Dennis Lehane (Editor) - Boston Noir

After standing there a minute, Boupha pressed the doorbell again and heard it chime inside- bing-bong.

“They’re probably all out looking for you,” she said, scratching Edgar’s head.

She was about to knock when a voice called, “Can I help you?”

It came from the porch next door, from an older lady with puffy white hair and red lipstick. She wore a flowered apron over a powder-blue sweat suit. In one gloved hand, drawn like a weapon, she held a spade.

“I’m looking for the Friedmans,” Boupha said.

“I’m sorry, the Friedmans aren’t here. They’re both gone.”

“I think I found their dog.”

“Is that Edgar?” the woman said, craning as if she couldn’t see him. “I thought the police took him.”

Just the mention of them made Boupha want to excuse herself.

“Wait right there.” The woman tottered down the stairs and across the yard. “Oh God, it is Edgar.”

Boupha went right into her story. When she described finding the blade, the woman covered her mouth with both hands.

“Oh dear, you don’t know, do you? You didn’t hear what happened to them?”

“No.”

“I thought everyone knew. It was all over the TV. There were reporters tromping all over my yard. I refused to talk to them. I told them they could go dig up their dirt somewhere else. It was a tragedy, that’s all. God forgives everything, I have to believe that. The people I feel sorry for are the children.”

“What happened?”

She really didn’t want to talk about it. The woman would just give Boupha the basics-she could get them from the paper anyway.

Last Wednesday, in the middle of the night, Mr. Friedman, who was having serious health problems, took a kitchen knife and stabbed Mrs. Friedman-who was having even more serious health problems-many times. Then Mr. Friedman stabbed himself, once, in the neck (the woman gestured with the spade). He survived, she died, which the woman guessed was better than the other way around, but it was still horrible. They were both such nice people. Mrs. Friedman had been president of the Hadassah.

“I’m sorry,” Boupha said.

“It’s no mystery. He couldn’t take care of her anymore, that was all. He was afraid.”

“You said there are children.” She petted Edgar as if to show how good he was.

“They’re long gone. They wanted to get as far away as possible from this mess, and I don’t blame them. I don’t have the slightest idea how to get ahold of them. You might try the police. It’s a shame. He always had such a sweet disposition for a shepherd. I’d take him in a second if I wasn’t allergic.”

“Is there anyone around here who could?”

The woman shrugged and shook her head as if there was nothing anyone could do.

Boupha knew what her father would do. He’d leave the dog sitting on the porch and drive away. Boupha thought she could have done that too, if the woman wasn’t standing there. Maybe later she could come back and tie him to a tree in the backyard-but how long would he be there, and who would find him? She might as well drive over to Brighton and drop him off at animal control.

She thanked the woman and-finally resorting to treats again-convinced Edgar to get back in the cab. In the rearview mirror, he watched his old home go, and she wondered if, that night, he’d tried to protect Mrs. Friedman, or whether it had already been too late and he was just lucky to escape. The way he acted on the porch, she wasn’t sure he understood what had happened. Had he expected them to be there waiting for him?

He was old, and hurt, and maybe he couldn’t imagine that great of a change.

When she let him out in their parking lot, she noticed bloody pawprints on the seat. He’d probably opened the cut running across the yard.

“I tell you!” her father shouted. “You get rid of him! Boupha!”

She closed the bathroom door to tend to Edgar, but the butterflies were fine. In the other room, her father raged.

“Stop!” she finally shouted. “I can hear you. Everyone can hear you. I’ll get rid of him when he’s better. Right now he’s sick.”

“That’s why you need to get rid of him! You’re not a doctor!”

She wasn’t, and she really needed to be. That night, as she was falling asleep, Edgar got up from his corner, padded to a spot in front of her closet, and squatted. The puddling noise woke her.

“No!” she yelled. “Bad!”

Fearing diarrhea, she turned on the light and saw he was unleashing a bloody stream. He looked over at her guiltily as it gushed out of him onto the carpet.

She jumped up in just her T-shirt and dragged him into the kitchen so he would go on the linoleum, because he wasn’t done, but that only made a bigger mess.

“What’s happening?” her father shouted.

“He’s sick.”

“I tell you that already.”

Someone upstairs stomped on the floor.

“Shut up!” Boupha yelled at the ceiling.

Bomp, bomp, bomp!

“Boupha! Listen to me! Get rid of it!”

In the whole city, the only animal hospital that was open was in Brookline. She laid down towels, knowing they wouldn’t do any good. He couldn’t stop. She couldn’t stop it. Her father was right, she wasn’t a doctor, and when she parked by the sliding doors and carried the dog inside, her sopping T-shirt sticking to her skin, there was nothing the doctor could do either.

She paid them to take care of him, a week’s worth of tips.

“What I tell you?” her father said. “You don’t listen. Stupid.”

The next morning she cleaned the carpet, going over the spot with Resolve and a scrub brush. She threw out the toys and blankets and folded the cage away. She took the car to the self-wash, using the rubber gloves and Oust one last time.

She worked. She drove. She bought her father cigarettes and listened to him cough. In the night he summoned her. “Boupha!” he called. “Boupha!” And sometimes, as she made her way through the darkened kitchen, she imagined the knives piled in the silverware drawer, and wondered how strong or how weak you would have to be to use them. Not very, she thought.

Southie

Father Tom Mulcahy can’t seem to get warm. He’s wearing his bulky cardigan sweater over his flannel pajamas over his V-neck T-shirt. He’s got fleece-lined cordovan slippers on over his woolen socks and an afghan folded over his lap. The radiator is clanging and hissing in the corner, and he’s still shivering. He tugs his watch cap over his ears, wipes his runny nose with a tissue. He stares at the bed against the wall and longs for the sleep of the dead. The window rattles. The weather people expect eighteen to twenty inches from the storm. He sips his Irish whiskey, swallows the other half of the Ativan, opens Meister Eckhart, and reads how all of our suffering comes from love and affection. He slips the venomous letter into the book to mark his page. The red numerals on the alarm clock seem to float in their black box. He sees his galoshes tucked under the radiator, the shaft of the right one bent to the floor. He’s so tired he wonders if the droopy galosh might be a sign from God. Then he smiles and takes another sip of whiskey.

He lifts a corner of the curtain, peeks out on the driveway below, and sees fresh footprints leading to the elementary school. Probably Mr. O’Toole, the parish custodian, up early to clear the walk, an exercise in futility, it seems to Father Tom. The snow swirls, and the huge flakes look like black moths in the spotlight over the rectory porch. How new the world seems like this, all the clutter and debris mantled in white. He looks at the school and remembers the childhood exhilaration of snow days. Up early, radio on, listening to ’BZ, waiting for Carl De Suze to read the cancellation notices: “No school in Arlington, Belmont, and Beverly. No school, all schools, Boston…” In the years before his brother died, Tom would wake Gerard with the wicked good news, and the pair of them would pester their mom for cocoa and then snuggle under blankets on the couch and watch TV while she trudged off to work at Filene’s. They’d eat lunch watching Big Brother Bob Emery, and they’d toast President Eisenhower with their glasses of milk while Big Brother’s phonograph played “Hail to the Chief.” Maybe if Gerard had lived, if they’d taken him to the hospital before it was too late, maybe then their dad would not have lost heart and found the highway.