Mystic River / Таинственная река
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Dave found that even the few classmates who'd been his friends after he'd first returned to school started to ignore him. If they ran into each other[15] as they left their houses, Jimmy Marcus would sometimes walk silently together with him to school because it would have been strange not to, and he'd say, “Hey,” when he passed him in the hall on the way to class. Dave could see some mix of pity and embarrassment in Jimmy's face, as if Jimmy wanted to say something but couldn't put it into words. But it felt to Dave as if their friendship had died when Dave got in that car and Jimmy had stayed on the street.
Jimmy, as it happened, wouldn't be in school with Dave much longer, so even those walks together soon ended. At school, Jimmy had always hung out with Val Savage, a small, psycho boy. They finally stole a car – almost a year after their fight on Sean's street – and it got Jimmy and Val expelled from the school. They were allowed to finish sixth grade, since there were only a few days left in the year, and then their families were told they had to look elsewhere for the boys' schooling. They found a place for them in a mostly black school where the two of them, Dave heard, soon became the local terror – two white kids so crazy they didn't know how to be scared.
Dave hardly saw Jimmy after that, maybe once or twice a year. Dave's mother didn't let him leave the house anymore, except to go to school. She was sure those men were still out there, waiting, driving that car that smelled of apples, looking for Dave.
Dave knew they weren't. They were just wolves. But they visited his mind more often now – the Big Wolf and the Greasy Wolf, and what they'd done to him. They came, and Dave closed his eyes, trying not to remember that Big Wolf's name had been Henry and Greasy Wolf's name had been George.
And Dave would tell himself that he was the Boy Who'd Escaped from the Wolves. And sometimes he replayed his escape in his head: the crack by the hinge he'd noticed in the door, the sound of their car driving away, the screw he'd used to open the crack wider and wider until the old hinge fell off. He'd come out of the cellar, this Boy Who Was Smart, and he'd run straight into the woods and followed the late afternoon sun to the gas station a mile away. It was a shock to see it – that neon sign already lit for the night. It made Dave drop to his knees at the edge of the woods. That's how the owner of the station found him: on his knees and staring up at the sign.
* * *In Sean's dream, he looked into the open door of the car that smelled like apples, and the street held his feet. Dave was already inside the car. All Sean could see in the dream was that open door and the backseat. He couldn't see the guy who'd looked like a cop. He couldn't see his partner who'd sat in the front passenger seat. He couldn't see Jimmy, though Jimmy had been right beside him the whole time. He could just see that seat and Dave and the door and the trash on the floor. That, he realized, had been the alarm – there had been trash on the floor. He hadn't remembered the trash until now. Even when the cops had been in his house and asked him to think – really think – about any detail he might have forgotten to tell them, it hadn't occurred to him that the back of the car had been dirty, because he hadn't remembered it. But in his dream, it had come back to him, and he'd realized, without realizing it, somehow, that something was wrong about the “cop,” his “partner,” and their car. Sean had never seen a cop car in real life, but a part of him knew that it wouldn't be filled with trash. Maybe under all that trash had lain half-eaten apples, and that's why the car smelled as it had.
A year after Dave's abduction Sean's father came into his bedroom to tell him two things. The first was that Sean had been accepted to Latin School, and would begin seventh grade there in September. His father said he and Sean's mother were really proud. Latin was where you went if you wanted to make something out of yourself.
The second thing he said to Sean was: “They caught one of them. One of the guys who took Dave. They caught him. He's dead. Suicide in his cell.”
“Yeah?”
His father looked at him. “Yeah. You can stop having nightmares now.”
But Sean said, “What about the other one?”
“The guy who got caught,” his father said, “told the police the other one was dead, too. Died in a car accident last year.”
Sean hoped he'd been driving the car that had smelled of apples, and that he'd driven it off a cliff, and took that car straight to hell with him.
Part II
3
Brendan Harris loved Katie Marcus like crazy. He loved her waking up, going to bed, loved her all day and every second in between. Brendan Harris would love Katie Marcus fat and ugly. He'd love her toothless. He'd love her bald.
Katie. Brendan Harris loved everyone now because he loved Katie and Katie loved him. Brendan loved traffic and smog. He loved his old man who hadn't sent him a birthday or Christmas card since he'd left Brendan and his mother when Brendan was six. He loved Monday mornings and standing in line. He even loved his job, though he wouldn't be going back ever again.
