Brighton (16 page)

AGGIE LIVED
on the first floor of an aging brownstone in Jamaica Plain. She was eighty-eight and had suffered at least two major strokes. Maybe more, according to her doctors. They’d wanted her in a rehab facility with hot and cold running nurses, but her great-niece wouldn’t hear of it. And Bridget Pearce was the money. So Bridget made the decisions.

She’d found Emmanuelle working in Watertown at a produce store called Russo’s. Emmanuelle was an illegal who split her time stocking bananas out front and hosing down pallets of cherry tomatoes in the back. Bridget offered the soft-eyed Guatemalan twice what she made at Russo’s to take care of Aggie—twenty-four seven. Emmanuelle jumped at the chance. That was four years ago.

Bridget walked up the sagging steps to the apartment and banged on the front door. Emmanuelle was there in a flash, sugar on her lips, inviting her boss inside. Bridget sat on a small, neat couch while Emmanuelle bustled around in the kitchen. Cut flowers scented the room, and the furniture gleamed under a fresh coat of polish. A bamboo fan beat gently overhead and classical music played in the background, the two combining to
cover up the hiss and thump of an industrial-strength respirator wheezing away in a bedroom down the hall. Emmanuelle came in with tea and a plate of gingersnaps. Bridget smiled and did the honors, pouring cups for both of them.

“She’s doing wonderfully,” Emmanuelle said. Bridget nodded at the comfortable lie. In four years, Aggie had made no discernible neurological progress. She ate when fed, moved her bowels when prompted, and three times a week got into a wheelchair so Emmanuelle could push her around the block. She couldn’t speak but seemed to know where she was and followed any visitor around the room with a slack jaw and rinsed-out eyes. Not that Aggie got a lot of visitors. Early on Colleen had wanted to visit, but Bridget poured cold water on the idea until her sister gave up. Now, besides Emmanuelle and the doctors, it was just Bridget, twice a week like clockwork. She broke off a piece of cookie, soaking it in her tea before nibbling off an edge.

“How are you doing?” she said, gesturing for Emmanuelle to sit closer. The girl slid maybe an inch across the sofa.

“I’m fine, ma’am. Just fine. You want to see her?”

“In a minute. Tell me about your family.”

“It’s all good. My niece, Jacinta, she started middle school.”

“She’s that old?”

“Sí, sí. Thirteen.”

This was their routine. Tea. A couple minutes of small talk. Then Bridget would go in. But first, the money. She pulled out a roll of bills and began to peel off twenties. “Here’s your cash for the week. And a little extra for your niece.”

Emmanuelle tried to give back the extra, like she always did. And Bridget refused, like she always did. The girl supported an extended family of at least twelve that Bridget knew of, so the
cash came in handy. And it kept her on a short leash. With the money taken care of, Emmanuelle quickly slipped on her coat. Bridget saw her out and watched from the front windows as she walked neatly down the street. She’d be gone for two hours. More than sufficient. Bridget headed back to the bedroom and opened the door.

The ghost of her grandmother sat at the foot of the bed, unfiltered cigarette in one hand, lips peeled back in a deathless grin. Her great-uncle, Shuks, floated near the ceiling, diving at Bridget as she approached the bed before disappearing in a long, winding sigh. Bridget gave as good as she got, shooting a withered smile back at Gram, then pulling a chair within whispering distance of her patient.

“They’re not gonna help you.”

