Dennis Lehane - The Given Day

Danny made sure to call his parents most every night and managed to make one trip home during the pandemic. He sat with his family and Nora in the parlor on K Street and they drank tea, slipping the cups under the masks Ellen Coughlin demanded the family wear everywhere but in the privacy of their own bedrooms. Nora served the tea. Normally Avery Wallace would have performed that duty, but Avery hadn’t shown up for work in three days. Had it bad, he’d told Danny’s father over the phone, had it deep. Danny had known Avery since he and Connor were boys, and it only now occurred to him that he’d never visited the man’s home or met his family. Because he was colored?

There it was.

Because he was colored.

He looked up from his teacup at the rest of the family and the sight of them all — uncommonly silent and stiff in their gestures as they lifted their masks to sip their tea — struck him and Connor as absurd at the same time. It was as if they were still altar boys serving mass at Gate of Heaven and one look from either brother could cause the other to laugh at the least appropriate moment. No matter how many whacks on the ass they took from the old man, they just couldn’t help it. It got so bad the decision was made to separate them, and after sixth grade, they never served mass together again.

The same feeling gripped them now and the laugh burst through Danny’s lips first and Connor was a half step behind. Then they were both possessed by it, placing their teacups on the floor and giving in.

“What?” their father said. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Connor managed, and it came out muffled through the mask, which only made Danny laugh harder.

Their mother, sounding cross and confused, said, “What? What?”

“Jeeze, Dan,” Connor said, “get a load of himself.”

Danny knew he was talking about Joe. He tried not to look, he did, but then he looked over and saw the little kid sitting in a chair so big his shoes barely reached the edge of the cushion. Joe, sitting there with his big wide eyes and the ridiculous mask and the teacup resting on the lap of his plaid knickerbockers, looking at his brothers like they’d provide an answer to him. But there wasn’t any answer. It was all so silly and ridiculous and Danny noticed his little brother’s argyle socks and his eyes watered as his laughter boomed even harder.

Joe decided to join in and Nora followed, both of them uncertain at first but gathering in strength because Danny’s laughter had always been so infectious and neither could remember the last time they’d seen Connor laugh so freely or helplessly and then Connor sneezed and everyone stopped laughing.

A fine spray of red dots peppered the inside of his mask and bled through to the outside.

Their mother said, “Holy Mary Mother of Jesus,” and blessed herself.

“What?” Connor said. “It was a sneeze.”

“Connor,” Nora said. “Oh God, dear Connor.”

“What?”

“Con’,” Danny said and came out of his chair, “take off your mask.”

“Oh no oh no oh no,” their mother whispered.

Connor took off the mask, and when he got a good look at it, he gave it a small nod and took a breath.

Danny said, “Let’s me and you have a look in the bathroom.”

No one else moved at first, and Danny got Connor into the bathroom and locked the door as they heard the whole family find their legs and assemble out in the hall.

“Tilt your head,” Danny said.

Connor tilted his head. “Dan.”

“Shut up. Let me look.”

Someone turned the knob from the outside and his father said, “Open up.”

“Give us a second, will ya?”

“Dan,” Connor said, and his voice was still tremulous with laughter.

“Will you keep your head back? It’s not funny.”

“Well, you’re looking up my nose.”

“I know I am. Shut up.”

“You see any boogers?”

“A few.” Danny felt a smile trying to push through the muscles in his face. Leave it to Connor — serious as the grave on a normal day and now, possibly facing that grave, he couldn’t keep serious.

Someone rattled the door again and knocked.

“I picked it,” Connor said.

“What?”

“Just before Ma brought out the tea. I was in here. Had half my hand up there, Dan. Had one of those sharp rocks in there, you know the ones?”

Danny stopped looking in his brother’s nose. “You what?”

“Picked it,” Connor said. “I guess I need to cut my nails.”

Danny stared at him and Connor laughed. Danny slapped the side of his head and Connor rabbit-punched him. By the time they opened the door to the rest of the family, standing pale and angry in the hall, they were laughing again like bad altar boys.

“He’s fine.”

“I’m fine. Just a nosebleed. Look, Ma, it stopped.”

“Get a fresh mask from the kitchen,” their father said and walked back into the parlor with a wave of disgust.

Danny caught Joe looking at them with something akin to wonder.

“A nosebleed,” he said to Joe, drawing the word out.

“It’s not funny,” their mother said, and her voice was brittle.

“I know, Ma,” Connor said, “I know.”

“I do, too,” Danny said, catching a look from Nora now that nearly matched their mother’s, and then remembering her calling his brother “dear” Connor.

When did that start?

“No, you don’t,” their mother said. “You don’t at all. The two of you never did.” And she went into her bedroom and closed the door.

By the time Danny heard, Steve Coyle had been sick for five hours. He’d woken that morning, thighs turned to plaster, ankles swollen, calves twitching, head throbbing. He didn’t waste time pretending it was something else. He slipped out of the bedroom he’d shared last night with the Widow Coyle and grabbed his clothes and went out the door. Never paused, not even with his legs the way they were, dragging under the rest of him like they might just decide to stay put even if his torso kept going. After a few blocks, he told Danny, fucking legs screamed so much it was like they belonged to someone else. Fucking wailed, every step. He’d tried walking to the streetcar stop then realized he could infect the whole car. Then he remembered the streetcars had stopped running anyway. So a walk, then. Eleven blocks from the Widow Coyle’s cold-water flat at the top of Mission Hill all the way down to the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. Damn near crawling by the time he reached it, folded over like a broken match, cramps ballooning up through his stomach, his chest, his throat for Christ’s sake. And his head, Jesus. By the time he reached the admitting desk, it was like someone hammered pipe through his eyes.

He told all this to Danny from behind a pair of muslin curtains in the infectious disease ward of the intensive care unit at the Peter Bent. There was no one else in the ward the afternoon Danny came to see him, just the lumpen shape of a body beneath a sheet across the aisle. The rest of the beds were empty, the curtains pulled back. Somehow that was worse.

They’d given Danny a mask and gloves; the gloves were in his coat pocket; the mask hung at his throat. And yet he kept the muslin between him and Steve. Catching it didn’t scare him. These past few weeks? If you hadn’t made peace with your maker, then you didn’t believe you’d been made. But watching it drain Steve to the ground powder of himself — that would be something else. Something Danny would pass the cup on if Steve allowed him. Not the dying, just the witnessing.

Steve spoke like he was trying to gargle at the same time. The words pushed up through phlegm and the ends of sentences often drowned. “No Widow. Believe that?”

Danny said nothing. He’d only met the Widow Coyle once, and his sole impression was one of fussiness and anxious self-regard.