Rosalind
This story and all themes and ideas contained in said story are the sole
ownership of J.L. Scott. Any copyright infringements can be prosecuted in a
court of law.
To borrow a phrase: NYPD Blue no mine......no permission..no money, no sue, please? AN: I know this skips around a lot...I told you!
John opened the door and stepped in. Rosalind was in the courtyard, playing with the sidewalk chalks Grace had given her. Today was the first day it had really been warm enough to go outside for any length of time.
"Hi, John!" Grace greeted him from her sink, where he could see she was talking on the phone.
"No, not John. John!" she told whoever she was talking to, "He just walked in" John gave her a quizzical look as he opened the fridge and grabbed the bag of baby carrots she kept for munching on. He leaned up against the counter while she dried her dishes and rolled her eyes.
"Yeah, he has a key, so what? Oh, please! You're neurotic, you know that?" She stuck her tongue out at the wall, which John assumed she was pretending was the other half of her conversation.
"Not tonight!" she suddenly said forcefully, "I have play practice" she recovered, "We'll be there Saturday, that'll just have to be soon enough for you." She paused while whoever it was made a comment.
"You know why, and you know I have good cause. Look, I've gotta go. I'll see you Saturday, all right?" She put her towel down and closed the last cupboard while she waited for a response.
"Yeah. Fine. Love you too. Bye" she said quickly and a beep turned the phone off. John handed her a carrot. She seemed kind of frazzled.
"What was that all about?" he asked. She crunched and rolled her eyes.
"My brother" she shivered, "Scary lot, those" John decided not to comment. There was something about Grace's brothers that she kept hidden very well, some secret that made her jumpy and obtuse whenever they talked about them. Although she had several pictures of her parents sitting around her apartment, there were none of her brothers. And Grace was one of those people who took pictures of EVERYthing. Whatever it was though, it had John worried. He was a cop, after all, and he tended to think up the worst scenarios. Wealthy brothers? Irish, so they weren't part of the Mob, but there was nothing to say they couldn't be part of some other kind of criminal organization. She had said one of her brothers, Andrew was it? was a social worker, but that could be some kind of cover.
He shoved the suspicions off. Grace come from a family of criminals? It was laughable. It had to be something else.
"You have play practice tonight?" he asked, putting the carrots back in the fridge, "Does that mean no dinner?" It was Saturday, so neither of them had to work, which was nice. Rosalind was going to CCD for an hour so they'd have that time alone, and he figured they'd all go for dinner afterwards. But it sounded like that might not happen. Grace directed the fall plays and spring musicals at the local high school, and for the past two months she'd had practice practically every night. She said the spring musical was a bigger deal than the fall play, which he had gone to see and had been impressed with, for a high school production. The spring musical had a larger budget though and so he fully expected it to be spectacular. It had better be, with all the time it ate up! But Grace loved it, and he couldn't deny that the frenzy was perfect for her. Oh, she might complain about being over worked, but she loved it, he knew. She was one of those people who loved to have something to do every second of every day.
"No, of course not!" she answered, peering out the window to check on Rosalind down below, "Practice is from three to seven, so you can drop Rosalind off and then come pick me up" She dropped onto her green couch and blew a puff of air out of her lungs.
"What's the matter?" he asked, plopping down next to her and putting his arm up around her shoulders. She immediately pulled her legs up and snuggled into him.
"I'm just tired" she answered.
"Yeah right" John said sarcastically, " You've been acting nervous ever since last week when you told me we were going to that family thing" He waited for her to reply but she didn't. He had to brush the hair away from her face to see that she had fallen asleep. John shook his head in wonderment. She really was tired.
Later......
John pulled the door open and stepped in. He could see light spilling from the gym doors and headed straight for them. It was eerie to be in a school at night, when no one was around and the lights were all off. He pulled the gym doors open and found himself at the other end from the stage. Teens were laying around, with bags of chips, school books and homework out, magazines lying open, one group was sitting in a circle playing some card game that made them giggle and laugh hysterically, and some were swapping cd's in another corner. There were two adults other than Grace, both sitting in plastic chairs facing the stage with scripts in their hands. There were four kids on stage, a girl and three boys, and they were standing, just listening to Grace, who was climbing onto the stage.
