Ask Again, Yes (41 page)

“Actually, don’t answer that.”

The doctors on the panel were two orthopedists and one psychiatrist. The orthopedists were there for the patrolmen who’d been on modified duty for broken legs, ruptured discs. The psychiatrist was there for him.

They began pleasantly. One of the orthopedists asked him how he’d been feeling lately, if he was sleeping well, eating right. When his answer came in too short, they asked him to elaborate. Was he still seeing his therapist? Did he feel he was making progress? And how were things at home? Things with his kids? His wife? How was his wife handling everything, in Peter’s view? Peter reminded them—it must have been somewhere in their notes—that Kate also worked for the department, that she was second in seniority only to the director of the crime lab. They waited for him to say more. The psychiatrist referred to a note.

“And your drinking. Has it gotten worse since you were moved to restricted duty? We have a statement from a hospital employee that says you tried to get your union rep to bring you alcohol that evening? While you were being evaluated? You couldn’t wait until you were cleared? Another hour, maybe? Two hours?”

Peter pressed hard on his thighs to keep his hands steady. He said the
words he’d practiced. “It had been a very emotional night and I think I was in shock. But what happened had nothing to do with drinking. Still, if it makes the department feel more comfortable, I’m willing to enter a rehabilitation program if the department sees fit.”

“Were you intoxicated when you discharged your weapon, Peter?”

“No.”

“Do you believe it’s possible to do your job while intoxicated?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

They seemed to consider this but said nothing.

“And what about your parents? Your father, he was on the job, correct? You told Dr. Elias that you haven’t seen your father in twenty-five years? And that your mother spent over a decade in a state mental institution as part of a plea deal?”

It was annoying to be asked questions that everyone in the room already knew the answers to.

“Can you describe what happened? The incident when you were fourteen?”

Peter had expected the question but now that they’d asked it, he couldn’t think of a way to frame his answer. They had all the details in their pile of papers anyway. Why make him say it?

“Twenty-four years. It’s been twenty-four years since I last saw my father. Not twenty-five.”

“And your mother. It was a violent charge, yes? She shot your neighbor? You told Dr. Elias she had paranoid delusions. At one point she was considered schizophrenic but that might have been a misdiagnosis? How familiar are you with her diagnoses and treatments?”

“Yes,” Peter.

“Yes what?” the psychiatrist asked.

“Yes it was a violent charge.”

“And are you in touch with her? Is she still in treatment?”

“I saw her recently and she’s much better. The medications now are much better than they were back then.”

“Peter,” the psychiatrist said, “you have to answer all of our questions. You can’t pick and choose.”

Peter sighed. “What happened then, the incident you refer to, it was terrible, yes, but my mother was ill and she wasn’t getting sufficient support at home. I was a kid so I didn’t know anything but my father, he should have known she needed treatment. But anyway, we’ve all moved on, even my father-in-law, and if he’s moved on I don’t see why it’s relevant to these proceedings.”

“Your father-in-law? What’s his connection to that event?”

Peter sat way back. Had he never mentioned that detail? In twelve weeks of struggling to fill those therapy slots with talking, had he never mentioned that part? He figured they already knew. He thought quickly and felt them leaning closer, their ears perked up to receive his answer.

“My wife’s father. He was the neighbor. He’s the one my mother shot.” They all leaned over their notebooks and wrote something down.

In the end, they didn’t even bother to send him out of the room while they deliberated. He’d retire immediately. They’d continue paying him until the end of the year.

As soon as he stepped out of the room, there was Benny. And sitting on the bench next to him was Francis Gleeson.

“What are you doing here?” Peter asked. Francis had called the house several times to find out how things were going, what was happening. Peter didn’t know if Kate called him back.

“I wanted to be here,” Francis said. He was wearing his usual tweed flat cap pulled low over his forehead. He was the only man in the building who had not removed his hat when he came indoors. “How’d it go?”

Benny didn’t need to ask because he already knew. “You’ll appeal,” Benny said.

Peter strode past both men to the elevator bank. He punched the button, but then made for the stairs.

“Did you tell them you’d go to the farm?” Benny called into the stairwell. “You said all that?”

