December Boys (3 page)

“Lombardi? Gerry Lombardi is dead. He’s been dead almost as long as your brother. I wish he’d gone to prison too for what he did to those kids. But God took care of that—”

“I’m not talking about just Gerry. I mean Adam. Michael. That whole goddamn family—”

“That whole family? Jay, you sound like—” She pulled up short.

“Say it.”

Jenny shook her head. “What are you so angry for? You act like you’ve got it so bad. You don’t. You have a wife and son who love you, a steady job—”

“Steady job?”

“It’s nothing to sneeze at. In this economy? Marjorie’s husband Bob—”

“Bob? Who the hell is Bob? Who the hell is Marjorie?”

“The woman I work with at the bar? Do you listen when I talk? Marjorie’s husband Bob has been out of work since last October.”

“Why do I give a shit about some woman at a bar or her husband?”

“
I
work at a bar.”

“My point! Same lousy job you had when I got this one. What’s changed? Nothing!”

“I’m sorry you hate your job so much. I never told you—”

“What? To take it? Bullshit.”

“I never said you had to take that job.”

“No, you never did. Just like you never said I had to quit smoking cigarettes.”

“You want to get lung cancer? Talk out a hole in your throat? Keep smoking! If you don’t care enough to want to see your son—”

I stabbed a finger at her. “See! That!”

“What?”

“That. What you did there. ‘If I want to see my son.’ No, you didn’t say I had to take the job. But I still had to do what you wanted all the same—”

“That’s not fair.”

“You made it clear that if I wanted us to be a family, I had to do the things
you
decided were best.”

“I never once said that.”

“You didn’t have to. You threatened to move to Rutland. You threatened to take
my son
away because I wasn’t making enough money—”

“It was never about the money!”

“Whenever someone says ‘it’s not about the money,’ it’s always about the money.”

“Not true. I just thought you could be doing so much more than clearing out junk from dead people’s houses.”

“It’s called ‘estate clearing.’ It’s a legitimate career. Lots of people do it.”

Jenny tilted her head, a card player’s tell that I was pushing logic to its limit.

“Doesn’t matter what it’s called. I was happy.”

“When have you ever been happy, Jay?”

“Thanks for telling me how I feel.”

“Don’t play that game. Like I’m some shrew of a wife, harping
about what you can and can’t do. You make me sound like one of those women who trapped you into getting married.”

I returned a blank stare.

“Fuck you, Jay. You
asked
. You practically begged!”

“I wanted to get married! I love you. I want to be with you and Aiden. But this?” I tugged at the tie, freeing myself from the noose, and chucked it to the ground.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she said. “Watching you skulk around, refusing to talk or get help. Even when you’re here, you’re not here. You’re emotionally unavailable—”

“‘Emotionally unavailable’? Where do you come up with this shit? What’s that even mean? Emotionally unavailable.”

“It means when you are married to someone, you don’t get to hoist burdens on your shoulders and act like carrying them around alone is heroic. Needing help doesn’t make you weak—”

“Actually, that’s the very definition of—”

“It makes you human.”

“You sound like one of those posters DeSouza has hanging in the office. Fucking Teamwork. Fucking Inspiration. Fucking birds flying together because they believe in themselves and not because flight is the result of millions of years of evolution—”

“If you hate it so much—leave!”

“Just the job?”

That was the big blow I had in my bag, the one I’d been waiting to use. Leveling it now was a cheap shot, but I’d take it. Let the possibility serve as warning to back the fuck off. I never intended to leave, and, Christ, I felt like an asshole when I saw Jenny’s eyes tear up. I knew I had gone too far. Even as I’d been throwing my tie to the ground, pitching a fit like a toddler who wasn’t getting his way, I felt ridiculous. But I couldn’t stop.

And that remorse only grew worse when I looked over and saw
Aiden standing there in his PJ bottoms, little boy potbelly, wide-eyed and terrified. He ran to his mother’s side, like his father was some monster. My son didn’t even look at me. Neither would my wife. I couldn’t talk my way out of this now.

