Second Billing to Violet & Jesus

by Vulgar Argot

(MF, Mf, rom)

After a few years on the force, you can start to tell how bad an accident is going to be by the tone of the dispatcher's voice. To the untrained ear, Kim sounded calm and professional, particularly over the static and crackles of a police radio. But, there was a slightly different tone or a momentary tremolo that betrays what she's heard, but chosen not to relay on an open channel.

It's been a hellacious winter. The first snows came before Halloween and seemed to never stop. There was a blizzard that started on December twenty-third and lasted for four days. The inane weatherman on channel eleven kept going on about a white Christmas. I don't know who the fuck really wants a white Christmas besides weathermen. Even my son Steven was sick of the snow. He's five years old and he already has better sense than the morons on TV who play at being meteorologists.

If there's anybody on the planet who likes snow on Christmas less than a New York state trooper, I don't know who they are. Even snowplow drivers may be torn between wanting to be with their families and making a few extra dollars to pay for the holiday. But, to a highway patrolman like myself, snow on Christmas means more, messier accidents as people try to get from place to place filled with holiday cheer.

This Christmas, at least, the snow had been a mixed blessing. By Christmas day, there was two fee on the ground and more coming down. Traffic slowed to a crawl. There seemed to be an unlimited number of accidents, certainly more than there were cops to cover anyway, but they were mostly at low speed and, for the first time since I'd joined the force, no immediate fatalities.

The snows had stopped late on the twenty-sixth and not started again until today, New Year's Eve. Whatever blessing we were given by a slow Christmas dried up. The combination of cabin fever and a holiday whose main focus was drinking without even a nod to miracles or family had meant a day where the accidents started early and didn't let up.

It was ten minutes to seven p.m. when Kim called me on the radio, "Car seven, there's a fender bender at exit seventeen, route forty-two. Officer required on the scene. Ambulances have been dispatched."

I sighed before picking up the mike, "Car seven here. God damn it, Kim. I'm already headed in. Let James handle it."

"Negative, car seven," said Kim, sounding mildly sympathetic. "Car nine was dispatched to another accident en route. I've got nobody else."

"Shit," I muttered, not keying the mike. Then, to Kim, I said, "Roger that."

En route, I called Noelle Harris, the neighbor's kid.

"Hello, Mike," she said when I identified myself. "Do you need me to watch Stevie tonight?"

"If you could please, Noelle," I said wearily. "Mrs. Carter said she can't stay past eight."

"Of course," Noelle said. "I don't have any plans."

I listened to her voice for some sign of reluctance or self-pity, but could hear neither. Either they genuinely weren't there or I was losing my touch. "Thank you, Noelle," I said. "If you get hungry..."

"I know," said Noelle. "I can help myself to whatever is in the refrigerator. Is there anything in the refrigerator this time?"

"I have no idea," I admitted. "Oh, wait. Mrs. Carter said she was bringing me a casserole. It should be in there. And Noelle," I added, remembering why I'd dismissed the regular babysitter, "no boys."

Noelle laughed, "Don't worry, Mike. I don't really know any boys."

I immediately felt stupid for saying it. Noelle is one of the most responsible people I know of any age. As of this week, she was sixteen going on thirty-five.

When I got to the accident, I realized that Kim's voice hadn't begun to express how bad it was. Somehow, the wires had gotten tangled because the local police were already there. One was standing off the side of the road throwing up his lunch. When he stood up, he looked young to me, barely more than a teenager.

I was tempted to let them deal with it, but the highway is our jurisdiction. If we let the locals do the dirty work, soon enough they feel like they can do it all without us. Besides, the kid was completely useless here and his partner had a ring on his finger--a wife and kids to get home to. I sent them packing and they were grateful to go.

That's why I was standing just behind the tree line, far enough away from the accident so as not to contaminate the scene, getting rid of my fifth or sixth cup of coffee when the coroner finally pulled up at a quarter after ten.

He smiled at me when I emerged from the woods. It was the sad, tired smile I'd seen so many times before. Automatically, he said, "Happy holidays, Officer Weirsbach."

I returned the smile. There are certain pleasantries that sound wrong when said by or to cops. We say them anyway. When people say them to me, it's too much work and too awkward to point this out, so I just smile.

He lifted the plastic tarp the local cops had put down out of decency. His face didn't change when he looked at the mess underneath.

"Well," he said, "she's dead--blunt trauma and blood loss. Where's the rest of her?"

"Still in the car," I answered, "as near as I can tell."

"Do you have a preliminary ID?" he asked.

