The Policewomen's Bureau

by Edward Conlon

  Not even Paulie could have found fault with how Marie had handled her, being nice instead of not-nice, while maintaining control. Two o’clock? Yes, please, thank you! Can we be early? Marie wasn’t looking to make new friends, and she didn’t have a shortage of problems to solve, of cases to work. She didn’t understand why she was so angry with Patten for lightening her workload.

  And yet she was angry. She was convinced that Lothringer had to be called to account. She resented having her time wasted. She even resented the waste of Helen and Benny’s time. Patten had been more adept, more respectful than most DAs, but the process itself was disrespectful, making Helen repeat her ordeal, confessing over and over, as if she were a criminal. Which she was, Marie supposed. But if Mr. O’Connor didn’t think anyone committed a crime, why did his deputy bureau chief take half the day to talk to them? Didn’t all of them have better things to do? Marie hated the hypocrisy, the way different big shots made up their own rules. “The law is the law,” Patten had said. Except when it wasn’t. It was as if the chiefs had made peace, but they hadn’t bothered to tell the warriors to stop fighting.

  Marie went to a phone booth and fished in her purse for dimes. She didn’t want to see her chief. Mrs. M. wouldn’t be disappointed in her, but Marie wasn’t used to losing. The inspector would make her own calls, but the worst she’d learn was that Marie had been pushy with Patten. And it wouldn’t bother Mrs. M. to hear that Marie had given them a bit of what-for, as long as it had been done in a ladylike way. When Marie was put through, she spoke at vehement length. Mrs. M. was impassive when told of Patten’s decision, of O’Connor’s policy.

  “Well then, we won’t waste any more time in Queens. We are in great demand in the other boroughs, and we’re already stretched thin. You are, certainly, Marie. I can hear how tired you are. Go home and have a nice dinner with Sandy, and tell her I was asking about her. Take tomorrow off, too, as a commander’s day. You’ve earned it. I’ll tell roll call. Start your weekend now, and enjoy it.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. M. I will.”

  Marie nearly wept with gratitude. With exhaustion, too, which swept over her. She wouldn’t cry over what happened today, not with Carmen and Sid, or Helen and Benny and ADA Patten. She was glad that she didn’t have to fix her makeup. Mrs. M. would have noticed the bruise, and she wouldn’t have fallen for the line about playing catch. Marie wished she could have told the boss about Sid, but she was afraid of so many things, of everything. What was Marie supposed to be—a cop, ready to take on whatever rolled her way? Or a cop, who knew that you never gave up another cop, right or wrong? An Italian woman, taught that family shame should be kept within the family? Or an Italian cop in an Irish department, protective of the reputation of her kind? She was at an intersection, with nothing but bad roads to go down. Dead ends, every one of them.

  Marie looked across the street and saw a deli. She dropped a few more dimes in the phone and called Katie to discuss dinner arrangements. “We can have hot roast beef sandwiches, Katie, I know you like them. Do we need anything else?”

  “No, ma’am, we have the rest. The milkman came today. We have half a loaf of Wonder Bread, and the Chips Ahoy cookies, for dessert.”

  “Lovely. Tell Sandy I’ll be young again when I get home. Not as old, anyway.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’ll tell her.”

  In the deli, she took her number and waited to order. She asked for the end cut, which Katie liked. The counterman made a face when she insisted on coffee from a fresh pot but backed down when she glowered at him. She could handle certain men, most men. There was really only one she couldn’t manage.

  When Marie arrived home, she was relieved that Sid’s car wasn’t in the driveway. She didn’t expect to see it. After a blowout like last night’s, he’d wait a few days for the air to clear and return loaded with shopping bags from Gimbels or Bonwit Teller. Marie hoped he’d stay away the whole weekend, so she could have a real rest. On Monday, she’d be the picture of health when she went back to work.

  Marie collected her empty coffee cups and the deli bag and began to gather up her costume from the back seat. Her arms overflowed with gray hair and tattered clothes, and she dropped her uniform shoe. Leaning over to get it, she dropped the other and then flung everything to the ground. The pile of sorry rags could stay where they were. The light had begun to soften into evening, and she took a stroll around her little garden. The forsythia would soon be bursting with yellow flowers, and then the azalea would follow, pink and purple. And then the peonies . . . She touched the trunk of the fig tree, still swaddled in burlap. It was a gift from Papa, who had told her that a house wasn’t a real home without one. He’d wrapped his trees every October, to keep them warm for the winter. This weekend, she’d plant her peas and spinach and mulch the beds. Sandy loved to help her in the garden. Katie could have some time to herself, if she wanted. A wonderful weekend, it would be just wonderful. She flung open the screen door and called out, “Mama’s home!”

