Inside the O'Briens

by Lisa Genova

  At least they didn’t have any special plans. It’s bad enough to come home at the end of a sixteen-hour day to a lonely or disappointed wife, but if he misses a wedding or a christening or a holiday, then he faces resentment, and that’s much harder for Joe to make good on. When they don’t have plans, Joe can erase Rosie’s loneliness or disappointment with a heartfelt hug and a kiss. Chocolate and wine also help. She knows it wasn’t his fault he got ordered to overtime, and in his arms, she remembers to be grateful that he made it home alive. But if he misses a planned event, there’s nothing other than time that can melt Rosie’s hostility, as if he would ever choose to stand alone in the middle of the street for seven hours after working a full-day tour, directing angry pedestrians and motorists nearly running him down in ninety-degree heat.

  IT’S NOW EIGHT o’clock, and the concert doesn’t end for another two hours. Then, hundreds of people will be leaving the Common, and Joe will be busy again, but for now, he’s mostly hanging around, waiting. Other than directing the two sets of tourists who asked him how to get to Cheers, he’s had little to do since rush hour. He’s been on his feet for two and a half hours, and he can feel every ounce of the thirteen-pound gun belt around his waist. He’s exhausted, his back and feet are killing him, and his very soul is aching to sit on that bench he can see beneath the weeping willow tree in the Public Garden. It might as well be in California.

  He continues to stand and tries to listen to the music. It’s jazz, but too far in the distance to hear fully. A brassy note floats by here and there, but Joe’s ears can’t string enough of them together to decipher a melody, nothing he can whistle along to, and the effort only frustrates him.

  He notices a percussion sound, like a maraca shaking, in addition to the jazz notes, but the sound is separate, out of sync, closer. He tunes in to the noise and discovers that it’s coming from him. It’s the handful of coins, change from the crappy day-old ham-and-cheese sandwich he bought at 7-Eleven for dinner, jingling in his side pants pocket. The cause of the jingling has Joe curiously stumped until it finally registers. He’s hopping back and forth on his feet as if he were standing barefoot on hot coals.

  He didn’t even realize he was moving. He thought he was standing perfectly still.

  Maybe he has to take a piss. He checks. He doesn’t. He’s too dehydrated from sweating in this hideous heat.

  It must be an adrenaline hangover from the B&E bust. Of course the perceived threat is long over, but Joe knows from experience that those powerful juices can still be hitting every GO button in his body hours later. Anytime he has to take out his gun, his body floods with adrenaline, a visceral rush that feels a lot like chugging three Red Bulls. He can be twitching and vibrating, muscles ready to pounce into action for the rest of the day. It must be that.

  He imagines the people on the Common, couples drinking wine out of plastic cups, kids dancing barefoot in the grass, everyone enjoying the live music. He wishes he and Rosie could be there among them, sitting on a blanket, eating a picnic dinner, relaxing together. Then he pictures Fenway, only a couple of miles up the road, and wonders how the Sox are doing. He pivots on his restless feet, turning away from the concert he can’t quite hear or attend, away from the bench he can’t sit on, away from the baseball team he loves, toward the direction of Bunker Hill, near where Rosie is waiting for him, and imagines getting home to her.

  Four more hours and he’ll be home. Four more.

  He turns back toward the Common, only now his focus drifts past the jazz concert to the city beyond it, and a thought creeps into his consciousness like spilled ink bleeding onto paper, eventually soaking the whole sheet through.

  The Opera House!

  Joe checks his watch, and his heart sinks fast and heavy like a rock in water. Possibly at this very moment, Meghan is performing her solo in Coppélia. JJ, Colleen, and Rosie are in the audience, and there’s a disgracefully empty seat next to Rosie where Joe said he’d be.

  Fuck.

  Joe stands in the street, his feet already jumpy, desperate to bolt through the Common to the Opera House just beyond it, but he might as well be paralyzed. He can’t go. He’s on duty. He missed it.

  Yes, he was ordered to overtime, but he could’ve asked his supervisor for a favor. He could’ve tried to make a deal with another officer, offering to take a future shift for him or her in exchange for tonight. Someone would’ve helped him out.

