Life Detonated

by Murray Moran, Kathleen

  I danced with Chris, blonde and green-eyed, who loved to hold his new father’s hand, hop into his truck for Saturday morning errands, and hand him tools as James measured and cut wood for a shed. Save for the familiar snap of old rage that came back when we had to tell our little white lie about city hall, the wedding was flawless.

  __________

  I now took solace in that rage. I learned from studying activist women writers in school that the injustices forced on women were often the kernel for community activism and great change. I found this out for myself at the New York City Line of Duty Widows’ Christmas party that year. It took place at Harry’s on the lower level of the Woolworth Building, an underrated structure on Broadway, so glorious it held lobby tours.

  Once the trial was over, I never heard from the bomb squad again, but there were no repercussions from the NYPD. Commissioners moved on, replaced by new regimes, new faces, the trial forgotten, and so I stood at Harry’s bar, ordered a glass of chardonnay, and felt at home. And that’s when I saw the NYPDs newest widow, younger than I, striking, tall, and blonde. Her coat glistened from the cold. She stood at the door and looked nervously around, but made no move to walk into a crowd of women whose fate she shared. And then she began to cry.

  When I walked over she took a tissue from her purse and blew her nose. “This is my first time,” she said. “I thought maybe someone would be here to meet me.” She dabbed at her eyes.

  I knew about first times. My first time I had been shaking so badly I thought I was going to throw-up. I felt alone and in desperate need of someone to hold me up. The flash of remembrance was so acute, my eyes filled up, but I put a smile on my face so she wouldn’t come unglued and looked for Phil Caruso, the PBA president. The room was so mobbed with widows and policemen I couldn’t spot him.

  “Kathleen Murray.” I offered my hand.

  She tried to smile. “Mary Beth O’Neill,” she said. “I didn’t want to come.” She smiled a little now. “But my mother thought I should.”

  I nodded. I’d been through the same drill with my own mother. The other widows, who had been mostly my mother’s age, had patted me on the back and asked how I was doing, hoping I would answer “fine” so they could move on.

  Though I wasn’t the welcoming committee she expected, I walked her to the bar so she could order a chardonnay. “Thank you so much,” she said after her first sip, and we toasted a sad toast. The Emerald Society Pipe Band waltzed by playing “Amazing Grace,” just like they had at our husbands’ funerals, the dirges taking us back to a place we never wanted to go again. The noise in the room was deafening, everyone shouting to be heard, but I stayed with Mary Beth, feeling like a big sister.

  “Is it your father who was killed?” she asked.

  I let out a dry laugh. “I wish! Sorry.” I glanced at her, but she didn’t seem shocked. “If you knew my father you would know why I said that. No, my husband was killed seven years ago.”

  “You look so young.” She took a sip of her chardonnay. “I think it’s great that you’ve been able to make a new life. Right now I can’t see past today, but I hope someday I will wake up and go about my day without this terrible ache.”

  I wanted to protect her from the truth: it had taken me many years before I could go about my day without missing Brian, even after I fell in love with another man, even after I found myself succeeding at school.

  I squeezed her hand, “It will get better,” I told her, and she smiled gratefully. I knew all the police widows, had felt their sadness, and Mary Beth’s was no different, but I could see strength there, too, and I felt like she might be the person I had been looking for without even realizing it.

  __________

  We met again a week later at the Oyster Bar under Grand Central, a place that still gave me the shivers when I thought of that bomb placed inside the locker. The cavernous room was permeated with a mild fish odor and noisy lunchtime conversation.

  “The salmon is good. I used to eat here all the time when I worked on 40th,” I told Mary Beth, and we both ordered a plate of it and talked through the afternoon like old friends about our families and our plans for the future. It could have been a snowy day or a sunshiny afternoon, and we would never have known it in this underground restaurant. Through the window, scores of people swarmed around the marble lobby, pulling luggage, rushing for trains.

  “You’ll lose your pension if you re-marry,” I said after we had shared a piece of chocolate cake.

