Ask Again, Yes (31 page)

“Thirteen. But he looked older.”

“And if he were older? He wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

“Peter.” George looked at him. “I’m not denying that some cops are racist assholes. I’m saying now that girl from New Canaan decides that every cop is a racist asshole. Just because some meathead in the Seven-Nine beat up a kid. He never should have gotten near a shield and a gun, that guy.”

Peter laughed. “Isn’t that what every minority in this city has to deal with every single day? Whole groups being judged based on the actions of a few?” But Peter was only half debating since he was still thinking about Kate, and the overcrowded apartment he was about to move into. The thought of four guys sharing the same small bathroom made him wonder why he’d agreed.

George said he was willing to bet most of those protesters had never personally met and spoken to a cop.

“A big problem is the job doesn’t pay enough,” George said. “You listening? Not for the danger. And then another problem is first chance a good city cop gets, he or she heads to the suburbs. I read an article about it.”

“About what?”

“About the police. Hello? Earth to Peter. Young people have to see it as a place where they can use their brains.”

In the passenger seat, Peter sat up straight, felt a tug of such force it seemed impossible that it had come from within.

“It’s an important job.”

George glanced at him. “That’s what I’m saying.”

That night, Kate no doubt long asleep in her new apartment, Peter lay awake and felt a world older than he had when he imagined college as a road that would bring him somewhere far away. Around midnight he gave up on sleep, slid his feet into his weathered sneakers, slipped out of the apartment and then outside into the drizzly dark.

At the Banner he acted as if he were new to the neighborhood. After his second drink he asked the bartender if he remembered a guy from a few years ago, a tall guy, wavy hair. A cop. Used to be a regular, before he moved down south.

“You’re describing everyone,” the bartender said. “Narrow it down.”

“Nah, it’s nothing,” Peter said, and waved him off.

An hour later, when Peter set his glass down on the bar and reached for his wallet to fish out a few bills, he felt his hands tremble. Outside again, the drizzle now a downpour, he felt himself swimming toward the lure of the familiar, a path he could make his own and make right. He wondered if recruits got paid through academy. He wondered if the health insurance started immediately or only after several months’ delay.

He’d tell Kate as soon as he took the written exam. Then he told himself he’d tell her as soon as he found out whether he passed. He kept shaping for the ironworkers, kept getting per diem work. He tried to go for a run every day, after work, because it made him feel like he was still a student and it kept him out of the apartment for an extra hour. Autumn came
and went. Christmas. The evening news was in a lather over Y2K. The world had just a few more months to organize itself before the century changed and all files were lost. The subways would stop running. Planes would drop from the sky. All because programmers in the 1960s had not prepared for an existence beyond 1999.

The new millennium arrived, and the world kept turning.

In February, he heard from the Applicant Processing Division that he passed the written test and that there was additional paperwork to be filled out. Among this paperwork was a form that consented to a background check. An investigator was assigned to his application. He sat for a character screening, a psychological screening, an oral test, the medical test. They checked his vision, hearing, blood pressure, his heart. When the doctor took his resting pulse, he said either Peter was a runner or he was dead.

After all that came the formal interview, scheduled with the same investigator who had completed his background check.

George figured it out when he saw the envelopes arriving. He told Peter it didn’t feel like all that long ago that he’d brought in the mail and noticed similar envelopes for Brian. He asked Peter if he was sure, how far along he was in the process, how he’d done on the formal interview. If he’d met with anyone since the background check.

“That’s the last step. Next week.”

“Ah. Okay,” George said, but seemed concerned.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

The investigator introduced himself as a member of the detective bureau. He seemed jolly enough and Peter could tell he was trying to put him at ease. He told Peter about the car trouble he’d had that morning, how his wife was a nag but was always right. Peter had shaved carefully,
was wearing a sport coat and tie. All the other tests had taken place in LeFrak City, but this one was held on East Twentieth Street in Manhattan. Peter had a folder with him that contained every document they’d asked for, from his social security card to his transcript from Elliott. His backpack was too scuffed for him to use and he didn’t have a briefcase, so he clutched the folder in his hand on the subway, and all morning he was paranoid that something had slipped out and fluttered away without his noticing. He checked and rechecked.

