Kristin FitzPatrick
Excerpt from "The Lost Bureau"
by Kristin FitzPatrick
published in Epiphany, Spring/Summer 2011
The district picnic is a hell of a way to end Andrea’s first week on patrol. At the table, the folding chair next to her stays empty. Cop, wife, cop, wife, empty seat, female cop. “Who’s your husband?” is a broken record by six-thirty. That’s when she pours her first and only drink. She has thought about this all week: beer is masculine, overdoing it suggests she thinks she has a shot at becoming one of the boys. White wine is too dainty. Liquor, if drunk too fast or with the whole hand clutching the cup, signals too close a friendship with what’s inside, as if she stays up late laughing and crying with it every night. She chooses a red from the cluster of bottles at the center of the round table. She will sip it slow, for composure, and because her swing shift starts in three hours. She will leave here early, but until then she will focus on the positives. Positive No. 1: She’s a patrol cop now, hunting one of Chicago’s dirtiest pusher-pimps. Positive No. 2: Her sister Trina is safe at home.
After dinner, at the other tables, women take their positions. Lieutenant and captain wives there, black wives over here, old ones there, with a couple of rookie wives salted in at each table. Old hands hold young hands. Welcome dear, and congratulations. What a life you will have.
The other lady officers who have shown up are the ones still on office duty and married to male cops. For the first time, Andrea misses the girls at the academy, misses the way they never spoke to each other. The silence kept them separate, safe, because together they would fall.
At Andrea’s table, every other chair is empty now, because the men are at the beer coolers, where they joke about the week’s news, about how the bullet must have softened Reagan “like Cupid’s frigging arrow, and turned him gaga for Sandra Day.” The wives fill the empty seats, get close, so they can hear over the music, until Andrea becomes home plate and they are the arc of the outfield.
“I hear you’re a good shot,” one of them says.
“Oh, thank you,” Andrea says. The wives inspect her sundress, her necklace, her neat brown drape of hair. “Whoever told you that is too kind.”
“It was my husband, Alan. Alan Serano.” She blushes. A proud wife, a fearful wife.
Andrea nods and reaches up to smooth her hair, which she has worn down but not teased.
She spent hours deciding what to do with it. The outfit she wears is also the result of deep worry. Too flattering would draw attention. She’s over the no-good husband, they’d think. Now she wants ours, or a promotion, or the hand of one of the bachelors left on the squad. Too concealing suggests a lack of interest in men, period, and they’ve already worn out the names for that.
One of them stands. “I don’t know about you girls, but my kid’s got school in the morning and my mom is a pill about babysitting past eight, especially on a Thursday night.” She shoves in her chair. “Toodle-oo.”
They check their watches. “Christ,” another one says. She looks at Andrea. Her frown announces a realization that Andrea has no kids, no pain-in-the-ass mother. “No offense,” she says. “We don’t mean any offense.”
Positive No. 3: At least Andrea doesn’t have to wake up and see Serano’s mug on the pillow, or Parker’s, Accardi’s, or O’Malley’s. Andrea sleeps only with Frank’s .32. Unloaded in the thigh holster, the gun reassures her, lulls her to sleep. She pities the wives. At home it must be all shoeshine and billy club and wait till your father comes home. The officer everyone wants to see. What pride is higher than that?
“No offense taken,” Andrea says. She stands in what she hopes is a ladylike way. “My kid sister,” she says to the wives. Their eyes open wide. “Not Cindy. My other one, Trina. She lives with me. I gotta go help with her homework.” She nods. “Evening, ladies.”
In the parking lot, a clammy hand grabs Andrea’s wrist. “I’m sorry.”
Andrea turns around. It’s Nicola O’Malley. “For what?” Andrea says.
“You know. For Frank and your sister. For what happened. It was just—” She clicks her tongue, and her hand thunks over her heart. She chokes up. This is practice for the crying she’ll have to do as an officer’s wife, because with the pride comes the worry. Imagine. Everything can go down out in the field. Nicola’s eyes, behind the mascara and the shadow, will never see what Andrea will. Shit, what she has seen already. The wives’ hands will never close around steel, fingers won’t clasp, elbows won’t lock as every angle of the body aligns with the target.
“Don’t be sorry,” Andrea says. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I let it happen.”
[end of excerpt]
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