  She was quiet for a moment. “That’s not right.”

  “No,” I said. “It isn’t right. Do you want to help me change the laws?”

  She stared at me a moment. “Damned straight.”

  I told her it was a state law, not city, not police. After James asked me to marry him, I had called Albany, written letters, but no one was listening. I raised my voice to talk over the din of silverware and dishes.

  “If we rally other widows, get strength in numbers, we might be able to make changes.”

  She nodded. “I’ll make an appointment for us to talk with my attorney, Jimmy Lysaght. His firm represents the PBA. He will help us out.” Mary Beth had just hit upon the perfect solution. We needed someone with authority and contacts, someone who could offer legal advice, non-profit status.

  “And I’ll invite another new widow, Susan McCormack, to help organize,” I told her. I had met Susan when the department gave Mets tickets to the widows. We both brought our boys, and mothers and sons became fast friends. “I think she might have some good ideas.” We were changing the laws of the state of New York, and how strangely beautiful that it was the female literary masters who had given me permission.

  __________

  Jimmy sat on the corner of his desk, photos of him with Mickey Mantle and Ed Koch on the wall behind him. He was a big guy, Irish, fair-haired and ruddy complexioned. He thought starting a widows’ group was a great idea, said he could help us with incorporation and not-for-profit documents, that we were welcome to use his conference room as our meeting place.

  “And when you are ready,” he told us. “I will get you a meeting with the governor, so you can plead your case.”

  “Survivors,” Susan suggested when we settled into our new space. We had been toying with names.

  “Something to do with police or shield,” I said, attempting to draw a copy of a police shield.

  Mary Beth looked at my poor drawing. “Survivors of the Shield,” she said. “SOS.”

  We all laughed, the excitement building. We had a name, a place to meet, an attorney to help us with incorporation and not-for-profit documents, and a commitment from Jimmy that he would pave the way for a meeting with the governor of the State of New York.

  On the drive home, the streets were crunchy with new snow, the air muffled against midtown traffic. I passed shoppers scrambling, laden with shopping bags, and thought about the struggle of police wives. Mary Beth and Susan couldn’t make the Busics’ time in prison any longer, and they couldn’t tell me why that bomb exploded, but they were strong women, and they shared the willingness to do something revolutionary: turn pain into action, make the world better in the wake of violence. Women needed sisters. And as women we sometimes had to make our own sisterhoods.

  My aim is to put down on paper what I see and

  what I feel in the best and simplest way.

  — Ernest Hemingway

  A Postmark from Prison

  After James and I were married, our house came alive. In the years I lived in Northport, the neighbors said hello but never invited me to parties or asked me to come over for a cup of coffee. But after James moved in, everyone knew my name and began to invite us to socialize.

  “This is fun,” I told Pat the first time she and Skip asked us to go sailing. I thought about the scene I had witnessed from my window the first Christmas after we moved in, when her husband carried her to the c
ar, her mink coat glistening in the snow.

  Now we were watching Skip and James tackle the jib. “I wonder why it took us so long to become friends?”

  Pat laughed. “Try having a beautiful widow move in next door.” This took me aback. I had never thought about it. “And,” she said, “I thought you were running an escort service.” I looked at her like she was crazy. “There were cars in your driveway every weekend, young men sometimes stayed overnight.”

  Now it was my turn to laugh. “Those are my brothers,” I told her. “They stayed overnight to help me with the boys.”

  __________

  With James around, my schoolwork got easier. I had a shoulder to cry on about a tough exam, he built me a darkroom in the basement for my photography classes, and listened as I painstakingly read my papers aloud because I caught mistakes better that way. Sundays, James bought bagels and made bacon and eggs. Then he would take the boys down to the dock to wash the boat and go fishing.

  When winter came, I watched the boys on either side of him on the ski lift in Maine, their cheeks ruddy with cold, their ski pants covered in snow. They no longer had to be told to put their dishes in the sink, keep their rooms clean, finish homework, they did it all in anticipation of a weekend with their new dad. James wanted to adopt his two little boys, and I talked to Jimmy Lysaght about it. You’re not legally married, he told me, and you would be required to change their name from Murray to Moran. I thought some day we would have that marriage certificate, but could not take away their name, as that would feel like I was erasing Brian from their lives.

