Every day it starts again
You cannot say if you're happy
You keep trying to be
Try harder, maybe this is not your year
Not Your Year - The Weepies
Mary Beth gets married at 20, before she finishes school. Her mother tells her to drop out, to focus on Harvey and the life they're going to build together, but it feels like bad advice, even if it's coming from a good place. From a woman who never worked a day in her life outside of her own home.
Mary Beth feels like she's marrying young even though she's one of the last from the group of her high school girlfriends, most of whom didn't make it out of their teens single. Catherine O'Sullivan is six months younger than Mary Beth and already has two kids and a black eye once a month. But Harvey is her guy, her steady anchor in a world that seems like an ocean in the midst of a storm. She's pretty sure she wants to marry him - who else would she marry? And he deserves a reward for being so patient. Countless dates, many a night spent in the back seat of someone else's car where his hand never wandered past her skirt hem.
So she marries at 20 and because he can't keep his hands off of her, graduates from college six months along with Harvey Jr. But she graduates - first woman in her family, too.
Sex is fine, if not what she expected. She expected fireworks and gets at best, a candle that burns steady if not bright. Not bad, but different. Harvey gets fireworks. Harvey wants every night to be the fourth of July and she goes along with it for awhile, until the pregnancy makes her sick and then she tells him no. She knows she got a good man when he agrees.
They do okay until Harvey Jr. is born and then money is always tight and it's always a source of worry and friction and so she does what makes the most logical sense. She starts looking for a job. Her mother-in-law thinks that the baby should be her job but Mary Beth thinks it's only for show because when they ask Muriel to baby sit Harvey Jr. during the day when they're both at work, she happily agrees.
Mary Beth doesn't want to be someone's secretary. She doesn't want to clean people's teeth or teach children or go back to school for nursing. She doesn't want to work somewhere that she can't wear pants if she wants to. She doesn't want to do busywork or sit in an office all day, thinking about her baby and the sunshine she's missing and Harvey up on tall buildings, laughing with his buddies and eating liverwurst sandwiches, going out for a beer after their shift ends. She wants a challenge, excitement, she wants to help people, if possible.
She see's the recruitment advertisement on the television while she's nursing the baby. It's geared toward men and a little grainy on their old black and white set, but she sees it as clear as if were on a thirty inch screen in technicolor - there in the back of the crowd in full uniform - a woman.
The next week, she joins the force.
oooo
She can't help being smart. She's no rocket scientist but she's practical and hard headed and unfailingly honest. She knows good from bad and right from wrong and she doesn't take bribes or disappear during her shifts. She even ignores the behavior of most of the men on the force, lets it all roll off like water off a duck's back, complaining only when she feels threatened - like the time they left her alone with a known rapist in loose cuffs but taking the locker full of sanitary pads colored with red permanent marker in stride. That one, she thinks, is particularly stupid. It's the men who are afraid of blood, not her.
They put her on a desk when she gets pregnant with Michael, which stings but also is a kind of relief as her feet swell and her back aches. Harvey Jr. was an easy pregnancy compared to this and a sweet, good natured baby and is now a thoughtful, kind little boy. With the baby she carries now, she's swollen and moody and putting on weight like a prizefighter trying to go up a class. She worries this second child won't be so easy.
It's a hard birth; Michael comes out with bloodshot eyes and jaundiced skin and he tears her up from stem to stern. She listens to the silence for long, agonizing seconds and then everyone sighs in relief when they hear him cry. She prays and weeps as the doctor stitches her up. Prayers of thanks and gratitude and promises that she'll earn this reprieve she's been given, she'll make sure Michael doesn't squander the gift that is his life.
She doesn't heal up quite as quickly but goes back to work because her leave is up and they're not gonna make their rent if she keeps staying home, sitting on ice packs.
She pulls her stitches the first day back running after some punk kid who jumped the subway turnstile and limps into the ladies' john with blood running down her legs and a helluva sting. The uniform pants are dark enough that it's hard to tell and they don't fit anymore anyway. She can't even button them, had put some thread into the buttonhole to loop around the button and it gave her just enough extra room that she could make the pants work. But now they're wet and smell like blood, metallic and earthy and she is crying in the stall because on top of that, her breasts have started to leak too.
That's where the blonde patrol office finds her, climbs onto the toilet in the next stall and peers over the edge.
"You're Lacey, right?" she asks.
Mary Beth wipes her nose with toilet paper and looks up. She can't even summon enough energy to be mad at what is a very blatant breach of privacy. What if she'd been peeing or worse?
"Yeah, what's it to you?" she asks.
"Not a lot of other women," the woman says. "You need some help?"
