Inside the O'Briens (3 page)

He's descending the steep hill, using the stairs instead of the switchback ramp, when he somehow missteps and his view is suddenly nothing but sky. He skids down three concrete steps on his back before he has the presence of mind to stop himself with his hands. He eases himself up to sitting, and he can already feel a nasty series of bruises blossoming on the knobs of his spine. He twists around to examine the stairs, expecting to blame some kind of obstruction such as a stick or a rock or a busted step. There's nothing. He looks up to the top of the stairs, to the park around him and the landing below. At least no one saw him.

Yaz pants and wags his tail, eager to move along.

“Just a sec, Yaz.”

Joe lifts each arm up and checks his elbows. Both are scraped and bleeding. He wipes the gravel and blood and eases himself to standing.

How the hell did he trip? Must be his bum knee. He twisted his right knee a couple of years ago chasing a B&E suspect down Warren Street. Brick sidewalks may look pretty, but they're bumpy and buckled, brutal to run on, especially in the dark. His knee hasn't been the same since and seems to just quit on him every now and then without warning. He should probably get it checked out, but he doesn't do doctors.

He's particularly careful going down the rest of the stairs and continues down to Medford Street. He decides to cut back in and up at the high school. Rosie should be getting out soon, and he's now feeling a stabbing pinch in his lower back with each step. He wants to get home.

As he's walking up Polk Street, a car slows down next to him. It's Donny Kelly, Joe's best friend from childhood. Donny still lives in Town and works as an EMT, so Joe sees him quite a bit both on and off the job.

“Whaddya drink too much last night?” asks Donny, smiling at him through the open window of his Pontiac.

“Huh?” asks Joe, smiling back.

“You limpin' or somethin'?”

“Oh yeah, my back is tweaked.”

“Wanna ride up over the hill, old man?”

“Nah, I'm good.”

“Come on, get in the car.”

“I need the exercise,” says Joe, patting his gut. “How's Matty doin'?”

“Good.”

“And Laurie?”

“Good, everyone's good. Hey, you sure I can't take you somewhere?”

“No, really, thanks.”

“All right, I gotta go. Good to see you, OB.”

“You, too, Donny.”

Joe makes a point of walking evenly and at a rigorous clip while he can still see Donny's car, but when Donny reaches the top of the hill and then disappears, Joe stops the charade. He trudges along, each step now twisting some invisible screw deeper into his spine, and he wishes he'd taken the ride.

He replays Donny's comment about having too much to drink. He knows it was just an innocent joke, but Joe's always been sensitive about his reputation and drinking. He never has more than two beers. Well, sometimes he'll finish off his two beers with a shot of whiskey, just to prove he's a man, but that's it.

His mother was a drinker. Drank herself into the nuthouse, and everyone knew about it. It's been a long time, but that shit follows you. People don't forget anything, and who you're from is as important as who you are. Everyone half expects you to become a raging alcoholic if your mother drank herself to death.

Ruth O'Brien drank herself to death.

This is what everyone says. It's his family legend and legacy. Whenever it comes up, a parade of memories marches closely behind. It gets uncomfortable real fast, and he swiftly changes the subject so he doesn't have to “go there.” How 'bout them Red Sox?

But today, whether due to a growth in bravery, maturity, or curiosity, he can't say, he allows this sentence to accompany him up the hill.
Ruth O'Brien drank herself to death.
It doesn't really add up. Yes, she drank. In a nutshell, she drank so much that she couldn't walk or talk a straight line. She'd say and do crazy things. Violent things. She was completely out of control, and when his father couldn't handle her anymore, he put her in the state hospital. Joe was only twelve when she died.

Ruth O'Brien drank herself to death
. For the first time in his life, he consciously realizes that this sentence that he's held as gospel, a fact as verifiable and real as his own birth date, can't literally be true. His mother was in that hospital for five years. She had to have been as dry as a bone, on the permanent wagon in a hospital bed, when she died.

Maybe her brain and liver had been soaking in booze for too many years, and it turned them both to mush. So maybe it was too late. The damage was done, and there was no recovering. Her wet brain and soggy liver finally failed her. Cause of death: chronic exposure to alcohol.

He reaches the top of the hill, relieved and ready to move on to an easier street and topic, but his mother's death is still pestering him. Something about this new theory doesn't ring true. He's got that unsettled, hole-in-his-gut feeling that he gets when he arrives at a call and he's not getting what really happened from anyone. He's got a good ear for it, the truth, and this ain't it. So if she didn't drink herself to death or die from alcohol-related causes, then what?