  He pats his chest pocket for his phone, but it’s not there. He looks over to his parked cruiser. He’s pretty sure he left it on the seat. He was so frazzled by that friggin’ B&E report that he forgot to call Rosie to let her know about being called to overtime. He hasn’t checked his phone in hours. Christ. There will be many unread, increasingly angry texts from Rosie waiting for him.

  When he didn’t come home from his shift on time, she probably worried about him. But Joe knows that when she saw nothing on the evening news and didn’t get a phone call, she stopped worrying. She most likely concluded that he got ordered to overtime or was out having a drink with the guys. Either way, he didn’t return Rosie’s texts, and he missed Meghan’s dance. She’s now definitely and rightfully pissed.

  And Meghan. He promised he’d be there. He let her down. Again. That last thought punches Joe low in the gut.

  He wipes his sweaty forehead, shakes his head, and looks down at his boots, wishing he could kick his own ass for forgetting about tonight. He sighs and looks up, staring in the direction of the Opera House, imagining his beautiful daughter dancing on the stage, and prays for forgiveness.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Sox are in the World Series, and everyone in New England is high on hope. They’re on a nine-game winning streak, taking Game 1 last night, trouncing the St. Louis Cardinals 8–1. Things are looking good, an attitude no sane Bostonian would’ve dared possess before 2004. But the Curse of the Bambino has been reversed, and Sox fans are now a crazy bunch of cockeyed optimists.

  Tonight is Game 2 at Fenway, and Red Sox Nation is feverishly giddy with preparation, doing their part to ensure another win—donning their B caps, buying Fenway Franks at Stop & Shop and cases of beer at the package store, going unshaven and wearing their mismatched socks pulled up to their knees, or following whatever superstition has been clinically proven to work its juju. Joe is wearing his new Pedroia shirt under his Kevlar vest. And then there are those lucky bastards who have tickets to the game. Joe can’t even bear to think about them.

  Joe loves the Red Sox, but it’s a complicated, bittersweet relationship for a Boston cop. Like every kid in the city, Joe grew up worshipping the team. He collected cards and taped posters of Jerry Remy and Carlton Fisk to his bedroom wall. He played Little League, second base, and his glove was his most prized possession. He took better care of it than he did his bike or his teeth. He can still remember the heavenly smell of it—leather and oil and dirt. He’d rub his glove down with linseed oil, darkening every inch of the leather, stick a ball in the pocket, tie it up with string, and pound the hell out of it until it was as buttery smooth as a baby’s bottom. He remembers wearing his glove for good luck while watching the games on TV in the living room with his dad and Maggie, fetching cans of Schlitz from the fridge for his dad during commercials, everyone standing for the seventh-inning stretch and singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” many times staying up way past his bedtime in pajamas, especially if the Sox made it to the postseason.

  Whether they had won or lost, Joe has nothing but fond memories of watching the Sox in the fall as a kid. He has no such memories of the Sox as an adult. At least not of the home games. Each home game in the postseason means crowd control and overtime duty. It means riot training in Dorchester before the game, and it means standing outside Fenway during and after the game. It means no beer and no lucky glove. It means his kids didn’t grow up with the kinds of memories Joe did, of watching the postseason Sox in the living room with their dad.
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  When the Sox are playing a home game in October, all Boston police officers get called to duty. All days off are canceled. And that means never seeing the game.

  In his most selfish, shameful moments, Joe finds himself wishing they’d lose, that the Series would end, and then Joe wouldn’t have to stand outside Fenway like a knight banished from his castle, tortured by each eruption of cheers, excluded from experiencing the excitement on the other side of the green wall. Of course, he doesn’t really want the Sox to lose, and he knocks on wood as soon as he catches himself tempting fate with such evil, renegade thoughts.

  He tries to keep it positive. Joe always wishes for a clean sweep on the road. That would be the ideal scenario. The Sox would win, and he’d have the chance to see it on TV. Everyone wins. But that’s never how it goes for Joe or the Sox.

  Tonight’s game starts at 8:07, which means that this morning, Joe finds himself at the old National Guard Armory in Dorchester. The hangar is huge, a vast amount of empty space surrounding the collection of officers gathering in the middle of the gym. The height of the room is as impressive as its girth. The windows running the length of the building are set too high to see anything out of but sky, and the ceiling is at least forty feet up. Joe spots a pair of pigeons sitting on one of the rafters.