Outside smelled like autumn, finally. His favorite season. The first sign of cooler weather always made him crave a stack of fresh notebooks, made him want to eat an apple and then run a 10K as fast as he could. Cross-country weather, those glorious perfect weeks between the oppressive heat of summer and the first bitter wind of winter.

Benny hurried to catch up with Peter in the parking lot. Francis wasn’t far behind.

“Think about it for a week,” Benny said. “If you don’t want to appeal, I’ll have them schedule a pension hearing.” He tilted his head and put a hand on Peter’s shoulder. “You good? You okay?”

“I think so, yeah. Actually, I feel fine.”

“Peter!” Francis shouted from across the lot. Peter could see he was moving as fast as he could. Peter leaned against the bumper of his car to wait for him.

Benny excused himself, left father- and son-in-law alone.

“You need a lift somewhere, Francis?”

“No. My buddy drove me. I just wanted to say—”

“What?”

Francis held a hand up to shade his eyes, get a better look at Peter.

“Take it easy, okay? I’m on your side.”

“You’re on Kate’s side, you mean.”

“Yeah,” Francis said. “That’s right. I’m on Kate’s side. But as far as I understand you two are on the same side.”

“Why are you here?”

Francis looked around the parking lot. “I just wanted to tell you it’ll
be okay. You’re a young man. This seems like the end of everything but it’s not. I know what it’s like to have to stop early.”

Peter pulled off his tie and balled it in his fist.

“I’m a good cop.”

“I know that.”

“It was an accident. It happens pretty often, actually, you’d be surprised. Benny had statistics, specifics from other cases. As long as no one gets hurt, as far as I know, no one gets forced out.”

Francis seemed to be considering his responses.

“That may be true but is that why you’re out? Because you fired your gun at a wall?”

Peter turned away, fished for his keys in his pants pocket, walked around the car to the driver’s side.

“I’m also here because . . .”

“Because?” Peter paused.

“I wanted to say you should still go to the farm. I’ll help pay for it if they won’t. If you guys can’t. You and Kate. Or we can keep it between us. You and me.”

“I don’t keep things from Kate.”

“No?” Francis asked over his shoulder as he shuffled away.

Kate had gone off to work that morning but when Peter pulled up to their house, her car was in the driveway. The kids were at school. When he went inside she was sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of tea clasped between her hands. Silently, he sat down across from her. She searched his face.

“They’ll pay me through December,” he said. “Someone will come around tomorrow for the car. Benny is going to work on the pension stuff.”

She let out a slow exhalation. “Okay,” she said. “At least it’s over.” She put her hand on top of his, warm from the hot mug.

“There are lots of things I can’t do. Part of me thought I might pivot to security somewhere. But no security firm would ever hire a cop whose guns got taken.”

He could see that Kate hadn’t thought about that, that some paths would be barred now.

“I don’t think you have to worry about that today, do you?” she said. “That can wait until tomorrow. In the meantime, I got you something.” She went to the fridge and brought out a mini key lime pie from his favorite bakery. She placed it in front of him. As she stood beside him, he circled his hands around her waist, rested his head against her ribs.

“I trashed the hospital room,” he whispered. “I got so frustrated. I just, I don’t know. They cleared the room and gave me a psych exam. They brought in restraints.”

Instantly, Kate felt a latch lifting, an edge of light spread across the whole night. It finally made sense. She remembered his missing boat from so many years ago, how he’d told her, later, that his mother had smashed it to smithereens, and a feeling had come over him that made him want to smash things, too.

“Did they use them? The restraints?”

“No,” Peter said, and held her tighter.

“Good. Okay. That’s good.”

“I could still go away for a while,” he said, and immediately felt her body tense up. “For a little while until I get a hold of this thing.”

“Rehab,” she said, just to make completely certain they were talking about the same thing. She put her hands in his hair.

“I’ve been so worried you didn’t mean what you said this morning. I drove all the way to work and then I turned around.”