When he got to the building, a young woman directed him to the interview room and brought him a glass of water. When the investigator came in, he sat across from Peter at a beat-up wood table. The older man began with the questions Peter expected, the ones he’d practiced answering in his head on his evening runs: why Peter wanted to join and how he envisioned the job. He framed everything like a casual chat, like they were simply getting to know each other at a barbeque or a baseball game, though Peter could tell he was ticking through the items on his list. Finally, he asked about Peter’s parents, and Peter gave the answer he’d rehearsed, the answer he’d been giving for years. His mother lived upstate. His father lived down south. They’d separated a decade ago and Peter didn’t have a relationship with either of them. He nodded quickly to indicate that was the extent of his answer, but the investigator tilted his head, leaned forward.

“Your father. He was on the job, no?”

“Yes. Yes he was.”

“Nineteen years. Did he get injured? Something happen?” He flipped through his notes, and Peter felt his pulse firing in the palms of his hands. He knew it was possible that the man knew everything already, but he also knew it was possible the department was so vast, with so many moving parts, that it might have gotten missed. Nothing that happened in Gillam had happened on the job for Brian.

“There was a personal matter that prompted an early retirement.”

“Oh? What was that?”

He’d been warned that there was no limit to the scope of their questions. In the psychological exam they asked him if he was seeing anyone, if that person was a man or a woman, how he would feel if his eventual partner were a woman. How about a gay man or a gay woman? How about Black, Hispanic, Asian? He’d assumed those questions were illegal.

“We’re not close. We don’t have a relationship.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

“He retired early, because he wanted a change. At least I believe that’s why. But you’d have to ask him, honestly. He moved down south when I was fifteen. I lived with my uncle after he left.”

“Your uncle George Stanhope,” the investigator said, and Peter felt his stomach drop.

“Yes.”

“And your mother, she lives on Sixth Street in Saratoga now?”

“I don’t know,” Peter said. This, at least, was the truth.

“She was arrested in 1991 and charged with attempted murder. The man she shot was a neighbor, an NYPD lieutenant, off duty. She pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. The case settled. Correct?”

Peter remained silent while his heart pounded.

“I was fourteen. I wasn’t privy to most of the details.”

“It was your father’s off-duty weapon that she used, correct?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“You believe so.” The investigator pushed his notes aside. “You aced the written test. You aced the physical. Your college transcript is solid.”

Peter waited for the other shoe to drop.

“But the psych exam raised a flag. I’m talking about your psych exam, Peter. Not your mother’s. Not your father’s. Yours.”

Peter knew he might be testing him. The psych exam consisted of a thousand questions over the course of six hours. At one point he was asked to draw a house, a tree, himself. After, he remembered he’d forgotten to draw a doorknob on the front door of the house. How would
he get in through a door without a knob? As for the self-portrait, he’d drawn himself in shorts and a racing singlet and afterward thought he should have drawn a suit and tie.

“And your father’s record with us is troubling. He has a citation for drinking on the job. January 1989.”

“I’m not my father. I don’t even know him anymore.”

“And Uncle George has a sheet. Minor stuff but worth mentioning.”

Peter looked toward the narrow window and tried to gather his scattering thoughts.

“I’ve never done a single thing wrong. I’m the one who’s applying. Not my mother. Not my father. Not my uncle. So their histories don’t matter, only mine matters.”

“Maybe,” the investigator said. “That might be true. Depends.”

He waited two weeks. A month. Six weeks. He’d heard there was a new academy class starting up soon and if his name didn’t get added to the list of eligible recruits, he wouldn’t be able to join. Kate was enjoying her job despite the odd hours, despite the things she had to see when she was called out to crime scenes, down on her hands and knees with her black light, searching for fluid and blood.

“What’s with you?” Kate asked. They’d gone to see a movie but the few times Kate looked over at him in the flickering dark, Peter wasn’t looking at the screen. The movie wasn’t even halfway through when he took her hand and pulled her down the aisle, out to the lobby, and then to the frigid air of the sidewalk outside.

