Small Mercies

Mary Pat hugs her daughter on the sidewalk and lets her cry into her shoulder. She ignores the stares of passersby. The more they stare, the prouder she grows of this weak child she’s borne. At least Commonwealth hasn’t erased her heart, she wants to say. At least she held on to that, you thickheaded, coldhearted Hibernian assholes.

I might be one of you. But she isn’t.

When they break the clutch, she wipes under her daughter’s eyes with her thumb. She tells her it’s okay. She tells her someday it will make sense.

Even though she’s waiting for that day herself. Even though she suspects everyone on God’s green earth is.

2

Jules takes another shower when they get back, and then her poor excuse for a boyfriend, Ronald “Rum” Collins, and her sidekick since second grade, Brenda Morello, come calling. Brenda is short and blond with huge brown eyes and a figure so full and fleshy that it seems designed by God to make men lose their train of thought whenever she walks by. She knows this, of course, and seems embarrassed by it; she continues to dress like a tomboy, something Mary Pat has always liked about her. Jules calls Brenda into her bedroom to ask about what she’s wearing, so Mary Pat gets stuck in the kitchen with Rum, who, like his father and uncles before him, has the conversational skills of a baked ham. Yet he’s mastered the art of saying very little around girls and his peers at Southie High, replacing the natural dullness in his eyes with a lazy contempt that a lot of kids take as a sign of cool. And her own daughter fell for it.

“You look, ah, nice today, Mrs. F.”

“Thank you, Ronald.”

He looks around the kitchen like he hasn’t seen it a hundred times. “My ma said she saw you up the supermarket last week.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Said you were buying cereal.”

“Well, if she says so.”

“What kind?”

“Of cereal?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t remember.”

“I like Froot Loops.”

“They’re your favorite, huh?”

He nods several times. “’Cept when they’re in the milk too long and they turn it, like, different colors.”

“That’d be unfortunate.”

“So I eat it fast.” He gets a look in his eyes like he’s putting something over on Kellogg’s.

While her lips say, “That’s quick thinking,” her head says, I pray you don’t breed.

“But, yeah, I don’t like colors in my milk.” He arches his eyebrows as if he just said something wise. “Not. For. Me.”

She shoots him a tight smile. And if you do breed, please don’t breed with my daughter.

“I like milk, though. Without colors.”

She continues smiling at him because she’s too annoyed to speak.

“Oh, hey!” he says, and she turns to see Jules and Brenda coming into the room behind them. Rum steps past Mary Pat and puts a hand on Jules’s hip and kisses her on the cheek.

At least tell her she looks nice. Pretty.

“So let’s get outta here,” he says, and slaps her daughter’s hip, lets loose a high-pitched cackle-yelp that immediately makes Mary Pat want to brain him with a fucking rolling pin.

“Bye, Ma.” Jules leans in and gives her a peck on the cheek and Mary Pat gets a whiff of cigarettes, “Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific” shampoo, and dabs of Love’s Baby Soft just behind her daughter’s ears.

She wants to grab Jules’s wrist and say, Find someone else. Find someone good. Find someone who might be dumb but won’t be mean. This one will grow mean because he’s only one or two elevator stops above retard, and yet he thinks he’s kind of smart, and the ones who are like that grow mean when they realize the world laughs at them. You’re too good for this boy, Jules.

But all she says is “Try to come home at a reasonable hour,” and returns the quick kiss to her daughter’s cheek.

And then Jules is gone. Lost to the night.

When she goes to cook her TV dinner, Mary Pat is once again reminded that her gas is shut off. She puts the dinner back in the freezer and walks up the block to Shaughnessy’s. In Southie, everything has to be given a nickname — it’s like canon law or some fucking thing — so Shaughnessy’s, which is owned by Michael Shaughnessy, is never referred to as Shaughnessy’s but as Mick Shawn’s. Mick Shawn’s is known for its Saturday-night brawls (they keep a hose behind the bar to clean the blood off the floor) and its pot roast, which stews all day long in a pot in the tiny kitchen off the end of the bar, just past the hose.