I got my pad from the cruiser, reading off the details I'd gotten from the locals, "Beth Cole, age seventeen. She's a local girl. Died at six thirty p.m. , give or take a half hour."

The coroner nodded, "I'll take over from here. Go notify the family, Mike."

I nodded and got into my cruiser. I knew Beth's parents a little bit, at least enough to recognize them on sight. There was a New Year's Eve party going on at their house, more than a dozen cars parked haphazardly around the snow drifts. I could hear the music from the street.

I didn't recognize the woman who answered the door and, by the startled frown on her face, she didn't recognize me. Looking down at the beer in her hand, she tried to hide it behind her back, an interesting response since she was at least thirty-five years old. I guess that old habits just don't die sometimes.

"I need to speak to Marilyn," I said quietly, "or...Jeff."

She turned back towards the living room, calling out, "Jeff, Marilyn. I think we got a noise complaint."

The incorrect assumption didn't help. Once it was cleared up, it went like any one of the dozen or so times I'd had to do this. I got the parents out onto the front porch, deciding for them that they would probably prefer cold and privacy to warmth and eavesdroppers. She shrieked when I told them. He stared at me in blank denial. The sight of his wife crying was enough to snap him out of it. He moved to comfort her. I could see his resolve harden as he decided to be strong for her sake. That was about as well as you can ever expect this sort of thing to go.

Jeff invited me inside for coffee. I declined. It was already eleven o'clock and all I wanted to do was go home. I'm not a suspicious man, but I have always kept the tradition of trying to do something at the beginning of the year that you would like to be portentous of what you would be doing for the remaining three hundred plus days. For the last three years, I spent them looking in on Steven. The year before that, I spent drunk at home while Steven was at Violet's mother's house. The year before that, Steven had slept soundly enough that I was able to spend it making love to Violet, one of the last few times I would do so.

I did not want to start the new year sharing coffee and awkward company with a newly-dead girl's parents. The truth was that they really didn't want me there long enough for coffee either. I didn't have enough information to last a full cup anyway. I answered what questions I could. Yes, she'd been with her boyfriend. He was still alive. He hadn't been drinking. The other driver was dead and no toxicity tests had been taken. I felt like a fraud even telling them that much. All I was doing was parroting what the local cops had told me. By all rights, they should be here instead of me. It hadn't even been a highway accident exactly, but an off-ramp one. There would probably be a jurisdictional complaint filed against me for taking it out of their hands. The captain would commend me if there was one. That wasn't why I did it, though. I couldn't say why I did do it, but that wasn't it.

It was a local cop who came to tell me about Violet. He'd known slightly less about her than I knew about Beth Cole. He hadn't even realized I was a cop. She'd been sitting at a stoplight. The other car had hit her from behind at high speed. They hadn't done a toxicity test on either driver yet, since both were dead when the police arrived, but there had been no skid marks. Later tests would reveal that the other car was stolen and the driver loaded to the gills with angel dust.

Despite having done half a dozen of those visits from the other side, I found myself playing out the script as written. First, I didn't believe it. Then, I pled with the cop. She can't be dead. We have a baby. I might have even invited him in for coffee. To this day, I can't remember which local officer it was. I spent most of the conversation staring at the patterns his cruiser's red and blue flashers made on the pristine snow of our front yard. I must have dealt with him at least a hundred times since then, but whoever he is, he's never mentioned it.

By the time I got home, I was so tired I could have fallen asleep in the cruiser. Instead, I forced myself to climb out of the warm car, trudge up the unshoveled walk, and let myself into the house. The year had thirty minutes left. I was determined to be inside when it ended.

The snow was coming down in earnest now, threatening to turn into another blizzard. There would be more accidents tonight, more fatalities. But, I was done for the evening. Let James and car nine deal with it. I just wanted to sleep.

I came in from the entry hall, my coat and boots left behind in the hall closet and, for a second, I thought I saw Violet sleeping on the couch. It wasn't her, of course. It was only Noelle. She was much too young to be my wife, tan-skinned and blonde while Violet was pale of skin, dark of hair and eye. Only with the light off and her features washed out by the baleful cathode-ray glare of Dick Clark's New Year's Rocking Eve could Noelle be mistaken for my Violet.

I turned on the lamp by the door, avoiding the overhead lights, but it was enough to make her. When Noelle saw me, she got a stricken look like she'd been caught doing something wrong. It took me a few seconds to see what she was alarmed about.

