Pages 958–960
A smoky lunchtime AA meeting somewhere in Boston, on an unspecified November day: one of the round-robin-speaker deals, five minutes per speaker, each picking the next from the crowd, a chairperson with a clock and a novelty-shop gong. The whole scene is a single share, transcribed podium-to-gong: the speaker is Mikey — "alcoholic and addict and a sick fuck, you know what I'm saying?" — and no one interrupts him. The voice is unbroken Boston-street monologue, profanity as punctuation; that's transcription, not noise. What it's about is plain and hard: a father under a court order, trying to see a kid whose cast he caused.
Terms, in order of appearance
- the boat-ayouse (p. 959) — Boston-street contraction: "both of youse."
- half in the bag (p. 959) — slang: already drunk.
- irregarding / irregardless (p. 959) — nonstandard "regardless"; Mikey's grammar, transcribed straight.
- light (somebody) up (p. 960) — Boston slang: beat somebody badly; "the temper and judge" is why he got sober.
- a hundred m.'s (p. 960) — meters; the restraining order's radius, metric like everything else here.
- renting space (p. 960) — AA idiom for a resentment you keep replaying: "It's been up in my head, renting space."
After you read: three things
1. Notice what you're seeing through. Mikey stands at the podium "blurred a bit through the linen" (p. 958) — the scene reaches you through fabric, from a seat in the crowd. The page never says whose linen; you've spent a lot of this book near a woman who views the world through exactly that material. The placing is left entirely to you.
2. The prayer works on the person it has to work on. Track the share's one turn: the old Mikey comes out (truck on the lawn, the crotch-grab exit), and then, driving home in a killing rage, "I all of a sudden try and pray" — and what comes to him is that he has to go back and apologize "irregardless, for grabbing my balls at them, cause that's old fucking behavior" (p. 959). He does. The apology is refused. The program you've watched Gately learn since pp. 343–67 says the amend was still for him — and the scene shows that, without once saying it.
3. The kid never appears. Every approach is mediated — phone consent, screen door, hook latch, the hundred-meter order — and the share ends with Mikey not even knowing "for sure if the cast is even off" (p. 960). What he came to say is "I scared me"; what the meeting does with it is laugh, gong, and call on Tommy E. Both things are true at once, and the scene asks you to hold them that way.
Written only from this scene and earlier pages. Safe to read before you start.