“Don’t forget to close it before you go to bed. Don’t wanna get robbed,” she mutters.
“We’re not gonna get robbed.” We live in Clarksville, a historic neighborhood and one of the nicest in a city that’s generally considered to be safe and clean. I can’t blame her for being cautious, though; she’s been a cop for thirty years. She’s seen society’s underbelly. She probably knows things about our neighbors that would make me avert my eyes when passing them on the street. Still, even the worst parts of Austin are a playground next to typical city slums.
I frown as I peer down at the filthy sink. The stainless steel is spattered with black specks. “Did you burn something in here?”
“Just . . . trash.”
I fish out a scrap of paper with perforations along one side. It looks like a page torn from a notepad. April 16, 2003 is scrawled across it in writing that isn’t my mother’s.
“Biggest mistake of my life.” She puffs on her cigarette, her words low and slurred. “I should have known Betsy wasn’t the only one . . .”
“Who’s Betsy?”
“Nobody anymore,” she mutters, along with something indiscernible.
I fill a tall glass of water and set it down in front of her, using it as a distraction so I can drag the bottle of whiskey out of her reach.
She makes a play for it anyway, her movements slow and clumsy. “Give it on back to me, Noah. Right now, ya hear me?”
I shift to the other side of the table, screwing the cap on extra tight, though she could probably still open it. For a woman of her stature—five foot four and 130 pounds—she’s all muscle. At least she was all muscle. Her lithe body has begun to deteriorate thanks to the daily liquid supper. “You’ve had enough for tonight.”
“What do you know about enough? There ain’t enough whiskey in the world for what I’ve done.” She fumbles with the four silver stars pinned to her uniform’s collar, looking ready to rip them off.
So it’s going to be one of those nights. But who am I kidding? Those nights, when she starts in on this incoherent rambling, about not deserving to be chief, are more and more common lately. I miss the days when all she’d complain about was stupid laws and lack of department funding.
I sigh. “Come on, I’ll help you upstairs.”
“No,” she growls, a stubborn frown setting across her forehead.
It’s half past eleven. She’s normally passed out by nine, so this is an unusually late night for her. Still, if she downs a few glasses of water and goes to bed, maybe she’ll be ready for work by the morning, only a little worse for wear.
I fold my six-foot-two frame into the chair across from her. “Mom?”
“I’m fine . . .” she mumbles, her brow pinched with irritation as she fumbles with her pack of cigarettes.
I wish I could be angry with her. Instead, I’m sad and frustrated. I’m pretty sure I need help, but I have no idea who to turn to. I was eleven the last time she hit the bottle like this. She and Dad were still married, so he dealt with it. But Dad has wiped his hands of her. He’s got a new wife and family and a meat-and-potatoes life in Seattle. He was never meant to be the husband of a cop, and especially not one as ambitious as my mother.
She’d skin me alive if I went to any of the guys I know from the APD about her drinking. There are too many people looking for a reason to get rid of a female chief. This would be a good reason.
I could go to Uncle Silas. He’s the district attorney; he wouldn’t want voters finding out that his sister the chief of police is a drunk. I should have gone to him already, but I hoped it was a phase, something she’d work out on her own.
Maybe with a little push from us, Mom can get sober again. She did it once before, years ago. Quit cold turkey. She’s tough like that. She can beat this again.
If she wants to.
I turn down the volume on the police scanner. “Mom?”
Her eyes snap open. It takes her a moment to focus on me, but she finally does. “How was basketball?”
“They beat our asses.”
“Who were you playing with?”
“Jenson, Craig. The usual crew.”
“Jenson and Craig . . .” she mutters, her gaze trailing over my arms, long and cut from hours of lifting weights and swimming laps. And she smiles. It’s sloppy, but I see the wistfulness behind the boozy mask. “You’ve become so strong and independent, Noah. And smart. So smart. You know I love you to bits, right?”
I nudge the glass of water forward. “Take a sip, Mom. Please.”
She humors me by downing half the glass, only to then reach for her glass of whiskey and knock back the shot.
“What time do you have to be in to work tomorrow?” If I can catch her over her morning coffee, when she’s sober and still feeling the pain of tonight, maybe I can start a serious conversation.
Maybe I can get through to her.
“You’ve grown into a good, honest man,” she mutters, not answering me. “You’re going to be fine.”
“Here. Let me get you another glass of water.” I fill up three more, lining them on the table in front of her. “Drink. Please.”
With reluctance, she reaches for the first.
“I’m gonna grab a shower.” Without the promise of more booze, she’ll stagger upstairs and be passed out facedown in her uniform by the time I’m out, I’m betting. I dip down to grab the bottle from beneath the chair.
“He was a good, honest man, too,” she mutters.
“You’ll find someone else. You’re still young.” She does this when she’s drunk, too—talks about Dad, about how it’s her fault they divorced. Right after this, she’s going to say that she’s a terrible mother, because she abandoned me, let him take me to Seattle all those years ago. A boy needs his father, she believed.
“No, not your dad . . . Abe.”
I freeze.
I haven’t heard her say that name in years.
I ask cautiously, “Abraham, Abe?”
“Hmmm.” She nods. Again, that wistful smile touches her lips. “You remember him, don’t you?”
“Of course.” He was the tall man with ebony skin and a wide smile who taught me how to dribble a ball. He was my mother’s police partner for years, and one of her best friends for even longer.
Until he was killed by a cocaine dealer, only to be labeled a corrupt cop after his death. I was eleven when he died. I didn’t understand what that meant, only that whatever Abraham Wilkes did was bad. It made statewide news and broadened an already perceptible racial divide within the community. It made Mom start drinking, and I’m pretty sure it broke apart our family.
“He was a good man.” Her voice drifts off with her gaze, as her eyes begin to water. “He was a good, honest man.”
I wander back toward the table. “I thought he was stealing and dealing drugs.”
She chuckles as she takes another drag of her cigarette. It’s a sad, empty sound. “That’s what everyone thinks, because that’s what they made them think. But you . . .” She pokes the air with her finger, her normally neat and trim fingernails chewed to the quick. “You need to know the truth. I need you to know that he was a good man and we are bad, bad people.”
“Who’s bad?” I’m desperate to pull the chair out and sit down across from her again, to listen to whatever it is she’s trying to tell me. But I also don’t think she realizes what she’s divulging. And I don’t want to give her pause to clue in and clam up.
She dumps her cigarette pack out on the table, scattering a half dozen cigarettes before finding one to light. “You know he broke Dina. Ran her and that beautiful little girl out of town. She was so young when Abe died. Gracie. He always smiled when he said her name.” Mom smiles now too, reminiscing. “She has her mama’s green eyes and Abraham’s full lips and kinky curls. And her skin, it’s this gorgeous color, like caramel, and—”
“Mom!” I snap, hoping to get her focus back. I vaguely remember Abe’s kid—a cute girl with big eyes and wild hair—but I don’t want to hear about her right now. “What are you talking about? Who did what?”
“It didn’t start out that way. Or . . . I guess it did. But he made it sound right.”