Michaelaen sat up in his bed. What was that? It was raining so hard. He was in his own bed but those shadows made all kinds of funny shapes on the wall. You could never be sure. His heart beat swiftly in his narrow chest. They were supposed to go out for their meeting. There was going to be magic and everything. He slipped out of bed and went up to the window. Boy. It was really coming down. And he felt a little sniffly. No one was going out on a night like this. But he didn’t want Mommy to get in trouble. He didn’t want anyone to hurt Mommy. What was today? Was it Wednesday? He couldn’t remember. If it was Wednesday Mommy was off nights. She’d be home. But if he went all the way down to her room and it wasn’t Wednesday, no one would be there. Michaelaen gulped. It was better to take along his old blankie. You never knew if it might get cold. Or drafty. Or something. He found it, right where it always was, tucked underneath his toy chest. How he hated to go down this hallway. It was best to more or less skedaddle through. He raced with his rear end tucked up tight behind him and never looking right or left, just squint so you couldn’t see too much and close your ears and hunch up, like.
Zinnie woke up quickly, a blink of an eye and she went from full sleep to full consciousness. This was a talent of cops and conscientious mothers, and of course she was both. Michaelaen slept alongside her most of the time when she wasn’t on nights, the hell with what those psychs said in the books—what did they know, anyway? She’d arrested her share of them. Sure, they’d always gotten off, but you knew what you were dealing with. Professional loonies, half of them. She’d let her son sleep beside her as long as he needed her warmth. She smiled at the sweet-smelling body cradling into her arms. Oh Lord. This is what kept her from going over the edge. The things she saw at work! The people! If you could call them that. The things some of them did to their own kids. It made you want to be sick. It almost made you want to quit the whole deal and move out to the Island or up past Westchester. But not quite. Those people, their kids were just as hopped up as the kids in the neighborhoods. And the job, whatever it might be, it had its points. There was a feeling of camaraderie you weren’t going to find somewhere else. Like that time one of their own took a bullet and they closed every street and intersection and even the bridge on the way to Saint Luke’s. Fast. She’d had the entrance to the bridge and she’d stood there alone in the night in her uniform—that was back when she’d still been in uniform—and all of a sudden like a shot out of nowhere comes this speeding ambulance, over the bridge with no moment of hesitation, one of their own they were going to get taken care of, and save him they did, not a moment too soon they’d said later. And it made you feel good. Especially when the ambulance had been flying by and there you were holding back any interference. The little lights twinkling on the bridge there, and you knew that all the way there, there would be someone else to take over, like a chain. It was horrible. But it was beautiful, too. It had its own kind of grace. And you were part of it. It could give you a chill up your spine. She pulled Michaelaen closer still and buried her face in his tufty hair. His smell was all his own and she reveled in it. Like clover and gum. Water-pistol water from the plug. She closed her eyes. The Mayor, satisfied that all was well and everyone in their proper place, walked contentedly back down the hall.
CHAPTER 12
Mary sat in her chair and looked down at the floor. That was the next thing. A really good scrubbing for that linoleum. Not today, though. And she wasn’t going to ask one of the kids. If they couldn’t think of it on their own, they could live with it the way it was. That was one thing she just wouldn’t do. She remembered her own mother sitting at the same table, probably the very same chair, saying nothing, looking out the window while her husband ranted and raved at the kids. His fine Irish tongue run to drivel with drink and the florid injustices that went with it. He would aim it at the children, at her brothers and sisters and herself. Sure, weren’t they the only ones who didn’t know better than to take it? Do this, Mary. Go on off, now and do that, Mary. Isn’t that tea up yet, girl? Oh, she could still hear him as clear as a bell. Well she wasn’t going to have her children remembering their parents for that sort of nilly. Row upon row of upright tulips in the garden, all straight in rows, and never a child allowed near enough to God forbid enjoy them. No. Mary took a noisy, bitter slurp of her coffee. It might be noisy, chaotic memories her kids would have, but they would be gentle and permissive. Yes, that would always be the better way. She’d decided that as a young girl and she wouldn’t change that.
Stan came in and sat down. “You wanna sit here all day or you wanna come with me?”
“I was just thinking … remembering. How rigid my own dad was. How we never really knew him. We were afraid of him if anything. ‘Dad’s comin’!’ we used to hiss at each other. Like, the monster’s comin’ … or something. You’d think he would have wanted us to love him, wouldn’t you?”
“’Cause if you want to stay here, I can go drop off the Lotto and come back and get you.”
“A man as intelligent as he was … you’d think he would have known better. Phh. Artist! Artist in false pride is what he was. With seven children and too good to take honest labor of any kind! And my own poor mother swallowin’ the bile and goin’, with her head held high, mind, to his own mother just to get money to pay the bloody milkman … it was … it was disgustin’!”