A Love Restrained

by Becky Flade

  “Along with a bunch of other plants I didn’t want? Yes.” She kept peeling, but she knew it wouldn’t end there.

  “Were they all from the same man?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “And you gave them all to me?”

  She thought of the small fern in the spare bedroom she’d set up as her home office. He’d left it on the step. “Sort of, yes.”

  “You get so many flowers from men you can afford to just give them away?”

  “No, Mom, I don’t, and you know I don’t as my lack of a romantic life offends your femininity. A fact you remind me of often. But this man is inappropriate.”

  “What makes him inappropriate?”

  She smiled into the potatoes. “He’s a drug dealer.”

  “Jesus Christ!” her mother exclaimed. “Why would a drug dealer be sending you potted flowers? And he knows where you live? Where we live? I knew something like this would happen.”

  Oh shit, I should’ve lied.

  “You knew I would arrest a guy I went to high school with and he would torment me because he beat the charges, and has a sick sense of humor?”

  “Who?”

  “Jayson Donovan.”

  “Oh. Poor boy had a terrible situation growing-up. Well. I still don’t like it.”

  “Don’t like what?” Her father stepped into the room.

  “Kylee ran into Jayson Donovan. You remember him.”

  Her father nodded.

  “He’s the boy sending her plants. You know the geraniums that came here for her the other day?”

  Her father nodded again. “I think he’s not a boy anymore, Mare.”

  “She gave me all the plants.”

  “Why?”

  “She arrested him. That’s how they reconnected.”

  Her mother’s ability to not lie and not tell the truth amazed. Mary Parker should’ve been a lawyer. Before the question and answer segment of the afternoon could go any further, chaos, in the form of her sister Jordan and Jordan’s family, descended on the Parker home.

  It didn’t take long for everyone else to arrive. The spacious dwelling took on a beleaguered and claustrophobic atmosphere when they were all together. It also brimmed full of laughter, love and sibling rivalry. She enjoyed the ribbing as much as she did the hugs.

  Her older brother, Michael, leaned in close. “Hear you have a secret admirer?”

  “You heard wrong. I know who he is.”

  “Tell us about geranium man,” Pat asked.

  “Yeah, what’s his name?” Scott added.

  She stood and took her plate out to the kitchen. She stood for a second, her hip against the kitchen sink, her eyes focused on the planter outside the window, silently cursing arrogant jerks and large, nosey families. Someone entered the kitchen behind her. She didn’t turn. A heavy, calloused hand rubbed her neck.

  “Your mother said you arrested Jayson Donovan for dealing drugs, but he beat the charges and he’s courting you.”

  She knew her dad would seek her out. Just as she should’ve realized her mother would give him the whole story. But when did she have a chance?

  “I doubt he’s courting so much as rubbing it in my face, but yeah, that’s the gist of it.”

  “I don’t know the man he became but the boy had it harder than most. He tried to rise above his childhood. I liked the kid. Respected him.” He paused. “I trust you to know the difference between a good man making bad choices and a bad man living true to his nature. If you say he’s no good, he’s no good. I’ll make sure your brothers and sisters leave it alone.”

  “Thanks, Daddy.”

  Hours later, back at home, sitting at her desk in the spare room, she looked at the fern and remembered her dad’s words. Do I even want to know if JD’s a good man?

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Mom. Please open the door.” He looked at his watch. He’d been begging for the better part of thirty minutes. I’ll give it five more. Then I’m out of here. It had been over a month since he’d been able to get in the door. About to give up, the lock clicked, and the door opened. The odor of old food and mildew grew as he pushed the warped wood wide and stepped into chaos. Stained furniture, some of it broken, littered the gloomy space. But the condition of the house paled beside his mother’s bedraggled, broken, countenance and bird-like frame. She’s not eating. Is that from the depression or is Amy selling the food for booze?

  “Mom?” He reached for her, but she stepped away, jerking her head so that thin, oily hair—once thick and beautiful—swung forward, shielding her face. “Look at me. Please.”

