Work Text:
Korsak is held hostage in mid-June.
Jane is sitting on his porch with her work family - one serial killer in custody, and one dead body and crime scene being processed below them - drinking a beer and petting a little puppy, calmer than she probably should be, when she hears Maura tell Vince some version of, “I really like your porch; Must be nice to have a porch.”
Jane is enveloped in her grandmother’s arms
(Rita. Margherita.
Her dad’s mom’s name was Margherita. She had a “grandmother” name she chose just before Jane was born but none of the cousins ever got to use it because she died just after Jane started to put sentences together. Jane, as the eldest, and as the eldest girl, carries memories of her the way she carries everything else: silently. And alone.
Jane knows what she called her then from stories, but she can’t remember it. She always just thinks of her as ‘Rita’, or ‘Pop’s mom’.
But she does remember)
Jane is enveloped in her grandmother’s arms. On her grandmother’s porch. Only four houses down from her parents’ porch. ‘Home’ is a nebulous concept for a toddler Jane. Her house and her grandparents house and the block they both sit on is a safe space, is home. There is nowhere Jane can toddle where she isn’t known; where she isn’t taken care of.
Some decades later, in the office of a therapist Maura is paying for, Jane will reflect on the fact that even though her young self was safe, she was also surveilled, constantly. At least 20 years before the digital age, Jane knew what it felt like to always be watched, or to always be potentially watched, at any given moment.
But right now, Jane is enveloped in her grandmother’s arms. One fat, flappy arm cradling her like a pillow, and the other mapping a steady path up and down her back, when it’s not rhythmically patting her bottom.
Her grandmother smells like her grandmother, and her grandmother’s friends are taking 3 of the 5 available seats on the porch, and their gossip sounds like a bedtime story, as the slant of the afternoon light that manages to make its way under the awning makes Jane feel even warmer than she normally does in Rita’s arms. Jane’s mom comes home from her work, to the greetings of all the women on the porch, before it gets dark, and when Jane hears her voice she instinctively snuggles deeper into her Rita’s neck.
It’s mid summer, and Jane gets to stay up late!
Until even after the late summer sun sets. Jane made it through Kindergarten and she’s bound for First Grade and that means she’s in charge of her brothers and the trash and lots of other things!
Jane knows her bedtime is supposed to be 8pm, same as her brothers. But she figured out that in the summer the sun stays up even later than the clock says 8, and she is smart enough not to say anything when her parents don’t put it together.
She’s holding an Olympic gymnastic tournament between her brothers on her porch, when Carlo Talucci comes running up the porch steps asking her to play.
(And unbeknownst to her, Carla makes whatever gesture means “we have a new bottle of wine if you’re interested, and her Ma makes her acquiescent gesture in return.)
Her mom gives her - and Frankie - but not toddler Tommy - the okay sign to run wild and Jane immediately starts to set up the parameters for sprint speeds using their sidewalk markers for the 5 of them.
Jane reluctantly focuses on her book as she hears her friends and brothers play below her on the street.
And Angela warns, “Jannne” to keep that focus.
It’s late August and Jane’s behind on her summer reading of ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’.
She is only allowed on the porch, among Angela’s friends sipping lemonade and gossiping, as a courtesy.
She doesn’t want to get banished into their house, which is hot, especially her room, which is sweltering. The only outside options are the backyard which she ‘forfeited when she didn’t finish her assignment before July’ and the porch under her mom’s close supervision.
She’s finally, actually invested in the story, but it would be so embarrassing if Angela and her friends knew that.
The Rizolis are asleep; Jane checked.
11pm. Her parents are in bed. Her brothers are asleep. And Sean has until 11:40 to be able to make it to her place and then back home safe.
She’s sitting quietly alone on her porch until at 11:19 when she sees Sean turn onto her corner, and she sprints down the stoop and into the alley between her parents home and the Talucci’s to meet him.
They have approximately 20 minutes and it scares them both.
They talk baseball to ease the awkwardness and both of them get so into it they don’t even realize how much time passed. They’re debating whether Roger Clemens will be a Hall of Famer when Jane’s watch starts ringing, and 20 seconds later Sean’s watch does the same.
