Ericka Misses the Cut

Ericka McKann sat at her kitchen table staring at her laptop computer on an Easter Sunday morning hoping the screen in front of her would change. Her mostly full cup of coffee sat on table beside it growing cold. The next day was the start of the year’s police academy cadet class. Six weeks of training stood between her and her becoming a cop. She ranked 28 after taking the exam. Not as good as she would like, but not bad. Most years it would be more than good enough, but this year the police budget was cut. No, not cut, it was increased less than normal, and one of the cutbacks was reducing the new recruit class size from 60 to 24 cadets. When the offers came out, 2 of the top 24 declined – that usually only happened if someone failed a background check or accepted another job like the FBI or CIA. Whatever the reason they left the class making Ericka 26. Of 24. Unless 2 more people declined it wouldn’t be good enough. She wasn’t good enough.

At 9am an alarm rang on her phone. She had been up since before 6 sitting in her nightshirt pressing snooze over and over but now it was really time to get up. It was still Easter Sunday and she still needed to go to church with the family. In truth she usually enjoyed these weekly family gatherings. With her father and brother now both out of state, going to mass with her Aunt Anne (her mother’s sister) and cousins was normally something she looked forward to. She took a bath, mostly resisting the urge to finger herself while she cleaned herself and then shaved her pubis, legs and pits.

Exiting the bath, she wrapped the towel around herself and went to her closet. In discussing plans last week her Aunt made it clear that Easter was a day for a dress. Not for jeans, not for slacks, not even a skirt, but a dress. Ericka didn’t have many of those in her closet. She rejected the dress she wore last Easter and two bridesmaids dresses. She didn’t think Aunt Anne would approve of the short dresses that she would wear on a night out with the girls dancing. But in the back of her closet was a yellow camisole sundress she hadn’t worn in a few years. Thin shoulder straps held the dress up and a column of eight buttons shaped as little flowers ran up the middle. The skirt came down to her mid thigh and with the bare arms it was showing too much skin for what her family would approve of on a Sunday morning at church, though it seemed like it would be fine for a walk in the park. Ericka went to the other side of her closet and found a white cardigan that she could wear over the dress to cover her shoulders for church. She dressed, experimented in the mirror with the sweater open and closed, ultimately deciding that open looked better. She decided it needed one more thing, and put on a pair of white pantyhose. She thought it complimented the sweater and her Aunt couldn’t complain about too much leg showing. About 15 minutes later she completed putting a light amount of makeup and then slid into a pair of 2-1/2 in sandal wedges before she left on time to catch the red line to meet the family at 11:30 mass.

Easter mass was crowded as always. She was sandwiched between her older cousin Shaun and the edge of the pew. Ericka asked Shaun where his girlfriend Tatianna was. He replied that she was at church with her family and that they preferred the 10am mass. Ericka thought something was bothering him but didn’t think that this was the time and place to talk about it. There would be plenty of time later at dinner or watching the Red Sox game or over drinks afterwards. Mass started and Ericka went through the motions standing, kneeling, sitting and mumbling something that almost sounded like the right words at the right times. While the priest droned on about how Easter wasn’t a once a year event, Ericka took out her phone to check on her status. She was still 26 of 24.

After mass she walked the few blocks to Aunt Anne’s house and preparations for dinner began. Once inside, Ericka took off her sweater and joined the other women in the kitchen to try to help. She was pretty good with the knife so shredded lettuce and cabbage then sliced up the potatoes and carrots. When her tasks eres done she asked what to help with next.

Aunt Anne took two beers from the refrigerator handed them to Ericka and said, “Have a beer with your cousin Shaun. Something is bothering him and he wouldn’t talk to me about it. Maybe he’ll talk to you? Me and the children can take care of the food from here” Ericka looked, the children were two of her younger cousins. At 16 and 19 years old they probably didn’t like being considered children, but in their mother’s eyes they would be – at least until they got married and gave her grandchildren. Preferably in that order.

Ericka’s cousin Shaun was all man. At 25 he was the oldest of her cousins and since her Uncle Frank passed away he was the man of the house. At 5 foot 10, 185 pounds of solid Irish muscle he was a pretty intimidating sight even when he wasn’t in his police uniform. Ericka found him sitting on the couch watching the pre-game show for the Red Sox she handed him one of the beers and sat next to him.

Ericka waited for the commercial break before she asked him, “Where’s Tatiana? She’s practically part of the family, I thought she’d be here for Easter dinner.” She took a sip of her beer, “Or maybe you’d be with her family.”

