by Andrew Birch
Josh was stunned,
“And the car?” he asked.
“Oh”, she said a little crestfallen, “Well, I kinda borrowed it. I couldn’t exactly walk back here, and I wanted to surprise y’all”
He hugged her to him,
“Well you did that. Again. Life is just one big surprise with you, isn’t it”
With no witty rejoinder, she closed her eyes and hugged him tight, feeling relief that she did not show.
Later he would take her to his apartment, and make love to her. Although it was not the first sex they’d had, this was the first time it felt like something permanent, something natural, something resembling love.
Life was happy. They let their final guards down with each other now. A proper couple. Tay had never had this before. A boyfriend, a mom and a brother. One night a few weeks later, they were all sitting around the trailer. Tay’s mom was polishing some old silver cutlery when Tay was struck with an idea suddenly. Running into her tiny box room, she rummaged for a minute in her things, and pulled out Groucho’s locket.
“Here mom”, she said running to her mom, “try that shit on this old thing. Got it years ago, I’d wear it if it were clean”
Mom saw the locket, and staggered back, leaning on the counter top, the color draining from her face.
“OH my”, she said, “where the hell did you get that”
“From a friend” Tay said quietly. He lost his daughter to the sea.”
“His Tinkerbell”, muttered mom”, lost at sea”
“How the hell did you know about that”, Tay muttered, “that was what Groucho always said”
“Let me have a look at that”, asked Mom.
Tay placed the locked in Mom’s outstretched shaking hand. Mom took it, and turned it over. She polished the old locket with the cloth, and with the cleaning fluid on it began to come clean. As mom rubbed, it turned gold. Billy and Joshua came closer to see, but Tay backed away, suddenly afraid she would weep with the thoughts of Groucho, her only friend during her childhood.
“This Groucho”, Mom said, “he was your friend?”
“He was my only friend”, she said, “He taught me stuff I needed to survive”
“And he stayed with you”, asked Mom, “He was with you always?”
“Well huh, not really. I mean I slept at the home, but snuck off in the morning to go find him and Dreamer”
“Harlan found you”, she said with a tear in her eye, “somehow, even with mind snapped, he found you, his little Tinkerbell”
Tay was quiet. She realised where this might be heading. Josh put a protective arm around her, and for the first time, she never wanted him to remove it. Whatever happened, Tay would make certain that Josh’s arm never moved from by her side. She blinked away her tears as mom fiddled with the locket
“You didn’t know it opened, did you?”
Tay couldn’t speak. She shook her head.
“See, here take a look”
Mom took her hand and together they opened it.
“Here baby”, mom said, these photos were taken just after we lost you.”
She opened the locket and there was mom, younger and just as blonde as Tay was now. In the other side of the locket was Groucho, younger, cleaner and without a beard, his hair short and neat.
“There we are”, said mom, suddenly hugging her daughter while their little family looked on, “your mommy and daddy. You had us close to you all the time”
That’s where my story ends. The interesting part, anyway. It was never my intention to write about my career in greater detail, or talk about my family and the mundane aspects of my life any more than I have. I’d found what I’d been seeking, I was happy. There was no need any more to tear down my life again and come crashing to the bottom, I could enjoy my life now, a regular life.
After a while I married Josh, and we both worked at the business until I was approached by the police department to work intelligence for them as part of a new crime team employing those who had been on the inside. I did the police training and everything, and even had a badge. Imagine, me a cop? Who could have thought it. Three years after leaving jail for the last time I was a cop with my own crime team. With the extra money, we were able to move to LA, and Josh’s garden business took off. We lost Mom just after my 55th birthday. Sure I was sad, but in a way I wasn’t. For twenty years, while most thirty somethings are trying to get away from their parents, my mom and I were often inseparable. We had to make up for lost time, you see. And we did just that admirably. It didn’t matter that I’d spent thirty six years without her, because the nineteen I had with her were the best years of my life. A gift from God, as Bill would say.
