All Our Yesterdays (28 page)

“It wasn’t the religious part,” he said. “It was the celibacy.”

Mary Alice smiled. Gus walked to the window with his drink and looked out.

“Never saw a person hated sex so much,” Gus said.

“Except Peggy,” Mary Alice said.

“Yeah. Except her.”

“What a coincidence,” Mary Alice said.

He drank more of his Scotch, looked at the glass, drank the rest, and went to the kitchen for a refill.

“You can bring me some wine,” Mary Alice called after him.

He came back with the two glasses and gave one to her and went back to the window.

“Aren’t you afraid someone will look up and see your dinky?” Mary Alice said.

“Not from that distance,” Gus said. “I’m Irish.”

Mary Alice laughed. Cars went past on Storrow Drive, below him. Their headlights made the wet road gleam. Beyond that was the wide darkness of the river.

“Her and the goddamned priests,” Gus said. “Both of them telling me how women were a deadly danger.”

“That’s why they became priests,” Mary Alice said.

“Yeah? I thought it was so they could diddle altar boys in the sacristy,” Gus said. “Anyway, my mother didn’t like me to date. And I never had much luck with women.”

“Might be a connection, huh?”

Gus turned from the window and smiled at her. His drink was empty and he went for a refill. She still had most of her wine.

“So I’m a young guy, on the cops, and I’m single and not getting much,” Gus said when he came back. “And I get fixed up with this peppy little broad, who went to school with the nuns, and won’t wear patent leather shoes. She talks all the time so I don’t have to, she likes to drink, and she only lets me kiss her with her mouth closed.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it, no French kisses, no feeling the boobs under the sweater, no hanky-panky under the skirt. Just some hugging and some cute kisses.”

“Perfect,” Mary Alice said.

“We were married in six months,” Gus said. He drank most of the rest of his drink. “And the rest is fucking history.”

“Or no fucking history,” Mary Alice said.

Gus laughed. It was a harsh sound, and Mary Alice knew it had nothing to do with amusement.

“So here I am, Mary Alice, an old fat guy walking around bare assed getting drunk with his mistress and whining about his wife.”

“You’re not fat, Gus. You still got a back like a stonemason.”

“Need it to support my stomach,” Gus said.

“And I asked you about your wife, and I like being your mistress.”

“Think I’ll go to hell, Mary Alice?” Gus said.

Mary Alice felt her eyes fill.

“You probably have, Gus,” she said. “Already.”

“I hadn’t married her, I wouldn’t have the kid,” Gus said.

H
e went to the couch, and sat down. She came immediately and sat on his lap.

“She glad to see Tommy?” he said.

She nodded, her eyes wide as she looked obliquely up at him.

“Tommy’s glad to see her too,” he said. “It’s been very hard out there for Tommy.”

“You want some Pepsi?” she said.

He shook his head. She giggled.

“I bet I know what you want,” she said.

He put his hand under her dress.

“She thinks she knows what Tommy wants?” he said. “What does she think he wants?”

She squirmed a little as he touched her under her dress, and she giggled again.

“You want to fuck me,” she said.

“Tell Tommy what that means.”

She told him carefully, and explicitly, reciting it as he’d taught her, anatomically, saying all the dirty words carefully and clearly. She knew he liked to hear them. While she talked he continued to touch her.

“Will you do that to me?” she said when she was through.

“What do we say?”

“Please?”

“Please what?”

“Please fuck me?”

He smiled then, and picked her up in his arms and carried her into the next room to the huge canopied bed. It too was cluttered with stuffed animals and clothing, food wrappers, magazines, and tissues. He shook his head with annoyance and put her on the bed on her back. She lay limply as he’d placed her, with a dreamy little smile on her face, and let him undress her, and lay quite still while he had sex with her. He had sex with her for a long time, trying to ejaculate, until finally he got tired and rolled off of her. They lay together quietly, on their backs, beside each other, looking up at the paislied canopy above them.

“You didn’t come,” she said.

“Tommy’s got a lot on his mind,” he said.

He felt frustrated, unfinished.

“Are you mad at me?” she said.

“No.”

There was a pair of white cotton underpants on the coverlet near him. He brushed them angrily to the floor.