"No, no!" she said, but not harshly, "Look, she's just seen Tony die!" They were doing West Side Story. "A piece of her soul has just vanished, been extinguished. She's devastated, she's gone a little mad. It's a tragedy, think Romeo and Juliet." John found himself captivated as he watched her kneel down to provide an example. She suddenly ceased to be Grace and became Maria. Her expression revealed the sheer mind numbing pain she was experiencing with every muscle. She clutched her two hands to her heart as if she were holding the dead boy's (who wasn't there) and he could see her start to tremble.
"Tony? Tony!" she cried loudly, anguish spilling into her voice, "NO!" She shouted and everybody's head snapped up. They watched as she reached for the gun, like she was in a trance, and stood up, just looking at it, lying in her hands.
"How do you work this thing, Chino?" she asked in Maria's shocked voice, "Do you just.....pull this back?" They all heard the gun cock.
"How many bullets are left Chino?" she asked quietly, but there was now steel in her voice.
"Enough for you?" she shouted, pointing it to one side of the stage. John figured if he had been up there he would've jumped back. She sounded crazy, wild.
"And you?" She swung around, still pointing the gun, to the other side of the stage. John was astonished with her acting abilities. No, it wasn't acting. She had stopped acting, and she had become the character. There was a difference. And then she stopped. She lowered her arm and she was Grace again.
"Okay?" she handed the gun to the girl who was on stage watching, then hopped back to the floor.
"One more time" she said and stood there to watch as the boy got back on the floor. John crossed the gym quickly and came up behind her, putting a hand on the small of her back to alert her to his presence. She turned her head quickly, startled.
"Oh, hey! Is it seven already?" she asked, glancing at the clock on the wall, "Okay, guys, it's seven. We'll pick it up from here Monday! Help clean up, then you can go home!" She said loudly enough for the entire gym to hear her.
"John, can you help me with this?" she asked, picking up one end of what looked like a scoring table.
"Yeah" he replied and they carried it back up onto the stage.
"Hey, Grace, is this one of your brothers?" the girl playing Maria asked as she folded up some chairs on the stage.
"No, he's not one of my brothers" Grace informed her. Suddenly a myriad of girls seemed to be surrounding John.
"Really?" one of them asked, "This must be your boyfriend, then, the cop?"
"You girls leave him alone!" Grace warned lightly.
"He's pretty cute, Grace, but I'm telling you, you could get someone better than a cop" another girl said.
"I don't want anyone better than a cop" Grace replied.
"So when you gonna ask her to marry you?" the Maria girl asked, hands on hips.
"Yeah, you've been going out for almost a year!" another girl cried.
"For heaven's sake, Bethany, Carly, get out of here!" Grace came to rescue him, pushing the girls away and dragging him back down to the gym floor, where he was afraid he was now going to have to face the boys because they were all standing around in a group.
"Hey, Grace, what time is practice tomorrow?" one of them asked.
"We don't have practice tomorrow, Eddy, can you READ a schedule?" Grace told him.
"I lost it" Eddy replied.
"Get one from Helen" Grace instructed him, picking her coat up off the floor.
"She already gave me three!" Eddy objected. Grace just rolled her eyes and turned the lights off as she ushered the last few kids out the door.
"Bye Helen!" she called at one of the other directors as she locked up.
"Sorry about that" she apologized, looping her arm through his as they headed to the car. They were going for coffee before they had to pick Rosalind up.
"I was starting to wonder if they'd settle for my driver's license or if I'd have to produce a birth certificate and pay stub" John joked. Grace laughed.
They settled at a cozy little table with their coffees at about 7:30. That nervousness had returned to Grace's countenance as she took a sip.
"John? You know how we have that family thing Saturday?" He nodded, "Well, there's, um, something I should probably tell you." He waited for her to continue.
"You know how, whenever you ask about my brothers I make some stupid comment that's not really an answer and then change the subject?"
"Yeah" he said, sipping from his coffee.
"Well, that's cause I, well, I didn't want you to know....it usually scares..." she stopped herself, shut her eyes, then opened them.
"I have nine brothers, John" she said. That was the big secret? They weren't mobsters, or terrorists, or car thieves or anything like that? John felt relieved....................wait. Did she say NINE brothers?
"Nine?" he repeated.
"They tend to scare boys off. I generally don't take men I like home, because when I do, I generally don't ever see them again" Grace told him meekly, waiting for him to say something else.
