if I want to go to pieces/ I can do that
A/N: I will warn you before you read this: there are sentences so long that they seem to run on and section breaks that make no sense in the story. This is such an utterly defragmented story. There is no correlation between some of the substance except for in my own twisted head, and I can't even explain it to myself. I guess it's the influence of the title, which has its own story: see end author's notes. So don't ask me why some of these sections belong together; they probably don't. But they make sense as a story to me, so I put them as a story. For epithette, she knows why, especially with that discussion we had about section breaks and poetry: here is an example of what NOT to do. For tailwind, who asked why no one showed Connor any love, when I thought the question should have been "Why doesn't anyone show Murphy some love?"
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Connor used to bite his fingernails when he was younger.
At first it wasn't because he was nervous or anything like that. It was because his mother never had the time to cut them for him, and their nail clipper was always lost. Connor would look at his hands, his fingernails dirty and rimmed with black, and he would run them under the water and tear the long white part that extended over his fingertip with his teeth. Slow and careful like that. He was so dreadfully careful with the way he would bite off his fingernails. His fingernails, if you look at them now, are still long and slender, not bitten to the quick.
Then he grew up and his fingernails weren't that dirty anymore. By then he had developed sort of a liking for the way they tasted and felt in his mouth, angular and almost bony, and by then it had become a habit.
When they moved to America, his mother found out about his habit of biting off his long nails. Instead of buying a nail clipper, and Connor was and still is convinced that their old nail clipper still rests in a crevice in their old house in Ireland, she went out and bought a pair of completely metal scissors about the size of her palm, scissors with huge rounded handles and two blades at the top about the size of the first segment of Connor's thumb. It was a good idea on her part anyway; she used the same scissors to both cut their nails and mend or lengthen their clothes. Connor remembers her rushing home after she bought them new pants and in an effort to prolong the time before she would have to buy new pairs of pants for them, doing her best to extend the fabric folded up under for the seams. Connor, good at metaphors since he was a kid, something that would later surface as an attribute to his future priesthood, liked to compare the ripped seams of their new pants lying on the kitchen table, which functioned as the multipurpose flat surface in their house, to the slightly yellowed curved slips of their nails.
Murphy, good at playing devil's adovcate since he was a kid, something that would later surface as an attribute to convincing Connor not to go into priesthood, liked to say Connor was insane.
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This might not be true, but Connor thinks that the reason they went to America is because their mother is still hoping to run into their father. The last news they ever got from them was a postcard from Massachussetts on the boys' tenth birthday, and they only reason they thought it was from him was because the date on the postcard, instead of being any date close to the boys' birthdate was instead the day their parents got married. There was no name or address on the postcard, and it was sent to one of their cousin's house. The only reason that their cousin thought it was from their father was because their father is the only person from both sides of the family to have ever left Ireland for America, and the front of the postcard had the words 'The United States of America' printed in small block letters on the bottom.
Connor has never bothered to point out to their mother that even though the postcard was from Massachusetts, it doesn't mean that their father sent it from Massachussetts. In fact, now that he knows what his father is like, Connor is quite convinced that his father didn't mail it from Massachussetts and, in an effort to make himself even more obscure, had grabbed a postcard of Massachussetts quite randomly. Murphy has brought up this subjects a few times before with their mother, always starting with, Ma, you know that postcard?, but always stopping before he got to the brunt of the point.
What makes you think, Murphy had asked Connor once, after another one of his missed attempts, that if you don't have the heart to do it, I do? Connor had shrugged and that was that, but the reason he had been looking for was just--
Well, it just wasn't a reason.
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After their mother left them by themselves in Boston, there was, among other things, no one to cut his fingernails, and so for a while Connor just let them grow long and would break them off with his teeth again, until one night Murphy suddenly took out a pair of scissors so similar to the pair that their mother used to cut off their fingernails that Connor just stared at the pair of scissors in Murphy's hand, scrutinizing it for scratches or their mother's fingerprints. But it just turned out that Murphy had been looking around for a pair and had finally gotten his hands on one through a friend of a friend.