“She doesn’t keep Tommy’s house too nice for him,” he said.

“I hate always picking up,” she said. “Why can’t I ever have a maid?”

“I’ve told you before, this is our secret place. Nobody else can come here.”

She nodded silently.

C
hris’s office was down two corridors from Flaherty’s, and looked out onto the big vacant brick plaza that had seemed so good an idea on the drawing board.
You could have war games on it
, Chris thought,
and no one would notice
. Behind him the door opened. He turned. It was Flaherty, with his jacket off and his shirtsleeves rolled. He had a newspaper in his hand.

“You seen this fucking Cityside column today in the
Globe
?”

“Just the headline,” Chris said. “I didn’t read the piece.”

“Didn’t read it?” Flaherty said. “Fucking guy eviscerates us and you didn’t even read it?”

“Why would I want to read about my own evisceration?” Chris said.

Flaherty stared at him. Then he began to read aloud.

“‘The good Dr. Sheridan from Hahvad appears to be just another bit of window dressing in the five-and-dime store that Hizzoner runs out of our City Hall. Appointed two months ago with great fanfare and a lot of photo ops, Dr. Sheridan has kept unblemished the city’s record of ineptitude. The son of Boston Homicide Commander Gus Sheridan, he has stayed dead even with his father. Neither has made any progress whatsoever in ending the Townie Gang Wars.’ You want more?”

Chris shook his head. “Where would columnists be without moral outrage?” he said.

“Don’t give me a lot of intellectual Cambridge bullshit,” Flaherty said. “What kind of progress have you made?”

“We got phone taps on both Butchie and Pat,” Chris said. “We’ve got a bug in Butchie O’Brien’s liquor store. We haven’t heard anything useful. We’ve interviewed everybody connected to either the O’Briens or the Malloys and no one has said anything useful. Sergeant Cassidy and I have reinterviewed everybody who can be called a witness. And we got, in the words of the poet, Katz-an-goo.”

“Well, do something else.”

“Like what? You think I’m Philo Vance? Run around with a magnifying glass, discover some heretofore unseen pecker tracks?”

“I didn’t appoint you to tell me you couldn’t do it,” Flaherty said.

“There’s this problem with evidence,” Chris said.

“Don’t evidence me,” Flaherty said. “Find some. Manufacture some. I don’t give a shit. You may as well be working for your fucking brother-in-law.”

“He’s not my brother-in-law,” Chris said.

“Girlfriend-in-law. Whatever,” Flaherty said. “Don’t get distracted—November’s coming.”

“I didn’t know I was working on your campaign,” Chris said.

“Well, you do now,” Flaherty said. “Everybody’s working on my campaign. That’s the current business of this administration, ya unnerstand, working on my fucking campaign.”

“What about the part where you tell me you’ll take care of me after you’re elected?”

“Yeah, sure. That’s how it works. I take care of everybody. You know that. What the fuck do you think we do this for? Christ, you sound more like your old man every time I talk with you. I never saw two guys said less and mean more.”

“It’s probably better than the other way around,” Chris said.

“Not in politics,” Flaherty said. “I can’t fire you right now, make me look like an asshole. But I want something to happen, and it better happen quick. I go down on this issue, I’m going to take you with me.”

“I guess that’s a commitment of sorts,” Chris said. “These days I’ll take it where I can get it.”

“Read the fucking column,” Flaherty said, and dropped the newspaper on Chris’s desk and walked out.

Chris picked up the newspaper, rolled it carefully, and put it in the wastebasket.

“Fuck you,” he said out loud, and heard himself and laughed briefly.

S
till in workout clothes, Gus stood with his son on the Larz Anderson Bridge in the late afternoon, with the sun warm on his back, leaning his forearms on the low brick wall, looking at the Charles River curving below them, watching the racing shells tended by motorboats beating upstream against the languid current.

“Grace and I are separated,” Chris said.

Gus felt the sadness flicker in his stomach.

“You happy about that?” Gus said.

“No.”

“Her idea?”

“Yes.”

“Somebody else?”

“She says no.”

Gus nodded, staring down at the slow water.

“You have your doubts?” Chris said.

“People like backup,” Gus said.

“Yeah.”