"Nine brothers?" John said again, "Wow. That's....a lot of brothers" Her expression told him that wasn't all though.
"They're...all...older" she added. Nine older brothers. Nine! He'd dated girls with older brothers before. Usually, combined with a Dad and the occasional uncle, one brother was enough of a menace to tread carefully. But Grace was Irish, which meant a big, close family. A dad, at least three or four uncles, maybe from both sides of the family, and nine brothers! Nine protective brothers too. Weren't they the ones paying for her apartment because they hadn't like the neighborhood of the last one?
"Well, I think we're going to have an interesting time Saturday" he said.
"You're not going to run away, are you?" she asked. That's what she had been worried about all this time. That he'd do what every one else in their right mind would do and run away, screaming, from the prospect of nine protective older brothers, and the likely hood of a good beating. But he wasn' t in his right mind. He was in love.
"No, I'm not going to run away. I love you" he said, caressing her hand, "Even if I have to face nine older brothers" She smiled happily at him.
"Well, you might as well start telling me about them" he said.
"Goody!" she said and reached in her purse to draw out a picture. She pulled her chair around to sit beside him. He could see the picture was of her family, all twelve members. Some of the men were red heads like she was, some had dark black hair like their mother. All of them had red faces and big smiles, with the exception of two who seemed to have hard won tans.
"Okay, this is Peter, he's the oldest. He was the only one born in Ireland. He's fifteen years older than me" she started, pointing to a red head.
"Fifteen years?" John repeated.
"My parents weren't planning on me" she explained, and went on, "He's a Priest. His homilies are great but they are sooooo long!" She babbled on, pointing to each man in turn, and telling some little thing about them. Paul was the second oldest, fourteen years older, and a lawyer, despite family objections and a disownment from one of his third cousins in Ireland. Mathew and Mark were twins, Mathew was a teacher and had three kids, Mark was a mechanic with his own business and four kids. Luke was a wall street man and turned a pretty profit. John was another priest.
"It's gonna be funny, having two Johns in the house!" Grace exclaimed when she told him that. Then there was Andrew, the social worker, and lastly, Patrick and Michael, more twins, who were both painters and construction workers, hence the tans.
"Well?" she asked in the car on the way to pick Rosalind up. John looked over at her.
"Well, I think I have some homework to do" he said and she laughed.
To borrow a phrase: NYPD Blue no mine......no permission..no money, no sue, please? AN: I know this skips around a lot...I told you!
John opened the door and stepped in. Rosalind was in the courtyard, playing with the sidewalk chalks Grace had given her. Today was the first day it had really been warm enough to go outside for any length of time.
"Hi, John!" Grace greeted him from her sink, where he could see she was talking on the phone.
"No, not John. John!" she told whoever she was talking to, "He just walked in" John gave her a quizzical look as he opened the fridge and grabbed the bag of baby carrots she kept for munching on. He leaned up against the counter while she dried her dishes and rolled her eyes.
"Yeah, he has a key, so what? Oh, please! You're neurotic, you know that?" She stuck her tongue out at the wall, which John assumed she was pretending was the other half of her conversation.
"Not tonight!" she suddenly said forcefully, "I have play practice" she recovered, "We'll be there Saturday, that'll just have to be soon enough for you." She paused while whoever it was made a comment.
"You know why, and you know I have good cause. Look, I've gotta go. I'll see you Saturday, all right?" She put her towel down and closed the last cupboard while she waited for a response.
"Yeah. Fine. Love you too. Bye" she said quickly and a beep turned the phone off. John handed her a carrot. She seemed kind of frazzled.
"What was that all about?" he asked. She crunched and rolled her eyes.
"My brother" she shivered, "Scary lot, those" John decided not to comment. There was something about Grace's brothers that she kept hidden very well, some secret that made her jumpy and obtuse whenever they talked about them. Although she had several pictures of her parents sitting around her apartment, there were none of her brothers. And Grace was one of those people who took pictures of EVERYthing. Whatever it was though, it had John worried. He was a cop, after all, and he tended to think up the worst scenarios. Wealthy brothers? Irish, so they weren't part of the Mob, but there was nothing to say they couldn't be part of some other kind of criminal organization. She had said one of her brothers, Andrew was it? was a social worker, but that could be some kind of cover.
He shoved the suspicions off. Grace come from a family of criminals? It was laughable. It had to be something else.
