A Long December

by Richard Chizmar

  He opened the car door.

  “One more thing. It’s my place to tell Laura. Not yours. So until I tell her about this, don’t say anything to her. All right?”

  I just stared at my big hands on the steering wheel.

  “All right, Chet?” The anger coming back into his voice.

  I could barely whisper. “All right, Michael.”

  The phone rang that night as I was walking up the stairs to bed.

  I hesitated, thinking: what if it’s Laura? What if Michael told her tonight?

  I heard the squeak of bedsprings down the hallway as Jen moved over to my side of the bed to check the caller ID.

  The phone stopped ringing just as I walked into the bedroom.

  I braced myself for an argument. “Late for a phone call…”

  “Just Erin. I’ll call her back tomorrow.”

  I nodded and went into the bathroom and brushed my teeth and filled up a glass with water.

  I set the glass on my night table and settled into my side of the bed.

  Jen turned the page of her book with one hand and reached over and took my hand with the other.

  I wanted to check the caller ID myself, make sure it was really Erin. I wasn’t sure I believed her. The very idea shocked me.

  Abnormal. Unnatural.

  Jen finished her chapter, turned off the light and was snoring within minutes.

  I leaned over in the dark and looked at the caller ID screen. Erin Matthews.

  It took me a long time to find sleep

  4

  The next day, I started following Jane Cameron. I wanted to see where the best place was to have the conversation she was forcing on me.

  Didn’t take me long to figure out that there would be no opportunity to confront her during the day. She was all forward motion. She walked fast and drove fast. Meetings all over town with her various important clients. I couldn’t afford to brace her in any sort of public way.

  Nothing to stop me from wearing my uniform on my night off, though.

  I had to make sure she was alone. I sat in my car across the street from her fifteen-story condo. She swept her Jag—what else?—into the underground parking garage just after nine that night. She was alone.

  I pulled in four spaces down from her. I reached the elevator before she did.

  In the shadowy light, she wasn’t able to see even my faint resemblance to Michael.

  “Did something happen here tonight?” she said.

  She looked especially fine this evening in a silver suit, her golden hair pulled into a loose chignon.

  “Happen?”

  “When I saw your uniform, I thought maybe something had happened in the building tonight.”

  “Oh, no, ma’am. I’m here on my own. I’m just going to see somebody in the building.”

  She smiled. “Well, I love having a police officer around. Makes me feel safe.”

  The elevator door opened. We climbed in.

  Then she said: “That’s funny.”

  “What is?”

  “Why aren’t you in the lobby getting checked in by Lenny? He checks everybody in. Even cops.”

  I had been demoted from police officer to cop. She was smart. She knew there was something wrong with this situation.

  I said, “I’ll bet you didn’t say that to my brother.”

  “Your brother? What’re you talking about?”

  A bit of panic—just enough to be gratifying—shone in those azure eyes.

  She didn’t know it, but she’d already lost control of the situation. It was almost disappointing. I thought she’d be a lot tougher.

  After she’d brought us whiskey sours, she sat on the divan across from my chair and said, “I hope you realize that all I have to do is pick up the phone and call my friend the police commissioner and your days as a cop are long gone, sweetie.”

  “And if that happens, ‘sweetie,’ then I’ll get somebody to help me get a computer file of some of your messes we’ve had to help you with—especially a certain group of pissed off wives—and I’ll download that file straight to a friend of mine who’s a reporter at KBST. And I’ll do the same thing if you don’t agree to break it off with my brother right away.”

  She smirked. “You’re going to blackmail me out of seeing your brother?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “I can’t believe you two are brothers. Michael’s so handsome and intense and you’re so—” She hesitated. “I may as well be upfront with you. You scare me.”

  “Good. I should scare you. You’ve got good instincts.”

  She exhaled harshly. I tried not to notice the way her long sleek legs were stretched out on the divan or the sheer blouse she wore now, having discarded the coat to her suit. She kept a single shoe on a single big toe, dangling there. Like my brother’s future.

  “You’ll dump him someday, anyway.”

  “I’ve been dumped, too, you know.”

  “Any tears go with this story?”

  “It’s true, you bastard, whether you believe it or not. I was dumped—twice in fact—and I got hurt just like anybody else would. You make me sound like some sort of professional heartbreaker. I have parents I see three times a month and I have a daughter I love very much.”

  “So much you put her in boarding school.”

  Her eyes narrowed. She just watched me for a moment, as if she was observing something in nature she’d never seen before. “Michael told me you were like this. So goddamned judgmental. He calls you ‘The Pope.’”

  “I’m judgmental about women who break up marriages.”

  She laughed. A harsh sound. “Michael told me you had an affair when you were about his age. Aren’t you the hypocrite.”

  I felt my cheeks burn. “I made up for it. I’ve never touched a hand to another woman since.”

  “Mass three times a week? Confession every Saturday? Coach a Little League team? The perfect husband and father.”

