Home was Dante's Inferno as translated by Dr. Seuss. The outer circle of Penny Gallagher's domestic Hell revealed the first clues of what to expect within. The neighbor's German Shepherd/Husky had treed the Gallaghers' Siamese, Yum Yum. She was an indoor cat and hadn't set foot outside in nearly four years, so obviously she had been forcibly evicted.
Shooing the dog away from the sole tree in the tiny front yard that was shared by both families occupying the adjoining townhouses, Penny reached the six feet to the dogwood branch from which Yum Yum was still growling. That was when she noted the huge, two-wheeled trash receptacle on its side. Deirdre and Gerry were playing trash derby again. Eight year old Gerry would climb inside, empty or not, and his nine year-old sister would push for all she was worth. The idea caught on fire with the other neighborhood kids and they'd sometimes hold races up and down Nickerson Terrace until busted by an irate parent or terrified babysitter.
Speaking of babysitters, she thought, righting the four foot-high trash can. Where the hell is Sam? Imagining the hapless thirteen year-old strapped to a burning stake in the middle of the livingroom and a hundred other babysitter stereotypes, Penny quickened her pace, stopping at the front door only long enough to take a deep breath.
The scene awaiting her, like a mangy dog that she never wanted, was more or less what she'd expected, minus the Joan of Arc motif. A wineglass-shattering shriek transformed the already nervous Siamese in Penny's arms into a Tasmanian Devil, shredding the sleeves of her police windbreaker. As the cat streaked into the house to find a safe niche, mom surveyed the wreckage like a heartbroken mayor after a Level Five tornado.
A huge jar of Jiffy peanut butter lay on its side on the kitchen floor, the butter knife half out. Picking it up and throwing the utensil in the sink, another Tasmanian Devil rumbled in as she was about to screw on the lid, immediately seeking refuge behind its mother.
"Mom, he's going to shoot me! He-e-elp!"
"Hasta la vista, babe!" announced Gerry as he closed in on Deirdre, brandishing a .357 cap gun. He managed to get off a shot before Penny grabbed it from his hand.
"It's 'hasta la vista, baby', and give me that. What did I tell you about firing this in the house? Now the place smells like a fireworks factory. Where's Samantha?"
"She's in the livingroom," Deirdre answered.
Penny Gallagher then saw the blood covering her chest.
Back when Gerry was still the only child in the Gallagher household, Penny had learned not panic at the first sight of something that didn't meet her expectations of normalcy. Oddly twisted limbs were normal for babies who were still made of rubber, double-jointed five year-olds would do disgusting things with their bodies, and nine year olds commonly had fake blood covering their torsos. Well, her nine year old, anyway.
"Oh my God! Deirdre…!" Her oldest was alarmed at her mother's angry outburst. "Didn't I tell you not to use that vampire blood until Halloween? Especially in the house? Look at you. You've got it all over your new blouse."
"It washes out…!"
"That's not the point! Look, why can't you kids listen to me just once?"
She began looking for Samantha Lopez, her babysitter for those Tuesday and Thursday practice nights. The cap gun still dangling against her right leg, she looked, for all the world, as if she was hunting down an FBI Top Ten fugitive who'd been cornered and vowed not to be taken alive.
"Samantha, where are you?"
"Right here," came back the timid reply.
Sam was sitting on a loveseat near the old Magnavox t.v., rubbing at a purple stain on her blue Patriots jersey with a damp washcloth. Penny didn't need a gold shield to see what had happened. The Blood of Dracula had struck again.
"I'm trying to get this stain out. I just got this last week!" The girl was perilously close to tears. Penny knew that the next time she was needed, she'd be washing her hair or something.
"I'm sorry, Sam. I'll get you one next time I get paid." That makes, what so far, two tops, a pair of khakis, and a pair of white Nikes that I'd had to replace for harried babysitters since I became coach? "Did you feed the kids the dinner I'd left in the microwave?"
"Yes. They just finished. And I put the little ones to bed just now, before…" she said absently, still rubbing at the pink stain across Drew Bledsoe's #11. Well, that's something.
"Guess what I did last summer!"
"EEEEEEEEEE!!!! MOM-EEEE!!!"
Gerry had managed to get hold of the new plastic French knife that came with his Jason Halloween costume. He began chasing Deirdre around, who this time screamed more out of pure terror than delight. Penny grabbed the prop and threw it on top of the fridge where Gerry couldn't reach it. The nine year-old's already big eyes were as wide as blue china plates and she seemed to go into a catatonic state. By now, Penny knew from experience and countless counseling sessions that it was best to let her daughter grope her way back to reality and to not touch her. Deirdre's fugue-like states tended to activate when a male was in the house, which was in itself a huge reason why her mother had never dated after the divorce.
