After a chorus of amens, conversation tapered off as everyone dug in. Sully asked how Keaton and Kelly were doing, and Deb responded with anecdotes about the price of a college education and the dearth of affordable housing in San Francisco. Peg inquired about Mary Kate’s middle boy, Conner, who dropped out of SUNY Buffalo and was back at home, attending community college.
“Why doesn’t he come to Sunday dinner?” Peg’s cajoling didn’t cover her disappointment. “Did he forget where we live?”
“He’s got friends, Ma.” Mary Kate chewed rapidly, reminding Bernie of a rabbit. “There’s school papers and he works at the cinema now. Conner has a lot of things to do.”
“We’ve all got friends and plenty of things to do.” Peg put a dollop of potatoes into her mouth, then paused. “Mmm. There’s lumps in the potatoes. Did you heat the milk?”
“Some people like a little texture,” Bernie said. Was it too much to hope that her mother would take the task away from her because she’d failed?
“That’s why you heat the milk,” Peg said. “It smooths things out. I like creamy potatoes. And I’d like to see my grandson, too.”
“I’ll tell him you guys missed him.” Mary Kate leaned onto the empty chair beside her, as if she could extract herself from family scrutiny. “You know how college kids are. They eat dinner at midnight instead of two in the afternoon.”
“Dinner at midnight!” Maisey rolled her eyes, holding her fork of impaled carrots upright like a flag. “That’s crazy.”
“It sure is.” Peg grinned with satisfaction as she cut a piece of beef.
“Eat your carrots,” Sarah said. “You’ve got a busy week ahead. The school show on Tuesday, and then your birthday Friday.”
“That’s right,” Peg said. “I’ve got the show on my calendar. You’re coming here for dessert afterward.”
“We are?” Grace’s eyes went wide. “Thank you, Nana.”
“You’re welcome.” Peg nodded approvingly at Brendan and Sarah. “Such good girls.”
“And you’re all invited.” Sarah grinned as her blue eyes scanned the faces at the table. “The show starts at six-thirty. ‘Songs of Winter.’ I know you can’t resist.”
“I have to work,” James said, “but I’m sorry to miss it.”
Bernie smiled at Grace, who seemed to soak up the conversation like a sponge. “I’ll be there,” Bernie said. “I love to see you guys perform.”
Maisey looked around the table. “Is the ’nother aunt going to come to the show?”
Everyone looked at Mary Kate, who blinked. “Oh, I could probably make the end.”
“Not you; the ’nother aunt.”
Sarah’s mouth opened in a wide O. “Lucy?”
Maisey nodded.
“Aunt Lucy lives in Delaware,” Sarah explained. “And that’s a long way to drive in the middle of the week, with traffic and everything.”
A lame excuse, but no one seemed to hold the true explanation for Lucy’s departure from the family. She had pursued a scholarly profession, converted to Judaism, married a doctor, and emerged from her Queens cocoon “a very cultured lady,” as Ma would say. None of those things alone were a problem, but they all added up to detachment.
Lucy had left, and she didn’t seem to care if she ever saw her family again.
“I’m surprised you remember her, pumpkin. When was the last time she visited?”
“She came for my First Communion last year,” Grace said.
“That’s right; she did.” Brendan rubbed his jaw. “Now if you’re done, you can take your plates into the kitchen and help Nana clean up.”
As if on cue, Sarah and Deb rose and began to clear away dishes.
“Excellent meal, Peg.” Dad lifted his squat juice glass of red wine in salute. “Roast was good as ever. Nice and tender.”
“Yeah, well, I hope you saved room for dessert. Sarah baked those mini cherry tarts, and Bernie brought cookies from Marietta.”
Since Bernie refused to bake, she chiseled away at her guilt by contributing sweets from the local businesses her parents had frequented for the last forty years, most of them merchants on nearby Bell Boulevard.
“Can I have a cookie?” Maisey asked.
“Go have a cookie,” Peg said, shooing the girl toward the kitchen, “but we don’t set dessert out until after the dishes are done.”