Brendan was leaving this house tomorrow morning, leaving his mother, walking out that door and down those steps, and into the heart of Buckingham to take his Katie's hand, and then they were leaving it all behind for good[16], hopping on that plane and going to Vegas and getting married – and then, forget about it all, they were married and they were gone and they were never coming back, no way, just him and Katie, and the rest of their lives.
He looked around his bedroom. Clothes packed, toiletries packed. Pictures of him and Katie packed. He looked at what he was leaving behind. Posters on the walls. His CDs. A pair of speakers he bought last summer, working for Bobby O'Donnell, when he'd first come close enough to Katie to start a conversation. Jesus. Just a year ago. Sometimes it felt like a decade, in a good way, and other times it felt like a minute. Katie Marcus. He'd known of her, of course; everyone in the neighborhood knew of Katie. She was so beautiful, but few people really knew her.
But Katie, from that very first day, she was so basic, so normal. She knew his name, and she said, “How come a guy as nice as you, Brendan, is working for Bobby O'Donnell?”
And tomorrow, as soon as she called, they would be gone. Gone together. Gone forever. Brendan lay back on his bed and pictured her face. He knew he'd never sleep.
* * *After work that night Jimmy Marcus had a beer with his brother-in-law, Kevin Savage, at the pub, the two of them sitting at the window and watching some kids playing outside. Kevin was good company because he didn't talk much and neither did Jimmy.
At thirty-six, Jimmy Marcus had come to love[17] the quiet of his Saturday nights. He had no use for loud, crowded bars and drunken conversations. Thirteen years since he'd walked out of prison, and he owned a corner store, had a wife and three daughters at home. He was a changed man now, a man who enjoyed his life – a Saturday beer, a morning stroll, a baseball game on the radio.
He looked out onto the street at the playing kids. He could feel their youthful energy. When Jimmy was a kid that energy had ruled over him. And then… then you just learned how to keep it someplace. You hid it away.
His eldest daughter, Katie, was nineteen years old and so, so beautiful. At the store this afternoon, as she was leaving, she'd kissed Jimmy's cheek and said, “Later, Daddy,” and five minutes afterward Jimmy realized he could still feel her voice in his chest. It was her mother's voice, he realized. Her mother, almost fourteen years dead now, and coming back to Jimmy through their daughter. Saying: She's a woman now, Jim. She's all grown up.
A woman. Wow. How did that happen?
* * *Dave Boyle hadn't even planned on going out that night.
It was a Saturday night, after a long week of work, but he'd reached an age where Saturday didn't feel much different than Tuesday, and drinking at a bar didn't seem much more enjoyable than drinking at home.
So he'd tell himself later, after it was all over and done, that Fate had played with him. Fate had played with Dave Boyle's life before.
So Dave knew Fate when he saw it. Because it hadn't been planned. It hadn't. Dave, alone late at night in the days afterward, would say softly to the empty kitchen: You have to understand. It wasn't planned.
That night, he'd just come down the stairs after kissing his son, Michael, good night and was opening the fridge for a beer when his wife, Celeste, reminded him that it was Girls' Night.
“Again?” Dave said.
“It's been four weeks,” Celeste said.
Once a month, Celeste and three of her coworkers got together at Dave and Celeste Boyle's apartment to watch a movie, play cards, drink a lot of wine, and cook something they'd never tried before. Dave had three options on Girls' Night: he could sit in Michael's room and watch his son sleep, hide in the back bedroom and watch TV, or go out and find someplace where he wouldn't have to listen to four women chatting. Dave usually chose number 3.
And tonight was no different. He finished his beer, kissed Celeste, and then he walked out the door and down the stairs past Mr. McAllister's apartment and out through the front door into Saturday night in the Flats. He thought about walking down to a bar, but then decided to drive instead. Maybe go to the Point, take a look at the college girls.
As Dave's car drove into the Point, he tried to remember if he knew anyone his age or younger who lived there anymore.
He stopped at a red light. Ever since a man had tried to jack his car while he was in it with Michael, Dave kept a.221 under the seat. He'd never fired it, but he held it a lot.
