Love In Darkness

by E. M. Tippetts

  “How’s Mikey been?”

  “We got him a diagnosis this week.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yep. Autism, as you guessed. Moderate bordering on severe, and we got the paperwork started to get him some therapy and then I’ve been researching what would be best for the little guy. We may need to move somewhere to get better services.”

  “Here used to have really good services.”

  “Yeah. Kevin’s death and the lawsuit though... No assisted living facility, no one trusting respite care providers.”

  “Respite care providers going psychotic.”

  “And having their personal information splashed all over town, yeah.” He’s fidgety and I know we’re going faster than the speed limit, which may technically be okay in a police cruiser, but I assume even a cop needs a valid reason.

  I rest my elbow against the window and dig my fingers into the rubberized door seal as we shoot down the road, the headlights illuminating the towering trees on both sides until the forest drops away on our right and the view opens out onto the bluffs. The sun’s down but the sky’s still got a little brightness in it on the horizon. A row of lights out on the water signals a fishing fleet, trawling for their catch.

  Officer Li lives in a house out by the cemetery at the back of Pelican Bluffs High School. The place is a perk that comes with his job, not that it’s that great of a house, but it’s got a good location. It’s one story, boxy, has cracking, yellowed stucco and only a one car garage. Officer Li pulls into the driveway and kills the engine.

  “Come on in,” he tells me as he gets out his side.

  He wants to bring me into his house? That is much weirder than riding in the front seat of his cruiser. I follow him up the two concrete steps onto the hollow sounding wooden porch and through the front door into the buttery yellow light of his front room. The moment his front door opens, Mikey’s wail pierces the night. It’s the kind of wah-wah-wah cry that can go on forever. I would know.

  A woman sits on the floor, her back against the far wall, her knees drawn up to her chest, her dark hair cascading down over her face. She looks up at Officer Li with tear stained cheeks, and her eyes widen at the sight of me. Yeah, this is a private moment. I shouldn’t be here.

  I look away from her and at Mikey who sits in the middle of the floor, his head thrown back, his eyes screwed shut. He emits that endless cry that drives even the most patient people over the edge. The kind of “wah, wah, wah” that can be triggered by something as simple as the wrong food for dinner and go on for days. Poor little guy. I kneel down next to him and look him over. “Your lights have a dimmer?” I ask.

  Officer Li, who’s squatted down to talk to his wife, nods and reaches up to decrease the illumination.

  No effect on Mikey, except that his little fists unclench. I look him over again and go with my gut. He’s light enough that it’s easy to lift him onto my lap. I wrap my arms around him so that he’s secure and tuck his face against my shoulder. He’s crying, I know, because he’s got sensory overload, so my touch might make that worse. I don’t say anything or rock him or pat his back. I just hold him while that wail of his begins to peter out and his body relaxes. His cries become less intense, and then less frequent. After several long minutes, he breathes a deep sigh and goes silent. From the way his head lolls, I know he’s asleep. I heft him onto my shoulder as I get to my feet.

  Both Officer Li and his wife are still over by the wall, staring at me.

  “He was just overwhelmed,” I say. “Who doesn’t feel like that sometimes, huh?”

  “Carla,” says the cop, getting to his feet, “this is Alex.”

  “He’s hauling me off for punching a guy,” I explain.

  “No I’m not.”

  His wife gives me a baffled look as she gets to her feet, her cheeks and nose still red from crying.

  “What?” I say. “Surely you’ve told her about the time I dented your car with a rock.”

  “That was you?” says Carla.

  I transfer Mikey from my arms to hers gently, so as not to rouse him, but he’s exhausted. He doesn’t even stir.

  “Very funny,” says Officer Li. “Alex is the guy who told me about Dr. Klein and gave me those resources on autism.”

  “Oh.” There’s a different note of recognition in Carla’s voice, a positive one. Now that I’m standing next to her, I see that she’s very petite. She barely comes to the middle of my chest, but the look she gives me is pure gratitude as she steps out of the room with Mikey’s unconscious form in her arms.

  “How did you do that?” says Officer Li.

  “He was overstimulated. And it was a lucky guess. Different people respond to different stuff.” I shrug.

  “Alex we’ve been struggling with his tantrums for forever, it seems like.”

  “Glad the town psycho could help, you know?”

  “Do me a favor?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t crack jokes about your disability. For one thing, it’s not funny, and for another, it gives people the wrong impression of you. You’re not just some nutcase who talks to his houseplants all day.”

  “Just part of it.”

  “Come on.” Now he’s irritated with me. Punching John’s lights out didn’t anger him, but me insulting myself does.

  “I’m not going to pretend to be something I’m not,” I say. “My condition is what it is.”

  “You sell yourself short.”

  “What is this? First you won’t arrest me, now I get a pep talk?”

  “Listen.” His tone goes serious. “Keep it up and I’ll give you a lecture. Tell me you wouldn’t rather go to jail.”

  I can’t help but laugh.

  Carla steps back into the room, her stance more relaxed, some light in her brown eyes. “Thank you,” she says to me. “I was just losing it here.”

  “What are your rates?” Officer Li asks.

