Mercy Street(47)

“There’s that.” Sean Barry nodded gravely. He had two ex-wives of his own. “You can’t put a price tag on that.”

They drank in silence.

“So what about this?” said Sean Barry, gesturing with the joint. “What do you do about this, with a child in the house?”

“He’s fourteen,” said Timmy.

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning I don’t know what it means.” It was a question he had never confronted. The Tuna had visited Boston only once, nine years ago. Back then he was too young to notice the skunk smell of Timmy’s apartment, the all-day parade of visitors coming and going. Now that he was older, their visits took place in Florida. Twice a year, Timmy got a motel room in Pensacola. They spent a week playing video games, fishing and body-surfing and lying on the beach.

They passed the joint in silence. Timmy inhaled deeply, an alternate vision of his life coalescing in his head. The kid would come to live with him, finish high school in Boston. Together they would run the Laundromat, a family business the Tuna would eventually inherit. In this way, Timmy would give his son a decent start in life. His own parents hadn’t given him squat.

“Forget the list. The list is a nonstarter. The list, I will tell you now, is not going to happen.” Sean Barry squashed out the joint in the ashtray. “You need cash? Here’s my advice. Sell the Cuda.”

The car was a sore subject. Timmy had spent more on it than he’d intended: the rebuilt engine, bodywork, a new paint job. He garaged it, also on the barter system, at his buddy Andy Stasko’s—for free, but not really. It was depressing to think what the Cuda had cost him in time, money, and weed.

He said, “I’m not going to sell the Cuda.”

Sean Barry looked disgusted. “Jesus Christ and his mother! Was that not the whole goddamn point? An investment, you said.”

“It was,” Timmy admitted. “Now, I don’t know.” There was more he could have said. In thirteen months, when the Tuna got his license, the Cuda would be the coolest birthday present in history. It would make up for a lifetime’s worth of fuckups, the best gift any father ever gave his son.





10


Jesus Christ, not another storm.

Five nor’easters in five weeks. It was like living in wartime. Weather alerts were updated twice an hour. Public utilities sent stern warnings via text message: Storm preparedness is a civic responsibility. The homeless were urged to seek shelter indoors.

In the neighborhoods, parking wars intensified. Spaces were saved with lawn chairs, with recycling bins. Sofas and armchairs were dragged into the street. Workers called in sick to avoid driving. It was worth burning up a vacation day to hang on to a parking space.

The text messages arrived like digital precipitation, what the Weather Channel called wintry mix. The homeowner is responsible for clearing sidewalks.

Ice dams were a serious problem. This was a thing people talked about.

Five nor’easters in five weeks. It’s fair to say that Boston took it personally. Boston blamed El Ni?o or La Ni?a, global warming and fossil fuels, corruption in the State House, the city’s cursed geography. Boston blamed the New York Yankees, just because.

Long underwear, wool sweater, down parka, balaclava. Boston packed into train cars, awash in sweat and indignation. Boston—not the jolliest city on its best day—was feeling cantankerous. Resentment hung in the air like a toxic gas. Clear your dryer vents! Blocked vents lead to carbon monoxide poisoning. The resentment was visceral, a physiologic response to known phenomena—dew point, bulb point, barometric pressure—and to others not yet identified.

MEANWHILE THE REST OF LIFE WAS STILL HAPPENING. CLAUDIA worked too much and slept too little. She made appointments (haircut, dentist, mammogram); she showered and laundered. She shoveled the sidewalk and dusted it with rock salt, read the newspaper and ate toast. On alternating weekends she drove to Stuart’s house in Andover, to eat steaks and fuck. (Occasionally they watched a movie.) Once or twice a week, her car was buried by the snowplow. Once or twice a week, she dug it out. All this took time.

At work, the hotline kept ringing. Condoms broke, eggs were fertilized, periods came or didn’t. Symptoms flared, worsened, required attention. The body, indifferent to weather, made its demands.

Each morning on Mercy Street, protestors gathered. Puffy fingered his rosary beads—a kind man, well-meaning. He wore a wedding ring. Claudia imagined him long married—widowed, maybe—and lonely in retirement, eager to do good in the world. He spoke gently to the young women he met at the clinic, not understanding that most of them were not actually pregnant.

A female body is a lot of work. Puffy, not having one himself, was possibly unaware of this fact. Women go to the doctor all the time, just to keep things running smoothly. On any given day the clinic was full of them, women of all ages and colors sitting in stirrups for the annual tribulation—an experience they’d all happily forgo, if they had any say in the matter.

Bring in your pelvis for its twelve-month checkup. Failure to perform scheduled maintenance may void the warranty.

These drab medical realities didn’t interest the protestors gathered on the sidewalk. Only abortion mattered, a stranger’s crisis. The rest was too mundane, too visceral: the messy business of secretions and hormones and cyclical seepages, the routine (expensive, embarrassing, occasionally lifesaving) interventions a female body required.