By the time the team released him, seven years in, he was done. His only shame was in thinking about Patrick and Nora. The two people who had been to every Little League game he ever played, every game at Hull High. He worried he was letting them down.
In the off-season, Brian lived at home with his parents, helping Charlie out with painting jobs to make extra money. When his baseball career ended, he moved back in. It was supposed to be temporary, while he paid off the credit card debt. But he got lazy or comfortable, or both. Then his father got sick. After Charlie died, Brian couldn’t leave Nora alone in the house. He had been there ever since.
Pat gave Brian a job at the bar, full-time.
“Until you catch your breath,” he said.
Somehow, seven years had gone by.
Everyone at the bar still associated Brian with baseball. They thought of him as their in-house expert. What he wished he could say to Joe now, but didn’t, was that every mention of an active player filled him with jealousy, reminded him that in the end he hadn’t been good enough. So many ugly thoughts but not a single one uttered out loud. The worst part was that he’d loved baseball more than anything since he was a kid, but now he could hardly stand the thought of it.
—
“Mulcahey!” Pat yelled at a guy taking a seat at the bar.
Pat made a big show of going around, hugging him.
Brian had no idea who he was, but that wasn’t uncommon. The bar was Patrick’s domain.
“You’re back,” Pat said.
“Just for a few days to see my mother. She had to have her hip replaced.”
“Jesus,” Pat said. “Sorry to hear it. Give her my best. Tell her to call me if she needs anything after you’re gone.”
“Thanks, pal. She’s doing her physical therapy now. I’m stealing an hour away. There is only so much Judge Judy one man can take.”
Patrick turned to Brian. “Mulcahey grew up on Crescent Ave. with us. Moved out to Atlanta when he got married. Did you two even meet last time he was in? How long’s it been, Mulcahey? Five years? Six? You were here for your sister’s kid’s graduation.”
“That’s right. Good memory.”
The guy had a Boston accent, like Patrick, like most of them in this place. Their parents had Irish accents, and Patrick had a Boston accent, and Brian had no accent at all. The family moved to Hull the summer before he was born. As a kid, he used to stand in front of the mirror talking to himself, pretending to sound like the rest of them.
“How’s your sister doing?” Mulcahey said. “My sister was asking for her.”
“She’s good. She’s still in New York, running the animal shelter.”
“God love her.”
“She specializes in rehabbing pit bulls. You know, after they come out of the dog fighting ring or whatever.”
“Jesus.”
After college, Bridget followed a few friends to New York for the summer. She never returned. In the early years, she was going out with a group of retired cops every night, a band of tattooed vigilantes who called themselves the Angels. They got animals out of all kinds of hideous situations. Brian once had to leave the room as she told John about somebody’s cocker spaniel, left tied up outside the grocery store while the owner went in for milk and later found by the Angels, dead, with its mouth duct-taped shut. “Used as bait in a dog fight,” Bridget said. “Sick fuckers.”
Sometimes a crackhead stole a five-pound designer dog from a parked car, then sold it on the street. The Angels tracked the dog down. If someone left a dog out in the cold, they’d build it a doghouse. When the Angels rescued an animal, they brought it to a shelter. They never knew what became of it after that. Bridget said some of the shelters were great, but it was easier to get a cute puppy adopted than an older dog that had been through something. She wanted to open her own place, where the neediest cases would get the attention they deserved. She saved until she was able to do it. Nora seemed vaguely embarrassed by Bridget’s work, but Pat bragged about her. He did a fund-raiser for the shelter every year at the bar.
“And how’s John?” Mulcahey said. “Does he ever bring the governor in here for a few rounds?”
Brian knew Pat wouldn’t mention that the two of them hadn’t spoken in a while. Every guy who came into the bar thought Patrick was his best friend. But he hardly shared anything about himself. He didn’t trust people.
“My brother John’s too good for the likes of us,” Patrick said. “My brother John belongs over there at Dottie’s Wine Bar.”
