Young Wives

“Time for bed,” Michelle said in a throaty whisper and Frank’s smile echoed her own. “You carry Frankie. I’ll walk Jenna up,” she told her husband. Frank nodded, then reached out and took a Lego from her right hand.

“Did you bake these just for me?” he asked, his voice low.

“You don’t bake plastic,” Michelle said. “You extrude it.”

“I thought we’d do that later, upstairs.” He waggled his eyebrows. Michelle shook her head and moved her hand to Jenna’s shoulder.

“Come on, big girl,” she murmured to Jenna who, very reluctantly, came out of her doze and, propelled by Michelle, got on her feet.

“Bed time for Bonzo,” Frank added as he placed his sleeping son across his shoulder, cupping the boy’s head gently in one hand.

“Be careful with him. Most accidents happen in the home,” Michelle reminded him.

Upstairs, Michelle got Frankie out of his clothes and into his pajama top while Jenna got herself into bed. Michelle took pity on her firstborn and didn’t insist that Jenna wash her face and brush her teeth. Just for one night it would do. She knew just how tired Jenna felt. She looked forward to lying down herself.

When she entered their bedroom, Frank was already stripped and under the sheets. As usual, he hadn’t folded down the bedspread, so Michelle did it for the three-thousandth time. He was a good man and a good father. They had had a lovely night, but she still couldn’t train him to take the bedspread off before he lay down. Oh well. There were a lot worse traits.

“Come here, gorgeous,” Frank said, his voice already thick with sleep. Michelle sat down on her side of the bed, pulled off her shoes, and wriggled out of her skirt, but left on her panties and bustier. She wanted Frank to notice how nice she looked in it. Frank took a curled tendril of her hair in his hand and gently pulled her face down to his. “Hey, hot stuff. How much for the whole night?” he asked.

“A lot,” she informed him before he kissed her.

“Worth every penny,” he said. He reached for her upthrust breast. “Take that thing off,” he said. Michelle followed his order in less than sixty seconds. “That’s more like it,” Frank murmured, wrapping his arm loosely around her, resting his hand on her hip and pulling her against him.

“Better than Nintendo?” Michelle teased.

“Well, not as exciting but …” he mumbled. She poked him between two ribs. “Okay, okay. Better than Nintendo,” he admitted and kissed her on the neck. She sighed deeply and she heard her sigh echoed by him. Fridays were always long, exhausting evenings, but good ones. She was happy and tired and so was Frank. “Baby, you know I want you, but …”

Michelle kissed him on his sexy, stubbled cheek. Later perhaps, some time in the middle of the night, he would wake her up with his arm tight around her and the rest of him insistent.

But it wasn’t Frank who woke Michelle. It was a horrible, rending sound and the noise—lots of noise—of feet on the stairs. From somewhere downstairs the usually quiet Pookie was barking ferociously. Michelle barely had time to sit up before she was aware of the red light flickering round the room. My God, she thought, the house must be on fire.

“Frank!” she screamed, but his eyes had already flown open, just as the bedroom door did. And then their bed was surrounded by men, some in uniform, some not, all with guns drawn.

“Police!”

“Police!”

“Police! Don’t move! Put your hands up over your heads!” The voices were shouts, harsh as punches. Michelle turned to look at Frank, but one of the voices brayed “Don’t move!” in her ear. “Hands up! Don’t move!”

Michelle wondered, for a brief instant, if this could be a dream—a very, very bad dream. But before she could find out, one of the uniformed cops leaned over and slapped handcuffs on her. She knew, from the cold reality of the metal on her wrists, that this nightmare was real. Pookie was now in the room barking; suddenly he was interrupted mid-bark and went silent. What had they done?

“Frank,” she cried out again.

“Don’t fuckin’ touch her!” Frank yelled, and the two men holding him at the shoulders began struggling with him. The struggle pulled the top sheet and blanket down, and Michelle, paralyzed with horror, felt her left breast exposed to the cool bedroom air in front of a dozen men.

“This must be a mistake. You have the wrong house!” Michelle cried. “We’re the Russos. The Frank Russos.”

“No fuckin’ shit,” one of the men said.

“Mommy?” Michelle heard Frankie’s bleat from down the hall and, despite her nakedness, sat up. “Mommy?” The bleat now sounded more certain of being terrified and Michelle called out to her son.

