Chloe and Cy

Chloe

My name is Chloe Louise Rawlins. I am 23-years-old, and I have red hair. I work as an EMT and am about to start medical school in Boston, MA. I enjoy reading, cycling, hanging out with friends, and the occasional camping trip.

Oh, and I might be sorta falling for my Step-dad.

Before you get all judgmental and jump to conclusions, I have to establish the Copperfield shit, I suppose.

Cy and my mother got together when I was still in grade school, and they were both in their middle-to-late twenties. They had apparently grown up in the same small town out west but ended up in Boston as complete strangers to each other.

He was working as a traffic cop for the Boston P.D. in those days. He pulled mom over one spring day after she'd blown through a red light in her old '87 Mustang.

I was in the back seat chattering away, and she hadn't been paying attention. I remember looking through the rear window of the little cloth-top and seeing him swing his leg over his shiny motorcycle. He strode up to the side of the car and leaned over to flash mom his dark cobalt blue eyes over the rims of his mirrored glasses.

"Do you know why I stopped you, Miss?"

Mom, in those days, could flirt her way out of any traffic ticket.

"Sorry, Officer, I-- have we met before?"

"Chrissy Rawlins?" He smiled, pulling his shades off entirely.

"Cy Brown! Oh my God, you actually became a cop?"

In this case, she pulled away from the curb with a "warning" and the handsome policeman's telephone number. That night, when we got home, I made my Ken doll into a cop who kept arresting Barbie for being "too pretty."

After the initial dating phase, Cy would come over and cook us dinner, and then he and mom would read me to sleep before closing my bedroom door. Mostly I think they just watched old movies or split a bottle of wine and talked. At any rate, eventually, Mom sublet our apartment and moved us into a three-story walk-up with "Officer Cy."

I should clarify that his name is actually Leroy, but nobody calls him that. Any telemarketers who called the house asking for "Leroy Brown" got a laugh and were promptly disconnected.

I assumed for most of my life that his middle name was something like "Cyrus." However, he looks less like a Cyrus than he does a Leroy. Cy is the name on his cards, although I can't recall even a piece of mail coming to our house listing a middle initial.

Anyway, Mom has always called him Cy, so that's what I called from the time they first started dating.

He was really sweet to my mom. And he was always making time to play games and give me piggyback rides. When mom started working on bigger real-estate deals, Cy helped with my homework and read me stories at night. Always very innocent and above board.

I had never really known my birth father, and mom said he'd been a brief fling she'd had right out of college, and he'd left her practically in the middle of her first Lamaze class. So Cy was a good fit in our lives.

"Nighty night, Cy."

"Sweet dreams, Chlo-worm."

It was a nickname that had started as a tease one weekend he had taken mom and me to the beach. While applying sunscreen to my face, he remarked at how pale I was. "You could glow in the dark," he joshed.

From that sprang the nickname "Chlo-worm."

Mom eventually switched from selling commercial real estate to selling residential real estate out in the country. Cy, who had made the leap from traffic cop to the detective bureau of the Boston P.D., allowed her to convince him to leave the city. He took a job as the police chief of Lawrence, a medium-sized town in Essex County.

It was bittersweet moving out of Boston proper. Both Cy and I loved the hustle and noise, but Mom said it was better to raise a kid out in the suburbs to get into better schools.

At any rate, we put in for the two-story neo-colonial with the picket fence and the three-car garage. Cy made it official and offered mom a ring, and mom said "yes," and they were married at the courthouse three months after we finished unpacking. I was both the "best kid" and "the kid of honor."

After that, it was a bit awkward transitioning from adolescence to young adulthood as the town police chief's kid.

Mom and Cy were both staunch believers in education. I made it all the way to my high school graduation without going on a single unchaperoned date that wasn't a church social or a school dance. After my prom, both Mom and Cy rolled up in his police cruiser promptly at 9:30 sharp, and Mom blasted the horn.

"My date has a car, Mom," I'd scowled, tossing my corsage in the back seat and climbing in, making sure my prom dress didn't get caught in the door.

"She knows," Cy said, shooting me a glance in the rearview. "She made me run his plates after you two drove off."

"Any felonies?" I asked.

Cy had simply shaken his head and put the cruiser in gear, driving us past the ice cream parlor on the way home.

The thrill of my prom night, three weeks after my 18th birthday, was a scoop of mint pistachio ice cream. Mom had Vanilla frozen yogurt, and Cy had an iced coffee before going on patrol.