  “Oh, we could hire him?”

  “I… No. I don’t still do the respite care thing.”

  “We just need a babysitter sometimes,” says Officer Li, “and will totally pay you if you’d help us.”

  “Mikey’s more than we can deal with twenty-four/seven,” says Carla. “Even just a few hours a week would be a huge help.”

  “You can watch him here, in our home with one of us present if that makes you more comfortable,” says Officer Li.

  His wife looks askance at that.

  “Alex has a health condition,” says Officer Li.

  And Carla, obviously, does not get out much if she hasn’t heard the rumors.

  I look away from her and around at their little front room with its oversized couches and bookshelf crammed full of children’s books and toys. Just standing here makes me feel like an invader in Officer Li’s personal life.

  “Alex, think it over,” says the cop.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It’s Justin.”

  Yeah, right, I think. As if I’d ever call him by his first name.

  I’m more than ready to get out of this house and back into the cruiser. Once I do, though, Officer Li looks at me, eyes slightly narrowed, as he puts on his seatbelt. “You aren’t just good at your job. You’re phenomenal.”

  I shrug.

  “No, I’m serious. You’ve seen Mikey twice and each time, you’ve done something that just changes everything. I mean, we’ve started reading up on ways to calm Mikey down, but you see the situation and fix it, just like that.”

  “Nothing with him is going to be ‘just like that.’”

  He looks at me again, absorbing this. “You’ve even helped make me a better cop. No more just slapping handcuffs on people who step out of line.” We reverse out of his driveway and head on down Main Street.

  “So what do you do now?” I ask. “Let the town descend into anarchy?”

  He chuckles. “I had this ongoing case of someone who shoplifts, but the thing is, they shoplift really random things. I knew something was fishy with
it. I studied it from every angle. They didn’t go for expensive stuff all the time. They almost never went for useful stuff. They didn’t go for the stuff that was hard to steal or easy to steal. I mean, this person would fill their pockets with the most random garbage. Cigarette lighters and aspirin and shoe polish and toys that weren’t age appropriate. I figured that had to mean something, so I got on Google.”

  “And?”

  “Pretty sure it’s a kleptomaniac. Stealing was a compulsion. It wasn’t something they wanted to do and they had no plan for it. It wasn’t like they were trying to get useful stuff without paying for it or resell items or anything like that. They just had the urge to steal, so I figured out that I needed to help the person, not just haul them up in front of a judge and get them a slap on the wrist, because that wouldn’t solve anything, really.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I went over to the family with some stuff I found online and I told them that they needed to get the person treatment, and that I’d help smooth things over with the stores the person stole from if they did, but if they didn’t then this person was going to be in trouble.”

  “So did they do it? Did they help the person?”

  “I dunno. Too soon to say. Just spoke to them a few hours ago, but I feel like I’m getting the hang of this. I’ve got a lot of damage to undo.”

  “Damage?”

  “To people’s opinions of me. I was a bully for too long. People didn’t want to come to me with their issues. They’d just call me up when they wanted someone yelled at or hauled off, and I delivered every time.”

  “You weren’t any worse than any of the other cops before you.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a compliment. The last two cops before me got fired for misconduct.”

  “They did?”

  “Yeah. One for excessive force.”

  “Oh… I bet I know which one.” There had been a woman cop when I was a little kid who’d slapped my mother. Aunt Ellie did something about it, but I never knew the details.

  “I mean, I talked to the Ruskins,” says Officer Li.

  “Yeah?”

  “Five minutes. You talked to Dmitri for five minutes and the kid’s a changed person. I saw him. He was smiling and laughing, and I was there every time he tried to off himself. He wasn’t fooling around. I was sure he’d get the job done before too long. Now he’s watching Youtube videos of the most messed up sport I have ever seen-”

  “Wheelchair rugby.”

  “-and loving it. He was talking non-stop about his parents agreeing to buy him a special chair if he gets his grades back up. He used to be an honor roll student and I’m betting you that in a couple of months, he will be again.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “You saved his life.”

  “Whatever. I got lucky. I guessed he was an athlete and I know one trick to transitioning into life as a disabled person is finding something you can do that wasn’t an option before. You’ve gotta counterbalance all the things you can’t do anymore.”

  “So what’s your thing?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “That you can do now that wasn’t an option before?”

  “Um…” I shrug.

  “You want to stop at The Shack for a bite or something? Except it’s a little early.” The Shack serves overpriced, homemade Mexican food by day and after midnight turns into an affordable burger joint.

  “Could get some deep fried EVOL.”

  “Some what?”

  “Burritos. From the freezer section in Jacksons. Deep fry those and, yeah, it’s totally disgusting and will give you a heart attack, but they taste good.”

  “I have never heard of that.”

  “Seriously? Kids who sneak out after midnight always go… I shouldn’t tell you that.”

  He laughs. “Feel like a snitch now that I know to check The Shack for kids out too late and up to no good?”

  “How could you not notice? That’s, like, what everyone did.”

  “I only focused on the bad kids, like you. Let all the cute ones who didn’t seem tough slide right past me, but you know? Maybe I woulda picked up on what was going on in the Beales’ home before Kailie tried to kill herself if I paid attention to how much she was out. Maybe I could’ve prevented Shawna Hoppni’s rape if I’d just been watching.”

