We Are Not Like Them

by Christine Pride

* * *

  Ever since I was little, I’ve loved cramped, claustrophobic spaces. I would nestle into Lou’s closet, cocooned in the familiar scents of faux leather and stale cigarette smoke; it made me feel safe somehow. At the moment, this closet-size powder room in my mother-in-law’s house is the closest I can get to squirreling myself away. I know better than to hide in Cookie’s closet.

  I sit on the lid of the toilet and replay the conversation at Monty’s, trying to make sense of it. It’s been five full days since Riley and I have spoken. It’s the longest we’ve gone without talking or texting or emailing that I can remember. I do some deep breathing. That’s all I do these days: deep-breathing exercises. There’s a basket of cinnamon-scented potpourri on top of the toilet tank, and I can almost taste it with each inhale. I stare at the peeling floral wallpaper in front of me, fight the urge to grab the loose corner and tear it all off. It would be so satisfying to do that, to destroy this one little thing.

  Cookie’s voice travels down the hall. I can’t make out what she’s saying, only the shrill cadence, the soundtrack of my life since Kevin and I moved in with his parents last Friday, the night after the shooting. We’re hoping the reporters and protesters won’t follow us all the way out here to Bucks County. But every so often, I peek through the curtains in the living room and expect to spot a news van. It’s probably only a matter of time. They’re still camped out at our house, round the clock, waiting for someone to arrive or emerge so they can swarm like flies to a carcass. I know this because Mrs. Jackowski from next door texts me updates.

  “Where did Jenny get off to? Is she okay? She’s got to keep it together.” Cookie’s voice fills the bathroom now, loud and clear, as if that’s her intention, which it damn well is.

  Cookie’s had this song on repeat over the last week, that I’m checked out, that I’m not doing enough to help Kevin. It’s so obvious Cookie is projecting her own powerlessness onto me, but that doesn’t make it any easier not to scream at her, What the hell am I supposed to do exactly? Tell me and I’ll do it!

  I keep swinging wildly back and forth between a manic adrenaline rush—How can we fix this, what do I do?—to shutting down, pretending this is all happening to someone else, until I can’t pretend any longer. Like now.

  I splash cold water on my face and take yet another deep breath. “Come on, Little Bird, we got this,” I whisper to my stomach before forcing myself to open the door. I find Kevin and Frank exactly as they have been for the last hour, father and son sitting at the built-in banquette in the corner of the kitchen, which has essentially become a war room.

  “There you are!” Cookie looks up from chopping celery as I slide in beside Kevin on the upholstered bench. I rest my head on his shoulder; he leans his own down to rest atop mine. We fit together like puzzle pieces. His thigh brushes my leg, and I shift to keep us close. We used to touch all the time, back when we were dating and first married, our various body parts finding each other like they were magnetized. But somewhere along the way—maybe when we started scheduling sex on a Google calendar—we stopped reaching for each other. Now I find myself seeking him out whenever I’m near him, a hand squeeze, a shoulder rub, anything to say, I’m here. Whatever Cookie might think, I am. I’m trying.

  Fred spots me through the patio doors and offers a pathetic whine. She’s not happy either, being exiled here at Cookie and Frank’s house, especially since Cookie keeps her locked in the backyard.

  “Julia Sanchez will be here any moment, you know.”

  Cookie’s accusatory tone makes me clutch the table so hard my knuckles turn white. Of course I know the media consultant sent by the union will be here any moment. Cookie’s only reminded us like a hundred times, which is pretty hilarious because she didn’t even know what a media consultant was until two days ago, and now she thinks this woman can magically make the world stop hating her son.

  “We know…,” I say.

  “You keep telling us,” Kevin finishes my sentence, another habit we fell out of since we were first married.

  My mother-in-law wipes her hands furiously on a tea towel. Cookie is somehow always wiping her hands on a tea towel. She has an absurdly large collection of them.

  Now she waves a plaid one in the air. “I could use some help here.” She looks at me pointedly, which is unnecessary. We both know she’s not drafting Kevin or his dad, Frank, into kitchen duty. I learned the rules a long time ago. When Cookie says, “I’m getting started on dinner,” it means “we’re” getting started on dinner. And by “we’re,” she means any women in the house better snap to attention and start chopping.

