'You saw his hands. What he said about the cuts would explain the blood.'
'If he's innocent, why'd he clean off his briefcase with acid?'
She allowed, 'Maybe he's more dastardly than he looks.'
'He's got a crush on you.'
'Please.' Men didn't get crushes on Anther. She was hardly a sultry siren.
'Listen, you could work that angle. Make him think he's got a chance. Guy like that probably hasn't seen a pussy since he was being born outta one.'
An did not respond to the comment. She had been a cop for almost twenty years now. Early on, she'd made a habit of challenging every sexist remark or disgusting joke uttered by her mostly male colleagues. This had done nothing but garner the reputation that she was a lesbian. When she had insisted that she was not, in fact, homosexual, they chastised her for being ashamed of her sexuality. When she had pointed out that (at the time) she was married, they had sadly shaken their heads, as if to ask to what lengths she would go in her denial of the love that dare not speak its name. An had been so maligned over the years that, in order to protect herself – really, in order to properly perform her job – she had fallen into the habit of fabrication.
Fabrication. That was a pretty word to use for a lie. An was not by nature a liar. Her father had detested lies and taught her early on that the punishment for a lie was much more harsh than the punishment for confession. And yet, here she was, fabricating to her heart's content. And her heart was content, though only when she let herself slip into believing her own stories.
This was how it happened: Charlie, her husband, had just died. This was fifteen years ago. There was no one at home to cook for, no laundry to do, no shirts to iron. A big case had just been solved – a child killer was going to the electric chair. People were in a celebratory mood. An decided that she would go to the local cop bar and have a drink with her fellow brothers in blue.
They all got drunk, but An was better at holding her liquor. Or, maybe she wasn't. Somebody hit on her. Somebody made a comment not to bother. Somebody called her a dyke. Somebody called her frigid. Maybe it was the word 'frigid,' because that was what Charlie called her when, for some crazy reason, she didn't want to have sex with him after he'd beaten her.
No matter how it happened, that was when Jill was born.
Jill was a nurse who worked with children. She was a kind and caring woman. She had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. She was the love of An's life. She was dying. They all felt sorry for her. They all shut up.
The next morning, An woke up with a throbbing headache. When she got to work, everyone was quiet, respectful. A few asked how Jill was doing. 'Jill?' she had echoed, and then it had hit her, the half-drunk fabrications from the night before. She'd tucked her head down, mumbled, 'I don't really want to talk about it,' and ran to the women's room where she cleaned out her purse, filed her nails and took a nap, only to emerge to concerned stares and 'chin ups' from her new friends.
Belonging to a group was an alien concept to An. Not that she had never had friends, but as the daughter of Dutch immigrants, she had never quite fitted in. During the summers, when most girls were off at camp, she was visiting relatives in Hindeloopen, walking along the narrow streets and wooden bridges of her seafaring ancestors, still never quite fitting in with her 'y'alls' and 'fixin' tos'. Her parents fared no better. Like many immigrants before them, they had come to America seeking a new life. As with those earlier immigrants, the life they made for themselves was basically the same as the one they had back home, but in a different country. They attended parties for the Dutch-American Society. They drank Heineken and sucked on coins of honingdrop that their relatives back home were kind enough to mail. Most of their friends were childless, Dutch ex-pats, except a few shifty Norwegians who mostly stood in the corner at parties talking among themselves.
Walking into the Albada house, you would never guess that you were still in the American South. An's mother was an art teacher who was passionate about blending substance and style. Every room was colorfully decorated in bright reds, yellows and greens. The dining room was boldly striped in blue. There were cupboards they had brought from home, leafy floral patterns and swirls intricately carved into every inch of wood, then painted in complementary colors. On Halloween, her mother would don her chintz wentke, and – solely as a concession to her ignorant art students – put on a pair of wooden clogs she had bought at a tourist stand in Schiphol Airport.
Her father had been overly educated, as was the Dutch way, and he insisted his daughter be the same. When An was not studying, she was working on extra credit projects or helping her father in the lab (Eduart Albada was a botanist for the State of Georgia). He had a small shed in the back yard – her mother called it the likhus after the small houses in Hindeloopen where the sea captains' families stayed – and An would spend hours with him there over the weekends, watching his steady, square hands as he grafted together different plants in hopes of creating a tulip that was more resistant to the South's unpredictable seasons.
And so it was that An grew up a much-beloved only child with very few friends her own age. She had never been particularly lonely, or at least she thought she'd never been lonely, but what An realized when Jill came into her life was that she had always been alone. Even when she was married to Charlie, there was that sense that she did not quite belong to him, that he did not quite see her when she entered a room or asked a question.
But, not anymore. That all stopped the day An walked out of the women's room and was greeted by her colleagues as an equal. When had it happened? When had Jill crossed over from being a figment of An's imagination into a living, breathing part of An's life? It had never occurred to her as she cleaned out loose pieces of paper and various pieces of fuzz from her purse that Jill was taking on real physical aspects in her mind.
Okay, well, An had to admit that she milked it at first. She took some personal time, claiming she wanted to sit with Jill during her treatments, when really it was because she was having bad cramps and there was a John Wayne marathon on TBS. Then, there was the day she overslept and missed an important meeting. Telling them that Jill was sick from chemo and she'd had to take her to the doctor was only a little white lie. What was the point of those stupid meetings anyway? They were cops. They didn't have to be rounded up into a smelly conference room to be told that they needed to catch the bad guys.
Of course, there was no way to get around the fact that it was a whopper of a falsehood when An had taken a week-long trip to Florida under the guise of flying Jill to the Mayo Clinic to see a world-renowned specialist. A handful of people noted her suntan, which An explained away by telling them she insisted on staying with Jill during radiation treatments. Maybe it wasn't so much of a lie, because by then An felt a real connection to Jill. While the thought of lesbian sex wasn't particularly appealing (or even concrete in her mind, because what, exactly, did two women do together?), An liked the idea of the companionship, the connection with another human being.
In short, she fell in love.
Over the ensuing months, the myth of Jill had slowly evolved into a reality. An had worked on the detective squad for three years, but no one had ever bothered to talk to her before Jill had appeared. Knowing that An had a sick lover had somehow humanized her with these men. She made friendships – lifelong relationships. A couple of them had wives who'd had breast cancer. They gave An literature on survivors. Then, one day, they had all surrounded her desk and handed her a sign-up sheet. Real tears had welled into her eyes when she realized that the entire squad had agreed to participate in the Avon Breast Cancer Walk on behalf of Jill.