  “She got raped?”

  “Yeah. And went public with it. It was a couple of years ago; she was out at a beach party, drinking, and the perp was a kid I was used to busting. But did I protect other people from him? No. I was too busy checking boxes, seeing how many charges I could file against him. I mean, if I’d just been around when Shawna got herself trashed, I could’ve gotten her home, maybe busted her for underage drinking to get her parents to crack down on her a little. It’s not about how many offenses I can make stick. It’s about preserving order and making people feel safe. And like I said, I beat up enough hall monitors in high school to know that just being straight laced and by the book doesn’t make you a ton of friends.”

  “I have a hard time believing you weren’t a hall monitor.”

  “No, I was a total delinquent. What are you talking about? Started so many fights in high school that I got expelled.”

  “No way.” I don’t believe it.

  “I was you, Alex. Why do you think I always had it in for you? I saw your future, and it wasn’t good.” These last words are broken up by laughter.

  “True,” I deadpan. “Wow, I didn’t know the danger I was in. Thanks.”

  “I didn’t get my act together and join the Mormons. I enlisted in the National Guard because that was one of my only options, really. Then I looked at other jobs that required you to know how to shoot at stuff, and cop seemed like the best fit.”

  “You’re a high school dropout?”

  “Yeah, that’s another thing. You finished high school.”

  “I didn’t, actually. Certificate of Attendance.”

  “Well, the system failed you.”

  “Sure. I’m just the victim here.”

  “You’re kidding, right? Disabled single parent home? English as a second language? Yeah, you are a victim.”

  “No, the system tried to help, but help always seemed to involve having to say goodbye to my mother, so I figured out how to get around all that and make people leave us alone.”

  “People could have done better by you.”

  “I’m not a fan of self pity.”

  “I hear that.” He turns off the road and I look up to see that we’re parking at The Shack. “Okay, deep fried burritos. Show me how this works.”

  I never, in my wildest dreams, though I’d be showing Officer Li the kind of lame things I did while sneaking out of the house as a teenager. It’s beyond surreal. “You get the burritos from where?” he asks.

  I nod at the convenience store a few doors down. “There,” I say. “Jacksons.”

  Officer Li looks dubiously at the golden brown burrito in the plastic basket that Beatriz, one of the owners of The Shack, sets on the counter in front of him. The thing’s already soaked the tissue paper lining with grease.

  “And you have to eat it with French fries,” I say.

  “I do?”

  “Nah. We just always bought something else to say thank you. Can I have a root beer?” I ask Beatriz. “Large?”

  “Same for me,” says the cop.

  She gets out the paper cups, fills them at the fountain, and presses the flimsy plastic lids in place. The Shack’s service window opens right onto the kitchen. You can see everyone moving around inside, preparing the food.

  Officer Li waves me off when I get out my wallet and pays for everything, plus a couple dollars’ tip that he tucks into the marked jar on the counter.

  Yeah, the layers of weird on this situation keep piling up. He paid for the burritos at Jacksons too.

  “You all right?” he asks as we head on over to an empty table.

  “I’m eating deep fried burritos with Officer Li
. I might as well be having another psychotic break.”

  He laughs as we tuck into our burritos. “Okay,” he says after a few chews. “This is so disgusting and amazing.”

  It’s the truth. The deep fryer turns the tortilla into a crispy crust, while the interior is all melted cheese and warm shredded beef. I’m not sure how many of these a person’s arteries can take in a lifetime, but I’m probably well past the number.

  “Oh, hey,” snaps an irate voice that I’d know anywhere. Kailie comes storming across the gravel parking lot to us. “What the... This is my invention, okay? You can’t go giving secrets like this away to The Man.” She stops at our table and stands, one hip jutting out, her lips in a pout of disapproval.

  “You want one?” I ask.

  “Yes. But I’m not getting one.” Uninvited, she pulls out a chair and joins us. “Since when were you consorting with the Dark Side, Alex?”

  “These were not your invention.” I point at my burrito.

  “Yes they were.” That comes out as a shriek of indignation. “Like you would even know. I was the one who flirted with Hernan and got him to make these after midnight, and then Carson Montrose flirted with Beatriz and got her to make them before midnight.”

  “I’m thinking he probably just asked her,” says Officer Li. “She doesn’t seem like the type to be moved by flirting.”

  “Shut up,” Kailie snaps at him. “Was I talking to you? No, I wasn’t. Why are you here, Alex? I thought you were going to the movies.”

  “What, does she have a tracker on you?” Officer Li asks.

  “Yes.” She doesn’t even glance his direction this time. “Now shut up. Alex? What’s the deal?”

  “I wasn’t feeling well, and then I punched John.”

  “Awesome! You rock. Did you knock him out?”

  “Out cold,” says Officer Li.

  “What?” I say. “No, I-”

  The two of them share a conspiratorial laugh. “Okay, that is funny,” says Kailie, “but I still wasn’t talking to you.” She turns her back on Officer Li once more. “What did John do?”