  It’s not like I was a big feminist or anything before I married Kevin. At least, I wasn’t until I started coming to dinner at the Murphys’ and found myself filling deviled eggs to Cookie’s exacting standards while the men—Kevin, Matt, and Frank—watched the Eagles in the sunken living room, even though I’m the biggest Eagles fan in the whole stupid house. Our baby’s womb name is Little Bird, for God’s sake! I was at the Linc in 2005 when Chad Lewis scored that two-yard touchdown against the Falcons to send them to the NFC championship. But I’ve never been able to sit and enjoy a game here. Kevin will wander in every now and then to report the score while offering me a commiserating look that says, This is just how it is with my mom. Easy for him to say as he stuffs his face with Cheetos in front of the TV.

  I trudge to the counter, and Cookie thrusts a plastic sack of celery and a knife at me.

  “Three-inch slices,” she commands, like an epicurean surgeon.

  Along with Julia, Matt and Annie are coming over. Cookie has demanded that we all circle the wagons; she, for her part, will make sure we’re well-fed while we do.

  “Do you think we should have invited Brice over this afternoon too?” Cookie asks before answering her own question.

  She’s notorious for these animated conversations with herself, which is fine by me. I’d rather silently chop.

  “No, no, I suppose we got what we needed in yesterday’s call. I know we have to hold tight.”

  Brice Hughes is the lawyer Kevin’s parents hired to represent him. Kevin insisted his union lawyer was enough, but Cookie wouldn’t hear of it.

  “You need a real attorney,” she’d said.

  Brice is the son of a woman Cookie knows from her bridge group, and he comes “highly recommended.” I have no idea if these stellar reviews are from anyone besides Brice’s own mom. He seemed fine on our initial call, even if he sounded like he was throwing around words from a legal dictionary to impress us. I don’t want to think about the money Frank and Cookie are spending on this. When Brice told us his rates—$300 an hour and a $10K retainer—Cookie looked like she’d swallowed her tongue. Living on Frank’s police pension doesn’t leave room for many extras, like, say, a legal defense fund. But it doesn’t matter. Cookie will sell her last possession to help her son. For all her faults, I love this about Cookie.

  During the call, we’d all hovered around Kevin’s cracked iPhone on the kitchen table, as Brice explained that the boy, Justin, is the real key to everything, and that we’re waiting for him to regain consciousness so he can tell his version of events. “As you probably know, they’ve moved him over to CHOP—the children’s hospital. Maybe so he can receive better care… but also the optics, to remind everyone that he’s just a kid. And you know, of course, if he dies, we’re talkin’ a whole other ball game. The DA, Sabrina Cowell, I don’t know if you’re familiar with her, but she’s a real tough-ass, power hungry. Her whole agenda is police reform, so… it’s possible she could go after serious charges here. Assault with a deadly weapon, manslaughter, or even second-degree murder.”

  Murder. Cookie audibly gasped and fanned herself with a towel. The word made its home in the room like it would be there forever.

  “My son is no murderer,” she spat, actual drops of spit flying out of her mouth and onto the tabletop.

  “Well, we just have to hope the kid pulls through. That’ll make t
his a whole lot better,” Brice said, his tone so shockingly matter-of-fact I wanted to reach through the phone and grab him by his throat.

  A boy could die.

  “In any case, everything here will depend on two words.” He paused, and I pictured him holding up two meaty fingers. “Reasonable. Threat. In order for Kevin and Cameron to be convicted of any crime, the prosecutor will have to prove that they didn’t believe there was a reasonable threat to their lives. You thought this kid pulled a gun, right? You feared for your life?” The way Brice posed the questions, there was only one answer. But Kevin didn’t say anything.

  I didn’t dare turn to look at Kevin, but I felt his hand land heavy on my thigh beneath the kitchen table. I squeezed his fingers, willing him to respond.

  “I followed my training.” His voice was robotic.

  “I gotta say, that seems like a dodge, Kev. That’s not going to work for the prosecutor or jury. We need conviction.”

