The Town: A Novel (23 page)

Shithead.
“Where we going?”

“I was thinking about the Chart House? It’s nice but not too nice, you know? By the Aquarium on Long Wharf, overlooking the harbor? What do you think?”

“Let’s do it.”

“You thought I was going to pick some place on Newbury Street, right? Sonsie, or something.”

“Yeah, maybe,” he said. Newbury Street, he knew of only as an avenue of art galleries and shopping boutiques; Sonsie, he had no clue.

“But—before that.” She turned to him again. “I was wondering if I could ask you a huge favor.”

“Sure,” he said, trying to read her as they crossed the rusted bridge into the city. “Anything, what?”

“I know it’s not much of a way to start the night… but I have a friend who’s having an operation tomorrow morning, and I promised him I’d stop by and visit.”

Doug nodded, thinking,
Him.
“And you wanted some company?”

“I promise it won’t take too long. Cross my heart.”

“No problem at all.”
Him.
“Just tell me where.”

When she said, “Mass. Eye and Ear,” Doug realized who the friend was.

S
HE WAS SOMEWHERE OTHER
than inside the elevator with him, and Doug realized that she was more anxious than he was. “You seem worried about something.”

She stopped nibbling her lips and switched to pulling invisible thimbles off her fingers. “Just hospitals,” she said. “Give me the creeps.” She watched the numbers blink. “My brother died in a hospital.”

“You had a brother?”

“He had a tumor in his bladder. It wrecked my parents.” She shook it off, turning to him for distraction. “You cut your hair.” She reached up and rubbed the stiff bristle over the nape of his neck. Her hand was gentle, cupping, cool. “What is it about a new haircut on a man?”

He thought that nothing had ever felt so good. “I might start purring here.”

The floor dinged and the doors opened, her hand falling away. Signs pointed them to a circular hospital wing where they followed the numbers to the correct room.

Doug said, “I’ll wait out here.”

“No,” she said, thinking he was jealous. “Meet him.”

She took his hand, and before he knew it she was leading him into the room.

The patient was propped up against an avalanche of pillows. He turned toward them, head and shoulders moving as one. Gauze and bandaging masked half his face, bulging thick over his right eye, but Doug saw enough to recognize the assistant branch manager of the Kenmore Square BayBanks, Davis Bearns.

Claire released Doug and crossed to Bearns, Doug remaining just a few steps inside the private room.

Bearns held out his johnny-bare arms and Claire bent into them, a gentle kiss against his unbandaged cheek. “Hey there,” said Bearns, his throat and lips doing most of the work, his fixed chin giving him a Harvard lockjaw. When she was slow to pull away, he said, “I’m getting some action here.”

Claire straightened and smiled, whisking away a tear. She looked back at Doug and made introductions, and Doug nodded, giving Bearns a flat wave and a
Hey
.

“Are you comfortable?” she asked. “I wish you had let me bring you something.”

“I just want to be done with it—this operation, this place.”

“You said they’re hopeful.”

“They better be. I am. If I recover fifty percent sight in this eye, it will be a roaring success. I just want to get on with it, get home, get back to work.”

“Really?” she said. “Back to work?”

“Anything, God, yes. Something to focus on instead of large-print crossword puzzles. But it won’t be for a while. They’ll have me on this dim-lightonly diet for a few weeks, at least.”

She nodded, tugging on a sheet wrinkle. “I’m having trouble at work.”

“Well, see, you have memories. The one inconvenience I was spared.” He turned his face farther toward her for inspection. “Which would you rather?”

She shook her head at his halfhearted joke, looking away. “Someday I’ll go through it all with you. I promise. But not now.”

“Of course not now. Tell me your plans for tonight. Vicarious living is all I have.”

Doug cut in, “I’m gonna step outside. Nice meeting you, good luck.”

“I won’t keep her long,” said Bearns. “But we will talk about you.”

“Fair enough,” said Doug, turning away, remembering Jem standing over bloody Bearns with the open jug of bleach.