Eyes on her plate, Bernie lingered, poking her fork at the round disks of carrots on her plate so that she could stay at the table with the men and engage in more of the conversation she loved.
Cop stories.
The good stories, uncensored and full of color, didn’t come out until after the women and children left the table. Bernie was raised on war stories, just as the Horak twins next door were raised on frozen dinners with little compartments to separate peas and mashed potatoes—the envy of Bernie and her sibs back in the day.
With three bottles of salad dressing in one hand, Ma reached for the beef platter with the other.
“I was going to leave that for Tony.” Mary Kate nodded to the empty chair where the unused china and silverware still sparkled. “He should be here any minute.”
Nothing registered on the faces of the men at the table; from their bland expressions one would never know that this scene was replayed nearly every Sunday evening.
“We’ll make him a plate in the kitchen.” Ma’s grip on the platter was strong, unrelenting, and Bernie felt grateful for her mother’s backbone. Thank God Peggy Sullivan was not one to sit around and let good food spoil or delusions grow.
“He can’t help it if he’s got to work miserable midnights,” Mary Kate muttered as a fork thunked to the wood floor.
“We all know how that is, darlin’.” Sully’s blue eyes sparkled for his oldest daughter.
Mary Kate’s face was expressionless as she hugged her load of plates and escaped to the kitchen.
Sully sat back in his chair at the head of the table and linked his hands in the prayer position on the edge of the gold tablecloth. Just like Father Tillman in the confessional booth, Bernie thought. “I used to hate midnights.”
Brendan and Jimmy agreed. Although Bernie was tempted to point out that she was stuck working night shifts right now, and yet she managed to get here for dinner, she restrained herself. She didn’t want to be the one who pushed Mary Kate over the edge.
Bernie used to feel sorry for her frazzled sister, who was clearly in denial over whatever was or was not going on in her marriage. She had trusted her sister to figure things out. But now that she dealt with Tony Marino professionally—he was always trying to shove some arrest down the DA’s throat—she had lost patience. Why her sister kept covering for Tony, who was “quite a swordsman” according to the office rumor mill, she had no idea. But she was done feeding the delusion.
“Peggy, where do you keep the decaf?” Sarah called from the kitchen. Long before she married Brendan, Sarah was a part of the kitchen klatch, coordinating meals, tidying up afterward.
“We’re outta decaf.” Peggy’s lips pursed in that grin-and-bear-it frown as she headed into the kitchen. “Your father forgot to bring it home from the shop.”
The shop was a small coffee shop across the street from the 109th Precinct, Sully’s home precinct for years. After retirement he’d bought the shop, a favorite hangout spot for cops, and renamed it “Sully’s Cup.”
“The memory is shot,” Sully said. “Looks like you guys are stuck with leaded tonight.”
“Fine with me.” Bernie pushed her glasses onto her head to rub her eyes. “When I work Lobster Shift, I always hit that wall around four in the morning.” For some reason lawyers called the shift from one to nine in the morning the Lobster Shift, and Bernie was still a green enough prosecutor to rotate into the weird hours from time to time. Secretly, she didn’t mind because she and Keesh worked the same schedule, but she didn’t talk about her relationship with Keesh at the family table. Sully didn’t approve of his daughter having a relationship wi
th “some potential terrorist from the Middle East.” Keesh was Rashid Kerobyan, son of an Armenian brain surgeon who hailed from Ohio. In Bernie’s opinion, you couldn’t get much more American than Ohio, but there was no arguing with her father.
Brendan bumped her playfully on the shoulder. “You need to get off those night shifts, Peanut.”
“One of these days. But I don’t have the Lobster Shift all the time,” she said, softened by the endearment. When was the last time Brendan called her Peanut? Of all her siblings, she was most simpatico with Bren, who was closest in age. That was no surprise, considering that Jimmy Jr. was nearly twenty and out of the house when Bernie was born. “She was my ‘oops’ baby,” Peggy liked to say of Bernadette, “but she kept Sully and me on our toes.”
“And Dad ...” James’s brows arched over his eyes in an earnest expression as he turned to their father at the head of the table. “How can a man like yourself, who serves coffee to hundreds of people a week, have no decaf in the house?”