  Kevin tried again like he was rehearsing lines. “We were in fast pursuit of a dangerous offender we knew was armed and had already shot someone. It all happened so fast. Cameron yelled, ‘Gun!’ and fired, and in that split second my training kicked in and I fired to protect myself and my partner.”

  “Exactly, exactly. It was a dangerous—deadly—situation. And it happened so fast. All leads to reasonable fear for your life. And there’s something else here—sounds like Cameron was the instigator. He’s the one who supposedly spotted the gun. So technically it was Cameron who shot the wrong guy. I mean, you had no choice but to back him up? You had to, that was your training, but it was on Cameron to identify the right guy and properly assess if there was a weapon. Yeah, yeah, that could work….” It was as if we weren’t even there and Brice was working out an entire defense in his head. “And Cameron is young, inexperienced?”

  “He’s pretty fresh out of the academy. But I don’t know if that—”

  “Feels to me like this is our strategy,” Brice continued. “Cameron is the bad guy here; he’s green, out of his league. He made a bad call. Sounds like you didn’t know him all that well, but did you ever hear him say anything against Blacks? Maybe he had a bias there. Some buzz around the district about him being a bad apple? Anything like that?”

  “I don’t know. We didn’t talk that much.” Kevin shook his head; he clearly didn’t like where Brice was going with this.

  “Okay, okay, well, we can dig into that more. But whatever the case, this could work. Cameron guilty, you innocent. You’d have to testify though.”

  Kevin’s father had been silent until that moment, so we all jumped when he raised his voice. “No way!” The stroke had left half of his face and his right side completely limp, and sometimes his cheek twitches when he wants to say something, his jaw muscles straining to get his mouth to cooperate with his brain. Kevin’s told me stories about Frank’s extreme mood swings when he was growing up. One minute he was the most fun dad on the block, playing kickball with the kids until the sun went down, the next he was whipping off his belt and lashing Kevin for back talk. But since I’ve known him, Frank’s always seemed docile, like a bird with its wings clipped. Not in that moment, though: he was fired up, and his words flowed as forcefully and as easily as I’d seen.

  “That’s not gonna happen. We don’t turn on our own. When we draw our guns we do it for a good reason, and we shouldn’t have to defend ourselves for defending lives. You have no idea what it’s like out there. I spent forty years on the force. I’ve been shot at, punched in the jaw. Some crazy son of a bitch tried to run me over with his car after we tried to arrest him for beating the hell out of his pregnant wife. When you’re on the streets long enough, deal with the criminal element long enough, you have instincts, and you can’t explain those instincts to anyone. We do what we do to protect ourselves and our partners. There’s a thing called loyalty in the force, and Kevin would never turn against another cop. Right, Kevin?”

  My husband looked at me instead of looking at his dad. “I should tell the truth.” I watched the muscles in his back tense. All he’d ever wanted to do was make Frank proud of him. It was why he put on that uniform in the first place.

  “I hear you, Frank.” Brice changed his tone when he addressed the man who was ultimately paying his bills. “We just have to figure out the best case for your son. And yeah, yeah, of course you need to tell the truth, Kev, it’s just there can be different versions of that, you know?” He paused here. “We also have to consider what the video’s going to show.”

  I was already holding my breath as Brice threw all of that at us, and then a video? This was caught on camera? I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, same as I didn’t know if it was good or bad luck that neither Kevin nor Cameron had body cams. Because of the limits of the department budget, they’re doling them out in waves, like the new vests, outfitting one unit at a time. Kevin’s wasn’t scheduled for a few months yet.

  “There’s video?” Kevin asked, clearly just as surprised. It was hard to tell how he felt about this possibility.

  “Oh yeah, yeah.” Brice seemed pleased that he was the one delivering this information, like he was already earning his absurd fees. “Pakistani guy who owns the liquor store on the corner rigged cameras in the alley after someone tried to break in through his back door. I’ll get it as soon as I can. Hopefully before it leaks. Without a body cam, this is a big deal. If a video does surface, it’s going to show exactly what you describe, right?” Brice asked. “No surprises? ’Cause if there are, I need to know up front.”