They have less than a minute to act, and Sean decides for them when he leans in before Jane even silences her watch.
It’s her first kiss.
(She’s back in bed before anyone notices)
Jane learned that if she waits long enough - 2, 3, 4am long enough - all the neighbors’ lights on the block will go off, and she can sit on her porch undisturbed.
Sometime, after Becky Zisti's 15th or so sleepover, Jane lets her in on this sacrosanct fact.
And they spend an incredible spring whispering secrets back and forth on Jane’s porch in the streetlight-dark. And then an incredible summer enjoying the local pool and playground.
And then for some reason, when Junior Year starts, Becky wants nothing to do with Jane.
Jane graduates from the Academy first in her class, and there’s a ceremony, and there's a party Jane knows her mom is throwing half-heartedly at most even though they never talk about it, in her parents’ backyard.
And Jane goes out with her buds after, the same way they all do after all their respective parties, and when she comes home, she holds tight to her stoop’s railing as she stumbles more than she ever did even when she was a teenager.
She reclines on her parents’ porch furniture with her feet on the 6 dollar white plastic table that’s now basically gray after a summer’s worth of dust. (Their cleaning is a chore luckily still designated to Frankie when it’s time to pack everything away, a few weeks from now).
She thinks about what she’s earned and she thinks about what she lost. She misses her grandmother and Becky. She misses the girl she could have been. She misses her parents even though they’re sleeping maybe 15ft above her.
She’s been leaving them for awhile. And even though she’ll never be able to hang an off-white degree over her father’s recliner, she does let herself get lost in the nebulous achievement of her new shining silver badge.
She’s a police officer. That’s what she wanted.
That’s all she ever wanted.
She tries not to think about BCU's annual ceremonies.
The night of her ‘graduation’ party, she spends hours on the porch, thumbs exploring her first year officer’s badge, as she watches the sunrise and makes peace with her decision.
And she knows she will be moving out before next summer.
A serial killer targets them precisely because they’re so good at targeting serial killers and Maura ends up mentioning she’d like a porch in the aftermath.
Maura’s building’s front ‘facade’ is protected by the city and the state and the ‘Commonwealth’ so all building needs to happen in the back of the property.
And a sad little deck overlooking Maura’s diligently studied garden is ripe for an overhaul.
So Jane studies city documents from the library. And Jane calls her guy for lumber and her guy for zoning and her guy for construction.
She decides Maura will have a porch, because she wants a porch, and because Maura wants a porch.
All her ‘guys’ are working on cost and beers and pizza and sweat equity (it’s a primo July 4th fireworks spot that Maura has agreed to open to whomever) and Jane’s orders.
Until Jane is pregnant and even though her pace is more frantic all the men in her life are hesitant to let her work; doubly so after they get Maura’s lectures on pre-natal-whatever.
The back porch is finished before Jane loses the baby.
Maura loves her porch. She doesn’t even remember saying she wanted a porch, but apparently she did at some point, because that’s the reason she has one.
And she certainly doesn’t remember whatever verbal contract made her home the go-to for July 4th festivities.
Every year they barely manage to accommodate everyone, but since that looks indiscernible from accommodating everyone, it just keeps happening.
This year, Jane is giving their 5 year old a safety lecture on the proper way to light illegal explosives as Uncle Frankie does the honors.
Angela is close next to Maura in the prized space of the main porch swing, rubbing their 2 year olds back as she looks on, 3 fingers in her mouth, in baited wonder.
And Maura’s hands follow a practiced soothing of her 6-month pregnant belly.
This is one of Maura’s most stressful days of the year. But after all the fuses are lit, as her kids look in wonder, and her unborn baby is settling with her decreasing heartbeat, Angela says, offhand, “Janie always loved our porch”.
And Maura lets her mind wander to a childhood always in want of a porch. To a community worthy of a porch. Until, free of their eldest daughter, dancing in the yard with her uncles and cousins, her wife settles in the cramped space beside her and the armrest and gives her a kiss so intimate both their 10 year old selves feel it.