It doesn’t say anything about the dead black guy being a drug dealer, but it’s a pretty safe assumption, or otherwise why would he be there? Why come into their part of town? She doesn’t go into theirs. She doesn’t know anyone who says they’ll be spending the afternoon on Blue Hill Ave. to shop for clothes or go pick up a record at Skippy White’s. She stays on her side of town, her side of the fucking line, and is it too much to ask that they do the same? Why do they have to antagonize? You go downtown, okay, fine, that’s where they all intermingle, black and white and Puerto Rican. They work together, they bitch about their bosses, lives, the city together. But then they go back to their own neighborhoods and sleep in their own beds until they have to get up in the morning and do it all over again.
Because the truth is they don’t understand one another. It’s not a plan of Mary Pat’s making, nor is it her desire, that they have different tastes in music, in clothing, in the food they put on their tables. But that’s the way it is just the same. They like different cars, different sports, different movies. They don’t even talk the same. The Puerto Ricans barely speak the language, but most of the blacks she knows have grown up here and still it’s like they didn’t. They speak that jive of theirs, which, truth be told, Mary Pat likes, loves the rhythm of it, loves the way they emphasize different words in a sentence than any white people she knows, have a way of punching out through the ends of their stories with big booming laughs. But it doesn’t sound anything like the speech that leaves the mouths of Mary Pat or her friends. So if you don’t speak like us, Mary Pat wants to ask, and you don’t like our music, our clothes, our food, our ways, why come into our neighborhood?
To sell drugs to our kids or steal our cars. That’s the only answer left.
Something about the newspaper article, though, bugs her the rest of the shift. She can’t put a finger on it, but there’s something in there that sets off an alarm. What? What is it? And then it hits her: “What’s Dreamy’s last name?” she asks Gert.
“Calliope,” Gert says.
Mary Pat frowns. “Did you really just say that?”
“What?”
“Calliope’s her real first name,” Anne O’Leary says with a withering sigh.
“So what’s her last name?” Gert says.
“You’re her friend,” Anne says to Mary Pat. “How do you not know?”
“I mean” — Mary Pat can feel her face pinken — “I just know her as Dreamy.”
There’s a quiet that feels not-quite-awkward-but-awkward’s-on-the-way, and it’s broken only when Dottie, of all people, says, “Williamson.”
“What?”
“Dreamy’s last name. It’s Williamson.”
“How the fuck would you know?”
“I’m a beast for the details.”
Mary Pat moves down the prep table until she finds the Herald. She opens it to the article for the other girls, points at the dead drug dealer’s name — Augustus Williamson.
“So?” Gert says.
Gert is dumber than a busload of retards on a bus driven by a retard.
“So,” Mary Pat says, “Dreamy always talked about her son, Auggie.”
It takes the other girls a minute.
“Oh, shit,” Anne O’Leary says.
Dottie says, “That’s why she didn’t come to work.”
4
On the way home, Mary Pat doesn’t admit to herself that she’s worried, but she doesn’t dillydally either. No stops, no pop-ins at any of the bars. Just straight home.
Jules is not there. And Mary Pat can tell from a quick glance around their unit that she hasn’t been there during the day.
She calls the Morellos a third time, gets Suze again, but Suze immediately says, “She’s here. Let me get her.”
Mary Pat feels herself slide down the wall but can’t decide if it’s relief or something else. Did Suze say “Jules is here”? Or “She’s here”? In which case “she” could be—
Brenda. Whose voice comes over the line now. “Hey, Mrs. F.”
“Hey, Brenda.” A leaden dread fills Mary Pat’s stomach. “Jules there?”
“I ain’t seen Jules since last night.” Brenda’s words come out a little too fast, as if she’s been preparing them.
“No? Who’d you see her with last?” Mary Pat lights a smoke.
“She was with, you know, Rum and, ah, you know, Rum.”
“Rum and Rum? He comes in a pair now?”
“No, I meant just Rum. She was with Rum.”
“Where was this?”
“Carson.”
Carson is the local beach. Not much of one. No tide. An inlet of the harbor, not the ocean beyond. Mostly a place for kids to go and drink behind the old bathhouse.
“When did you see her and Rum last?”
“Like, midnight?”
“And they just wandered off?”
“Well, yeah, I mean, you know.”
“I don’t know.” Mary Pat can hear the edge in her voice. Hopes Brenda doesn’t hear it to the point that it shuts her down. She softens her voice. “I’m just trying to find her, Brenda.” She lightens the mood further with an embarrassed laugh. “Just being a silly worried mom.”
Nothing on the other end of the line but silence. Mary Pat bites down into her lower lip hard enough to taste blood and nicotine.
“I mean,” Brenda says, “I mean, she walked off with Rum, and that’s the last I saw her.”
“Was she drinking?”
“No!”
“Bullshit,” Mary Pat says. The gloves come off for a second. “Brenda, do not take me for a fool, and I won’t take you for a fucking liar. How drunk was she?”
Hisses and pops on the line. A dog barking somewhere far off on Brenda’s end. Then: “She was, you know, feeling no pain. She had a few beers, some wine.”
“Pot?”
“Yeah.”
“Was she stumbling drunk?”
“No, no. Just buzzed, Mrs. F. I swear.”
“So, last time you saw her, she was with Rum?”
“Yeah.”
“And you haven’t heard from her since?”
“No.”
“If you do?”
“I’ll call you first thing.”
“I know you will, Brenda.” Putting some steel into the words before adding, “Thank you.”
Brenda hangs up, leaving Mary Pat looking at the phone in her hand and feeling a screeching train of helplessness barrel through her. Jules is seventeen, able to do what she wants. If Mary Pat calls the cops, she knows they can’t do a damn thing about it until it’s been seventy-two hours. At least. And Mary Pat doesn’t have that. So she’s now in the position of sitting on her hands or chain-smoking until her daughter walks back through the door.
She tries it for a bit, finds herself thinking of Dreamy Williamson facing life without her child, and recalls that Dreamy sent her a beautiful card when Noel died. She roots around in a drawer where she put most things related to Noel’s death — his dog tag and war medals, his laminated funeral card, the sympathy cards — and eventually finds the one Dreamy sent her. On the front is a cross and the words May the Lord Grant You Strength in Your Hour of Need. Inside the card, filling up both sides, she wrote to Mary Pat:
Dear Mrs. Mary Patricia Fennessy,
It’s a terrible thing for a mother to lose her child. I cannot imagine the hurt you are feeling. Many times at work you have brought a smile to my face or made the day go quicker by telling me stories of your beloved Noel. What a scamp he was! What a rascal! He loved his mama, that was clear, and his mama loved him. I do not know why the Good Lord would ask something so painful of a fine woman such as yourself, but I know He makes our hearts so big so our dead can live in them. That’s where your Noel is now. Living in his mother’s heart like he once lived in your womb. If I can ever be of assistance, please reach out to me. You have always shown me every kindness and your friendship is something I value.