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Choices The slam of the door downstairs woke me up. Took me a second to figure out what the hell it was. And remember how come we were on the floor. Dammit. The bed was only about ten feet away, but we were laying on the floor, half in the bedroom, half in the hallway, half naked. All naked if you only count the important parts. “Daddeeeeee!” I don’t know if Lynn woke up the same time I did, or if she hadn’t been asleep. I guess it didn’t matter, she scooted inside the bedroom with me and our clothes, and I shut the door. Turned the lock. And just in time. We could hear the little Mary Janes stomp up the stairs, and stop outside our door. “Look, Norma! Daddy’s tie!” Dammit. Guess we didn’t get everything. Wondered what else we missed, hurrying to get our bare butts hid. We could hear Norma’s voice, and Charles’, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. “No! Daddy’s here!…….No!” “Wait a minute, Becky.” I didn’t have much hope that would satisfy her, but there’s a first time for everything. The doorknob turned, back and forth. “Let me in!” “Babydoll, daddy’s getting dressed. Just wait a minute.” I found my pants--thank God they weren’t out in the hall, too, for her to find--and got dressed. Lynn sat on the floor. After a minute, she snickered. “Daddy! Let! Me! In!” The doorknob turned some more, and then her little fists pounded as hard as they could on the door. That wasn’t very hard, it sounded like she was using one of her stuffed bunnies to bang on the door insteada fists. Lynn snickered some more. She stood up. I couldn’t help smiling back at her. I meant the kiss to be short and sweet, but you know how it is. “DADDEEEEEE!” “I’m coming, I’m coming, and YOU, young lady--“ I opened the door, and shut it behind me. “--are in trouble.” “No, I’m not!” “Yes, you are. It was naughty for you to stand here yelling at me, when I was getting dressed.” I picked her up. “I wanted you!” I shook my head. “Naughty.” “No,” she said more quietly. “I wanted you.” “Next time you wait without yelling.” She put her hands over her face. “Daddy. I wanted you.” Sniffle. She lay her head down on my shoulder, her arm around my neck. Whimpered. “Nothing to cry about. Looks like you got me.” “I’m not naughty.” “Next time, no yelling.” She heaved a big sigh. “Kay.” When I got to the bottom of the staircase, Charles said, “You got on the same clothes you had on before.” “So?” “You just told Becky you were changing clothes.” “Yeah?” “So you weren’t changing your clothes. Why’d you tell her that?” “’Cause she’s four.” He thought about that. “You gonna tell me what you were doing?” “No.” “Why not?” “Cause you’re ten.” He got that stubborn look on his face. “That’s not fair,” he muttered. “And it’s none a’ your business. OK?” “Daddy,” Becky said. She put her hand on my cheek, turned my face toward her. “Kiss Becky.” I suspected she did that to get her brother’s goat, but you know me--I’m a sucker for baby kisses. And she wasn’t gonna be a baby very much longer. “And you hit that man,” Charles said. I sighed. “Yeah.” “Why?” I shook my head. “Sorry, partner. Can’t tell you that either.” “I thought dads weren’t supposed to keep secrets.” “Who told you that?” “Somebody.” “Well, here’s a secret--kids don’t need to know everything. You got me?” “It’s not fair.” He scowled. “Right.” He stomped away a few steps, then turned. “Where’s Lynn?” “She’s upstairs.” He’s one you can see in his face just what’s going on behind it. He thought hard, and I knew when it hit him. He turned red, I couldn’t tell if it was because he was embarrassed, or because he was mad. I figured odds were about 50-50. Somebody at school clued him in on a few things, and every so often after that something shocked the living daylights outta him. If you catch my drift. Norma said, ”I’m sorry we….bothered you, I would have kept them at the park a little longer, but Becky started to scream, and then…..well, you know Mark isn’t used to little kids, and…….” She talked with her hands, her fingers fluttering on this word or that. “It’s ok. We appreciate you watching ‘em.” Norma wasn’t used to little kids, either. Or the rest of us. She wasn’t comfortable yet, being around us. I didn’t know if she ever would be; she took long visits back to Haverly even though she lived here in Bisbee. She said the reason was to spend time with Mark, and I expect that was one reason, but I wondered if sometimes it was because things got to be too much for her here. She worried about everything under the sun. Didn’t wanna do anything inappropriate, didn’t wanna talk too much or stay too long or leave too quick or be too quiet. Not like the kid I remembered. Made me wonder what happened to her while she lived in our aunt’s house; she didn’t talk about it much, except to say it was fine. And after the first day, she didn’t let me get too close. Kept