Back Bay (20 page)

“I’m an old friend of Kenny’s late mother,” the priest explained. “I knew Kenny when he was just a little shaver. I used to visit them on Sunday afternoons when I was in seminary. He was a beautiful child.”

Fallon glanced at the body a few feet away. He could not imagine it as a beautiful child.

“Pity he never married,” continued Father Hale. “It would be nice if he had some blood relatives here to say goodbye. But from what his mother used to tell me, he was never very comfortable with the girls.”

Maureen Fallon smiled. “We’re Kenny’s blood, at least in spirit, Father.”

“We are, indeed,” Tom Fallon admired Kenny Gallagher. He knew that without Kenny’s help, he’d probably be dead.

Tom Fallon. Called Black Tom by men who disliked his stern expression. Called Nails by the bricklayers who worked for him because he filed away at his fingernails whenever his hands were idle. He was sixty-four, with crew-cut gray hair, enormous hands, and shoulders so broad that his grandchildren could not touch both of them at the same time.

One day in the mid-fifties, Tom and Kenny Gallagher, who had also been a bricklayer, were working for Norton Construction. It was a pointing job—repairing and replacing old mortar—on the Western Union building. Tom and Kenny had just come back from the Barrister Bar and Grill, where they’d each taken a beer and a shot with lunch. They were working nine stories up, on a swing staging that hung from the roof of the building. Tom stepped out the window first. With the alcohol and hot sun, he forgot to check the rigging.

That was the day the laborer had failed to lock the pump after lowering the staging.

Tom Fallon put all his weight on the staging and it fell out from under him. As he started down, he spun toward the window.
Kenny, still inside, was able to grab him. For almost five minutes, Kenny clung to Tom’s arm and screamed for help. While he hung nine stories above the street, Tom Fallon got religion. He resolved that he would never drink again, and decided that if he had to risk his neck, he would do it for himself.

After that, Tom Fallon went to Mass every Sunday and prayed every day. He drank nothing but beer and only on weekends. He scraped together some money and started his own contracting company. He worked day and night to build his business, placing such demands on himself that he expected too much from those around him. His business never flourished, but it was his own and he was able to give his family a good life.

Tom Fallon told his sons that all his hard work was for them, and he expected great things from both of them. Danny showed promise of becoming a good tradesman, and Tom encouraged him. Peter had other talents.

When Peter showed excellent grades in grammar school, Tom decided to pay tuition and sent the boy to Boston College High School, where he was taught by Jesuits. When Peter became a champion debater, his father imagined a law career. When Peter was accepted at Harvard, Tom Fallon saw the pattern unfolding—Harvard, Harvard Law School, a solid Boston legal practice, and then, the most important step into respectability for the Boston Irish of earlier generations, a career in politics. Senator Peter Fallon and his father, Tom.

Peter Fallon decided in college that he would not let his life be sledgehammered into shape. He had listened to his father’s dreams and fulfilled his father’s plans for twenty years. When he had to decide between law and history, he chose as much from a sense of rebellion as intellectual interest. His decision caused a rift with his father which had not closed in four years.

Tom Fallon could not understand why Peter would choose a scholar’s life, spent in libraries, to a life in politics or business. He believed that his son had run away from a challenge and hidden in the study of the past. He was deeply disappointed.

“You haven’t been around in two or three months, Peter. Can’t you stop over here more often?” Tom spoke bluntly.

“I’m busy, Dad. I’m almost to the end of my dissertation.”

“Then what?” Tom Fallon asked the question as though he already knew the answer.

“I have several teaching offers in the Midwest.” Peter spoke as though his privacy had been invaded.

“Father Hale was just telling me about one of his nephews. It seems the boy graduated from Boston College, went to law school, and is now making a name for himself in the Justice Department down in Washington.”

“So what?”

“So people are doing things.”

Father Hale sensed the coldness between father and son. He excused himself.

“Do you want to know something, Dad?” Peter lowered his voice. “I don’t give a shit.”

Tom Fallon turned to his wife. “Nice, isn’t it? Forty thousand dollars’ worth of education, and that’s all he can say.”

“Well, if you’d find something other than jobs to talk about…”

“What else is there, Maureen? A man’s work is his life.”

