Page 56 of Nothing Less than Magic
I don’t understand why he keeps bringing my father into this. A man he doesn’t even know. Then again, perhaps he’s mistaken me for someone else.
“I appreciate it.” It seems like a good thing to say to the person who stands between me and a jail cell. “I won’t do it again, officer.”
“I’m going to hold you to that,” he says. “Now be careful when you pull out of here. I’ll follow you down the hill.” He waits for me to get in the car, then leans into my window with his arm resting on the roof. “Tell your dad hello from me.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. If he knows my father, there is only one way he can mean that. There’s only one way I can tell Dad hello.
It’s ridiculous, of course. And by the time I get to the highway, I decide that the officer thinks I’m someone else. Another Chelsea.
Chapter 14
From everything I can remember about my father, he was a good man. He loved us, Lolly and me. No matter what came later, I always knew that. I always knew that he loved us more than anything else in the world.
When we were little, three or four, he used to bounce us on his knee and sing, “Pony boy, pony boy, won’t you be my pony boy. Don’t say no, here we go, ride away with me. Giddy up! Giddy up! Pony my boy, hey.” Then he’d throw us in the air to fits of giggles.
When we were a little older, he would make us elaborate pancakes for breakfast. Mickey Mouse, puppy dogs, gingerbread men, and big flowers decorated with icing.
As I got older and more independent, he let me cross the street to my friend’s house by myself but would stand at the corner, watching me until I was safely at the door.
No one made us feel more secure than Dad, not even Mom. Part of it, I’m sure, was that he was a cop. A big, tall, handsome hero, who left home every day to fight the bad guys. He was the one we ran to after a bad dream. He’s the one who would check for monsters under our beds, making a thorough sweep with his flashlight, shouting, “All clear” to prove it was safe.
He was the one no other man could live up to, not even Big Al Rosario.
Big Al was Dad’s partner and the second most important man in our lives. Big Al could brighten a room just with his smile. It was electric, Mom used to say.
We loved him almost as much as we loved Dad.
I can still remember the days when Dad and Al would come home for lunch. Al tucking Lolly and me under each of his arms and carrying us across the living room, sideways, then dropping us on the sofa, making us laugh so hard, we’d pee our pants. Mom yelling at Al to knock it off, but she was laughing, too.
Al and his wife, Gloria, didn’t have kids of their own, so Lolly and I became his surrogate ones. On our birthdays and Christmas, he’d buy out the toy store with gifts. My first Easy-Bake Oven, my third or fourth American Girl doll, and more electronics than I knew what to do with. The man would’ve bought me a pony if we’d had the room for it.
But for Mom, he gave her the biggest gift of all.
“I know you’re safe out there,” I once heard her telling Dad as she stood at the door, kissing him goodbye before he started his shift. “I know Big Al will never let anything happen to you. He loves you like a brother, Chris.”
And even now, I know he did.
Once, they foiled a liquor store robbery. It was on Ventura Boulevard near Woodland Hills in broad daylight. A man, strung out on meth, went into the store and at gunpoint ordered the cashier to give him all his money. Luckily, the liquor store owner had recently installed a panic button under the counter and had trained all his employees how to use it. This particular cashier was the first to put the new panic button to the test.
When the call went out for a 211, Dad and Big Al responded. Dad liked to tell how he and Al were just two blocks away, eating hoagies outside the best sandwich shop in the valley. They’d put their soft drinks on the top of their patrol car and left so fast that when they got to the liquor store, the cups were still there; not a drop of soda had spilled. I doubt it really went down that way, but Dad never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Inside, the robber had forced two customers behind the counter while he held the gun to the cashier’s head as the poor man tried to open the safe. Dad and Al were supposed to wait for backup.
According to Dad and Al’s version of the story, they rushed in anyway, entering from an alleyway at the rear of the store and using a small storage room for cover. It was a tricky operation. With hostages, anything can happen, and Dad and Al weren’t exactly a SWAT team. And neither of them had hostage negotiation training.
As Dad liked to tell it, they’d just gone in, “guns blazing with their heads so far up their asses, they didn’t stop to think about the ramifications.”
What happened after that isn’t completely clear, as Dad and Al changed the story so many times—with each new telling, they got more and more daring, more and more clever—that we’ll never know for sure how it really happened. But by the time the calvary showed up, Dad and Al had successfully handcuffed the robber without firing a shot, according to the official record. No one was hurt, everyone lived happily ever after, and Dad and Al got commendations.
That night, Mom and Gloria threw a big barbecue at our house, and all the families on the block came to give Dad and Al a hero’s welcome. I remember Lolly and I being so proud that we took turns sitting on Dad’s and Al’s laps for the entire party.
It was after that that Al started coming around even when Dad wasn’t home. I remember, even at eleven and twelve, wondering if things weren’t good with him and Aunt Gloria.
Gloria was the opposite of Mom, who stayed at home, always baking cookies and volunteering at Lolly’s and my school. Even back then, it was a novelty to have a stay-at-home mom. Most moms worked. Los Angeles is an expensive place to live, and one salary isn’t usually enough to cut it.
Sometimes, to add a little to the coffers, Mom would freelance for a neighbor who had her own organization business. Together, they would go to people’s homes and whip messy garages into shape or reorganize closets and storage sheds. Once, they even did a hoarder’s house, Mom regaling us with stories about how the woman had taken over an entire bedroom with shipping pallets of every shape and size. She told Mom that she couldn’t stand the thought of throwing away perfectly good wood.
But the organization jobs were few and far between. And Mom liked it that way, because she wanted to be home for Lolly, Dad, and me.
