Mystic River (3 page)

Jimmy kept a few steps behind him, just in case, though, and tossed the ball up into the air, caught it in the baseball glove he’d stolen from Sean’s house while the cops had been saying their good-byes to the Devines and nobody had even said a word to Jimmy and his father as they’d headed down the hallway toward the front door. Sean’s bedroom door had been open, and Jimmy’d seen the glove lying on the floor, ball wrapped inside, and he’d reached in and picked it up, and then he and his father were through the front door. He had no idea why he’d stolen the glove. It wasn’t for the wink of surprised pride he’d seen in the old man’s eyes when he’d picked it up. Fuck that. Fuck him.

It had something to do with Sean hitting Dave Boyle and pussying out on stealing the car and some other things over
the year they’d been friends, that feeling Jimmy got that whatever Sean gave him—baseball cards, half a candy bar, whatever—came in the form of a handout.

When Jimmy had first picked up the glove and walked away with it, he’d felt elated. He’d felt great. A little later, as they were crossing Buckingham Avenue, he’d felt that familiar shame and embarrassment that came whenever he stole something, an anger at whatever or whoever made him do these things. Then a little later, as they walked down Crescent and into the Flats, he felt a stab of pride as he looked at the shitty three-deckers and then the glove in his hand.

Jimmy took the glove and he felt bad about it. Sean would miss it. Jimmy took the glove and he felt good about it. Sean would miss it.

Jimmy watched his father stumble ahead of him, the old fuck looking like he’d crumple and turn into a puddle of himself any second, and he hated Sean.

He hated Sean and he’d been dumb to think they could have been friends, and he knew he’d hold on to this glove for the rest of his life, take care of it, never show it to anyone, and he’d never, not once, use the goddamn thing. He’d die before that happened.

Jimmy looked at the Flats spread out before him as he and the old man walked under the deep shade of the el tracks and neared the place where Crescent bottomed out and the freight trains rumbled past the old, ratty drive-in and the Penitentiary Channel beyond, and he knew—deep, deep in his chest—that they’d never see Dave Boyle again. Where Jimmy lived, on Rester, they stole things all the time. Jimmy had had his Big Wheel stolen when he was four, his bike when he was eight. The old man had lost a car. And his mother had started hanging clothes inside to dry after so many had been ripped off the line in the backyard. You felt different when something was stolen as opposed to simply misplaced. You felt it in your chest that it was never coming back. That’s how he felt about Dave. Maybe Sean, right now, was feeling that way about his baseball glove, standing
over the empty space on the floor where it had been, knowing, beyond logic, that it was never, ever, coming back.

Too bad, too, because Jimmy had liked Dave, although he couldn’t put his finger on why most times. Just something about the kid, maybe the way he’d always been there, even if half the time you didn’t notice him.

A
S IT TURNED OUT
, Jimmy was wrong.

Dave Boyle returned to the neighborhood four days after he’d disappeared. He came back riding in the front seat of a police car. The two cops who brought him home let him play with the siren and touch the butt of the shotgun locked down beneath the dash. They gave him an honorary badge, and when they delivered him to his mother’s house on Rester Street, reporters from the papers and TV were there to capture the moment. One of the cops, an Officer Eugene Kubiaki, lifted Dave out of the cruiser and swung Dave’s legs high over the pavement before placing him down in front of his weeping, giggling, shaking mother.

There was a crowd out on Rester Street that day—parents, kids, a mailman, the two roly-poly Pork Chop Brothers who owned the sub shop on the corner of Rester and Sydney, and even Miss Powell, Dave and Jimmy’s fifth-grade teacher at the Looey & Dooey. Jimmy stood with his mother. His mother held the back of his head to her midsection and kept a damp palm clamped to his forehead, as if she were checking to make sure he hadn’t caught whatever Dave had, and Jimmy felt a twinge of jealousy as Officer Kubiaki swung Dave above the sidewalk, the two of them laughing like old friends as pretty Miss Powell clapped her hands.

