Falling Back to One

by Randy Mason

“What would it be like if there were no cops at all?”

  Baker grunted, then stubbed out his cigarette. Seconds later he lit another and went back to his narration:

  There had been almost no displays of affection between his parents, and what little he’d seen had appeared artificial and contrived, leaving him—even as a small child—uncomfortable. He himself was rarely the recipient of any tokens of endearment, frequently hit and almost never hugged by his mother. And he didn’t know which of those was worse—stiff and smothering, her hugs were more for show than anything else. The inherent insincerity made him want to break free and run away—though he never did. Unfortunately, his father was no better, never taking much interest in his son, always anxious to be back on the road, conning strangers. But to Baker, his father was a stranger. Their interactions were awkward and self-conscious. Baker had carried on more significant conversations with people he’d barely met.

  When he was twelve, his father left at his mother’s request. But because his father professed to be a practicing Catholic, his parents never divorced. Baker was aware, however, that his father had had affairs while on the road and would, no doubt, have girlfriends once he had his own apartment. This hypocrisy left Baker angry and ashamed. But from that point on, whether he wanted to or not, he saw his father once a week for an obligatory dinner and a night of two-handed blackjack or poker. It was probably more time than he’d ever spent with his father. But just as empty.

  He continued to live with his mother, who, several years prior to the separation, had returned to work as a legal secretary. Because of her schedule, he got used to coming home to an empty house and taking care of himself—even when he was sick. He made his own breakfast and lunch, and often cooked dinner—though he almost always ate alone. He cleaned, did laundry, went grocery shopping, and also did things his father had previously taken care of, such as taking out the garbage and draining the boiler. But the task he hated most was going to the bank every week to cash his father’s support checks. He was the only child in the neighborhood from a broken home. And while his mother treated him more like a servant than a child—even interrupting his homework to make him come upstairs to change the channel on the TV—she never stopped telling him what a burden he was, even going so far as to scream at the top of her lungs that he’d ruined her life, making him wonder if his birth had been an “accident.”

  The one bright spot in his young life was school. An overachiever, he received from his teachers the praise and attention he craved, even as his mother continued to find fault with everything he did. Despite—or because of—his academic accomplishments, she repeatedly called him stupid. And when he made the track team, she could only snipe that his brains were in his feet. The better he did, the more contempt she had. He took to forging her name on his report cards just so he wouldn’t have to show them to her anymore. She never even noticed.

  “She slept a lot, too,” Baker said. “Every day she’d come home from work, have her Chivas on the rocks, and lie down. Almost any time I ever talked to her—no matter how important the issue—she was lying down, half asleep. It was like I was annoying her just by existing.”

  “It sounds like your mother was depressed,” Lerner said.

  “So what! So was I! She had a kid! A responsibility! She always acts—to this day—like she was the sacrificing mother. But ultimately, when you get right down to it, she was simply doing what was best for her, or whatever was needed to keep up appearances. I don’t think she ever wanted a kid. She always put herself first. What really gets me is that she honestly believes she was a good mother. Jesus! I was more like her mother.”

  “Do you still keep in touch?”

  “Barely. She’s still denigrating everything I do, so why would I want to talk to her? When I was going to law school, all I heard from her was how low-class lawyers are and that, these days, anybody can become a lawyer. So now that I’m a cop, she looks down on me because it’s blue collar. I think it embarrasses her: it’s not ‘sophisticated’ enough for her. She’s always got her nose up in the air. She keeps asking me when I’m going to get a real job.”

  Flicking ashes from his cigarette, he shook his head. “She’s cold—cruel. Whenever I’ve made the mistake of seeking some comfort from her, she’s just thrown it back in my face and twisted the knife in deeper.”

  “Like? Can you give me an example?”

  “Like a few years after I joined the force, when we were on the phone and I was extremely stressed out. She asked me what was wrong, and I told her how depressing it is to see people throwing their lives away, doing sick things to each other. I told her how, just that day, I’d found a dead baby in a dumpster. I told her how I couldn’t get it out of my head. Such a tiny thing—a newborn—still covered in blood, lying on top of a bunch of chicken bones. I kept seeing its little face practically buried beneath the flies and the bugs … and the stench. My mother’s response was, ‘You wanted to be a cop! You picked it!’ That was it: no empathy, no sympathy, no … no nothing. I fucking hate her most of the time. I don’t even talk to her much anymore—stopped trying to have real conversations with her ages ago.”

  “And what was it that made you stop?”

  “I finally realized she was never going to change.”

  “Yes!” Lerner said. “Yes, that’s very good! People don’t change unless they want to, and then they have to be willing to work hard in order to make it happen. Even if we know that intellectually, we often don’t get it emotionally. We keep repeating the same things over and over with the same people—or people just like them—getting surprisingly angry when we get the same results.” She cocked her head. “Maybe in some ways Micki’s lucky.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “She has you, and you’re here.”

  Baker grunted.

  Half a minute went by.

  “So what about your father?” Lerner asked.