Aggie responded by rubbing together a toothless set of gums. The closer Bridget’s great-aunt got to death, the more she looked like she was just being born. Her body was barely a bump under the covers, shrinking under the assault of chemicals, disease, and the inevitable wasting of old age. She’d lost all but a strand or two of hair, her skull covered with deep wrinkles that looked like ancient runes you might see carved on a cave wall somewhere. Bridget got a sudden urge to run her hands over them and discern what sort of message they held. Instead, she stood up and circled the bed, inspecting the machinery that kept her great-aunt alive—machinery she paid the tab for. Bridget tweaked a tube dripping clear fluids and tugged at some wires that ran along the floor and disappeared under cool sheets. When she returned to the chair, she held up the white Friendly’s bag. It was Aggie’s weekly treat, fed to her through a straw. Emmanuelle had cried and kissed the back of Bridget’s hand the first time she’d
asked to feed the shake to Aggie. Since then it had become part of their routine. Bridget pulled out the Fribble and poked a straw through the hole on top. Aggie watched closely, rubbing a furred tongue across lips cracked and blistered with fever. Bridget found some ointment Emmanuelle kept nearby on a tray and rubbed it on the sores. Her great-aunt purred low in her throat like an old tabby and began to shift her legs under the sheets. Bridget made a quieting motion with one hand and picked up the Fribble, fitting the straw to Aggie’s lips. Her eyes grew wide while yellowed cheeks worked overtime drawing up the vanilla goodness. Bridget let her get a good taste, then plucked the straw from her mouth, watching her lips dry suck like a fish out of water. Bridget pulled off the cover and took a sip herself, allowing a mustache of thick cream to form before licking it off.

“That’s enough for today,” she said and tossed the cup in the trash. Aggie moaned and popped her lips.

“Now, stop that.” Bridget cleaned her great-aunt’s face and hands with a warm washcloth and plumped her pillows. By the time she kissed her forehead, the old woman was back to looking at Bridget like she was a god. She left the room, closing the bedroom door softly behind her, and headed down the hallway toward the kitchen.

A rear door opened to a set of stairs leading down to the building’s basement. Bridget had rented out the lower levels when she took the first-floor apartment, agreeing to pay extra provided she, and she alone, had access. The scumbag landlord had jumped at the cash. Bridget told him she’d change the locks and cut the keys herself. She tugged open a second door in the basement and pulled out a flashlight as she navigated another set of steps. The subbasement smelled of rats, dead and decaying in
the walls. Bridget could hear the live ones, urgent nails chattering against the concrete as they scurried in advance of her approach. She hit the bottom of the stairs, her light finding the first storage bin. Bridget checked her watch. If everything went well, she’d be done in an hour. She punched in an alarm code, opened the bin, and grabbed a canvas bag. Sitting on the cold floor, Bridget pulled out bundles of cash and piled them around her. She’d just begun to count when her cell phone buzzed. Bridget looked at the number on caller ID and picked up.

“What’s up, Finn?”

Finn McDermott breathed through his nose and didn’t say a word.

“Finn? You there?”

“I can hardly hear you.”

“What do you want?”

“You seen your brother?”

“Not yet. Why?”

“I seen him down at Tar Park yesterday. He was asking ’bout Bobby.”

“So what?”

“I don’t like him sniffing around.”

“He’s not sniffing anything.”

She’d started skimming off Bobby’s book years ago. He had more than he needed and she had squat, so fuck him. Finn didn’t care as much about the cash as he did banging her and he was cheap insurance. If Finn wanted to think they were partners, that was all right, too.

“I paid our money a visit today,” she said, picking up a stack of twenties and counting silently.

“Where are you keeping it?”

“None of your business.”

“It might be good if I knew.”

“It might be good if you go fuck yourself. What did we agree on?”

“Just be careful. Bobby’s not a dummy, you know.”

“We’re fine. You still wanna meet tonight?”

“I should be done by eight, eight thirty.”

“I can’t get there till ten.”

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing. You want to meet or not?”

“Bridge . . .”

“I’ll see you at the Cask. If I’m not there by ten thirty, I’m not coming.”

She hung up and finished counting the stack of twenties. Somewhere above her, there was a groan in the pipes. Bridget pulled out a ledger book filled with her best friends—black columns of figures, etched in small, precise script and marching down the page in picture-perfect order.