I almost got in that car, too, Jimmy wanted to tell some
one. He wanted to tell Miss Powell more than anyone. She was beautiful and so clean, and when she laughed you could see that one of her upper teeth was slightly crooked, and that made her even more beautiful to Jimmy. Jimmy wanted to tell her he’d almost gotten in that car and see if her face would fill with the look she was giving Dave now. He wanted to tell her that he thought about her all the time, and in his thoughts he was older and could drive a car and take her to places where she smiled at him a lot and they ate a picnic lunch and everything he said made her laugh and expose that tooth and touch his face with her palm.

Miss Powell was uncomfortable here, though. Jimmy could tell. After she’d said a few words to Dave and touched his face and kissed his cheek—she kissed him
twice
—other people moved in, and Miss Powell stepped aside and stood on the cracked sidewalk looking up at the leaning three-deckers and their tar paper curling up to expose the wood underneath, and she seemed younger and yet harder to Jimmy at the same time, as if there was something suddenly nunnish about her, touching her hair to feel for her habit, button nose twitching and ready to judge.

Jimmy wanted to go to her, but his mother was still holding him tight, ignoring his squirms, and then Miss Powell walked to the corner of Rester and Sydney and Jimmy watched her wave desperately to someone. A hippie-looking guy pulled up in a hippie-looking yellow convertible with faded purple flower petals painted on the sunbaked doors, and Miss Powell climbed in the car and they drove off, Jimmy thinking, No.

He finally wrenched free of his mother’s hold. He stood in the middle of the street, watching the crowd surround Dave, and he wished he’d gotten in that car, if only so he could feel some of the adoration Dave was feeling, see all those eyes looking at him like he was something special.

It turned into a big party on Rester Street, everyone running from camera to camera, hoping they’d get on TV or see themselves in the morning papers—Yeah, I know Dave, he’s
my best friend, grew up with him, you know, great kid, thank the good Lord he’s okay.

Someone opened a hydrant and the water jetted out onto Rester like a sigh of relief, and kids tossed their shoes to the gutter and rolled up their pants and danced in the gushing water. The ice cream truck rolled in, and Dave got to pick whatever he wanted, on the house, and even Mr. Pakinaw, a nasty old widower who fired a BB rifle at squirrels (and kids, too, sometimes, if their parents weren’t looking) and screamed all the time for people to just be fucking quiet, will ya—he opened up his windows and put his speakers up against the screens and next thing you know, Dean Martin was singing “Memories Are Made of This” and “Volare” and a lot of other shit Jimmy would normally puke if he heard, but today, it fit. Today the music floated down Rester like bright streams of crepe paper. It mixed with the loud gush of water from the hydrant. Some of the guys who ran the card game in the back of the Pork Chop Brothers’ store brought out a folding table and a small grill, and pretty soon someone else carted out some coolers filled with Schlitz and Narragansett, and the air turned fat with the smell of grilled hot dogs and Italian sausage, the wafting, smoky, charred smell and the whiff of open beer cans making Jimmy think of Fenway Park and summer Sundays and that tight joy you got in your chest when the adults kicked back and acted more like kids, everyone laughing, everyone looking younger and lighter and happy to be around each other.

This was what Jimmy, even in the pit of his blackest hates after a beating from the old man or the theft of something he’d cared about—
this
was what he loved about growing up here. It was the way people could suddenly throw off a year of aches and complaints and split lips and job worries and old grudges and just let loose, like nothing bad had ever happened in their lives. On St. Pat’s or Buckingham Day, sometimes on the Fourth of July, or when the Sox were playing well in September, or, like now, when something collec
tively lost had been found—especially then—this neighborhood could erupt into a kind of furious delirium.

Not like up in the Point. In the Point they had block parties, sure, but they were always planned, the necessary permits obtained, everyone making sure everyone else was careful around the cars, careful on the lawns—Watch it, I just painted that fence.