“It’s okay,” she shouted, though it wasn’t. “Leave my children alone,” she cried out hoarsely. “This is some kind of mistake. Leave my children alone.”

“Tell her what kind of mistake this is, Russo,” one of the cops holding Frank down said. Frank went into a diatribe of swear words, some of which Michelle had never heard come out of his mouth. “Get your hands off her, you cocksuckers!” he screamed. “Leave my kids alone, you stupid fuckin’ bastards.”

Two of the officers had gotten her up, standing between them. She hoped her hair covered most of her. She had to get to her children. That was all she knew.

When Frank swung to hit the guy on the left with his shackled wrists and called them cocksuckers for the second time, Michelle saw the cop throw a mean knee into Frank’s groin. Frank screamed as Pookie had, then crumpled at the side of the bed.

“Mommy? Mommy?” Frankie’s now ever-more-urgent voice was joined by his sister’s, and by the terrifying noise of crashing from below. Michelle began to shake. Pookie ran past her, past all the watching men, maybe to protect her children.

“For chrissakes, collar the dog and give this woman something to put on,” a plainclothesman said, entering the bedroom, and threw a blanket at her.

“Fuck the coke whore,” another one retorted, and then Frank was on his feet, naked and screaming, fighting first one, then three of the cops.

“Frank!” Michelle yelled out to her husband as the two officers beside her began to pull her out of the room.

“Get her outta here,” the man who had given her a blanket told the police. “Call McCourt in. Make sure she’s gotta woman officer with her all the time.”

“McCourt’s taking the kids.”

They were already in the upstairs hall. Behind her, Frank was bellowing. “Where are you taking my kids?” Michelle asked, frantic. “Stop! Please! Where are my children?”

They paid no attention to her. It was as if her voice was unhearable. “Get McCourt, goddamn it!” the plainclothes policeman yelled. “We should have two women officers. And what the hell are the state guys doing here? This is our jurisdiction.”

“It’s RICO, baby. Everyone wants in. Even the county’s here.”

“Frankie? Jenna?” Michelle called. “Where are you?”

Someone grabbed Michelle roughly by the shoulder and propelled her down the hallway. No! She wouldn’t. Where were her children? What was happening? She heard another howl from Frank. Trying to hold the blanket around her despite the handcuffs, she also clutched at the banister outside Frankie’s room. There were two cops in there and, as Michelle looked, they began to throw action figures, blocks, and Legos off the counter to the floor, pulling the mattress off the bed, throwing open cabinets. Frankie was being ushered out of the room by a woman police officer.

“Mommy!” he yelled, the tears and snot already mingling on his face. “The bad man let Pookie out.”

“Let’s go,” the officer behind Michelle said, and gave her shoulder a push. “McCourt, stick with her. Johnson can take the kid.”

“No!” Michelle said. She held on to the banister but bent forward to her son. “I take care of the kid,” she said, her voice harsh.

“Not now you won’t,” the voice behind her answered and gave her another, harsher push. Her long hair fell into her face. She lost her hold on the railing and fell to her knees. Her son began to wail. “Frankie, it’s all right,” Michelle said, though it had never been less all right, not ever.

“Johnson!” The woman officer—McCourt, or whoever she was—yelled out in a tough voice down the hall stairs. The sound of glass smashing obscured the response. “Johnson!” McCourt yelled again. Behind McCourt, Jenna was being pushed out of her bedroom, still almost sleepwalking.

“They have Pinkie,” she said. The whole group at Michelle’s back was blocked from moving forward because of her. She couldn’t hold the blanket on, conceal the handcuffs from her children, and grab them all at the same time. She didn’t know what to do. She was still on her knees. She had no idea what was going on. It took all of her willpower not to break into sobs louder than Frankie’s.

“They have Pinkie!” Jenna cried again and as Michelle was pushed past Jenna’s door, she saw a policeman tearing off the back of the stuffed animal, pulling out the kapok, and scattering it. “No! No!” Jenna shrieked, lunging for her rabbit. Someone behind him was beginning the destruction of Jenna’s room.

“Get up,” someone behind Michelle commanded, and she felt herself lifted by her hair. Just then another uniformed woman ran up the stairs, took Michelle’s daughter by the shoulder, and moved her around the banister and onto the stairwell.

