Small Mercies

Mary Pat sits at the bar and eats a plate of it. She drinks two Old Mil drafts and shoots the shit with Tina McGuiggan. Mary Pat has known Tina since kindergarten, though they’ve never been close. Tina has always made Mary Pat think of a walnut. As something hard and curled into itself, dry and difficult to break. Men have always found her “cute,” though, maybe because she’s small and blond and has a helpless look that men refuse to believe is just a look. Tina’s husband, Ricky, is doing seven to ten at Walpole for an attempted armored car heist that went tits up from the get-go; bullets flew, but no one got shot, thank the good Lord. Ricky kept his mouth shut about Marty, who’d financed the job, so Ricky’s doing easy time, which is nice for him, but doesn’t help Tina make her rent, doesn’t keep her four kids in Catholic school uniforms and dental checkups.

“But whatta ya gonna do?” she says to Mary Pat after finishing a brief rant on the subject. “Right?”

“Right,” Mary Pat says. “Whatta ya gonna do.”

It’s a refrain they all hold dear. Goes alongside It is what it is and Shit happens.

They aren’t poor because they don’t try hard, don’t work hard, aren’t deserving of better things. Mary Pat can look at almost anyone she’s ever known in Commonwealth in particular, or Southie in general, and find nothing but strivers, ballbusters, people who treat ten-ton burdens like they weigh the same as a golf ball, people who go to work day in, day out, and give their ungrateful-prick bosses ten hours of work every single eight-hour day. They aren’t poor because they slack off, that’s for fucking sure.

They’re poor because there’s a limited amount of good luck in this world, and they’ve never been given any. If it doesn’t fall from the sky and land on you, doesn’t find you when it wakes up every morning and goes looking for someone to attach itself to, there isn’t a damn thing you can do. There are way more people in the world than there is luck, so you’re either in the right place at the right time at the very second luck shows up, for once and nevermore. Or you aren’t. In which case...

Shit happens.

It is what it is.

Whatta ya gonna do.

Tina drinks some of her beer. “How was your pot roast?”

“It was good,” Mary Pat says.

“I hear it’s slipping.” Tina looks around the bar. “Like everything these days.”

“Nah,” Mary Pat says. “You should try it.”

Tina gives her a long, slow look, as if Mary Pat suggested she burn her bra or some shit. “Why do you think I should try things?”

Mary Pat looks in Tina’s eyes and sees in the dark swim of them that Tina was probably drinking harder stuff before Mary Pat arrived. “Then don’t try it.”

“No, I just want to know.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Just what the fuck,” Tina says. “Why do you want me to try the stew?”

“The stew” — Mary Pat feels the blood flush up her neck and flood her jaw — “is not stew. It’s pot roast.”

“You know what I’m saying. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m fucking saying.”

“And,” Mary Pat has to restrain herself from sticking a finger in Tina’s face, “there’s nothing new about it. It’s the same old pot roast.”

“So eat it.”

“I just did.”

“So what the fuck are you bothering me about it for?”

Mary Pat’s surprised by the sudden weariness in her own voice. “I’m not bothering you, Tina.”

Tina’s been leaning forward, her mouth open, ripples running up her neck. But then, at Mary Pat’s tone, her eyes suddenly soften. She slackens in her seat and takes a wet drag on her Parliament, exhales in a rush. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“It’s okay.”

Tina shakes her head. “I’m just mad. And I don’t even know why. Someone told me — I can’t even tell ya who, some guy — the pot roast wasn’t as good here anymore, and I thought, I can’t fucking take this. I can’t.” She puts her hand on Mary Pat’s wrist so they lock eyes. “I mean, you know, Mary Pat? I can’t fucking take it sometimes.”

“I know,” Mary Pat says. Even though she doesn’t.

But, then again, she does.

She’s back home half an hour when Timmy Gavigan drops off the signs. Timmy G is from a family of nine on K Street. He played decent hockey in high school but not decent enough to get a scholarship anywhere, so now, at twenty, he works at a muffler place on Dorchester Street and hustles for the Butler crew when they’ll throw him a bone. It’s what all the young guys around here aspire to these days — bag work for the Butler crew. But she suspects Timmy is too soft, too decent at his core, to ever ascend the ranks the way a hard case like Brian Shea or Frankie Toomey did. As she watches him walk back down the hall toward the exit door, she hopes he sorts himself out before a nickel in prison sorts it out for him.