Bad Cop

The tea has gone cold. She tips it into the sink and the mug falls from her fingers, clattering in the steel basin.

“What was that?” Brian asks. She jumps. He’s right behind her.

“It just slipped.” He grunts and plods away. She releases her breath.

The gauzy curtains hang limp against the window. Garish colors shift and morph beyond, people in an antsy dance at the edge of the lawn. Rita can hear them calling and chanting. She considers twitching the curtains to peek, just an inch, just for a second, but remembers their lawyer’s advice: Don’t give them anything. So instead she cleans the mug and tries to ignore the new chip on its rim. It’s not like she can replace it now.

The list of things she can’t do has expanded. Before, it was simple. She couldn’t work because of the boys. She couldn’t go to school because of money. She couldn’t go to Del’s with the girls on Thursday nights because Brian said so. But now she also can’t post on Facebook, she can’t arrange playdates for the boys, she can’t even go to Home Goods and buy a new mug.

The hum of the fridge seems louder than usual, as if its empty chambers are echoing. She tells herself it’s her imagination playing tricks on her, like how when she’s home alone on Brian’s night shifts the creaks of the old house turn into robbers and creeps. That sound is going to drive me crazy, she thinks. The sound of no food and dinner due soon. She checks the fridge, but she knows what she’ll find – sauces, more sauces, a slimy head of lettuce. The pantry isn’t much help either. She braces herself.

“Brian?” She’s standing in the doorway to the den. She hates how shaky her voice is. “Brian, what are we going to do about dinner?” He’s watching something on Cinemax. Clark is sitting in the corner. It’s a small blessing that he’s absorbed in his tablet, because she isn’t brave enough to ask Brian to change the channel tonight.

“You’ll figure something out.”

“We don’t have any food in the fridge.”

“So? Order a pizza.”

“But the phone –"

“Can’t you see I’m watching something? You can plug a phone in on your own, can’t you?”

“Yes, Brian.”

Back in the kitchen, Rita digs around the junk drawer for an old Tony’s menu. She finds one for the Cherry Blossom, another for Taco Spot. She considers ordering from one of them instead. No, Brian said pizza. It has to be pizza. But she can’t find the menu. And if she can’t find the menu, she can’t find the number so she can’t use the landline, and then she’s going to have to turn on her phone for the first time in three days just to find the stupid number.

Clark strolls in, nose in his tablet.

“Sweetie, can I use your tablet?”

“No!” he shouts. He clicks it off and presses it to his chest, startled to see her in the far corner. She’s taken aback: Clark is usually the sweetest, most agreeable child. Everyone says it. He’s her heart in another living body. Which of course isn’t to say that she doesn’t love Chris, but Chris has gotten to that age where he doesn’t seem to need anyone’s love anymore.

“I just need the number for Tony’s,” she says quietly. “It’s ok. I’ll figure it out.”

“Oh.” He looks ashamed. “No, it’s ok, let me get it for you.” His fingers blaze nimbly across the touchpad and she realizes just how clumsy she is in comparison, a modern analog of her own mother’s hunt-and-peck typing style. “Got a pen?”

Now she stands before the landline, which has also been silent for three days. The tough part will be making the call before another one comes through. She hopes they won’t try to call her back for anything. The phone will have to be unplugged immediately after she makes this call. She decides her name for the order will be Monique, which sounds foreign and classy. The call goes well enough, except for the incessant beep of the call waiting function that makes it hard to understand the host at Tony’s. There is a single ring between hanging up and tugging the cord out of the wall again.

“What was that?” shouts Brian from the den.

“I ordered some pizza,” she shouts back. “Half an hour, they said.”

Forty-five minutes later, she’s waiting anxiously by the door. Chris has already come to tell her he’s hungry. Brian is muttering under his breath every few minutes. She can’t hear what he’s saying and she’s glad of it. Finally, through the spyhole, she sees a beat-up Honda civic with the Tony’s logo on it. As the delivery man approaches the property, he’s mobbed by reporters. Shouts and the click of a hundred camera shutters mingle with the moans from Brian’s show. She sucks in her breath, but he waves them off and makes it to the other side of the door. The cash is in her hand, damp and wrinkled from how tightly she’s been clutching it. She cracks open the door after the first knock.

“Delivery for Monique?”