B
EING AT THE CHART HOUSE
with Claire felt nice and clean and free of deception—until Doug remembered that, in fact, their entire relationship was founded on deception. But then the conversation would continue and he would again lose himself in the flickering candle of temporary innocence. What amazed him was his sincerity. Within the overarching lie—maybe because of it—he talked freely and was more honest and open with her than he had ever been with anyone else.

She ordered a single glass of white wine without comment. They worked out three Boston College football games they had separately attended. His steak arrived, her scallops. She talked about work at the bank and how unmotivated she was, killing two-hour lunches in her garden in the Fens and then suffering from pangs of guilt. “BayBanks does this community service thing, you know, masquerading as a small bank that cares? It’s mostly bullshit, but they do pay you a couple of hours each week to volunteer somewhere. I started a year ago, at the Charlestown Boys and Girls Club?”

“Sure, yeah.”

“Working with kids who were about the age my brother was. Whatever that means, right?” She smiled self-consciously, shrugged. “I just chaperone trips and stuff. They’re delinquents, but they’re good delinquents. Funny kids. Probably like you were, I’m guessing, right?”

“Nice that you do that.”

“Thing is, it’s supposed to be like three hours a week, and I’m spending more time there than I am at the bank.”

“They’re gonna catch up with you.”

She nodded. “Part of me hopes they do.”

The waiter wasn’t used to being paid in cash. Outside, they followed low, black iron chains slung post-to-post along the waterfront, the night surf knocking boats into docks, groaning the piers, slapping wood. Doug was hit up by a skinny extortionist hand-selling roses out of a mop bucket, and Claire stripped away the cellophane and tissue down to the dethorned stem, raising the petals to her nose, then slipping her hand around the crook of his elbow.

In Columbus Park, at a sprawling, vacant play structure, they crossed the soft wood chips to still rubber swings. She sat and twisted in circles, letting the chains twirl apart and then twisting them again. She stuck her legs straight out as she spun, flexing her smooth calves, and Doug imagined that every flight of stairs she had ever climbed was mere training for that moment in that light, in his eyes.

“Okay, getting dizzy,” she said, swiveling to a rest. Doug stood near her like a bodyguard, toeing at the tamped-down mulch. She looked out at the airport, the planes coming in. “Weird, isn’t it? Here we are, two people, enjoying the night—and then Davis, sitting alone in a hospital room, waiting.”

Doug watched her eyes. Something was happening in them. “He got a tough break.”

She tracked a seagull flying over the docks. “One little thing—that’s all it takes. You turn the wrong corner one morning and suddenly—you’re Davis, you’re on the outside of life, looking in.”

“Some terrible luck.”

“No,” she said, looking down now. “It’s worse than that.” Her arms were inside the swing chains, worrying the stem of the rose in her lap. “It’s actually my fault.”

Doug followed this through. “How is it your fault?”

“I was the one who set off the alarm at the robbery. Not him. They beat up the wrong person.” She sighed to forestall tears. “And I watched them do it. I could have spared him, I could have told them it was me. But I just stood there and let it happen. I took the easy way out, because that’s what I always do.”

“But come on. You were scared.”

“He’s marked for life now, and he did nothing wrong—nothing to deserve it.
I
did this to him.”

“Look,” said Doug, dropping into the swing next to her. “You gotta find a way to stop thinking about this. Is it the FBI? They still coming around?”

“The agent, he assumed that it was Davis who hit the alarm. And of course I let him. Admitting otherwise wouldn’t have been the easy way out.” She looked up into the sky over the water. “Why am I this way? You wouldn’t have lied.”

“Me?” said Doug, going for it. “I wouldn’t have told them anything.”

“What do you mean? Anything like what?”

“Nothing beyond the basics.”

She turned, confused. “Because you think the agent suspects me?”

