Extensions by Myrna Dey Read Free Book Online

began to cry. “I come home last night and she’s passed out again. I thought she was dead. How you think I feel?” He sobbed noisily. “I had to call my dad to come and take her to the hospital but then she woke up. My sisters do anything they want and she loves them to death. She want to put me in jail.”
    When his shoulders stopped heaving, I spoke quietly but firmly above Wanda nattering “They’re good girls.”
    â€œTerry, you can’t keep stealing or threatening people with knives or you will end up in jail. I don’t want to see that happen, because I know you’re really a good boy at heart. And I believe you’ll try your best to prove it. Because you know it too, no matter what anyone says about you.”
    Terry stared at me and the other three looked disappointed as I turned to go. Wanda followed me through the house, pointing out Terry’s caked soup bowl that would otherwise not have been noticed on the coffee table among empty beer bottles and overflowing ashtrays. In the paper passage she stopped me and whispered: “I know he’s doing drugs too.”
    â€œWanda, you’ll have to try to sort things out with Terry. Maybe give him some praise when he does something right.” Our job was not to play psychologist, so I handed her a card. “Here’s the name and number of a counsellor you might want to talk to. I don’t think it’s the police you need.”
    â€œOh, thank you, officer. I write down everything he does wrong so I can take that sheet along with me.” She smiled, as if we really did understand each other.
    It was drizzling when I finally escaped. I gulped a breath of fresh wet air to cleanse my lungs of the stench. Just before I reached the car, Wanda came running after me. “He’s swearing at me again. What should I do?”
    â€œCall the counsellor.” I got inside as fast as I could. My hands were shaking more than Wanda’s. The rain was pouring down now, and I knew I had to drive somewhere or she would come running out again. I turned the corner and parked in front of another house that probably had the same things or worse going on inside it. I had gone to hundreds of domestics in this area, seen a hundred Wandas and Terrys. Why was this different?
    Seeing Ray this morning proved how vulnerable I was myself. I had attended the former calls as if they were part of a world to which I never could belong. Today the connection triggered a thunderstorm in my head. I felt as if I had skidded to a halt at the edge of a dangerous precipice. Retha and Ray could easily become my Terry. If you took away my security on all other fronts — financial, professional, family — I might be seeing Wanda when I looked in the mirror. It was not only her addictions, her squalor, or her poverty that made her helpless. It was her need for a scapegoat.
    A counsellor would never untangle what was happening in that house, because Wanda needed her son to be the obstacle to her happiness. As if removing one dirty sock from a trash heap would make the trash heap fade into the background. The comfort of blame right there for the taking. For Wanda, for the witnesses, for Terry. And for me.
    I was not sure if my limited visibility was due to the pounding rain on the windshield or the pounding now going on in my head. I told Sally I was coming in. As I crept along the streets to the detachment, I muttered, Thank you, Wanda, for leading me where you will probably never go yourself . One look at me, and my corporal advised me to take the rest of the day off.
    When I got to my apartment, there was a message from Dad. When I called, he said he had been going through boxes and found the picture of Sara and her sister I was looking for.
    â€œI wondered if you wanted to meet for supper at Wendy’s and I could bring it. But you don’t sound too well.”
    â€œHeadache,” I said, fighting the nausea mixing in