Along Came December

by Jay Allisan

  Dixon tried to help me up but my legs were jelly. I laid back down and looked at Josie.

  “If I stay here will you watch me? Me and Max?”

  She nodded. “Okay, Shirley. We’ll watch you.”

  “Thanks.”

  I closed my eyes. Someone put a blanket over me and a pillow beneath my head. I went to sleep.

  I STAYED with Max until the service. Dixon brought me a cot I didn’t want and food I didn’t eat, and for two days I laid on my back and looked up at the pedestal. Max deserved a pedestal. He deserved a monument in the park and a civic holiday. Max Mordecai Day. No fireworks allowed.

  Paddy told me Carl was in custody. He had a broken jaw and two broken arms. Paddy didn’t say how that happened.

  Lieutenant Patel was dead too. Carl killed him when he took Maria. He only got shot, so he had a funeral. His wife got to see him one last time.

  On the day of the memorial Josie brought me my dress blues. She brushed my hair and straightened my cap, then hugged me tight enough to wrinkle my uniform. I hugged her back numbly before returning to the pedestal, to my husband in a jar. I touched it for the first time. The metal was cool. It should have been warm. Max was always warm.

  Dixon came up beside me and took my hand. He slid a ring onto my finger. I stared. It was Max’s ring.

  “Are you all right to take him?” Dixon asked. I nodded. He let my hand go. “You should know it’s a circus out there. The media is all over this, and some tactless brown-noser is going to come after you. We’ll do our best to keep them away, but you do what you have to do. We can cover a few broken cameras.”

  “What about broken noses?”

  “Those too. There’s a car downstairs when you’re ready.”

  I looked at Max’s ring, resting comfortably next to my own, and found that my hands were steady. I picked up the urn and held it to my chest. Dixon and Josie fell into step with me as I went to the stairs.

  There were a dozen officers in the lobby, Paddy and Whale among them. I recognized some as Max’s bomb squad team. They formed a barrier around me as we exited the building. As I walked out the door I understood why.

  Throngs of reporters pushed against police barricades, calling my name and Max’s name and popping off flashes. I held the urn tight and walked faster. Someone broke through the ranks and shoved a camera in my face. Paddy snatched it away and smashed it on the ground. Whale put his arm around my shoulders and we ran for the limousine.

  It was a slow journey from the precinct to the First Church. We followed squad cars and officers on horseback, their flags and banners rippling in the wind. Officers overflowed the streets and sidewalks, standing at attention as we passed and joining the procession behind us. The only noise was the whisper of the engine and the clop of horseshoes.

  The church was crowned with lilies from the outside steps to the altar. Max would have loved it. I began to tremble as I stepped over the threshold. Paddy and Whale took my elbows in support.

  I looked to the front of the church and froze. There was a picture of Max, his official photo larger than life. He wasn’t supposed to smile but it was there anyway, glowing in his eyes, teasing at the corners of his lips.

  He was looking right at me.

  My arms slackened. Josie took the urn before I could drop it. She brought it to the front and set it on the table. Paddy and Whale half-carried me down the aisle. I sank into the pew between them and buried my face in my hands.

  When Paddy nudged me, Shapiro was at the pulpit and the building was standing room only. Shapiro’s eyes found me for a moment. Then she looked away.

  “It is with great sadness that we are gathered here to commemorate the life and service of Sergeant Maximilian Mordecai. Though taken from us too soon, it is his strength and his courage that we honor here today.”

  I didn’t listen to her speech or the speeches that followed. The mayor spoke after her, then Dixon, and Max’s bomb squad lieutenant after him. There were hymns, beautiful hymns played on the organ, and a haunting tenor choir. Then there were the bells.

  Finally bomb squad moved to the front of the church. Dixon’s team stood too and joined them. We gathered around the silver urn, under the warm gaze of my husband. By unspoken agreement I took the microphone and turned to the crowd. I couldn’t look at them. I closed my eyes.

  “Radio 2027,” I whispered. My hail echoed in the stillness of the sanctuary. “Come in, 2027. Come in.”

