Mystic River

Dave's voice fell through the water and drummed into Jimmy's skull: "I live in you now, Jimmy. You can't shut me off."

Yes, Dave, I can.

And Jimmy turned the shower off and stepped out of the tub. He dried off and sucked the soft steam up his nostrils. If anything, it left him feeling even more clearheaded. He wiped steam off the small window in the corner and looked down into the alley that ran behind his house. The day was so clear and bright that even the alley looked clean. Christ, what a beautiful day. What a perfect Sunday. What a perfect day for a parade. He would take his daughters and his wife down to the street and they would hold hands and watch the marchers and the bands and the floats and politicians stream by in the bright sunlight. And they'd eat hot dogs and cotton candy and he'd buy the girls Buckingham Pride flags and T-shirts. And a healing process would begin amid the cymbals and drumbeats and horns and cheers. It would take hold of them, he was sure, as they stood on the sidewalk and celebrated the founding of their neighborhood. And when Katie's death pressed in on them again during the evening hours, and their bodies sagged a bit with the weight of her, they would at least have the afternoon's entertainment to balance their grief a little bit. It would be the start of healing. They would all realize that, at least for a few hours this afternoon, they'd known pleasure, if not joy.

He left the window and splashed warm water on his face, then covered his cheeks and throat with shaving cream, and it occurred to him as he began to shave that he was evil. No big thing, really, no earth-shattering clang of bells erupting in his heart. Just that? an occurrence, a momentary realization that fell like gently grasping fingers through his chest.

So I am then.

He looked in the mirror and felt very little of anything at all. He loved his daughters and he loved his wife. And they loved him. He found certainty in them, complete certainty. Few men? few people? had that.

He'd killed a man for a crime the man had probably not committed. If that weren't bad enough, he felt very little regret. And in the long-ago, he'd killed another man. And he'd weighted both bodies down so that they'd descended to the depths of the Mystic. And he'd genuinely liked both men? Ray a bit more than Dave, but he'd liked them both. Still, he'd killed them. On principle. Stood on a stone ledge above the river and watched Ray's face turn white and sagging as it sank beneath the waterline, eyes open and lifeless. And in all these years, he hadn't felt much guilt over that, although he'd told himself he did. But what he called guilt was actually a fear of bad karma, of what he'd done being done to him or someone he loved. And Katie's death, he supposed, may have been the fulfillment of that bad karma. The ultimate fulfillment if you really looked at it? Ray coming back through his wife's womb and killing Katie for no good reason except karma.

And Dave? They'd wrapped the chain through the holes in the cinder block, tied it tight around his body, and locked the two ends together. And then they'd struggled to lift his body the nine inches it needed to clear the boat, and they'd tossed him over, Jimmy having a distinct image of the child Dave, not the adult, sinking to the river floor. Who knew exactly where he'd landed? But he was down there, at the bottom of the Mystic, looking up. Stay there, Dave. Stay there.

The truth was, Jimmy had never felt much guilt for anything he'd done. Sure, he'd arranged with a buddy in New York to have the Harrises sent five hundred a month over the last thirteen years, but that wasn't guilt so much as good business sense? as long as they thought Just Ray was alive, they'd never send anyone looking for him. In fact, now that Ray's son was in jail, fuck it, he could stop sending the money. Use it for something good.

The neighborhood, he decided. He'd use it to protect his neighborhood. And looking in the mirror, he decided that that's exactly what it was: his. From now on, he owned it. He'd been living a lie for thirteen years, pretending to think like a straight citizen, when all around him he saw the waste of blown opportunities. They were going to build a stadium down here? Fine. Let's talk about the workers we represent. No? Oh, okay. Better keep a close eye on your machinery, boys. Hate to have a fire on something like this.

He'd have to sit down with Val and Kevin and discuss their future. This town was waiting to be opened up. And Bobby O'Donnell? His future, Jimmy decided, wasn't looking all that bright if he planned on sticking around East Bucky.

He finished shaving, looked one more time at his reflection. He was evil? So be it. He could live with it because he had love in his heart and he had certainty. As trade-offs went, it wasn't half bad.

He got dressed. He walked through the kitchen feeling like the man he'd been pretending to be all these years had just gone down the drain in the bathroom. He could hear his daughters shrieking and laughing, probably getting licked to death by Val's cat, and he thought, Man, that's a beautiful sound.

* * *

OUT ON THE STREET, Sean and Lauren found a space in front of Nate & Nancy's coffee shop. Nora slept in her carriage and they placed it in the shade under the awning. They leaned against the wall and ate their ice cream cones and Sean looked at his wife and wondered if they'd make it, or if the yearlong rift had done too much damage, squandered their love and all the good years they'd had in their marriage before the mess of the final two. Lauren took his hand, though, squeezed it, and he looked down at his daughter and thought she did look a little bit like something to be adored, a small goddess, perhaps, filling him up.

Through the parade streaming in front of them Sean could see Jimmy and Annabeth Marcus, their two pretty girls sitting atop the shoulders of Val and Kevin Savage, the girls waving at every float and open convertible that passed by.

Two hundred and sixteen years ago, Sean knew, they'd built the first prison in the region along the banks of the channel that ultimately bore its name. The first settlers in Buckingham had been the jailers and their families and the wives and children of the men housed in the prison. It had never been an easy truce. When the prisoners were released, they were often too tired or too old to move very far, and Buckingham soon became known as a dumping ground for the dregs. Saloons sprouted up along this avenue and its dirt streets, and the jailers took to the hills, literally, building their homes up in the Point so they could once again look down on the people they'd corralled. The 1800s brought a cattle boom, the stockyards springing up where the expressway was now, a freight track running along the edges of Sydney Street and unloading the steers for the long walk up to the center of what was now the parade route. And generations of prisoners and slaughterhouse hands and their offspring pushed the Flats all the way down to the freight tracks. The prison closed in the wake of some forgotten re-form movement, and the cattle boom ended, and the saloons kept sprouting. The Irish immigrant wave followed the Italian wave in twice the numbers, and the el tracks were built, and they streamed into the city for jobs, but always back here when the day closed. You came back here because you'd built this village, you knew its dangers and its pleasures, and most important, nothing that happened here surprised you. There was a logic to the corruption and the bloodbaths and the bar fights and the stickball games and the Saturday-morning lovemaking. No one else saw the logic, and that was the point. No one else was welcome here.