  He’s standing in the center of the gymnasium floor among forty-nine other officers from every precinct, guys he typically only sees at parades and funerals. Joe spends a few minutes catching up with Darryl Jones and Ronnie Quaranto, two of his best buddies from his Police Academy days. Darryl’s daughter is getting married. It’s costing him a fortune, and he can’t stand the groom. Otherwise, no complaints. Ronnie’s looking forward to a much-needed vacation next week with his wife, a cruise in the Caribbean.

  Joe finds the familiar face of his best friend, Tommy Vitale, but then does a double take. His lip. In the twenty-four years Joe has known Tommy, he’s never once seen Tommy’s upper lip.

  “Hey, Magnum, should we file a missing report for your furry pet?” asks Joe.

  Tommy combs the naked skin beneath his nose with his fingers.

  “It was time for a change. Whaddaya think?”

  Tommy turns to the side, offering Joe his profile, and smiles.

  “I think you should’ve gone the other way, grown a full beard to cover up that ugly mug.”

  “Amy likes it. Says I look like a young Robert De Niro.”

  “Tragic that she’s going blind at such a young age.”

  Tommy laughs.

  “Naw, you look good. Ten years younger.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ve never been more attracted to you.”

  “It feels weird. I can’t stop touching it.”

  Joe spits out a laugh. It takes Tommy a second, and then both he and Joe are giggling like teenage boys.

  The sergeant calls an end to the happy reunion. The fun and games are over. It’s time for three hours of tedious, military-style drills, crowd-control training for tonight’s potential postgame riot.

  Everyone lines up in full gear, wearing helmets and gloves, holding three-foot service batons and gas masks. It’s a delightful fall day outside, sunny with a crisp, gentle breeze rolling in off the Atlantic, but it’s friggin’ summer in Florida in this gymnasium. Joe’s Pedroia shirt is already damp, and the tag is irritating the top of his back. He chastises himself for not remembering to cut the tag out.

  They’re standing arm’s length apart in a stack formation. Joe is positioned in column number two, lucky number thirteen—twelve taller guys in front of him, four shorter guys behind. Sergeant Ferolito, a former marine, is bellowing out commands, his gravelly voice echoing throughout the hangar and Joe’s helmet.

  “Column number two, line formation, on me. MOVE! ”

  The point man moves first. Odd numbers advance forward and shift left, even numbers shift right. Sticks and boots stomp the ground in unison. Step, together, step, together, step. It’s an intimidating drumbeat, a thunderous trotting that grows exponentially as more officers peel off, like a herd of large animals in a controlled stampede. The uniforms ahead of Joe weave like braided hair, creating a brand-new line configuration. The choreography is precise and allows no room for error. It requires a remarkable amount of attention and coordination, the closest thing to dance Joe knows, which makes him admire Meghan all the more.

  It’s Joe’s turn, and he’s supposed to cut right foot first to the left. He’s been repeating the mantra “Odd men are never right” amid a sea of crisscrossing bodies ahead of him. But now that it’s his turn, his right foot jumps out, as if he were an impulsive dog on a leash sniffing out the irresistible aroma of a squirrel over there, and it jerks Joe to the right. This move fucks up the line of officers behind him, as they all copy Joe’s mistake and line up behind him like misplaced dominoes. It also fucks up the progress of the remaining guys in column three, who correctly cut left only to collide with a wall of bodies who weren’t supposed to be there.

  “Well, that was ugly,” says Ferolito. “Everyone, back in stack. You’re gonna do it again. O’Brien, you need a lesson in right and left?”

  “No, sir,” says Joe.

  “Good, then kindly get your head out of your ass.”

  They all arrange themselves back in stack formation. Sergeant Ferolito keeps them there, pacing with his hands clasped behind his back, saying nothing, holding his order, the corners of his mouth lifted in a devious smile. Meanwhile, Joe is having a hell of a time keeping still. His body is a can of shaken soda, ready to spray in all directions.

  And he can’t stop thinking about the friggin’ tag. The sensation is somewhere between a tickle and an intense itch, but it might as well be a knife stabbing him in the back for all the attention it’s demanding. He’d like to rip the friggin’ tag off his shirt right now. Pedroia had better hit a homer tonight.

