All Our Yesterdays (24 page)

G
race sat across from Chris at a corner table in the bar at the Casablanca. It was an airy room for a barroom, with bright murals of scenes from the movie, and a long half-circular bar along one side of the room. They hunched forward a little as they talked to each other.

“It seems like a good idea to meet like this once a week, and talk,” Grace said. “I think it’s important to keep talking.”

“Yeah.”

“Sometimes I’m so worried about you, I can’t breathe,” Grace said.

“But not quite worried enough about me to come back,” Chris said.

She shook her head.

“No. That’s not a reason to be together.”

Chris nodded.

“Yeah,” he said.

With both hands, Grace turned her wineglass slowly in front of her.

“I think you need other relationships,” Grace said.

“You mean dating?”

“I mean open your life up. New friends, new relationships, men or women.”

“You think I should start dating men?”

Grace smiled.

“No, I don’t think that’s your style,” she said. “But you need to see other people.”

The Casablanca served Yuengling on draft and Chris was drinking it. His glass was empty and he looked for a waiter, found one, and gestured for a refill.

“How about you?” Chris said carefully. “You seeing other people?”

Grace smiled brightly and nodded. The waiter brought a new glass of beer and took away the empty.

“I went to New York last weekend with a friend…. A guy friend.”

Chris could feel himself start to sag. The weight of it settled at the top of his stomach like a stone. It was hard to swallow and he felt as if the air was too thin. Carefully he picked up the glass and carefully sipped some beer, and carefully put the glass down, fitting it exactly back into its ring of moisture on the napkin.

“Must be a fine man if you’re with him,” he said. “Anyone I know?”

Grace shook her head.

“Where’d you stay?”

“The Pierre.”

“Nice,” Chris said.

“You all right?” Grace said.

“Sure,” Chris said. “You want to go to New York and fuck somebody, your business. We’re separated. I don’t own you.”

“You ought to open out your life, Chris.”

“How was it with the guy? Better than what you’re used to?”

“Both of us were quite scared. He’s married.”

“Swell,” Chris said. “You can fuck up another relationship too. Way to go, Gracie.”

“We can’t talk like this, Chris. It doesn’t do anyone any good.”

“How am I supposed to talk? My girlfriend leaves me and goes to New York and balls some guy friend. I’m supposed to say
bon appétit
? You love this guy?”

“No. Mostly, I’m trying to find out if I love you.”

“Jesus,” Chris said. “You mean you don’t know?”

“Nor if you love me.”

“You don’t know that?”

“No. I need to find out. You do too.”

“By fucking some guy in the Big Apple?”

Grace stood.

“I need to go,” she said. “I can’t let you beat up on me for too long.”

“Maybe we should just say so long and let me get on with my life,” Chris said.

“I’d like to keep talking, Chris.”

Chris stared down at his beer.

Grace turned to go.

“Next Wednesday,” Chris said.

“Yes.”

Chris looked up from his beer and stared after her as she walked out of the bar.

H
arvard Stadium was empty and dead silent in the late afternoon. Gus sat with Chris in the first row above the field, with the thin April sun on his face. Beyond the open end of the stadium the Harvard athletic complex sprawled along Soldiers Field Road. And across the river, the new red brick of the Kennedy School was bright through the still leafless trees.

It was one of the ways they kept contact. Gus would come over once a week and work out with his son in the Harvard Gym. Chris did mostly light repetitions on the Nautilus machines, keeping his form. Gus lifted heavy. Usually they had little to say to each other, and the exercise made not talking easier.

“I needed to discuss something,” Chris said.

He sprawled beside his father in chinos and Top-Siders and a pale beige cashmere sweater—no shirt. The sleeves were pushed up on his forearms. His dark brown Harris tweed jacket was folded beside him on the stadium seat. Chris was taller than his father, as tall as Conn had been. His dark hair was longish and carefully cut. He was clean shaven, with the shadow of a heavy beard. If he were going out for an evening he shaved a second time. Gus’s beard, were he to let it grow, would be reddish, flecked with gray.

He looks like my father
, Gus thought.

Chris’s eyes ranged over the empty stadium. Gus waited.