He took a drink from the beer before answering, “My mom sent you to talk to me?” Ericka nodded and he continued, “Well today Tatiana is having dinner with her folks and her brothers and sister and cousins and I’m here with my lovely family” Ericka waited while he took another drink from his beer. “Her idea. Not mine. Game’s starting.” They watched the game for a bit, not saying much of anything besides commenting on an uneventful game. In the middle of the second inning Shaun sent Ericka to get him a new beer. She returned with one for each of them.

Ericka waited. She knew Shaun would talk when he was ready to. If she pushed it might make things worse. But she and her older cousin always had each other’s back. He had been more of an older brother than her older brother had ever been. And there was certainly a time or two in her fantasies that he would be a kissing cousin, or more. After the fourth inning Shaun told Ericka, “I proposed to Tatiana last night.”

“Fuck” Ericka kept her voice down, and dragged the word out as she realized if he proposed and they aren’t here together, “So I take it she didn’t say ‘yes’?” She asked it as a question.

“She didn’t say yes. She didn’t say no. What she actually said was that she ‘can’t marry a cop.'”

“I didn’t see that coming. Fuck. She knew you are a cop right? She’s known that for a while now, right? ”

“Yes. For a while. When we first met she didn’t know. I just chatted her up at a bar on the beach. We both like the way the other looked. We danced. We drank. We didn’t take each other serious for a while. Then somewhere along the way we did. Maybe it was Halloween. I went as a stripper cop and she was a damn sexy vampire. We went to a party together and most of our friends already saw us as a couple. Our first kiss was that night. In character I gave her a lap dance and at the end I kissed her. She kissed me back. I knew then I wanted to kiss this woman every night for the rest of my life.”

“Wow cuz, that’s sounds pretty romantic. She doesn’t feel the same?”

“It took a little longer for her, but we said our ‘I love you’ on Thanksgiving and started talking forever on New Year’s. Had conversations about having kids and everything. She wants 4, at least one of each.”

He was interrupted by the excitement on the TV. The Sox had a man on 1st and second and a line drive banged off the green monster, the first runner scored easily, but when the left fielder misplayed the ball the runner from first tried to score too. It looked like he was going to be out, but the catcher dropped the ball. The Sox took the lead and had a runner on third and two out. The next batter lifted a fly ball to deep center field for the final out and during the commercial Aunt Anne called everyone to the table for dinner.

Dinner was good, the girls were loud and accepted that Tatiana had her family to spend Easter with too. The girls were happy enough to talk about boys. Ericka was briefly asked about the police academy and broke the news to the family that this wasn’t going to be her year to become a cop. At least there was some good news, the Sox won the game 2-1.

After dinner Shaun offered to give Ericka a ride. “I can take you home if you want, but afterwards I’m going out and get drunk off my ass and I’d love your company.”

“I think I want to get drunk off my ass too, let’s do this” Shaun drove them to a bar that he knew. It wasn’t his normal cop bar, he had taken Ericka there before. This one was a little outside the city. But it looked like a cheap Irish dive. Ericka thought there were more gingers than not in the place. The place wasn’t empty but they were able to get a table and the only other woman in the place came up to take their order. Shaun ordered a couple of pints of Guinness and Ericka added a couple of shots of Jaegermeister to the order.

“Jaeger?” Shaun asked after the waitress left.

“Yeah, I want to get drunk. Quickly. Guinness takes forever.”

They sat in awkward silence for a moment until Shaun said, “I remember that dress now. I was trying to place it, but I remember now.”

“What? This old thing?” Ericka was trying to play it coy, but she knew the dress was indeed pretty old and had no idea where Shaun had seen her in it.

“Yes! you wore it the night I took you to your junior prom. That was what? 4 years ago?”

“Fuck, I think your right- but that would have been 6 years ago. I was 17 then. No wonder I didn’t remember it, back then it came down past my knees.” Ericka smiled, she had some happy memories about that night. She had been distraught that she didn’t have anyone to take to the dance. Her boyfriend had been an African-American classmate of hers but she knew that her father would refuse to let her date him so they kept themselves to after school fun. But it meant no one was taking her the dance. Her dad caught her crying and asked her about it. 2 days later Shaun asked her about school and her dance and asked if he could go with her so Ericka showed up at the dance with her 19 year date. Her girlfriends didn’t believe it was a real date so she asked him to hold her ass while they danced. “I remember that night, I had a good night.”