This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage (15 page)

Officer Crane appraises us coolly. “Now I know you're wondering, ‘Do I want to be in the group that goes outside or the group that stays in here?' But I want to congratulate you people. You passed.” We applaud ourselves heartily and then receive our oral exam times. Several people have to leave right away, but I have until one o'clock and wouldn't miss the rest of this talk for the world.

The LAPD appears to have no intention of tricking anyone. They offer a study group for the written exam. They will give you the best answers for your oral. They will show you how to get over the wall. The message is clear—they want to help us if only we will listen. Officer Crane proceeds with his lecture. “Next,
any
misconduct is to be reported to a supervisor. But first you have to verify the misconduct.” His voice rises, his eyebrows go up. “You and your partner go to a robbery call on a computer store. Your partner, who has twenty years' seniority on the job, has a computer in his hands. He tells you to check the front of the store. You hear him leave the store, then you hear the trunk of the police car being slammed. He comes back empty-handed. You have to first
verify
the misconduct. Ask him about it politely. Maybe he's taking it in to be fingerprinted. Maybe he's putting it back in the stockroom. Maybe he says, ‘Hell yes, I got one, now you pick out one for yourself, partner.' Call the sergeant immediately, have him come to the store.”

Having prepped us for simple theft, Officer Crane ups the ante. “On this job you will have to deal with the worst of the worst of the worst.” Once he says this he looks at us to see if we can take it all in, and then he repeats it, slowly. “You go on a rape call. It's a six-year-old girl. The paramedics are already there and they tell you she has a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. The mother is there and she is screaming. Other cops are already on the scene and the suspect is handcuffed. He can tell that you're a probationer and he starts in on you.” Officer Crane then outlines all the vile things the suspect claims he will do to
your
children, and you, and various other people, until your partner hauls off,
“POW!”
Officer Crane punches the air hard enough to make the whole room jump. “Clocks the suspect right in the solar plexus. And you say, ‘Yeah!' ” Crane gives the thumbs-up and smiles a Hollywood smile. “No you don't, not really, because the suspect is handcuffed already. The people on the street around you are clapping. They say, ‘I would have done the same thing. If I was you, I would have shot him.' Your partner says, ‘Oh my God, Buddy. I can't believe I did that. Twenty-five years on the job and I've never done anything like that. I just got so mad. That won't happen again.'
Any
misconduct,” Crane repeats. “Say you let it go, and that night you're home and there's a report on the six o'clock news about police brutality and you sit down to watch and who's on television?
You
are on television, grinning and giving the big thumbs-up when your partner hits the guy. Then you lose your job. They don't talk about what the suspect did, they talk about those brutal cops. You are expected to be PERFECT. Once you are a police officer you are expected to be ERROR FREE.”

I'm not entirely sure about the moral of the story, but I take it all down as Officer Crane brushes over traffic violations and the importance of a good closing statement. When we're outside, the rest of the crowd heads for the parking lot while I go to the pay phone to call my father for a ride. I've got an hour and a half before my oral exam, just enough time for lunch.

I look through the paperwork I've been given, and discover that before the oral I have to fill out a form listing every job I've had in the last fifteen years: locations (including addresses), months worked, monthly salaries, names of superiors, job descriptions. I sit on a curb and begin to make a list in my notebook: a teaching assistantship in graduate school, other teaching jobs. Is my publisher my employer? What about freelance writing? Houghton Mifflin,
Bridal Guide
,
Seventeen
, the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe, the University of Montana, Murray State in Kentucky, Book World in Nashville. My father and Jerri arrive. At the restaurant I fill out forms like mad while they eat, finishing just when it's time to head back. A pamphlet on the oral has told us to dress well, and my father has thoughtfully brought my blazer. In the restaurant bathroom I borrow a lipstick from Jerri and smooth out my hair with tap water.

When I arrive for the oral, I see several of the people from my original group, now wearing stiff, ill-fitting suits. I give my employment form to the young woman behind the counter, a gum-chewer with spiked mascara. She wants to know how I am still working for Radcliffe College, Houghton Mifflin, and
Seventeen
. She wants monthly wages that I can't provide. I fill in a few more lines, she whites out the places I've written “Not Applicable.” While I'm trying to correct my answers, she begins to pick apart the form of the next person in line. I take the opportunity to give my form to a woman at another desk, who seems to accept it for what it is and sends me down the hall to testing room B. It turns out there are more written tests to take, and while I hadn't understood that, I am glad to tackle anything that is not my employment history.

I'm sure that white men do not comprise the entire group who've made the cut, but that's the story in this room—white men in suits hunched over papers. A woman reading a Danielle Steel novel at the head desk, the proctor, gives me a copy of the test and a pencil and tells me I have forty-five minutes. I take my place at the table and read the instructions for completing Form P: “No dictionaries, no grammar textbooks allowed.” Whatever this test is, it's worse than the last one. The men in suits seem close to tears. All around me a great deal of erasure is going on. I answer a set of questions on the first page about my conduct in the workplace:
Have I ever been fired? Have I ever had a fight of a serious nature with a co-worker or superior? Have I ever been praised for good work? If yes, tell the last time it happened.
All I can think of is an article I wrote about virginity for
Seventeen
that was popular. I mention the praise without naming the piece. I don't mention that my first novel was a
New York Times
notable book of the year.
Have I ever been reprimanded for poor work?
Yes. I've had to rewrite countless articles in my life. I don't want to appear suspiciously eager to please by saying I've never done any cut-rate work.
Have I ever been put on probation?
The other side of the page is clearly what's got the suits sweating.
Write four sentences in which you describe three qualities that are important in a police officer. Next, write a mock police report about a disruption at a public event. It is not important to know correct police procedure. What is important is the quality and clarity of the writing.
I may not be able to outrun them, but chances are I can outwrite them. I have forty of my forty-five minutes left. I settle on a city legislature meeting about putting a homeless shelter on the outskirts of an affluent neighborhood. A shoving match ensues and I get down the details. I figure that anything concerning property values is a good choice.