"Gerry…!" Swearing softly under her breath, Penny tightly pulled back her bangs with her left hand and suddenly had an overwhelming desire to get Samantha out of her home so she could get a grip on the already out of control situation. She looked abstractedly through the window at the abandoned Spenser Shoe factory down the glen. To Penny, the derelict building had represented her economic situation and was an eyesore that she wished would go away. Glancing at her watch, she saw that it was 8:01. Already a minute behind schedule. She took her last ten dollars and paid the disgruntled kid, realizing that she probably wouldn't have time to go to the ATM before driving to the station. Penny already owed two other patrolmen each the price of a large coffee from previous shifts.
Just as she made her closing apologies and shut the front door, Gerry's and Deirdre's screams teleported Penny back to Hell.
At this moment, two small faces appeared at the top of the well-worn staircase- Kieran, four, and his baby sister Colleen, three.
"Now look what you two did… You woke up your brother and sister. Right after Sam got them to sleep. Thank you very much." Penny tromped up the stairs, looking at her watch- 8:07. "All right, you two- back into bed." Penny followed him into his room.
"Are you mad at them?" asked Keiran.
Penny smoothed the Power Rangers comforter over her four year-old. "Yes." Even after the incident with Deirdre three years ago, Gerry still hadn't learned not to brandish even rubber knives at her. The insurance that her counseling required was one of Penny's biggest reasons for joining the force. The town of Eastbridge, small as it was, boasted one of the best health care plans in the state.
"Were they bad?"
"Yes. Par for the course. Well, Gerry did make a hole in one."
The joke was lost on the four year-old. "They woke us up," he said, terribly serious.
"No they didn't. You weren't asleep."
"How did you know that?"
Penny pointed to her eyebrow, her anger softening a little. "The eyes. The eyes tell no lies, as my grandma used to say. I can tell whether or not someone's been sleeping." She looked at him levelly. "Or lying to me. Now, stay in bed. Please."
"Are you working tonight?"
"Yeah," she said, sighing. "Good night, sweetheart." She kissed him goodnight and flicked the lightswitch.
After more or less re-enacting the same routine with Colleen, Penny pattered down the stairs, already rehearsing the riot act that she was going to read to her two oldest ones.
It bothered her that they had suddenly become infatuated with firearms and Cops and Robbers games since Penny became a police officer seven months ago. She had always been leery of guns even while training with them at the academy in Worcestor.
Lord knows she'd been responsible with her standard issue Smith & Wesson 9 mm. As much as she hated having it in the home, she made the best of a barely tolerable situation and did the pragmatic and responsible thing- She kept the semiauto and its ammo high out of reach and locked in two separate safe boxes. Even then, while getting ready for a shift, Penny ensured that the kids were upstairs in bed or out of eyesight before stepping on the kitchen stool to retrieve them.
When she got to the bottom of the stairs, Penny realized that she was still foolishly holding the toy pistol. Something about it wasn't right… Peering closer, she discovered that Gerry, that little shit, had pried off the precautionary bright orange cap in the muzzle. Obviously, he'd wanted it to look as real as Mommy's. A shiver scurried through her slender body.
She couldn't resist asking herself that perennial parental question- Where did I go wrong? Penny's sense of duty and responsibility wouldn't allow her for a minute to rationalize her supposed failures with her single mother status. Other women, several of them friends of hers, had done fine jobs raising their kids without any help from the fathers. Penny did not see any reason why she'd be an exception.
By now, Gerry and Deirdre had sought refuge from her imminent wrath elsewhere in the house. It was a small place, actually, even as far as townhouses go.
Not having heard any footsteps on the stairs, that automatically excluded the top two floors and immediately narrowed her search to the ground floor. The kitchen was plainly visible from where she stood, as was the livingroom and the nook generously called a dining room by the landlord. So they must be in…
Once again, Penny pulled open a closet door and was greeted by another pair of high-pitched screams of delighted alarm. Gerry and Deirdre were sitting on the floor of the crowded "whatnot" closet, four large blue eyes lit up with the excitement of being discovered. As expected, Deirdre had come out of her catatonic-like state and was her old self. Thank God for the medication.
"All right, rugrats, out. I want to talk to you two."
The subdued quality of her slightly gravelly voice touched the most mature parts of both children, the parts that listened to reason when the sense of fun didn't intrude too strongly on it. Gerry and Deirdre got up from the clutter of shoeboxes, old Christmas wrapping paper, baby blankets, and God only knew what else. They then obligingly sat on the couch and looked up at their mother as she sat down between them and began, looking at her fingernails.