  We were happy, living a life I had never let myself imagine after Brian’s death. Although the hijacking always hovered in the back of my mind, there were some days I forgot about it altogether. Until that Tuesday in April when it all came rushing back.

  __________

  I had been out running errands. As I turned the corner onto Vista Drive, I saw a squad car in our driveway. In Northport, Long Island, 45 miles from Manhattan, where the crime blotter in the Observer listed weekly offenses from drunk driving to an occasional B&E, where sailboats lined the harbor, and tourists bought ice cream at the Sweet Shop, a squad car in the driveway meant tragedy, accidents, a death. Two police officers stood waiting. The boys. I thought. Please, not my boys.

  By the time I managed to park, my hands were shaking. The officer took off his hat and leaned into the window. I thought for a moment he was going to pull the keys from the ignition, cite me for some violation, and then I could laugh with relief. “Mrs. Murray?” He was so close I could see the indent his hat made on his forehead. I remembered the indent my father’s fedora had made in the same place. “I’m Officer Silver.” He hesitated. “Mr. Busic has escaped from prison. He has not yet been apprehended and we’ve been told he might show up here.”

  There was a moment of incomprehension, and then another when the fear that had bubbled up into my throat began to recede. My family was safe, the boys in school, James at work. And then the terror arrived as a sharp-edged memory. It was 4:00 a.m., the persistent ringing of the doorbell, red lights turning on our walls, a coffin lifted into the hearse in front of St. Agnes.

  I hadn’t thought of the Busics for a long time, not since the ten year anniversary. I pictured them walking out of prison together after a twenty-five to life sentence that guaranteed only ten. Only now I realized they hadn’t been paroled.

  The voice of the officer came back slowly “We don’t believe Mr. Busic will try to harm you or your family, but as a precaution . . .”

  Officer Silver was studying me. “Mrs. Murray? Are you okay?

  I felt as though something had cracked inside and not yet broken. “Yes,” I managed. The boys are at school, I told myself. “I’m fine.” James is at work. They’re okay, everyone is okay.

  “Why don’t you come inside the house?” Officer Silver opened my door. “For your safety,” he added. The second officer had walked to our porch and was standing guard at the front door.

  “State police have set up roadblocks and dispatched search teams from Orange and Rockland Counties,” Silver said as we walked across our yard. “They’re combing the area with bloodhounds.” He sounded so official, as though every word was repeated verbatim from radio communication. “We doubt he’ll get far, but you’ll have a police presence around the clock until he is captured.”

  Both officers followed me into the house, putting in mind that dark uneven dawn years before, my mother washing my hair, Gracie in her stiff black dress, the three-volley salute into a hushed crowd.

  Sunlight had moved past the window, leaving the kitchen in a wintery dusk. I found myself reaching for the keys I had just thrown on the table. “Actually, I’m going to get my boys from school, I want them with me.” But the second officer interrupted me. “We have someone picking them up right now, Mrs. Murray.” He was tall, square-jawed, a red head. His name tag read Sullivan. “Just a precaution.”

  The blue uniforms visibly altered the kitchen with their broad shoulders and gun belts, had slipped into the atmosphere and changed the air of the room where we had family meals. I tried not to let them see my hands shaking. I kept thinking of Brian in his uniform which still hung like a ghost in the back of my guest closet, along with my first wedding dress and some of Brian’s things I never could bear to throw away.

