Small Mercies

Mary Pat frowns. “Did you really just say that?”

“What?”

“Calliope’s her real first name,” Anne O’Leary says with a withering sigh.

“So what’s her last name?” Gert says.

“You’re her friend,” Anne says to Mary Pat. “How do you not know?”

“I mean” — Mary Pat can feel her face pinken — “I just know her as Dreamy.”

There’s a quiet that feels not-quite-awkward-but-awkward’s-on-the-way, and it’s broken only when Dottie, of all people, says, “Williamson.”

“What?”

“Dreamy’s last name. It’s Williamson.”

“How the fuck would you know?”

“I’m a beast for the details.”

Mary Pat moves down the prep table until she finds the Herald. She opens it to the article for the other girls, points at the dead drug dealer’s name — Augustus Williamson.

“So?” Gert says.

Gert is dumber than a busload of retards on a bus driven by a retard.

“So,” Mary Pat says, “Dreamy always talked about her son, Auggie.”

It takes the other girls a minute.

“Oh, shit,” Anne O’Leary says.

Dottie says, “That’s why she didn’t come to work.”

4

On the way home, Mary Pat doesn’t admit to herself that she’s worried, but she doesn’t dillydally either. No stops, no pop-ins at any of the bars. Just straight home.

Jules is not there. And Mary Pat can tell from a quick glance around their unit that she hasn’t been there during the day.

She calls the Morellos a third time, gets Suze again, but Suze immediately says, “She’s here. Let me get her.”

Mary Pat feels herself slide down the wall but can’t decide if it’s relief or something else. Did Suze say “Jules is here”? Or “She’s here”? In which case “she” could be—

Brenda. Whose voice comes over the line now. “Hey, Mrs. F.”

“Hey, Brenda.” A leaden dread fills Mary Pat’s stomach. “Jules there?”

“I ain’t seen Jules since last night.” Brenda’s words come out a little too fast, as if she’s been preparing them.

“No? Who’d you see her with last?” Mary Pat lights a smoke.

“She was with, you know, Rum and, ah, you know, Rum.”

“Rum and Rum? He comes in a pair now?”

“No, I meant just Rum. She was with Rum.”

“Where was this?”

“Carson.”

Carson is the local beach. Not much of one. No tide. An inlet of the harbor, not the ocean beyond. Mostly a place for kids to go and drink behind the old bathhouse.

“When did you see her and Rum last?”

“Like, midnight?”

“And they just wandered off?”

“Well, yeah, I mean, you know.”

“I don’t know.” Mary Pat can hear the edge in her voice. Hopes Brenda doesn’t hear it to the point that it shuts her down. She softens her voice. “I’m just trying to find her, Brenda.” She lightens the mood further with an embarrassed laugh. “Just being a silly worried mom.”

Nothing on the other end of the line but silence. Mary Pat bites down into her lower lip hard enough to taste blood and nicotine.

“I mean,” Brenda says, “I mean, she walked off with Rum, and that’s the last I saw her.”

“Was she drinking?”

“No!”

“Bullshit,” Mary Pat says. The gloves come off for a second. “Brenda, do not take me for a fool, and I won’t take you for a fucking liar. How drunk was she?”

Hisses and pops on the line. A dog barking somewhere far off on Brenda’s end. Then: “She was, you know, feeling no pain. She had a few beers, some wine.”

“Pot?”

“Yeah.”

“Was she stumbling drunk?”

“No, no. Just buzzed, Mrs. F. I swear.”

“So, last time you saw her, she was with Rum?”

“Yeah.”

“And you haven’t heard from her since?”

“No.”

“If you do?”

“I’ll call you first thing.”

“I know you will, Brenda.” Putting some steel into the words before adding, “Thank you.”

Brenda hangs up, leaving Mary Pat looking at the phone in her hand and feeling a screeching train of helplessness barrel through her. Jules is seventeen, able to do what she wants. If Mary Pat calls the cops, she knows they can’t do a damn thing about it until it’s been seventy-two hours. At least. And Mary Pat doesn’t have that. So she’s now in the position of sitting on her hands or chain-smoking until her daughter walks back through the door.

She tries it for a bit, finds herself thinking of Dreamy Williamson facing life without her child, and recalls that Dreamy sent her a beautiful card when Noel died. She roots around in a drawer where she put most things related to Noel’s death — his dog tag and war medals, his laminated funeral card, the sympathy cards — and eventually finds the one Dreamy sent her. On the front is a cross and the words May the Lord Grant You Strength in Your Hour of Need. Inside the card, filling up both sides, she wrote to Mary Pat: