Читать книгу Good Cop/Bad Cop - Rebecca Cofer - Dartt - Страница 10
ОглавлениеTony Harris woke up Friday, December 22, to the loud scraping of a snow plow’s blades as it roared along Ellis Hollow Road. It was a familiar early morning sound in the winter that could be heard for miles around. Tony strained to hear the 6:45 weather report coming over WHCU: “Currently five degrees in Ithaca with more snow predicted for today and tonight. Fifteen below zero tonight. Snow flurries on Saturday with a high of six degrees.”
That meant it was probably colder in Ellis Hollow, because the temperature dropped lower in the outlying valleys. Tony was accustomed to getting up early, preferring not to hurry. During the week he left the house around 7:30 in order to be at the office by 8:00, unless he had to drive to the branch office in Gaithersburg, Maryland, or catch a plane for Raleigh or Atlanta, in which case he left earlier. He slept a half-hour later this morning, having retired later than usual, about 12:30, after watching the Syracuse-Georgetown basketball game. Marc, their eleven-year-old son, had taped the game for him earlier, but he hadn’t found time to sit down and watch it until then.
As he shaved, Tony reviewed his plans. This should be an easy, relaxing day, and he was even going in a little later. Not much going on the day before Christmas break except the scheduled afternoon office party. Dodie usually stayed in bed a few minutes longer than Tony, rising in time to set breakfast on the table before Shelby, their fifteen-year-old daughter, and Marc came downstairs.
Tony was a family man. He never let getting ahead in business interfere with what he considered the most important part of his life. Filled with ambition, he wanted to excel in his career yet maintain a solid family life. Now, at thirty-nine, Tony had achieved both. He was near the top of his company as director of marketing and sales on the East Coast for the Deanco Corporation, an electronics distributor based in Ithaca. Jim Felton, the Deanco manager who had hired him in 1974, had lured him away from an insurance firm in Syracuse after Tony sold him a million dollars of business and personal insurance. Felton knew that anyone who could sell him that much insurance would be an asset to Deanco. Tony started as a salesman in charge of the Syracuse area and in three years had expanded his territory to cover New York state.
Growing up in Mattydale, a predominately Catholic, blue-collar neighborhood in North Syracuse, Tony’s family lived in a modest, one-story frame house, like many that cluster together on the orderly grid of streets off Route 11, a commercial district near the airport. It was the kind of place where folks regularly displayed the American flag in their front yards or on their porches.
His father, an industrial pattern maker, abandoned the family when Tony and his brother and sister were preschoolers, forcing his mother to support the family on the low wages she earned as a cook in the school cafeteria. Mary Harris, a strong, perceptive woman, made sure her children knew what the important things in life were and how to stick to them—keeping their religious faith, helping others whenever they could, and staying in school. She believed strongly that education was the way to get ahead and to better themselves.
Tony learned the lessons well. Very soon he also figured out that in order to get ahead he had to use his head and his will. That determination was coupled with a strong sense of responsibility. As the eldest boy, he thought of himself as the man of the family. At twelve, Tony started a neighborhood paper route, getting up before 6:00 A.M. to deliver the Syracuse Post-Standard. In a few months he had doubled his route, partly as a result of close attention to customers. Each morning Tony placed the paper at their doorstep, rang the bell, and wished them good morning. A week before Christmas in his first year as a paperboy, Tony politely requested customers to give him tips early enough for him to buy presents for his family; the extra hundred dollars bought jackets for the children and a lined raincoat for his mother.
A short while later he convinced his mother of the idea first and then a local merchant—to sell him a snowblower on time. Tony would put some money down and then pay the rest off week by week, allowing him to expand the snow removal business he’d started in the neighborhood. The blower paid for itself before the winter was over, and Tony made a small profit.
By the time he was a teenager, people who knew Tony Harris assumed he had a bright future; he had all the attributes which contribute to success. For instance, Tony’s self-confidence enabled him to tackle new tasks and to be inventive in transforming mundane ones. Tony convinced his tenth-grade English teacher that making an oral report about Walt Whitman was as acceptable as writing a composition about him. He loved speaking in front of people, but writing was another matter. Other students who preferred talking to writing followed suit and the teacher was pleased too; it meant fewer papers to grade.
Tony intended to become a math teacher, having been encouraged by his instructors at North Syracuse High School before entering Onondaga Community College. But Tony was so turned off by the unruly and lackadaisical students he saw on a visit back to his old high school during his senior year, that he changed his career plan. Taking a course in public relations and marketing was exciting. Tony discovered he had a natural bent toward public relations and in a sense had been practicing the art of persuasion for years. Before graduation in May 1971, he landed a job selling insurance for Mutual of Syracuse. The same summer Tony married Dodie Lake, who had grown up on the east side of Syracuse; a pretty brunette with a sensitive nature that he appreciated. Tony felt he was a lucky man.
This morning, dressing in jeans, the cream-colored sweater Dodie had given him last Christmas, and his tan dockside shoes that felt so comfortable on his feet. Tony felt relaxed. His casual personality had never fully meshed with a business suit and tie. He liked the feel of comfortable clothes and they matched his unpretentious nature
Just under six feet, Tony had always been a little overweight. After years of eating on the road—conference dinners, whiling away lonely evenings in restaurants—he had put on more pounds then his frame could hide. He grew tired of seeing himself in the mirror with a double chin that was getting more prominent every day. The pounds had accumulated to the point where Tony decided to do something drastic. In February he’d joined a Weight Watchers group, and lost fifty-three pounds in nine months. On Tuesday nights, he’d even started playing basketball with a group of guys and running a bit to get in better shape and to keep his weight down. The suit worn to his interview with Deanco was too tight for him at the time, but now it was too loose.
Dodie had begun to change Tony’s ideas about food when they lived in Atlanta in the mid-1980s. After Dodie was afflicted with breast cancer, she made changes in the family’s diet, cutting down on fatty foods and serving more fresh fruits and vegetables. The crisis brought on a sudden urgency to be serious about a healthy lifestyle. Tony stopped smoking and tried to eat more chicken, but being a meat and potatoes man, he found it hard to stick to the lighter fare. It was not until he tried Weight Watchers that he found a plan to which he could stick and with which he’d found success.
In six days Tony would turn forty—he felt it the demarcation line between being young and middle-aged—but except for a slight hair loss in the front and a few age lines on his face, he could still pass for a man in his thirties. A family ski trip to Greek Peak, a popular ski area thirty miles north of Ithaca, was planned for the following Thursday to celebrate his birthday.
Tony liked the early morning, even these cold winter ones when he looked out over the white fields and the hills to the south in back of the dream house that Dodie’s father had built for them three and a half years before. When they moved to Ithaca in 1985 from Marietta, Georgia, where he was branch manager for Deanco, they searched for enough land to build a large house, and an antique and country gift store that Dodie had wanted for a long time. They needed enough space for children and animals; their long-range plans included raising geese and maybe a horse or two.
Ellis Hollow fit their priorities. The location offered an independent country life in a community that held traditional family values. The Harris’s could enjoy their privacy, yet join in community activities when they chose. Seeing the empty pond a few hundred yards to the east of the house reminded Tony of one project that had failed. It was to be a farm pond, verv common on the rural landscape, used for fishing, perhaps swimming, and during the winter when it froze over Marc and his friends would practice skating. Ice hockey was Marc’s passion. But the pond did not fill up, apparently due to the rocky soil. Tony and Dodie laughed about it with friends and neighbors, but he felt sorry for Marc’s sake.
It was a lively breakfast scene in the Harrises’ kitchen that morning. Marc’s dog Annie, a German shepherd and collie mix, barked loudly at the newcomer, a six-month-old tabby cat named Shadow, sending her running out of the room. Annie was a stray they had found while living in Marietta. She was a peaceful family fixture who slept with Marc and followed Dodie around all day, even riding in the van when she went shopping.
“Calm your dog down, Marc, for gosh sakes, the poor cat is scared to death,’’ yelled Shelby, as she wrapped up the cookies she had baked the night before to take to her friends at school.
“Mom, remember about going over to Jim’s house tonight at seven, okay?”
Shelby knew her mother never forgot anything. Why did she ask? But the reminder just popped out of Shelby’s mouth as she sat down to eat a toasted raisin bagel and drink a mug of hot cocoa at the kitchen table. Her mother was a near-perfect mother, and Shelby loved her deeply. They had become even closer during Dodie’s bout with cancer. After the first mastectomy the doctor said he had gotten it all, but a few months later found a malignant tumor on Dodie’s other breast. Shaken by these threats to her life and convinced she might have limited time to live, Dodie decided she had to return to New York to be closer to her family in Syracuse. The Harris’s planned their move back north even though Tony didn’t know if Deanco had anything open for him in the Syracuse area. He rejected Dodie’s desperate suggestion that in order to keep his job he might have to live in a condo in Atlanta and commute to New York on the weekends. He was willing to resign from the company in order to keep the family together.
“Shelby, I’ll drop you at Jim’s tonight around seven. I have a few things to pick up at the mall, so I’ll do that and come back for you in an hour or so. All right?” Dodie said to her daughter as she poured her a small glass of orange juice.
Jim Ciolek was Shelby’s first serious boyfriend. They’d known each other since DeWitt Middle School, but started going out in the fall after finding themselves in the same tenth-grade English class.
Ithaca High School was intimidating to many students, but not to Shelby. She thought the school with twelve hundred students was exciting; she liked the range of activities she could try and opportunities to make new friends. Most of the kids Shelby ran around with were active in school sports and ski club and were tracked either in the honors program or regents classes.
Shelby played second doubles on the girls’ tennis team and planned to go out for lacrosse in the spring. She didn’t like the high school cliques that jammed everybody into rigid categories: athletes, nerds, the popular crowd, and so forth. She chose friends on her own terms.
Those around Shelby were attracted to her easygoing, friendly nature, but her outward appearance could be misleading. Underneath a frivolous teenager veneer lay a serious streak not usually associated with a fifteen-year-old. She shared her simple faith without hesitation in a Catholic confirmation class, saying that belief in God meant that you were sure that if you died at that moment, you would go to heaven. Her close friends appreciated the sound advice she gave them about boyfriends, getting along with their parents, and what social choices to make, such as laying off drugs and alcohol. She was active in the high school’s Students Against Drunk Driving group.
Despite her serious side, like most teenagers, Shelby loved clothes and spent plenty of time in front of tine mirror getting her hair and makeup on just right and talking endlessly on the phone. She and her mother loved to shop. She usually liked her mother’s taste in clothes but also had her own ideas. One school day a week before the winter formal, they drove to Syracuse to pick out a dress for the occasion. Shelby persuaded her mother to buy her a long, strapless taffeta gown in emerald green, modeling it for Dodie at the store. Shelby was physically well developed for her age and popular with boys, which made Dodie uneasy at times. It was such a grown-up kind of dress that Dodie hesitated, not sure the strapless part wasn’t a bit too much, but Shelby’s enthusiasm won her over.
Unfortunately a snowstorm canceled the formal, but her dad’s Deanco dinner dance went on as scheduled; so Shelby and Jim’s plans were not completely scrapped. Seeing the grown-up Shelby dressed in a formal was a lovely family moment, one Dodie wanted to look back upon. Jim in his tuxedo and Shelby in her taffeta gown stood in front of the Christmas tree as Dodie clicked photographs of the couple before they all left for Deanco’s party at the Ramada Inn.
Tony and Dodie Harris had the kind of rapport with their two children that many admired and some envied. Shelby, now almost sixteen, hadn’t shown signs of the kind of rebellion endemic to teenagers. But Dodie thought she was growing up too fast, and she hated the idea of letting her go. Dodie was very emotional, especially when it came to her children. She couldn’t imagine living without them.
Even though her physical looks were maturing Shelby still had the easygoing, affectionate ways of her childhood. She hugged and kissed her parents in front of friends, and it pleased her that Dodie watched every tennis match she played for the high school team. Her mother was the kind of person who cheered for everyone, made sure they had team sweatshirts, and brought cookies for the players after matches.
The Harrises believed that staying involved with their children and providing wholesome opportunities for the kids to express themselves kept the family close. Marc and Shelby often had friends to sleep over, and Dodie cooked the customary waffles or pancakes the next morning. They had staged an elaborate party the previous June for Shelby’s birthday, with a band set up in the garage and a crowd of friends dancing on the driveway.
With their son they were a bit stricter. Tony disciplined Marc with a firm hand, insisting he behave, and although it was not a buddy-buddy relationship. they shared many interests. Both were avid baseball card collectors; Tony went on weekend outings with Marc’s Boy Scout troop; they put model rockets together and fired them from a hill in back of the house. Tony couldn’t forget the gap left when his own father had deserted his family, but instead of harboring resentment, Tony worked to be the kind of father he wished he’d had.
Shelby, on the other hand, was her father’s girl, and there was little discipline involved. Like her mother she had a sweet disposition. She was a pretty child who had blossomed into a beautiful creature that her father adored. Occasionally Shelby called her father at work to check in and to let him know she loved him. During Dodie’s illness Shelby had taken on many responsibilities around the house and developed a seriousness and sensitivity unusual at such a young age.
Tony got downstairs just in time for Shelby to kiss him on the cheek and call, “love you,” directed at all of them as she went out the door to catch the school bus, which stopped in front of their house.
“You want to take some Christmas cookies for your friends, Marc?” Dodie had baked dozens of fancy bars and cookies for the neighborhood cookie exchange she hosted on Monday night. Marc asked for the plain sugar ones. She wrapped up a bunch of cookies and put them inside his knapsack.
Marc was a kid who liked to be neat. He wore the usual jeans with preppy shirts, not the neon-colored sweatshirts that were the latest rage at school. And he liked his hair cut short. This morning he was more keyed up than usual. He and his friend Michael Mazza had written a skit for their sixth-grade English project and were performing and videotaping it that day. He hurried out the kitchen door to the garage to find some rope they planned to use as a prop for “The Grammar Round-up.” He and Michael met while on the same hockey team the previous year and had become good friends since landing in the same homeroom at DeWitt Middle School in September. Both ran in the election to represent their homeroom at student council. Marc won (giving “the speech of my life,” he later told his mother) and Michael came in second. Marc, however, decided they would share the responsibility equally.
That morning Marc had just enough time to take Annie for her walk—more like a run—around the house before the school bus came. This was a regular chore for Marc twice a day in the winter, when it was too cold to keep Annie outside. Annie pulled on the leash that morning as she always did; the invigorating cold air made her run like a pup.
Walking back inside the house, his cheeks pink from the cold, Marc gave his mother a quick hug, patted his father on the shoulder as he sat at the table, and ate a bit of cereal. Too excited to finish, he said, “See you guys later.” He ran out the front door to catch the bus.
Dodie sat down at the kitchen table with her cup of tea. Although she never drank coffee, she made a two-cup pot of brewed coffee for Tony every morning. That morning he sat sipping it slowly. It was one pleasure he had no intention of giving up. His breakfast of a high-fiber cereal and wheat toast or bagel was a far cry from what he really liked and used to eat for breakfast—bacon or sausage and eggs sunny-side up. On the weekends he splurged a bit with waffles or pancakes—no longer soaked in butter.
“I’m going to deposit all this cash I have from the shop when I’m out on errands today. The Grey Goose will just have to operate on its own for a little while,” Dodie said as she refilled Tony’s mug.
Tony tried not to worry about the huge amount of money they had put into Dodie’s shop. The Grey Goose had cost them twenty-three thousand dollars to build; it would be a long time before they would recoup their investment, if ever. Their assets had always been tied up in real estate, so much so that only recently they bought their first new living room furniture. They had lived with used pieces that Dodie refinished or antiques she bought at a bargain because he felt so anxious about having invested so much cash in the store.