"No," Mary Beth snaps. She tries to stand up and then hisses. Her blouse is soaked through, her pants are ruined and she can't afford to get fitted for a new uniform and she can't hardly walk out of here to do anything about anything.
"You sure?" the blonde asks, laughter in her voice.
Mary Beth starts to cry again.
"Tell you what," the woman says. "You get yourself together enough to walk out of here, I'll drive you home."
"Where's your partner?" Mary Beth asks.
"Eh, he ditches me all the time," she says. "No one'll miss us."
That's how she meets Christine Cagney. Bleeding and crying and fat. Christine drives her to her doctor's and leaves her there, at Mary Beth's request. Harvey picks her up and takes her home and she washes her pants out in the sink, desperate to get more wear out of them. Then she sits on an ice pack on the sofa and nurses Michael who drinks and drinks, milk running down his cheek and her breast until finally, he's sated. He looks up at her with crossed eyes and a dreamy expression and she hears herself laugh, a loud bark into the quiet apartment.
"You're all right, kid," she says, happy in spite of it all.
oooo
She catches a killer and they make her a detective. She didn't realize that it was a goal of hers until after it happens but once it does, she can't help but be proud of herself. It happens at a good time too - both boys in school and Harvey's bad back has put him out of his regular job so they need the money. She gets sent to the 14th precinct but Lieutenant Samuels doesn't assign her a partner. He hems and haws about it, lets her tag along with other detectives for a few months, lobs her easy cases, tells her you can't just pair anyone up, you gotta wait for the right fit.
She realizes that they were benching her until they got another woman. Maybe none of the guys wanted to work with her, maybe Samuels didn't even give it a thought, but the next Detective they get after her is Christine Cagney and Samuels says, "See? Ain't this a match made in heaven?"
It should feel unjust but because it's her, the blonde from the bathroom, it doesn't.
Once they're alone, Cagney says, "How's your vagina these days?" and Mary Beth laughs and laughs and she doesn't worry about the partnership not working out anymore.
oooo
Harve used to call her MB when they were still going together in school. He kept it up through the wedding and into married life, only stopping once Harvey Jr. was born. Like having the baby made her a real woman, somehow, like someone who could make a whole person inside of her deserved the respect of having her whole name, spoken. Well, most of it. No one calls her Mary Elizabeth besides her mother.
Chris calls her MB once, crouching down to look at a dead wino in an alley at nine thirty on a Wednesday morning. Too early for so much despair, too soon after the last homicide to catch another. Of course, Chris had been ecstatic, wants only the worst murders, gets off on the thrill of it all.
"Take a look at this, MB, look here, on his neck," she says. The old nickname jolts Mary Beth back in time, back to being fifteen again, going out with Harvey, a full two grades ahead of her, the excitement, the anticipation of it, how she was certain him asking her out meant forever and now here they are, two babies later and sometimes it's nothing how she thought it would be, not the mornings or the weeks or the nights, none of it.
"You hate that," Chris says, interpreting the look on her face incorrectly. "Sorry, I won't do it anymore."
"Nah, it's okay," Mary Beth assures her, but Chris never calls her that again.
In the car, crawling down 10th avenue in traffic, Chris hits the wheel and says, "I'm never gonna make my date. Damn it! He's so cute, too."
"The same guy from last week? The architect?" Mary Beth asks.
"No, this one is an environmental engineer," Chris says. "Whatever that means." She winks at Mary Beth like it's all some joke, though Mary Beth could no more describe the job of an environmental engineer as any other kind.
"What do you do with all these guys?" Mary Beth wonders and Chris just laughs and waggles her eyebrows.
Chris thinks about sex like Harve does, single-mindedly, always desperate to get it, always worried when the next time will come around. Mary Beth has been married for ten years now, but has no doubt that Christine Cagney has had three times the amount of sex that Mary Beth has had, and she and Harve are no slouches. Mary Beth tells everyone she has a headache that night and puts herself to bed early. She thinks about Christine and her dates, her twitchy eyebrows, her blue eyes and her bright white smile. Mary Beth's love life with Harvey is fine, she thinks, maybe it's even spectacular and she just doesn't know it because she's got nothing to compare it to.
It doesn't seem like it's spectacular. It seems fine. Lots of things are fine - their sofa that dips in the middle is fine, the meatloaf she makes every Tuesday is fine, the coffee at work is fine. It seems like this should just be more than fine.
Her hands wander. She doesn't mean it, but she's too deep in it to stop once she realizes what she's doing. She hasn't done this in years. It's candlelight and then it's fire and she thinks of Christine on her dates, laughing with that hair and those eyes and white, pearly teeth and, there, there it is, right there, yes, yes, yes.
