The Treads in Our Lives
Topic: Book Reviews


I told Mr. Tiger what I was reading yesterday. "I was reading the absorbing novel, Mystic River by Dennis Lehane. Had me sobbing like I haven't cried in a long time," I added.

'You could have rented the movie instead of spending all those hours reading a whodunit mystery.'

He was right again. I could have. I did enjoy the movie version when it first came out in the theaters in 2003. Watching the DVD would have been quicker. Nonetheless, I was glad to have read the book. I tried to explain to the pest. "Clint Eastwood did a great job directing the film and the actors did well too, but still," I said, straining to articulate, "there's something that only the written word effectively communicates. Something about the language of Life that a story about 3 eleven year old boys, one of whom was accosted, could reach."

I went on with an excerpt from pages 173 and 174 of Mystic River. Jimmy, the father of teenager Katie - the murder victim, is talking to his old buddy Sean and another cop named Whitey. They are in the morgue.

"Mr. Marcus," Whitey said, "we were hoping to ask you a few questions. I know it's a hard time, but..."

Jimmy lowered the sheet back over his daughters's face, his lips moving, but no sounds leaving his mouth. He looked over at Whitey as if he were surprised to find him in the room, pen poised over his report pad. He turned his head, looked at Sean.

"You ever think," said Jimmy, "how the most minor decision can change the entire direction of your life?"

Sean held his eyes. "How so?"

Jimmy's face was pale and blank, the eyes turned up as if he were trying to remember where he left his car keys.

"I heard once that Hitler's mother almost aborted him but bailed out at the last minute. I heard he left Vienna because he couldn't sell his paintings. He sells a painting, though, Sean? Or his mother actually aborts? The world's a way different place. You know? Or, like, say you miss your bus one morning, so you buy a second cup of coffee, buy a scratch ticket while you're at it. The scratch ticket hits. Suddenly you don't have to take the bus anymore. You drive to work in a Lincoln. But you get in a car crash and you die. All because you missed the bus one day."

Sean looked at Whitey. Whitey shrugged.

"No," Jimmy said, "don't do that. Don't look at him like I'm crazy. I'm not crazy. I'm not in shock."

"Okay, Jim."

"I'm just saying there are threads, okay? Threads in our lives. You pull one, and everything else gets effected. Say it rained in Dallas and so Kennedy didn't ride in a convertible. Stalin stayed in the seminary. Say you and me, Sean, say we got in the car with Dave Boyle."

"What?" Whitey said. "What car?"

Sean held up a hand and said to Jimmy, "I'm losing you here."

"You are? If we got in the car, life would have been a different thing. My first wife, Marita, Katie's mother? She was so beautiful. She was regal. You know the way some Latin woman can be? Gorgeous. And she knew it. If a guy wanted to approach her, he better have some big balls on him. And I did. I was King Shit at sixteen. I was fearless. And I did approach her, and I did ask her out. And a year later - Christ, I was seventeen, a child - we got married and she was carrying Katie.

Jimmy walked around his daughter's body in slow, steady circles.

"Here's the thing, Sean - if we'd gotten in that car, been driven off to God knows where and had God knows what done to us by two freaks for four days when we were, what eleven? - I don't think I'd have been so ballsy at sixteen. I think I would have been a basket case, you know, stoked on Ritalin or whatever. I know never would have had what it took to ask out a woman as haughty gorgeous as Marita. And so we never would have had Katie. And Katie, then, never would have been murdered. But she was. All because we didn't get in that car, Sean. You see what I'm saying?"

'Done yet? asked Mr. Tiger, acting as though he were struggling to make sense of the above.

"Yeah," I said with anticipation, "just another few pages to read before I'm finished with this powerful novel."

---------------
post note:
"Hey Tige, "Ever wonder how a post would appear if you copied and pasted only half of it into the entry place? That is exactly what happened on this post. I'm leaving it as is...kinda like it too."