Kerry stared at the bloodstains, stupefied.
"Your wagon, you pissant. You left your fooking wagon on the path . . ."
Kerry shook his head reflexively. "I'm sorry, Da," he tried. Then he began to cry, trying hard to stop.
Mary Kilcannon appeared in the doorway.
Her long black hair was disarranged, her skin pale in the light. Kerry was too afraid to run to her.
Entering, she gave him a gaze of deep compassion, then placed a tentative hand on her husband's shoulder. Softly, she asked, "What is it, Michael?"
Throat constricted, Kerry watched his father's angry face.
"The wagon." Michael paused, and then gazed down at the sheets with a kind of wonder. "Sharp edges . . ."
Eyes never leaving her son, his mother kissed Michael on the side of his face.
"That'll need tending, Michael." Still trembling, Kerry watched his mother take his father by the hand. "We should go to the hospital."
Slowly, his father turned and let Mary Kilcannon lead him from the room.
Kerry could hardly breathe. Turning, Mary Kilcannon looked back at him. "Don't worry about your father . . ."
Somehow, Kerry understood she meant that he was safe tonight. But he did not get up until he heard the front door close.
His eighteen-year-old brother Jamie—tall and handsome, the family's jewel—was standing in the door of his bedroom. "Well," Jamie said softly, to no one, "they cut quite a figure, don't they?"
Kerry hated him for it.
* * *
It started then—the thing between Kerry and his father.
Two days later, the stitches still in his arm, Michael Kilcannon, with two tickets a fellow patrolman could not use, took Kerry to a Mets game. Michael knew little of baseball—he had emigrated from County Roscommon in his teens. But he was a strapping handsome man in his red-haired florid way and, when sober, a dad Kerry was desperately proud of: a policeman, a kind of hero, possessed of a ready laugh and a reputation for reckless courage. Michael bought Kerry popcorn and a hot dog and enjoyed the game with self-conscious exuberance; Kerry knew that this was his apology for what no one would ever mention. When the Mets won in the ninth inning, Michael hugged him.
His father felt large and warm. "I love you, Da," Kerry murmured.
That night, Michael Kilcannon went to Lynch's Ark Bar, a neighborhood mainstay. But Kerry felt safe, the glow of his day with him still.
His bedroom door opening awakened him.
Rubbing his eyes, Kerry looked at his father across the room, halfglad, half-afraid.
Michael staggered toward him and sat at the edge of the bed. Kerry kept quiet; his father was breathing hard. "Bastards." Michael's voice was hostile, threatening.
Kerry's heart pounded. Maybe if he said something, showed his father sympathy . . .
"What is it, Da?"
His father shook his head, as if to himself. "Mulroy . . ."
Kerry did not understand. All he could do was wait.
"I'm as good a man—better," Michael said abruptly. "But he makes sergeant, not me. They give it only to the kiss-ass boys . . ."
As she had two nights before, Mary Kilcannon appeared. "Michael," she said in the same soft voice.
Kerry's father did not turn. "Shut up," he said harshly. "We're talking . . ."
Fearful again, Kerry looked at his mother. Her words had an edge her son had never heard before. "Leave the boy alone."
Michael Kilcannon shrugged his heavy shoulders and rose. With a slap so lazy yet so powerful it reminded Kerry of a big cat, he struck Mary Kilcannon across the mouth.
She reeled backward, blood trickling from her lip. Tears stung Kerry's eyes; watching Mary Kilcannon cover her face, he was sickened by his own fear and helplessness.
"We were talking." Michael's voice suggested the patience of a reasonable man, stretched to the breaking point. "Go to bed."
Gazing at Kerry, she backed into the hallway.
Michael turned from her and sat at the edge of his bed. He did not seem to notice that Kerry was crying.
"Mulroy," he repeated.
Kerry did not know how long his father stayed, mumbling resentful fragments. Kerry dared not fall asleep.
After this, Kerry never knew when it would happen. On some nights his father would come home and beat his mother. On others he would open Kerry's door and pour out his wounds and angers. Kerry learned to make some sound or comment so that Michael thought he was listening, to fight sleep or any sign of inattention that might set his father off. Michael never touched him.
As long as Kerry listened, he knew that his father would not beat Mary Kilcannon.
* * *
As deeply as Kerry feared his father, he loved his mother.
What Michael imposed on them at night was a shameful secret, never to be discussed. Kerry knew that his mother could not ask the police for help. Michael Kilcannon was the police: to tell his friends would shame him, perhaps make him even more brutal. Within the tight community of Vailsburg, where a quiet word from a policeman was enough to nip trouble in the bud, Michael treasured his reputation.
Every morning Mary Kilcannon prayed at Sacred Heart.
In the half-lit vastness of the church, Kerry would watch her rapt profile. Kerry, too, found the church consoling—its hush, its seventy-foot ceilings and beautiful stained-glass windows, its marble altar framed by a fresco of Jesus ascending. Sometimes they stayed for an hour.
One snowy winter morning, they wended their way home. They made a game of it, Kerry trying to walk in his mother's bigger footprints without making footprints of his own.
His prize was a cup of hot chocolate. As they sat at the kitchen table, his mother smiling at him, Kerry felt he would burst with love. But it was she who said, "I love you more than words can tell, Kerry Francis."
Tears came to his eyes. As if reading his mind, Mary Kilcannon said softly, "Your father's a good man when he's sober. He takes good care of us. He's only frustrated, afraid he won't succeed as he deserves."
The words were meant as comfort. But what Kerry heard was that they were trapped: from the long nights with his father, he sensed that the reasons for Michael's failure to rise were the same as for his abusiveness, and that this would never end until someone ended it.
Kerry squeezed his mother's hand.
* * *
But outside their home, Kerry knew, Mary Kilcannon would always be known as James's mother.
It began with how much Jamie favored her, so closely that only his maleness made him handsome instead of beautiful. By seventeen, Jamie was six feet one, with an easy grace and with hazel eyes which seemed to take in everything around him. Vailsburg thought Jamie close to perfect: he was student body president of Seton Hall Prep; captain of its football team; second in his class. Jamie's clothes were always neat and pressed, nothing out of place. Girls adored him. Like most obvious expressions of emotion, this seemed to amuse Jamie and, perhaps, to frighten him.