“Where?”
“It’s not too cold. It’s sunny. I know a spot over in the Public Garden. Just a block away. We should be able to chat there without interruption except for the pigeons.”
I told him the spot and suggested 10am. He hung up without saying yes or no.
At 10:00 I was sitting there on a bench getting some sun. He showed up at 10:05. He did not say hello. What he said was, “What is it you want?”
I said, “Just some facts. I just want to get the facts straight.”
He did not sit down, so I stood and turned enough to keep the sun out of my eyes and just launched right into it.
His voice was flat. “For example?”
“Had you been planning a visit that weekend, or did it just come up?”
“I don’t have the luxury of unplanned visits. Right now, I should be down at Federal Street listening in on a deposition.”
I didn’t correct his lie about being at the deposition. It didn’t matter to the point I was after.
“Before that. In September. The second week in September. Were you in Boston then?”
“Just after Labor Day? No. I was supposed to be here, but something came up. I was in court in California with a client that week.”
“Okay.”
That was it. That was all I wish I didn’t know.
Unfortunately, he didn’t know that. He moved a little closer. There was less that a foot of space between us.
“Not okay. If you call my wife. If you have anyone call my wife, or contact her in any way, I will sue you for everything you have in the world, and then I’ll kick your ass just for the fun of it.”
It got my Irish up, as my dad would say. A bit silly. But then, I was not in his position, with my marriage threatened.
I said, “I suppose you could hire somebody for that. I just can’t figure what Maggie Ann saw in you. Bullies are a dime a dozen.”
I had opened my coat for the sun when I was waiting. He brought his fist up beneath my sternum. Not totally unexpected but quicker than I could move. It landed hard enough to take a fair amount of wind out of me.
I managed to get both my arms out enough to push him away before he came back with his next shot. He bounced right back.
He was wearing an expensive black overcoat, and I was pretty sure I could not make much of an impact on his stomach in return. He was expecting a head shot. I kicked him in the shin as he came forward again. That distracted him. Then I hit him in the face. About as hard as I could. He went back again and lost his balance this time. He fell on his ass. But he was up again before I could appreciate the sight. He was limber. He pulled a good boxing move then and a faint punch with his right and caught me with the left. It staggered me, but I managed to keep my feet by going away from it. I got both my arms up as he came forward for the advantage. I blocked another left. And then another. I could see he had a school ring on that hand and I figured that was what he wanted to tag me with. I moved to my right and got a glancing blow with my left on his shoulder. At least it turned him a bit. Just enough. I got my right fist on his face again. It felt like it broke my index finger. My typing finger. I backed away.
He hadn’t actually moved with the last punch. He tried glaring at me, but I figured he was dazed, and it looked more like a squint.
I said, “This is stupid. It’s not proving anything.”
He took a breath and swallowed some blood. I could see it creasing his lips. I figured his cheek had cut inside on his teeth. At least he would think about me for a few meals.
He said, “No. It doesn’t.”
I told him, “I won’t be calling your wife. That doesn’t matter anymore.”
I saw a crease flicker across his forehead. I know he’s smart. He’ll figure it all out when he has the moment.
I went back to my car then and drove a while. I got on the Expressway and drove all the way to Duxbury Beach. Nobody is there in the cold weather and I took a long walk.
You can hear the voices when the wind plays across your ears. The waves spend themselves against the sand in an unsyncopated rhythm and that underscores the small blusters of wind—like soft speech. The light is fine and clean on every wrinkle of the water. The smell of the water is steely cold with a touch of vinegar.
When I was teenager, I used to take dates down to this place. You get a warm day in October or November and it’s the best. Better than spring.
I wish I had taken Des down here. She would have liked it.
It was actually a little like the beach at Nauset on the Cape, where Des and I had spent that day. But the waves are not as big. There is more refuse in the sand here. Just the price of being closer to the city, I guess. I never noticed it when I was a kid.
It is not easy accepting the role of a bench player.
When I was in high school I was on the football team. All the big guys are. But I was not good enough for first string. Football was just a game. I had better things to do. And even though sitting on the bench was a cold punishment for lack of effort, for missing practices or showing up late, I accepted the role then. It got you some attention from the girls. That was all that mattered.
This was harder.
Des had called me that day in September, as I sat in Becky’s office. Why? Because George Jefferson Adams had not shown up.
Des had intended our great weekend down on the Cape as a rendezvous with Mr. Adams. Not with me. Only then his wife had insisted on coming with him to Boston, and the plan had changed.
I ran over all that in my mind enough times to be sick of it before I heard the voice of James Crockett again. James was always right.
“You blew it,” he’d said.
I think I repeated the words out loud into the wind.
But what I actually had was not second best. It just wasn’t the same. It was just not what I had expected. Des was my youth, reclaimed.
And I’m not really that stupid.
I drove back to Boston and showed up at Becky’s door around eight.
She was in her pajamas already and I could hear the television. She said, “There’s blood on your cheek.”
I said, “I fell.”
She gave me that straight-eyed teacher’s look. She said, “Some boys fall more often than others.”