  I finished my drink and set it down. “Thanks for the drink. I’ll wait to hear Michael tell me that you’ve broken it off.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  “We’ve already discussed that.”

  “You’ll ruin me.”

  I waited until I was on my feet. “I’ll sure give it my best shot.” I started walking to the door.

  “I really do love him. I’ve never claimed to be anything other than what I am—a selfish, spoiled woman. But this time, with Michael, it’s different—I really do love him.”

  I kept walking.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  I stopped and looked at her.

  “I never wanted to be owned by a man or by a child. But with Michael—I stopped taking my birth control. I went to the doctor’s last week. I haven’t even told Michael yet. I want this child. I want Michael, too. But if I can’t have him, at least I’ll have his child.”

  For once, I didn’t know what to say. I was trying to make sense of all this. But there was no sense to be made of it, none of it. A little fling, every man did it once in a while. Back when it started it had seemed nothing more than that. But now I was listening to her tell me that she was carrying Michael’s baby.

  All I could think of was poor Laura and the kids. I walked to the door and stopped with my hand on the knob. I wanted to say something nasty. But then an old man’s weariness overcame me. I didn’t seem to have any strength left at all. Then words came: “I’ll pay for an abortion. And Michael doesn’t have to know about it.”

  She laughed. “You won’t believe this, Mr. High and Mighty, but I don’t believe in abortion. I may be a slut in your eyes but I’m still a good Catholic girl.”

  I turned my eyes back to hers and with the last of my strength, I said: “Then walk out of his life. He doesn’t have the strength, but you do.”

  “That’s the terrible thing,” she said. “I don’t have the strength, either.”

  5

  The next afternoon I tried to find my brother before his shift started. Sometimes he had coffee
down the street at a luncheonette. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the precinct locker room, either.

  “You didn’t happen to see my brother, did you?” I asked Keller, who was spelling the watch commander while he was in Vegas at a police convention. Don’t think there hadn’t been a lot of jokes about holding a cop convention in Vegas.

  “Bad sore throat and fever. Home sick.”

  “He call in himself?”

  He gave me a sharp look.

  “No, his wife did. Man, you gotta give the kid some breathing room, Chet. He calls in or Laura calls in. What’s the difference?”

  “Just curious.”

  He shook his head and walked on. It was clear that Michael had done a good job with the other cops at the precinct, letting them know that I was always interfering in his life.

  Abnormal. Unnatural.

  I called, but there was no answer at his house. I didn’t leave a message on his machine. If he’d actually told Linda about his affair, this wasn’t a hopeful sign. A number of paranoid ideas shook me, the loudest one in my head being the one where the wife, kids off at school, goes insane and kills her unfaithful husband. It happens.

  I thought about asking Keller if I could take off early. Family emergency. But I knew how that would look.

  Instead, I got in my car and did my job. I answered calls for a breaking and entering, a domestic, and a shop-lifting and assault at the big Wal-Mart superstore. I helped a little girl find her lost puppy and put a couple Band-Aids on a crying kid’s skinned and bloodied knee. The whole time I was thinking of Michael and Laura. I tried to call three more times. No answer.

  As soon as my shift was over, I got in my car and drove over there. A lone lamp lit the house, downstairs, the family room. Michael’s car was gone. I went to the front door and knocked.

  I could see her through the glass slat in the door. She was curled up in the corner of the couch. She wore a pair of faded pink cotton pajamas. With her short dark hair and sweet face, she could have been a sorority girl. The TV was on but the sound was off and she wasn’t watching it anyway. Screen colors flickered across the living room.

  I knocked again. This time she looked up. I walked over to the window and waved. She got up off the couch, buttoning the top of her pajama shirt and came to the door.

  She let me in but said nothing. She went back to the couch and sat down. “You could’ve told me. Then this wouldn’t have come as such a shock tonight.”

  I sat down in an armchair across from her. “It would’ve been just as much of a shock if I’d warned you.”

  She raised her head, closed her eyes, as if invisible rain was spattering her face. “This is so unreal.” She opened her eyes, lowered her head, looked at me. “In case you don’t think I got hysterical, I did. There’s broken glass all over the kitchen floor. The kids are at my sister’s house. I didn’t trust myself enough to keep them here tonight.”

  “Don’t do anything nuts.”

  She shrugged. “I never do anything nuts, Chet. You know that. I’m not dramatic. Or sexy. Or exciting. That’s what he said she was. Exciting.” Then: “Damn, I wish I had a cigarette.”

  “No, you don’t. You quit five years ago. Keep it that way.”

  “And all my self-pity.”

  “You’re entitled.”

  “I just keep thinking about all the people who have it worse than me. And here I am feeling sorry for myself.”

  “That never works. Believe me, I’ve been trying it all my life. Just because somebody’s crippled or blind or has cancer doesn’t help me at all.”

  She made a face. “We could always have sex.”

  “You frowned when you said that. Meaning that you know better.”

  “I have these fantasies that he walks in on me when I’m having sex with somebody and it makes him jealous and then he realizes what a good thing he’s lost.”