“Let’s go,” she said. The policewoman looked up at the screaming Frankie, struggling against McCourt. “I’ll take him, too,” she said, and flashed a look at Michelle. It was a look of compassionate concern, the only human thing about this nightmare. “It’ll be all right,” she said. “It’ll be all right. Tell them to go downstairs,” she told Michelle. “We’ll all come downstairs.”

Michelle, on her feet now but still panicked, nodded automatically. “It’s okay,” she said, though she wasn’t sure if Frankie could hear her—or anything. “It’s okay,” she said to Jenna. “Let’s all go downstairs.”

But it wasn’t okay. Not downstairs or outside, not now or anytime soon. The Russo living room had been transformed in moments from a showplace to a scene from hell. There were more than a dozen men tearing books from the bookshelves, pulling the sofa cushions apart, tearing up the carpet. The desecration was so shocking that Michelle herself shrieked.

Somebody put her into a coat, taking the handcuffs off her to do so, but recuffing her afterward. “Frank!” she yelled. “Frank!” Her Lalique vase was smashed, Frank’s flowers tracked across the floor. “Watch out for the glass,” she called out. “Be careful of the children. They’re barefoot.”

“Get some shoes on them,” someone yelled.

“Pookie! Here Pookie!” Frankie was calling out.

“Frank! Frank!” Michelle screamed again. There was a lot of noise going on overhead and then, faster than she could believe possible, Frank’s bloody face moved past her down the stairs and out the door, surrounded by a coven of police.

“It’ll be okay, Michelle. It’s okay,” Frank called. Behind him the cop who had given her the blanket was again issuing orders.

“Get the kids into a car,” he barked to Johnson. “Get them some warm clothes. We’ll take them over to Child Welfare.”

Michelle’s eyes opened wider. “No! Please!” she said. “Please. I don’t know what this is. But please, can’t I leave the children with my neighbor?”

“Sorry. No.” He turned away. “Get her clothes. Put her in my car. Keep her away from Russo.”

“What is going on?” she managed to scream to him as her children were hustled out the door. “This is against the law. What is going on?” A line from some television show came to her. “I demand my rights!” she screamed.

“Oh Christ.” In a tired voice someone began a drone. “You have the right to remain silent. You have the right …”

This was like a bad television show, Michelle thought, as if she were at the movies, or in some kind of daze, watching the news. It couldn’t be real. But Michelle was read her rights, forced into shoes, and walked out into the cold night air. The children were already gone, but other people, neighbors, were standing staring at her. Her neighbors! The Joyces. The Shribers. And strangers! What was happening?

Flashes went off. Who the hell could be taking pictures? She turned her head toward the garage only to see the lawn furniture strewn around. The driveway was filled with unmarked vans and men dressed in black wearing headsets. Six, maybe more, cruisers and troopers cars were pulled up around the house, their lights flashing. Lights were being turned on in houses farther down the street, and more people were gathering. Michelle even thought she saw Jada. She put her hand up to block the lights and get a better view. But before she could call out to her friend, she felt a hand press on the top of her head and force her into the police car waiting at the side of the curb.

9

Wherein Jada increases her already heavy workload

Jada sat at her desk, the office door closed. That was unusual: when she had to work Saturday mornings, Jada liked to keep an eye on what was happening on the bank floor. But today her own state of mind was unusual. Last night—well, at 2:10 this morning, to be precise—she had opened her eyes and gone to the window to see her friend’s life being destroyed: police two-tones, unmarked cars, ominous gray vans, all with lights flashing and gun racks, had surrounded Michelle’s house. Jada, shocked, had roughly shook Clinton awake and flung on her coat. She was at the Russos’ gate in time to see both Jenna and Frankie being dragged off by a uniformed woman. When she had shouted out to them, Jenna had managed to look up, but Frankie was way beyond noticing a friendly face.

Jada had turned back to the crowd when the car drove the children away. The other faces around her were anything but friendly. Neighbors from the block and even one street over had assembled. If the night was colder, Jada wondered whether they would have rushed out into it so quickly to share Michelle’s tragedy. Such alacrity, when with advance notice you couldn’t get them out for recycling.