KEVIN GOT
out of his car and made the slow walk up Champney Street. Leaves in the trees rubbed together in the breeze, scouting up whispers all around him. He lingered on the sidewalk, staring at windows curtained against the day. There was no grace left in the old homestead, no sense of nostalgia, or even foreboding. Just a lawn mower resting in pieces on the porch, along with a stripped-down bike frame and rusted hunk of chain. A black sedan rolled down the block and knifed to the curb.

“Kevin Pearce?”

The voice pulled Kevin from his slow-churning fog. Father Lenihan had been the priest at Saint A’s for three decades. As far as Kevin knew, he was the only one left in a parish with more tumbleweeds than parishioners rolling down the aisle every Sunday.

“Father, how are you doing?”

“Doing well, thanks.”

Kevin moved closer but didn’t offer his hand. The priest leaned across so the late-afternoon sun blanched his face, lighting up the veins in his eyes and cobwebbing in cheeks and nose.

“You look good, Kevin.”

“I’m kind of surprised you recognized me.”

“You’re the spit of your mother. What brings you back?”

“No reason. Just thought I’d see the old neighborhood.”

They both turned their gaze down the block. A pair of sneakers was slung over a telephone wire and cars swirled around Oak Square, their shapes cutting fast and dark in the murk. The priest spoke first.

“It’s not like it was.”

“That’s what everyone says, but I’m not sure if they mean it’s better or worse.”

Lenihan nodded as a chunky white kid stepped from the alleyway of a two-family across the street. He stopped next to a statute of Mary on the Half Shell stuck in the front yard. The kid gave Kevin and the idling car a Boston once-over then disappeared back from where he came, leaving the Virgin to fend for herself.

“I heard you work for the
Globe
?” the priest said.

“I’m a reporter.”

“Good for you.”

Kevin’s newspaper had been the one to expose the cancer feeding on the archdiocese of Boston. Kevin knew the reporters from the Spotlight team working the story. He’d checked early on to see if Lenihan’s name, or any of the other priests from his childhood, had made their lists. Lenihan hadn’t. A couple of others from Brighton had. Kevin would like to say he’d felt some foreboding of evil, some skin crawl at the back of his neck when he was a kid and they were leaning over him, touching his shoulder, tousling his hair, correcting, disciplining, teaching him right from wrong, but he hadn’t felt a thing. Saint A’s had never been a home for him growing up—not like some kids—but when he was
there, he’d always felt safe. Now he just felt sick and wanted to get away from the whole thing as fast as he could. The old priest didn’t have that option.

“Have you seen anyone yet?”

“I saw Bobby Scales this morning.”

“Bobby. You know he comes to church just about every day? Sits in the back when I light the candles for mass. He thinks I don’t know he’s back there, but I do.” Lenihan sparked up an old-school Irish smile that had Kevin leaning against the side of the car.

“Should I tell him you’re onto him?”

“Let’s keep it our secret.”

“No problem.”

“Lord knows we can’t be driving away the ones that do show up.” The priest peered up at Kevin like a beggar at Christmas looking for the tickle of a coin in his cup.

“I’m sorry, Father.”

“It is what it is, but you probably know that better than most.” He lifted his chin toward 8 Champney. “Does she look any different?”

“Yes and no.”

“Like everything else?”

“Exactly.”

“Welcome home, Kevin. Say hello to everyone for me.”

“I will, Father.”

Lenihan offered a half wave that might have been a blessing and eased his car away from the curb. Then Kevin was alone again. Just him and the house. The house he’d grown up in. The house where she’d died. The house he’d run from. He walked across the slabbed sidewalk and felt the soles of his shoes scratch
as he climbed the steps. The screen door he’d cycled through a million times as a kid was still on the job, except now it was torn in more spots than not and hung by a single screw screwed into a single hinge. He opened it with two fingers and reached for the key under a piece of fitted wood that made up part of the doorstep.

