by Liz Moore
So dedicated was I to Ms. Powell and her teaching that there was a time, in fact, when I believed I wanted to follow in her footsteps and become a high school history teacher myself. Even today I wonder about this other life. Thomas has begun to ask questions about how various things got to be the way they are, and I find myself racking my brain, trying to remember what Ms. Powell taught me all those years ago—or, when I can’t, researching Thomas’s questions on my own, and then presenting him with the answers in a way that I hope is engaging. Just as Ms. Powell herself was.
The point of all of this is to say that I was so fond of Ms. Powell and of the material she taught me, so admiring of her, that when I ran into her in a supermarket several years ago, in uniform, I froze.
It had been a very long while since I had seen her. The last she had heard of me, I was applying to colleges.
She was holding a box of cereal over a full shopping cart. Her hair had new gray in it.
She opened her mouth. Took in my attire. (I remembered, in an instant, a special lecture she had devoted to the L.A. riots, and the expression that she wore when explaining their cause.) She hesitated. Then I saw her eyes shift to my name tag, M. Fitzpatrick, which seemed to confirm the truth for her.
—Michaela? she said, tentatively. Is that you?
Time slowed.
After a pause, I replied, No.
Like I said: a coward. Unwilling to explain myself, to stand by my own decisions. I had never before been ashamed of being an officer. In that moment, for reasons I find difficult to explain, I was.
Ms. Powell hesitated for a moment, as if deciding what to do. Then she said, My mistake.
But in her voice I heard her disbelief.
* * *
—
In the parking lot, now, remembering that small undignified moment, that small failure of character on my part, I summon my courage, lift my phone once more, and dial Truman.
* * *
—
The phone rings five times before he answers.
—Dawes, he says.
I find, suddenly, that I don’t know how to begin.
—Mick? he says, after a pause.
—Yes.
I have a lump in my throat, and it embarrasses me. I haven’t cried in years, and certainly not in front of Truman. I open my mouth and a sort of horrible clicking sound comes out. I clear my throat. The feeling passes.
—What’s going on? says Truman.
—Are you busy? I ask.
—No, he says.
—Can I come see you?
—Of course, he says.
He gives me his new address.
I drive toward him.
Here’s how it happened. The attack. It came from nowhere and seemed to be unmotivated, unless the motivation was simply the fact of our uniforms and our work. Seconds before, Truman and I had been facing one another, standing outside of our assigned vehicle, on the sidewalk. In the background, behind Truman, I saw someone approaching. A young man. He was wearing a light jacket that, zipped all the way up, partially obscured his face, and a baseball cap that was pulled down over his brow. It was a chilly day in April, and his attire made sense to me, didn’t cause me any alarm. He was wearing athletic pants, and he had a baseball bat casually slung over one shoulder, as if he was walking home from practice.
I barely glanced at him. I was laughing at something Truman was saying, and Truman was laughing too.
Unswervingly, almost gracefully, the young man swung his metal bat around as he passed Truman, cracking him vigorously across his right kneecap. Truman fell to the ground. Just as quickly, the young man stomped once on the same knee, and then took off at a run.
I believe I shouted, Hey, or Stop, or Don’t move.
But my overwhelming sensation was one of being, myself, frozen: my partner was on the ground, writhing in pain, and suddenly my instincts failed me in a way they hadn’t since I was a rookie. I hated seeing him that way: out of control, in agony. He was always in control.
I took one or two faltering steps—first in pursuit of the perpetrator, and then back to Truman, not wanting to leave him unattended.
—Go, Mickey, said Truman, through gritted teeth, and at last I sprinted in the direction of the vanishing man.
He rounded a corner. I followed.
I was met, on the other side, with the barrel of a small pistol—a pocket pistol, a Beretta with a wooden grip—and, beyond them, the gaze of the young man who’d attacked Truman. His face was now fully obscured but for his eyes, which were blue.
—Back the fuck up, said the young man, quietly.
Without hesitation, I complied. I took several steps backward, and then ducked back around the side of the building, breathing hard now.
I looked to my right: Truman on the ground.
I peered around the building: the perpetrator was gone.
* * *
—
I played no part in the young man’s arrest. For an agonizing month, he was on the loose. During that time, Truman underwent the first and second of the several surgeries he has had while on medical leave. When the perpetrator was, eventually, apprehended, it was not due to any usefulness on my part, but rather to the discovery of video footage from a storefront a few blocks away that revealed the face of a known offender.
I was glad to know he was off the street—for a long time, too.
But I took little further comfort in his arrest, because it did nothing to assuage my guilt, my sense of shame. My conviction that, in not acting quickly enough—in retreating, when commanded to by the man in question—I had failed my partner.
I visited Truman only once, in the hospital. I kept my head down. I kept my condolences brief.
I couldn’t look him in the eye.