Just last week, Mr. McAllister, Dave's landlord, had told Dave that housing values[18][19] were going up. “Where would I go?” Dave was thinking. He wondered where the hell they were going to live. On what he and Celeste made together, they'd be lucky to get a two-bedroom in a place where stairs smelled like piss, rats ran behind the walls, and junkies walked through the halls, waiting for you to fall asleep.
The light had turned green, and Dave went through the intersection.
* * *That night Katie Marcus went out with her two best friends, Diane Cestra and Eve Pigeon, to celebrate Katie's last night in the Flats, last night, probably, in Buckingham.
They sat down at a table in the back of Spires Pub, and drank shots, and shrieked every time a good-looking guy gave one of them a look. They'd eaten a big meal at the East Coast Grill an hour before, then drove back into Buckingham and smoked a joint in the parking lot before walking into the bar. Everything was hilarious now.
Once the place got crowded, they moved to Curley's Folly in the Point, smoking another joint in the car.
“That car's following us,” Katie said. “It's been behind us since we left the bar.”
Eve looked at the lights in the rearview mirror. “Oh, come on, Katie, that was, like, thirty seconds ago!”
“Hello? It's your paranoia again,” Diane said and started laughing.
“Bitches,” Katie said, annoyed. She fell onto the backseat, feeling all dreamy, thinking this was it, this was what you lived for, to giggle like a fool with your giggling-fool best friends on the night before you'd marry the man you loved.
* * *Four bars, three shots, and a couple of phone numbers on napkins later, Katie and Diane were so drunk they got up on the bar at McGills and danced even though the jukebox was silent. Eve sang, and Katie and Diane were dancing and shaking their hair until it covered their faces.
Which is where they were when Roman Fallow showed up with his latest girlfriend. Bad news for Katie, because Roman was friends with Bobby O'Donnell.
Roman said, “You're a bit drunk there, Katie?”
Katie smiled because Roman scared her. Roman scared almost everyone. A good-looking guy, and smart, he could be funny as hell when he felt like it, but there was a strange hole, an emptiness in Roman.
“Yeah, I'm a bit,” she said.
That amused Roman. “A bit, huh? Yeah, okay, Katie. Let me ask you something,” he said gently. “You think Bobby would like hearing you were drunk at McGills tonight? You think he'd like hearing that?”
“No.”
“I don't like it either, Katie. You see what I'm saying?”
“Right. I'll go home right now,” Katie said. “I've had enough.”
Roman smiled and put his arm around his girlfriend. “Shall I call you a cab?”
“No, no. We'll get one, no problem.”
“All right then, Katie, we'll be seeing you.”
Eve and Diane were already at the door. Outside, Diane said, “Jesus. You think he'll call Bobby?”
Katie shook her head, though she wasn't sure.
In the parking lot, Eve threw up[20]. When she was finished, she asked Katie, “You going to be okay to drive?”
Katie nodded. “I'll be fine.”
As they drove out of the parking lot, Katie said, “Just one more reason to leave. One more reason to get the hell out of this town.”
They drove carefully through the Flats, heading for Eve's house, Katie staying in the right lane, concentrating. Suddenly, Diane had decided to stay at Eve's place instead of going to her boyfriend's house, so she and Eve got out together. It had begun to rain, but Diane and Eve didn't seem to notice.
They both turned and looked back through the open passenger window at Katie.
“You going to be okay?” Diane asked.
Katie smiled, “Yeah. Of course. I'll call you from Vegas. You'll come visit.”
“Flights are cheap,” Eve said. She and Diane put their hands in through the window and Katie shook each of them, and then they stepped back from the car.
“Okay,” Katie said, finally. “I'm going to go before someone cries.”
They waved. Katie waved back and drove off.
They stayed on the pavement, watching, long after Katie's car had disappeared in the distance. They could smell the rain and the Penitentiary Channel on the other side of the park. They felt there were other things still left to say.
For the rest of her life, Diane would wish she'd stayed in that car. She would give birth to a son in less than a year and she'd tell him when he was young that she believed she had to stay in that car, and that by getting suddenly out, she'd changed something.