  “You’re in shock right now.”

  “That’s funny you should say that. That’s sort of how I feel. So shocked I don’t know what to do with myself. I can’t even get drunk. Two drinks and I throw up.”

  “You have any tranquilizers?”

  “I’ve taken two already. This is the best they can do for me, I guess.” Something changed, then. I wasn’t sure what. The eyes were no longer vulnerable or sad. They were angry.

  “I’m probably just lashing out here, Chet. But I need to say something to you, something I should’ve said a long time ago.”

  “Lash away. You’ll feel better.”

  She took a deep breath and said, “This’ll probably make you mad.”

  I was thinking she was going to tear into me for keeping the truth from her.

  Instead, she said, “You didn’t help my marriage any by constantly being on Michael’s back.”

  Her anger was swift and sure. I was a little shocked, although I guess I shouldn’t have been; I’d been told too often in too short a time how I was doing badly by my little brother.

  “I don’t think that’s fair, Laura.”

  “I just had to say it.”

  “Did it make you feel better?”

  “Maybe. But it made you mad.”

  “No, it didn’t.”

  She smiled. “You’re grinding your jaw muscles and your hands are fists. I’d say those are signs you’re pretty pissed off.”

  “Irritated, maybe. But not pissed off.” Then: “I was just trying to help you kids.”

  “That’s just it. We’re not kids, Chet. We’re grown-ups. But you’d never acknowledge that. You were always checking on him at the precinct and giving him advice on handling his money and telling him who to hang out with and not hang out with and—God, I remember the time when your aunt died and you told him right in front of everybody at the funeral that he shouldn’t have worn a tan suit to the wake. But that was the only suit he owned, Chet. And the time you saw our girls playing wiffle ball and you told him you thought they should be playing more feminine games. And when you got on his case about where we went to church, that it was better to go to St. Joe’s because that’s where the shift commander went. It just never ended, Chet.”

  I suppose, looking back, that’s when it started, this black feeling. And that’s the only way I can describe it. It was anger in such volume that I could barely breathe holding it back.

  I said, “You ever hear the expression ‘No good deed ever goes unpunished.’ I used to think that was just a funny line. But it isn’t. It’s the truth.”

  “Now who’s feeling sorry for himself? We’re just talking here, having a conversation.”

  “Is that what this is, Laura, just a conversation?”

  “All I meant was that you need to let him go. I hate that bitch he’s in love with but even with them, Chet—you have to let them have their own lives. You can’t be his father anymore.” She hesitated. “He told me they’re going to move away. He said he’s giving notice to the commander tomorrow that he’ll be leaving.”

  “Oh,” I said, “just great.” And the anger made my breathing short again. Gave me a sudden stabbing headache just above my left eye. Made every taut muscle in my body scream for release. “You know how hard I had to work to get him on the force? All the trouble he’d been in, and I had to promise that he’d straightened out and really wanted to be a cop. And now he’s throwing it all away.”

  “It’s his choice, Chet. His choice. He’s a grown man. Right now I’d like to get that gun of his and empty it into his heart. And then I’d do the same to her. I hurt so much right now I don’t know what to do. But it’s his choice and you’ve got to let him make it.”

  “Right. I get him through high school, studying with him every night so he’ll get good grades. And then I get him through a couple of years of college until he starts hanging out with punks. And then I get him on the road to recovery and introduce him to you. And you’re everything a man would want in a wife. And he throws it all over for some slut. And I’m supposed to like it.”

  “You don’t have
to like it any more than I do, Chet. But you’ve got to let go now. He’s in love with her and he’s moving away and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  I stood up.

  “Where’re you going?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Are you okay?”

  I thought about it for a moment.

  “No, I’m not. All the things I’ve done for you two over the years and this is what I get, this is what you say to me.”

  “I’m sorry, Chet. I didn’t mean to chase you away.”

  I went to the front door, opened it. “You aren’t chasing me away, Laura. I’m chasing me away.”

  6

  I didn’t count the beers. I was careful to stay under control, but that didn’t mean I was sober.

  A little bar near the old stadium. Dark, anonymous. I found myself salting my beer the way the old man had. He used to take me to the neighborhood tavern with him. Sometimes we played darts or talked football. Those were my favorites times, the few occasions when I got to be alone with my old man. I’d sit on the stool next to him and he’d pop peanuts in his mouth and sprinkle salt in his beer. I always wanted people to know he was a cop because I was so proud of him. But he never wore his uniform when he went drinking. He said it just caused trouble. I’d always wondered what he meant by that. If somebody gave him trouble, couldn’t he just shoot him? That was how my eight-year-old mind worked. Nobody could insult cops. They were the good guys.

  But I made the mistake he’d avoided. Early on I wore my uniform into a few non-cop bars and paid for it. No fights or anything but a couple hours of vague insults grinding into my ear canal. Everybody, especially drunks, has a good stock of anti-police stories.

  I had one more beer than I should have and went out to my car.