Needless to say, now at the age of sixth two I’m still married to Joshua though these days we live a little further out in the quiet suburbs. We adopted two children, Beth and Peter. Beth has moved out and lives in the city house with her own son and boyfriend (yes I’m a grandma now!!) but my son Peter refuses to leave home, and he and his father share the chores around the house, and fuss over me way too much. I left the Police gang unit when I turned forty eight, after I got offered the job of Captain of the precinct. I served the PD until I turned sixty, which is when I retired.
As to the other characters in this story, I managed to bump into my old “friend” Maddisen Payne at a police dinner a year ago. She’d grown slightly plumper with age, and didn’t recognise me at first with my snow white short hair, but after we spoke, I found out that she had two children with Jack Mason, both whom are now grown with families of their own. She told me that Jack had died over five years before, having suffered heart problems for several years. Maddisen herself had served two terms as a city mayor before her own retirement. As for my own brother Bill, he ended up abandoning the Crack business, and moving into helicopter tours for the tourists. He sold the business last year and retired, now spending his money betting on horse racing and playing cards with his friends. He’s still a little crazy, maybe more so. I don’t know the fate of any of the other characters I’m afraid, I guess most of them are either dead or in jail, though I did hear Dawg, an old name from my past was involved with the Rap music scene at one point.
And as to why I’m currently sat in a jail cell myself, it was my daughter Beth’s idea. The state women’s prison is now a tourist attraction (apparently it’s haunted). Beth had the idea that I should write the last part in the cell where I spent the early years of my life, where I learned how to survive. The owners of the former prison were only too happy to accommodate a former police captain; I think some of the tour guides recognise me by the way they stare at me.
Of course at one time, I was used to men looking at me; in fact I made a career out of exploiting that very thing. Course now it’s different, they all look so damn young. I guess they are, it’s just that my brains still feels young, and I forget I’m a white haired grandma sometimes. Not that my body doesn’t soon remind me. It does. Usually with a pain in a new place that I didn’t have before!
But there’s something else. At one time, I got a lot of looks off people that, while not fear, resembled something close to trepidation, like they were looking a tiger in the eyes. Now when I see the looks of admiration on the eyes of these young men for a retired police captain, it makes me feel strange. How my life has changed since I first sat here. When I was here as a young woman, I was a convicted con artist, drug user and general rebel with no family in the world, no career and no home. And here I am, a retired police captain with a marriage that has lasted over twenty years, and a grandchild of my own. I remember the old fear, how it felt to have it while I had been locked in this very cell, and how I thought it would never go away. That I would never have anyone, I would become an old woman and the skills that my youth and attractiveness helped to provide would leave me. How wrong I’d been. Mine has been a happy, satisfying and often exciting life, and I have no regrets for any of the things I’ve done.
Anyway, it’s time for me to leave. One
of the nice tour guides helps me to the jail exit through the gift shop, where my SUV is parked. I know Joshua will want to read this before I send it to the publishers. He fusses over me so. Farewell.
Lots of Love
Lol
Table of Contents
Chapter One. Bottom of the pile
Chapter 2. A change in management.
Chapter 3. Back on top
Chapter 4. Remembering
Chapter 5. At the Top
Chapter 6. Groucho and Dreamer
Chapter 10. A cold new Morning
Chapter 11. Allen Rigby
Chapter 12. Allen Rigby.
Chapter 13. Jack Mason
Chapter 14. Gangsta bitch
Chapter 15. Building again
Chapter 16. Living dangerously
Chapter 17. Smack, crack, but not quite bushwhacked
Chapter 18. Bang bang I shot you down
Chapter 19. Reckoning
Chapter 20. Underpass
Chapter 21. Evidence
Chapter 22. Later
Chapter 23. The best dressed coyote in town.
Chapter 24. Batshit crazy
Chapter 25. Abandon chopper
Chapter 26. Homecoming
Chapter 27. Building
Chapter 28. Chinese prison blues