“Parnell Flaherty wants me to be a special prosecutor on these gang murders,” Chris said.

Gus was quiet. He sat with his forearms resting on his thighs, his hands clasped loosely.

“I know it’s a way to pull Cabot’s fangs on the crime issue,” Chris said. “But it would be a hell of a break for me.”

“Sure would,” Gus said. He looked carefully at his hands.

“National coverage, a chance to deal with some actual crime, you know, instead of writing another flicking paper for
JSPC
.”

“Theory and practice are different,” Gus said. “Doesn’t mean one’s more important.”

“Yeah, I know. But being an academic criminologist is like being a literary critic. You know all about it but you can’t do it. I want to do it.”

“Here’s your chance,” Gus said.

“I know.”

“So do it.”

“I don’t know, I mean I’ll be sort of undercutting Grace’s family. Her brother wants to be senator, and the old man wants it more than he does.”

“Tommy won’t object,” Gus said.

Chris looked at his father for a moment as if he were going to ask something. Then he let it go.

“I haven’t talked with Grace about it yet.”

Christ, he’s talking to me first
.

“But she and her brother aren’t close. She thinks he’s ‘a dumb prig.’”

Gus grinned.

“You’re right,” he said. “They’re not close.”

“So I think I’m okay there.”

“Even if you aren’t,” Gus said, “you can’t decide
based on what she wants. First you decide what you want to do, then you ask her how she feels about it and then …” Gus shrugged and turned his palms up.

“Grace is hard to ignore,” Chris said. He looked at Gus. “What about you?”

“Am I hard to ignore?”

“Isn’t it sort of undercutting the homicide commander if the mayor appoints a special prosecutor to look into some murders?”

Gus shook his head.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’m five years from my pension. I’ll retire as a captain. There’s nothing to undercut.”

“Part of the job is to see if the police are doing their job right. That means you.”

Gus shrugged.

“I thought you and Flaherty were pals,” Chris said. “Why would he put your own son in over you?”

“I know Parnell a long time. Doesn’t mean we’re pals.”

“But your own kid?”

“Maybe Parnell’s doing me a favor,” Gus said.

“It could be shrewd, I suppose,” Chris said.

Gus was looking out the open end of the stadium now, squinting. In the openings among the buildings, across the road, he could see little splashes of the dark river. Chris was thinking out loud.

“He gets me to defuse Cabot and at the same time avoids making you mad because it’s a good chance for your son.”

“Un-huh. He also thinks he’s getting a Harvard Goo Goo that he can lead around by the nose.”

“You think he’s right?”

“No.”

“Hope not.”

“Remember,” Gus said, “he’s got to deal with both of us.”

“I don’t need you taking care of me,” Chris said.

“I was thinking we could take care of each other,” Gus said.

They sat quietly for a time. Chris sprawled with his elbows resting on the seat behind him, Gus bent forward, his arms resting on his legs.

“So how does it make you feel?” Chris said.

“Feels okay to me,” Gus said.

“No, I mean how do
you
feel? Not how does it feel?”

Gus shrugged.

“It’s one of the things you do, you know, shift the question just slightly so you can stay closed.”

“Maybe staying closed works for me,” Gus said.

Chris looked at the patches of river.

“Maybe,” Chris said.

The patches of river continued to move and stayed always the same.

“Always hard for me to talk with you, you know,” Chris said. “But it’s harder being quiet.”

Gus nodded.

“You seem to be okay with quiet,” Chris said.

“You get older, being quiet gets easier,” Gus said. “How’s Grace?”

Chris took in a long breath and let it out slowly through his nose.

“She’s a piece of work, isn’t she?”

“I like her,” Gus said. “She’s got juice. How about you. You love her?”

“I don’t know,” Chris said. “She’s, she’s got so
much, what? … voltage, you know … it’s like living with a cloudburst….”

“There’s worse things,” Gus said.

Chris nodded.

“You going to marry her?”

“I don’t know. My marriage models aren’t too good, you know?”

“Yeah,” Gus said. “I do know.”

There were pigeons circling down onto the stadium floor, maybe a dozen of them. Gus watched them circle and then settle, pecking at whatever they pecked at in the grass, ordered by some sort of internal rules that Gus didn’t know.
Like everybody else
, Gus thought.

