The Son of John Devlin by Charles Kenney Page A

fact, when I was I think ten or eleven, he took the initiative to go and sign me up for the Dexter Hockey Camp in Brookline, and I spent the summer there. That’s what turned me around in hockey, helped me turn it up a notch. I was a much better player at the end of that summer, and the following winter I was recruited for Catholic Memorial. In fact, he paid for that camp, which was not cheap. He paid for the whole thing. And I remember when one of the coaches there said my skates were too small and that it was time I had a reallygood pair, Tom drove me out to Needham Sporting Goods and bought me my first pair of Tacks.”
    “Tacks?”
    “Made by CCM,” Jack said. “The Cadillac of hockey skates then. He was very supportive of me. He knew people at Catholic Memorial and helped me get in there.”
    “So you lived with your aunt through high school?”
    “Yes,” he said. “But I was never there. I’d leave for school early in the morning, and then I’d have practice after school and I wouldn’t get back to my aunt’s until maybe six o’clock or later, and then I’d do my homework and go to bed.”
    “Was she a good cook?” she asked.
    Jack shook his head. “She was a funny woman, Emily,” he said. “I can’t answer that because she never cooked.”
    Emily reacted with surprise. “What do you mean?”
    “I mean she never cooked. She’d heat up frozen things like vegetables or macaroni and cheese or TV dinners. But I don’t ever remember her actually cooking anything, like making a meat loaf or cooking pasta or anything like that. She never did it. A lot of the times I’d eat at school before going home. The Irish Christian Brothers would have their supper at five-thirty, and a lot of nights I’d get something there. Or I’d get pizza or a sub on the way to my aunt’s.”
    “You’re kidding,” she said.
    He shook his head. “No, I’m not kidding at all. Mr. Edwards gave me money, and Tom Kennedy, too. Both of them had a sense that my aunt wasn’t exactly with it. And they knew I couldn’t get a weekday afternoon job because of sports, so they made sure I had money for lunch and pizzas and stuff. To go to school dances. They were both very generous to me.”
    “And you stay in touch with both of them?” she asked.
    “Tom and I have lunch every few months, yeah,” Jack said. “Mr. Edwards is quite elderly now. He’s in a nursing home in West Roxbury and I see him at holidays mostly.”
    “Amazing that now you work with Tom,” she said.
    “It’s ironic,” he replied, “because when I was in college he and I would get together regularly for lunch or whatever, and when I was beginning my senior year I told him I was thinking of joining the force and he told me I was nuts. He all but made me apply to law school. His whole argument was that I was opening doors by going to law school. Increasing opportunities. He was right.”
    “You know, whenever you mention where you lived you say ‘my aunt’s,’ you never say ‘home,’ ” Emily said. “I guess it didn’t feel much like home.”
    “It was just a place to be, a place to stay,” he said. “I knew I was there because I had no place else to go. It never felt like home to me in any way. I remember what feeling that was, the feeling of being with my dad, and staying at my aunt’s was—I mean, Jesus, it was never anything like that.
    “If you want to know what my relationship with my aunt was, on the day of her wake, when we were all at the funeral home, after the wake everybody went back to her apartment because her three kids were all there. This was my senior year in high school. The middle of winter. And after the wake I went to practice. My life went on. It was not that big a deal. We never connected in any way, so it was never a loss for me. I mean I was sad for her kids, but it had no real meaning for me.”
    “That’s too bad,” Emily said.
    “I guess,” Jack said. “It’s okay, though.”
    “So life just sort of