The guys chuckled, and Sully pointed a finger at his oldest son. “Watch it, Jimbo, or we’ll cut you off without a drop of French Roast.”
James clutched his chest. “You’re breaking my heart.”
Over the laughter and cawing no one heard the side door open, but from the kitchen came Gracie’s animated voice. “Uncle Tony! Where were you?”
After the hellos Tony appeared at the kitchen door. “Hey, sports fans.” He extended a hand to Bernie’s father, the only man in the room afforded the courtesy. Tony knew how to work a room. “How’s it going, Sully?”
“I can’t complain. You want a beer?”
“I’d love one, but I’m working tonight.”
Brendan pointed a thumb toward Bernie. “She is, too. Sarah’s making coffee.”
“And here’s your dinner.” Mary Kate’s voice was thick with pride as she placed a steaming plate of food in front of her husband. “I nuked it for you.”
“Thanks, sweetheart,” he said.
Bernie turned away from the spectacle: fawning wife, philandering husband. Did Mary Kate know that he called every female in the DA’s office “sweetheart”?
“Let me know if you want seconds.” Mary Kate backed toward the kitchen. “There’s plenty more.”
“I’m good.” Tony unfolded Ma’s cloth napkin and tucked it into the top of his button-down shirt. A shirt no doubt pressed with love by Mary Kate.
“Do you two ever cross paths at work?” Sully asked from the head of the table.
“I wish,” Tony said. “Somehow I always get stuck with those ADAs who think they know it all.” Tony gestured with a fork. He was one of those guys who could pull off eating in front of a group. It wasn’t just his high self-esteem; he never seemed to end up with seeds stuck between his teeth or grease shining on his lips. Bernie saw it as part of his natural charm, an ornate façade for an architecturally unsound building.
“Sometimes we run into each other in the office.” Bernie didn’t mention that she tried to dodge any cases that came into the Complaint Room with “Marino” listed as the arresting officer.
Sully leaned back in his chair, palms on the table. “I’ll tell you, I sleep well at night knowing that this city is in good hands. My sons out there on the streets. My daughter prosecuting the scum of the earth. I’m proud of you all.” James Sullivan Sr. had joined the New York City Police Department in the early sixties at the age of eighteen. Sometimes Bernie had trouble wrapping her brain around the image of her father, a teenager in the sixties, getting a buzz cut and saluting the establishment while, all around him, the hip generation was espousing free love. Sully stayed on the job until he reached the limit—his sixty-third birthday—and loved every minute in between.
Pride flickered in Bernie’s chest. “You set us all on the path, Dad.”
Sully swatted off her comment. “You guys are the new heroes. The new generation.”
“Yeah, and sometimes I wonder about the next generation,” James said. He explained how half a dozen recruits had to be cut from the academy because they couldn’t pass the physical exam. “These guys, and a girl, they couldn’t run at all. Fat pales, all of them.” Now that Jimmy taught at the Police Academy, his stories tended more toward comedy than heartbreak, but at times his eyes were shaded by pain. Sully said a cop never forgot the street. “You can take a cop off the streets, but you’ll never take the street out of a cop.”
Talk turned to James’s new hours at the Police Academy. He had a shot at steady days, but didn’t want to lose the night differential.
“But days are sweet,” Brendan said. “It’s good to work when the sun is up.”
“You day shift guys are lucky,” Tony said. “Nights are hard on a family. You never see your kids, at least not ’til they’re in college like my kids. Then they act like they’re working nights.”
At least Tony had that part right. Bernie pressed a napkin to her mouth to hide her smile.
“Yeah, steady days are good. I love having the afternoon to pick up the girls from school and day care. Best part of my day.” The shadows under Brendan’s eyes deepened as he glanced toward the kitchen. “I want my kids to know who their father is. Grace and Maisey are going to grow up right.”
“Yeah, it’s getting harder and harder to take care of a family these days.” Tony buttered a roll as he spoke. “I still can’t get over that horror show in Connecticut. What those monsters did to the Stevens family. Fuckin’ animals.”