Mulcahey laughed. He ordered a Guinness. Pat poured it himself.
“You know John’s name was in the Globe today, right?” the guy said, taking a sip from the glass when Patrick handed it over.
Pat shook his head.
“You didn’t see it?”
Fergie raised up the Herald. “We don’t read that rag around here.”
“It was an article about that kid—what’s his name? McClain?” Mulcahey said. “The one who just won for state senate. This whole story about how his best friend got robbed in high school and ended up blind. Do you guys remember that? Oh man, it was awful. He was just walking down the street in broad daylight, and boom—these pieces of shit came out of nowhere. I think they stabbed him in the eye. Or did they shoot him?”
“Did they ever catch them?” Brian said.
“It was a bunch of black kids from Mattapan,” Fergie said.
“I thought it was Whitey Bulger and those lowlifes,” Mulcahey said. “The kid’s father owed them. Wasn’t that it, Pat?”
Patrick shrugged. “I don’t remember it, to tell you the truth. I think maybe we had moved away by then.”
“Right,” Mulcahey said. “I forgot. You left in seventy-five.”
“Yeah. How’d you remember that off the top of your head?”
He shrugged. “Half the neighborhood moved that year.”
The family had left soon after some judge decided to desegregate the Boston public schools by busing poor black kids from Roxbury into Southie and poor white kids from Southie into Roxbury. Neither side wanted it. Most of the kids who lived on Crescent Ave. in Dorchester went to Southie High. Patrick was one of them. He got bused for a year, and then the family went to Hull.
From what Brian had heard, everything was bedlam that first year. Riots in the streets, people dragged from their cars and beaten to death. It was shameful to admit now that this was the reason they had gone away, that they had abandoned the old neighborhood. The family never talked about it.
“So what does this blind kid have to do with Rory McClain?” Pat said.
“I guess he was homeless. Hard for the poor bastard to find work after what happened. Heroin got him. But Rory’s been trying to help him get back on his feet. And he’s making the whole opiate thing a big part of his plan once he’s in office. Good guy, I think. My mother’s crazy about him. Even if he is a Republican. Her sister owned a triple-decker on the same block as Rory’s parents for years.”
“Leave it to Rory to save the day,” Pat said.
He had a strange look on his face.
For as much as Patrick was the life of the party, he had an angry streak. He loved to fight. Once, at a crowded bar in Faneuil Hall, the girl he was with said she was pretty sure some guy had touched her ass. Which one? Patrick asked. She pointed, and he threw a punch, just like that. Afterward, the girl said maybe it hadn’t been that guy, she wasn’t sure.
Rory McClain had brought this out in him on the day of Maeve’s confirmation. Pat got all worked up for reasons Brian couldn’t understand. He assumed it had more to do with Pat’s feelings toward John than it had to do with Rory. And Pat had been drinking all day.
“Well. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta go in and pay some bills,” Patrick said. “Customers prefer it when you keep the lights on. Great to see you, Mulcahey. Come back in before you skip town.”
“I will.”
They embraced and then Patrick walked toward the office, shut the doo
r hard behind him.
A few minutes later, the guy finished his drink and left.
Fergie stared at the closed door of Patrick’s office. Finally, he went over and knocked, but Pat didn’t answer, and Fergie knew better than to barge in. Sometimes Patrick went dark. He went somewhere they couldn’t reach him. In those moments, it was best just to let him go.
—
When Patrick resurfaced, it was almost eight. The bar had filled in. A group of guys in their twenties, dressed in soccer uniforms, had just ordered a round of Blue Moons.
Fergie smirked as Brian poured them.
“Ahh, the Brian Special,” he said.
Pat came behind the bar. One of the soccer players held out his beer, still foaming at the top. “Excuse me. Sir?” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to have an orange slice?”
Patrick looked around like he had the wrong guy.
“No,” he said finally. “I don’t have a fucking orange slice. Get the fuck out of here.”
