She held out her hand. He deposited a baseball in it. It was a ritual they’d started at the beginning of the summer. She dated each ball and kept them in a cardboard box under the bed. Kevin played it off like he was doing a favor for his kid sister but was secretly thrilled, feeling a little bit like a big-leaguer signing autographs every time he handed over a ball. Colleen was studying the latest addition to her collection when a hand snaked out from under a lump of blankets and ripped it from her fingers. Colleen looked up at Kevin, enormous eyes already beginning to fill.
“Cut it out,” he whispered.
Bridget peeked out from beneath the bedding, a lurid smile slumming on the twelve-year-old’s lips. “Let her cry.”
Colleen was about to burst and Kevin could hear movement in the living room. “Here.” He had another ball in his glove and gave it to Colleen. “This is the one that won the game anyway.”
She immediately brightened. “Really?”
“He’s lying,” Bridget said. “This is the real one. That’s why he gave it to you.”
An image shot through Kevin’s head. His mom, fingers greased with Dippity-Do, fashioning thick rings of curls in Colleen’s hair, then oohing and aahing as they cascaded down her back. Bridget, sitting in the corner and watching in the mirror, hating everything and everyone she saw reflected there. Nothing and no one more than herself. Kevin felt a pinch of sorrow and plucked the ball from Bridget’s hand in the smooth, easy motion of an older brother. “Both of you go to bed. Colleen, keep that one for now and we’ll figure it out later.”
There was another creak in the hallway—someone walking to the front door and back into the living room.
“Better get out of here before he comes down.” Bridget’s tone screamed coward, and Kevin felt her eyes drilling into his spine as he walked back down the hall toward the pantry. He lay in the bed he’d made under a high window, watching the world turn in long beams of moonlight, listening for footsteps until he fell asleep.
2
KATIE PEARCE drew hard on her cigarette, letting the smoke soak into her lungs before exhaling into the sharp morning air. HE would be up soon. She needed to get Kevin out of the house, get going on breakfast. Her eyes traveled across the brooding presence of Indian Rock. Her mind climbed the hill that lived behind it. At the top of that hill was Saint Andrew’s Academy, an all-girls high school. Twenty years ago, her high school. Class of 1955. Katie took another suck on her cigarette and poured out the memories in twisted ribbons of smoke. Old men, long-nosed and rawboned, yellow teeth and whiskers, perched on thin wooden chairs, cheeks coarse and ruddy under cold, black eyes. Boston. Brahmin. Blue bloods. She conjured up her opponents as well. Four other students, all boys, sizing up one another as they waited. Two whispered in a corner. One looked like he wanted to talk, but she froze him out. Fear curdled her stomach. They were from Latin School, BC High, Exeter, Groton. Crème de la crème. Goliath to her David. Finalists for the state oratory medal. St. A’s had never hosted the event, never won it either. Katie would be the first. The nuns were certain of it, and so they’d heaped everything on her seventeen-year-old shoulders. The Smart One. And she’d loved them fiercely for it. Until now. Now that the moment was here. It wasn’t like practice, standing at one end of the gleaming third-floor hallway while Sister Ellen stood at the other, snapping a wooden clicker and telling her to enunciate. Not like the prelims where they’d arrived as a team, the Academy girls, smart as whips, quiet, modest, confident. Feared. That was then. This was different. They trotted out the finalists one at a time. The first speaker was a senior from Groton. He rested his hands lightly on the lectern and leaned forward, every gesture polished and easy, his speech little more than a private chat between two generations of New England privilege and power. When he was finished, the boy took his time, gliding past Katie with barely a glance. Then her name was announced, and a tiny trickle of piss leaked down her leg.
Stupid Irish cow. Dumb cunt. Whore.
Her father’s whispers hissed and snapped all around her as she walked on wooden legs to the lectern. He’d noticed the attention his daughter was getting. Fuck yes, he’d noticed. His attention. His spotlight. And that could never be. So he’d taken her for a drive two nights before the final and explained the pecking order—where she stood, what she was, what she’d always be.