He searches for a better answer for three more blocks and comes up empty. What does it even matter? She's dead. She's
been dead a long time.
Ruth O'Brien drank herself to death
. Leave it alone.

The bells are ringing as he arrives at St. Francis Church. He spots Rosie right away, waiting for him on the top step, and he smiles. He thought she was a knockout when they started dating at sixteen, and he actually thinks she's getting prettier as she ages. At forty-three, she has peaches-and-cream skin splashed with freckles, auburn hair (even though these days the color comes from a bottle), and green eyes that can still make him weak in the knees. She's an amazing mother and definitely a saint for putting up with him. He's a lucky man.

“Did you put in a good word for me?” asks Joe.

“Many times,” she says, flicking holy water at him with her fingers.

“Good. You know I need all the help I can get.”

“Are you bleeding?” she asks, noticing his arm.

“Yeah, I fell on some stairs. I'm okay.”

She takes hold of his other hand, lifts his arm, and finds the bloody abrasion on that elbow.

“You sure?” she asks, concern in her eyes.

“I'm fine,” he says, and squeezes her hand in his. “Come, my bride, let's go home.”

CHAPTER 3

I
t's almost four thirty, and the whole family is sitting around the kitchen table set with empty jelly jar glasses, plates, and silverware on the threadbare green quilted place mats Katie sewed in home ec ages ago, waiting for Patrick. No one has seen him since yesterday afternoon. Patrick bartends nights at Ironsides, so presumably, he was there until closing, but he never came home last night. They have no idea where he is. Meghan keeps texting him, but, no surprise to any of them, he's not answering his phone.

Joe noticed Patrick's empty, perfectly made twin bed on the way to the bathroom early this morning. He paused before continuing down the hall, his focus drifting above where Patrick's head should've been to the poster on the wall of Bruins center Patrice Bergeron. Joe shook his head at Bergy and sighed. Part of Joe wanted to go in and mess up the blankets and sheets, make it look as if Patrick had been home and was already up and out, just so Rosie wouldn't worry. But that's not a believable ruse anyway. If Patrick had come home, he'd still be in there, passed out until at least noon.

It's best if Rosie knows the truth and is allowed to express her concerns. Joe can then listen and nod and say nothing, concealing his own darker theories beneath a veiled silence. What Joe is capable of imagining is far worse than anything Rosie might cook up. The lad drinks too much, but he's twenty-three.
He's young. Joe and Rosie have their eyes on it, but the excessive drinking isn't where either of their real worries lie.

Rosie's terrified that he's going to get some girl pregnant. This highly religious woman actually slips condoms into her son's wallet. One at a time. Poor Rosie is gravely mortified each time she checks inside and finds only a couple of bucks and no condom, often many times in the same week. But she always resupplies him, sometimes with a little cash, too. She then makes the sign of the cross and says nothing.

Although Joe wishes Patrick had a steady girlfriend, someone with a name and a nice face and a pretty smile who Patrick cared enough about to bring home to Sunday supper, Joe can live with the womanizing. Hell, part of him even admires the boy. Joe also can forgive him for not coming home at night and for the time he “borrowed” Donny's car and totaled it. Joe's more worried about the drugs.

He's never held this kind of suspicion with the other three kids and has no direct evidence that Patrick is using. Yet. He can't help finishing that thought every time with a “yet,” and so therein lies Joe's worry. Whenever Joe's working the midnight shift and gets called to the Montego Bay boat launch or some other secluded parking lot to arrest some punks for drug possession, he finds himself first searching the young faces for Patrick's. He hopes to God he's wrong and is being unnecessarily paranoid, but there's a familiar attitude in these kids that reminds him too much of Patrick, an apathy and recklessness beyond the normal sense of invincibility of young people. It worries Joe more than he'd like to admit.

He's not a stranger to arresting family, and it's no fun. He caught his brother-in-law Shawn literally red-handed, stained head to toe in exploded red dye, with a thick, crisp stack of one-dollar bills sandwiched between two fifties shoved inside the pocket of his hoodie—only minutes after a bank was robbed in City Square. Another brother-in-law, Richie, is still
doing time for drug trafficking back in the late nineties. Joe remembers eyeing Richie through the rearview, handcuffed and staring out the backseat window of his cruiser, and Joe felt ashamed, as if he'd been the one who committed a crime. Rosie was heartbroken. He never wants to put another relative in the back of his car again, especially not his own son.

