Silver & Gold: Part Two
—-xxx—-
Kate hoists the bag onto her shoulder and raps her knuckles on the back door of Church Kitchen, adjusting the nose of her mask to keep it from slipping again. Dan sees her and comes to the door, pulls off the sanitary gloves and unlocks the door to let her in. "Kate, good to see you again. How's the baby-sitting going?"
She opens the bag so he won't see her eyes, grateful the mask mostly hides her face. "Good, going good. Mia's living with us for a bit longer."
"Ah." But he doesn't comment. Dan Jordan has been at Church Kitchen long enough, and seen enough, that he knows family is whatever you can make of it. Since his own son won't talk to him, she knows he understands the value of not having to explain. All he does is take the bundles of fresh bread Castle has made, hefting them in his hands. "Wow, he's getting good at this, isn't he? How many this time?"
She rolls her eyes a little, but she's proud of him, how he rallied during lockdown and still keeps them all going. "Ten for this Sunday's dinner. Is that enough?"
"Yup, that will do us. Tell him thanks. You guys gonna be here?"
She shakes her head. "But we're hoping to bring Mia to one of the lunches during the week. Soon as Rick feels comfortable in a masked crowd."
"Yeah." Dan tugs his short white beard beneath the paper mask and winces. "Well and. We have a guy who's been coming lately… I'll have to point him out to you."
She moves to the fridge, helps him put the homemade bread in with the other perishables. "You know I can handle things, should it come to that."
He slants her a look which she knows is a reminder that they have a firm non-violence policy, and she takes it without comment, because he's right to look at her slant, because she has had that itch to 'protect' everyone, even though that would be the worst idea. Especially here, where the those facing rough times and are currently unhoused come to for security. She knows. "I've been to your training," she reminds him. How to stand non-threateningly, keep your hands where they can be seen, modulate your tone, have back-up stand six feet away, don't smile when you have to kick someone out for breaking the rules.
"You have," Dan says. In the pause, the moment of silence, is unspoken but you'll always be a cop. "Bring Mia. I'll point him out to you and you'll just have to steer her clear."
"How many are steering clear already?" she asks. She can't help herself; she is a cop, to her bones, even though the NYPD kindly asked her to leave. To fall on her sword for them.
Dan sighs and closes the fridge door. "He's white, about six feet, dirty beard, skinny, holes in the knees of his jeans, pocked face, probably some meth abuse. So far, no one has been able to make a connection, or get his name. He shouts, talks to people who aren't there, starts conversations as if he knows you and it's all negative. We've had to ask him to leave for breaking the rules—every single time. He's been coming to the lunches and avoids the Sunday dinners for the preaching."
She chuckles dryly. Also why she and Rick haven't come to Sunday dinners. "I see."
"Kelsey says she has a bad feeling about him," Dan finally admits, sighing.
"Oh?" Kelsey is pretty sharp; if Dan's daughter, the former litigator-turned-CFO of the soup kitchen thinks the guy is someone to look out for, then she better pay attention. "Is it okay if we text you beforehand? Get the lay of the land. I'm not sure how stable Mia is without—"
She almost said without her mother, but Mia has called her momma four times this past week. And Kate didn't correct her. It slips out. She wants her mother, and Kate will do.
"Yes, please do. Me or Kelsey or even Robert. He's been keeping an eye on the guy."
"Oh, speaking of, can we borrow Robert for a job at the house?" She would rather avoid a conversation about how her cop brain is trained to see suspects and not fit for work at the soup kitchen with those experiencing homelessness. She doesn't have the energy to defend herself, not when she's not sure he's wrong. "We're trying to get a handle on all the baby stuff we've collected, and Rick bought this organization unit we're clueless to put together. I thought Robert might bring his boys to the house too."
"Up to him." Dan doesn't balk at her change of subject. "We can only afford to keep him on part-time, so I'm sure he'd appreciate the work."
"Okay, good. Is he back in the sanctuary or out—"
"He's hauling out dead wood from the back of the property. In the last storm, we had a lightning strike that started a fire—"
"God," she croaks. "Is everyone okay? Was there damage?"