Keeping financial records wasn’t something Dodie liked to do or did very well, so Tony kept track of the money. He usually gave her a check for two or three hundred dollars on Monday for household expenses, the amount depending on what was coming up that week. This eliminated the need for a checkbook and spared Dodie the temptation to spend the shop’s income. At the beginning of each week she carried a wad of bills in her wallet or pants’ pocket. By week’s end she was cash poor. That morning Tony made out a six-hundred-dollar check and gave it to her to cover the weekend’s holiday expenses.
It was a busy time of year at the Grey Goose. Many shoppers came for her country-style gifts: straw wreaths and woodcut wall ornaments that she made, decorative mailboxes and tree ornaments. The shop was filled with items on consignment from friends or crafts people Dodie met at fairs or through contacts at other shops in the area.
Dodie’s father had built the two-level shop in the same saltbox style in wood clapboard that Dodie designed for the house after she studied design magazines and got ideas from visits to gift shops around central New York. It was important to her that she do the thing right, so there was no detail left to chance. Dodie wanted the shop to be a short walking distance to the house, but not close enougli to disturb the peaceful ambiance she carefully planned for their dream home. Fifty yards separated the two buildings.
Flair and talent were attributes Dodie had—her house resembling a Norman Rockwell painting, inside and out. She used geese as her decorating theme; a white wooden goose that she had designed and painted stood next to the mailbox to advertise her shop, and other cutouts of geese in various sizes and colors were on the wall or on kitchen shelves among her pewter mug collection. Country antiques and other homemade decorative items filled the house. Rusty old kitchen utensils and an ancient frying pan hung on the family room wall.
She fell in love with the country style when they lived in a Marietta subdivision. The dark wood-frame houses, modernized log or mountain cabins set in pine woods landscaping, looked like the country in an area a few miles from interstate highways and metropolitan Atlanta. This was the time when decorative, “homemade” country items were starting to be popular.
Although the shop was important to Dodie, she refused to be a slave to it. Occasionally the door to the Grey Goose was left unlocked with a note on the door inviting guests to browse and stating the approximate time she would return.
“I’m just going over to the store for a few minutes, Tony, wait for me,” she said, smiling at Tony. He nodded. She quickly walked to the store.
Dodie wanted to keep the shop open for last-minute shoppers that day, but with the cold weather, she knew the wood stove wouldn’t keep the rooms warm enough to stay in there for long stretches. She decided to leave the door unlocked in the morning while she was home. She had so many things to do. She wanted to make phone calls to Tony’s old friends in Syracuse and invite them for his fortieth birthday party next week, and she needed to start getting ready for all their Syracuse relatives, who were spending Christmas day with them. There was major food shopping to do, and she had to clean the house and do more baking, not to mention picking up some last-minute gifts and finishing the present wrapping.
Getting back home she opened the front door and called, “Hello.” Her husband returned the greeting. The wreath she had made with evergreen branches and red ribbon hung on the door, and shiny wrapped boxes lay in an antique sleigh on the snow-covered lawn. As she stepped inside, she smiled. The spruce Christinas tree they had cut down from the woods in back was decorated with ornaments that she and the children had made; a red velvet bow was tied with green sprays to the staircase. Dodie’s decorations were meaningful expressions of her dedication to family life. They gave the children the feeling of having contributed to the holiday. As she sat down again with Tony, she looked around at the lived-in house where kids and their friends ran in and out or messed up the kitchen making cookies, where dogs, cats, and gerbils were welcome, and where she frequently had someone over for an impromptu lunch. At the slightest chill, she built a wood fire in the kitchen fireplace.
Dodie thought about playing tennis but realized she didn’t have time and sighed. Tennis was Dodie’s big passion outside her home and family. She had started playing in a neighborhood doubles league while they lived in Marietta, and it became an absorbing part of her life. After her breast surgery, she returned to the court as soon as the doctor allowed, and she perfected the lob she used to outwit her opponents. She lost some strength in her arms after the surgeries, which made it harder to hit ground strokes with power, but she still loved playing.