  She sniffled and stepped further away. Crossed arms painted with new and old bruises over her chest and raised her chin. And he saw what she’d tried to hide—the swollen eye and cut cheek. Amy had punched her.

  “That bitch.” His mother flinched, and he hated her a little for it. The guilt washed over him, as it always did, battling with the anger, as it always had.

  “Mom,” he spoke as though addressing a skittish colt, “you don’t have to put up with this from her, from anybody.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She looked at the floor when she lied and braced her legs apart to absorb the hit she expected as penalty for the falsehood.

  In his earliest childhood memory, he remembered her on the floor at his father’s feet, crying and begging forgiveness as bruises blossomed over her face. He’d been three, and he’d hidden under a table. When he’d been seventeen, she’d taken some of the old man’s money, and she’d lied, saying JD had taken it to impress a girl. And she had stood there, sobbing, while he took the beating meant for her. I guess she didn’t fit under the table.

  “Amelia hit you. Been hitting you from the looks of it. She’s sick, Mom. She needs help. You both do.”

  “Shut up. Just shut up. You don’t know shit. Think you’re some big deal, asshole. You’re nothing. Nothing!” Amelia ran from the bedroom.

  She wouldn’t hit him, no matter how angry or how drunk. He never knew why not; she had no problem taking on men twice his size in a drunken rage but never him. A part of him wondered if maybe his mother and sister were afraid of him. Another part told him of course they were. Neither part understood.

  Later, after convincing them both to lie down, he salvaged what he could of the furniture and dug his mom’s old push sweeper from the closet. It was senseless busy work, but was something he could do for them. I don’t know how long I can keep doing this. I should’ve never come back. Maybe they’d be better off without me.

  He did his best to take care of his mom and his little sister. But his mom never quite overcame the lifetime of abuse and fear she had endured being married to James Donovan. His sister had followed in their father’s footsteps adopting the mantle of drunken abuser to his mother’s suffering victim. Roles they were both ideally suited to play. But with dad dead, they’re my responsibility.

  He noted the void where the DVD player he’d given them last Christmas should be and found he didn’t care. He stood in the center of what should’ve been a sweet little two-bedroom condo and he saw a cage formed by addiction and obligation. The story of his childhood.

  He knew at a young age his family wasn’t right, but not until after meeting the Parkers’ did he give up hoping they’d ever be right.

  He was maybe twelve the first time he ran away. He remembered it like it was yesterday. His dad passed out after first beating him with the belt and then with meaty fists. He’d gotten lost and sat down to cry, thinking no one would notice. Mary Parker had noticed. She’d joined him on the curb and handed him a handkerchief before taking him inside to tend his wounds.

  He was on his second piece of apple pie when a car pulled into the driveway, startling him.

  He thought it was his dad. That he’d come for him. Remembered looking for a place to hide and the way the woman’s kind eyes had gone sad. She’d asked him to wait, in a quiet, reassuring voice. And he had. But he watched from the window as she spoke
to a tall man with a thick mustache. A girl about his age climbed out of the back seat of their faded station wagon and skipped along the driveway. The woman took the little girl’s hand, and they walked out of sight.

  The man came in alone. He was scared, but the man nodded to him and shook his hand like real men did on TV. The man’s hands were big like his father’s, but his eyes were kind just like the lady who had given him chocolate milk and apple pie. He still stood back, his feet braced apart, ready to run or duck. Prepared to accept the blow if he could do neither in time.

  “Hello, young man. My name is Keith Parker, and that was my wife Mary you were charming while I escorted my daughter to softball practice. She tells me your name is Jayson.” Mr. Parker took a seat at the kitchen table and offered him the opposite seat.

  He nodded and he sat, hesitantly, as he knew it was harder to run from a seated position. Just as he knew sometimes grown-ups said one thing and did another.

  “Should I worry about you putting moves on my woman?”

  “No sir.” He giggled. He hadn’t meant to, but he did, and he waited to be called a faggot or a sissy for doing it. His dad hated when he giggled. Mr. Parker just smiled.

  “Good to hear. You want to tell me how you got marked up like that?”