If you'd asked me before tonight whether Noelle was pretty, I would have said after some hesitation that she had the potential to be. I hadn't seen her since the summer. She'd been skinnier then, still clearly a kid, dressed very modestly for the heat, her hair tied back so tightly it seemed like she was punishing it for something.

Tonight, she was pretty and it was clear that she would one day be beautiful. Her hair was down, framing her sleepy face in a golden halo. More significantly, she was dressed like she should have been the last time I'd seen her--in a thin, white halter top and denim skirt. That was a big part of why I'd momentarily mistaken her for Violet. She was wearing my dead wife's clothes.

I suppose that I could have been angry. I'd left Violet's clothes where they were when she died. Eventually, I'd gotten around to washing the clothes in her hamper, neatly folded them, hung them on hangers, and put them away as if she'd be looking for them soon. They'd stayed there for over three years. After a few months, I'd let the cleaning woman start maintaining the room. But, I hadn't been in there myself for more than a few seconds at a time since I put away Violet's clothes.

I wasn't angry, though. The room was not a shrine, nor Violet's clothes the Shroud of Turin. I just didn't want to be in the room and wasn't ready to give the clothes to Goodwill. They certainly looked better on Noelle than they did on hangars.

As I stood, considering this, Noelle's eyes flickered to a water glass on the table, then away again. I leaned down, picked it up, and sniffed.

"Vodka?" I asked.

She nodded, rising, "Mike, I'm so sorry. I..."

I put the glass back on the table and sank into my chair, "I didn't think you drank."

Noelle sat back down, "I don't. I wanted to try it, but I didn't like it very much. How do you drink that stuff?"

I chuckled, "With orange juice."

Noelle picked up the glass and smelled it, wrinkling her nose, "It tastes like medicine."

"Try the Amaretto next time," I said. "It's much sweeter, easier to handle."

She raised an eyebrow, "Mike, are you all right?"

"I'm just tired," I said. "It was a long night."

She made a pained face, "It must be hard. Were there any accidents?"

I nodded. I didn't want to talk about it, so I said, "How was your birthday?"

Noelle rolled her eyes, "It was Christmas, like it is every year. I'll always have second billing to Jesus."

I chuckled, "And how's school this year? I haven't seen you since the summer."

Noelle curled her legs up underneath her, "It's the same as it was last year, except that I'm not a freshman anymore. My parents love the school of course. All they see is nuns and green grass and they think it's the Sound of Music."

"It's not?" I asked.

She shook her head, "It could be, I guess. If you mind your own business, it's very quiet, almost like we were nuns ourselves. Two of my three roommates think they want to be nuns. But, there's another side to L'Ecole Coppet des Jeunes Filles. I just try to ignore it as best I can."

I got up long enough to retrieve a beer, then returned to my chair, "Is it something you need to talk about? Have you told your parents?"

Noelle shook her head, "I don't think so. Like I said, it doesn't seem to effect anyone who doesn't want to take part in it. Besides, my parents would just tell me I was making things up. They don't listen to me. That's part of why I like coming over here to watch Stevie."

I took a sip of my beer, "Stevie gives you more credit than they do?"

She laughed, "Stevie thinks I'm a grown-up. Sixteen must seem awfully old when you're five. Plus, you never talk to me like I'm a kid. I feel like I could tell you anything."

I laughed, "It's only because I have no idea how to talk to kids without being a cop. I don't want to be a cop when I come home."

Noelle ran a hand through her hair, "I know what you mean. I don't want to be a student when I come home, either--or a kid. I don't know how I'm going to take two and a half more years of Swiss nuns."

I nodded, "Would you rather be in public school?"

She nodded slowly, "I think so." Then, she told me a few third-hand stories of what the local school was like, things she'd heard from girls she'd been friends with in the eighth grade and spent some time with whenever she came home--fights, romantic strife, pregnancy, wild parties. I didn't bother to tell her where the details had been blurred or exaggerated from what the local cops said actually happened in some of the more notorious details. She might be right and they wrong, after all.

"Mike, I'm sorry about Violet's clothes. I shouldn't have..."

"It's all right," I said. "I keep meaning to give them to Goodwill. She'd be glad they were getting some use."

"I see pictures of her all over the house," said Noelle. "She was very beautiful. I just wanted to see what I would look like wearing the same clothes. I don't have anything like these at home."

"They look good on you," I said. "You're becoming a lovely young woman."

Noelle blushed. "I should get changed,"

"Definitely before you go," I said. "Your father would have a heart attack if he saw you dressed like that. But, it's almost the New Year. Watch the ball drop. I'm going to go look in on Steven."