“Speaking of that, I hear that Fallon and Son Construction Company has been having a few problems.” Peter was sorry he’d said that. He didn’t mean to sound so callous.

“We’ll survive. We have before.” Tom Fallon did not conceal his anger.

Peter tried to convey his concern. “Has someone put the screws on you, or were you just in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

“I made a bad mistake. I signed a contract with a fella who didn’t have any money. Except that I didn’t know it. To get his job started, I pumped bricks, blocks, and lumber into it. I used my own money. Then, this fella goes bankrupt and leaves me with my hand up my ass.” Tom Fallon spat out the details. “You work hard all your life, then you take the shaft. But I don’t guess you’d know anything about that, sittin’ up there in your library.”

Peter decided he’d had enough. Their meetings always ended in unpleasantness. He had paid his respects. He had no need to stay. Before his mother could change the subject, Peter kissed her on the cheek. “I’ve got to get back.”

“Can’t you come back to the house? We’ll be having coffee and sandwiches for everyone.”

“I don’t think so, Mama.” He offered his hand to his father. “I hope it all works out for you, Dad.”

Tom Fallon shook hands with his son. “Try to come around more often.”

They looked at each other for a moment. They had more to say to each other, but they were both too stubborn. Neither would start the conversation again. Peter turned abruptly and left, crossing the room much more quickly on the way out. He felt stifled, closed in. He had to escape. Old, familiar faces smiled everywhere. He brushed past them all. He used to enjoy family gatherings, but he could not recount the last four years of his life for anyone else.

Halfway down the stairs, he bumped into Sadie Halloran, Jackie’s mother. She gave him a hug and a kiss. At close range, she smelled like a distillery. They exchanged a few pleasantries, but to his relief, she didn’t want to talk about his career.

“I think it’s a shame we don’t have wakes in the home no more. When my Jack dropped dead at forty-six, we laid him out right in the living room. We had coffee and sandwiches and a few other things”—she winked—“and I don’t have to tell you that his old pals did themselves proud for my dear Jack.”

“Well, I’d say we’re doin’ proud by Kenny.” Fallon tried to smile.

“We’d all feel a little better if your Uncle Dunphy had himself a tap workin’ in the other—” Sadie Halloran noticed someone standing at the top of the stairs. “Why, I know that boy from somewhere.”

The young man who had followed Fallon to the Book Cellar the night before was standing at the top of the stairs. He had trailed Fallon to the wake. His name was James Buckley. He had an Irish moon face and the body of an ironworker. He was wearing the coat and tie he kept in the trunk of his Oldsmobile, and he blended easily into the South Boston gathering. Fallon glanced at him. Buckley slipped into the smoking room. Sadie scampered up the stairs. Fallon headed down.

Sadie found the young man quickly. “I know that face.”

“I’m afraid not, ma’am.” Buckley tried to leave.

Sadie clamped a hand on his elbow. “Let me guess your name.”

“Denny Flynn,” said Buckley.

Downstairs, Fallon said goodbye to Dunphy Kelleher and stepped into the humidity.

Father Hale was climbing into his car, a Chevy Impala parked in front of the funeral home. “Can I give you a lift?”

“I’m going to Cambridge.”

“A bit out of my way, but I can run you up to Broadway Station in my air-conditioned chariot.”

“You’ve convinced me.”

James Buckley loosed himself from Sadie Halloran’s grasp and hurried out to the front lawn. Fallon was nowhere in sight.

“I wanted to stay longer,” said Father Hale. “I like meeting new people. But it’s a long drive back to the Cape.”

Considering how slowly he drove, it would take him several hours to get home, thought Fallon. “Are you retired down there?”

“Oh, no. That I could never stand. I’m the pastor of a small church near Plymouth. Very quiet in the winter, packed for seven Masses on a summer weekend.”

“It must be pleasant.”

Father Hale grunted. “It’s the last stop.”

Fallon understood what the old man was talking about. He did not pursue it.

Father Hale stopped at a red light, then glided slowly into the flow of traffic on Broadway. Brakes squealed and horns blared. Fallon grabbed the back of his neck and waited for the collision. Nothing happened.

“Father, I’m not quite ready to make my last stop, yet.”

