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wasn’t such a runt by carrying her antique accordion, which she’d played since she was sixteen, and which was now held together with glue and electrical tape. It never lost its tuning or its booming volume, though, and she preferred it to any newer accordion. Then she started bringing her guitar to do country-western songs, songs like “Your Cheating Heart” by Hank Williams and “My D-I-V-O-R-C-E ” by Tammy Wynette. These songs were often dedicated with a cackle of laughter to her “ex-husband, Dave MacDonald,” or “Mac,” as we’d all started to call him now that he was a thing of the past.
    I’d listen to my mother from a barstool, along with all the old drinkers who were slouched over mouthing the lyrics between long cigarette drags. I’d wait until one of them would notice me and offer to buy me some chips or a pickled egg from the big jar I was staring at. Meanwhile, Kevin would be off scheming about how to get in on a little of the drinking money placed carefully under the noses of all these drunk people. Sometimes he’d put on a sad pauper’s face and pass a hat for our mother, as if she weren’t already getting paid by the bar. Kevin often got sympathy, being as bony as he was. The drinkers said he looked half starved and would give him a dollar sometimes. But Kevin wasn’t collecting for my mother at all. By the age of seven, he was already finding ways to “get over.” And since he always shared his spoils with me, I kept my mouth shut. A few times Ma found out and made him hand over the money to her. She was thrilled to get more than the thirty bucks the bar paid. In the end, Kevin didn’t mind because it would all be spent to stock our refrigerator anyway, and he was proud to show off that he was “a born provider.” Keeping the money from my mother was really just a game to see if he could play the player. Ma always told him that he should’ve lived during the Depression, that he would’ve been able to support a whole family back then.
    Like my mother, Kevin was outgoing and would use his way with people to make more money. He played the spoons by taping two kitchen spoons together and banging them up and down his legs, arms, and back. He had great rhythm and could keep double-time. He was acrobatic, and could walk on his two hands, his skinny body straight upside-down. The teachers had called Kevin hyperactive, and he bragged about that to friends and strangers alike, as if he’d been given a title of importance. When he wasn’t entertaining for money, he was out shining shoes at the bars. He saved up for a shoe-shining box and took special care of it, hiding it in a safe spot every night before he went to bed. He had a sweet look about his face, and people were drawn to him. I spent a lot of time tagging along on Kevin’s exploits up and down Centre Street, the main drag in Jamaica Plain. As long as I could keep up with his speedy pace through the store aisles, I’d make out pretty well, getting my fill of candy or toys from Woolworth’s. Kevin was generous. Whenever I’d hear the expression “He’d give you the shirt off his back,” I’d picture Kevin. I always thought that the expression was made for him alone. He’d literally give you the shirt off his back, and had done so more than once. It might be a shirt swiped from the back of a truck, but that was beside the point.
    Every spring we looked forward to the Irish Field Day, way out in the country, in Dedham. It was a day of Irish entertainment, games, rides, and food to raise money for the African Missions, which worked for some starving children far away in Africa—those children we always heard about when we weren’t hearing about the poor hungry children of Ireland who would walk miles to school with no shoes at all on their callused feet. It’s because of those kids so far away that we were never