“Meghan, text him,” says Rosie, her arms crossed.

“I just did, Ma,” says Meghan.

“Then do it again.”

Rosie's concern is deteriorating to anger. Sunday supper is nonnegotiable for the kids, especially on a Sunday that Joe is home, and to be this late is approaching unforgivable. Meanwhile, Rosie will keep cooking the food that was already overcooked a half hour ago. The roast beef will be dry, tasteless leather, the mashed potatoes will be a bowl of gray glue, and the canned green beans will have been boiled beyond recognition. As he's done for twenty-five years, Joe will get through supper with a lot of salt, a couple of beers, and no complaints.

The girls have a harder time with Sunday supper. Katie is vegan. Each week she passionately lectures them about animal cruelty and the outrageously disgusting practices of the meat industry while the rest of them, minus Meghan, all shovel in heavily salted mouthfuls of overcooked blood sausage.

Meghan typically rejects most of the meal because of fat and calorie content. She's a dancer for the Boston Ballet and, as far as Joe can tell, eats only salads. She usually picks at the obliterated canned vegetable while the rest of them, minus Katie, fill up on meat and potatoes. Meghan's not too thin, but her eyes always look so hungry, following the movement of their forks like a caged lion stalking a family of baby gazelles. Between the two girls, you need a degree from college to learn and memorize all the rules and restrictions surrounding their diets.

JJ and his wife, Colleen, will politely eat anything Rosie
puts in front of them. God bless them. That takes some highly skilled manners.

Joe and JJ are a lot alike. They share the same name, the same stocky build, and the same sleepy blue eyes. They both have pasty white skin that blooms an unflattering carnation pink whenever they get excited (the Red Sox win) or angry (the Red Sox choke) and that can sunburn in late-afternoon shade. They both have the same sense of humor that at least half the time Rosie thinks isn't one bit funny, and they both married women who are far too good for them.

But JJ is a firefighter, and that's the most striking difference between them. For the most part, Boston firefighters and cops consider themselves brothers and sisters, here to protect and serve this great city and her people, but the firefighters get all the glory, and that bugs the piss out of Joe. Firefighters are always the big heroes. They show up at someone's house and everyone cheers and thanks them. Some of those guys actually get hugged. The cops show up and everyone hides.

Plus firefighters get paid more and do less. It drives Joe nuts when they respond to fender benders where they're not needed, messing up traffic, getting in the way of BEMS and the police. Joe thinks they're bored and trying to look busy.
We got it, guys. Go back to the house and take another nap
.

To be honest, he's actually grateful that JJ didn't become a cop. Joe's proud to be a patrol officer, but he wouldn't wish this life on any of his kids. Still, sometimes Joe feels strangely betrayed by JJ's career choice, the way a Red Sox player would feel if his son grew up and became a New York Yankee. Part of Joe is busting with pride, and the other part wonders where he went wrong.

“What's goin' on, Dad?” asks Katie.

“Huh?” asks Joe.

“You're all quiet today.”

“Just lost in thought, honey.”

“Havin' two of them in there can be tough,” ribs JJ.

Joe smiles.

“Now I'm thinkin' you should go get me a beer,” says Joe to JJ.

“Me, too,” says Katie.

“I'll have one,” says Colleen.

“No beer until supper,” says Rosie, stopping JJ at the fridge.

Rosie looks up at the kitchen clock. It's now five o'clock. She continues to stare at the time for what feels like a full minute and then, without warning, slams her wooden spoon down on the counter. She unties her apron and hangs it on the hook. That's it. They're eating without Patrick. JJ opens the fridge and retrieves a six-pack of Bud.

Rosie pulls what used to be roast beef out of the oven, or the “taste extractor” as Joe likes to call it, and Meghan helps her transport the entire meal to the small, round table. Everything is overcrowded—elbows bump neighboring elbows, feet kick opposite-facing feet, bowls touch plates, plates touch glasses.

Rosie sits down and says grace, and then everyone rotely says “Amen” and begins passing food.

“Ow, Joe, quit bumping me,” says Rosie, rubbing her shoulder.

“Sorry, honey, there's no room.”

“There's plenty of room. Stop fidgeting so much.”

He can't help it. He had three cups of coffee this morning instead of his usual two, and he's feeling on edge, wondering where Patrick is.

“Where's the salt?” asks Joe.

“I got it,” says JJ, who showers the food on his plate and then hands the shaker over to his father.