  Footsteps scurried on the floor above. Marie put the meat on the kitchen counter. She took out a can of brown gravy and a box of potato flakes from the pantry, a pack of peas from the freezer. Dinner could be on the table in less than fifteen minutes. The convenience still made her marvel. She’d bought the meat fresh, but it would have been fine defrosted. She could go shopping twice a month if she had a big enough freezer. When she thought of the hours her mother spent cooking every day, the hours at the market, Marie wasn’t nostalgic for the old days. The instant food tasted better than her childhood’s endless round of lentils, chickpeas, and beans. And her mother was a fine cook, after all. Once the dread of poverty had finally lifted, dinners in the Bronx had become feasts. But they took a day or more to prepare. Tonight, Marie could be a good mother again in minutes.

  Katie walked into the kitchen with a mild grimace on her face, an expression that signaled some lesser trespass on Sandy’s part. “She was up in your room.”

  “And?”

  “She’d forgotten your disguise from this morning. But when I told her you were coming home, as yourself—like you asked—it reminded her. The thing was, she seemed so pleased I didn’t have the heart to be sharp with her. She wants to make a grand entrance. I know she shouldn’t be in your things, but—”

  “How does she look?”

  “I don’t have the words for it.”

  “Well. Have her come down. We might as well see.”

  Katie went back upstairs. Marie looked inside the refrigerator and saw that there was half a bottle of wine. Sid had opened it the night before. She filled a glass and had a sip. She heard Katie and Sandy exchange whispers outside of the door.

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I want you to introduce me, how I said! Shh! She can practically hear us!”

  Katie entered the room with her arms folded behind her back for her announcement. Sandy strolled in before it was complete. “And now we have the winner of the Miss America pageant, Miss Sandy Carrara, from Yonkers, New York!”

  Marie took another sip before setting her glass down. It was her daughter standing before her, but it was also another creature altogether, adorable and awful in equal parts: Marie’s turquoise dress swaddled Sandy like a general’s greatcoat; her little hands—in white gloves—hiked up the hem, so that black high-heeled pumps were visible below. Marie tried to hold back laughter at the costume, at its darling failure to appear all grown up. But the makeup was another story, a garish clown-face of red lips, white powder, and blue eye shadow, plastered on in profusion. To complete the ensemble, she wore one of Marie’s fedoras, white with the black tiger stripe. Her daughter was a vision. An apparition, really. Katie hadn’t prepared her for the sight. Sandy was clearly thrilled with her handiwork.

  “What do you think, Mommy? Don’t I look just like you?”

  Marie couldn’t ignore the sincerity of the tribute. She wondered if she’d always been clear with Sandy, as she left her house in her sundry masquerades, t
hat she intended to look appalling at least as often as she meant to appeal. Maybe she should make the distinction clearer, leaving by the front door when she was a society dame, through the back when she was a tramp. Or she could have Katie take Polaroids of every outfit, pasting them into separate scrapbooks, labeled “Do” and “Don’t.” Right now, her task was to find a compliment. She didn’t always have one at hand, as she did her excuses. “You come here, Miss America.”

  Sandy rushed forward, stumbling into Marie’s arms. Marie picked her up and spun her around. She didn’t have to say anything, as long as she kept giddily turning. One shoe, and then another fell away from Sandy, and then the hat. Marie wanted to keep on spinning and spinning, so all the paint spun away from her face, and her clothes, and the years. She could imagine Sandy as a little girl again, fresh from the bath, laughing in her arms. Both needed to catch their breath when they stopped.

  “This is the way you dress, Mama, when you dress pretty. You should be like this, every day. I didn’t like how you looked this morning.”