  While I made them coffee, Silver spoke in his deep Bronx accent, the short a’s and long back chain shifts reminding me of my childhood. “From what we’ve been told, Mr. Busic shaved his head and face and made up a dummy with his mustache and beard.” Silver took a sip of the coffee I gave him. His almost silent partner glared out the window as though daring Busic to walk down our street. “They believe he must have hidden in a crawl space,” Silver went on. “And then lowered himself into the yard where he dug a hole under the fence. He wriggled through a barrier of razor wire.” Silver touched his gun, a reflex I had seen in a lot of cops. “And ran away.” My eyes went to the gun, a .38 like the one Brian had carried that lay in my night table drawer, minus the firing pin. “He is considered armed and dangerous.” Silver set down his cup. “He’ll be shot if he makes a move to harm anyone.”

  I thought back to the statement I gave to newspapers after the Busics were sentenced, how I had hoped for the death penalty, or life without parole. I remember telling a news reporter how disappointed I was with their abbreviated sentences, that ten years for killing a police officer was a travesty. Now I regretted speaking out. Would Busic come here to try to kill us?

  Moments later I heard a car door slam and looked out to see yet another police car in front of the house. It was Keith and Chris. They both looked pale and frightened. I met them at the door.

  “Busic escaped from prison,” I said. “The police are here only as a precaution, to be sure he doesn’t show up. He has no reason to cause us harm, but we have to stay inside until he is caught.” I put my arms out toward Keith, but he turned and bolted up the stairs to his room and I let him go.

  Keith lost his father in a violent death. He still had night terrors, woke up and didn’t recognize me or his surroundings. He knew Zvonko Busic was the man who killed his father. Although I wasn’t convinced that Busic would show up in Northport to kill us, his reaction said that he thought he would. A police officer had taken him out of school without explanation, drove him home in a squad car, another was parked in our driveway, and two officers stood in our kitchen. He had good reason to be afraid.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” I said to Chris and led him over to the couch. I put my arm around his shoulder. “This is just a precaution,” I said, using Lieutenant Silver’s words again. He shrugged out of my hold to face me. “I thought something happened to you. The police came to my school.” Tears streamed down his face and he wiped them away, sniffling.

  “I know, honey, I’m sorry. They’re only doing their job. They want to make sure we’re s
afe.” Chris was on the cusp of independence, but today’s unfolding took that away and he let me hold him for a few minutes until he calmed down.

  I did not know where James was working, and had no way of contacting him. He sometimes came home for lunch if he worked in the neighborhood, and I didn’t want him to come home to a mess of police cars in the driveway. He had come into our lives and smoothed out the wrinkles. The boys were his sons, called him Dad and looked up to the man who worked hard to make our lives easier.

  James did not take Brian’s place. Instead, he became my soft place, a respite from a darkness that threatened to engulf me and the boys. He taught me to love again, different from the innocent love I had for Brian. He accepted the constraints of my life as the wife of a dead hero and the long hours I worked on starting Survivors of the Shield.

  When James did arrive home that afternoon, he took the news in stride, the way he did everything else. However, he refused to be held hostage, and argued he should be allowed to go back to work, something the police guarding our house couldn’t prevent. “Busic doesn’t know who I am,” he reasoned with Officer Silver.

  As I watched James’s car pull away, I noticed small country birds line up on the overhead wires and marveled at their precision. The two policemen who brought Keith and Chris home from school talked quietly in the driveway, their presence enough to raise the heart rate of everyone who lived on this quiet street. They all knew my story, a young widow with two sons who later married a plumber. Our children went to school together, played together. They would want to know if a police presence concerned their safety and I wished I could tell them it didn’t.

  While we waited for Busic’s capture I imagined him peering through the window, his grizzly face void of the beard that I remembered from his photos. I played out scene after scene of bullets flying, glass breaking, Northport police powerless to stop this terrorist who feared so little.

  During our next two nights of seclusion, I slept little and watched as dawn brought into focus the oak tree outside our bedroom window. I dreamed that same haunting dream where I was searching my father’s apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn, which still smelled like cigarettes and grease, with the same stacks of paperback mysteries that served as tables for overflowing ashtrays. Room after room beckoned to me, Brian waiting behind each door, but instead of Brian’s ruined face it was Busic’s, pocked and menacing. “You cannot escape from me,” he said in broken English. “I know where you live.”