Stupid Irish cow, dumb cunt, whore.
Katie looked out at her audience. One of the judges, the oldest with white hair and purple lips, took a handkerchief out of his pocket and waved at her to begin. She opened her mouth and a dry croak hopped out. The patrician wiped his lips clean and leaned to his left for a whisper, then a delicious smile. Katie felt the shame well in her chest as a chair scraped and her head emptied. She turned and fled, running from her stillborn future, hiding somewhere in its cooling past. Eventually, one of the nuns found her in a bathroom stall. She told Katie it was all right. She’d do better next time. But Sister Ellen never spoke to her again, not like she had before. No one at the Academy did. And the only foothold she’d ever had in the world was scrubbed away in a flush of tears and fear and cunning. And she slid back down the hill, back into the valley of soot and ash where she belonged, where they all waited with their eager, misshapen smiles and sharp, shining teeth. And the bulb that had burned so brightly, so briefly, popped inside her head, the filament glowing red for the briefest of moments before her mind went dark forever.
Stupid Irish cow. Dumb cunt. Whore.
Katie Pearce flicked her cigarette into the morning breeze and watched it catch in the grass before winking out. There was more movement inside the house. HE would be up soon. She had to start the breakfast. And she had to get her only son out before they ate him alive as well.
3
KEVIN WOKE to the rough burn of tobacco and squinted at the smell in his sheets and on his clothes. His mom was awake, standing on the back porch with the kitchen door open, enjoying a smoke in the cold. He pulled the blanket up to his chin, relishing the warmth of his bed for another moment or two. In the concrete distance, he could hear the early morning rounds of the ragman. He haunted the neighborhood at five miles an hour, hanging his head out the window of an ancient pickup, beating a spoon against a tin pan dropped on a rope over the driver’s-side door and sawing away in a singsong voice.
Any old rags, any old rags, any old raaaags . . .
Kevin listened to the wax and wane until the ragman’s call had faded down the hill. Then it was quiet again. His mother came back inside, slippers scraping across the cracked linoleum as she went back and forth. Kevin waited until the kettle began to whistle, then got dressed and crept into the kitchen.
It was cold for early September. The radiator heat wasn’t up, so his mom had lit the stove and left the oven door open. Kevin pulled a chair next to the heat and drank from the cup of Barry’s she’d fixed.
“Want me to make some?” She held up a package of Jiffy corn muffin mix. Kevin loved corn muffins and his mom thought it made up for everything else. At nineteen cents a package, it was a cheap fix.
“Sure, Ma. Corn muffins would be great.”
That was all the absolution she needed. Ten minutes later, they were ready—thin, gritty meal, but hot with a dollop of butter. Kevin ate two of them with tea. His mom sat with him and stared into some blank space only she could visit. After a few minutes, she stiffened in her chair, eyes moving to the hallway.
“Your father’s up.”
Kevin heard the hollow fear in her voice and felt it balloon in his belly. He scooped up another muffin, wrapped it in a paper napkin, and made his way to the back door. She helped him slip on his coat.
“Ma.” He pulled away, but she still managed a kiss on the cheek.
“Got you.” She wiped at the spot with the flat of her thumb and pushed back the hair from his forehead. “I love you, Kevin.”
“I gotta go.”
She took him by the chin and forced his eyes onto hers. “I do, Kevin. You know that.”
“Yea
h.” There was the sound of water now from the bathroom. “I gotta go.”
She rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Stop upstairs and see her.”
“I’m running late.”
“Stop up and see her. It’ll only take a minute.”
Kevin grabbed his glove and slipped onto the landing, his mom snapping the lock behind him. He listened to the scrape of a kitchen chair and the cut of voices through the thin wooden door. Then he turned and took the stairs, two at a time.