  All was well again in the world. Katie started on dinner while Marie walked Sandy back upstairs to change and wash. They gabbed as they ate, and then all three did the washing-up. They watched Ozzie and Harriet at seven-thirty, and then Marie brought Sandy up to bed to tuck her in and say prayers. Katie stayed downstairs to watch Perry Mason. Marie was about to retire when she remembered she had left the heap of tatters and gray hair in the backyard. What would the neighbors think of that if they saw it in the morning? That a witch had been killed? Strega, strega, strega! Marie collected the pile and returned to her room. She put the wig on the post of a chair and hung up the old suit in the closet. It would have made sense to leave it on the floor, to make it look slept in, but enough was enough. When she checked the pockets of the coat, she found the tin of liniment from the boy at the supermarket. She rubbed it like a lucky penny and set it on the nightstand.

  Marie washed her face and went to sleep. She didn’t remember turning the light out, but she must have. The click of the switch made her stir, pulling her back toward consciousness, and the brightness felt sudden, severe. She didn’t open her eyes. She felt a heavy tread on the floorboards. The shoes dropping to the floor with a clunk. The shuffle as the socks came off. Marie kept her eyes closed. If only it were a stranger in her house, a burglar. She would know what to do with a man like that. No, this would not be a good day. Not at the beginning, and not at the end. She felt old and broken again, even more than she had in the morning. No costume was necessary anymore; no costume was possible. Her heart nearly broke when she heard Sid laugh. “Holy shit! I knew it didn’t make sense. You dressed like an old bat, an old bag when Carmen came here? Holy shit, I wish I’d seen that. Unbelievable!”

  Marie blinked her eyes open for a second. It was a mistake. She didn’t know why she had to peek. It was a mistake, even though Sid wasn’t facing her. He was laughing at the wig on the chair, pulling off his tie, throwing off his suit jacket. He had three shopping bags from Macy’s. The curled ribbon that erupted from their tops made her sick. They had arrived too soon. The timetable she’d assumed, with the whole weekend free—No. She closed her eyes again and rolled over, feigning unconsciousness. This wouldn’t work. She didn’t know why she tried. She heard his suit come off, the slip of his belt. He came into bed with her. “Hey, baby.”

  Marie tried not to move, but she flinched at his touch. She couldn’t pretend to be asleep anymore. There was a kiss on her cheek. “Sorry we fought.”

  He reeked of scotch. Marie didn’t like where this was going. He pressed against her back. His skin was hot, a little wet, as if he’d just chased someone. Marie wanted to run now, too. What was about to happen hadn’t happened in a long time. She had to get out of bed. ‘I’m sorry, too, honey,” she said. “Are you hungry? You must be starving. Let me get up, fix you a plate of something.”

  She tried to slip out from under his arm, but he wouldn’t let her. She had to think of something to say. Outside—on the street, anywhere else—she could always think of something. Diversions, distractions, delays. She labored to turn and face him. She kissed him and smiled. He laughed. “That wig,” he said. “The old lady act. I’d’a given a million bucks to see that. Didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. You are something, honey. What, I don’t know. But something.”

  Sid shifted in the bed, but he still kept an arm around her neck. His breathing slowed, and Marie thought he might sleep. And then he laughed again. He slid on top of her, his body heavy, radiating heat. He smelled differently. Maybe it was just that it had been so long since they’d been close like this, skin against skin, that she mistook him for a stranger. She did better with strangers, she could talk to them.

  “So you like the old lady getup, do you? I gotta tell you, there was a kid from a supermarket, he came up to me today. What a nice kid! His mother raised him right. When you were a kid, didn’t your mother always tell you how—”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  Sid didn’t hit her. He covered her mouth with one hand, pulled her hair back with the other. It hurt. When she closed her eyes, he moved his hand away from her mouth and opened one, scratching her with his thumbnail.

  “Look at me. If you ever try to leave, I’m the last thing you’ll ever see.”

  There was no way to not see him. There was nothing she could say to move his heart, to move him away. She had to find a way out, to try. What did she have, that could help? She stretched out a hand toward the night-stand, to take hold of her token of mercy. She couldn’t reach it.

  11 YOU KNOW HOW THIS ENDS

  “Crawling at your feet,” said the Gnat (Alice drew her feet back in some alarm), “you may observe a Bread-and-Butterfly. Its wings are thin slices of Bread-and-butter, its body is a crust, and its head is a lump of sugar.”

  “And what does it live on?”

  “Weak tea with cream in it.’”