"Some damage to the back corner of the dormitories we were building," Dan scowls. He rubs one hand into the other, where his arthritis bothers him, and Kate senses just how far removed she and Rick have been these past two years. Her being a cop, Rick's urge to push money into everyone's hands; they weren't an easy fit. And when Covid pulled them out of their regular routines, and lockdown stranded Alexis in LA, their sudden parenthood made life too chaotic. While moving into the Hamptons house put them closer to Dan and his charity here at Church Kitchen, it didn't send them up the village road to actually do the work. They closed ranks, huddled around their orphaned girl, shut out the rest of the world.
"What do you need for the building?" she says quickly, rousing from her thoughts. "Tell me and—"
"We need workers," he says softly. "Laborers in the vineyard, Kate. We have the money; it was part of the fund, actually, you guys started for us in 2015. But labor is..." He shakes his head; she knows there have been news reports about rising costs, about the production shortages, about restaurants not able to keep their underpaid staff. She never thought about it in terms of jobs like this—building dormitories for temporary housing.
"Okay," she admits defeat. "Will you let us know if we can?"
"You just focus on that baby girl," Dan tells her. "And the bread, of course." He winks and gestures for the door, a subtle hint that he has 300 plus sandwiches to make and probably a shortage of volunteers there too. "They look forward to that bread of Rick's."
She's supposed to do a thousand things at home, not the least of which is round up Mia so Rick can get back to the book.
But she moves to stand on the rubber mat before the shining stainless steel of the work counter. Already the loaves of donated sandwich bread are piled up and about to topple over, the peanut butter tubs, the huge ones from discount chains, are open and waiting. The guys who come to the soup kitchen for lunch really hate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but it's the easiest, and also the most-often donated foods from grocery stories and Wal-Marts. It's reliable, steady, dependable, and good protein. She bets Dan is planning on chili or soup to go with it—especially if he has help.
"You making sandwiches today?" she says, but it's not really a question. She slides her bag off her shoulder and pushes it under the counter, on the bottom rack where she used to, back in 2015 when they were here to help plate so many of those lunches. She tugs two plastic gloves from the box and nods to Dan. "I'll start the assembly line. You need hands, I've got two."
He doesn't tell her no, doesn't say go back to your child—which isn't her child anyway. He just cracks open three more jars of peanut butter while she opens bags of bread to lay out slices on the gleaming stainless steel.
—-xxx—-
The garage smells like salt again. She plugs in the car and glances around, but Robert has already smelled it too.
"I'll poke around," he says, before she can ask. "Bad storm coming this weekend."
"Thank you," she says, checking the insert. The plastic casing around the plug broke when Mia's big wheel bike ran over it—the girl is a natural disaster—and it doesn't always fit right into the housing unit these days. "Hey, does Shawn and Will want to come by and swim later?"
"Don't wanna bother you with them," Robert says, shifting the garbage cans to check the baseboards.
"They're not a bother," she counters. Robert's boys are only slightly more destructive than Mia, but they're polite and happy; their cheerfulness can overcome any of the girl's moods. "Please, tell them to come on. Or Rick can drive down and pick them up."
"I'll relay the message," he says. He's still stiff and formal with them from time to time, like they didn't all weather the covid lockdown together, but she understands he's rigid about the charity. It's not, but it's hard to convince a proud man that he's doing them a favor as much as they're doing him one.
She rolls her eyes at the male psyche.
"I found it," Robert says grimly.
She comes around the car and finds him at the side panel of the water heater. A chewed hole, a scattering of what used to be drywall and is now just shavings. "Great," she sighs. "Um. There's chicken wire in the shed—"
"And I have drywall at the Kitchen," he says. Glances at her face. "Don't fuss. You write enough checks you're owed some drywall."
She flattens her mouth but doesn't argue with him. "Thanks."
"If your man will pick us up, me and the boys, for swimming later, then I can bring it in the back of his truck."
"That works," she agrees. "Let me show you the kit he bought for Mia's room; it's through here. It has directions but they're in Swedish."
"You went to that Ikea."
"No," she laughs. "Actually it was something he found online. It's rainbow colors, all the shelves, and it's supposed to build the rainbow as you set it up—"
"Rainbow? Don't seem to me that a rainbow is gonna be functional shelving in a closet."