Truman’s new house is in Mount Airy. I’ve never been. I make several wrong turns along the way, which adds to my nerves.
I didn’t go frequently to his last place, in East Falls—with few exceptions, my relationship with Truman took place at work—but I knew it, at least; I dropped him off and picked him up there, over the years, and once or twice attended gatherings there. His daughters’ high school graduation parties; his wife’s birthday. That sort of thing. But two years ago, he announced, with forced casualness, that he was getting a divorce from Sheila, after more than two decades of marriage, and that he would be moving out. The girls were in college now, he said, and there was no point pretending any longer that he and Sheila had anything in common. If I had pressed him, I believe he would have acknowledged that the divorce was her idea, not his—a particular sadness, an unusual flatness to his affect, convinced me of this, along with the many years he had spent before that lighting up whenever he spoke of her—but I did not ever press Truman for personal details he didn’t volunteer, and he returned the favor to me. (This was, I believe, one of the main reasons that we always got along so well.)
Mount Airy represents a section of the city I’m not familiar with. When I was growing up, the Northwest might as well have been in a different state from the Northeast. The Northwest does have its own problems, a few high-crime pockets, but it also contains within its borders great stone mansions with long stone walls and rolling lawns, the sorts of homes Philadelphia was known for back when a mention of the city’s name conjured Katharine Hepburn rather than crime statistics. Most of what I know about the history of the Northwest Ms. Powell taught me: it began as a settlement for twenty German settler families and was called, appropriately, Germantown.
* * *
—
At last, I find Truman’s street. I turn onto it.
From the outside, the house looks charming: detached from its neighbors, just barely, a tiny stretch of grass on either side. It’s narrow across the front but appears to be deep, with a short front lawn that slopes steeply down to the sidewalk, a front porch
with a swing on it, and a driveway running up the side. Truman’s car is parked there. There would be enough room for my car, too, but I hesitate and then park on the street.
Truman opens the door while I’m still walking up the front steps. He ran cross-country in college and ran marathons after that. His father, he has told me, was an internationally competitive track star in Jamaica before emigrating to the United States, hanging up his cleats, earning his master’s in education, and then, sadly, dying too young. Before he did, though, he passed on what he knew about speed and endurance to Truman, and in Truman one can still see the vestiges of his own athletic career: he’s tall and thin and ropy. He’s always walked on his toes, as if ready to spring. On the many occasions I saw him take off after some perpetrator, I almost felt bad for the runner. Truman had them on the ground before they took five steps. Today he’s wearing a brace on his right leg, outside his jeans. I wonder if he’ll ever run again.
He doesn’t greet me with anything aside from a nod.
* * *
—
It’s calm inside the house, pale walls, neat to the point of absurdity. His last place was neat, too, but still contained within it the trappings of family life—shin guards in the foyer, scribbled notes on a bulletin board. Here, an old radiator coated in thick white paint occupies a space near an interior wall. One lamp lights up a corner of the room, which is otherwise dim. The house is shady, the front of it overhung by the ceiling of the porch, the sides devoid of windows. As if he, too, has suddenly noticed this, Truman walks to a corner and turns on the switch to an overhead light. There are built-in bookshelves everywhere, which is perfect for Truman. A major topic of conversation between us was always what we were reading. Truman, unlike me, was raised in a functional and affectionate home; but he was a shy only child, and a speech impediment that he’s since outgrown made it difficult for him to speak up without getting teased. Books, therefore, were great friends to him. Today, one is open on the coffee table in the living room: The Art of War. Sun Tzu. A year ago I might have teased him lightly about this, asked him whom he was planning on fighting. Now the silence between us feels syrupy, tangible.
—How have you been? I ask him.
—Pretty good, he says.
He makes no move to take a seat, nor does he offer me one.
I’m still wearing the uniform I put on earlier, in the locker room, and I wish, now, that I hadn’t left my duty belt in the car. Without it, my hands don’t know what to do. I scratch my forehead.
—How’s the knee? I ask.
—Okay, he says. He looks down at it. Straightens it.
I gesture weakly around at the room, the house.
—I like it, I say.
—Thanks.
—What are you doing these days? I ask him.
—This and that, he says. I’ve got my garden going in the back. I read. I do the Co-op now.
I don’t know what this is. I don’t ask.
—It’s a cooperative grocery store, says Truman, reading my mind. It’s one of the things he used to rib me about: my reluctance, at times, to admit to deficits in my body of knowledge.
—The girls are good? I say. There’s a small family portrait standing upright on an end table, something taken when his daughters were young.
I notice that the portrait includes his ex-wife, Sheila. Something about this embarrasses me. It feels undignified. He’s been lonely, perhaps. Missing her. I don’t like thinking about it.
—They are, says Truman, and I don’t know what to say after that.
—Tea? Truman asks, finally.