  I took a shuddering breath and wiped my eyes. Hands fell on my shoulders and came around my waist. I shook like an earthquake.

  “No response from 2027. This is the last radio call for Max Mordecai. Radio 2027 is out of service. Gone—”

  I faltered. I looked at Max and felt like I was going to die.

  “Gone, but not forgotten.”

  The microphone slipped out of my hands, and I sat down on the steps and cried.

  32

  THE DEADBOLT rattled briefly before giving way, and the door opened and shut without greeting. Paddy. Everyone else still knocked before breaking in. He came straight to the living room and loomed over me. I made it easy. I was lying on the floor.

  “Get up.”

  I didn’t. His eyes flickered to the urn on the bookshelf before narrowing at me.

  “Get up, Shirley.”

  “That’s not my name.”

  “Get up, Mordecai.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “I don’t give a shit what you want. I haven’t seen you eat once since you left the hospital, and that was a week ago. I brought you soup, and you’ll eat it if I have to pour it down your throat.”

  “I don’t want soup.”

  “And I still don’t give a shit.”

  He set a takeout bag on the coffee table and grabbed my arms, dragging me up onto the couch. He pulled a cup of soup and a plastic spoon from the bag and held them out. I didn’t take them.

  “You won’t like it if I gotta do this for you.”

  I glared at him.

  “Dammit, Mordecai, eat the fucking soup!”

  “No.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  He stalked to the kitchen and I heard the tap running. When he came back I was eating the soup. He muttered under his breath and sat across from me on the coffee table. He glanced out the balcony door. “Any more trouble with reporters?”

  “You’d know if there was.”

  Three days prior, an ambitious young woman had climbed the trellis to my third floor balcony and broken into my apartment. I’d clobbered her over the head with a lamp and had been trying to send her back down the way she came when Paddy let himself in. He stopped me from dropping her off the ledge, but left her cuffed to the railing for a few hours before sending her downtown. There had been a watch on my apartment since.

  “You still haven’t showered,” Paddy said.

  “If my hygiene offends you, feel free to leave.”

  “Don’t be an ass.”

  “Don’t be a bitch.”

  Paddy narrowed his eyes. “Is this some kind of test? You trying to see how far you can push me before I leave you here to rot? Because that’s not gonna happen.”

  I threw the soup container across the room. “Why not?! Why can’t you just leave me the fuck alone and let me grieve the way I want to? What makes you think you can show up whenever you want and tell me what to do?”

  “Somebody has to! You’re so fucked in the head right now you don’t even know what you’re doing! I have to tell you to eat! I have to stop you from killing a woman! Jesus Christ, Mordecai. You’re not grieving. You’re self-destructing.” He seized my arms. “And I will not—⁠will not⁠—watch you do this. I owe Max that. And you owe him a hell of a lot better than this.”

  He yanked me roughly to my feet and pushed me toward the bathroom. “I’m taking you to see Tish, but you’re not going anywhere until you’ve showered, and don’t kick up a fuss about it. Soap’s not gonna solve your problems, but it sure won’t make anyth
ing worse.”

  I hit him angrily in the chest but stomped into the bathroom, slamming the door and locking it loudly. Not that a shitty lock on my shitty door could stop him, but it made me feel better.

  The ride to Memorial was thick with silence. I crossed my arms and stared out the window, and when we got to the hospital Paddy had to pull me from the car. He gripped my elbow and steered me to the courtyard.

  Tish was waiting at a picnic table near the entrance. She stood when she saw us, smiling sadly. I crumbled. She opened her arms and I ran to her.

  “Oh, honey,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry.”

  I sobbed into her shoulder. “He’s dead, he’s dead…”

  “Let’s sit down, all right, Shirley?”

  “DON’T CALL ME THAT!”

  “It’s Mordecai now,” Paddy said. He seated himself on the far side of the picnic table. Tish guided me to the bench, and I laid my head down on the table. Tish sat beside me.

  “Mordecai. Tell me how you’ve been doing.”