“Is that all you're having?” Rosie asks Katie, looking at her big white plate sporting only a modest mouthful of wilted gray beans.

“Yeah, I'm good.”

“How about some potato?”

“You put butter in it.”

“Just a little bit.”

Katie rolls her eyes. “Ma, I'm not just a little bit vegan. I'm vegan. I don't eat dairy.”

“And what's your excuse?” asks Rosie, referring to Meghan's similarly empty plate.

“Do you have any salad?” asks Meghan.

“Yeah, I'd like a salad,” says Katie.

“There's some lettuce and a cucumber in the fridge. Go ahead,” says Rosie, sighing and waving the back of her hand at them. “You girls are so difficult to feed.”

Meghan pops up, opens the fridge, finds the two ingredients and nothing else, and sets herself up at the counter.

“How about some cow?” offers JJ, extending the platter of roast beef under his sister's nose.

“Stop it. That's disgusting,” says Katie, pushing the plate back toward him.

Meghan returns to the table and portions half the salad onto Katie's plate, the other half onto hers, and then dumps the empty bowl into the sink. Meanwhile Joe works at cutting his roast beef with the same level of effort a lumberjack might use to saw through a tree. He finally frees a piece and watches his girls happily crunching on their salads as he chews on a salty roof shingle.

“You know, the farmers who grew that lettuce and cucumber probably used fertilizer,” says Joe, wearing the straightest expression he's got.

Katie and Meghan ignore him, but JJ cracks a smile, knowing where this is going.

“I'm no farmer, but I think they use cow manure for fertilizer, don't they, JJ?”

“Yup, they sure do,” says JJ, who has never stepped foot in a garden or on a farm in his life.

“Stop,” says Meghan.

“The lettuce and cucumber seeds use nutrients from the cow manure to grow. So basically, if you do the math, that salad you're eating is made of cow shit.”

“Gross, Dad. Really gross,” says Katie.

“I'd rather eat the cow than the cow's shit, wouldn't you, JJ?”

JJ and Joe have a good laugh. For many reasons, the women in the room are not amused.

“Okay, that's enough,” says Rosie, who would normally find Joe's teasing at least good-natured. She doesn't understand the whole vegan thing either. But he knows that she's still fuming about Patrick's unknown whereabouts and is too distracted by his absence to think anything is funny. “Can we please talk about something other than shit?”

“I have the dates for
Coppélia
,” says Meghan. “It runs August tenth to the twenty-fourth.”

“Me and Colleen are going on the first Friday,” says JJ.

“Colleen and I,” says Rosie. “That works for me. Katie?”

“Uh, I'm not sure yet. I might have plans.”

“Doing what?” asks Meghan in a dismissive tone that Joe knows Katie will find offensive.

“None of your business,” says Katie.

“Lemme guess. Ironsides with Andrea and Micaela.”

“My Friday nights are just as important as yours. The whole world doesn't revolve around you.”

“Girls,” warns Rosie.

Growing up, Katie was Meghan's dutiful shadow. As Joe remembers it, he and Rosie always parented them as a single unit. Except when it came to dance, Joe and Rosie referred to the girls together so often, their individual names seemed to blur into a single third moniker.
Meg-an-Katie, come here. Meg-an-Katie are going to the parade. Meg-an-Katie, time for supper
.

But since high school, the girls have been drifting apart.
Joe can't put his finger on exactly why. Meghan's so consumed with her rigorous ballet schedule; even though the girls live together, she's not around much. Katie could be feeling left behind. Or jealous. They all do make a pretty big deal over Meg. Joe listens politely whenever other parents in Town brag about their daughter who works at the library or the MBTA or who just got married. He beams when they're done, when it's finally his turn.
MY daughter dances for the Boston Ballet
. No other parent from Town can top that. He realizes just now that he doesn't mention anything about his other daughter.

Katie teaches yoga, which Joe will admit he knows virtually nothing about except that it's today's latest fitness craze, like Zumba or Tae Bo or CrossFit but dressed in a New Age, hippy-dippy, cultlike kind of following. He thinks it's wonderful she's doing something she enjoys, but Joe can tell she's dissatisfied. He's not sure whether it's with yoga or all the attention they give Meghan or a boyfriend Joe doesn't know about, but there's a tension in the posture of Katie's voice that seems to be squeezing tighter each week, a chip on her shoulder that she wears like a favorite accessory. She was such an easygoing kid. His baby girl. Whatever's going on, he assumes it's just a phase. She'll work it out.