  “He died when I was twenty-five.” Baker took a hit from his cigarette, then tossed off a painful smile as he exhaled. “Y’know, I guess it’s pretty obvious that I’ve repeated with Micki a lot of the things that were done to me; although”—he glanced away, his expression somber when he looked back—“I stopped, or started to stop, some of them already. On the other hand, physically I’ve been way ahead of my mother.”

  “You mentioned your mother hit you.”

  “Yeah. A lot. I was small for my age until high school, which was when I started building up my muscles. Came a time she hit me and I just laughed. After that, she was too scared.” He shrugged. “Still, the worst she ever did was use a hairbrush on me, though she used to threaten all kinds of shit like: ‘I’ll bash your head against the wall,’ or ‘I’ll knock your teeth out.’ And when I was little I used to believe she’d actually do it. She was so enraged. I’d imagine what it would be like to have my brains splattered across the wall and my skull caved in. I’d think about how much she had to hate me.” He shifted in his seat and snorted. “Listen to me going on like this. I mean, what’s the big deal since she never really did those things, right?”

  “So you think only severe physical abuse is harmful.”

  “I don’t know—well, yeah.”

  “Then emotional and psychological abuse—or neglect—don’t count?”

  Baker looked uncertain.

  “How much have you physically abused Micki?” she asked.

  His eyes flashed. “A lot. You know that already.”

  “And that time when you, as you put it yourself, ‘beat the shit out of her’ because you thought she’d molested another student—did she try to kill herself then?”

  “No.”

  “And this time, when she actually did attempt suicide, how much did you hit her?”

  Muscles taut, he said, “I didn’t! I didn’t touch her at all!”

  “So which do y
ou think hurt her the most: your fists or your words?”

  Baker clenched his jaw, but was soon forcing back tears. He tried to continue smoking, then gave up and blurted out, “Micki hates me.”

  “She’s very angry.”

  “Yeah, but she hates me, really hates me now. She screamed it at me.”

  Lerner’s face looked back with compassion. “If you didn’t mean so much to her,” she said, “she wouldn’t be so angry.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  GOULD STOPPED BY MICKI’S apartment to help Baker board up the windows and clear out the larger pieces of broken furniture. They went to the deli to pick up a six-pack, and Frankie asked after Micki since he hadn’t seen her for several days. Back at the apartment, once they’d been working again for a while, Gould noticed he was the only one drinking.

  “I wonder if those assholes got in here with a key,” Baker said.

  “Who would Micki give a key to?”

  “No one. But when I arrived, the windows were all locked, and the door hadn’t been picked or forced in any way. I’m just not buying that they climbed in through the fire escape. I asked the guys working the case to check with the super—find out who has access to his keys.”

  “What about prints?”

  “They only lifted a few usable ones out of the entire mess. Except for one, they were all Micki’s—or mine.”

  “And the one?”

  “Rick’s, which, since he’d been in her apartment before, leaves us nowhere. When they brought him in for questioning, he denied everything, sat there smirking the whole time.”

  “Did they lean on him?”

  “His father’s attorney was there. But, man, how I’d love to get my hands on that little prick.”

  “Do yourself a favor—”

  “I’m not going after him,” Baker interrupted. “Not now, anyway.”

  Gould shot him a look, but said nothing, the black swastikas staring at him from the wall.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  BAKER DIDN’T EVEN BOTHER having dinner that night, though he stopped by the liquor cabinet several times just to stare at it. It would’ve been easier to simply throw all the bottles away, but then the next time he hosted the poker game, he wouldn’t have any liquor in his apartment—and his friends would all know …

  Fingers tapping on the armrest of the chair, he chain-smoked and stared at the TV. But the cheesy canned laugh tracks were only irritating, the commercials even worse. He shut the set off and picked up his pack of Camels, the last of three he’d bought that day. He had all of two cigarettes left. Two. Christ, this was a bitch. He put on several layers of clothes and went out jogging in the frigid night air.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  IT WAS DARK IN the Quiet Room, as they called it. Micki strained her ears to catch the slightest sound lest someone be returning—not that she could do anything if they did. Unlike her previous episode, they hadn’t put her back in her room all shot up with tranquilizers. Instead, they’d stuck her here, strapped to the bed in unforgiving all-points restraints—completely defenseless. She could be raped—or maybe just tortured, like what she’d heard about at Heyden over Thanksgiving. Apparently, the latest thing was tying a girl down to an infirmary bed, then injecting the muscles of her arms and legs with some kind of drug that made them cramp up tight, causing unbearable pain that lasted for hours—but left no trace.

  Time dragged on, and she stared at the ceiling … the walls … her toes … She forced herself to stay awake, cursing Baker for not letting her die. Life was nothing but hell. Tears welled up, but she forced them back: after all, who was she crying for? She was worthless. Just like Baker had said.

  She wondered if you could simply will your heart to stop beating.

  chapter 28

  COLD AND GREY WITH a light snowfall, Saturday dawned. Baker rose early, did laundry, then drove to Queens. First stop: the hardware store.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  ALMOST LATE FOR HIS appointment, Baker was hurrying through the psych ward. Under his black leather jacket, he wore a blue work shirt and a very old pair of Levi’s—both generously speckled with beige paint. He’d also brought a bag with something to give to Micki, but when he passed by the dayroom, he noticed she wasn’t there.

