way he damn well pleased. It was his couch. He’d lie there all night just for spite. The little fuck-yous are the sweetest.
“How long are you going to keep this up?”
“Keep what up, Brendan?”
“Moping.”
“The word is mourning.”
“Mourning is it? How long will you be doing it?”
“Amy’s only dead a few weeks. You in a hurry?”
“Oh, come on. You’ve been at it longer than a few weeks, boyo.”
“Have I? Must have lost track of time. Been having too much fun, I guess.”
“You’re mourning your dad.”
“Well, he’d do the same for me.”
“Not this long, he wouldn’t. You know, there comes a time, Michael. You don’t mourn forever. Life is for the living.”
“Hm. I thought it was for the dentist’s office. Now, Time, that’s for the living. But Dad does not get Time anymore. Or Life. He got thrown out of the Time-Life Building, the poor bastard.”
“I’m trying to talk to you here, seriously, man to man, and you’re making jokes. I don’t get you, Michael.”
“I know you don’t. Isn’t that always the way with families? Fathers and sons, you know.”
“You blame me for your old man dying, is that it?”
“Should I?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why do you ask?”
“Because something about me pisses you off, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what the hell it is.”
“We’re just oil and water, Brendan. Irish salad dressing. Don’t let it bother you.”
“Doesn’t bother me. Doesn’t bother me one bit.”
“No, it doesn’t seem to.”
“Doesn’t bother me a bit.”
“Alright, Brendan, let’s just be quiet now and watch Judy Garland.”
“Fuck Judy Garland.”
Michael dilated his eyes in mock horror. Fuck Judy Garland?
“If you’ve got something to say to me, say it. Cut with the jokes and the snide remarks, you and Ricky both, couple of little kids. Be a man, for Christ’s sake, would you?”
“I’m trying. For Christ’s sake.”
“Ai-yi-yi, to get a straight answer out of you…You think your dad dying is my fault?”
Shrug.
“Answer me, Michael, yes or no: Do you think your dad dying is somehow my fault?”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Affirmative. Roger. Ten-four. Aye-aye.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“He doesn’t know. Well, you’ve got some nerve, boy, I tell ya. I love these armchair quarterbacks. What more should I have done, Michael?”
“Run faster.”
“Run faster?”
“Run faster.”
“And what would that have done? You mean so I could get shot instead of him? Maybe you forget, I did get shot. I’ve got a hole in my gut to prove it. I nearly died. Do you know I still get blood in my shit?”
“No. Didn’t know that.”
“Well, I do. I shit blood. What do you have to say about that?”
“You should watch what you eat.”
“Go ahead, make jokes. You like to forget little things like me getting shot because you’re so busy feeling sorry for yourself.”
“It’s a full-time job.”
“Let me ask you something: If I did die, would that have been enough?”
“Would have been a start.”
“Well, that’s just fine. I’m a little dense, I guess, I’m just a thickheaded old Irishman, but I get it. I’m done with this. You hear me? You want it to be like this forever? Fine. But just so’s you know, I understand what this is really about. Couldn’t be more obvious. Poor little boy doesn’t like to see his mommy with anyone but daddy, so you blame me for anything and everything. What a, a-”
“Cliche?”
“Yes. And for what it’s worth, you’re wrong. Your father’s dying broke my heart. I’d do anything to find the kid that did it.”
“Would you? So what have you done to find him? Tell me, what have you done? Where’s that kid, Brendan?”
“How the fuck should I know? If I knew, don’t you think I’d move heaven and earth to find him?”
“I don’t see you moving heaven or earth.”
“What do you recommend?”
Michael shrugged. “I’m not a cop. Neither was Amy.”
“That’s not an answer. Tell me, boyo, what should I do? What would satisfy you?”
Another voice intervened: “That’s enough.”
Michael twisted to see his mother standing on the bottom stair in her pale blue housecoat, arms folded across her belly. He sat up.
“You two are going to have to learn to live with each other. That’s all I’m going to say. Michael, you show a little respect. Brendan, time for bed.”
“Time for bed, Brendan,” Michael mocked.
Conroy gathered up his shoes and padded across the room to the foot of the stairs. Margaret stood aside to let him pass on the narrow stairs. Even so, there was barely room for the two of them. As he climbed past her, Conroy’s hand lifted the little wood ball out of the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. That wood ball, the size of a large orange, had been loose for almost thirty years. Conroy seemed surprised to see it in his hand, as if it had adhered there. He fitted it back on the post then continued up the stairs unembarrassed. His hand curled over the wobbly banister, incongruously massive on the handrail burnished smooth by children’s palms.
Michael could feel that banister passing under his own hand, the narrow rounded top, a hairline joint that scratched across the palm halfway up, a scabrous patch where the wood grain roughed your thumb pad, the upturn that signaled the top of the staircase.
“You go home too, mister.” Margaret sighed. “Work in the morning.” She did not wait for a response but turned and trudged up the stairs.
37
Parts of the West End construction site were surrounded by an eight-foot plywood wall. Here and there the wall was decorated with propagandistic posters: “Coming Soon: A New Boston” and “The Future Is Now…Here!” Bostonians took these promises with a grain of salt. Politicians and other gasbags had been talking about a “new Boston” long enough that they wondered where the hell it was, just as Old Englanders once upon a time must have wondered where the New one was. So the wall was defaced in predictable ways, lewd and antiauthoritarian. One sign was somehow graffiti-proof, though. It was enameled steel, very large, and it hung at the corner of Cambridge and Charles Streets, near the jail. The sign showed an architect’s pen-and-pastel sketch of those four white towers