The summer after graduating, I risked sneaking out to a summer party with a few other just graduated seniors. I hadn't been there twenty minutes before Cy showed up with a swarm full of cops and stormed into the fray. I recall him peeling the varsity swim-team captain off me just as things were starting to get interesting.

"Chloe! Car!" He barked.

I'd never seen him so livid. This was a man who'd never raised a hand to me or my mother in all his time with us. He was a cool customer, level-headed, like Andy Griffith with biceps.

"I've got a mind to get my nail gun and fix your balls to the flipping Civil War monument, Cavenaugh!"

Cy never did tell me how he tracked me down that night. Instead, we had driven all the way home with me hugging my knees in the back of his squad car, totally miffed.

Mom had been livid with me, too, of course. Even though I was over eighteen, she was determined I would not go through college as a single mother juggling two jobs and an infant daughter like she had done.

The story of "Bad Chief Leroy Brown" and his nail gun kept me celibate and single through the first two years of junior college. Any future comers interested in doing the no-pants-dance with good old Chloe had to wait until I saved up enough to make the leap to a four-year school.

I kind of recall not talking to Cy for the rest of that summer, actually.

Of course, the other reason I avoided Cy had to do with something else that happened later that same summer.

I had joined the girl's intramural soccer team as a way of keeping in training and possibly landing some scholarship money for my eventual transition to a University.

And one day, after a very intense and gruelingly hot practice, I walked in on "my parents."

I was covered in dirt, sweat, my hair sticking to the collar of my grass-stained uniform. All I wanted was to ditch my uniform in the wash before heading to the bathroom for a hot shower.

I passed by the den, where suddenly I heard sounds of hips slapping thighs and mom yipping like an excited pomeranian.

I inched a glance around the door to find Cy, still in his uniform shirt, and mom, her house-showing skirt and blazer combo pulled up to her waist, as he corkscrewed into her.

I felt my eyes widen at the sight of the two of them together and realizing I was in nothing but a sports bra and panties, I beat a hasty retreat to my room. I dressed quickly in a spare uniform and then snuck downstairs to make a loud and pronounced entrance into the house. "Anybody here? I'm home!"

I'll never forget Cy appearing in the hallway a few moments later, tucking his shirttails into his uniform pants. He cooly ran his fingers through his dark black hair. "Hey, Kiddo," he smiled. "How was practice?"

He took in my flushed face and messy knees but puzzled over the cleanliness of my uniform.

"I took my spare," I said, shaking my practice bag. "The one I wore for practice is pretty ripe."

He nodded. "Throw it in the washer and I'll start a load, then. You want a snack from the kitchen?"

"After I grab a quick shower. Oh hi, Mom. I didn't know you were home."

Mom had managed to put her hair back in a neat ponytail and looked amazingly unrumpled considering what she'd been doing only minutes before. "Cy and I hooked up for a quick Lunch," she said, kissing him on his cheek. "Thanks, Honey. See you at dinner?"

He gave her a polite peck as she grabbed her briefcase and went out through the garage.

Now, I keep saying I'm not a freak or a perve or anything. Let's just say, that afternoon, after I had showered, as Cy made me a peanut butter sandwich, I saw him in a new light.

My step-dad was sort of a hunk.

Since mom had had me so young, she was only just hitting 40 when I finished high school, and Cy was only a year older than mom.

"You alright, kid?" He asked, re-wrapping the wheat bread and putting it away.

"Huh? Yeah." I wiped the goofy look off my face. "You think someday you can teach me how to ride your motorcycle, Cy?"

He'd bought an old BPD bike at auction and spent a summer or two tinkering with it in the garage.

"If it's okay with your mother," he said.

I fantasized for the first time about him then. Nothing major, just him smoothing the orange-red strands of my hair back over my ears and leaning down to kiss me.

But I knew the moment that little spark ignited in my belly that it was wrong to think of Cy like that.

The kiss fantasy was as far as it went for a while.

I varied it a little. Different rooms of the house. Different set-ups. I'd be lugging a heavy box or need help down off a ladder, and he'd be there, helpful and handy. Or he would just suddenly grip my shoulders gently or tilt my chin up to meet his lips.

That fall I'd gone out for the Junior College Fall Play and landed the part of Hamlet. Very few guys went in for drama in my town.

Cy ended up running lines with me after dinner most nights while he did the dishes.

