House of Blues

coming."
    She didn't mean it, of course.
    Skip knew her: Though she had small children like
Reed, though she knew that if Reed were convicted, Sally might be
left to the tender mercies of Dennis and Sugar, Cappello would have
locked Reed up and thrown away the key if she could have. She was
trying to make Skip feel better.
    But nobody could these days.
 
    30
    She came home from work and fell immediately into
bed, unable to read or even watch television. She tried spending time
with Dee-Dee and the kids, but they didn't cheer her up, she brought
them down. The kids didn't need that; they had enough trouble.
    Sometimes she'd see Angel after a few days—or was
it weeks?—and she'd have tripled in size. She'd panic: I'm missing
it. She's growing up, the kids are growing up, and I'm not even there
for it. Still, she could do nothing. She couldn't stay awake. And
when she was awake, she didn't want to be.
    She dreamed sometimes of the night in the Conti
Breezeway, saw Jim's face as he lay wounded on the ground, and when
she saw Augustine Melancon's face, it was not the terrified baby face
of a teenager caught in a nightmare, it was a Satan mask and it spoke
to her, droning and much too slow, like a record played at the wrong
speed.
    "Your turn now," it said, and she would
wake up sweating. In the dream, she thought the figure was predicting
her death, and sometimes she would tremble afterward, unable to go
back to sleep.
    But in daylight she'd remember what she knew it
meant, what she always forgot when she dreamed it: It meant it was
her turn to kill.
    It was funny. For the longest time she was afraid to
go to sleep for fear of dreaming. Yet she never dreamed the thing she
feared, never saw tiny Shavonne crawling across that floor to her
mama. She did all the time in her conscious hours. Every time she saw
a pair of pink jeans or a pair of flip-flops, or even, sometimes,
just a small black girl with braids, Shavonne came to her like an
acid flashback.
    Sometimes when that happened, she would very
deliberately switch channels—take her camera across the room to
Delavon lying dead of her own bullet. She wanted to avoid hiding
behind his daughter, to break the denial she knew was there, to
understand, deep in her belly, that she had taken a human life.
    And yet the image of Shavonne hurt her more deeply
than that of Delavon. Indeed, she found it almost unbearable, and
sometimes, in the office, brushed at her head when it came, as if a
swarm of bees surrounded her. People stared. Cappello brought her
coffee and asked if she were all right.
    She said she was, she always said she was, because
she knew the job was the only thing holding her together right now,
and she could not risk being transferred. The pressure to perform was
enormous.
    The funny thing was, at work she was a hero. The
round of applause the day after the shooting was just the beginning.
She got a Medal of Merit, a little gold button shaped like a badge.
She got congratulations from people whose names she didn't even know,
strangers who stopped her in the hall. She finally gave Eileen
Moreland an interview.
    Eileen didn't ask her, she asked the superintendent,
and he all but ordered her to do it.
    "Heroic Female Cop" was great publicity for
a department that sorely needed some.
    "Oh, Skippy, don't be such a pill," said
Eileen. "It's a chance to get things off your mind."
    Sure. Heroic Female Cop's supposed to tell the whole
city about her depression. About the recurring nightmares. The
superintendent would love that one.
    She ended up saying, more or less, that she did what
she had to.
    As if it were original.
    As if it were the end of the story.
    As if police officers were automatons.
    And then she had to deal with a second round of
congratulations.
    Joe Tarantino, her lieutenant, encouraged her to take
the sergeant's test, saying she was "ready" now; she'd
"matured." She was "seasoned."
    All words that mocked her.
    You're mature if you shoot somebody? A seasoned
cop is a killer? What the hell am I doing here?
    She was there because it was her job and it was the
only identity she felt she had right now; she needed it to maintain
contact with the Earth. But even at headquarters she couldn't check
her hopelessness at the door.
    Cindy Lou told her she should be in therapy, but she
couldn't seem to get around to finding a therapist and making an
appointment. She certainly wasn't going to do it at work, where
everyone, including O'Rourke, could hear.
    And when