30. Stage doors
I still felt at loose ends. Too many loose ends.
Matty had not returned home last night, and Mary Ellen called while I was making my coffee this morning to say that our girl had shown up at school on time. Along with Eric. Mary Ellen wanted me to come by later.
I called Connie and told him I couldn’t make the job scheduled for that afternoon. He didn’t say that much about it. I was working more shifts than anyone else on the staff, mostly because he was trying to cut expenses. He said he’d cover it.
I said, “What about all the video equipment you were going to buy?”
“What about it?”
“We need it. It’d save us more than a little bit on manpower. You can buy the equipment on credit.”
He laughed. It’s a ‘How little you know’ type of laugh. He says, “You want to run that stuff? You want to do the set ups? It’s all digital now. Like nothing you’ve ever used before. I’d have to hire someone to handle it. That’s what we can’t afford!”
I told him. “I know someone who can handle it.”
“Who.”
“Fellow named Jim Lunz.”
“Jimmy Lunz! He’s an ex-cop. I’ve run into him. Wasn’t he the guy you ran into on the Davis job?”
“Ex-cop. To his credit, he quit. He might be honest. Check him out.”
Connie went silent. I waited. After half a minute he asked about Matty and I told him. He said he was happy not to have any daughters, but we both knew that was a lie.
After that I needed some solid distraction and spent the better part of the day at the Historical Society.
It appeared that the rope walks I had believed were at the foot of the Boston Common by the ‘Ba
ck Bay’ tidal waters of the Charles River were not in fact moved to that location until sometime after 1779. The small fortified bastion there, little more than a rise above the flood waters, was seldom manned during the British occupation except during alerts. And further along that weedy inner coast at Barton’s Point, the house where Izaak Andrews was forced to live with his family—just about where Charles Street is today—was little more than a shack, according to descriptions of other houses in the same vicinity. Certainly, this was a severe change of circumstance for a man who had been born to far better. My thought now was of the smallpox epidemic that ravaged Boston in 1775. How had his family survived that ordeal? Had they all survived, in fact? The Reverend Jedidiah Frost’s letter from Halifax gave no account of the children.
From the Historical society, I drove over to Arlington and parked outside the high school in the line of cars with other parents waiting to pick up their responsibilities. At exactly 2:30, when her last class ended, I called Matty on her cell phone. She didn’t answer but I left a message and told her where I was. She could ignore me, of course. I half-thought she would. But ten minutes later she was at my window by the curb, giving me a look that said, ‘Is this necessary?’
I leaned over and popped the door and said, “Yes,” out loud.
She huffed and climbed in.
“What is it?”
“It’s about the rest of your life. That’s all. I thought you might be interested.”
She leaned her head to the side with her eyes wide with exasperation.
Finally, she said “What?” a little loudly, given the thirty seconds that passed.
I said, “Can we talk? Do you have half an hour for me?”
She huffed again.
I started the car and drove up to the Robbins Farm Park, where I used to take them sledding when they were little. Hell, I had taken Matty and a couple of her friends up there just the year before. She was still that much of a kid. I waited to speak. She didn’t say a word.
That place is part of the Arlington Heights, with the park tucked between a grammar school and the thick settlement of houses. There is a rock up there at the top where we used to sit when the kids were tired. Nice view of things. All the way to Boston. In the summer it’s a sea of green over the trees of the neighborhoods, right to the edge of the city. In the winter there is a fine sense of the skeleton of roads and smaller hills between. If you look hard enough, you see more, like a palimpsest, where the old roads trailed beneath the new. I’ve been there a few times lately just to get my mind set on how things must have unfolded that day in 1775 when everything changed.
I got out of the car without a word and Matty followed. She knew where I was headed.
The sun was already low and the gray bark of the bare trees had begun to turn rosy. I sat at the base of the rock, as I always did. Matty went right to the top.
I said, “Did you know your mother was three months pregnant when we got married?” This got her attention. She actually looked a little shocked. I told her more. “It’s funny, really. Looking back at it. We’d gone to a lot of trouble to keep our relationship secret from all the nosy-bodies at the school. Teacher-on-teacher gossip is always ripe. And then of course we were under a lot of scrutiny from the administration as well as the students. Some students will give a teacher up at the drop of a hat. A feather in the cap for bringing down the enemy. Besides, we were that unsure of ourselves. If things didn’t work out, we didn’t want to make a spectacle out of it . . . Then suddenly all bets were called. Your sister Susannah was on her way. No time left for fooling around. No time for games. The tease was off . . . God. I’ll tell you. I liked that time before. It was special. It was just between your mother and me. And then suddenly it wasn’t.”
I’d been hoping my admission might open her to telling me what I wanted to know about her own situation. Matty looked off at the city. In the late sun, it was the wonderful city of Oz. All the glass and steel taking on the brick red of the light against the blue.
She said, “It’s a family tradition, then.”
I said, “To be human. That’s all. There’s no magic. There’s just what we do. We were always in Kansas from the start.”
Matty’s head jerked around.
“Why did you say that?”