  A new difficulty came into Alice’s head. “Supposing it couldn’t find any?” she suggested.

  “Then it would die, of course.”

  “But that must happen very often,” Alice remarked thoughtfully.

  “It always happens,” said the Gnat.

  —Lewis Carroll

  Through the Looking-Glass

  APRIL 16, 1963

  1700 HOURS

  The newspaper strike had ended, but Marie didn’t care. She didn’t want to know what was happening now, what would happen next. She knew she had to see the doctor the day she vomited. She knew that she was pregnant. It wasn’t flu season, and she hadn’t eaten anything risky the day before—minestrone for lunch, an overcooked pork chop for dinner. That was . . . yesterday? Yesterday, yesterday . . .

  The life she’d made was over. She’d feared it from the first, from that night when Sid came home. He left the next morning, early. Marie had the weekend to herself, as she’d hoped, planting peas and spinach in the garden. She didn’t open any of Sid’s gifts but delivered them to the same Salvation Army store where she’d picked up her bag-lady duds.

  Yesterday, Marie had driven back from her two wiretap plants in Brooklyn to the office and decided to grab lunch in Chinatown. When she got out of the car on Pell Street, the fishmonger stink overwhelmed her. Marie didn’t have a delicate stomach. Not since she first carried Sandy. It had been just over a month since the night with Sid. She felt ill again when she realized, but her stomach held. Yesterday, yesterday, yesterday. She might have been able to get away with the ingénue act yesterday, one last time.

  For the first time in her life, Marie hated her husband. She wanted to call the police. With past beatings, she could have had Sid arrested—possibly, if she was hurt badly enough, and the right cop responded—even though it would have done more harm than good. After a night in jail, Sid would be bounced back to patrol, maybe put on a desk for a while. There would be chaplain visits for both of them. This time, it wouldn’t have mattered. There were no charges to press. What Sid did was
n’t a crime. A husband couldn’t rape a wife, even if all the burdensome corroboration requirements had been met. And it was Sid’s stupidity as much as his malice that infuriated her. Why didn’t he just stick to his fists, the way he had before? Didn’t he understand what could happen? This injury wouldn’t heal in a few days, and it couldn’t be covered up with cosmetics. He’d planted a bomb inside her that could destroy them both. Ticktock, ticktock.

  And now, Marie couldn’t leave him. The realization made her more nauseated than any smell. With another child, she’d have to take sick leave, starting in August, September at the latest. Unpaid, of course. Four or five months before the birth—she wasn’t up-to-date on the regulations, since she hadn’t thought she’d need to know—and then six months after. A year without a paycheck, without a purpose beyond the four walls of her house. A year of living only on his dirty money, of having to ask him for it, just to keep a roof over their heads. She remembered how miserable she was after her last pregnancy. And that was with a baby that she wanted. No, she had to try and find someone who could defuse the bomb.

  Marie didn’t go to her own doctor. She’d flipped through the yellow pages and picked a random name. Not entirely random: Not Irish, or Italian, or Polish, or Spanish. Not Catholic. She didn’t recognize Dr. Levine’s address, or his telephone exchange, “AS9.” Was it in Astoria? She hadn’t made up her mind about what to do. And she didn’t really know if there was any urgency to decide.

  That was a lie, she knew. Her lying mind refused to believe her body, which was speaking louder and louder. She was an unreliable informant, who could neither be trusted nor controlled. What she knew was that they didn’t do wiretaps on doctors in Queens.

  “MRS. MELCHIONNE, DR. Levine will see you shortly.”

  It turned out to be in Astoria, after all. An Italian and Greek neighborhood, mostly. Marie was Lana again, for luck. Marie had driven through the neighborhood to find the address she’d claim as her home. She didn’t see any big apartment houses, where the vast anonymity of New York life might seem natural. People on the street stopped to chat, slapping backs and shaking hands. Did everyone here know everyone else? Where were the solitaries, the strangers? Marie found a desolate block off the far end of Steinway Street, noting the nearest deli, pizza place, beauty parlor, in case she was asked. Had she made a mistake being a Melchionne here? Of course, she was using it as a married name. Marie could have been born Lana Levin . . . ski. Yes, Levinski might work, almost a cousin of the doctor. A meydele who married into the wrong tribe, and wanted to return. Maybe he’d look kindly on her. Nu?