“How do you stand her?” Chris said. “Why don’t you ever confront her? Tell her to shut the fuck up?”

The pigeons flew off suddenly, all together. Gus leaned back and stretched his neck, turning his head slightly back and forth as if to ease a crick. He shrugged.

“She’s your mother,” he said.

“Yeah, well, don’t do me no favors.”

“She doesn’t know anything,” Gus said. “Simple stuff, like how to write a check, or when to put gas in the car, or how to get to Cambridge. The world’s a mystery to her, and all she knows how to be is a bratty, know-it-all little girl.”

Chris was sitting upright now, leaning forward with his forearms resting on his thighs.

“Do you have sex?” he said.

Gus smiled a little.

“No.”

“So what do you do?”

“For sex?”

“Yes?”

Gus smiled.

“Love is hard,” he said, “but sex is easy.”

“You have a friend.”

“Yes.”

“Does Ma know?”

“The things your mother doesn’t know,” Gus said, “placed end to end would reach Omaha.”

“I’m glad I know this,” Chris said.

Gus shrugged.

“That’s one of my problems, you know? You never stood up to her. You never said, ‘Peggy, that’s enough.’”

“Wouldn’t do much good,” Gus said. “She can’t act different. She is what she is. Just mean a fight and I always thought it wouldn’t be good for you, see your parents fight.”

“You could have left her.”

“And you? Leave you alone with her?”

Chris shrugged. They were both quiet. The pale sun was gone. Cars along both sides of the river had their lights on.

“Take Flaherty’s job,” Gus said. “I have no problem with it, and your in-laws won’t object.”

“You have a lot of influence with Tom Winslow,” Chris said. “It’s strange.”

“Known Tommy a long time,” Gus said.

They stood. Chris looked down at his father, shorter and wider than he was, at the flat red Mick face he’d looked at all his life, at the thick neck, and the arms tight in the jacket sleeves, and always the air of distance. He knew his father would walk in front of a train for him. But always still the airspace around him, that even Chris had never quite penetrated.

Four inches taller and thirty pounds lighter, the son patted his father’s shoulder for a moment, and then they walked together out of the stadium toward the parking lot.

A
t night the Bay Tower Room, sixty stories up, was a public restaurant. But at lunch it was a private club full of bankers and stockbrokers. Gus sat near the window with Tommy Winslow and drank some club soda. To his left the Custom House Tower gave scale to the high setting, and beyond it, across the harbor, Gus could see planes coming and going at Logan Airport. He’d worn a gun every day for nearly forty years, and he usually noticed it no more than his wallet; but he could feel its weight here among the suits. It made him smile.

“Something funny?” Tom asked.

Gus shook his head.

“I don’t get up here often,” he said.

“It’s okay for lunch,” Tom said. “At dinner it’s full of people from Worcester.”

The waiter brought their salads. They ate in silence. Tom ate quickly, putting too much salad per bite into his mouth. He was tall and spare with square shoulders, and a long nose. His receding gray hair was straight and long and combed smoothly back.

“Parnell Flaherty’s going to appoint my kid as a special prosecutor on these gang killings,” Gus said.

“The hell he is,” Tom said.

There was a hint of salad dressing at one corner of his mouth and he dabbed at it with his napkin.

“Parnell’s a smart fella,” Gus said. “Figure it’ll dehorn Cabot on the crime-in-the-streets thing.”

“Because of Grace,” Tom said.

“Um-hmm.”

“I don’t want him to take it,” Tom said.

Gus shrugged.

“I mean it, Gus. It will fuck up this campaign. Cabot is going to be the best senator money can buy.”

Again Gus shrugged.

“For Crissake, Gus, do you ever talk?”

The waiter cleared their salad plates, put down their entree, and retreated.

“Chris’s going to take the job,” he said.

Tom Winslow’s eyes behind the old-fashioned round black-rimmed glasses he wore were small and flat.

“I don’t like that, Gus.”

Gus put his fork down and folded his hands on the edge of the table. He leaned forward toward Tom.

“Tommy, we’ve known each other all our lives. You ever remember a time when I gave a fuck what you liked?”