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Summary of

Small Mercies

A

Summary of Dennis Lehane’s Novel

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Summary of Small Mercies a Novel by Dennis Lehane

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NOTE TO READERS

This is an unofficial summary & analysis of Dennis Lehane’s “Capitalist Punishment: How Wall Street Is Using Your Money to Create a Country You Didn't Vote For” designed to enrich your reading experience.

 

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The contents of the summary are not intended to replace the original book. It is meant as a supplement to enhance the reader's understanding. The contents within can neither be stored electronically, transferred, nor kept in a database. Neither part nor full can the document be copied, scanned, faxed, or retained without the approval from the publisher or creator.

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Copyright 2023. All rights reserved.

Historical Note

Judge Garrity ruled in Morgan v. Hennigan that the Boston School Committee had "systematically disadvantaged black school children" in the public school system and ordered busing students between predominantly white and predominantly black neighborhoods to desegregate the city's public high schools.

1

Mary Pat wakes up to sweltering temperatures in her Fennessy apartment. She lights her first cigarette and stares out the window. To get the family out of arrears, she has picked up two shifts at the shoe warehouse and a trip to the billing office. She carries the trash can into the living room and sweeps the beer cans into it. She sees a creature she can't reconcile with in her mind, but she isn't aging.

She is peering at her face in the TV when the doorbell rings. Brian Shea is a Butler crew member who works for Marty Butler. He wears a white T-shirt under a navy blue Baracuta, blond hair cropped tight in a crew cut, and off-white chinos and scuffed black ankle boots with zippers on the sides. He has eyes the color of Windex and asks Mary Pat if she can help him with the signs for the rally, which is happening Friday at City Hall Plaza. Mary Pat places the slats in the umbrella bucket just inside her door.

Brian and Mary Pat are attending a protest to end judiciary dictatorship on Friday, August 30, at City Hall Plaza. They are asked to pass out leaflets asking people to cover specific blocks, such as Mercer between Eighth and Dorchester Street, Telegraph to the park, and all the houses ringing the park. Brian offers protection to the IRA, starving children in Wherever the Fuck, and families of veterans. Mary Pat asks Brian if he can shoot the judge, but he replies that he'll do it for her. Mary Pat's daughter, Jules, is aging at seventeen due to a variety of factors, including growing up in Commonwealth, losing a brother, being forced to enter a new school, and getting into trouble with her friends.

Jules is addicted to booze, cigarettes, and the Scourge, which can turn healthy kids into corpses in under a year. If Jules keeps it to these substances, she will only lose her looks and everyone in the projects will lose their looks. Mary Pat's mother, Louise "Weezie" Flanagan, a Hall of Fame Irish Tough Broad, told her that Mary Pat was either a fighter or a runner. Jules, Mary Pat's daughter, is tall and sinewy, with long smooth hair the color of an apple. She is fragile in the eyes, flesh, and soul.

Mary Pat wishes she had found a way to get them out of Commonwealth before Jules finds out which she is. Mary Pat and Jules are going to City Hall to rally against the Scourge. Mary Pat's voice is a wet whisper when she says, "You bet, sweetie." Mary Pat and Noel are living in South Boston, where black and white kids are about to be bused into Southie and out to Roxbury. Mary Pat has worked alongside many blacks and knows that they want the same things she does, such as a steady paycheck, food on the table, and children safe in their beds. Noel has seen a lot of coloreds walking up West Broadway, but she misses his smile.

Noel kisses her on the top of her head and tells her she's too nice for these projects. Project kids in Southie hate staying in the way rich people hate work. Mary Pat and Jules are taking Mary Pat to back-to-school shopping, but Mary Pat doesn't have a stove. Jules encourages Mary Pat to get a job before she breaks her head in, but Mary Pat refuses. Jules helps Mary Pat knock on doors and they start in the Heights.

Mary Pat and Jules visit a park and monument, where many people aren't home. Mary Pat takes Jules to Robell's and buys her a notebook, four-pack of pens, a blue nylon school bag, and jeans. On the walk home, Jules asks her mother why she doesn't feel the way other people seem to feel. Her mother tries to explain that she doesn't understand why she doesn't feel the way other people seem to feel. Mary Pat's daughter, Jules, is tired of lying to her mother, Mary Pat, and wants to know why they are doing this.

Mary Pat kneads her daughter's palms with her thumbs, and Jules gives her a smile that's sad and knowing. Mary Pat asks Jules if she is PMSing, and Jules hucks out a liquid chuckle. Mary Pat kneads her daughter's palms with her thumbs, and Jules gives her a smile that's sad and knowing. Mary Pat kneads her daughter's palms with her thumbs, and Jules gives her a smile that's sad and knowing. Mary Pat kneads her daughter's palms with her thumbs, and Jules gives her a smile that's sad and knowing.