  He looked at the table top. “No, sir.”

  “Didn’t think so.” Mr. Parker leaned back in his chair. “You have your fill of pie, son?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It’s going to be dark soon, and I need to get you home before your people get worried.”

  I didn’t argue, but I didn’t want to go back. I wanted to stay. But I didn’t belong in the friendly kitchen with warm people who had kind eyes.

  He stared at his mother’s kitchen. Torn, dirty linoleum. A rusting metal table with four mismatched chairs. Dingy curtains pulled tight against the sun. This is my family. I didn’t belong with the Parkers. Not then and not now. At least Ky knew it if he didn’t.

  His cell phone rang and pulled him off memory lane. Not a minute too soon. He’d never been so happy to see his boss’s number on the screen. He stepped out of the small space, locking and pulling the door closed behind him. “Hey Chic, what’s up, man?”

  He’d been working for Chic Checcio for three years. He had started small in the organization and worked his way up to being Chic’s go-to guy. The problem solver. He’d refused Chic once. When the gangster had wanted a competitor killed. He’d spent countless hours sitting awake waiting for a bullet or a bat to the head. But none came. The following day he screwed up the courage to ask why it hadn’t.

  Chic explained, “Why would I wanna kill my best problem solver?”

  He understood. He was still of value. And when he wasn’t? Well, he wasn’t.

  “I’m just leaving my mom’s place.” He strode to his bike, his long legs eating the pavement. Eager to be away from despair so thick it threatened to swallow him whole. Wishing he didn’t feel like a broken twelve-year-old making another run for it.

  “Social call or is it your sister again?”

  “What do you think?” He pulled sunglasses from his back pocket, wondering if the headache behind his eyes would lessen as he put some distance between him and his family.

  “You busy?”

  “Just so happens my day is free, why?”

  “I need someone to take Coopers’ collections for me tonight.”

  He thought about it. He knew a couple guys would be willing to pick up some extra cash collecting the payments from the bookies on Cooper’s detail, but he needed something to get his mind off his family and off a certain doe-eyed cop. “I got it.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The desk sergeant had yet to find someone willing to work with her full time and tonight she was paired up with Matt Shore. Decent cop, better guy, with a young family at home and better yet, one of the few in her precinct who didn’t leer in the gym or hold up the sign of the cross behind her back. Matt liked to drive, and he liked to talk. Most nights they worked together, she could keep her eyes on the street and one ear open.

  “You may be interested to know Sherman requested he not be partnered with you anymore.”

  She stiffened. Some considered her bad luck, others thought her unreliable, but either way, the responsibility of Guff’s death fell on her.

  “He warned me. Said you’re tireless and have unfair expectations.”

  “Yeah, I expected him to work. That man has already retired. He just isn’t pulling his pension yet.” She sat up taller. “Do you see that?”

  Matt turned on their lights and signaled for a right turn in answer. She called it in. “Two men and one woman, appearing intoxicated, are involved in an altercation outside Lucky’s on the corner of J and Erie Streets. Officers Parker and Shore responding.”

  They split the two men up and sent the screaming woman inside with friends. They had a clear picture in minutes. Former boyfriend showed up at Lucky’s tonight—his regular drinking hole—to find his new-ex there with her new boyfriend. After a few beers and dirty looks had been exchanged by all, the new guy found his girl making out with her ex when she was supposed to have been catching a quick cigarette. Screaming ensued. The screams turned to shoving and the shoves to fists.

  She took the new boyfriend while Matt calmed the ex. They had the situation in hand, things were calm, when the femme fatale ran through the door and launched herself at Matt. He turned toward the woman, arms outstretched as though he intended to embrace her.

  The ex took Matt’s service pistol from its holster and aimed it at her partner’s back. “If I can’t have her no one can!”

  “Gun! Get down.” She pulled her weapon from its harness, aimed and fired. She watched the drunken man fall, horror filling her as blood bloomed on his shirt. She fell to her knees, triaging the man’s wound, staunching the flow of blood, without any recollection of moving. Matt stood over her calling for an ambulance and tried to keep the growing crowd out of her way. Someone wept amid the excited murmurs of the people watching.