“About Kansas? Because.” I pointed out at the inverted nest of the buildings at the heart of Boston, glowingly surreal with the late Technicolor sun in front of us, “I often think of The Wizard of Oz when I’m up here.”
She smiled. It was the first smile I’d seen that day. She said, “So do I.”
That brought on one of those moments with both of us realizing how much we were alike and a bit dumbstruck at the simplicity of it.
Finally, I said, “You can put a lot of tags on things—or medals and certificates—but things are what they are. You have the heart, and the smarts, and the courage, or you don’t.”
Matty said, “I suppose . . .”
We talked pretty freely then. She had figured it out on her own. But I was happy to hear her tell me about it.
She had talked all night with Eric. They were not going to get married. Not yet. He was going to go to college. She still hoped to. As for the baby, she did not want to put it up for adoption. Eric’s parents had offered to help. Mary Ellen had offered to help as well.
Matty intended to finish her senior year of high school at home. In a year or two she might take a few additional classes locally. There were plenty of good colleges close to Boston.
My only other important thought then was that Matty struck me as even more mature than her older sisters. But I didn’t say that. She had gone through that door to adulthood pretty fast. And I told her I thought she could handle it. I made sure of that thought.
“Don’t sell yourself short. You’re better than that.”
Afterwards, I left her at home and then drove back to my apartment. I put in another couple of hours on the computer, making sense of the notes I had taken at the Historical Society. Then suddenly I was hungry. I had time before the show let out at the Colonial to catch a couple slices of pizza. Stupidly, I figured Burley would be waiting for his lady love at the front entrance. I was distracted, I suppose, by other matters.
The Colonial Theatre is easy to miss, locked in a wall of buildings right across the street from the old Central Burying Ground. There is no gaudy marquee as you might expect from what is the oldest theatre in the city. Just a little gold awning—not much more than a rigid box overhang with the theatre name on it. When it gets dark, the lights can be lost in the general shuffle of surrounding signage. I suppose they think it’s tasteful, but I’ve never understood this. I’ve always liked the braggadocio of old theatre marquees. They’re a happy sight. Full of expectations. But then, I was standing right next to the graveyard at the time, passing judgment from beyond a wave of traffic, so I was probably just looking for a little uplift.
Waiting there for Burley in the cold brought on more than a little contemplation of things. I grabbed a large coffee at the Dunkin Donuts and picked my spot. It was easier to think about the immutable facts of history than the soft particulars of my own life.
And I’ve seldom been here on this side at night. The dark puts a different feel to it.
This graveyard is at the southernmost angle of the Boston Common and it’s a forlorn and Godforsaken place in winter. That’s because the Common is a misbegotten sort of park to begin with, strapped by a maze of asphalt walkways, and only used as a crossing ground by most Bostonians in cold weather. With your head down against the wind, the bare trees become pillars to a ceiling of muddy electrolit sky.
In that historical moment I had the most interest in, they used to hang people here from an old elm. Or was the actual hanging tree an oak? I suppose there is some dispute about that. But it was around here that they hung the Quaker Mary Dyer a full hundred years before they figured out she had it right after all and tyranny must be resisted.
The broad space o
f the Common was originally meant to be a pasture for the horses and cows of old Boston town. Just the bare backside of a port that naturally faced the sea. The rear of the pasture edged the tidal swamp of the Back Bay. It is, in fact, still an open space now, with trees enough and benches, but punctuated by ignored monuments and non-functioning fountains used primarily as trash receptacles. Back to my right a few hundred yards were the scattered kiosks of the underground parking garage, and to my left I could see the stone portal of the subway. Behind me, well beyond the undulations of the open land to the north there is the cement basin of a ‘frog pond’ used in this weather as a skating rink. I can see a bit of glow from the light there now. If it wasn’t too late, there would be people skating there. But it lies empty most of the year, lacking enough water to keep an amphibian alive.
At a nearer corner to my left there is a fenced-in ballpark that’s seldom used, even in summer, but when the lights are on there, and teams are playing, it makes the whole place more human. It gives a proper scale to it all that I can understand.
Somewhere near that ballpark, British soldiers under the Command of Lord Percy, mustered in haste early on the morning of April 19, 1775. They had been called out by Gage, as a precaution, to march in relief of Colonel Smith and his Regulars who were already deep into Lexington and about to meet with that history I wanted to grasp.
Behind me, at the very center of the commons, the largest and tallest of the monuments, honoring soldiers and sailors of the Civil War, rises at the highest point. It was there, in the eighteenth century, that a powder house and arsenal was kept behind a small fortification. Despite its height, or perhaps because of it, that Civil War tribute is completely ignored by the citizenry except as a place for assignations in good weather. I have always found this odd. Shouldn’t that monument be dedicated to the earlier conflict? No battle of the Civil War was fought in this vicinity. But Boston was wealthy when the later conflict came, made rich from the slave and molasses trade, and after the Revolution they had prospered. They could afford the marble and brass. Not that it mattered now. Not one person in ten who sat on the benches waiting for romance could tell you what the monument that shadowed them was for. And those who cared were too long dead.
John Finn Page 31