But what the hell was going on? Jada overheard a few nasty murmurs and then some even more unpleasant rumors. “A kiddie porn ring,” Mr. Shriber said, and his wife, a pleasant plump woman whom Jada had always liked before, nodded her head knowingly. “There were always a lot of kids around,” she intoned.

“That was because their children were popular,” Jada snapped. “And because Michelle let the whole neighborhood play in her yard.” The Shribers were notorious for the perfection of their lawn and flowerbeds. No one was allowed on their property, ever. They had once put in a formal complaint about the mailman when he stepped off the walk. “You better watch out you don’t get sued for slander and lose your landscaping.”

Jada had then struggled through the rest of the crowd, wondering what the hell could be so wrong. What really had worried her was that there wasn’t an ambulance in sight. The irony that seeing an ambulance would be good news was not lost on Jada. At least there wasn’t a van from the morgue. She had stood there helpless a few more minutes. Finally, after she—and all the damned locals—had seen a handcuffed Michelle put into a police car and driven away, she had asked one of the black cops, one of only two she’d seen among the dozens there, what the hell was going on.

“Drug bust,” he had said. “Big dealer. We’ll get a couple of new cruisers out of this.” Jada’s mouth had fallen open.

It was still open. She sat at her desk, the memo that needed correction unmarked in front of her. She could barely take it in. A drug bust—a big one—on her safe street, and happening to her friends. Not that she believed Michelle was involved or guilty. Just that it could happen, that wealthy, working white people who owned their home could have their lives—and their furniture—wrecked and left on public display.

This morning, as she drove past the house, roped off with yellow crime scene tape, she’d seen two of Michelle’s dining chairs, the upholstery torn, the filling ripped out of them, sitting forlornly on the drifts of leaves in front of her house. All sorts of other household goods were strewn over and among the leaves: throw pillows, Frank’s footstool, the lamp filled with shells that Michelle loved and Jada had always thought was a little tacky.

Seeing Michelle’s things strewn like garbage in an abandoned lot had given her such a pang, such a sense of doom and the inevitability of death, that it was almost as bad as seeing corpses out there. Jada knew just how often Michelle polished the wood of those dining room chairs. She’d even been with her when she picked out the rose and ivy fabric they’d been reupholstered in, fabric that was now slashed and flapping like torn eyelids in half a dozen places.

Her elbow on the desk, Jada put her forehead against her hand and rested it there, closing her eyes for a moment. She could feel her long fingers pressed against her skull through the thin skin at the top of her head.

When she’d come home last night, Clinton had been standing in the front doorway holding the baby. He hadn’t asked her a single question. He’d only admonished her.

“You shouldn’t be out there,” he’d said as she walked up the steps.

“Why the hell not?” Jada had asked, thinking he was criticizing her for rubbernecking like the others. “I was trying to see if I could help. She’s my best friend.”

“You shouldn’t be out there because we don’t want to be attached to this thing.” She had walked inside and Clinton had closed the door behind her. “Frank Russo has always dealt from the bottom of the deck. How do you think he got those county contracts?” For years Clinton had been anti-Frank. Jada had never been able to figure out if it was because Frank was so successful and Clinton was jealous, or if there really was something to Clinton’s concerns.

Last night, Jada had snapped at him. “It’s not about a damn contracting dispute,” she told him bitterly. “It’s about drugs.”

“That motherfucker’s been dealing drugs?” Clinton had exploded. “Unbelievable.” The baby started, woke, and began to cry. Clinton began to pace and handed Sherrilee off to Jada. “I told you not to mess with them. Cops will be all over us, questioning us tomorrow. They see drugs, they see niggers. Jesus! How dare he? That greasy little fuck puts our whole family in jeopardy.”

“Not quite as much as he jeopardized his own family,” Jada had said coldly and had begun to stomp upstairs, soothing the baby but not knowing how to soothe herself. “If it was a black man, you wouldn’t think he was dealing. You would think he was framed,” she flung at Clinton from the stairs. “We don’t know what the story is.”

Of course, Michelle hadn’t come in to work and Jada had said nothing about last night to anyone. She’d made more than a dozen calls to police stations and to the courthouse. She’d also checked her answering machine twice to see if Michelle had, by any chance, called. But there was no message.

When Anne, Jada’s secretary, gave her little double knock on the door, Jada quickly lifted her head from her hands and picked up a pen. “Yes?” she asked and Anne came in, her eyes so big they seemed to precede her.