In the Flats, half the people didn’t have lawns, and the fences sagged, so what the fuck. When you wanted to party, you partied, because, shit, you sure as hell deserved it. No bosses here today. No welfare investigators or loan shark muscle. And as for the cops—well, there were the cops now, partying along with everyone else, Officer Kubiaki helping himself to a hot-’n’-spicy sausage spuckie off the grill, and his partner pocketing a beer for later. The reporters had all gone home and the sun was starting to set, giving the street that time-for-dinner glow, but none of the women were cooking, and no one was going inside.

Except for Dave. Dave was gone, Jimmy realized when he stepped out of the hydrant spray and squeezed out his pant cuffs and put his T-shirt back on as he waited in line for a hot dog. Dave’s party was in full swing, but Dave must have gone back in his house, his mother, too, and when Jimmy looked at their second-story windows, the shades were drawn and lonely.

Those drawn shades made him think of Miss Powell for some reason, of her climbing in that hippie-looking car, and it made him feel grimy and sad to remember watching her curve her right calf and ankle into the car before she’d closed the door. Where was she going? Was she driving on the highway right now, the wind streaming through her hair like the music streamed down Rester Street? Was the night closing in on them in that hippie car as they drove off to…where? Jimmy wanted to know, but then he didn’t want to know. He’d see her in school tomorrow—unless they gave everyone a day off from school, too, to celebrate Dave’s return—and he’d want to ask her, but he wouldn’t.

Jimmy took his hot dog and sat down on the curb across from Dave’s house to eat it. When he was about halfway through the dog, one of the shades rolled up and he saw Dave standing in the window, staring down at him. Jimmy held up his half-eaten hot dog in recognition, but Dave didn’t acknowledge him, even when he tried a second time. Dave just stared. He stared at Jimmy, and even though Jimmy couldn’t see his eyes, he could sense blankness in them. Blankness, and blame.

Jimmy’s mother sat down beside him on the curb, and Dave stepped away from the window. Jimmy’s mother was a small, thin woman with the palest hair. For someone so thin, she moved as if she carried stacks of brick on each shoulder, and she sighed a lot and in such a way that Jimmy wasn’t positive she knew the sound was coming out of her. He would look at pictures of her that had been taken before she’d become pregnant with him, and she looked a lot less thin and so much younger, like a teenage girl (which, when he did the math, was exactly what she’d been). Her face was rounder in the pictures, with no lines by the eyes or on the forehead, and she had this beautiful, full smile that seemed just slightly frightened, or maybe curious, Jimmy could never tell for sure. His father had told him a thousand times that Jimmy had almost killed her coming out, that she’d bled and bled until the doctors were worried she might never stop bleeding. It had wiped her out, his father had said. And, of course, there would be no more babies. No one wanted to go through that again.

She put her hand on Jimmy’s knee and said, “How you doing, G.I. Joe?” His mother was always calling him by different nicknames, often made up on the spot, Jimmy half the time not knowing who the name referred to.

He shrugged. “You know.”

“You didn’t say anything to Dave.”

“You wouldn’t let me move, Ma.”

His mother lifted her hand back off his knee and hugged
herself in the chill that was deepening with the dark. “I meant after. When he was still outside.”

“I’ll see him tomorrow in school.”

Her mother fished in the pocket of her jeans for her Kents and lit one, blew the smoke out in a rush. “I don’t think he’ll be going in tomorrow.”

Jimmy finished his hot dog. “Well, soon, then. Right?”

His mother nodded and blew some more smoke out of her mouth. She cupped her elbow in her hand and smoked and looked up at Dave’s windows. “How was school today?” she said, though she didn’t seem real interested in an answer.

Jimmy shrugged. “Okay.”

“I met that teacher of yours. She’s cute.”

Jimmy didn’t say anything.

“Real cute,” his mother repeated into a gray ribbon of exhaled smoke.