"You and me both, Robert." She glances at him and he's smoothing back a chuckle, apparently still mystified by her husband's ways.
So is she, from time to time.
She leads Robert through the garage, bypassing Castle's electric truck, which was an exorbitant cost she didn't have the heart to deny him, threading their way around the four wheeler she refuses to allow him to play on after be broke his arm last year, and finally through the piles of boxes that used to be in the storage unit down in the basement of the loft apartment.
"What are these?" Robert halts just as she's bending to inspect the hastily-returned-to-its-box closet organization system, and she has to straighten up and turn to see what's caught his attention.
She laughs at the shock arresting his face, realizes Castle must have been digging through their stored stuff. "Um, really long story, but it's the nativity scene minus the holy family."
Robert lays a hand on a blow-mold plastic camel that comes to his waist; on its hump sits a stoic wise man, turbaned and with a box of gold. The paint is flecked around the camel's mouth, making him look slightly deranged, while the wise man has ruby red lips like a woman. All of it is creepy, really, and very much them.
"Where did this come from? I didn't put these out for you last year." Robert was the one who insisted on installing their outdoor decorations for Christmas, and he refused to take payment for it, saying the display had made his boys happy.
"Oh, Robert, you don't know Rick very well then. He has a crap-ton of Christmas decorations. Even I haven't seen it all, because he doesn't want to overwhelm me."
Robert grunts, opening a man-sized plastic container to reveal one of the two nutcrackers Rick used to put up in the loft. Robert jerks back at their walnut-cracking teeth.
"I guess you figured you'd seen it all?" Kate chuckles.
Robert shakes his head, giving her a look, and moves on to the next storage container, this one with the rest of the blow molds in the nativity scene. "You really did go all out."
Kate peers in. "Yeah, this was actually a prank I pulled on Rick our first year of marriage, first Christmas. I stuck this guy in the hall outside his door—our door—and had a whole scene of the wise men like they were coming to our apartment to pay their respects."
Robert gives her a sideways look and his face goes still, as it does when he's hiding some discomfort.
Oh, he thinks she was pregnant. And lost the baby.
It's not wrong. It's just not accurate. "No, no, just a joke. I had the rest of the nativity up on the roof, the shepherds, the angels, but it was all I could get my hands on at the time. He put that silly nutcracker in our bathroom, scared the shit out of me."
"Oh." A little twist of his lips which is what passes for laughter from Robert. He runs his hand down the back of one of the shepherds, fiddles with the socket where the light bulb is mounted in its back. "You're missing some lights."
"Yeah." She doesn't try to explain again that they're not really Christmas lawn decor; Robert seems absorbed by their existence though. "If you want to put them out at the church, feel free. I think Alexis bought us one of the reindeer as a joke one Christmas…"
Robert looks up, at her face, as she trails off.
She flinches and gestures to the area of the four-car garage that is now taken over by storage from the loft when it sold. "Take whatever you think you might need, Robert. In the meantime. Here's the closet organization kit. All the pieces—yeah, we took it all out and tried it ourselves." She makes a face as he raises an eyebrow at a dowel sticking up from one of the bright green boards. "I told you we made a mess of it."
"I can make it right," Robert says slowly, giving her a fierce nod. The way her officers used to do when she strode into roll call in the mornings at the Twelfth, none of them wanting to disappoint her, wanting to make her proud of them.
She swallows back that ache and nods in return, just as she would have one of her officers. If they were still hers. "Thanks. I'm heading inside, come find me if you have trouble with it. Rick's trying to finish the edits to his book."
"Will do." She sees him bite off the ma'am that wants to come after it, and she gives him a warm smile as she heads inside once more.
She forgot all about the nativity blow molds. There were sheep, some shepherds, the wise men, and even a few winged angels with unearthly glowing faces and cherub cheeks. It was all so hilarious at the time, so very amusing, waiting the whole day for him to take out the trash and find the surprise waiting for him.
When did they stop doing that? Surprising each other.
Lately it's been everything they can do to keep their heads above water.
—-xxx—-