saying she wasn’t sure she was doing the right thing. I guess I didn’t talk much about anything that happened after Ma died, either. We reminisced some at first, talking about Ma and stuff we remembered, but Norma always got teary-eyed and had to blow her nose, so we quit that. Otherwise, we didn’t have a lot in common; but we didn’t wanna just go our separate ways. You know, after all this time we finally find each other, were we gonna give it up, forget about it? Nah. So we both kept trying. Her fella, Mark, he was OK, I guess. A little fussy; kinda anxious, too, about things. Serious. Probably they suited each other, but he and I didn’t have much to say to each other. Reminded me of somebody, I couldn’t remember who. “Well,” she said. “I guess I’ll be going.” She turned toward the door. “Norma.” She turned back toward me; there was that bright fake smile on her face. I put my arm around her, felt her tense, pulled her close and hugged her anyway. After a couple seconds, she relaxed, and hugged me back. “Come to dinner one night this week,” I said. “Bring Mark if you have to.” She put her hand over her mouth, but not before I heard her giggle. “OK. Night, big brother.” I could almost recognize her when she giggled. She just didn’t giggle often enough. I don’t think I can tell you how it felt, the day I realized who she was. If you wanna know the truth, I think deep down I never expected to see her again in this life. Sure as hell didn’t expect her to find me first. I guess I can understand why she didn’t tell me right off, why she wanted to get the lay of the land before she said anything……nah, that’s a lie. I don’t understand it. If the situation had been reversed, I wouldn’ta been able to keep that secret even for a day. Only thing I could figure is it’s ‘cause she was so timid. Cautious. But she knew me, I’m her brother. Couldn’t figure what there coulda been to be anxious about. It took Lynn a while to warm up to her again, after she found out Norma’d been lying to us. But she didn’t say anything, didn’t make a fuss about it. I appreciated that. It was hard enough without that. Finding Norma, being found…..it wasn’t at all like I thought it’d be. When I’d thought about it, I kinda imagined we’d be close, like we were when we were kids. That she’d want that, too. That she’d be happy, I’d be happy, everybody’d be happy. I shoulda known better. Things, or people, never are the way you think they’re gonna be. The way you want ‘em to be. Next time I saw the fella from the picnic was a coupla days later. He was standing in front of the flower shop. Just standing there. I drove on by, but slow. Just before I got to the end of the block, I looked in the rear view mirror, and saw Lois come out of the flower shop, and stop. So I pulled over and watched ‘em. He started talking, she backed away. He followed her. Pretty soon, she stopped backing up. I watched him close, but he didn’t touch her. She turned around and walked away real fast, almost running. He yelled after her, “I’ll call you. We’ll talk.” As if he hadn’t been doing that the whole time anyway. He saw me when he walked past. Gave me a little salute and a big grin. Asshole. I didn’t follow him; I thought it’d be easy to find him when I wanted to. I was wrong. Couldn’t find out where he was staying. Not in any a’ the motels, or the boarding house. I sent Albert out cruising to check cars with license plates from out of town. I wanted to know who the hell he was and what he was doing here. Yeah, I was still a deputy. Herbert tried retiring; found out fishing all day every day got boring. I guess it’s only fun if you’re supposed to be at work. And his wife sure as hell didn’t want him around. That’s when she was there. Most of the time she was somewhere else. Herbert always said she was visiting family in Tucson or Albuquerque or somewhere. Dwight told me that actually she lived in Reno. House and job and boyfriend there. “Uncle Herbert just doesn’t want anyone to know.” Even though it seemed like just about everybody knew about it anyway. The city council took him back on as chief. Herbert bought a rock polisher and set it up in his office. During the day, you could hear it working; the motor buzzed pretty loud, and beneath that was the shush-shush of the actual polishing going on. Sometimes you could hear him working on his typewriter, but I don’t think he was typing anything official. I don’t mean to say that he spent all his time in his office. The rock polisher polished all by itself without any supervision. That bad hip of his gave him a lot of trouble, so he was on light duty; what that meant was, he stood around and talked, answered the phone sometimes, wrote up complaints when somebody came to the station, and reassured complainants. We rearranged things a little bit. Dwight took over most of the heavy paperwork---I coulda kissed him. Betty made