  He has to stop thinking about the tag. He stares at the head of the guy in front of him. It’s Ronnie Quaranto’s head. He narrows in on the bulge of fat in the back of Ronnie’s neck and counts to himself, concentrating on each number and Ronnie’s neck pudge and not the tag, holding himself steady. He’s on thirty-six, clenching his fists, his teeth, even his ass, when Sergeant Ferolito finally barks out the command.

  “Column number two, line formation, on me. MOVE! ”

  Ronnie proceeds right, Joe’s cue to move, but the relief in Joe is so overwhelming, he loses focus. He’s supposed to be the mirror image of Ronnie, and so he should cut left and land in a straight new line, but again, his body seems to have an impetuous mind of its own, and Joe steps right. Again, the officer behind Joe is then faced with the dilemma of what to do—go to the right, as he would have if Joe had done what he was supposed to do, or follow the rule and do the opposite of what was done directly in front of him—and he can’t ponder this decision over a leisurely cup of coffee. It must be now, immediately, in precision with fifty pairs of boots and service batons beating against the hangar floor. He chooses to mirror Joe. The formation is fucked up. Again.

  “O’Brien,” calls out Sergeant Ferolito. “Are you aiming to be here all day?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Cuz I’m sure as hell not. Let’s do it again.”

  On their way back into columns, Joe makes eye contact with Tommy. Joe answers Tommy’s raised eyebrows with a quick shrug and then finds his spot. Everyone is still, waiting for the sergeant’s order. Everyone but Joe.

  Joe keeps shrugging as if he’s got hiccups in his shoulders, and it’s causing a noticeable swing of his baton, which knocks into the leg of the officer next to him. He tries pulling his wrists down and pinching his shoulder blades together, but his shoulders keep popping up. He can’t stop them.

  Be still, goddamn it. But the effort somehow recruits his feet, and now he’s shrugging his shoulders and shifting back and forth on his feet, dancing in
place. He bumps into the guy to his right, then the guy to his left. Good God, if someone doesn’t kick the shit out of him soon, he’s going to do it himself.

  “O’Brien, I’m getting tired of hearing my voice say your name. You got ants in your pants?”

  “No, sir,” says Joe.

  “We’re all going to wait right here until everyone is perfectly still.”

  Joe squeezes every muscle he can find, trying to transform his entire body into an inanimate object, imagining himself as a wooden plank. He holds his breath. Sweat drips off the tip of Joe’s nose like a leaking faucet. He resists the urge to mop his face with his gloved hand. That tag is still pissing him off. He promises himself the satisfaction of annihilating it later. A phlegmy tickle rakes the back of his throat, begging him to cough. He swallows several times until his mouth goes dry, but it won’t go down. He will not cough. Joe knows discipline.

  But there’s a mightier urge to move building deep inside him, emanating from an elusive, nonspecific origin, denying him a target to aim at. He’s not a plank. He’s a rubber balloon, blown to thin capacity and not tied off, and someone else, someone with a sick sense of humor, is pinching the neck, threatening to let go.

  His shoulders shrug again. What the fuck. Sergeant Ferolito is standing before the formation, his feet wide and arms crossed over his chest, his dark eyes staring Joe down. It feels as if the eyes of every officer are on Joe, even though Joe knows the only officers actually looking at him are Sergeant Ferolito and the guy directly behind Joe.

  He can’t imagine what’s causing these bizarre muscle spasms. He hasn’t been lifting weights or furniture or exerting himself in any way out of the ordinary. He mostly stands on his feet, sits in his cruiser, sits in the living room chair, or sleeps.

  Maybe he didn’t do anything to cause it. Joe sometimes gets spasms in his toes, especially the two next to his big toe. Without warning or instigation, they’ll pinch together in an unnatural, rigid position, out of line from the rest of his foot, and stay there in a gnarled pose, impervious to any attempt at relaxing them, for several agonizing minutes. But these shrugs feel more like hiccups than toe cramps. Sudden, involuntary, exaggerated bursts of movement. Shoulder hiccups. He’s never heard of such a thing. And what’s up with his antsy feet?