Like the fourth of July.
She gets up extra early, goes to church to pray for forgiveness. She can't bring herself to go to confession - what would she say? She nods at Father Donnelly, struggling to meet his eye and he nods his head toward the confessional like a question but she just says, "No," puts up her hand to create even more distance between them. "Just here for a tune up, Father."
He seems satisfied enough and lets her be - but it turns out she doesn't know what to say to God either.
So she just says that she's sorry over and over again, like when Michael spills a full glass of milk across the dinner table, says it so many times that she isn't sure she even understands what she's asking for, anymore.
oooo
Chris thinks she hides the silver spoon in her mouth by talking about her cop dad, but it's one of the first things Mary Beth realizes about her gung ho partner. She comes from money. She has money. Chris always listens to Mary Beth complain about rent and braces and the heat going out or how hot it is in the summer but they don't have money to get one of those window units to keep at least one room cool. She does her partnerly duty by listening and doesn't do something stupid like offer her and Harve money.
Mary Beth does her fair share of listening, too, about unfair cases and lack of departmental resources and men, always men, who are never good enough. Too stuck up, not handsome enough, boring, bad in bed.
"What makes it good?" Mary Beth blurts before she can stop herself.
"Huh?" Christine asks. She's driving, they're going all the way to Staten Island and it's already three so they'll be in the car for a spell. Chris is never happy when she can't go at least about 45 miles per hour. This stop and go always puts her into a funk.
"In bed," Mary Beth says because in for a penny, in for a pound. "How come some guys are good and some are duds? What is it that you want, exactly?"
"The same thing any woman wants, I suppose," she says which is no help at all. They're quiet for a while and then Christine says, "Mary Beth?"
"Hmm?"
"Have you ever… I mean, other than with Harve, I mean. You ever been with anyone else?"
"I been with Harve since I was fifteen, Christine," Mary Beth says, "You know that."
"I just worry," Chris says, shaking her head. "What if I find Mr. Right and he's perfect in every single way except for in bed. How could I live?"
"Harve ain't bad," Mary Beth says, defensive suddenly like she isn't the one who started this conversation.
"Of course not," Chris says.
"And sex ain't the be all, end all of marriage," she says.
"Nobody said that it was," Chris says.
Mary Beth watches the landscape pass, cranks down the window just a little bit to get some fresh air.
"Sometimes," she says with a laugh. "Sometimes I think I'd be better off with a wife instead of a husband! Then I'm not the only one packing lunches and sewing buttons and soothing fevers, ya know?"
Chris laughs along with her and says, "Yeah, you need a wife for the house and a husband for the bedroom."
Mary Beth laughs along with her but it's forced, it's pretend because she knows that the only way she ever gets fireworks anymore is when she gives them to herself and there's nothing she needs a man for, for that. Anyone could do it - anyone with fingers and soft skin and hair like spun gold and eyes like the sky the morning after a storm.
"Pull over," she says.
"What?" Chris asks.
"Pull over, I'm gonna be sick," Mary Beth says. They just make it to the shoulder, in fact they're still rolling when Mary Beth heaves her lunch up onto the pavement.
Three days later, she's riding home on the subway from the doctor's office, staring down into her lap.
Pregnant again.
oooo
There's nothing wrong with living a life that you choose. She loves her boys and her love for Harvey is fierce, the life that they've cobbled together, the path she's chosen. It's a stressful life and not always fair, doesn't always make sense, but she loves it. And she loves Chris, too.
They go out for drinks one night. Their case is technically a victory, but it doesn't always feel that way. She usually rushes home but she feels like stretching the evening out a little. It's summer, there's still light in the sky. Christine gets a beer in a frosty mug - Mary Beth gets club soda and rests a hand on her growing stomach. She watches Christine get drunk, dark circles under her eyes. She can drink as well as any irish girl but Mary Beth thinks tonight is different, thinks tonight Chris wants to end up under the table.
"You're a good cop, Cagney," Mary Beth says when Cagney starts to slur a little, her cheeks pink. "You oughtta hear that more often. Especially from me. You're good."
Christine smiles at her, reaches out to lace their fingers together.
"I love you, Mary Beth, you know that right?"
Something in her chest aches, something lower flutters, the first movement she's felt since puking on the side of the road. Since the test coming back positive, since Harvey lifted her up and spun her around, since Michael slammed the bedroom door closed at the news.
She nods at her partner, squeezes the hand hard. "I know that, Christine, I do know it. I love you, too."
She makes sure Chris gets home safe, arm around her narrow waist, and then takes the subway home, shooting underneath the city, back toward the life that she chose. She chooses. She would choose again.