sure Herbert signed everything he had to sign. Albert liked cruising in the patrol car, so we let him do that. I took care of everything else. Herbert went fishing a coupla times a week, and we all got perfectly round polished balls of marble for Christmas. Ed woulda been ready to put a bullet in somebody inside of a week, if he’d had to work here. It took me a while to get used to it. You couldn’t really call the way things were done in Bisbee a system; but it worked ok unless something serious happened; you know, an actual crime. Remember what a cockup the boys made outta the investigation of Rhonda’s murder? Or Roxanne or Rachel or whoever the hell she was. Not saying they woulda been able to solve it even if they’d done everything right……but we’d never know. Herbert shoulda asked the State boys for help right away, but he waited; and by the time he finally did it, any evidence there mighta been was gone, the trail was cold. I butted heads with him once after I signed on. He stuck his nose into a case I was handling--robbery and assault--told me to lay off. I had a suspect in custody. I knew the bum was dirty, knew it; if I coulda leaned on him, he woulda talked. But Herbert pulled me off the bastard, told me I couldn’t do things in Bisbee the way I did ‘em in LA. Talked to me like I didn’t know what I was doing, but by God, it was all by the book, all of it. I argued with him, he pulled rank on me, and I quit. Yeah, he’d been a chief for twenty years, and I was never more than a sergeant, but he was wrong. He screwed up the investigation, the perp walked….and laughed at Herbert as he went out the door. He apologized and I came back. I handled the investigations after that. When there were any. In between rescuing dippy dogs from the sewer and directing traffic after funerals. The stranger came to the station. He asked Betty all kinds of questions: what’s your name? you always lived here? where’d you live before? got kids? go to college? I recognized his voice, not because a’ the sound so much, but the way he talked. Like a fella trying real hard to be friendly, too hard. Inquisitive—and why would he wanna know all that anyway? A fella trying to make time with a skirt he’s just met doesn’t ask her where she went to school. Betty looked kinda funny, like she didn’t know whether to be flattered or wary. She’s not normally a suspicious person, but she’s got a wedding ring right there on her finger in plain sight. I stood in the doorway between my office and the waiting room. “What do you want?” I said. He seemed surprised to see me. “Hey there, friend.” He looked back at Betty for a second, who was looking at me, and then he said, “You work here.” It wasn’t a question. “Nobody told me that.” “Now you know.” He laughed. “This is funny. Somebody’s been asking around about me, and I figured it was the local flatfoot, so I thought I’d find out. I understand, it’s a small town, the cops gotta do something with their time……I shoulda figured it was you. Don’t know why I didn’t.” I let that pass. Noticed the cut on his lip was healing up pretty good. “So which one are you?” “Why don’t you lemme ask the questions? Like what you’re doing here in Bisbee?” “Maybe I’m here for my health. You know, the climate.” “Uh-huh. If you’re worried about your health, you might wanna move on. Climate’s pretty much the same in Sierra Vista as it is here.” “Oh, I don’t think so. I’m making friends here already. I think I’ll stay for a while.” Herbert picked that moment to come out of his office, introduce himself and go into his Welcome-to-Bisbee spiel. The stranger called Herbert Chief Hansen, told him his name was Bill Smith—yeah, I thought the same thing you’re thinking---and they were pretty good buddies insida twenty minutes. “Well, this hombre and I got off on the wrong foot,” he said to Herbert, “but I’m thinking he’ll come around sooner or later.” He grinned and grabbed my shoulder. I shrugged him off, said, “I wouldn’t bet on it.” “You’re a tough one, friend, that’s for sure. I’ll be seeing you around, Chief.” And he left. “He seems like a pretty nice fella,” Herbert said. “You think so? Something about him ain’t right.” “What?” I shook my head. “Something.” Walked to the window, stuck my fingers between the blinds and looked out. Lois Larsen’s green Packard was parked out front. The windows were down, I didn’t have any trouble seeing in. She was sitting behind the wheel. “Bill” said something to her as he walked around the back of the car, and she slid over into the passenger’s seat. He got in and started the car…….then put his hand on the back of her neck, pulled her over to him and kissed her. Not on the cheek, and not just a peck, either. I watched him put the car in gear, watched Lois turn her head away, and wipe her mouth with the back of a shaky hand. And they drove away.
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