"You have play practice tonight?" he asked, putting the carrots back in the fridge, "Does that mean no dinner?" It was Saturday, so neither of them had to work, which was nice. Rosalind was going to CCD for an hour so they'd have that time alone, and he figured they'd all go for dinner afterwards. But it sounded like that might not happen. Grace directed the fall plays and spring musicals at the local high school, and for the past two months she'd had practice practically every night. She said the spring musical was a bigger deal than the fall play, which he had gone to see and had been impressed with, for a high school production. The spring musical had a larger budget though and so he fully expected it to be spectacular. It had better be, with all the time it ate up! But Grace loved it, and he couldn't deny that the frenzy was perfect for her. Oh, she might complain about being over worked, but she loved it, he knew. She was one of those people who loved to have something to do every second of every day.
"No, of course not!" she answered, peering out the window to check on Rosalind down below, "Practice is from three to seven, so you can drop Rosalind off and then come pick me up" She dropped onto her green couch and blew a puff of air out of her lungs.
"What's the matter?" he asked, plopping down next to her and putting his arm up around her shoulders. She immediately pulled her legs up and snuggled into him.
"I'm just tired" she answered.
"Yeah right" John said sarcastically, " You've been acting nervous ever since last week when you told me we were going to that family thing" He waited for her to reply but she didn't. He had to brush the hair away from her face to see that she had fallen asleep. John shook his head in wonderment. She really was tired.
Later......
John pulled the door open and stepped in. He could see light spilling from the gym doors and headed straight for them. It was eerie to be in a school at night, when no one was around and the lights were all off. He pulled the gym doors open and found himself at the other end from the stage. Teens were laying around, with bags of chips, school books and homework out, magazines lying open, one group was sitting in a circle playing some card game that made them giggle and laugh hysterically, and some were swapping cd's in another corner. There were two adults other than Grace, both sitting in plastic chairs facing the stage with scripts in their hands. There were four kids on stage, a girl and three boys, and they were standing, just listening to Grace, who was climbing onto the stage.
"No, no!" she said, but not harshly, "Look, she's just seen Tony die!" They were doing West Side Story. "A piece of her soul has just vanished, been extinguished. She's devastated, she's gone a little mad. It's a tragedy, think Romeo and Juliet." John found himself captivated as he watched her kneel down to provide an example. She suddenly ceased to be Grace and became Maria. Her expression revealed the sheer mind numbing pain she was experiencing with every muscle. She clutched her two hands to her heart as if she were holding the dead boy's (who wasn't there) and he could see her start to tremble.
"Tony? Tony!" she cried loudly, anguish spilling into her voice, "NO!" She shouted and everybody's head snapped up. They watched as she reached for the gun, like she was in a trance, and stood up, just looking at it, lying in her hands.
"How do you work this thing, Chino?" she asked in Maria's shocked voice, "Do you just.....pull this back?" They all heard the gun cock.
"How many bullets are left Chino?" she asked quietly, but there was now steel in her voice.
"Enough for you?" she shouted, pointing it to one side of the stage. John figured if he had been up there he would've jumped back. She sounded crazy, wild.
"And you?" She swung around, still pointing the gun, to the other side of the stage. John was astonished with her acting abilities. No, it wasn't acting. She had stopped acting, and she had become the character. There was a difference. And then she stopped. She lowered her arm and she was Grace again.
"Okay?" she handed the gun to the girl who was on stage watching, then hopped back to the floor.
"One more time" she said and stood there to watch as the boy got back on the floor. John crossed the gym quickly and came up behind her, putting a hand on the small of her back to alert her to his presence. She turned her head quickly, startled.
"Oh, hey! Is it seven already?" she asked, glancing at the clock on the wall, "Okay, guys, it's seven. We'll pick it up from here Monday! Help clean up, then you can go home!" She said loudly enough for the entire gym to hear her.
"John, can you help me with this?" she asked, picking up one end of what looked like a scoring table.
"Yeah" he replied and they carried it back up onto the stage.
"Hey, Grace, is this one of your brothers?" the girl playing Maria asked as she folded up some chairs on the stage.
"No, he's not one of my brothers" Grace informed her. Suddenly a myriad of girls seemed to be surrounding John.
"Really?" one of them asked, "This must be your boyfriend, then, the cop?"
"You girls leave him alone!" Grace warned lightly.