  He reached Lerner’s office, flopped down, and immediately dove into a detailed description of Micki’s vandalized apartment. When he was finished, he pulled out a pack of Camels and drew the ashtray toward him, saying, “I don’t think it would be such a good idea to tell her what happened just yet.”

  Lerner nodded.

  “Has Micki seen you?” he asked.

  “Not really, no.”

  “What happens if she won’t talk to you?”

  “It’s a little too early to be worrying about that.”

  Baker lit a cigarette and fell silent. And though merely smoking, he exuded an overtly intimidating aggression the doctor hadn’t seen before.

  “How’s the alcohol withdrawal going?” she asked quietly.

  He shrugged. “It’s worse at night. And the weekend was tough. But I’m holding up okay.”

  “What do you do when it gets difficult?”

  “I usually work out at the gym or go for a jog.”

  “What about your friends?”

  “What about them?”

  “Do you call them?”

  “For what?”

  “For support.”

  Exhaling smoke through his nose, he snorted. “There’s no reason for me to bother my friends.”

  “It might make it easier for you when you’re feeling shaky.”

  “I can handle this myself.”

  “Perhaps. But I think alcohol was your friend—the one you could always turn to, the one you could always count on. And now that friend is gone.”

  Baker closed his eyes.

  “What are you feeling now?”

  He opened his eyes. “I’m not feeling anything, okay?” And he turned his gaze to the window.

  After a lengthy silence, Lerner asked, “Did your father drink?”

  “Not really.”

  “But you mentioned your mother drinks.”

  “Yeah, but when I was a kid, she drank even more. Didn’t get noticeably drunk or anything, but every day she’d have a few drinks—large drinks—and either be meaner or lie down for a while. Like I said, she slept a lot.”

  “Do you think she was depressed?”

  “Yeah, I suppose. Her life didn’t exactly turn out the way she expected. But she took it out on me like it was my fault.” He inhaled from his cigarette. “I feel sorry for her sometimes. In some ways, she’s kind of pathetic. But it doesn’t make what she did all right.”

  “No, it doesn’t. But by understanding her, she isn’t evil, just a severely flawed human being who made mistakes—most likely the product of her own childhood.”

  “She’s a selfish, self-centered bitch. She acts like the whole fucking world revolves around her. She thinks she should be waited on hand and foot. She made me feel guilty for every penny she ever spent on me, every minute of her time that I took—like I owed her for it. Everything she did for me made her a martyr in her eyes; that’s why I tried to do everything for myself. And still I worked so hard to win her approval—to make her love me. When I was very little, I was disgustingly good, but it was only because I didn’t feel loved by either one of my parents. I was afraid that if I didn’t do everything perfectly, my mother would just get rid of me.”

  “Did you really think she’d throw you out in the street?”

  “It seems outrageous now, but, back then, I believed it. Jesus, all I wanted was a little love from her—real love—but I didn’t get shit.”

  “You’re very angry at her.”

  “So tell me somethin
g I don’t know!”

  Almost an entire minute passed.

  Lerner asked, “How would you describe your current relationships with women?”

  “Okay, I suppose. What do you mean?”

  “How long do they usually last? Do you fall in love easily?”

  “Do we really have to talk about this?”

  “Why don’t you want to talk about this?”

  “What does this have to do with Micki?”

  Lerner tilted her head. “Do you understand what your therapy is about?”

  He leaned back, crossed his left ankle over his right knee, and took a long drag on his cigarette. “To make me a better guardian for Micki.”

  “That’s true, but I see that as a natural outcome of the process as a whole. The problems you have with Micki aren’t the result of poor parenting skills, per se; they’re a symptom of larger issues that need to be resolved. By talking about things, you can gain insight into the patterns of your behavior and what’s caused them. That, in turn, will eventually lead to change.”

  Baker tapped his cigarette against the ashtray. “How long is this going to take?”

  Lerner tried not to smile. “Why, are you in a rush?”

  “I don’t want to lose Micki while I’m working on getting my head straightened out.”

  “The most important thing to me is that there’s progress being made. Before all of this happened, you’d actually made some progress on your own; it just wasn’t enough.”

  “I—” Baker sat up a little straighter. “Oh.”

  “And if it makes you feel more comfortable,” the doctor continued, “I can also tell you that I’m very impressed with the work you’ve done here so far.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  Baker’s smile was almost shy. “I’m going to be at the hospital every day, so I can see you as often as you want.”

  Lerner pulled out her appointment book. “I think twice a week is enough for now. Let’s see what we can arrange.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “WOULD YOU TELL MICKI I’m here?” Baker asked. The diminutive woman he was talking to looked so young he’d first thought she was only a candy-striper. Staring down at her white cap—which looked like a giant, upside-down cupcake liner—he still wasn’t convinced she was a real nurse.