But as the morning moves along and the speakers grow louder (and a lot more repetitive), Mary Pat has begun to feel her outrage thin when she catches sight of a woman with the same hair as Jules move through the crowd. The woman’s face is rounder and older than Jules’s, but the hair is near identical. And suddenly, it’s like she’s lost her again. Like she’s losing her over and over and over. Like she can see the baby Jules cupped, naked and squawking, in her hand, and then she’s rushing straight through her daughter’s life, observing it the way you observe a train blasting past you — teething, first step, first flu, scraped knees, missing front teeth, first-grade pigtails, second-grade ponytail, a permanent broken heart in fourth grade after Mary Pat tells her Daddy’s never coming home again, acne at twelve, breasts at thirteen along with apathy for everything, eighth-grade graduation, high school dance nights, the end of the apathetic stage coinciding with Noel’s final decline, the return of her spunk, her humor, her loud, goofy laugh — and then she’s gone, her daughter’s gone, she’s left this life, she’s stepped off into a void. Chambers of Mary Pat’s heart she was certain she’d shut tight fly open, and a sea of loss rushes in. She suddenly can’t remember what she’s doing here or why she should give two flying fucks why blacks or Jews or Orientals cross the bridge into Southie.
Jules.
Jules.
Why’d you leave me?
Where’d you go?
Has the pain stopped, baby?
Is your world warm?
Will you wait for me to find you there?
Please wait.
For a moment she wants to drop, just fall to her knees and wail her daughter’s name. And she might have if, at that moment, the crowd hadn’t surged to the right as though it were a single organism, and Carol, beside her, hisses one word:
“Teddy.”
Mary Pat looks through the throng, and now she can see him, flanked by security personnel and two MDC cops, his black hair slicked back and matching his black suit. Edward M. Kennedy. Brother to the dead president who gave his name to the federal building fifty yards away. Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the national stage, but here, in Boston, he’s Teddy. Mostly it’s because he’s Irish and the Irish don’t put on airs, so President Kennedy was always Jack, and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy was always Bobby, but maybe he’s also Teddy because of the three, he’s the one they all take a little less seriously. So clearly the youngest, so clearly the needy one, desperate for approval. And, of course, they all know he was kicked out of Harvard for cheating and abandoned his mistress in a sinking car in a Martha’s Vineyard lagoon and still has an eye for other ladies who aren’t his wife, particularly when he goes on his benders in the pubs of Beacon Hill and Hyannis Port. And all of that would be fine for his constituents, the good people of Southie and Charlestown and half of Dorchester, he’s one of them, after all, a Hibernian, a mick, a Paddy — except that Teddy’s bona fides have been suspect of late. Particularly in matters of race and even more particularly on the matter of busing, which he came out in full support of during several recent interviews.
Mary Pat can feel the crowd turning on him before he even opens his mouth or they theirs. Who is he to stroll down here in his fine suit and slick haircut and expensive tie and shoes and explain to them what’s what? They know what’s what.
“Hey, Teddy,” some guy shouts, “where do your kids go to school, Teddy?”
Teddy ignores the voice, even though the guy keeps asking the question about every fifteen seconds.
By this point, Teddy’s almost reached the stage, but the crowd swarms the steps so he can’t walk up. He turns to one of the organizers, Bernie Dunn, who wears a brown suit far less expensive than Teddy’s, and says, “Are they going to let me up?”
“Doesn’t look like it,” Bernie says. “Listen to me, Teddy. I—”
“They need to let me up on the stage,” Teddy says.
“No, they don’t. You’re not hearing us. It’s despicable what’s going on, Teddy.”
“I understand your point, but—”
“But nothing. We’re not going to have some judge tell us how to run things, tell us where our kids are going to go.”
“I understand, but you have to agree something had to be done.”
“They’re gonna rip our neighborhoods apart, parish by parish, and you’re letting them. Hell, you’re helping them.”
“Are you going to let me talk?” Teddy asks.
“No.” Bernie seems a little surprised himself. “We’ve heard all you have to say.”
And Bernie Dunn turns his back on a Kennedy.
Everyone adjacent to him does the same. The next cluster of people follows suit. And on and on through the crowd. When the surge reaches the SWAB Sisters and Mary Pat, Mary Pat feels light-headed as she turns her back on Senator Edward M. Kennedy of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It’s like turning her back on the pope.
Those who don’t turn away from Teddy turn toward him, and Mary Pat can hear it getting ugly quick.
“Where do your fucking kids go to school, Teddy?”
“Where do you live, Teddy?”
“You’re an embarrassment to your brother and to your people.”
“Go back to Brookline, you fucking faggot.”
“You’re not one of us anymore!”
“Fuck you, nigger lover! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”
They hear the commotion and turn back to see the MDC cops and the security guys hustling Teddy toward the building named after his brother. Mary Pat is baffled by the back of Teddy’s suit. It’s almost completely white now, as if he’s been shit on by a flock of birds. It takes her a second to realize it isn’t bird shit.
It’s spit.
The crowd is spitting on a Kennedy.
Mary Pat feels ill. Isn’t there a line we don’t cross? she wants to ask the crowd. Isn’t there a place we don’t allow ourselves to go?
The crowd keeps spitting on the senator until his guards and the two cops get him into the federal building. The front of the building is clear glass, so Mary Pat can see them hustling him toward the elevators, and that should have been the end of it — everyone should have regained their sense — but then a pane of glass the size of a semitruck shatters.
The crowd lets out a roar of approval. Joyful shrieks split the air like birdshot.
Half a dozen police officers rush into the crowd from the edge of the plaza. It serves as a reminder that an entire police station sits less than a block away, so no one rushes the building. The cops don’t swing their clubs or anything stupid, they just hold their hands at arm’s length so the crowd will take a few steps back. They say a lot of “Now, now, we understand” and “We get it, we do,” as if they’re talking to children having a tantrum.
The crowd keeps yelling — at least a hundred voices screaming about Garrity and Kennedy and hell no we won’t go — but the violence stays confined to that one pane of glass, unless you count the spitting.
“Well, they heard us,” Carol says to the other SWAB Sisters. “They sure as hell heard us.”
Joyce O’Halloran’s daughter, Cecilia, approaches the group of women with a scowl on her face. She’s got her mother’s sharp cheekbones, thin lips, and lack of chin. Her eyes are red with recent tears.