“Oh, he’ll come through, all right. Not for me. He’ll do it for you.”
They stayed with Ray for months, until Sylvia saved enough for a deposit on a dingy one-bedroom in Dorchester, where Kathy slept on the foldout sofa. When the time came to move, Ray begged them not to. They could stay forever as far as he was concerned. He considered the three of them a family, he said. But Sylvia heard it just as him wanting her in his bed. She wasn’t the type to care for a man because he treated her well. Just the opposite, in fact, judging by Eddie, and the guy she took up with next—Marty, who owned a restaurant in Scituate that he managed with his wife. Marty dumped Sylvia, as did the guy after him. Ray, ever hopeful, was always there to pick up the pieces.
Kathy feared the day he gave up on them.
Beginning when they were staying at his house, Ray took an interest in her education. It started one night when she asked Sylvia to quiz her for a history test, and Sylvia couldn’t be bothered. But Ray happily stepped in, asking the sample questions, critiquing her answers. The next day when she brought home a hundred on the test, he was tickled. After that, he promised to pay ten bucks for every A on her report card. When she made straight A’s that term, he actually paid up. Sixty bucks—she bought clothes with it. Maybe that was a normal thing for a parent to do, but nobody had ever done it for Kathy. Ray Logue made her into a serious student. It wasn’t because she wanted money. She just couldn’t stand the thought of disappointing him.
The way he started paying for her education, though, was a bit more complicated.
One afternoon in eighth grade, she had a hall pass to go to the bathroom. She was walking down an empty hallway when a kid came running, folding up a knife. He slowed down, making eye contact and putting a finger to his lips. Mikey Bruno. He was bad news. She froze. But around the corner, someone was screaming. She found Mikey’s victim writhing on the floor, covered in blood, and ran for the nurse. That kid ended up losing an eye. The cops wanted to interview her. But Ray wouldn’t allow it. We don’t snitch, he said, and besides, I know that kid’s father. You don’t want to mess with him. Kathy was upset. It was wrong to stay silent. But Ray insisted it was too dangerous, and ultimately she was persuaded. Something good came of it in the end. He decided her school wasn’t a good fit. A smart kid like Kathy was wasting her time in that dump, he said. He helped her fill out the application for Catholic Prep and agreed to pay her tuition, a promise he kept even after they moved out, and despite the fact that Sylvia continued to rebuff his advances. Maybe Kathy should’ve questioned his motives. She just thought he cared.
He did care. He couldn’t’ve faked that for so many years, with the effort he put in, the way he showed up for her. Encouraging her interest in history and English, hiring a tutor for math, which was her weakness. He even found a college consultant who told her which extracurricular activities to pursue if she wanted to get into an Ivy. An Ivy. Her? Ray was a BC man, college and law school. She wouldn’t’ve dared to dream beyond what he’d done himself, but he dreamed for her. Kathy was smarter than him, he said. And the truth was, her grades were perfect. There were few distractions. Boys scared her. She wasn’t one of the popular kids and didn’t run in the fast crowd. She was the treasurer on student council, sang in the chorus, and volunteered as a Big Sister. The teachers who wrote her letters of recommendation talked up how remarkable she was, as the child of a single mom who’d dropped out of high school and been ill throughout Kathy’s childhood. She didn’t feel remarkable. But the combination of her accomplishments and her life story was enough to get her into Harvard.
On the day of her college graduation, Kathy was sweating beneath her cap and gown, hung over from partying the night before. Freshman year, she’d discovered drinking and never looked back. She collected her diploma and went hunting for Sylvia in the massive crowd. It was Ray she spotted, big and bulky, coming toward her, waving and beaming with pride, her delicate mother on his arm. And her heart swelled.
He’d booked them a table at Union Oyster House to celebrate. The place was jammed that day, a line out the door of the old brick building with its mullioned windows. Ray pushed his way into the paneled dining room and claimed the prime booth set aside for him, which had a gilded sconce and an oil painting of that same room a hundred years ago. A regular for decades, he knew everybody in the place, and the waiters were falling over themselves to bring them champagne, oysters on the half shell, a seafood platter to share.