“That’s me!” Brian snorts and shakes his head from his chair.

“Uh, yeah, that’ll be $42.50.” She hands him three twenties.

“Keep the change.” She pulls open the door enough for the boxes, but he looks up at her with a smirk. He can’t be more than 17. His face is pale and spotted, greasy hair hanging out from under his cap. Instead of handing her the pizza, it flips out of his arms and onto the front porch. They land upside down. Her mouth drops open. Reporters scream her name from the sidewalk.

“Whoops,” he says. “My mistake. Oh, fuck! I totally forgot to turn my body camera on! Guess I can’t go to prison for this one.” He knocks his forehead in an ‘aw shucks’ motion.

“What did he just say?” roars Brian from behind her. The teen starts laughing and flips his middle fingers up as Brian struggles to get past Rita and the door. Before Brian can fully step onto the porch, he’s sprinted across the lawn and back in the welcoming embrace of jeering protestors. Brian, shaking with impotent rage, stands over the toppled boxes. He stomps one in anger before gathering them in his arms and slamming the door. “It’s time to eat!” he shouts. “Pizza is fucking here!”

Rita won’t be looking at the morning tabloids, but she has a bad feeling that the front-page picture will be of Brian scowling on their porch, one foot raised in the air.

She sends the boys to bed after dinner. They won’t be going to summer camp this week, but Rita still wants them on their regular schedule. Brian’s head is lolling on the couch as he drops into a whiskey sleep. Her eye snags on Clark’s tablet at the family charging station. She finds it hard to look away for very long. What if she could just find out what happened? She wouldn’t have to face all the messages that she knows are waiting on her own phone.

From her neighbor, Betty: Given the circumstances, we think it best you don’t come for the 4th party. No one wants you here.

From the camp director at the Y: The boys should remain at home until further notice. Many of the children in this program, not to mention our staff members, feel personally affected by your husband’s actions.

From a stranger: Rot in hell, you cop fucking cunt.

Brian made her turn the phone off after that one. She almost didn’t obey him because she was waiting on one more text that didn’t come, the one from her sister that said anything. But she didn’t have the heart to get into the whole sister thing with him, not when he was already so worked up about the situation at work.

She tiptoes to the tablet and secrets it to the kitchen table. A few half-stomped pieces remain there, cheese congealing in messy clumps. She considers throwing them out but worries they might be the only option they have for breakfast tomorrow. She distracts herself by putting them in the fridge, then finally sits and opens the tablet. She doesn’t even have to search. Clark’s web browser is open, all his tabs on breaking news and social media sites.

PIZ-ZA SH*T screams the Post headline over the picture Rita knew would be making the rounds. She spies herself in the doorway, half hidden by shadow. She looks terrified. The caption reads, Officer Brian Prang, 42, accused of killing Dexter Clemens, 12, by use of excessive force, shows his violent side after an altercation with local delivery man.

12 years old? The tablet clatters back against the table. She waits for Brian to ask her what happened, but all she hears are snores. 12. That boy could have been her son. Brian had told her he killed a suspect by accident. A suspect. Not a child. She feels like she's had cotton wool wrapped around her head. How could she not know this? She flips through the tabs, tears streaming down her face. She worries learning more will set her off sobbing so loudly she’ll wake him up, but every new, disgusting detail hardens her. The man in the den is a stranger.

No, that’s not right. She knows Brian. She’s felt his fists more than a couple of times. She’s heard him bragging to his buddies about roughing people up. She’s scrubbed skid marks from his underwear, blood from his shirtsleeves. She knows her husband. The problem, she thinks, is that she doesn’t know herself. How did it come to this? How did Rita, valedictorian of her high school class, end up trapped in a house with a monster? A monster she chose, again and again, over herself, over her Thursday nights at Del’s, over her own flesh and blood sister. How could she not have seen that every time she looked the other way, she only tied herself closer to him?

She wipes the tears off her face. She turns on her phone and waits for its paroxysm of missed notifications to end. She dials the number she was told to delete but still knows by heart. It’s almost midnight, but her sister answers on the first ring.

“Lisa?” she whispers. “Lisa, I need help. I’m sorry. I fucked up. It’s so bad.”

Her sister’s voice comes through, clear as a bell. “Oh, honey. Did you get my texts? It’s ok. It’s going to be ok.”