"How do you memorize so much without any effort!?" I'd groaned in exasperation, having read through all my dialog three or four times with none of it sticking.

"It's hard to explain. But come on, you're doing great."

"I can't believe I let Jolene rope me into going out for this. I was expecting something easier. Spear carrier number two. Or assistant grave digger, maybe?"

"That's no way to be. Besides, you get to stab your step-father at the end."

"After he poisons me," I scowled.

"Try again," he smiled. "From Where wilt thou lead me..."

"Where wilt thou lead me? Speak! I'll go no further."

"Mark me," he said in his best raspy voice. "My hour is almost come when I to sulfurous and tormenting flames must render up myself."

"Alas, poor ghost..."

Even as he washed and put the dishes in the Maytag, doing his best to sound like a wheezing old ghost, I found my thoughts drifting towards our imagined kiss.

"But know, thou noble youth, the serpent that did sting thy father's life now wears his crown."

I blinked.

"It's you," he smiled, pointing a potato peeler at me.

"Oh," I looked down at the lines. "My prophetic soul, My Uncle."

"Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, with witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts-- O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power so to seduce!--won to his shameful lust the will of my most seeming-virtuous queen."

"So, is Gertrude in on it, do you think?"

He scowled. "We're running lines, not analyzing the play."

"No, but if you were a cop investigating the case, you would totally suspect the queen of helping bump off her husband, am I right?"

"Someone trying to avoid learning her lines?" Mom asked as she appeared with a basket of laundry for me to help fold.

"Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive against thy mother aught. Leave her to heaven and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge to prick and sting her."

"I would have bumped him off," Mom nudged with a smile.

I ended up getting a dean's list certificate for my performance. Both mom and Cy were very proud.

I keep a picture of the three of us on the nightstand in my apartment in Boston. I'm dressed in my doublet and hose while Cy and Mom both have their arms around my shoulders, grinning from ear to ear.

I keep drifting back now to all the everyday family things because I dread having to go into the depravity of it all.

This was the guy who'd put bandaids on my scraped knees after disastrous roller-blading accidents. Every time I'd drift off into my little fantasy after that summer, I would quickly shake it from the etch-a-sketch of my mind.

Bad, Chloe. No. Wrong. Utterly and irredeemably wrong in the wrongest way.

Anyway, the time eventually came for me to head off to U-MASS. I left after my 20th birthday in mom's old Mustang with a hug and kiss from her and a quick side-shoulder hug from Cy.

"Keep gas in the tank," he said. "And there's mace on the key ring."

"What if he's cute?" I asked.

He scowled at me. "You come back with a Bachelor's degree before you bring home a boyfriend, alright, Chlo-worm?"

I saluted. "Yes, Chief."

I enjoyed college. In junior college, I had decided my degrees would be in pre-med and psychology. I had my first long-term boyfriend, Matthew, a guy in my dorm, who wore thick-rimmed glasses and old concert t-shirts.

By my third year, I had my EMT certification and my nursing degree. Also, I like to think I had an average "body count" for a moderately good-looking ginger-haired coed with long legs, B-cup boobs, and porcelain skin.

Then that summer, just as I was beginning to study for my M-CATs, Mom started bringing up how much she missed having me in the house.

Cy had apparently become a ghost in her life, coming in from working long hours on patrol to crash out on the sofa watching the day's sports highlights. Or else he was brewing coffee in the morning without speaking and just casually reading his newspaper.

"I don't know what's happened," mom sighed one night over the phone. "Just a few years ago, we were still like a couple of teenagers. Now, he's just this stone-faced cop who lives in my house."

By the end of the summer semester, I had agreed to come home for a few weeks before the fall term commenced.

I took the commuter train out of Boston to Essex County on the Friday afternoon before July Fourth. I arrived just as the sky was turning orange and pink over the Lawrence Metro station.

"Chloe!" Cy waved to me on the platform and scooped me up in a big lifting hug before I could say anything. "What are they feeding you at that college?" He asked. "You're practically a toothpick, Chlo-worm!"

Arms. Big solid arms. Holding me. Clad in a brown leather motorcycle jacket that creaked softly against the swell of his muscles.

Oooh, the sound of well-weathered leather, even in summer.

A quick mental image of him kissing me hello. And then...

Harsh repression and guilt1.

"A leather jacket in July?" I teased.