Brian raised his eyebrows as the kid skulked back to his table. Fergie doubled over laughing.
“Christ,” Patrick said. “Great. Now I can’t remember what I came out here for.”
He went back into the office.
“Is he shit-faced?” Brian said.
“What? No. I think he’s just fired up.”
An hour later, at nine on the dot, Brian called the house to check on his mother, as he did every night. He worried about her when she was home alone. He pictured her up in the den, reading one of her mystery novels, oblivious to the madman trying to break in downstairs.
“Did you lock the doors?” he said when she answered.
“Of course I did.”
“What are you doing?”
“Reading,” Nora said. “Or trying to. There’s something funny going on with the boiler. Will you have a look in the morning?”
“Sure. Why are you talking so softly?”
“I have a tiny headache, but I’m fine.”
Patrick came out of the office again, shouting Brian’s name.
“He’s on the phone with his girlfriend,” Fergie said.
Brian gave him the finger as he answered his mother. “Why don’t you take an Advil?”
He didn’t know why he bothered to say it. He knew she would act like he had just advised her to smoke crystal meth.
“You know I don’t like to take that stuff,” Nora said. “I don’t want to get dependent.”
“Tell her I’m gonna send my ironing home with you tomorrow,” Pat said.
“Christ, you two have got to be the oldest mama’s boys on the planet,” Fergie said. “We should call the Guinness World Records people.”
“The woman does a crease like none other,” Pat said.
It seemed like whatever was bothering him before had subsided. He sat at the bar beside Fergie, looked up at the TV.
As Brian said good night to Nora, he noticed that Patrick’s eyes were half open, as if he was dozing off.
“Did you have a couple before you got here, buddy?” Fergie said.
Patrick didn’t answer.
Fergie raised his voice. “Hey, Tom Selleck. I’m talking to you.”
Brian didn’t hear his brother’s response because at that moment, Ashley Conroy walked in. She came straight over, leaned across the bar, and kissed him. Fergie and Patrick and even old Joe whooped and ooohed like a bunch of girls in the sixth grade.
Brian could feel himself blushing. He poured her a rum and Coke.
Ashley was a cute blonde, a slightly trampy dresser, several years younger than him. They met four months ago at the bar, while she was out on a pub crawl for a friend’s bachelorette. That first night, he watched her move through the room, every part of her bouncy yet firm, the perkiness of youth. While her friends did a round of tequila shots, she collected five business cards in rapid succession, got a guy to take a condom out of his wallet and give it to her, and drew an anchor tattoo on yet another guy’s arm with a Sharpie. After each interaction, she crossed something off a piece of paper in her hand. She noticed Brian looking and came straight toward him. He looked away, pretended to be wiping down the bar with a rag.
“Give me your underwear,” were her first words to him.
“Excuse me?”
“Or let me take a shot off your stomach? It’s for this scavenger hunt we’re doing. I was late joining my girlfriends at the last place so they’ve given me a ten-minute head start here. Just trying to make it count. Your name’s not Jordan by chance, is it?”
He laughed, befuddled. “No.”
“Well, can I at least have your phone number? That’s an easy one. It requires nothing of you but it’s worth seven points.”
“Why not,” he said.
He ended up going home with her that night.
Brian didn’t think she was all that smart. But then, no one had ever mistaken him for one of the great minds of our time. He had never figured out how to match the words he said with what he was thinking. People at the bar joked that he was quiet because Patrick talked enough for the both of them.
Maybe Ashley had as much going on in her head as he had in his, even though she only ever talked about celebrities he’d never heard of and the secrets of friends he’d never met. She wanted a commitment. Twice now she had asked him for a “state of the union.” Both times, Brian succeeded in ignoring the request.
He wasn’t half as good-looking as Patrick, but Brian didn’t have much trouble meeting girls. The fact that he lived at home with his mother ruled out most women his own age. But the baseball thing helped. That, and the way he was so often silent. A girl with enough imagination could project anything she wanted onto him.
