Stars for Daddy's Little Girl
Lennie and Ed were visiting the sister of a suspect in a homicide. As they stood in the entry way of her small apartment, they could see the living room and kitchen behind her. She asked them to come in to the kitchen and sit down. As Lennie moved further into the apartment, a paper tacked up on the fridge beneath a magnet caught his attention and took him down memory lane. It was a 1st grader's spelling test, on that paper they gave to little kids who were still learning to print. The child had gotten every word right and so her teacher had given her a gold star.
It was that gold star that caused Lennie's flashback. Funny how such a small thing could send him back 25 years. Cathy's 1st grade teacher had emphasized to the parents of her students how important it was for children to be read to and to start reading themselves. To help the parents encourage their children to read, she'd given them a small sheet containing colored stars and a mimeographed calendar. She encouraged them to give the child a star every time they read a story out loud to Mommy or Daddy.
That sheet of stars sat on the table next to his recliner along with a stack of children's books. Cathy would brush her teeth and put her pajamas on and then clamber up on to her Daddy's lap. Lennie would listen to her read The Cat in the Hat or The Little Engine That Could or Curious George, and then he'd peel a star off the sheet and put it on the calendar. Then he'd pick up another children's book and Cathy would put her arms around his neck and her legs around his chest and he'd carry her to her bed and read to her. He read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Charlotte's Web or the Velveteen Rabbit.
At some point Cathy would ask him to sing her a song. Lennie tried to get out of singing to Cathy. It wasn't that he was a bad singer, it was that Gloria had always been the one to sing lullabies to Cathy. Somehow his singing to her just made it more painful to him that Gloria wasn't at home with him and Cathy where she belonged, but was instead "at a class".
Somehow, he couldn't recall how, Cathy talked him into a deal, she could "trade-in" two stars for a song. Lennie figured that meant he only had to sing to her every other night, that didn't seem too bad to him. That's when he found out that Daddy's little girl was very clever. Her teacher also gave stars out for perfect spelling papers and math tests. So Cathy began bringing her school papers with her when it was storytime, so Daddy would have to sing to her almost every night. And he would, and then after he tucked her in he'd grab a tumbler and a bottle of scotch and try to drink himself to oblivion before Gloria returned from "class".
Ed realized his partner had "zoned' out for a while but decided not to make a big deal of it. 'Old Spice' had covered for him in a lot of different circumstances, so he owed him a few. Maybe he'd ask him about it later, maybe not. If he knew Lennie, and he thought he did now, it was probably something to do with his daughter Cathy. It didn't seem like there was an end to the man's pain over his daughter and so many things that seemed to trigger it.
Lennie came back to himself and realized that Ed had pretty much gotten everything he could from the woman and was wrapping up the interview. As they left the apartment, he turned to Ed and said "You get a gold star for covering for me back there, but no trading them in".