"Gerry, you know better not to threaten Deirdre with knives, even…"
"It was a rubber knife!"
"It doesn't matter. You know what happened to her and you know what even the sight of one does to her. Don't do that again."
"Alright."
"Now look, guys. I know that things haven't been the same in the two years since
Daddy… left. And it got a little more hectic since I took on this second job." She slowly looked up from her hands and into four large, absolutely beautiful blue eyes wide with curiosity. "It's not easy being a single parent and I hope to God that you kids never have to find that out for yourselves when you have children of your own."
Penny looked into their faces more intently to see how much of what she had said was being absorbed. Satisfied that she was getting a fair hearing, the monologue continued.
"You're my oldest guys, OK? I depend heavily on you two to set good examples for the little ones."
God knows your father didn't set a very good example for you guys, she didn't say. I should've 86'd his drunken, lazy ass right after Colleen was born.
"When are we going to see Daddy again?" asked Deirdre.
"I don't know, honey. You know we lost touch with him after he was paroled last summer."
That fact, plus Jack Gallagher's criminal record, allowed Penny to file for divorce with a clear conscience. Before, she clutched to some hope that Jack would come back, rehabilitated, if for no other initial reason than staying in touch with his four kids. Then, in Penny's fantasy world, Jack would begin to soften and open up toward his estranged wife, as well.
But Jack's disappearance since getting out of Cedar Junction changed all that. She gave him a month to initiate contact. On the 31st day, she went to South Middlesex District Court and filed for divorce. With a clear conscience.
If I did it with a clear conscience, then why haven't I told the kids?
"You're a cop, Mommy. Isn't it your job to find people?" Gerry. Quick little shit.
"Well, honey… sometimes it's best not look for someone who obviously doesn't want to be found." She couldn't keep the acrimony from seeping into her voice. "If Daddy doesn't want to be found, then it doesn't make much sense to look for him."
Her answer obviously dissatisfied her two older kids and she wondered for the umpteenth time how much better they'd take the news that Mommy divorced Daddy
after he'd said "I'm sorry" to society, having paid his debt.
Well, almost a quarter of the debt, anyway, thanks to the criminal justice system and his previously spotless civilian record. Jack Gallagher, to his wife's horror, had been arrested, tried, and convicted to ten years at MCI-Cedar Junction for punching his boss at the Marlboro Foundry, resulting in his jaw being rewired. Of course, that surgery was done while Mr. Burke was still in a coma. The DA's office wanted to wait for the patient's outcome and to try him at least on manslaughter if he died. However, the judge, making a show of swift and sure justice, set a pretrial date a week after the arraignment and then a date for the trial right after that. Jack Gallagher was found guilty on all counts of aggravated assault and sentenced to a decade in the Cedar Junction House of Corrections, being eligible for parole in a year. He made it out in two. Luckily, his criminal record didn't seriously impact on Penny's application to the police department. Being an Eastbridge townie all her life, she'd already been invited to the houses of over half the officers on the force. A few of their kids were either in her gym class or cheerleading squad.
"OK, why don't you guys brush your teeth and get ready for bed?" They began to get up from the couch, then she asked, "Hey! Did you two do your homework today?"
"Uhhh…" Gerry said.
"I'll take that as a no. You can do it in the kitchen then straight to bed you go. I don't want you waking your brother up again."
Shit. Working during the day as a high school gym coach then volunteering as the football team's cheerleading coach meant getting home hours after them and she couldn't depend on the babysitter to make them do their homework when she probably wasn't even doing her own. She'd hate to give up her cheerleading activities. It offered the best of both worlds- Even though it didn't pay anything, it kept her occupied while not pressuring her like her real teaching job, where she had a principal, a superintendent, the entire Board of Education and the PTA looking over her shoulder.
Penny made a mental note to herself to have her ex mother in law, Maureen Gallagher, ensure that Gerry did his homework. His grades had been slipping since his father was tried and convicted. Damn that asshole. She resented being left holding the bag for someone else's shortcomings.
She looked at her watch again- 8:29, an hour and a half until the shift, minus another 15 minutes driving time. Hardly enough time to wolf down the remains of her meatloaf dinner. Tonight was the one night when she absolutely could not be late. The only time she was late it was by a minute and the Chief practically Rotor Rootered her a new asshole. Tonight, being late was unthinkable.
The execution was in three and a half hours and the Senator would be there to witness it.
Enjoy! Let me know what you think. My email address is Crawman2@Juno.com