Small Mercies

In the tightly-knit community of South Boston, everyone knows everyone, enabling a level of trust in one’s friends, extended family, and neighbors to provide help when needed. This in turn creates open lines of communication so that ideally, there are no secrets, at least none that stay secret for very long. When Jules does not come home, Mary Pat trusts this network as she goes to work, but instead of information or substantial promises of help, all she gets are clichés about how children “always turn up” (26) and “if she turns up, I’ll send her your way” (60). As Mary Pat steps up her efforts and finds out the truth about Jules, the shock and horror includes the realization that seemingly everyone knew what happened except Mary Pat. When she finds out about the relationship between Jules and Frank Toomey, Donna Shea tells her “Everyone knew,” to which she replies, “Who’s everyone?” (68), and the ensuing conversation soon reveals Donna’s implicit knowledge—and lack of concern—about Jules’s situation. Similarly, as Mary Pat interrogates Rum, asking him how he knows Jules is dead, he responds, “Everyone knows” (169). Mary Pat is therefore left on the outside of the community she once trusted, precisely because she believed in a more idealized notion of community in which people look out for one another. Instead, she discovers the reality: a community that enforces a grim code of silence in order to protect the powerful. Whether her neighbors fear retribution or are just too fatalistic to imagine a world in which Butler and his associates are held accountable for their ghastly crimes, the fact remains that the code of silence persists, and Mary Pat must be kept in ignorance because she is the one person who won’t keep silent.