“No thanks, I just had breakfast. I didn’t get much sleep last night, so I’m on my way to bed.”
With Ella’s leash trailing over his shoulder, he gave me a half wave and went inside his house. I headed for my stairs and a nap. Maybe the world wouldn’t look so uncertain when I woke up.
For some reason, my apartment seemed too quiet, as if it were anxiously holding its breath. In my bedroom, I flipped the switch to start the AC on the wall, and started toward the bathroom. But in the hall I hesitated at the narrow linen closet and opened the door. My linen closet is neat and spare, narrow stacks of a few sheets and blankets, some spare towels for guests in case I should ever have any. On the top shelf, a pillowcase holding the furry red Elmo that Christy loved so much, and an elegant round hatbox that once belonged to my grandmother.
Almost furtively, I reached overhead and got the hatbox and carried it to my bed. As soon as I opened it, I was nine years old and secretly watching my mother on the day before she left us. Quiet as death, I stood outside her nearly closed door while she carefully lifted out the contents of the hatbox. She laid them in a precise row along the edge of the bed. She seemed intent on getting them exactly a certain distance from the edge, occasionally adjusting one, moving it higher or lower until she had them the way she wanted them. Then she went still and looked at them for a long time, finally caressing each one as if it were a loved one’s cheek. From my spying place, I held my breath. I didn’t move. If I moved, my mother might explode into one of her irrational furies. I didn’t know what the objects were, but I knew they were more important to her than I was. After a few minutes, she gathered the objects up and replaced them in the box. When she got up from the bed to deposit the box on the top closet shelf, I melted away.
My mother left us for good the next day—ran off with a man my brother and I had never even heard of. After I knew she was never coming back, I stood on a chair and got the box from its hiding place. I don’t know what I’d expected, but it wasn’t what I found. Ticket stubs to a Grateful Dead concert she and my dad had gone to in Tampa, the baby bracelets Michael and I had worn in the hospital when we were born, Michael’s first lost tooth Scotch-Taped to a card with the date and time he lost it, and a handprint I’d made for her in kindergarten. There was also a photo of her and my dad when they were high school sweethearts.
I’m not sure why I’ve held on to that box, but every now and then I do exactly what I watched my mother do—lay the things out and caress them. The box is my only inheritance from my mother. It links us in a powerful way that transcends reason.
Putting the box back in its place beside Christy’s Elmo, I peeled off my clothes and threw them in the washer in the hall, then clumped naked into the bathroom and turned on the shower.
While I stood under a hot shower, I thought about how Maureen had looked when she begged me to help her. Her big pleading eyes. Her messy hair with that dangling barrette with the red plastic flower.
I imagined myself calling Maureen. I imagined myself saying, “You’re going to have to do this without me.” Then I imagined her saying, “If it were your husband, I’d help you.”
While I brushed my teeth I imagined calling her and asking, “Are we still on for tonight?” I imagined her saying, “We don’t have to! Victor’s here with me! The kidnappers drove him home and we just handed them the million.”
Yeah, right. Like kidnappers delivered COD.
I pulled on a terry cloth robe and fell into bed with a dark cloud hovering over me. From a distant place in my head, a voice sang:
The one with the scarlet flowers in her hair
She’s got the police comin’ after me
11
After a long nap, I dressed and pulled my narrow bed away from the wall to get at the customized drawer built into its dark side—the one that holds my guns in their special cushioned niches. Every law enforcement agency in the country issues standard weapons to its officers, the standard depending on the city or county’s choice. Sarasota police are issued 9mm Glocks, while the Sarasota Sheriff’s Department prefers SIG SAUERS. Regardless of the weapon issued, law enforcement officers also qualify for several off-duty guns at their department ranges. Using a gun for which you haven’t qualified means big trouble, so sworn officers usually qualify for several models even if they mostly stick to one favorite.
After Todd was killed and I went on indefinite leave of absence, I returned our SIG SAUERS to the department, but I still had our personal guns. I was qualified on all of them, and I had a concealed weapon permit making it legal to carry any one of them.
Some states are picky about guns, but Florida, bless its heart, takes the position that people need to compensate for something, even if it’s just their own frightening imagination. The state therefore offers the right to tote a pistol to anybody with the guts to stare down howling hurricanes, venomous snakes, rapacious developers, and squirrelly election officials.
Actually, guns and responsible ownership of guns have always been part of my life. When my grandparents first came to Siesta Key, rattlesnakes outnumbered humans, and some of the humans were unsavory types one step ahead of bounty hunters. A rifle was a handy thing to have around for protection against all those varmints, and my grandfather would have thought it ludicrous for anybody to question his right to own one. On the other hand, he would think it equally ludicrous for civilians to claim they needed machine guns or assault weapons for personal protection.
When Michael and I were little, our grandfather would take us out to the country and let us shoot tin cans off fence posts. He’d preach that guns were dangerous weapons not to be left loaded or lying around. On the way home he’d make us giggle with the old Jimmie Rodgers song our grandmother wouldn’t let him sing in her presence: “If you don’t want to smell my smoke, don’t monkey with my gun.”
I was always a better shot than Michael because he was too physical to enjoy the precision that shooting requires. Good shooters are precise people, like clockmakers or safecrackers. Either because of my grandfather’s training or Jimmie Rodgers’s blue yodel or some genetic trait, I was one of the best shooters the police academy has ever had. Michael, on the other hand, doesn’t own a gun and thinks armed civilians are ridiculous Clint Eastwood wannabes. I sort of agree with him, except that now I’m also a civilian with a permit to carry a concealed weapon.
My preferred gun is one of my former off-duty guns, a snub-nosed, five-shot, J-frame .38 caliber. It has a stainless steel two-inch barrel and cylinder, and an aluminum alloy frame with an exposed hammer. Its checkered black rubber boot grip is easy to handle and it fits well in my hand. No safety to worry about, no decocking levers to slow me down, no magazines to fail. Only thirteen ounces, it’s a sweet, simple, dependable gun.
I doubt that I’ll ever go back to being a law enforcement officer, and I have no fear of hordes of murderous aliens—either from outer space or other countries—coming to hurt me. But good shooters like to remain good shooters, and my lightweight .38 has a wicked recoil that can ruin my aim if I get sloppy about practicing. I therefore spend some time every week at the handgun shooting range. They all know me there, and the young man who led me to a vacant booth didn’t bother to tell me the rules. He just put up the paper target and left me alone.
If I’m honest with myself, I have to admit I don’t practice just to stay a good shot. There’s also something about putting on the eye and ear protectors, spreading my feet, and aiming at a fresh piece of paper with a bull’s-eye painted on it that gives me a feeling of kick-ass Wonder Woman power. I might get the same feeling if I just put on the Wonder Woman costume, but I don’t think so.