Eve would marry an electrician and move to a ranch house. Sometimes, late at night, she'd tell him about Katie, about that night, and he'd listen, but he wouldn't say much because he knew there was nothing to say. Sometimes Eve just needed to say her friend's name, to hear it, to feel it on her tongue.
But that night they were just two drunken girls, and Katie watched them disappear in her rearview mirror as she turned the corner and drove home.
It was dead[21] there at night, most of the homes opposite the Pen Channel Park had burned down in a fire four years before and stood empty. Katie just wanted to get home, get into bed, get up in the morning, and be long gone before Bobby or her father ever thought to look for her. She wanted to leave this place, never look back at it.
And she remembered something she hadn't thought about in years. She remembered walking to the zoo with her mother when she was five years old. Her mother had held her hand. She looked up at her mother's thin face and big eyes. And Katie, five and curious and sad, said, “How come you're tired all the time?” Her mother put both palms on her cheeks and stared at her with red eyes. Katie thought she was mad, but then her mother smiled and said, “Oh, baby,” and pulled Katie closer to her, and then Katie felt her tears in her hair.
She was trying to remember the color of her mother's eyes when she saw the body lying in the middle of the street. It lay like a sack just in front of her tires and she swerved to the right, feeling something bump under her left tire, thinking, Oh Jesus, oh God, no, tell me I didn't hit it, please, Jesus God no.
She stopped on the right side of the street, and someone called to her. “Hey, you okay?”
Katie saw him coming toward her, and she started to relax because he looked familiar and harmless until she noticed the gun in his hand.
* * *At three in the morning, Brendan Harris finally fell asleep. He did so smiling, Katie on his mind, telling him she loved him, whispering his name, her soft breath like a kiss in his ear.
4
Dave Boyle had ended up in McGills that night, sitting with Stanley the Giant at the corner of the bar, watching a baseball game.
Dave Boyle, former star for the baseball teams of '78 to '82, was watching it, thinking: Win for me. Win for my kids. Win for my marriage so I can carry your winning back to the car with me and sit in the glow of it with my family as we drive back toward our otherwise winless lives. Win for me. Win. Win. Win.
But when the team lost, when your team had failed you, it was only to remind you that usually when you tried, you lost. When you hoped, hope died. All you could do was to get in your car and drive back to your home.
“You see these chicks?” Stanley the Giant said, and Dave looked up and saw two girls standing on the bar, dancing, as a third friend sang. The one on the right… Dave had known her since she was a little girl – Katie Marcus, Jimmy and poor dead Marita's daughter, now the stepdaughter of his wife's cousin Annabeth, but looking all grown up. Watching her dance and laugh, her blond hair over her face, Dave felt a black hope, and it didn't come from nowhere. It came from her. It was radiated from her body to his, from the sudden recognition when her eyes met his and she smiled and gave him a little wave that brushed against his heart.
Dave watched Katie, remembering his glory days. Dave Boyle. Baseball star. Pride of the Flats for three short years. No one thinking of him as that kid who'd been abducted when he was ten anymore. No, he was a local hero. Pretty girls in his bed. Fate on his side.
Dave Boyle. Not knowing then how short futures could be. How quickly they could disappear, leaving you with nothing, with no surprises, with no reason for hope, nothing but dull days.
I will not dream anymore, you said. No more pain. But then you saw a dancing girl who looked like a woman you'd dated in high school – a woman you'd loved and lost – and you said. To hell with it, let's dream just one more time.
* * *When Celeste Boyle had been a teenager, she'd been sure someone would come and take her away from the problems they had in her family. She wasn't bad-looking. She had a good personality, knew how to laugh. She thought it should happen. Problem was, even though she met a few men, they weren't good enough for her. Mostly they were from Buckingham, Point or Flat punks, and one guy from uptown. Her ill mother's health insurance was out, and quite soon Celeste started working simply to try and pay the monstrous medical bills for her mother's monstrous diseases.
It had been Dave who Celeste had chosen. He was goodlooking and funny and calm. When they'd married, he'd had a good job, running the mail room, and later he got another on the loading docks of a downtown hotel and never complained about it. Dave, in fact, never complained about anything and almost never talked about his childhood before high school, which had only begun to seem strange to her in the year since her mother had died. It had been a stroke that had finally done the job, Celeste coming home from the supermarket to find her mother dead.