She carried a newspaper, not the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, which Jada had learned to look through for business news every day, but the local county rag. “Look,” Anne said and flapped the newspaper onto Jada’s obsessively neat desk. Jada didn’t want to, but Anne was going to make her look at the scene of the crime. Trust jealous Anne to gloat at someone’s misery. Jada sighed. This woman needed a lot of churching.

She looked at the paper. There, spread out in two pages of tabloid pictures, was Michelle’s house, a close-up of Frank’s bloody, obviously beaten face, and—oh dear Lord—Michelle herself in her blue winter coat and handcuffs. Jada put her hand up to her mouth. SUSPECTED DRUG KINGPIN BUSTED, the headline read. She could hardly believe it.

“Isn’t that something?” Anne asked. There was something in the sound of her voice that gave Jada the feeling Anne was enjoying the excitement of this.

Jada grabbed the newspaper and crumpled it. “That headline is outrageous. Why don’t they just write ‘guilty’? This man has only been accused, not convicted,” she reminded Anne. “The press has already gone too far.” She looked up at Anne as she flung the newspaper into the garbage. “When Michelle comes back to work, I hope you will all remember that she hasn’t even been accused of anything. Now, don’t you have something better to do?”

After Anne left, Jada walked out onto the floor, spoke to a few of her staff as naturally as possible, and greeted an important customer. She returned to her office, trying to look casual, closed the door, and retrieved the newspaper from the trash. Smoothing it out as best she could, she gobbled up the dearth of information. Despite the bad underwriting, it didn’t seem as if any drugs had been discovered, thank God, and it did seem as if the police had been incredibly harsh both to Frank’s face and to the house. Jada knew that since the RICO Act had been passed, police had been gung-ho about busting for profit. She also knew that success bred resentment, and Frank, cocky as he was, probably had a lot of envious enemies in the county.

The intercom rang. “It’s Michelle,” Anne announced in a breathless voice, as if Al Capone were back from the dead and calling bankers. Jada picked up the phone, watching to make sure that Anne hung up.

“Have you heard?” Michelle’s voice asked.

Jada wondered if Anne, not visible now, was still listening on some other extension. “Honey, everybody’s heard,” Jada said. “Where are you?”

“I’m at home,” Michelle managed and then she gasped, making an awful sound that Jada didn’t like to hear and hoped that Anne wasn’t hearing. She lifted the phone base off her desk and pulled it as far as she could. Then, setting it on the floor next to the credenza, she stretched the handset as far as she could and just managed to get to the door and look out. Anne and several of the other women had their heads turned toward her but immediately telescoped around, avoiding her. None of them was on the phone.

“Oh God, Jada this is terrible. This place … it’s …” Michelle began to cry. “I have to go. I have to go pick up the kids. They were fostered out last night. Can you imagine?” She started to choke up; Jada could barely understand what she was saying. Something about Frank and making a list and the mirror and something else.

“Be cool, Michelle,” Jada said. “All the shit you’re looking at, all the broken stuff, isn’t important. The babies are important and they’re all right. You can come to my house tonight. We can clean up your place tomorrow.” The poor girl. Kneeling there in the wreckage, she probably did look like Cinderella but it wasn’t the time for Jada to make a “Cindy” joke.

“Oh, Jada.” Michelle made another horrible noise and then said something else about Frank.

“Is he home?” Jada said. She didn’t want to be too inquisitive. She’d known a lot of people who’d been in trouble and now wasn’t the time for twenty questions. “Is he there with you?” she asked.

“No,” Michelle answered, sobbing. “They wouldn’t let me talk to him, but a lawyer came and said he would be home tonight or tomorrow. Jada,” Michelle whispered, “it’s a nightmare. Frank didn’t do anything. How could the police do this to us?” She lost it then, and tears rose in Jada’s own eyes.

“Michelle? Michelle? You cry, but then wash your face and fix your hair and pull yourself together for Jenna and Frankie. You want me to come with you to pick them up? I know how Child Welfare can be.”

“I can do it,” Michelle whispered, pulling herself together. “I can do it,” she repeated, as if she were giving herself a pep talk, which Jada figured she was doing.

Jada used an old joke they’d run through together during the trials of raising suburban kids. “Are you calm?” she asked.