“Just happen?” Gus said.

“No. Happened a while ago, before Flaherty offered me the job.”

“You know where she is?”

“No. Not exactly. I know she is in Boston somewhere. She calls me regularly. We try to meet once a week and talk. She says she doesn’t want to lose me.”

“What do you say?”

“I say she won’t.”

“You want her back,” Gus said.

“Yes.”

“Then you need to not quit,” Gus said. “You need to be tough enough not to quit.”

“You’re the tough guy,” Chris said.

Gus shook his head.

“I quit,” he said.

On the bridge, people passed them walking dogs, joggers, people riding bicycles, people on roller skates, people in cars. Below them the eight-man crews drove the long shells along rhythmically.

“You gotta break the chain,” Gus said. “My father, me, now you.”

“Unlucky in love?” Chris said.

“Luck’s probably not involved,” Gus said.

“We do badly at love,” Chris said.

“Yeah. Very.”

“Family tradition?” Chris said.

“Whatever,” Gus said. “You got a chance to break the chain.”

“Why me?”

“Because maybe you’re the one hasn’t fastened onto the wrong woman.”

“I think I may have fastened onto her in the wrong way, though.”

“You can change that,” Gus said.

“And if I can’t?”

“Life goes on,” Gus said.

The light changed at Memorial Drive and the traffic moved forward across the bridge.

“I’m not sure I would want it to,” Chris said.

“I know,” Gus said softly. “I know.”

G
race and Laura Winslow sat together at a white wicker table in the atrium off the kitchen. The sun coming in through the glass roof enriched the polished flagstone floor. They were drinking tea.

“Has he been faithful to you?”

“Chris?” Grace smiled slightly. “Oh, I’m pretty sure he has.”

“That’s no small thing,” Laura said softly.

Grace stared at her mother, and started to speak. “You—” Grace said, and stopped. “It isn’t about anything like that.”

“Sex?”

“We have enough sex,” Grace said.

“That’s no small thing either,” Laura said.

“It isn’t perfect, but it’s frequent and it distracts us from our problems.”

Laura gazed at her daughter for a long moment, and smiled—more to herself than at Grace.

“It’s nice to have a distraction, I imagine.”

Grace shrugged. Laura waited, her whole self focused on her daughter, this second self, grown up before her.

“But,” she said, “it’s imperfect.”

“Chris is so fierce,” Grace said. “Our relationship seems so all-important, there’s no fun to it. He loves me so … grimly. I like sex”—she smiled at Laura—“if a daughter may say so to her mother.”

“Her mother is very interested,” Laura said.

“But Chris puts so much weight on it. On everything. Everything is hugely important. Nothing is frivolous.”

“If someone never had experienced that,” Laura said, “one might think it desirable.”

Again Grace looked at her mother and paused. They sipped some tea. Outside the atrium, the garden, still wet from the night, glistened in the sunshine.

“Are you talking about you and Daddy?”

Laura smiled.

“Probably,” she said. “And we should be talking about you.”

“Christ, I don’t even know him,” Grace said. “With me he’s always stayed a hundred miles away.”

Grace waited a moment as if Laura would comment. Laura didn’t speak.

“It’s very tiring,” Grace said, “being the basis of someone’s life.”

“Yes,” Laura said. “I’m sure it is. Is it out of fashion to ask if you love Chris?”

“No, it’s the right question,” Grace said.

“And?”

“And I think I do,” Grace said. “And I think I’m not going to give up on him, and I’m not going to let him boil his life away like his father did.”

The sun brought out the red tones in her daughter’s auburn hair.
Not a little girl anymore
.

“But you can’t marry him.”

“No. He can’t marry me.”

“But he needs to be with you?”

“Yes.”

“And there’s a difference.”

“Apparently.”

“Do you want to marry him?”

“I might if he wanted me as me, and if there wasn’t always this love-hate thing under the surface that I don’t understand.”

“You want unconditional love.”

“Absolutely,” Grace said. “I am, and deserve to be, a Goddamned love object. Not some kind of functional necessity.”

“I never quite thought of it that way,” Laura said, smiling.

Grace grinned back at her.

“Well, it’s time you started. You’re still a good-looking woman.”