In the months after the funeral, Celeste comforted herself with the thoughts that at least things would be easier now. But it hadn't worked out that way. Dave's job paid about the same as Celeste's and she would look sadly at the financial crisis in their lives – the bills they'd be paying off for years, the lack of money coming in, the new mountain of bills for schooling Michael, and the destroyed credit.
Sometimes, Celeste found herself sitting on the toilet, trying not to cry and wondering how her life had gotten here. That's what she was doing at three in the morning, early Sunday, when Dave came in with blood all over him.
He seemed shocked to find her there. He jumped back when she stood up.
She gasped, “Honey, what happened?”
“I got cut.”
“Dave, Jesus Christ. What happened?”
He lifted the shirt and Celeste stared at a long cut along his ribs that was bloody red.
“Jesus, you have to go to the hospital.”
“No, no,” he said. “Look, it's not that deep. It's just bleeding like hell.”
He was right. On a second look, she noticed it wasn't that bad. But it was long. And it was bloody. Though not enough to explain all the blood on his shirt and neck.
“Who did this?”
“Some junkie psycho,” he said, and took off the shirt. “The guy tried to mug me. That's when he cut me, and then…” He paused to drink some tap water. “I freaked.[22] I mean, I freaked seriously, babe. I think I might've killed this guy.”
“You what…?”
“I just went crazy when I felt the knife in my side. You know? I knocked him down, got on top of him, and, baby, I exploded.”
“So it was self-defense?”
“I don't think the court would see it that way, tell you the truth.”
“I can't believe this. Honey, tell me exactly what happened.”
“I'm walking to my car,” he said, and Celeste sat back on the closed toilet as he knelt in front of her, “and this guy comes up to me, asks me for a light. I say I don't smoke.”
Celeste nodded.
“So, my heart starts beating fast right then. Because there's no one around but me and him. And that's when I see the knife and he says, 'Your wallet or your life. I'm leaving with one of them.'”
“That's what he said?”
Dave leaned back. “Yeah. Why?”
“Nothing.” Celeste was thinking it just sounded funny for some reason, too clever maybe, like in the movies.
“So… so then,” Dave said, “I'm like, 'Come on, man. Just let me get in my car and go home,' which was dumb because now he wants my car keys, too. And I just, I don't know, honey, I get mad instead of scared. And I try to get past him and that's when he pushes and cuts me.” He kissed her hand. “So, uh, he pushes me against the car and cuts me, and I feel the knife going through my skin and I, I just go crazy. I hit him in the side of the head with my fist, and I hit again, like the side of his neck. And he falls. And I jump on him, and, and, and…”
Dave stared into space, his mouth still open.
“What?” Celeste asked, still trying to see the whole picture. “What did you do?”
Dave looked at her knees. “I went nuts on him, babe. I might've killed him for all I know. I was so mad and so scared and all I could think about was you and Michael and how I might not have come home alive, like I could've died in some parking lot.” He looked in her eyes and said it again: “I might've killed him, honey.”
Dave needs me now, Celeste thought. And at that moment she realized why she was bothered: he never complained. When you complained to someone, you were, in a way, asking for help, asking for that person to fix what troubled you. But Dave had never needed her before, so he'd never complained, not after lost jobs. But now, kneeling before her, saying that he may have killed a man, he was asking her to tell him it was all right. And it was. Wasn't it? You tried to mug an honest man, and if it didn't go the way you planned, then too bad you might have died.
She kissed her husband's forehead. “Baby,” she whispered, “you take a shower. I'll take care of your clothes.” “What are you going to do with them?”
She had no idea. Burn them? Sure, but where? Not in the apartment. So maybe in the backyard. But someone would notice her burning clothes in the backyard at 3 A.M. Or at any time, really.
“I'll wash them.” She said it as the idea came to her. “I'll wash them well and then I'll put them in a trash bag and we'll bury it.”
“Bury it?”
“Take it to the dump, then. Or we'll hide the bag till Tuesday morning. Trash day, right?”
“Right.”
“I know when they come. Seven-fifteen, every week…”
“Okay. Look. I might have killed someone, honey. Jesus.
You all right with this?”
She wanted to touch him. She wanted to get out of the room. She wanted to tell him it would be okay. She wanted to run away.