The big cat slouched in a shadow, easy in his skin, watching as the boy ran up the stairs, Indian quiet, a baseball glove slapping off his thigh as he went. The boy disappeared into the third-floor apartment and the cat waited, almond eyes tick-tocking back and forth between the front windows of the cab office and the top floor where the old lady lived. Leaves chattered in the breeze. The cat flared his nostrils and squinted against the sun, dipped in fifty shades of cold heat and rising fast, its nascent rays caught in a stray pane of white glass. He thought about the boy. Then the old lady. It would be another hour before she made her way across the yard. The big cat shrank back into the scrub and settled in to wait.
4
MARY BURKE sipped at her tea and thought about her shorties. She had them stashed all over the apartment, waiting for a late night or early morning when Horrigan’s was closed and she needed one. She got up from the kitchen table and walked into the living room, playing bent fingers among the dust bunnies that lived on the ledge over the door. Her cigarette butt was crouched in the corner just where she’d left it. Mary took it back to the kitchen and lit up, pulling the velvet smoke down into her lungs. At night she could sometimes feel the phlegm, thick and hard and brown, and the pump as her heart skipped and struggled. Mary would hack and cough until she’d cleared a passageway and her heart had settled back into its normal rhythm. Then she’d light up again, just to show her lungs who was boss. She’d lie in bed and listen to Larry Glick on the radio, blowing smoke rings at the ceiling and thinking about cycles within cycles—dreamless days that blended, one into another.
She’d been born sixty years ago at the same table where she took her breakfast. The sixth of seven, Mary grew up silent and smart. Her mother died when she was thirteen. They told the neighbors she’d fallen down a flight of stairs, but Mary knew better. When her father fell down the same flight six months later, Mary and Shuks (one of her five brothers and Mary’s favorite) stared down at his body from the landing and thought that was just about right. She married in the winter when she was seventeen. Today they’d probably call it rape, but once her future husband took her cherry she didn’t really have much choice. And thinking about anything else just wore her out. Mary churned out six kids in eight years—a regular hump machine, staring at cracks in the wall as he rutted over her. Her husband was her father in every respect. Only this one knew better. He feared Mary. And so the beatings were that much worse.
She’d set up the closet when her oldest was twelve. It had a sliding black bolt on it, some pillows, and a blanket. The kids would hear him on the stairs late at night and show up at the bedroom door, eyes lit by a cold, vacant light. She’d walk them down the hall and stuff them all in the closet. She’d go in last and slide the bolt across. Then they’d sit. The first time he clubbed his fists against the door. The old boards shuddered and paint cracked and fell off in thin, curling pieces. But the door held. One of the middle girls started to cry and Mary put an arm around her and wiped the tears dry with the back of her hand. On the other side of the door, her husband pulled up a chair and talked to his family. Each, in turn. The girls were whores. The boys, faggots and fairies. Their mother? She’d sucked his dick the first night they’d met. In an alley just off Oak Square. She’d sucked and he’d watched her suck. And now her children knew and how did that feel? Mary could have told him it didn’t feel like anything at all. But he already knew that. And one day it would kill him.
She took a final drag and crushed out the cigarette with her thumb, watching memories fade and die in the coal red ash. There was a tread on the stairs outside. She got up slowly and shuffled to the back door just as it opened. Her grandson, Kevin, was there, gray eyes catching hers in sketches of early morning light.
“Hi, Gram.”
“You want some tea?”
“I gotta get going.”
“Sit down for a minute.”
The boy took a seat at the kitchen table. She could already feel the sadness in him. It rippled through the generations. Some seemed immune, the stony ground of their souls reflected in the hard, flat planes of their faces. And then there were ones like him. Mary felt the familiar tightening in her chest, a squirming bag of fears in her gut. A new generation would be served. And she was powerless to stop it.
“Are you working today?” she said.
“I was gonna ride with Bobby.”
“Let me guess, you want to drive?”
“Bobby said you wouldn’t mind.”
“Is that what he said?” Her chuckle turned into a hacking cough. They both waited while it ran its course.
“Is it okay, Gram?”
“Take one of the old cabs. And for cripes sake, don’t hit anything.” She got up to fill the kettle.