Women were crazy about his brother. As soon as one was hooked, Pat was on to the next. Brian supposed he had taken this approach as a model without meaning to, though for him it felt temporary. When he was playing ball, he never lived anywhere long enough to make a commitment. Eventually, he would settle down. He was still young. Thirty-three to Pat and Fergie’s fifty. As much as he aged, so did they, so that by comparison, Brian felt like a kid.
Things were slow for the rest of the night. At some point, he noticed that Patrick was no longer there. He thought maybe his brother had left without saying good-bye, or gone to the corner to get a slice of pizza.
At a quarter to eleven, Ashley said, “Is he okay?”
He turned to see Patrick stumbling out of the office in his coat, car keys in hand.
Pat looked back at the floor behind him with disdain, as if it had tripped him on purpose.
“Christ, Fergie! Clean that up.”
“Clean what up?”
“There’s some shit on the floor. I almost broke my neck.”
“I’m off the clock,” Fergie said.
“Well, clean it the fuck up anyway.”
Fergie looked at Brian. He made a face that Patrick couldn’t see.
“I’m heading out too,” Fergie said. “I’ll drive you.”
“No. I’m gonna drive myself. I have my car here.”
“Pat,” Brian said. “Let him take you. I’ll put the car in front of your place later. Here, give me your keys.”
“I need my keys to start my car,” Patrick said, the words coming out extra slow, a revelation.
He dropped the keys on the floor.
“Okay, man,” Brian said. “No way in hell you’re driving.”
“What the fuck are you guys talking about? I haven’t had a drop.”
Patrick was so indignant that Brian almost wondered if it was true.
Before anyone could reply, Pat scooped up the keys and was out the door.
Fergie followed behind.
“See you tomorrow,” he called to Brian.
A minute later, he was back.
“That asshole pushed me down,” Fergie said, with a mix of amusement and disbelief. “Your brother is stubborn as a mule, I swear to God. Well. Good thing he doesn’t have far to go.”
Th
ey laughed. The night went on.
When Brian was cleaning up before close, he noticed a glow emanating from below the office door. He went in there to turn off the lights. There was an empty whiskey bottle on the desk, but he didn’t think much of it.
By then, Patrick was gone.
—
The space between two days could be a lifetime.
Twenty-four hours later, Brian stood alone in the office, whiskey bottle in hand, trying to block out the noise from the crowd of mourners outside.
He wouldn’t go back to his mother’s tonight. After they closed, he’d go to Ashley’s apartment, which would only be slightly more bearable. Ashley and her roommates would moon over him, asking again and again if he felt like talking.
The one thing that might make him feel better would be fucking Ashley in the dark, the smell of her lotion like candy, forgetting for a few minutes. After, he would have to lie there listening to her tiny snores, remembering again, but still it was better than going home. He knew it might cost him later, that she would make it mean something. But Brian was willing to deal with that when the time came.
Part Four
1958–1967
10
IN THE MONTHS BEFORE her wedding day, Nora wished she could confess to Oona all that had happened since they arrived in Boston. They had promised to write every day, and they did, at first. But after a while, they both slowed down. Things got busy. A letter took an age to arrive. By the time you sent one and got one in return, everything you’d written had ceased to matter.
There were things she didn’t dare put in writing. If they were together, Nora would tell Oona about that kiss on the boat. She would tell her how she was careful around men after that, and about the last dance she went to on Dudley Street. How a sailor pulled her up from her chair, not listening when she said that she didn’t feel like dancing. When they moved together, he sent currents through her, a sensation she had never felt with Charlie. She knew it was wrong. She went to confession. She stopped going to the dances.
Nora scolded herself—she was shy and dull and ought to feel grateful that someone wanted to marry her. But when Charlie came upon her alone in the hall at Mrs. Quinlan’s and kissed her neck in rapid motion, like a woodpecker tapping on a tree, her body tightened up in refusal.
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