Jimmy still didn’t say anything. Most of the time he didn’t know what to say to his parents. His mother was worn out so much. She stared off at places Jimmy couldn’t see and smoked her cigarettes, and half the time didn’t hear him until he’d repeated himself a couple times. His father was pissed off usually, and even when he wasn’t and could be kind of fun, Jimmy would know that he could turn into a pissed-off drunk guy any second, give Jimmy a whack for saying something he might have laughed at half an hour before. And he knew that no matter how hard he tried to pretend otherwise, he had both his father and mother inside of him—his mother’s long silences and his father’s sudden fits of rage.

When Jimmy wasn’t wondering what it would be like to be Miss Powell’s boyfriend, he sometimes wondered what it would be like to be her son.

His mother was looking at him now, her cigarette held up by her ear, her eyes small and searching.

“What?” he said, and gave her an embarrassed smile.

“You got a great smile, Cassius Clay.” She smiled back at him.

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah. You’re gonna be a heartbreaker.”

“Uh, okay,” Jimmy said, and they both laughed.

“You could talk a little more,” his mother said.

You could, too, Jimmy wanted to say.

“That’s okay, though. Women like the silent type.”

Over his mother’s shoulder, Jimmy saw his father stumble out of the house, his clothes wrinkled and his face puffy with sleep or booze or both. His father looked at the party going on in front of him like he couldn’t imagine where it had come from.

His mother followed Jimmy’s gaze and when she looked back at him, she was worn out again, the smile gone so completely from her face, you’d have been surprised she knew how to make one. “Hey, Jim.”

He loved it when she called him “Jim.” It made him feel like they were in on something together.

“Yeah?”

“I’m real glad you didn’t get in that car, baby.” She kissed his forehead and Jimmy could see her eyes glistening, and then she stood up and walked over to some of the other mothers, kept her back to her husband.

Jimmy looked up and saw Dave in the window staring down at him again, a soft yellow light on somewhere in the room behind him now. This time, Jimmy didn’t even try to wave back. With the police and reporters all gone now, and the party so deep in swing no one probably remembered what had started it, Jimmy could feel Dave in that apartment, alone except for his crazy mother, surrounded by brown walls and weak yellow lights as the party throbbed on the street below.

And he was glad, too, once again, that he hadn’t gotten in that car.

Damaged goods. That’s what Jimmy’s father had said to his mother last night: “Even if they find him alive, the kid’s damaged goods. Never be the same.”

Dave raised a single hand. He held it up by his shoulder
and didn’t move it for a long time, and as Jimmy waved back, he felt a sadness weed its way into him and go deep and then spread out in small waves. He didn’t know whether the sadness had something to do with his father, his mother, Miss Powell, this place, or Dave holding that hand so steady as he stood in the window, but whatever caused it—one of those things or all of them—it would never, he was sure, come back out again. Jimmy, sitting on the curb, was eleven years old, but he didn’t feel it anymore. He felt old. Old as his parents, old as this street.

Damaged goods, Jimmy thought, and let his hand drop back to his lap. He watched Dave nod at him and then pull down the shade to go back inside that too-quiet apartment with its brown walls and ticking clocks, and Jimmy felt the sadness take root in him, nestle up against his insides as if finding a warm home, and he didn’t even try to wish it back out again, because some part of him understood that there was no point.

He got up off the curb, not sure for a second what he meant to do. He felt that itchy, antsy need to either hit something or do something new and nutty. But then his stomach growled, and he realized he was still hungry, so he headed back for another hot dog, hoping they still had some left.

F
OR A FEW DAYS
, Dave Boyle became a minor celebrity, and not just in the neighborhood, but throughout the state. The headline the next morning in the
Record American
read
LITTLE BOY LOST/LITTLE BOY FOUND
. The photograph above the fold showed Dave sitting on his stoop, his mother’s thin arms draped across his chest, a bunch of smiling kids from the Flats mugging for the camera on either side of Dave and his mother, everyone looking just happy as can be, except for Dave’s mother, who looked like she’d just missed her bus on a cold day.