“This is one of the differences between growing up in Canton and Charlestown, I think. People who don’t deal with cops that much, such as yourself, you probably tend to believe all that stuff about the Search for the Truth. Forgetting that cops, FBI, anybody with a badge who has a lot of power—they’re just people like anyone else. They have lives, they have jobs to protect. And how they do that is by clearing arrests. Getting results. Which also means, if they can’t catch the one who did it, sometimes they’ll settle for the one who fits. And that person is usually the one who talked the most.”

She stared. “You’re serious.”

“How often do you hear about convictions overturned, confessions coerced? We learn early where I’m from, don’t talk to the cops. Or if you do, get a lawyer present.”

“You’re saying I should hire a lawyer?”

“No, too late. Don’t do it now. You lawyer up now, you better believe they’re going to start taking an interest in your story, a very close interest.”

She nodded, assailed by his logic.

“You did your civic duty,” Doug told her. “And that’s great. You don’t know anything, right?” He pressed her. “Right?”

“No, I don’t.”

Doug nodded, relieved, easing off. “So leave it at that. Personally? It seems to me like you’re hanging on to this robbery too tight. I think you know this. It’s bad, what happened to your friend. And bad, sure, what happened to you.”

She was eager to cut him off. “I know, it doesn’t seem… a robbery, okay. Masked men, guns, the van. Other people have been through so much worse—I
know
this. But it’s like I’m stuck. I thought I was going to be murdered, I was going to die on the floor of the bank… and my life seemed wasted.” She winced, frustrated that this sounded like whining. “If only I could get that morning back. Or like Davis, have it wiped away forever.”

“Here’s the thing,” said Doug. He had put this pain into her face, maybe he could take it away again. “I’m outta my league here, I know. But I can tell you this. For a long time in my life, I was The Kid Whose Mother Left Him. That’s all I was, the sum total of my existence. And it led me into a world of trouble. Right now, I think you’re The Girl Who Got Robbed.”

She stared, listening hard.

“Now,” he went on, “I happen to like The Girl Who Got Robbed. I don’t mind her at all, she looks pretty good to me. But I think she’s not all that thrilled with herself.”

“You’re right,” she said, thinking, nodding. “You’re really right.”

“You can get past this.”

“I have to. I know.” She sat up, squaring her shoulders, a harbor breeze lifting her honey-colored hair with its fingers. “I’m sorry for getting into this with you, bringing you down. I’m going to cheer up now, I promise. Grow up too. Count to three.”

“One, two, three.”

“Ta-da.” She smiled. “Happy face.”

They sat there in swaying silence, drifting away from and back toward each other.

“You know what you are, Doug?” she said. “I just figured it out. You’re decent.”

“Oh.” Doug gripped the swing chains. “Christ, no.”

“You are, and more than that—a lot of people who are decent, they were
raised
to be decent, you know? Like me—good parenting, good manners, blah, blah, blah—which is all fine and good until a little pressure comes into your life, and then you crumble like stale bread. But you—you’ve made mistakes, you’ve said as much. You’re not a saint or anything, but you know how to be good. Your decency is earned, not learned.”

Doug said, “I don’t know how well you know me,” but she mistook his discomfort for modesty.

“Can you tell I’ve been thinking about you?” she said.

“Oh yeah?”

She swayed a little more, bumping her seat gently against his, eyes bright, grateful, and deep. “Yeah.”

T
HE CHARGES CRACKED LIKE
a volley of gunshots from the head of the cliff, wind whisking away the smoke tails, sheets of rock dropping like a hand had opened up and let them go, sliding off the stratified face into rubble and dust.

Doug and Jem squinted at the rip and crumble, feeling the earth shudder in complaint, watching the gray dust arise. They stood near the silver-sided break wagon and the hard hats lining up for Winstons and coffees, Doug wearing a loose, long-sleeved shirt reading
Mike’s Roast Beef,
Jem a white sweatshirt bearing a peeling green shamrock under the arched word
T O W N I E S.
The hood was snug over Jem’s head and ears, emphasizing his small skull. Both carried their old yellow helmets under their arms, like blue-collar jet pilots.