So for a while Murphy was the one cutting Connor's fingernails, and Connor cut Murphy's, and it was almost like having their mother back again. Neither of them were particularily good at it first, so their nails were blunt and had awkward edges and just generally looked a mess, but they both eventually got the gist of it and it worked a lot better. Neither of them could replicate the small, attractive rim of white that their mother could do when cutting their nails. Murphy was always just a little better at it than Connor, but both of them were undeniably male at it.
Anyway. Here's the reason Connor doesn't think is a reason:
One time, when Murphy was cutting Connor's nails, Connor had rather absently remarked, sometimes you just care too much, Murphy. Murphy stopped suddenly, one of Connor's nails dangling, half cut off and half still hanging on, and for a while Murphy just stared at that nail and his hands with the scissors pointed at the edge of Connor's finger, staring with such intensity that Connor thought he could feel his skin warm up and start wheezing out smoke under that look. Finally Connor said, Murph, I have to get to my homework, causing Murphy shrug and chop off the dangling nail with less grace than usual.
And they didn't talk to each other for the rest of that night, something uncomfortable under any circumstances, but more so because they were the only ones in that apartment, and there was no real avoiding of the other person, just a flat out silence.
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Murphy is pretty sure that deep, deep inside him, he hates Connor. Not because Connor has ever done anything worth hating, but because brothers exist to hate. Murphy firmly believes that what God completely missed about Cain killing Abel was that it was the only way Cain could truly love Abel. Sometimes he jokes with Connor that Cain killed Abel out of concern that Abel would turn out to be a goody-goody and waste his life serving some God who never sent clear messages about what he wanted anyway. Usually Connor doesn't answer Murphy; sometimes he jabs a finger into Murphy's chest and says, would you kill me? and then Murphy just gets pissed and they'd get into a fist fight.
The thing is, though, Murphy means it. Not the entire part about Cain and Abel, but about brothers hating each other and using that as a form of love. Deep down in there, of course, and even deeper is the love, hiding like a well under bedrock. It's not hate enough for Murphy to want to kill Connor, and it's not hate enough for Murphy to not give his life to Connor if Connor needed it. And it's love enough to accept the hate as part of a natural human condition, and it's love enough to care. But sometimes Murphy can feel something in him start changing and Murphy finds himself caught there, helpless, worried that with every movement of his body he's changing the air between him and Connor.
Maybe it's not hating. Maybe it's just a resentment that sometimes engulfs Murphy so completely that he is quite sure that is what hell is like. Maybe that's the part of Murphy that cares too much.
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For a stretch of time in high school, Connor used to date girls pretty regularly. They were the pretty types, the blonde and thin types, the hard-to-get types; Connor has this natural air to him that girls liked that not even Murphy has ever put a proper name to him, maybe charisma, but it's more than that. He's the kind of guy that other guys can't stand, for the most part, because he is always accidentally stealing their girlfriends and showing them up in class and never acting like a show off or a smart alec or really anything but very sincere, kind, and quiet. And he isn't the kind of guy that other guys can brand simply as a nerd or a geek or a shy new-kid-on-the-block. Connor is gifted with a particular kind of behavior, something that by the minute makes him look braver and humbler by the minute, while you, if you attempt in away to inflect insult or disparagement against him, will only come out looking like a loser.
Needless to say, many of the boys in Connor's class ended up looking like complete fools until they finally accepted him as an unstoppable force of nature.
For that same stretch of time in high school, Murphy dated girls with the same interval regularity, but with more variation between the kinds of girls he would date. Murphy isn't quite like Connor in terms of consistency; he has a habit of changing and molding himself by the second, so the girls who got close enough to him to smugly tell each other that they were "best and closest of friends to Murphy" varied, similiarly, by the second. And it was hard to tell whether Murphy quite understood the meaning of the word "date" in high school at least. Murphy treated, and in a way still treats, all women with a sort of casual offhandness that only magnified their friendliness to him and caused guys to think infinitely well of him, but in all cases, he never stayed still long enough for anyone.
But then Connor suddenly stopped dating girls all together. He's never told anyone about this, not even to Murphy, but he stopped because the one time he had been the one leaning in to kiss a girl, he had drawn back his hand and the makeup on the girl's chin had left a glittery sparkle on his fingertips, and it had been then that he realized what made that girl's skin shine in the light. Call Connor naive, but he had always believed that there was something special about girls that made them glow when the light blossomed on their skin, but it just ended up being something very, very fake.
