Read Online Mystic River by Dennis Lehane - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Dennis Lehane
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hero. Maura in his bed. Fate on his side.
Dave Boyle. Unaware, then, how short futures could be. How quick they could disappear, leave you with nothing but a long-ass present that held no surprises, no reason for hope, nothing but days that bled into one another with so little impact that another year was over and the calendar page in the kitchen was still stuck on March.
I will not dream anymore, you said. I will not set myself up for the pain. But then your team made the playoffs, or you saw a movie, or a billboard glowing dusky orange and advertising Aruba, or a girl who bore more than a passing resemblance to a woman you’d dated in high school—a woman you’d loved and lost—danced above you with shimmering eyes, and you said, fuck it, let’s dream just one more time.
O NCE WHEN Rosemary Savage Samarco was on her deathbed (the fifth of ten), she’d told her daughter, Celeste Boyle: “Swear to Christ, the only pleasure I ever got in this life was snapping your father’s balls like a wet sheet on a dry day.”
Celeste had given her a distant smile and tried to turn away, but her mother’s arthritic claw clamped over her wrist and squeezed straight through to the bone.
“You listen to me, Celeste. I’m dying, so I’m serious as shit. There’s what you get—if you’re lucky —in this life, and it ain’t much in the first place. I’ll be dead tomorrow and I want my daughter to understand: You get one thing. Hear me? One thing in the whole world that gives you pleasure. Mine was busting your bastard father’s balls every chance I got.” Her eyes gleamed and spittle dotted her lips. “Trust me, after a while? He loved it.”
Celeste wiped her mother’s forehead with a towel. She smiled down on her and said, “Momma,” in a soft, cooing voice. She dabbed the spittle from her lips and stroked the inside of her hand, all the time thinking, I’ve got to get out of here. Out of this house, out of this neighborhood, out of thiscrazy place where people’s brains rotted straight through from being too poor and too pissed off and too helpless to do anything about it for too fucking long.
Her mother kept living, though. She survived colitis, diabetic seizures, renal failure, two myocardial infarctions, cancerous malignancies in one breast and her colon. Her pancreas stopped working one day, just quit, then suddenly showed back up for work a week later, raring to go, and doctors repeatedly asked Celeste if they could study her mother’s body after she died.
The first few times, Celeste had asked, “Which part?”
“All of it.”
Rosemary Savage Samarco had a brother in the Flats she hated, two sisters living in Florida who wouldn’t talk to her, and she’d busted her husband’s balls so successfully he dove into an early grave to escape her. Celeste was her only child after eight miscarriages. When she was little, Celeste used to imagine all those almost-sisters and almost-brothers floating around Limbo and think, You caught a break.
When Celeste had been a teenager, she’d been sure someone would come along to take her away from all this. She wasn’t bad-looking. She wasn’t bitter, had a good personality, knew how to laugh. She figured, all things considered, it should happen. Problem was, even though she met a few candidates, they weren’t of sweep-her-off-her-feet caliber. The majority were from Buckingham, mostly Point or Flat punks here in East Bucky, a few from Rome Basin, and one guy from uptown she’d met while attending Blaine Hairstyling School, but he was gay, even though he hadn’t figured it out yet.
Her mother’s health insurance was for shit, and pretty soon Celeste found herself working simply to pay the minimum due on monstrous medical bills for monstrous diseases that weren’t quite monstrous enough to put her mother out of her misery. Not that her mother didn’t enjoy her misery. Every bout with disease was a fresh trump card to wield in what Dave called the
Dave Boyle. Unaware, then, how short futures could be. How quick they could disappear, leave you with nothing but a long-ass present that held no surprises, no reason for hope, nothing but days that bled into one another with so little impact that another year was over and the calendar page in the kitchen was still stuck on March.
I will not dream anymore, you said. I will not set myself up for the pain. But then your team made the playoffs, or you saw a movie, or a billboard glowing dusky orange and advertising Aruba, or a girl who bore more than a passing resemblance to a woman you’d dated in high school—a woman you’d loved and lost—danced above you with shimmering eyes, and you said, fuck it, let’s dream just one more time.
O NCE WHEN Rosemary Savage Samarco was on her deathbed (the fifth of ten), she’d told her daughter, Celeste Boyle: “Swear to Christ, the only pleasure I ever got in this life was snapping your father’s balls like a wet sheet on a dry day.”
Celeste had given her a distant smile and tried to turn away, but her mother’s arthritic claw clamped over her wrist and squeezed straight through to the bone.
“You listen to me, Celeste. I’m dying, so I’m serious as shit. There’s what you get—if you’re lucky —in this life, and it ain’t much in the first place. I’ll be dead tomorrow and I want my daughter to understand: You get one thing. Hear me? One thing in the whole world that gives you pleasure. Mine was busting your bastard father’s balls every chance I got.” Her eyes gleamed and spittle dotted her lips. “Trust me, after a while? He loved it.”
Celeste wiped her mother’s forehead with a towel. She smiled down on her and said, “Momma,” in a soft, cooing voice. She dabbed the spittle from her lips and stroked the inside of her hand, all the time thinking, I’ve got to get out of here. Out of this house, out of this neighborhood, out of thiscrazy place where people’s brains rotted straight through from being too poor and too pissed off and too helpless to do anything about it for too fucking long.
Her mother kept living, though. She survived colitis, diabetic seizures, renal failure, two myocardial infarctions, cancerous malignancies in one breast and her colon. Her pancreas stopped working one day, just quit, then suddenly showed back up for work a week later, raring to go, and doctors repeatedly asked Celeste if they could study her mother’s body after she died.
The first few times, Celeste had asked, “Which part?”
“All of it.”
Rosemary Savage Samarco had a brother in the Flats she hated, two sisters living in Florida who wouldn’t talk to her, and she’d busted her husband’s balls so successfully he dove into an early grave to escape her. Celeste was her only child after eight miscarriages. When she was little, Celeste used to imagine all those almost-sisters and almost-brothers floating around Limbo and think, You caught a break.
When Celeste had been a teenager, she’d been sure someone would come along to take her away from all this. She wasn’t bad-looking. She wasn’t bitter, had a good personality, knew how to laugh. She figured, all things considered, it should happen. Problem was, even though she met a few candidates, they weren’t of sweep-her-off-her-feet caliber. The majority were from Buckingham, mostly Point or Flat punks here in East Bucky, a few from Rome Basin, and one guy from uptown she’d met while attending Blaine Hairstyling School, but he was gay, even though he hadn’t figured it out yet.
Her mother’s health insurance was for shit, and pretty soon Celeste found herself working simply to pay the minimum due on monstrous medical bills for monstrous diseases that weren’t quite monstrous enough to put her mother out of her misery. Not that her mother didn’t enjoy her misery. Every bout with disease was a fresh trump card to wield in what Dave called the
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