“When are we going to live together, Kate? When are we going to get married? When are our lives going to be the way we agreed they were going to be instead of just getting together two or three nights a week? I don’t like it.”

Kate laughed. They were standing six feet apart on a gum-flocked
sidewalk. The woman sitting in the ticket booth was behind glass, reading a book.

“I’m serious, don’t you want to get married?”

“Well, I think you’re supposed to ask me if I’m up for it.”

“I did, didn’t I? About ten years ago?”

“No, you told me it was going to happen. I don’t think you asked. Plus I was thirteen.”

“Well? Are you up for it?”

“Of course I am,” she said, “but I hope you know this doesn’t count as a proposal.” And then, “Peter, what in the world is wrong with you?”

He paced back and forth as he told her everything, starting with the night he decided to become a cop, all the way up to the formal interview and the long weeks he’d been waiting, wondering if he was going to get in. He was sorry he didn’t tell her, but he wanted it to be a surprise. Kate watched and listened as she shivered and hugged herself tight.

Because what would he do otherwise, was the question he kept coming back to. Now that he knew what he wanted to be, he was sure of it. There were so many different ways to be a cop, so many different trajectories, no two careers looked alike, it was insane that they could hold against him something that had happened so long ago, something that truly had nothing to do with him. He thought of calling up that investigator and asking for another interview. What did Kate think of that idea?

“Did he say anything more about whatever flags were raised in the psych exam? Did he give you details?”

“No. He probably made that up.”

Kate nodded and Peter could almost see all the information he’d just given her get sorted into compartments in her brain.

“If I don’t get in I was thinking we could move. I could try Boston or somewhere in Connecticut. Hartford. Stamford. They probably don’t have so many applicants. Plus . . .”

“Peter,” Kate said, unwrapping her arms from around herself and
approaching him. He felt her body’s warmth through her thick down coat. “You’re sure?” she asked. “You’re certain this is what you want?”

“Yes,” he said. He’d be a better cop than his father had been. He’d be more like Francis Gleeson, before he got shot. He’d get to the place Francis would have landed, had his career not been derailed. He’d be respectful and he’d follow the rules and he’d climb the ranks. He could see it already.

“Let me try one thing. Can you hang on a little while longer? What’s the guy’s name? The investigator, I mean.”

Kate took the early bus to Gillam that Sunday, and walked home without calling for a pickup. She stopped walking when she was halfway down Jefferson and saw the windows of her childhood home were decorated with her and her sisters’ old heart cutouts for Valentine’s Day. The thought of her mother unfolding the stairs to the attic and getting down the old decorations while her father held the stairs steady and said, as he always did, “Be careful up there, Lena,” made Kate want to drop to her knees and cry. She remembered her father coming home from a midnight tour one Valentine’s Day and presenting each of them with heart-shaped erasers for their pencils. For Lena he had a dozen roses, and as she trimmed the ends and fussed about finding a vase, she said he should have waited until late February, when the markup wasn’t so steep, she wasn’t the kind of wife who would mind.

Kate knocked softly at the front door, and when no one answered, she went around the side of the house, the frost-stiffened grass crunching under her sneakers, and got the hide-a-key from under the false rock. When she pushed open the back door, her father was already opening the cabinet to remove a second mug.

“I saw you coming,” he said.

“Where’s Mom?”

“Sleeping.” It was not quite eight o’clock. Lena’s hair had grown back, curls as full as ever, only she didn’t bother coloring it anymore, so it was threaded with steel and white. Her cancer had been in remission for several years. She never discussed what had happened between Francis and Joan Kavanagh, but Kate was with her once, about a year after her surgery, her hair still impish and short, when they were walking through the parking lot of an Italian restaurant back to Lena’s car, and Lena stopped all of a sudden, turned back to the restaurant. “I forgot something,” she called over her shoulder. Kate almost laughed at the abruptness of it until she saw Joan Kavanagh walking through the parking lot across the street. Only when Joan had entered a shop on the other side did Lena reemerge.