“I’m sorry. I guess I’m preoccupied these days. My arthritis is getting worse.” He held up his right hand. The fingers bent off in four different directions. “I can hardly hold the Host. And handling Rosary beads is agony.”

“Maybe you should get workman’s compensation.” Fallon tried to joke.

The old priest sighed. It sounded like a death rattle. “I guess we all have to come to the end sometime. Kneeling over the body of poor Kenny Gallagher, I am reminded that my own is very close.”

“Your faith doesn’t sustain you?”

“Even priests fear death, my boy. And when you were never sure
that you chose the right vocation in the first place, you’re haunted by the might-have-beens when you draw near the end.”

They rode for a while in silence.

Then, the old priest sighed again. “It’s possible that I might have been Kenny Gallagher’s father.”

Fallon’s head snapped around.

Father Hale realized the ambiguity. He laughed softly. “No, no, not what you think. Had I chosen the other path, Kenny’s mother would have been Mary Hale instead of Mary Gallagher, and we would have made a child.” He shook his head. “What a wonder it would have been. I loved her so much, my poor, dear Mary Mannion.” His voice trailed off. He spoke with new strength as the memories flooded back. “We met in school. South Boston High, Class of 1921. She was beautiful, and I was not a bad-looking sort myself.”

Fallon felt that he was eavesdropping, but he listened. He sensed the old man’s loneliness and knew that Father Hale needed someone to talk to.

“We went together for two years,” continued the priest. “I was working as a clerk in a shipping office. She was just waiting for me to pop the question, but I was afraid to.

“You see, all along I thought I might have a vocation for the priesthood. I felt good inside the church. I liked the priests at Gate of Heaven. When I served Mass, I always felt that I belonged on the altar. And those were bad times, the twenties. Bootlegging and gangsterism, right here in South Boston. My mother would always say, ‘We need strong men on the altar in these days. We need good Catholic priests to show the rest of the world how to live. Maybe you should think about the collar.’ I guess I agreed.

“When it came time for me to choose a wife, I chose Holy Mother Church. Mary Mannion didn’t speak to me for almost a year. She ran off and married Big Jim Gallagher, leaving me to wonder if my mother had been wrong.” He spoke without bitterness. He had lived too long for that.

The car arrived at the subway station. Fallon didn’t move.

“And you know something?” said the priest. “After fifty years in the priesthood, I’m still wondering.”

Fallon studied the old man silently. A life had unfolded in front of him, and he didn’t know how to respond. Finally, he reached out and shook Father Hale’s misshapen hand. “Thank you, Father. Thanks for the ride.” He got out of the car.

“Take care,” said the priest. “And son…”

Fallon poked his head into the car.

“It’s a terrible thing to go through life lookin’ over your shoulder. Mothers and fathers are always willing to give advice, but a person must pray for guidance, then do what he thinks is best. Goodnight, now.”

Philip Pratt loved Szechwan food, especially on hot summer nights. The Yu Hsiang scallops and Szechwan shredded spiced beef were so hot that the fire in his mouth made him forget heat, humidity, and sinus problems all at once. Pratt had found an excellent Szechwan restaurant—blazing food and relaxing atmosphere—on Commonwealth Avenue, just beyond Kenmore Square.

He was dining with his cousin, Isabelle Carrington Howe. They met often to discuss business, the fate of Pratt Industries, and the mental condition of Isabelle’s mother, Katherine Carrington. Philip and Isabelle had grown up together, sharing summers on the tennis court at Searidge, learning to sail in the same boat, entering Harvard and Radcliffe in the same year, and, so the rumors went, teaching each other things beneath the wooden stairs at the beach that second cousins were not encouraged to learn together.

“I’m sorry, Philip. You know how carefully we screen her communications. I sometimes think Mother has no conception of the seriousness of all this.” A widow without children, she had lived with her mother for the past five years.

“I think she does, but she refuses to acknowledge it. She becomes more difficult to reason with all the time. As a result, we’re forced to follow this young historian around until we’re sure he’s nothing more.”

Isabelle heard the annoyance in Philip’s voice. She frowned. Horned-rimmed glasses and hair pulled straight back accented the expression. “I do my best, Philip,” she said sharply. “We try to
keep her happy. We take her where she wants to go. We see that she has visitors. We do whatever you ask.”