Tennis brought out a competitive spirit in her unseen in other aspects of her life. If it was her time to play a match in league competition, she wanted to play even if another doubles team had a better record and was more likely to win. Dodie played in a women’s morning league in Cornell University’s indoor tennis facility and was in charge of maintaining the Ellis Hollow community courts in the summer. Cindy Desmond, who was in the Marietta league with Dodie, tried to reason with her that sometimes you had to be realistic even if it didn’t seem fair, but Dodie disagreed. Fair was fair. She was convinced that if she treated others fairly, they would do the same with her.
Tony wasn’t as serious about tennis as Dodie. To him it was an outdoor sport and more social than anything else, but with his recent push to get into better shape, he had agreed to play doubles during the winter on Sunday nights with Barbara and Kevin White at the new indoor courts in town.
Dodie grew up in a close family, grounded in old-fashioned values and the Catholic tradition. However, like Tony’s, hers was not an easy childhood. Her mother, who suffered a serious heart ailment from having rheumatic fever as a child, ran a strict household to keep confusion and disorder to a minimum. Not being physically strong and with three children close in age, and a husband away from home a lot starting a construction business, she had to be a firm manager. Money was not plentiful, so extras in treats, toys, and visits with friends were rare.
Giving her children all the missed opportunities of her youth was the benefit of being financially well-off. Not only did Dodie and Tony indulge Shelby and Marc, but they also liked to share their good fortune with friends and family. To them, success wasn’t spending a lot of money; it was having enough time to do what they wanted with the people they cared about.
Dodie’s flair for design emerged in childhood when she drew clothes for the paper dolls that she and her sister, Sharon, played. After taking a sewing class in high school, she often made her own clothes. An art teacher suggested she develop her drawing talent: perhaps she should look into the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. Dodie didn’t know anything about the prestigious school, but with encouragement from her family and friends, she applied and was accepted.
As part of Dodie’s interview, the young woman was asked to sketch a Queen Anne chair that stood in the admissions office. She performed well under pressure (the drawing received high praise from the interviewer). This gave her the confidence needed to spread her wings in unknown territory. Going to New York—the fast, sophisticated big city—was a complete departure from life as Dodie had known it in Syracuse. And it was the first time she’d been away from home.
Dodie stuck it out at FIT for one semester, but she didn’t like the city. The fast pace, the dirt and grime of the streets and subways, and the unfriendly people turned her off. Classes were okay, but she felt uncomfortable around the students who were so different from those in Syracuse. She was hurt by the blunt remarks they and the teachers made about her work; the criticism seemed more cruel than helpful. Dodie had a soft shell when it came to others judging her work; it was as though they were attacking her personally, and she needed to be well-liked.
Moreover, Dodie was driven more by a desire to get married and have a family than to concentrate on a successful career. When she met Tony Harris, he was in his junior year at Brockport State and she was working in Syracuse’s major furniture store as an interior decorator. She fell in love with the gregarious, easygoing Tony, not knowing at the time how driven he was to succeed. They became engaged less than a year later. However Dodie’s happiness was interrupted by her mother’s death from a heart seizure a few days after the couple announced their engagement.
Her mother’s untimely death hit Dodie hard, and she often thought about it when her own life was threatened with cancer at thirty-one. By 1989, though, Dodie could feel more relaxed about her health. The cancer had been in remission for over five years by then, and the prognosis looked good. The news seemed a blessing from on high. It made her feel grateful for every day and filled her with a determination not to fritter time away on unimportant things.
After a last sip of coffee, Tony kissed his wife goodbye, said he loved her, and took the plate of cookies she had wrapped in foil for his office party.
Putting on a jacket, he walked from the mud room and into the garage. His breath formed smoke rings. Tony appreciated garages on mornings like that one. It was nice not having to scrape the windshields or brush off snow. Tony remembered many cold mornings in Syracuse, trying to start the older model cars he had then, parked on the street or driveway. Each day he had struggled to scrape the ice off the windows. His New Yorker sedan, although two years old, looked new because of Tony’s gentle care. The luxurious leather interior was wonderful plus the ease and comfort of driving such a car. By the time he backed out of the garage onto Ellis Hollow Road, the heater had taken off the chill. Tony began to think of the day ahead.
