Small Mercies

He hops in his Impala and peels out of there. Quentin and Joe-Dog stay where they’re at longer than Mary Pat had hoped they would. When they look down to light their cigarettes, she goes for broke and rolls along the back of the parking lot, eyes fixed straight ahead.

If they notice her, they don’t seem to think much of it.

She finds George Dunbar pulled over three blocks away, using the pay phone in front of a liquor store. His lips don’t move much; he’s mostly nodding. A lot. And his eyes are wide. Mary Pat thinks it’s a safe bet he’s getting his own tongue-lashing.

He puts the phone back as if the receiver might bite. He gets in his car and drives off, with Mary Pat tailing him from three cars back.

It’s not long before he pulls onto the Southeast Expressway and only a few miles farther before he pulls off and leads her along the edge of Dorchester and then over the Neponset River Bridge. From there, he leads her into Squantum, a spit of land that juts off the hand of North Quincy like a thumb that suffered an industrial accident. Squantum is surrounded, everywhere but the base of that thumb, by ocean, and she follows George and his nondescript Impala to a house on Bayside Road, just north of Orchard Beach. It’s a small Cape with dark brown shingles and white trim, with a small yard and a terrific view of the harbor directly across the street.

George parks in front, and before he’s out of the car, there she is — his mother. Lorraine Dunbar herself. Not much of a looker, to tell the truth, a face thin and hawkish under an abundance of fire-red hair, eyes too close together, a chin so violently squared off it looks like what’s left behind after an amputation. But she still has the body of a sixteen-year-old cheerleader — firm legs, an ass that looks like you could play the conga on it, and tits that defy gravity, logic, and time. Lorraine tells everyone who will listen that it’s her diet — lean meats and veggies, she crows, and no sweets — and her jogging. Where she came up with “jogging,” no one fucking knows, but Mary Pat’s seen her dozens of times running along Broadway or around the Sugar Bowl loop with her knees pumping so high they almost hit her chin, her cheeks puffing and lips pursed, wearing these zippered tops and pants of matching color with white piping and usually a matching headband to boot. Every time the topic comes up for discussion among the women of Commonwealth, someone offers the opinion that maybe, for tits and an ass like that, they could all do some jogging, but the idea lasts no longer than the smoke from the next cigarette.

Lorraine hugs her son and then looks out at the street. Lorraine is Marty Butler’s woman, so she’s been trained to look for threats in anything that looks out of place. She probably would have made Mary Pat and Bess if Mary Pat hadn’t backed up as soon as she saw George pull over. She sits at the start of a curve about thirty yards back up the street, under a tree that throws a nice late-afternoon shade. To see her, Lorraine would have to stand in the road and catch the light just right.

Lorraine and George head inside.

Mary Pat settles in.

At one point, she turns her head and sees Jules sitting beside her in the passenger seat. Jules yawns and gives her a sleepy smile.

It’s the sound of the outboard that wakes her.

It’s dark. Bugs mass under the lone streetlight. At the sound of a screen door creaking open and then snapping shut, she turns her head to see George Dunbar exit the house and walk across the road to the small cup of shoreline. He wears shorts and no shoes.

Mary Pat takes the binoculars from Dukie’s kit bag and trains them on the boat as it cuts its engine and bobs toward shore. Brian Shea jumps out of the boat as George half waddles in to meet it, and the two of them tug it to shore. Brian kills the light on the boat, and now the binoculars are no good.

Mary Pat turns off her dome light and exits Bess. She softly pushes the door shut behind her and crosses the road. Only one tree to hide behind and then just a beach wall that doesn’t even reach her knees. The tree stands at least twenty yards from Brian and George. But there’s no one else around and not much to muffle the sound, if only they’d speak the fuck up. She settles in behind the tree and strains to hear.

Brian Shea tells George, “You gotta...” and “We didn’t fucking...” and “...no free lunches.”

George’s back is to her, and his words travel upwind. He’s a lot harder to understand. She thinks she hears him say “I know” a couple of times. And something that could be “concrete” but she somehow knows isn’t. She knows that it’s also not “discreet” but “creet” is said for sure.

A sudden breeze carries Brian Shea’s three clearest sentences to her: “You already owe. Now you owe more. No one’s gonna grow a sense of humor about this.”

The breeze dies.

“I—” George says.

“...move it... Blue Hill Ave... I don’t fucking care.”

“...just sayin’...”

“...excuses are your own. Come on.”