Murphy had stopped his pratice of quasi-dating girls about the same time as Connor did, reinforcing the idea Connor had had for a while that the only reason Murphy started in the first place was because when Connor was away Murphy got lonely.
A couple of weeks later, right before Connor fell asleep, Murphy had rolled over in their shared bed and asked right into Connor's ear, why don't you have girlfriends anymore?
Because I just stopped, that's all, and Connor thought of the sun going down on the face of some girl in the summer, their face shining and bright in that light, and their lips pink, their eyelids white, all of those colors smeared on his fingertips.
Fine, Murphy said sharply and turned right over in his bed. At that moment Connor wanted to say something comforting and tender like, no, because I have you, except what came out instead was, why don't you have girlfriends anymore?
Because I have you, Murphy answered. Connor could feel Murphy scooting away from him so their spines didn't touch in the bed, so Connor couldn't feel Murphy breathing, so that when Connor fell asleep, it might as well have been that Murphy wasn't there, wasn't alive anymore.
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During that time they only owned one good white shirt, the kind that you can wear with a tie, so they would try and plan their job interviews on different days so they would have enough time to painstakingly wash and iron that one white shirt. They did have two ties, though, red for Connor and blue for Murphy, sent from their family in Ireland for one of their birthdays, both of the ties just a little bit two short and of not too good quality, so after a couple of washes the colors had faded a little.
Connor can't tie ties well. The top part is always too big and clumsy and the bottom part is always crooked. He has always depended on Murphy to straighten his tie all the time, and the one time Connor asked Murphy why he didn't just tell Connor to learn how to tie his own fucking tie, Murphy had answered, because if I'm going to be jealous of you, you might as well be look perfect. A pause in which Connor tried to figure out what to say, his heart pounding like he was on the brink of having a heart attack. Bt next time, tie your own fucking tie, Murphy said, and then smiled, even though like a man who only kept a handful of his promises but all of his intentions, the time after that, he was still the one adjusting Connor's tie, and Connor, now, still isn't quite sure how to tie one correctly.
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The three months between Rocco's death and Yakavetta's death they spend living at their father's old friend's houses. Old friends is a loose term that can apply to mere acquitainces whose vague rememberance of their father is already a miracle to hired assassins of other mafias to old Irish friends that had suprisingly not moved houses since they had first led Ireland. And living is also a loose term that in this context simply meant a place to stay at night and occasionally a place to eat at. For the most part none of McManuses stay in the house during the day. The boys' father spent most of his time negotiating with Smecker and the few renegade members of the Boston police or visiting places that had been hotspots of underground activity a decade ago when he had been out last.
The boys, though, spend their time in the local libraries. Their father never spends enough time in one place for the librarians to start to remember the boys, or he waits long enough in between returns to places so that most likely than not the librarians have forgotten about them. They don't have library cards, which means that if they want to finish a book, they either have to read it all in one day or hope that the next day no one has checked it out.
The books that they read are usually dusty old foreign books that no one has touched in historical periods, so usually neither of them care that they can't check out the books, but occasionally Connor steals a glossy plastic wrapped new book from its shelf and hides behind a bookcase to read it without Murphy making sarcastic comments about it over his shoulder. Connor isn't quite sure what he likes about modern writing; he likes the older classic books because they have a lyricism to them, a romance, a mystery, and an elegance to them, but modern writing is sparse and sacrilegious, something so horribly real and heart-tugging about novels now that Connor can't help but be attracted to them. And secretly Murphy reads fantasy and science fiction books and poetry when Connor isn't around and hides them in the piles of books to reshelve when he catches wind of footsteps; sometimes he's just paranoid, sometimes it's Connor coming back. Neither of them finds out until, Connor with some novel with waywardly patched drawings on the cover in his hand stumbles across Murphy reaching for a paperback novel whose cover is decorated in purple dragons and blond men with silver swords.