After I finish, I'm sent back to the waiting room, where I review my notes from Officer Crane's lecture until I'm called for my interview by Gabriel Robles, a man in his early fifties wearing a mauve shirt and a gray ponytail. He is friendly, very warm. In the tiny interview room he pulls out my chair for me, saying it's quite heavy. Robles is from personnel. His name is printed on a card in front of him. The other member of my board is Detective E. Waters, a tall woman in her middle thirties. Her body has the same kind of chiseled perfection as Officer Crane's. I can see the muscles in her tan face. She is wearing a dress with a print of lavender hibiscus and a lace inset in the top that looks like something she must have bought for Easter Mass. My father has warned me in advance that the routine is pretty much the classic good cop/bad cop, and by the tension working in her jaw I can see which side she'll be coming down on.

“We were very interested in your employment history,” Robles says.

I admit that it's not exactly conventional. It gets confusing, how much money did I make when.

“Don't worry about it,” he says, smiling. “We're nontraditional. I have a degree in sociology. Detective Waters was a speech pathologist.”

I nod appreciatively, wishing I could interview them.

“So you write novels,” Robles says. “That's something. What are they about?”

I'm vague and he asks me to be specific.

“And do you know these people?”

“I make them up.”

“Just out of your head? Out of nothing?”

“That's right.”

“So you just sit down to write,” he says, leaning towards me. Detective Waters looks bored, but I'm not the one encouraging this line of questioning. “No one tells you what to do, you pick all that out yourself?”

“That's right.”

Then they talk about how interesting that is, how much fun it would be, and it's true. It is fun.

“So what have you done to prepare for the Police Academy? Have you read your father's reports?”

I tell them I have not.

“Your form says you swim and run. Why don't you tell us about that.”

I skim over the details of my new physical life, knowing that it must all seem like small potatoes to Detective Waters.

“How do you think your work experience has helped to prepare you for a job with the LAPD?”

“I'm very self-motivated,” I say. “I'm great at making decisions. I think things through. I'm rational and calm.”

“Yes,” he says, “but have you thought about the fact that you're joining an organization that is nearly paramilitary? That you have to operate in a system of authority where you always have to do what someone tells you, even if you don't think they're right?”

“Yeah,” Waters adds, not so nicely. “I was wondering about that.”

“I've thought about it,” I say, “and it concerns me. I went to Catholic school for twelve years. I have some experience with authority. I haven't taken a lot of orders as an adult. All I can say is that I've thought about it and I'll try.”

“Why do you want to be an officer now?”

I tell them I'm not getting any younger. I tell them about my family, how I have recently realized that I want to follow my lifelong dream to be a cop. Do they buy this?

They want to know if I've had any experience with real danger. How do I know I'd be so calm? Again, Waters nods in an exasperated way.

I make a quick mental scan through the safety of my life. There is not a flicker of danger, the slightest threat of injury. The truth is I loath danger. I avoid it at all costs. “I've lived in and out of New York over the last ten years,” I say helplessly. “I've ridden the subway at night. I know from crazy.”

They like this answer. To an Angeleno, New York is still two steps removed from a Mad Max movie. I tell them I know who to face down and who to ignore. I consider telling them that I know whom to face down and whom to ignore, but even though it would be grammatically correct, I don't think it would further my case.

They give me two scenarios that are straight-up Officer Crane, one a mild infraction urged by an older partner, the other a case of violence against a child. I give the right answers. I would have given them without the prep session. I know what my father would have said.

They ask for my closing statement. I tell them my father, as they know from my paperwork, was a police captain. I have an uncle who is an assistant district attorney and an uncle who is a firefighter, all in L.A. I tell them I have civic blood and my time is now.

“Off the record,” Robles says, “how does your father feel about all of this?”

Leave it on the record: he's thrilled.

I return to the waiting room, where I wait about sixty seconds before getting the news that I've passed the oral and should go back to room B. The Danielle-Steel-novel proctor tells me to show up for the physical abilities test—the PAT—at six o'clock the next morning. Yet more paperwork: she gives me a medical form, a background form, and a Xeroxed letter of congratulations from Willie Williams that tells me not to quit my present job until I have been officially accepted. In the time I've been off in my oral exam I feel a shift has occurred between me and the police department—we've gone from me wanting them to them wanting me.

In the car, I tell my father everything and he nods enthusiastically. He tells me stories about oral boards he's been on where people sweated through their suit jackets, or when a candidate was so top flight they wouldn't give him a chair so as to make the interview that much more uncomfortable, or half the board would face the wall and never look at him. By my father's reckoning, Waters and Robles were my friends.

We eat a salad that night and sit outside after dinner while Jerri waters the plants. We talk about police brutality during investigations. I ask my father questions, personal questions, and he answers them all readily. “But that's not something you can ever write about,” he says.

I am starting to see how this is going to be a problem.

I am in bed by a quarter past nine. At ten o'clock I take a sleeping pill.

T
he alarm goes off at 4:45 a.m. My left leg has been tight for three days from the sprinting I've done and I try to stretch it out. My father knocks on my door at 5:20. He wants to go. Am I sure I don't want breakfast? He has made me a little bag on a string to wear around my neck, not much bigger than a quarter, to put quarters in so that I can call him when the test is over. Every year when my sister and I left California, he made index cards for us. He wrote down every phone number where he might possibly be reached and taped a dime next to each number. After we got back to Tennessee, I would peel the dimes off my card and spend them. My sister saved her cards just the way they were. She still has them, dimes and all, one from every year.