“Are you going over?” he said.
“I’ll probably go in for the morning and see how I do.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Just don’t get old.” She pulled out a box of wooden matches, struck one, and lit a burner on the stove. “You win last night?”
“Yep. We’re in the city final.” He held up his glove. “Got practice at eleven.”
The water was still hot and the kettle began to whistle almost immediately. Mary pulled out a box of Red Rose tea and dropped a bag in a mug. Tea was her constant companion—a cure-all for whatever brand of heartache came traipsing through the door. Everything about it, from the ritual of boiling the water to fixing the accompanying toast, calmed and soothed her. She knew it was crazy, but the world always seemed to make a little more sense when you considered things over a cup of tea. At least that was her opinion and the hell with anyone who disagreed. The water spit as she poured from the kettle, and she set the tea in front of her grandson. Then she poured a cup for herself. He stirred in milk and sugar. She got out the butter and began to fix the toast.
“Mom made corn muffins.” Kevin pulled a white napkin from his pocket and unwrapped it.
“Oh, all right.” She sat down again and picked at the muffin, tapping the side of her foot against the table in an urgent, anxious rhythm. “How’s your mother?” Katie Pearce was Mary Burke’s third youngest, the smartest of the lot, and the one who’d stayed close.
“She’s fine.”
“Tell her I went to the store yesterday. Never mind, I’ll tell her myself.”
Even with the milk and sugar, the tea was strong and brown and rich. They sat and sipped.
“Your father home last night?” she said.
“He watched the game in the living room.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
She caught the boy’s tone and let it go, opting for a pen and the Globe’s crossword. Kevin reached for the front page. He’d been weaned on Watergate, following every twist and turn, living and dying with Woodward and Bernstein as they took down a presidency. She’d watched from across the kitchen table, arguing the finer points with the boy, forcing him to defend his beliefs, challenging at every opportunity. Along the way she’d witnessed the blossoming of a mind. No one had ever been to college in their family. He’d be the first. And so much more.
“What’s the headline?” she said.
The Globe was running a retrospective on Watergate, with a focus on Nixon and what he’d do with the rest of his life. She took one look at the former president’s face on the front page and pushed it away. “Crook.”
“All Nixon ever had to do was tell the truth,” Kevin said.
“You don’t know Republicans
.”
“That’s all he had to do, Gram. Just tell the truth about the robbery.”
“And why would he do that?”
“Two reasons. First, Americans would have forgiven him. Second, the Washington Post was gonna get him.”
“The Republicans told JFK they’d kill him if he came to Dallas and they did.”
“What’s that got to do with Watergate?”
“They’re Republicans. That’s what.” She broke off a piece of muffin, soaking it in her tea until it was soft. “Did you hear about Brackett Street?”
“What about it?”
“Some black bastard from Fidelis Way broke into an apartment and nearly killed a woman.”
“I heard there was no one home.”
“He had a knife with him. What do you think he was looking to do?”
“How do you know he had a knife? And how do you know he was black?”
Mary Burke got up and began to pace, the fear now screwed up tight and spinning in her belly. “Goddamn niggers.”
“I hate that word, Gram.”
“I’m not talking about all of them.”
“I don’t care.”
“I saw one in the backyard yesterday.” Her words came out in a quick rush of air.
“Saw what? A black kid?”
She nodded. It was just three in the afternoon. He’d caught her peeking at him from behind a shade in her kitchen and hightailed it down the alley. But she’d seen him. And that was enough.
“Maybe he knew someone who lives around here,” Kevin said.
“He ran like hell when he saw me.”
“I cut through backyards all the time, Gram.”
She grunted. The boy drained his cup and pulled on his coat. “Bobby’s gonna be waiting.”
“Come here.” She gave him a kiss on the cheek and ran rough fingers through his hair. “You’re right, Kev. It’s an awful word.”
“Then why use it?”
“Cuz I’m an old woman and I’m scared. And I should know better.”
Brighton Page 2