Did he mean it? His thoughts on the subject changed every hour. Neither of them had said the word. An alcoholic was a person who stumbled and ranted. If he could just stick to a few rules. If he didn’t drink at home, only at parties or if they went out to a restaurant. Only on Saturdays and Sundays. If he set limits. Only beer, no liquor.
Only during Mets games, like George used to until he gave it up completely. He was retired now and that meant his routine would change, and part of the problem had been the old routine. Maybe if they sold their house and moved to a new house he could leave all bad habits behind. Maybe if they moved to another state where no one knew them.

Then he thought about the kids, how they’d soon sense his life was oriented around these rules. He thought of Kate, telling him gently but clearly that she would leave him if he didn’t stop.

Kate made all the calls. Once he said he was willing to go, she didn’t want to waste one single second. By the time he changed out of his suit, she had information. Their insurance was decent but they hadn’t paid into the optional rider and so most of what they’d pay would be out of pocket. She checked their bank balance, their retirement accounts. They almost never went on vacation and now they never would. But it was fine. Kate smiled, waving his worries away with a flick of her wrist. She didn’t want him to stop and think about it because then he might change his mind. The customer service rep from their insurance carrier directed her to a designated department, and that person was warm and patient where Kate had expected hostility, judgment. When it was all arranged Kate said thank you, thank you so much, he’ll leave right away. She felt euphoric. She had not been this happy in months. Now, finally, things were going to be better. The bills wouldn’t arrive until he was healthy. They’d solved the problem together, as they always had, as they always would.

“Oh, Mrs. Stanhope, no, he can’t drive himself. He needs to have a loved one drop him off and pick him up.”

“He has a valid driver’s license. He’s never gotten a DUI or anything.” Kate almost said that that was one thing he’d always been careful about.

“It’s just policy. Should we schedule for a different date then, if that’s a problem? He’ll lose this bed but I can see if a spot is opening up somewhere else in the next week or two?”

“No, we’ll keep it,” Kate insisted. “He’ll be there. It’s no problem.”

It was after one o’clock already. When Kate came home from work early, she’d canceled the teenager from up the street who normally got the kids off the bus. She called the girl’s mother back to say she needed her after all, but the mother told Kate that in the meantime she’d made an orthodontist appointment, she was very sorry. The facility they’d arranged with was in central New Jersey, two and a half hours away, five hours round trip. She began calling around to see who might manage the kids for the few hours. There would be paperwork, no doubt. All in, she had to figure she’d be gone for at least six hours. “Stuck at work,” Kate explained to the friends who lived across town and wouldn’t see that both Kate’s car and Peter’s were in the driveway. She knocked on their neighbor’s door, but there was no answer. She called the daycare where they used to send Molly to see if by chance anyone there might be willing to babysit for a very rewarding hourly fee. No one could get there on such short notice. Time ticked by. Peter was watching television upstairs in the family room, like he was afraid to go near the basement door. Kate called Sara, getting desperate now, but she didn’t want to tell her why she was asking.

“I got my schedule mixed up. I have an important meeting. I’m so sorry, can you come?” But Sara said the earliest she could get there would be five thirty, which was too late.

“Is Peter okay?” Sara asked. “You sound weird. Wasn’t his thing this morning?”

“Oh, he’s fine,” Kate said. “I’ll call you later. I still have to find a sitter.”

Peter had to be checked in by seven o’clock that evening at the absolute latest. Or else he’d lose the bed.

“You could try Mom and Dad if you’re in a pinch,” Sara suggested.
“Oh wait. Mom went up to the outlets with that friend she goes walking with. They usually get dinner, too.”

She told Sara not to worry about it, forget she’d called, she’d keep trying.

After another few fruitless calls, she felt Peter’s presence behind her.

“Call my mother,” he said. “She’ll come.”

It was true that Anne seemed to be back, perhaps because she knew the hearing was that week. Peter saw her walking the turnpike a few mornings earlier, waiting at a crosswalk for the light to change, and told Kate as soon as he returned home, wondering if he was supposed to do something about it. They’d spoken to her just once since the afternoon they had lunch together, when Anne showed up at the house to drop off puzzle books for the children, ask how Peter was doing. Kate had invited her in but she would only come as far as the front room and wouldn’t sit down.