  She ignored them all and continued putting pressure on the wound until a paramedic she hadn’t seen arrive bodily removed her from the fallen man’s side. I killed him. I killed him.

  Her back straight, the shaking controlled, she gave her initial report to the responding internal affairs detective. Her stomach clenched as they loaded the still bleeding man into the back of an ambulance. Her gun confiscated and instructed not to talk to any press, she was relieved of duty. Their captain pulled her aside before she could leave the scene.

  “You’ve got nothing to worry about. It’s a good shoot, and you saved, at the very least, your partner’s life. Go home. Sleep if you can. Get drunk if you can’t. I’ll call when I’ve got news. Good or bad.”

  “Thanks.” I killed him. I killed him. She looked down; she had blood on her hands. Literally. A morbid chuckle bubbled up her throat ending on a quiet sob she swallowed. Her captain patted her shoulder before walking away.

  She couldn’t help but remember the last time her uniform had soaked up so much blood, and her heart lurched along with her stomach. She raised her chin, determined to remain professional. Her father stood alongside his SUV parked outside the perimeter of official vehicles and police tape. She didn’t question his presence. Her father always knew when one of them needed him.

  Don’t hug him. You’ll break. You can’t break. She climbed into the passenger seat without saying a word. Two blocks away, he parked the car and pulled her into a hug, letting her cry into his shoulder.

  * * *

  The bar at Devane’s Tavern took up the center of the rectangular room; stools lined it on all sides; a couple of video games, a juke box, and a shuffleboard table filled the remaining space at the rear. It looked like a nice neighborhood place. Nothing like the dives his father used to frequent or the places his job took him. He’d spotted Kylee as soon as he’d entered but, out of habit, stood back and took stock of his surroundings. Assessing potential threat
s. Now he took stock of her.

  She sat alone, hunched over a beer and several empty shot glasses, her head bobbed to the music spilling from the jukebox. He’d sought her out after seeing her on the eleven o’clock news. Misery shrouded her. He wanted to hold her until the hurting stopped. Definite threat. This is a mistake. She had on a tee-shirt, jeans and canvas sneaks. If it weren’t for the short hair, he’d have thought he’d walked into a wormhole and came out the other side in 1994. Adding to the odd sense of surrealism, the bartender coming toward him looked like a fellow survivor of Frankford High’s School’s one hundred twenty-eighth graduating class.

  “Jay Donovan! Well, I’ll be damned. How are you?”

  “Tim? Tim Devane? Holy shit, man, I’m good, real good. Christ, you look just like you did in high school. Is this your place?”

  They had done four years in the same homeroom, had some of the same classes, and had dated some of the same girls. Tim was the closest thing he’d had to a real friend back then.

  “Mine, the wife’s and the bank’s, yeah. What would you like? On the house, of course.”

  “Won’t ever be yours if you keep giving out free drinks.”

  “First one’s on me, the rest is on you. It’s called strategic marketing. Just don’t tell the missus or I’ll be up shit’s creek.” Tim blushed. “Which reminds me, I guess you wouldn’t know I married Retta would ya?”

  “Little Loretta Peyton?” He’d gone out with Retta a few times senior year. If memory served she talked non-stop about Tim each time. He’d had the impression back then she went out with him to make Tim jealous. Looks like I was right and it worked. No reason to tell Tim that though. His smile stretched. “Give me a lager and give Retta my best.”

  He inclined his head toward the end of the bar. “How’s she doing?”

  Tim’s eyes twinkled. “Is she why you’re here?”

  He took a draw from the bottle Tim had opened for him instead of answering. Tim laughed.

  “Ah man, some things just never change. She’s having a rough night. She’s a regular and a good friend, but not a big drinker. Maybe twice a year she gets hammered. On her birthday, she comes in with a tangle of friends and her sibs. She gets lit up, dances, sings, flirts. On the anniversary of her partner’s death, she comes in by herself and gets obliterated. Tonight’s more like that.”