Mary Pat is tired of her daughter Jules, who owes her twelve sixty-two school supplies. Mary Pat gives Jules the third degree because she is worried about her. Jules smiles and tells Mary Pat that nothing makes sense. Mary Pat hugs her daughter on the sidewalk and ignores the stares of passersby. She tells Jules it's okay and that someday it will make sense, even though she's waiting for that day herself.

2

Jules and Brenda come to Mary Pat's house, where Brenda is short and blond with huge brown eyes and a full and fleshy figure. Mary Pat gets stuck in the kitchen with Ronald "Rum" Collins, who has the conversational skills of a baked ham and has mastered the art of saying very little around girls and his peers at Southie High. Mary Pat tells him that she doesn't like colors in her milk, but he gets a look in his eyes like he's putting something over on Kellogg's. He slaps Mary Pat's hip and lets loose a high-pitched cackle-yelp that makes Mary Pat want to brain him with a rolling pin. Mary Pat and Jules have a brief encounter at Shaughnessy's, a bar known for its Saturday-night brawls and pot roast.

Mary Pat is reminded that her gas is shut off and walks up the block to Shaughnessy's, which is known for its Saturday-night brawls and pot roast. Mary Pat drinks two Old Mil drafts and shoots the shit with Tina McGuiggan, who has known Mary Pat since kindergarten. Tina's husband, Ricky, is doing seven to ten at Walpole for an attempted armored car heist. Ricky is doing easy time, but it doesn't help Tina make her rent or keep her four kids in uniforms. Mary Pat encourages Tina to try the pot roast, but Tina refuses.

Mary Pat reminds Tina that there is a limited amount of good luck in the world, and if it doesn't fall from the sky and land on her, there isn't a damn thing she can do. Mary Pat and Tina are discussing pot roast. Tina is mad because someone told her the pot roast wasn't as good as it used to be. Mary Pat is surprised by Tina's weariness in her own voice, and they lock eyes. Timmy Gavigan is from a family of nine and works at a muffler place.

Mary Pat hopes Timmy will sort himself out before a nickel in prison. She spends two hours attaching signs to the sticks Brian Shea dropped off with the nails Timmy G provided. Mary Pat is doing her small part to stand up against tyranny by hammering signs to sticks in Southie High School. She feels a kinship with black people, as they are all victims of the same thing. The judge who ordered the signs lives in Wellesley, where his own law won't apply, and Mary Pat can't blame the coloreds for wanting to escape their shithole, but trading it for her shithole makes no sense.

The Other Voice asks Mary Pat how many names she knows for black people. Dukie is a woman who grew up in Rutledge in Commonwealth, New York. She has a daughter, Benny, and a son, Benny Jr., who are all named after signers of the Declaration of Independence. Dukie tries to help Benny, but he refuses to quit. She encourages him to try, but he refuses to quit.

Dukie's daughter, Benny Jr., is also a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Mary Pat hears Ken Fen's voice and wonders if he's still mad at her. She asks the dark why he stopped loving her, but he doesn't seem to care. As she falls asleep, she can hear the grid of circuits and conduits that channel electricity, water, and heat to power her world. She can imagine it spreading across her consciousness in a blanket of soft light. It is all connected.

3

Mary Pat works as a hospital aide at Meadow Lane Manor in Bay Village, a neighborhood that can't decide if it's white, black, or queer. She works the morning shift, seven to three-thirty, Sunday through Thursday, with a half hour off for lunch. Jules never comes home that night, and Mary Pat calls Brenda's father, Eugene, to check if Jules is there. Eugene gulps coffee and takes a deep drag before hanging up. Mary Pat heads to work, arriving a minute before start time.

Sister Fran looks like she's thinking of whipping out one of her "God favors" nuggets of wisdom, but she merely snorts and leaves her to start her day. Mary Pat's job is to clean bedpans, give daily baths to grown adults, and maintain an air of servility. She and Gert Armstrong and Anne O'Leary are behind the eight ball the whole morning due to Dreamy, the only black woman on their shift. Dreamy is the only black woman on their shift and everyone likes her. Mary Pat and Dreamy have a white-and-black friendship, but Sister Vi gets a weird look in her eyes.

After breakfast, they are on to bedpans or helping those who aren't quite at the bedpan stage get to the bathroom. Mary Pat and the other girls at a nursing home are aides to the elderly. On her lunch break, she calls home and gets Brenda's mother, Suze, but they don't answer. Dottie Lloyd mentions a "nigger drug dealer got himself killed" at Columbia Station, and Mary Pat reads the afternoon edition of the Herald American. The article reports that Augustus Williamson, twenty, was found dead under the inbound platform of Columbia Station early this morning and that police have confirmed he suffered multiple head traumas.

Mary Pat stays on her side of town and asks why they have to antagonize. Mary Pat and her friends have a hard

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 04.05.2023
ISBN: 978-3-7554-4113-7

Alle Rechte vorbehalten

Widmung:
Mary Pat Fennessy searches for her missing daughter and questions Marty Butler, chieftain of the Irish mob, in Small Mercies, a mesmerizing and powerful work by Dennis Lehane.