"He's pretty cute, Grace, but I'm telling you, you could get someone better than a cop" another girl said.
"I don't want anyone better than a cop" Grace replied.
"So when you gonna ask her to marry you?" the Maria girl asked, hands on hips.
"Yeah, you've been going out for almost a year!" another girl cried.
"For heaven's sake, Bethany, Carly, get out of here!" Grace came to rescue him, pushing the girls away and dragging him back down to the gym floor, where he was afraid he was now going to have to face the boys because they were all standing around in a group.
"Hey, Grace, what time is practice tomorrow?" one of them asked.
"We don't have practice tomorrow, Eddy, can you READ a schedule?" Grace told him.
"I lost it" Eddy replied.
"Get one from Helen" Grace instructed him, picking her coat up off the floor.
"She already gave me three!" Eddy objected. Grace just rolled her eyes and turned the lights off as she ushered the last few kids out the door.
"Bye Helen!" she called at one of the other directors as she locked up.
"Sorry about that" she apologized, looping her arm through his as they headed to the car. They were going for coffee before they had to pick Rosalind up.
"I was starting to wonder if they'd settle for my driver's license or if I'd have to produce a birth certificate and pay stub" John joked. Grace laughed.
They settled at a cozy little table with their coffees at about 7:30. That nervousness had returned to Grace's countenance as she took a sip.
"John? You know how we have that family thing Saturday?" He nodded, "Well, there's, um, something I should probably tell you." He waited for her to continue.
"You know how, whenever you ask about my brothers I make some stupid comment that's not really an answer and then change the subject?"
"Yeah" he said, sipping from his coffee.
"Well, that's cause I, well, I didn't want you to know....it usually scares..." she stopped herself, shut her eyes, then opened them.
"I have nine brothers, John" she said. That was the big secret? They weren't mobsters, or terrorists, or car thieves or anything like that? John felt relieved....................wait. Did she say NINE brothers?
"Nine?" he repeated.
"They tend to scare boys off. I generally don't take men I like home, because when I do, I generally don't ever see them again" Grace told him meekly, waiting for him to say something else.
"Nine brothers?" John said again, "Wow. That's....a lot of brothers" Her expression told him that wasn't all though.
"They're...all...older" she added. Nine older brothers. Nine! He'd dated girls with older brothers before. Usually, combined with a Dad and the occasional uncle, one brother was enough of a menace to tread carefully. But Grace was Irish, which meant a big, close family. A dad, at least three or four uncles, maybe from both sides of the family, and nine brothers! Nine protective brothers too. Weren't they the ones paying for her apartment because they hadn't like the neighborhood of the last one?
"Well, I think we're going to have an interesting time Saturday" he said.
"You're not going to run away, are you?" she asked. That's what she had been worried about all this time. That he'd do what every one else in their right mind would do and run away, screaming, from the prospect of nine protective older brothers, and the likely hood of a good beating. But he wasn' t in his right mind. He was in love.
"No, I'm not going to run away. I love you" he said, caressing her hand, "Even if I have to face nine older brothers" She smiled happily at him.
"Well, you might as well start telling me about them" he said.
"Goody!" she said and reached in her purse to draw out a picture. She pulled her chair around to sit beside him. He could see the picture was of her family, all twelve members. Some of the men were red heads like she was, some had dark black hair like their mother. All of them had red faces and big smiles, with the exception of two who seemed to have hard won tans.
"Okay, this is Peter, he's the oldest. He was the only one born in Ireland. He's fifteen years older than me" she started, pointing to a red head.
"Fifteen years?" John repeated.
"My parents weren't planning on me" she explained, and went on, "He's a Priest. His homilies are great but they are sooooo long!" She babbled on, pointing to each man in turn, and telling some little thing about them. Paul was the second oldest, fourteen years older, and a lawyer, despite family objections and a disownment from one of his third cousins in Ireland. Mathew and Mark were twins, Mathew was a teacher and had three kids, Mark was a mechanic with his own business and four kids. Luke was a wall street man and turned a pretty profit. John was another priest.
"It's gonna be funny, having two Johns in the house!" Grace exclaimed when she told him that. Then there was Andrew, the social worker, and lastly, Patrick and Michael, more twins, who were both painters and construction workers, hence the tans.
"Well?" she asked in the car on the way to pick Rosalind up. John looked over at her.
"Well, I think I have some homework to do" he said and she laughed.