  I closed my eyes. There weren’t words for how I was doing. There was no way to express how I spun between images of Max’s face and Max’s death, how I was filled with blind rage and then an ache so deep I couldn’t think of why I was trying to live without him. I’d been aching more and more.

  “Bad,” I whispered. “I’ve been doing bad.”

  “You’re depressed.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mordecai.” She waited until I peered up at her. “Are you suicidal?”

  My eyes flooded with tears. She took my hand.

  “Tell me.”

  “I want… I want to put a knife in my chest and carve out everything that hurts. I want to wrap a rope around my neck until I don’t have to breathe anymore. I want to go back to the bridge and lay down. Just lay down and wait for a truck. I want to close my eyes and be with Max again.”

  “Fuck, Mordecai,” Paddy muttered.

  “Why haven’t you?” Tish asked. I didn’t answer. “Mordecai? What are you waiting for?”

  I breathed in the scent wafting subtly from my shirt. Max’s shirt. It was loose and soft and smelled like him. It was almost like a hug.

  “Honey, you need to talk to me.”

  “I’m waiting for Max,” I whispered. “I’m waiting for him to come back.”

  “And if he doesn’t come back?”

  “Then I’ll go find him.”

  “You were there,” she said gently. “You know he’s not—”

  “I know. But I just want him to come back.”

  “How long are you going to wait?”

  “I don’t know. Until I’m brave enough to go after him.”

  “Why are you afraid?”

  “I’m afraid…” The explosion ripped through my mind and I choked back a sob. “I’m afraid he won’t be there. That wherever I go he won’t be there, and I’ll still be alone.”

  Another sob clawed up my throat, pain swelling beyond my capacity to contain it. I screamed, slamming my fist against the table, aching for Max with everything I was. “How could he do this to me?! How could he leave me? I need him! He knew I needed him! How could he just go and die?”

  Tish let me scream and cry until I couldn’t anymore. When I’d stopped shaking she helped me sit up, watching me intensely.

  “Mordecai, I’ve got a few options. I could try and get you a room in the hospital, but I don’t want to do that. Lying in a bed all day won’t do you any good. I can put you on antidepressants, but I don’t want to do that either, not with an overdose in your history. That leaves me with this: we go back to therapy, just like we did in the beginning, and I enlist your friends to keep an eye on you, which I can see they’re already doing. You can get better, honey. You did it before.”

  “I had Max before.”

  “And you’re not alone now. Let them help you.” She touched my arm. “Max would want you to fight this. He would want you to be happy.”

  I shook her off, standing abruptly. “Then he shouldn’t have died.”

  PADDY DROVE me home, but this time he didn’t leave. He made himself comfortable on the couch and watched sports all afternoon. I curled up in the chair and watched the urn on my bookcase.

  At suppertime Dixon let himself in, bearing a large casserole dish and a peach pie.

  “Darlene sends her love,” he said. “She’d like to have you over for dinner, when you’re up to it. Shondra and Lucy would like to see you too.”

  I shrugged. He studied me openly.

  “Tish called me,” he said. “You’re going to have company for the next little while.”

  “A babysitter, you mean.”

  “Whatever it takes to look after you. You’ll see Tish again in the morning, and every morning after that until you’ve got a handle on this. In the meantime we’ll help keep you busy.”

  “Oh, goody. Do I get to go to the zoo?”

  He frowned. “I know you’re hurting, Mordecai, and I know it will be a while before there’s any sense of normal again. We’ll do what we can, but you have to want—”

  “It doesn’t matter what I want,” I shot back. “It doesn’t matter, because I’ll never have it again! And all this goddamn hovering isn’t making anything feel normal. Just leave me alone.”

  “No,” he said simply. He turned toward the door. “Paddy will stay the night and Josie will come get you in the morning. Enjoy the pie.”

  ON DAY one Josie took me to the animal shelter to walk dogs. She was given a perfectly trained bull mastiff and I got a terror of a lap dog. He barked nonstop and peed on my leg. We went around the block and that was enough.

