No reason to.
He tried to explain it to Sheila, but how do you do that without bringing her into a world you don’t want to put on her? How do you go from a tenement where the mommy-daddy combo is so fucked up on crack, and you find a baby dead for a week, her feet chewed by rats, and then take your own kids to Chuck E. Cheese’s? You supposed to tell her about that? “Share” that? No, the right thing to do is put a smile on your face and talk to the tire salesmen about the Mets or what-the-fuck-ever because no one wants to hear about that and you don’t want to talk about it, you just want to forget it, and good luck with that, ace.
That time Phil and Monty and him get an anonymous tip, go to this address in Washington Heights and they find this guy tied to a chair, his hands had been cut off for skimming some smack off the top of a shipment and he was still alive because the people who punished him also perfectly cauterized the wounds with a blowtorch, his eyes were bulging out of his skull, his jaw broken from clenching it so hard, and then they had to go back to a cookout and stand around by the grill with the host like guys do and he and Phil looked at each other over the grill and knew what the other was thinking. You don’t talk to other cops about that shit because you don’t have to. They already know. They’re the only ones who know.
Then there was the birthday party.
Malone don’t even remember which kid’s birthday it was—some friend of Caitlin’s maybe—and it was another one of those backyard parties and they had a pi?ata strung from the clothesline and Malone was sitting there watching them whack the thing and he’d spent all week in court on a heroin dealer named Bobby Jones and the jury came back not guilty because they just wouldn’t believe that Malone had seen “Bobby Bones” slinging smack from across the street. So Malone was sitting there and the kids were swinging this stick at the donkey over and over and over again and they couldn’t break it and finally Malone got up, took the stick from a kid, smashed the fucking donkey into smithereens and candy came flying out all over the place.
Everything stopped.
The whole party stared at him.
“Eat your candy,” Malone said.
He was embarrassed and went into the bathroom and Sheila followed him in and said, “Jesus, Denny, what the fuck?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” she asked. “You embarrass us in front of all our friends and you don’t know?”
No, you don’t know, Malone thought.
And I don’t know how to tell you.
I can’t do this anymore.
Go from one life to another, and this life, this life, feels . . .
Stupid.
Phony.
This is not who I am.
Sorry, Sheila, but it’s not who I am.
So this Christmas morning a sleepy Sheila meets Malone at the door in a blue flannel robe, her hair disheveled, no makeup on yet, and a coffee cup in her hand.
Still, he thinks she’s beautiful.
He always has.
“Are the kids up?” Malone asks.
“No, I slipped them some Benadryl last night.” Seeing the look on his face, she says, “That was a joke, Denny.”
Malone follows her into the kitchen, where she pours him a cup of coffee and then sits down on a stool at the breakfast bar.
He asks, “How was Christmas Eve?”
“Great,” she says. “The kids argued over which movie to watch and we settled on Home Alone and then Frozen. What did you do?”
He says, “A tour.”
Sheila looks at him like she doesn’t believe him, her expression accusing him of being with “huh.”
“You on today?” she asks.
“No.”
“We’re going to Mary’s for dinner,” she says. “I’d invite you, but, you know, they fucking hate you.”
Same old Sheila—the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Actually, it’s one of the things he’s always liked about her. She’s black and white, you always know where you stand with her. And she’s right—her sister Mary and her whole family hate him since the separation.
“That’s okay,” he says. “I might swing by Phil’s. So how are the kids?”
“You’re going to have to have ‘the talk’ with John soon.”
“He’s eleven.”
“He’ll be going into middle school,” Sheila says. “You wouldn’t believe what goes on these days. The girls are giving blow jobs in seventh grade.”
Malone works Harlem, Inwood, Washington Heights.
Seventh grade is late.
“I’ll talk to him.”
“Not today, though.”
“No, not today.”
They hear voices from upstairs.
“Game time,” Malone says.
He’s standing at the bottom of the stairs when his kids come pounding down, their eyes lit up at the sight of the presents under the tree.
“Looks like Santa came,” Malone says. He isn’t hurt that they squeeze past him to get to the loot. They’re kids, and anyway, they come by it honest.
“PlayStation 4!” John screams.
Well, there goes my present, Malone thinks, knowing no kid needs two PlayStations.
How could they have grown so much in two weeks, he wonders. Sheila, she probably don’t notice because she’s with them every day, but John is shooting up, just starting to get a little gangly. Caitlin has her mother’s red hair, although it’s still really curly, and those green eyes. I’m going to have to build a guard tower on the house, keep the boys away.
His heart hurts.
Shit, he thinks, I’m missing my kids growing up.
He sits down in the same easy chair he used to every Christmas when they were still together and Sheila sits on the same cushion on the sofa.
Traditions are important, he thinks. Habits are important; they give the kids a measure of stability. So he and Sheila sit and try to establish some order and make the kids take turns so their Christmas isn’t over in thirty seconds, and Sheila enforces a torturous break for cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate before they go back to the presents.
John opens Malone’s gift and feigns enthusiasm. “Oh, wow, Dad!”
He’s a kind kid, Malone thinks. Sensitive. Can’t let him go into the family trade, it would eat him alive.
“I didn’t know Santa was handling this,” Malone says, a subtle dig at Sheila.
“No, it’s great,” John says, improvising. “I can have one upstairs and one downstairs.”
“I’ll take it back,” Malone says. “Get you something different.”
John springs up and wraps his arms around Malone.
It means everything.
Gotta keep this boy off the Job, he thinks.
Caitlin loves her Barbie set. Comes over and gives her dad a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you, Daddy.”
“You’re welcome, honey.”
She still has that kid smell.
That sweet innocence.
Sheila is a great mom.
Then Caitlin breaks his heart. “Are you staying, Daddy?”
Crack.
John’s looking up at him like he didn’t even know this was a possibility but now he’s hopeful.
“Not today,” Malone says, “I have to work.”
“Catching the bad guys,” John says.
“Catching the bad guys.”
You’re not going to be me, Malone thinks. You’re not going to be me.
Caitlin, she ain’t giving up. “When all the bad guys are caught, will you come home?”