I walked up the hall and opened to door to my son's room. He was sound asleep in his bed, fist in his mouth, hair slicked against his forehead. It was a minute to the new year. I spent the first half of that minute just staring at him, watching the gentle rise and fall of his chest. Then, I became aware of Noelle's presence right behind me. I turned in profile so that she could pass. She stepped into the room, crossing her arms under her breasts as she watched him.

I watched her watching him. Violet's clothes fit Noelle like they'd been bought for her. I didn't remember my wife as being so short or petite. She'd always managed to carry herself like a taller woman, her personality filling the room.

The last time I'd seen Violet wear that top and skirt together, we'd been out on Block Island , spending the day walking from shop to shop, our only real, grown up vacation, carefully saved for between our two salaries. It had started raining suddenly, making the top dangerously translucent and forcing us to sprint back to the cute, little bed and breakfast we'd spent the week in. I'd peeled the top off of Violet, kissing rivulets of rain off of her belly and between her breasts.

"Be careful," Violet had whispered. "The bed creaks and the walls are paper thin."

I nodded, unzipping the skirt and peeling off her panties before I lowered my mouth to her, teasing her with the tip of my tongue. Her eyes widened in surprised and maybe alarm. As I remember, I was relentless that afternoon, teasing her with tongue and fingers as the rain pattered against the single window behind the curtains. By the time I took her, the rain had cleared, the sun returning to bathe the bed in its late-afternoon glory. Violet was laying on her belly, teeth buried in the pillow, fists clenching the coverlet. Eventually, she forgot the neighbors and the caretakers and everything but me inside of her. She cried out my name as she came, gripping me inside of her.

It was that afternoon, as near as we could figure, that Steven had been conceived. When I remember my wife, it is most often in that white halter top, running from the rain.

Noelle took two steps back so that she was almost touching me, turning her head, "He's a really good kid."

I put my hands on her arms. At the time, I thought nothing of the gesture, but Noelle leaned lightly against me, the flesh of her back against the front of my uniform.

"He sure is," I said. It was true. He'd been so young when Violet went away, he hadn't understood at all what forever meant. He made friends easily, trusting people far more easily than I was comfortable with. When alone, he was serious and quiet.

Behind us, Dick Clark and a quarter of a million freezing people counted off the remaining seconds of the year.

"Mike," said Noelle quietly, turning towards me as she spoke, "when the year ends, you're supposed to kiss."

I smiled gently as the year ended. Leaning down, I made to kiss her on the forehead, but she tilted her head back, lips parted and eyes closed and wrapped her arms around the barrel of my chest. As I got closer, she went up on tiptoe, drawing my mouth down to hers and tangling one hand in my hair.

I didn't pull away, but let the kiss happen. Her little tongue probed against my lips, so I let it into my mouth a little ways. One of my hands rested on her hip, the other spread across her shoulder blades, flesh to flesh.

When the kiss broke, Noelle said, "Mike, I can stay tonight. My parents said I shouldn't try to walk home if the snow got too heavy."

I nodded, leaning down to kiss her briefly again, just enough to say that the first kiss had been something more than tradition. Then, I stood up straight and said, "You can sleep in Violet's room if you like."

She reached up behind my head, but I didn't yield to the light pressure she exerted. "That's not what I meant, Mike."

I nodded, "I know, Noelle. I'm flattered, really."

She kissed the front of my uniform, "I'm not drunk."

I kissed the top of her head, "You're sixteen."

She laughed, "That's hardly my fault."

"I know," I said, releasing her.

"I won't always be sixteen," she said.

"I know," I said again. "But, for now, you're sixteen."

Back in the living room, we talked in quiet tones. Noelle told me that she loved me, that she was in love with me and had been for as long as she knew what the words meant. I told her that I hadn't thought about her that way. I didn't bother to tell her that she was too young to love me or to know what being in love was yet or that I was nearly twice her age. She could do her own math and as for the rest, she would figure it out in time. In the middle of trying to form a coherent sentence about her personal philosophy, she fell asleep.

I stood, deeply weary myself, took the water glass, still two-thirds full of vodka, and drank it down before getting a blanket to cover her. After she was tucked in, I stood looking at her, sleeping the sleep of the innocent before I went to bed.

This morning, I'm lying in bed, the first sunrise of the new year slanting into my window. Noelle is still asleep on the couch. I'll get up, make her breakfast, send her home. She'll probably pine for a while, go back to school, and eventually find someone more appropriate for herself, get married, have a few kids of her own, forget about me. That's fine. For now, I'll let her sleep..