After that they read all of their books together, and neither of them say anything, but sometimes Connor can't help but laugh at the covers on Murphy's books, and sometimes Murphy can't help but make fun of the titles on Connor's book.
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This is Connor, washing his hands under water so cold that his fingers under the fingernail are a vivid pink, scrubbing with cheap hotel soup that refuses to foam, and running his soapy fingers over his wrists and halfway to his elbow to get rid of the blood splatters, the imagined and the real.
This is Murphy, watching from the bathroom doorway, his hands wet as well, one of them shoved into his pocket, and there is a pink mark over the back of that hand from where the jeans scraped it, his legs crossed over the ankles and his head resting against the door frame.
This is the tile floor of the bathroom, holding dropped words.
This is their father outside, trying not to eavesdrop.
Murphy says, sometimes you're just not fair, Connor, and then there's just the sound of running water from the faucet before their father calls for Murphy to watch the scene from the window and Connor to guard the door while he goes outside to get some ice and bottled water. Connor reaches for the towel affixed to the wall next to the door. Murphy grabs the towel before Connor can get a hold of it and throws it at Connor's chest as if that alone could say everything.
This is the hotel room between the two of them, silent, neat, organized, and sterile, quietly holding its breath as the two of them emerge from the bathroom, both hands still a bit wet and slipping slightly from the handles of their guns, neither Connor nor Murphy quite the good gunman he would have been five minutes ago.
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I just want to know why you hate me, Connor says, touching Murphy's shoulder under the blanket. Murphy jerks his shoulder a little away from Connor's touch, but he knows he's stuck because he's already poised at the edge of the bed and if he tries to move away anymore he'll fall off. The bed is small enough for one person, but for two it's ridiculous. So even though Connor's only intentionally touching Murphy's shoulder, his feet are unintentially brushing against Murphy's ankles and his knees are lightly drawing warmth from the back of Murphy's knees.
I don't hate you, Murphy says, but Connor retorts, you do, and then Murphy, touching Connor's hand on his shoulder, feeling the contours of Connor's fingernail and the wrinkles of Connor's knuckles, says, because you're too perfect.
If I'm too perfect, Connor says angrily, not sure what he had been expecting Murphy to say anyway, it's only because you made me that way. Except Connor knows that isn't entirely, completely, and wholly the truth.
Because if Murphy made Connor too perfect, it was only because Connor was perfect to begin with.
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Once, in school, one of Connor's fingernails broke off, and as he grabbed a pair of scissors and placed one of the metal blades cautiously under the nail, the blonde girl sitting next to him had asked, giggling, who cuts their nails with scissors?
My brother does, Connor said, not glaring, but fixing her with an intense look that accomplished just as much. Murphy's talented like that.
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Connor drives the next morning. Their father is in the backseat, still trying to not eavesdrop, when Murphy looks over at Connor's hands, placed at the acceptable 10 and 2 positions, and smiles. You need to stop biting your fingernails, Murphy says. The next time we hit a store, I'm buying a pair of scissors.
That's when Connor realizes it's been such a long, long time since Murphy's cared that much. A long enough time for Connor to revert back to his old habit, long enough so that Connor's gotten used to doing without Murphy's careful hands guiding a pair of scissors, long enough so that when Murphy points it out, Connor is surprised.
Maybe Murphy doesn't care too much. Maybe it's Connor who possess too much equanimity, puts in too much faith, sacrifices too many of his emotions, and choose to forgive and forget too much to understand the kind of person Murphy is. Maybe it's Connor who, laboring under the impression of Murphy being just as perfect as Connor is, mistakes Murphy struggling with the hate and love welled deep inside him for Murphy being a saint.
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A/N: The title is from a poem entitled "Occupational Hazards." It features sections outlining in a sometimes humorous fashion and a sometimes serious fashion the aforesaid occupational hazards of a butcher, a baker, a tailor, a gravedigger, and I think a woodcutter. Anyway. The butcher's is something along the lines of: "If I want to go to pieces/ I can do that./ If I pull them together/ I get sausage." I thought, well, the boys work at a meatpacking plant. It'll work for them as well. Sorry for the incredibly bad randomness in this story. Obviously my mind is on crack and I am running out of ideas and treading on the toes of my BDS muse.