“How you guys treated Raheem.”
“We were only being cautious. Don’t hold it against Carmella. She was trying to protect you. Blame me. More has been going on at home than I’ve let on.”
“Not that part,” she said, staring out the window as we passed Shea and smiling wistfully.
“Then I’m a little confused.”
“How the cops blew him off because he was a black kid and you guys were cops. If the roles were reversed and he had tackled you or Carmella, the cops would have beat the shit out of him. They wouldn’t have been slapping him on the back and inviting him out for drinks like they did with you and Carmella.”
“You’re right. I’d like to tell you it’s not true, but it is. That’s a cop’s world sometimes.”
“Well, it sucks.”
“There’s a lot of injustice in the world, Sarah. Some of it’s big. Some of it’s small. In the scheme of things, today’s events were a small injustice.”
“You don’t have to talk to me like I’m a little kid, Dad. Besides, there’s no such thing as a small injustice.”
“I didn’t say it was right. I just said it’s the way it is.”
“Is that how you rationalized yourself to sleep when you were a cop?”
“When I was a cop, I slept like a baby. Being a cop isn’t about the big questions. It’s about doing the job.”
“Did doing the job include mistreating innocent people?”
“Sometimes, yeah, I guess it did.”
“Then that sucks too.”
“I’m glad I’m sending you to the University of Michigan so you can learn to use the word ‘sucks’ in every other sentence. You gonna try for the debate team next term?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“Okay. Look, Carmella and me, we were just looking out for you. Raheem got the shit end of the stick today, but he also got a hundred and fifty bucks for getting his thumb twisted a little bit. You seem a lot more worried about his dignity than he did.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then I’m lost,” I said.
“It wasn’t necessarily what happened back there, but what it represented that bothers me. You guys got a free pass because you were once cops, not because of what you did or didn’t do.”
“Oh, kinda like how you got out of those speeding tickets last year because you were a cop’s kid and had the PBA and Detectives Endowment Association cards in your bag that Carmella and I gave you.”
Sarah had no snappy reply for that one, but sank into her seat and sulked for a few minutes.
“So what is it with you and Carmella anyway?” she said as we got off the Van Wyck and onto the Belt Parkway.
“We’re partners.”
“That all? Just business partners like you and Uncle Aaron?”
“Not exactly. I get along better with Carmella. I’m not a disappointment to her like I am to your uncle.”
“Come on, Dad, Carmella is beautiful and you have that cop thing between you and-”
“Look, kiddo, if this is about me and your mother, forget it. What went wrong with us has nothing to do with Carmella.”
“Not even a little bit, not even about you and Mom not getting back together?”
“I love your mom, but it just doesn’t work between us anymore.”
“But-”
“No buts. I hurt your mom and she can’t get past it. Until this stuff with Patrick, we were both okay with that.”
Patrick. Shit! I got a little queasy just saying his name. What had happened at the air terminal came rushing back to me. I worried Sarah might notice. Then, of all people, I thought of Francis Maloney and smiled. A reaction I had never before had nor was ever likely to have again. The strange thing about my late father-in-law and me was that in spite of our mutual loathing, we never fought, not really. We were engaged in a long cold war. And just like in the real Cold War, both of us kept a finger close to the button that would bring our worlds crashing down around our heads.
We barely spoke, but there was one question Francis Maloney Sr. never missed the opportunity to ask me, “Do you believe in ghosts?” He never explained the question, never once discussed it. He didn’t want or expect an answer. After a few years, he didn’t even have to say the words. The question would come in the guise of a sideways glance or a churlish smile. His favorite form of silent sparring was to raise his glass of Irish to me, a toast to his sworn enemy.
Only in death did he explain. The mechanics of his revenge from the grave were particularly cruel. Included in Katy’s inheritance was a cold storage receipt. She thought it might be for her mom’s wedding dress. When we retrieved the item from cold storage, it wasn’t a wedding dress at all, but a man’s blue winter parka, the blue parka her brother Patrick had been wearing the night he disappeared. Katy recognized it immediately. So did I. In the pocket of the coat was a twenty-year-old handwritten note from Francis:
“Your boyfriend gave this to me on February 17, 1978. Ask him where he got it and why he swore me to secrecy. Did he never tell you he found Patrick?”
And so I came to understand the question he had asked me hundreds of times in a hundred different ways over the years. The coat proved I had found Patrick, that I had let him go, and that I had conspired to keep the secret from Katy forever. Patrick’s ghost had essentially ended our marriage. Francis, thinking that his death would protect him from the fallout, had miscalculated. For as angry as Katy was with me, the extent of it was nothing compared to the animus with which she regarded her late father. Katy and I might never reconcile and she would likely not forgive me, but we would always share Sarah. Sarah was the best of both of us. On the other hand, Katy would hate her father for eternity.
So I sat there in the driver’s seat, smiling, thinking of the late Francis Maloney Sr. and wondering whether he would have appreciated today’s delicious irony. I closed my eyes just for a second and saw him raise his glass of Irish. In my head I heard him ask, “Do you believe in ghosts?” And this time I answered, “Maybe.”
“Dad, what are you smiling at?”
“I was just thinking about your grandfather.”
“Your dad?”
“No, Grandpa Francis.”
“But you hated him, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. That’s why I’m smiling.”
“You’re so weird, Dad.”
“I suppose I am, sometimes. At least you didn’t say I suck.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
For the second time that day I drove into Brooklyn Heights, but the road ahead hadn’t gotten any clearer. Now I was facing down the sun sliding slowly behind the curve of the Earth and the blue of the water was less assertive. The green spaces and bike paths that ran along the Belt Parkway were crowded with couples, joggers pushing strollers, tanned skater girls, dogs on long leashes, dogs on no leashes at all. Kites bathed in dying orange light flirted with the Verrazano Bridge and dreamed of untethered flight. These were not the cheap, diamond- shaped kites I flew as a kid, kites made of splintered balsa wood and paper, trailing tails of my mother’s old house frocks or whatever other schmattes were laying around. No, these were proper kites, fierce and sturdy things that loved the wind and did not fear it. I wondered if I were a kite, would I love the wind or fear it? It’s odd what you think about sometimes.
By the time I turned off the BQE at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge and into Cadman Plaza, the sun and the kites were gone. There may be no silence in Brooklyn, ever, but there are lulls when its symphony quiets down just