Bernie looked toward the door to see if the kids were out of earshot. As a rule, her father wanted the street language kept on the street.
“They should be fried,” Tony added.
“Heinous crimes,” Sully agreed, and though they had discussed the home-invasion-turned-murder before, Sully and James recounted the story, repeating certain details that they all knew by heart. Two ex-cons. A ladder at the back window. A blood-soaked scarf.
“I’d pull the switch on them,” James said.
“We need some good lawyers like Bernie up there to make sure they get what they deserve,” Sully said. “What do you say, honey? One day maybe you’ll be the one facing down these monsters in court, getting the big fish.”
“Dad ...” Bernie raked a hand through one side of her hair. “I’m an ADA. The prosecutors on those cases have years of experience behind them.”
“But you’re good, sweetheart,” Sully said. “You could do it.”
Brendan leaned back and tucked his hands behind his neck so that his arms folded out to the sides like two huge gray wings. There was turmoil in his eyes, but Bernie couldn’t quite read it.
“You could fry them,” Tony said. “Wouldn’t that be the bomb if little Bernie sent some piece of shit off to fry.”
“If it happened in New York, they’d probably use lethal injection,” Bernie said, trying to ground the conversation. “And the chances of execution here are slim. New York hasn’t used capital punishment since 1963.”
“And I hope we never do.” Brendan’s words seemed to suck the air from the room.
All eyes were on him.
Brendan dropped his arms, but he held his ground. “How does that make things right—killing a killer? In my book, that makes us animals, too.”
“True.” Sully stared off in the distance, surprising Bernie. If anyone else had said that, her father would have been all over them. “But sometimes you’ve got to do the hard thing, son. Sometimes you got to stop the bleeding.”
“Amen to dat.” Tony could be such a jerk, but at times it provided comic relief. “Hey, Bernie, what’s the word on the subway rapist down by City Hall?”
“You tell me,” she said. “You guys going fishing downtown?” Tony worked in Street Crime, a plainclothes unit that worked in all five boroughs.
“As a matter of fact, we’re setting up operations in some of the subways tonight. I’d love to snag this guy.”
“I read in the paper that they almost caught him the last time he attacked,” Sully sai
d as his wife brought a Corning-Ware pot of coffee to the table. “Wednesday, right?”
“That’s what I read,” Bernie agreed, accepting a clean mug from Grace. “Victims report that he walks with a limp, or else he’s intox. He lurks at the end of the platform.”
“You’re not riding the subway at night, are you?” Peg stared down at her daughter.
Bernie felt like a butterfly pinned to a board. “I don’t ride in the middle of the night.”
Peg let her head roll back, her eyes to the ceiling. “Lord in heaven above, watch over the foolish.”
“We got extra patrols and undercovers in the subways.” Tony clapped a comforting hand on Peggy’s shoulder, as if he had it all under control. “We’ll get this guy, Peg.”
“But till then, it’s not safe.” Peg’s mouth was set tight. “I don’t want you down there, Bernadette.”
There was that name, inspired by the saint, or more accurately the movie The Song of Bernadette, which had won her mother’s heart when she was a girl. The name meant serious business. “Okay, Ma. I’ll spring for a taxi and deal with the perverts on the street.”
“Very funny.” Peg frowned as she put out the platter from the bakery. “Now listen to your mother. And have a cookie.”
Tony reached for a petit four. “I love these things. You know what else? I’d love to catch that rapist. That would pave my path with gold. The guy who snags him will be a hero. There’s a gold shield there.”
James nodded, but Brendan shook his head.
“What?” Tony spread his hands.
Brendan folded his arms across his chest. “You are such a one-way ...” He looked to his daughters, climbing back onto their chairs at the table. “You’re a one-way fudgesicle.”
“The real heroes are the guys who come through in small moments, day after day,” Bernie said, stirring milk into her coffee. She thought of Brendan and the little girls who had to be removed from their abusive father. “Small moments that have big results. Aiding a victim. Resolving an argument. Even giving directions. It’s really about service more than enforcement.”
“That’s my daughter,” Sully said proudly.
The Daughter She Used To Be Page 2