The door swung wide, a rectangle of sun on the floor of the hallway and the smell of old paint and dust in his nose. Kevin rocked on the threshold, tracing the outline of his parents still scratched in the cushions of living-room couch and chair. His old man’s voice snapped on a string tied to the back of his neck and he remembered the warm feeling of imaginary piss running down the leg of a nine-year-old and the thrill, the pure fucking thrill, of uncut fear the way only a child can experience it. And keep it. And nurture it for a lifetime. He saw his mother, anchored in the corner, eyes hollowed and drawn at the mouth, the husk of her life peeling away in thin layers of regret. He thought all of that was done—the thump of dirt on wooden coffins announcing an end to a part of his life that had ended long before. Maybe not. He swallowed against the dry spot in his throat and stepped into the room. On a table near the front windows were a collection of things he’d missed. A blurry picture of Colleen in her cap and gown, high school diploma in hand, smiling and giving the camera a thumbs-up. Nearby were a couple more high school shots of Colleen and one of Bridget, holding her elbow while she stood on the back porch of the house and smoked a cigarette, narrowing her eyes and staring at something irritating in the distance. He sat down in one of the old chairs, green stripes with pink flowers, and touched a tender spot the
boys from Fidelis had raised near his temple. Then he got up and walked into the kitchen.

It was like the living room, except everything was even older and grayer. He saw the same cups he drank milk out of as a kid. The same bowls he’d used for cereal. Same knives, plates, forks. He walked over to the pantry that had once served as his bedroom. Scratched into the door frame was a ladder of pencil marks where they used to measure their heights. He noticed an old phone jack in the adjacent hallway, a tangle of wires spilling out across the floor. Kevin recalled the heavy black phone that used to sit on a table with a single chair beside it. His father, tumbling down the hall at night, pissed on whiskey and beer. The pull and recoil of the rotary dial and his voice like maple syrup, talking sweet to his women, telling them he was going to leave his family, begging them to wait, describing what he’d do to their bodies when he saw them. Then he’d hang up and crawl into bed with Kevin’s mom. The memory turned his saliva into sawdust, and a hot pulse quickened in the hollow of his throat.

He moved deeper into the pantry. The room’s only window was painted shut. Kevin crouched down to examine a section of wall underneath it. In 1967, the Red Sox were worse than bums. They were irrelevant. At the start of the season the oddsmakers pegged them at 100–1 for the pennant. Kevin didn’t much give a damn about oddsmakers back then. He jumped the bus to Fenway on Opening Day and sat in the bleachers with Shuks and eight thousand other diehards as Lonborg beat Eddie Stanky and the White Sox, 5–4. He listened that season on a transistor, sound down low at night, and scratched final
scores into the wall beside his bed. At first, it was a game here or there. As the Impossible Dream unfolded, his entries on the wall became more frequent and the ’67 team became his family, the soothing voices of Ken Coleman and Ned Martin welcoming him in every night, providing a place where he could feel safe and warm and even loved in a crazy sort of way only he could understand. Kevin rubbed off a thick layer of dust with his thumb and turned up a couple of scores etched in black ballpoint.

APRIL 14

Sox 3

Yanks 0

Billy Rohr one-hitter!!

JULY 27

Sox 6

Angels 5

Ten innings

He scrubbed a little more and found an entire string, scribbled in the wandering script of a sleepy third-grader.

AUGUST 24

Sox 7

Senators 5

AUGUST 28

Sox 3

Yanks 0

SEPT 5

Sox 8

Senators 2

At the very bottom of the wall, he unearthed a final, faded entry.

OCTOBER 1

Sox 5

Twins 3

Final Standings

Red Sox 92-70

Twins 91-71

Tigers 91-71

AL Champs . . . World Series!!!

IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

He’d gone to that last game, a bunch of them had, storming the right-field gates twenty at a time. Some of them got caught, but Kevin was far too quick. He sat on the concrete steps of the bleachers, a few feet from the bullpen, and watched Lonborg finish it off. Then he ran onto the field and rolled around in the green grass and red clay and lived a moment that only comes once in a young boy’s life and only if he’s terribly, terribly lucky.