W
HEN
I
LANDED
the job at NEI, I got health insurance for the first time in my adult life. Which included mental health visits. I didn’t go for that touchy-feely crap, but I’d been having these fits, shortness of breath, vertigo, like my heart was about to seize up. I went to the clinic for a checkup, but everything checked out. The doctor said they were panic attacks, even though I’d never been accused of that before. Jenny urged me to see a psychiatrist. Even without her prodding, I knew Chris’ death had messed me up enough that I could use professional help. So I signed on. Three trips to a shrink. That’s all our HMO covered. Who the hell can sort out the shit I’d endured with my brother in three fifty-minute sessions?

Chris’ death last winter had officially been ruled “suicide by cop” after he ran out of an old farmhouse, waving a gun around, leaving the police no other choice. But everyone knew the real reason he died: drugs. My brother had been an addict most of his life. His reason for living. And, in the end, his reason for dying.

Last spring I’d met with Dr. Louise Shapiro-Weiss over in Longmont. For three weeks, I spilled my guts in that tiny office, serenaded by gurgling waterfalls and raindrops dribbling over smooth stones, the calming, tranquil soundtrack designed to quell my looney tunes. The longer I listened to myself drone on, the more I wanted to rip that babbling brook from the socket and smash it against the wall.

I knew I sounded as nutty as my brother, outlining secret backroom meetings, collusion to conceal true agendas. When I got to the part about the hit man pretending to be a detective in order to bury my brother beneath the ice of Echo Lake, our time was up. And not a moment too soon. I was surprised the doctor didn’t recommend I be committed. Instead, she wrote me a script for a sedative and wished me luck.

Some secrets are better left undisturbed. After Chris died, old man Lombardi kicked it. Heart attack fetching the morning paper. So what difference did it make now? Maybe my wife was right and I needed to suck it up, pay out of pocket, and see the doctor again. Desperate times and measures. I had to try something because what I was doing sure wasn’t working.

I needed a drink. I didn’t feel like driving in circles or sitting at a roadside bar alone. My buddy Charlie still lived in Ashton. Outside of Charlie, I didn’t have many friends. I knew where I’d find him. Same place he was every night. Glued to a stool, getting soused at the Dubliner. My old hometown pub was over an hour away because of the long detour around Lamentation Mountain, which wasn’t actually a single mountain but an entire range of them. What else could I do? A man without a country, I hit the 135 and headed east.

Couples fight, I told myself. She’ll put Aiden back to bed, make herself some tea. We’ll both take time to calm down. I’ll call her later and apologize for being a jerk. Wouldn’t be the first time. Sure as hell wouldn’t be the last.

I felt for my cell, cursing when I realized I’d forgotten it. Again.

* * *

“Look what the canary dragged in,” Charlie said, sizing up the target on the dartboard.

“You mean cat, you stupid fuck.” The man standing beside him drained the dregs of a beer and set the empty pint glass down on a half wall.

A group huddled around my friend, anxiously awaiting the outcome of the next throw.

“Cat. Canary,” Charlie said. “Who gives a shit? When I nail this bullseye, Danny Boy, you are going to owe me a beer.”

On the television set above the bar, a newscaster reported on the Sox down in Fort Myers. Winter ball wrapping up, spring training around the corner, hope springs eternal.

Charlie lobbed a wobbly dart. A brief cheer erupted, drowned out by a chorus of boos when the fluttering shot missed its mark by six inches. Charlie dropped his head in exaggerated defeat. Another buddy clapped his back, whispering condolence, as someone else plucked the trio of darts from the board.

“I’m out,” Charlie said, fetching his empty pint off the half wall. He slung an arm around my shoulder, pulling me across the floor toward the tiki smoking porch outside.

Liam, the owner of the Dubliner, was setting up his guitar and mic stand at the dark end of the bar. Liam’s band, The January Men, used to play here on weekends. They’d broken up. Now he took the stage to sing his sad Irish songs alone, brushing strings, whispering lyrics. No one seemed to notice. I’d always thought his band sucked—they were too loud, never in sync, and you couldn’t hear what anyone was saying when they were bleating away—but it still beat this sad bastard music. At least when the band was together, everyone bashing on his instrument, it could be a good time. By the end of the night, the crowd would join in, whole bar screaming along, wasted. Sometimes a girl would take her shirt off. There’s comfort in numbers. Or maybe being with a group of other maniacs just hides the crazy.

“Hey!” Danny Boy called after Charlie. “Where’s my beer?”

