Small Mercies

Bobby is struck by the notion that something both irretrievably broken and wholly unbreakable lives at the core of this woman. And those two qualities cannot coexist. A broken person can’t be unbreakable. An unbreakable person can’t be broken. And yet here sits Mary Pat Fennessy, broken but unbreakable. The paradox scares the shit out of Bobby. He’s met people over the course of his life who he truly believes existed as the ancient shamans did, with one foot in each world: this one and the one beyond. When you meet these people, it’s best to give them breadth the length of a football field, or else they may suck you right into that next world with them when they go.

Because they’re going. Make no mistake. They are fucking going.

“Mary Pat,” he says gently, and she looks up at him, “do you have someone you can talk to?”

“About what?”

“About whatever you’re going through right now?”

“I’m talking to you.”

Fair enough.

“And I’m listening.”

Mary Pat studies his face for a bit. “But you’re not hearing.”

“What am I not hearing?”

Sitting on the hood of that ugly car, her eyes still far too bright for Bobby’s liking, she points a finger at the sky, twirls it, and answers him. “The silence.”

Bobby tries to formulate some kind of response, but nothing occurs to him.

Mary Pat comes off the hood, walks to door of her heap, and gets behind the wheel. She backs up, then pulls forward, and gives no indication she even sees him as she drives away.

17

A few hours later, Bobby has dinner with Carmen Davenport at Jacob Wirth, a German restaurant in the theater district. Bobby picks it because it’s just upscale enough to feel special for two civil servants, but not so upscale he’ll have to go to a loan shark to cover the tab. His mind keeps drifting, though; he can’t shake his odd encounter with Mary Pat. This is not where he wants his head to be on the first date he’s managed to get in ten months. But he can’t quit thinking of that finger of hers, twirling, as she pointed it at the sky and spoke of “the silence.”

What fucking silence?

“So, out with it,” Carmen says.

“What?”

“Whatever’s got you distracted.”

“Maybe I’m just nervous.”

“Mmmm, nah.” She places her napkin on her lap, settles her chair in relation to the table. “You’re not here. In this restaurant. With me. And I look kinda nice, in case you overlooked it.”

She wears a white peasant blouse over a denim skirt and knee-high boots the same mahogany color as the bar. Her hair is combed a little different than the night they met, falling a bit more into a curve over her eyes, and she’s wearing more jewelry — a silver choker that matches the bracelet on her left wrist, thin white-gold hoop earrings. The green of her eyes is so pale it’s almost translucent; it gives Bobby the impression she can see straight through the back of him.

Bobby tells her she looks beautiful.

“About time,” she says. “Okay, you can stop squirming — what’s on your mind?”

“You.”

She chuckles and shoots him the bird. “I would rather you tell me what’s preoccupying you than you stay preoccupied and eventually piss me off.”

Their drinks come — red wine for her, a draft for Bobby — and they pause to toast their first date before they drink.

Bobby tells her about Auggie Williamson and all the witnesses who saw the four kids chase him near the train. And how Auggie ended up being found dead on the tracks the next morning. And how some of the witnesses corroborated who those kids could have been — four kids from Southie, two girls and two boys. And how, just when they had two of them in their hands, lawyers associated with Marty Butler showed up and bailed them out.

“What about the other two kids?” she asks.

“One’s a hard case. The hardest case of the four, actually, and he’s got a personal connection to Marty, so he’s not gonna say shit.”

“And the other one, the girl?”

“No one knows where she is.”

“Is she dead?”

“Rumor is she’s in Florida.”

“You don’t sound like you believe it.”

“I’m wavering on the theory,” he admits. “Of the four kids, I don’t see why she would be singled out as a threat. That’s what I keep bumping against.”

Carmen thinks on that as she takes a sip of wine, staring at him with a calm intensity that he finds so attractive he immediately wants to duck from it. It’s a Coyne family trait — if you feel happiness, duck. Because the only thing that could possibly follow happiness is pain. Thanks, Mom, Bobby thinks. Thanks, Dad. What an outlook you gave your children. What a pair of fucking pips you were.

Carmen says, “You have this girl who may have witnessed a murder.”

“May have been involved in it.”

“Or not.” Her pale eyes widen to emphasize the idea. “She’s just with them when they do it. Then maybe she got an inconvenient attack of conscience.”

“That would do it,” he agrees. Bobby flashes on Mary Pat today. That too-bright light in her eyes, those sudden micro-bursts of despair and agony.