  “No surprises,” Kevin echoed him, sounding like a toy that had run out of batteries.

  Beyond that, Brice was spare on specifics. He gave us a rough sense of the timeline, but also said that it was impossible to understand what exactly would happen next and how fast it would happen. In the meantime, our future hangs in the air like a slow-motion coin toss.

  The doorbell rings, and it’s time for yet another person to tell us what we can and can’t say, do, expect, hope for. I pick a piece of celery out of Kevin’s front teeth as Cookie walks to the front foyer. We sit in silence in front of the mile-high platter of vegetables and listen to her exaggeratedly enthusiastic greeting.

  “Oh, look at you. You’re so pretty. Like a movie star. I didn’t expect someone so pretty. Come in. Come in.”

  I glance from father to son. They look so much alike, especially as Kevin’s gotten older. The same dimpled chin, steel-blue eyes, and thick curly hair, though Frank’s is entirely gray now. They also have the exact same expression: beleaguered and exhausted. Particularly Frank. Julia Sanchez rounds the corner into the kitchen, a pint-size woman in sky-high heels. She wears a pin-striped suit and carries an expensive-looking bag, as if she’s headed to a sleek corporate boardroom and not sitting in a suburban kitchen with rooster wallpaper. Cookie clucks around her, making introductions, pouring sodas, arranging and rearranging the platters on the table. As usual, she nudges a basket overflowing with potato chips toward Kevin. She’s always thrusting snacks on him like he’s a toddler.

  Julia looks a little overwhelmed by the aggressive hospitality as she settles on the banquette. But she doesn’t get much further than, “I’m sorry, I know you’ve been through a lot,” before the front door opens, bringing in a fury of noise.

  “That’ll be the rest of the family,” Cookie explains, as Annie and Matt’s four-year-old son, Archie, comes tearing into the room pretending to shoot a plastic bazooka at everyone. I wonder if I’m the only one who sees the irony in this. When I catch Julia’s quick cringe, I realize that I’m not.

  Cookie scoops up her grandchild, weapon and all, and pecks at his neck like a mama lion licking her young cub clean. Matt and Annie, my favorite Murphy besides Kevin, are close behind. They line up to kiss Cookie hello, and she puffs up at the attention. Nothing makes Cookie happier than having both her sons in her kitchen, even under these circumstances.

  Julia waits patiently as drinks are poured and
Archie is settled with a snack in front of the TV. When she finally has everyone’s attention, she clasps her hands on the table and begins. “So I’m here to help advise you. You’ve been thrust into the public spotlight, and I’m sure the attention is intense for everyone. I’m sure it’s been… challenging.”

  “It’s been absolute hell,” Cookie says, wringing her liver-spotted hands.

  “I can imagine. And I’m afraid it’s going to get worse before it gets better. You need to prepare yourself. You know the story is getting national attention already. And the local media is rabid. I’m sure you saw the piece this morning?”

  “Of course we did,” Matt says about the viral op-ed in the Inquirer about how Philly’s racist police force needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. “All these cocky Ivy League assholes with their opinions on police and guns—I bet none of them has even met a cop.”

  Julia eyes Matt warily. “I know it’s a lot to take in. I’m here as a resource to help you through this. The first thing you need to do is deactivate your social media accounts. You can’t give the trolls a platform, and you don’t want to be tempted to say anything yourself that could influence—or damage—public opinion. That’s really the key, no public commentary. Period. Your best bet is to wait until things die down.”

  “It seems like an impossible dream that this will ever die down,” I say, almost to myself.

  Julia nods at me, compassion in her eyes, compassion I wish I’d gotten from Riley.

  “I understand. And it’s not fair to any of you, but the press and the public have already made up their minds that Kevin is guilty. Unfortunately there’s a lot of anti-police sentiment out there right now.”

  “Who do they think is gonna come save their ass next time some junkie snatches their Prada purse or someone breaks into their Bimmer?” Matt says. “Not every cop is a racist asshole, but that’s what you’d think from watching the news, the way they spin the stories with half-truths and hyped-up headlines,” he finishes, drawing a long sip from his beer.