“Put it on my tab,” Charlie hollered back. “Rita!” He held up his empty glass and pointed outside. “And one for my good friend, Jay Porter, hotshot investigator up from the big city.”

Rita, the barmaid and Liam’s wife, rolled her eyes.

“Don’t be an asshole,” I said.

“What?” Charlie said. “A little patience never killed anyone. Fisher tells me it’s just a matter of time until you get the call up to the big leagues down in Concord.”

Fisher was Charlie’s friend who’d helped land me the job at NorthEastern. Like Charlie, Fisher had been around last winter when all that shit was happening with my brother. I didn’t blame Fisher for the job turning out so awful. But he wasn’t off the hook either. I’d been sold a bill of goods—namely that I’d be working out of Concord. Instead I got stuck in the outpost of Plasterville, which was actually further north than Ashton—I’d done the math—adding to the sense that I’d somehow taken a step back.

Charlie cinched the drawstring of his parka, Nanook peeking out the head hole. “Fisher swears it’s gonna happen. Just have to pay your dues.”

“Yeah. I’ve heard that one, too. And I think I’ve paid enough.”

We grabbed a couple stools beneath the thatched overhang, icicles jagging down with menace. Rita popped out the back door and set a pair of frothing pints in front of us. She shook her head like we were nuts to be out there in that arctic blast. But if this was where you lived and you wanted a cigarette, what were you supposed to do? I remembered my dad describing the good old days, going to see a movie and people smoking in the lobby, buying popcorn and Jujubes, blazing up right in the goddamn theater. Back then you could smoke on airplanes and in
the doctor’s office. Now they stick you outside of a bar where they legally serve cirrhosis, and have you freeze your ass off in minus twenty.

Charlie pulled out his pack. “Dropping the boy at Grandma’s?”

I bummed a smoke. Charlie didn’t bust my balls over trying to quit. He understood as well as anybody that sometimes failing can still be your best.

“Jenny’s mom doesn’t live in Ashton anymore,” I said, borrowing a match from him as well. “Moved to Burlington. About six months ago. Pretty much right after Jenny and I got married.”

Charlie screwed up his face. I wasn’t sure which part confused him. My mother-in-law Lynne relocating to the scenic shores of Lake Champlain, or the wedding itself? Charlie had been my best man for the ceremony at City Hall. We didn’t have the time or money to plan anything extravagant. Reception for six afterward at the Chicken Shack. My wife deserved better.

“Lynne earned her certification to be a traveling nurse. Remember? We talked about this the last time I saw you.”

“Was I drunk?”

“When aren’t you drunk, Charlie?”

“Good point.”

“Besides, it’s ten thirty. Kids have bedtimes. Something you don’t have to worry about.”

Charlie nipped his beer.

A gaggle of college girls burst onto the porch, interrupting our suffering with their enthusiasm. Giggling, then shrieking, then laughing hysterically at something that couldn’t possibly be that funny. I’d once bar-backed at a pub over the summer. I decided then that the most annoying sound in the entire world is young, drunk girls having fun.

My instant hatred of these four, who had done nothing besides
dare to exist, made me remember what Jenny said back at the house.
When are you ever happy, Jay?

When did I become such a miserable bastard?

“What’s going on with you, man?” Charlie said. “You got that mopey, hangdog expression you used to get whenever your brother came around.”

“Maybe he did,” I muttered.

“Huh?”

“Never mind.”

“Okay, Mr. Big Shot Investigator, why
are
you back in town?”

“Stop calling me that. And can’t I just meet a buddy for a beer?”

“An hour’s drive? In the snow and cold? This late?”

“Jenny and I got in a fight.”

“What did you do this time?”

“What makes you think it’s my fault?”

Charlie laughed.

“It’s complicated.”

“I bet it is.”

“Let’s just say nine-to-five doesn’t live up to the fantasy.”

“You fantasized about having a nine-to-five job?” Charlie pointed in the vague direction of the foothills. “Dude, I got a shoebox in my attic. Feel free to borrow some magazines. You need better fantasies.”

“No one keeps porn in a shoebox anymore, Charlie.”

“It’s a metaphor.”

“No. It’s not. But whatever. That’s not what I mean. Before all this went down, I had a goal, y’know? As long as I was chasing after that payoff, I was okay.”