* * *
—
I follow him into the kitchen: newer than the rest of the house, something he’s had redone. Perhaps, I imagine, something he redid himself. He’s always been handy. Regularly, he teaches himself to do new things. Just prior to his injury, he bought and restored an old Nikon camera.
I stand and watch the back of him as he works, taking a small empty tea bag from a box, portioning loose tea leaves into it.
Without his gaze directly on me, I find it easier to think.
I clear my throat.
—What’s up, Mickey, says Truman, not turning.
—I owe you an apology, I say. The words are too loud for the room. Too formal. I often misjudge these things.
Truman pauses, just for a moment, and then continues, pouring steaming water into a teapot.
—For what? he says.
—I should have had him, I say.
—I didn’t act fast enough, I say. I flinched.
But Truman is shaking his head.
—No, Mickey, he says.
—No?
—Wrong apology, he says. He turns around, facing me. I can barely meet his gaze.
I wait.
—He got away, says Truman. It happens. It’s happened to me more times than I can count.
He looks at me, then at the steeping tea.
—You should have come around sooner, he says. There. That’s your apology.
—But I backed down, I say.
—I’m glad you did, says Truman. No point getting shot. I survived.
I’m silent for a moment.
—I should have come around sooner, I say.
—I’m sorry, I say.
Truman nods. The air in the room changes. Truman pours the tea.
—Are you coming back? I say.
The question sounds needy.
Truman is fifty-two years old. He looks about forty. He has the kind of unharried, calm demeanor that has somehow crystallized his youthfulness, preserved it. I only found out his age a couple of years ago, at a fiftieth-birthday party that some officers threw him. Because of his age, if he wanted to retire now, he could. Already, he’d get a pension.
But he only shrugs.
—Maybe I will, he says. Maybe I won’t. I’ve got some things to think over. The world is weird.
He turns around, finally, and looks hard at me for a while.
—I know you didn’t come just to apologize, he says.
I don’t protest. I look down.
—Why else are you here? he asks me.
When I have finished speaking, Truman walks to the door off the kitchen. He looks out at his garden, asleep for the winter.
—How long has it been since anyone’s heard from her? he asks.
—Paula Mulroney said it’s been a month. But I’m not sure whether she has a particularly good handle on time.
—Okay, says Truman. He has a look on his face I’ve seen before: the one that used to come over him before he sprang into action, pounding after a runner. A coiled look.
—Do you know anything else at this point? he asks.
—I know she was last active on Facebook on October 2, I tell him. Also, she might be dating a person named Dock. D-O-C-K. I saw someone on her Facebook page with that name.
Truman looks skeptical. Dock, he says.
—I know, I say. Know anyone with that nickname in Kensington?
Truman thinks. Then shakes his head.
—What about Connor Famisall? I say. I think that’s his actual name.
—How do you spell that? asks Truman. And I hear something silly entering his voice. A smile.
I spell it for him, reluctantly. I dislike being on the outside of others’ jokes. A leftover from my childhood.
—Mick, Truman says. Did you get that off Facebook?
I nod.
Truman is laughing now. Fam is all, Mickey, he says. Fam is all.
Something about the way he says it—kind smile, kind eyes—loosens what’s tight in my sternum. As if a knob were being turned there, just so. And suddenly I am laughing too.
—All right, Truman, I say. All right, you’re smarter than I am, I get it.
Then Truman turns serious
.
—Have you reported her missing yet? says Truman.
—No, I say.
—Why not?
I hesitate. The truth is, I’m embarrassed. I don’t want everyone knowing my business.
—They’ll take a look at her record and put it on the bottom of the stack, I say.
—Make the report, Mick, he says. You want me to tell Mike DiPaolo?
DiPaolo is a friend of his in the East Detectives, someone he grew up with in Juniata. Unlike me, Truman has friends in the department, allies. It’s always been Truman who pulls me into things, shows me how to get what I need.
But I shake my head.
—Then tell Ahearn, says Truman.
I frown. The thought of telling Sergeant Ahearn anything about my personal life makes me stubborn. Especially after my episode from earlier. The last thing I want is for him to imagine, falsely, that I’m having some sort of breakdown.
—Truman, I say. If I can’t find her, who can?
And it’s true: patrol officers are the eyes. More than detectives, certainly more than sergeants or corporals or lieutenants. On the streets of Kensington, patrol officers are the ones families ask to find their missing children. We’re the ones children ask to find their missing mothers.
Truman shrugs. I know, Mick, he says. But just tell him. Can’t hurt.
—Fine, I say.
I might be lying. I’m not sure.
—You’re lying, says Truman.
I smile.
Truman looks at the floor.
—I’ve got someone I think I can ask about this Dock character, he says.
—Who? I say.
—Never mind. Let me make sure I’m right. It’s a place we can start, anyway, says Truman.
