Inside the O'Briens Read Free

St. Catherine’s closed. They don’t really become part of the community.
    But the bigger problem is the Toonies have made Charlestown desirable to outsiders, and they’ve bloated the housing market. A person has to be rich to live in Charlestown now. Townies are a lot of great things, but unless they’ve robbed a bank, none of them are rich.
    Joe is third-generation Irish in Charlestown. His grand­father, Patrick Xavier O’Brien, came over from Ireland in 1936 and worked in the Navy Yard as a longshoreman, supporting a family of ten on forty dollars a week. Joe’s father, Francis, also worked in the Navy Yard, earning a hard but respectable living repairing ships. Joe’s not breaking the bank on a cop’s salary, but they get by. They’ve never felt poor here. Most of the next-generation Townies, however, no matter what they do for work, will never be able to afford to live here. It’s a real shame.
    He passes a FOR SALE sign in front of a freestanding colonial, one of the rare few with a courtyard, and tries to guess the outrageous listing price. Joe’s father bought their house, a triple-decker at the Bottom of the Hill, in 1963 for ten grand. A similar triple-decker two streets over from Joe and Rosie sold last week for a cool million. Every time he thinks about that, it blows his friggin’ mind. Sometimes he and Rosie talk aboutselling their place, a giddy, fantastical conversation that sounds a lot like imagining what they’d do if they won the lottery.
    Joe would get a new car. A black Porsche. Rosie doesn’t drive, but she’d get new clothes and shoes and some real jewelry.
    But where would they live? They wouldn’t move to some monstrous house in the suburbs with lots of land. He’d have to get a lawn mower. Rosie’s brothers all live in rural towns at least forty-five minutes outside of Boston and seem to spend every weekend weeding and mulching and doing something labor-intensive to grass. Who wants that? And he’d have to leave the Boston Police Department if they moved to a suburb. That ain’t happening. And realistically, he can’t drive that kind of car around here. Talk about being a target. So he really wouldn’t get the car, and Rosie is fine with her fake diamonds. Who wants to worry about lost or stolen jewelry? So although the conversation starts out heady, it always loops into a big circle that lands them firmly right back where they are. They both love it here, and for all the money in the world wouldn’t live anywhere else. Not even Southie.
    They’re lucky to have inherited the triple-decker. When Joe’s father died nine years ago, he left the house to Joe and Joe’s only sibling, his sister, Maggie. It took some serious detective work to track Maggie down. Always Joe’s opposite, she made it her mission to leave Charlestown immediately after high school and never returned. He found her living in Southern California, divorced, no kids, and wanting nothing to do with the house. Joe understands.
    He and Rosie live on the first floor, and twenty-three-year-old Patrick still lives with them. Their other son, JJ, and his wife, Colleen, live on the second floor. Katie and Meghan are roommates on the third floor. Everyone but Patrick pays Joe and Rosie rent, but it’s minimal, way below market value, just something to keep them all responsible. And it helps pay offthe mortgage. They had to refinance a couple of times to put all four kids through parochial school. That was a huge nut, but there was no way in hell his kids were getting bused to Dorchester or Roxbury.
    Joe turns the corner and decides to cut through Doherty Park. Charlestown is quiet at this sleepy hour on a Sunday morning. Clougherty Pool is closed. The basketball courts are empty. The kids are all either in church or still in bed. Other than an occasional passing car, the only sounds are the jingling of Yaz’s tags and the