  On day two Dixon brought me to the zoo. I stayed all afternoon in the elephant enclosure, watching a young female paint with a brush held in her trunk. She’d been born in the wild and brought to the zoo after her family was killed by poachers. Her preferred colour palette was shades of blue.

  Whale came on day three with his guitar and asked if I wanted to play. I didn’t. We sat on the balcony and he played straight through James Taylor’s greatest hits. After that we went inside and he read War and Peace out loud until I fell asleep.

  Day four Paddy had tickets to the hockey game. He’d planned to go with Max and I refused to be his stand-in. We screamed at each other for a while before he said that if I didn’t go to the game he would bring me to Tish instead. I went, but when first period ended and the crowd was surging toward the concession, I slipped out a fire exit and jogged lightly until I was safely away from the arena.

  I’d had enough. I was sick of being dragged around on field trips like a school kid. I wanted privacy, and if I couldn’t get it in my own apartment then I’d find it somewhere else.

  I ducked inside a seedy bar and ordered a drink. I knocked it back quick and had another. I kept that up until I was pleasantly buzzed and more relaxed than I’d been in days. I settled in a corner booth with some good liquor and watched the room.

  A pool table stood stagnant across the way, cues crossed on the wall like a coat of arms. An underage couple was necking two booths down from me, and a trio of men sat at the bar with a deck of cards splayed out between them. No one so much as glanced at me in my corner. It was perfect.

  I twirled Max’s wedding ring around my finger. Two weeks gone, and a lifetime without him ahead. I couldn’t do it. Maybe tonight, maybe next week, maybe a few years from now it would be too much and I’d have to go too, whether he was waiting for me or not. If he wasn’t I’d be no worse off anyhow. Might as well be tonight, while I was drunk and brave and free. Just step out into traffic. One hit. One and done.

  I downed another tumbler and asked the bartender to call me a cab. The Highlands Bridge was too far for me to walk, and I thought first I’d go home and get Max. Maybe I wouldn’t wait for a truck after all. Maybe we’d fly off the bridge together.

  The cab dropped me off in front of my building and I stumbled up the walkway. I was struggling with my keys when a car door slammed and someone c
alled, “Shirley?”

  I stabbed my key at the lock and missed.

  “Shirley? It’s Scarlett.” He took my arm and spun me around. I almost fell. His nose wrinkled. “God, you’re drunk. Sit down for a second, okay? I need to call—”

  I smacked his hand away from his radio and grabbed him by the collar. “Don’t call. Don’t call or I’ll break your nose. You tell and I’ll break your nose.”

  Scarlett pried my hands loose but kept a grip on my arm. “Shirley, you’ve been missing for hours. There are a lot of people out looking for you. I need to tell them you’re okay.”

  I shook my head, tears welling in my eyes. “Not okay. They just want me to walk dogs and watch elephants but that doesn’t make it okay. Sad elephants aren’t okay.”

  “Uh-huh. You take anything tonight besides alcohol?”

  I threw my arms around his neck. “It’s not okay! Don’t tell them. Don’t tell them.”

  “I have orders—”

  “Please. You can stay with me. Just don’t tell them.”

  He sighed, peeling me off of him. “Fine. How about we go inside, and you can sober up before I call.”

  I nodded. “Inside. Sober up. Orange juice is in the fridge.”

  “Okay, Shirley. Let’s get some orange juice.”

  SCARLETT STOOD in front of the bookcase, transfixed by the silver urn. I finished my third glass of juice and came up beside him. He looked away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I never really knew him, but everyone says he was a good man.”

  I twisted Max’s ring. “He was,” I whispered. “He was the best.”

  “I saw him with you once, back at the academy. He was pulling out your chair and refilling your drink, and I remember thinking man, this guy’s a sucker, but you looked really happy.” Scarlett smiled wryly. “Guess I should have made my move sooner.”

  “It was always him.”

  “Yeah. I could tell.”

  Scarlett looked out the balcony door, his reflection cast back against the darkness. “I never knew,” he whispered. “I worked with Carl every day and I never knew, never even suspected… you were right about me not being cut out for detective. If I’d been smarter—”