"Hey, I'm from Arizona. So this mid-60s crap is fall weather to a kid who grew up with it hitting 120 in the desert shade. Seriously though, you're a stick."

"My gentleman callers have yet to complain."

He grabbed my pack off my shoulder and hefted my suitcase like it was air. "Har har," he said, obviously staring at my hair.

At the start of the summer, I'd decided to ditch my long red braided ponytail for something sleek and low-maintenance.

"You don't like it," I said, brushing my fingers through my short pixie cut.

"No, it's nice," he said. "Just reminds me of Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby, is all."

"Mia who in what?"

"It was a horror movie in the 60s. One of Polanski's early films. How are the grades?"

"You sure you don't want to see my phone? I've got a whole stable of boyfriends for you to track down with your nail gun."

"I never actually had a nail gun," he smiled. "At least, not in the trunk."

"Don't tell the guys I went to high school with, and you'll ruin their favorite urban myth."

"Grades," he prompted again. "And the job I got you."

"GPA through the roof," I said. "And I'm the best underpaid, overworked part-time EMT Liberty Med Rescue ever had. My captain says, 'hey,' by the way. Or, let me get this right." I paused, grabbing his aviator glasses from where they hung from his undershirt and pushing them up onto my nose. I cocked a hip doing my best to look sultry and scintillating. "Hey," I said breathlessly, pulling down the shades.

He laughed. "Rosie Payne," shaking his head. "There was a summer."

I returned his glasses. "She jokes that if mom hadn't come along and snapped you up, you would have been her biggest mistake."

"Well, there's a rule," he said.

"If you wear a uniform, don't date a uniform," I said. "EMTs shouldn't date cops or firemen--too much drama."

"There is something a bit off-center with people who run towards gunshots, gaping wounds, and into burning buildings." He nodded. "They aren't altogether sane. A lesson I learned from Rosie Payne."

"She says she learned it from you." I wiggled my eyebrows.

"Hey, I'm a quiet small-town police chief. I clean out old lady's gutters and jump people's cars in the winter. I'm sound as a pound. Rose isn't giving you a tough time for being my step-daughter, is she?"

"She speaks not on the sins of my father," I said. "Though I do ask. She's a real sweetie, actually. Makes sure I do my job, finish my homework, and get to bed by nine every night," I smiled. "Except when I stay up blowing firefighters and injecting heroin into my eyeballs."

"Hardy har har," he said again. "You couldn't be a bad kid if you tried," he said, leading me out of the train station to his patrol vehicle. It was a late model Explorer painted in ghost black and silver. "Tease me all you want, Chlo-worm."

"Oooh," I said, taking in the cruiser. "New wheels?"

"Raptor conversion," he smiled. "Town bought it from the state and gave me the budget to soup it up," he said. "Those lucky stiffs on Highway get new cars every year. This one only had 84,000 miles on it. With the new engine, she's practically cherry," he smiled.

He tossed my bags in the back, and we climbed into the cruiser. He fired it up and chirped the siren the way he always had from the time I was a little girl.

"I thought mom was meeting me," I said.

"She got called out of town," he sighed. "Some big house outside of Boxford she needs to prepare for a showcase in the parade of homes. She wasn't happy about it. But, she's the only one her boss trusts with the sale. Blah blah blah. So it's just you and me for dinner tonight."

"Ooh, ice cream and gummy-worms then?" I smiled.

"Your mother still hasn't let me live that down."

"I was 10," I smiled. "I tasted colors on that sugar high!"

"I'm thinking I'll order us a pizza," he said. "Maybe split a six-pack now that you're legal."

Legal.

Now, of course, he meant legal drinking age. I knew that. But somehow, my mind popped to an image of him stripped bare and slamming into me, my own yips echoing off the ceiling of the bedroom I'd had since I was 11.

Wow. Where did that come from? I mean, it was one thing to think about a sweet little stolen kiss. But...

I swallowed hard. I wasn't that sick, was I? It had been just an innocent fantasy when I went off to college.

No! Bad Chloe! He's your dad!

We stopped at Ralph's and bought a large Brooklyn Style pie. Then we hit the liquor store, and Cy came out with a sixer of light beer for me and him to split.

"Need anything else before we head for home?" He asked.

"Na, I'm good. I just want a hot slice, a quick shower, and to slip into my jammies with a good book."

"The acorn falls not far from the tree," he smiled. "That's your mom's routine for signaling to me that any attempt I might make at fooling around is ill-advised."