Kevin clapped the dust off his hands and got to his feet. At the other end of the hallway his parents’ old bedroom was closed off. He touched the smooth doorknob but didn’t turn it, threading his way back through the kitchen and out onto the porch. The wooden posts groaned as he leaned on the crooked railing
and looked over the backyard of his youth. Old Towne Taxi had closed up years ago, but the office was still there, windows dark and the dirt parking lot overgrown with hip-high weeds. Kevin picked his way across the yard and climbed the short run of steps. The front door was locked. Now that he was closer, he could see the door itself was heavy and new, as was the shiny deadbolt lock. He walked around to the side of the building and tried a window. Locked as well. Inside, a red alarm light blinked patiently on the sill. Beyond that, the main room looked empty except for the outline of a desk pushed up against a wall. Kevin wondered if it was his grandmother’s desk, who used it, and why was the place alarmed anyway? He followed a faint path toward the back of the building. The trees had grown thick here, forming a canopy with the roof and creating a deep tunnel of shadow. As he turned the corner, something came whistling out of the darkness. He ducked and heard the woody thump of a baseball bat off the side of the building. It was a wild swing and Kevin thought whoever it was either had piss-poor aim or only intended to scare him. He stepped in, catching a thin wrist with one hand and twisting the arm of his attacker at the elbow. A boot lashed at his knees, clipping him on the shins. He swore and pivoted, increasing pressure until he heard the bat drop. A hand grabbed at his hair and pulled him to the ground. They rolled into the weeds and then out of the shadows. Kevin wound up on top, kneeling astride his attacker.

“Fucking Bridget.”

“Brother Kevin.” His sister was wearing jeans and a loose-fitting white shirt. She flared her nostrils, the old man’s crazy circling in her eyes and stirring the blood they shared. Some Thanksgiving Day tables were populated by doctors or lawyers ar
guing the finer points of their respective professions. Others had relatives stabbing each other with silverware and chewing on the drapes for dessert. Bridget blinked and the eyes went sleepy—dark and impenetrable. Kevin got to his feet and helped her up.

“Did I hurt you?”

“Hell, no.” She rubbed her elbow and picked up the bat. “What are you doing sneaking around back here?”

“What are you doing coming at me with a Louisville Slugger?”

“Still got a lotta fucking rats in this neighborhood. Tried to break in three different times in the last year.”

“Is that why you got the alarms?”

“Sure.” She walked back toward the front of the cab office. Kevin followed.

“I didn’t see any alarms in the house.”

“They don’t try to get in up there.”

“What’s back here?”

“Nothing, but the rats don’t know that. Fucking pack of morons.” She’d parked her car at the edge of the dirt lot. A couple of shopping bags sat in the backseat. “We can leave the car here. Just grab a bag.”

They started to walk across the yard, Bridget slightly ahead of him. He’d only seen her a handful of times over the years, never more than a minute or two of mumbled small talk. Now he studied her profile, bathed in the pinks and purples of early evening. At thirty-eight, his nasty kid sister had grown into a cruelly efficient woman, with a wiry body and mean line to her upper lip that was the genetic birthright of Boston women who traced their roots back to the working kitchens of Ireland and England. A tweak here and there and Bridget might have been beautiful. Instead, she’d had to settle for common.

“You been inside the house?” she said.

“Just for a minute. You should find a new hiding place for the key.”

“You gonna tell me how to run this place?”

“I’m just sayin’ . . .”

“I told you. No one wants to get in except me. Come on.”

Kevin sat at the kitchen table and watched her unpack groceries. She shoved a stack of French bread pizzas and some fish sticks in the freezer and slammed the fridge shut. Then she took a seat across from him, settling in the chair with a heaviness that belied her spare frame.