You were family.
That world was gone with so-called progress. Most of the Burroughses and Mackenzies had moved on. They now lived in quasi-mansions in wealthier suburbs like Brookline or Newton with shrubs and fences and fancy marble bathrooms and swimming pools and where the very idea of living with non-nuclear family was nightmarish and incomprehensible. Other family members had moved to gated communities in warmer states like Florida or Arizona, sporting leathery tans and gold chains. Newer immigrant families — Cambodians, Vietnamese, whatever — had taken over a lot of the old homes. They, too, worked hard and took in all manner of extended family members, starting the cycle anew.
Philip paid the cabdriver and stepped onto the cracked sidewalk. He could still get a faint whiff of the salty Atlantic Ocean two blocks away. Revere Beach had never been a glamour spot. Even in his youth, the threadbare mini-golf and rusty roller coaster and worn Skee-Ball machines and assorted boardwalk arcades had been on their last legs. That didn’t bother him and Lenny and their friends though. They hung out behind Sal’s Pizzeria and smoked and drank Old Milwaukee because it was the cheapest and rolled dice. The guys they hung out with — Carl, Ricky, Heshy, Mitch — all became doctors and lawyers and moved out. Lenny and Philip stayed in town as local cops. Philip debated taking a quick walk down to Shirley Avenue to see the house where he and Ruth had raised their five children. But he decided against it. The memories were pleasant enough, but he was not in the mood to be distracted.
Memories always sting, don’t they? The good ones most of all.
The concrete steps were too damn high. As a kid, as a teen, as a young man, Philip took them two at a time, with a skip and a jump. Now he winced through the creak in his knees. Only one of the four apartments still housed Burroughses. Lenny, his oldest friend, his former partner in the Revere Police Department, was back in the same first-floor apartment on the right that his family had called home seventy years ago. He lived here now with his sister Sophie. For some reason, Sophie had never moved on, almost as though someone had to stay behind to watch the old homestead.
He thought about Lenny’s son serving a life sentence at Briggs. The whole incident was beyond heartbreaking. David wasn’t well. That was obvious. Philip was David’s godfather, though they managed to keep that secret so that they could conspire to get David into Briggs. David had no siblings (Lenny’s wife, Maddy, had a “condition” of some sort — in those days, you never talked about such things), but Philip’s oldest son, Adam, was David’s best friend and nearly a brother, their relationship not unlike Philip’s with Lenny. Adam too had spent hours here, in this four-family dwelling, just as Philip had. The Burroughs household had been a strange and wonderful place in those days. Back when Philip was young — and even when his son was young — this was a house of warmth and color and texture. The Burroughses lived life out loud, like a radio always set on high. Every emotion was felt intensely. When you argued — and you argued a lot in here — you did it with passion.
Then David’s mother, Maddy, died and everything changed.
Now the building stood silent, joyless, a withering apparition. For a moment, Philip couldn’t move. He just stood there on the stoop, staring at the door. He was about to knock when that faded-green door opened. Philip froze. If he had been disoriented before, he felt completely lost now. Being in the old neighborhood had brought on a bout of nostalgia, but seeing Sophie’s face again, still beautiful despite the years, plunged him back. She too was closing in on seventy, but all Philip could see was the breathy teen who’d answered the door for him on this very spot the night of senior prom. A lifetime ago, Philip and Sophie had dated. They had fallen in love, he guessed. But they were young. Something happened — who remembered what anymore? The military, the police academy. Whatever. Fifty years ago. Sophie had married an army guy from Lowell named Frank. He died in some kind of training exercise in Ramstein, making Sophie a widow before her twenty-fifth birthday. She’d moved in with Lenny after Maddy’s death to help raise David and never remarried. Philip had been betrothed to Ruth for over forty years, but some nights he still thought about Sophie more than he cared to admit. The sliding door. The road not taken. The big what-if. The good one he’d let get away.
Was that a crime?
He stared at Sophie now, his mind still traveling through some alternate universe where he hadn’t let her go.
Sophie put her hands on her hips. “I got something stuck in my teeth, Philip?”
He shook his head.
“Then why are you staring?”
“No reason,” he said. Then he added, “You look good, Sophie.”
She rolled her eyes. “Come on in, Silver-Tongue. Your charm is making me woozy.”
Philip stepped inside. Little if anything had changed. He could feel the ghosts surround him.
“He’s resting,” Sophie said, heading down the corridor. Philip followed. “He should be awake soon. Want some coffee?”
“Sure.”
They reached the kitchen. It had been updated. Sophie used one of those new coffee pod machines everyone seems to have. She handed him the thick mug, not asking how he took it. She knew.
“So why are you here, Philip?”
He forced up a smile over the brim of the mug. “What, can’t a man visit an old friend and his beautiful sister?”
“Remember what I said about your charm making me woozy?”
“I do.”
“I was joking.”
“Yeah, I figured.” He put down the mug. “I need to talk to him, Sophie.”
“This about David?”
“It is.”
“He’s sick, you know. Lenny, I mean.”
“I know.”
“Almost completely paralyzed. He can’t talk anymore. I don’t even know if he knows who I am.”
“I’m sorry, Sophie.”
“Is this going to upset him?”
Philip thought about that. “I don’t know.”
“Not sure I see the need.”
“There probably isn’t one.”
“But this is what you two do,” Sophie said.
“Yes.”
Sophie turned her head toward the window. “Lenny wouldn’t want to be spared. So go ahead. You know the way.”
He put down the mug and rose. Philip wanted to say something, but no words came to him. She didn’t look at him as he left the kitchen. He made the right and headed toward the bedroom in the back. The grandfather clock still stood in the hallway. Maddy had bought it at an estate sale in Everett a hundred years ago. Lenny and Philip had picked it up in Philip’s old pickup truck. The thing weighed over two hundred pounds. It took them forever to disassemble it and move it. They had to wrap the pendulum and the main spring and the cable and the chains and the weights and the chime rods and Lord knows what else in heavy blankets and bubble wrap. They used masking tape to affix cardboard over the beveled glass door and then something still chipped off the toe molding. But Maddy loved it and Lenny would do anything for her and hey, when you add up the pros and cons, there was no doubt Philip got the better end of the deal on the friendship. Not that either would ever keep track.