Extracurricular Activities by Maggie Barbieri Page B

in the neighborhood; her father owned a local bar and she worked there. She was inclined to agree with Frank—she saw Bobby in a different job but she accepted that police work appeared to be his calling. But she had supported them while he attended NYU, slaving away in her father’s bar, and she was tired. She wanted to go to college, too, but had sacrificed in order to make sure he got out of school first. The police department, to her, was her ticket out of drudgery. From what Crawford could tell, she never anticipated the strain it would put on their marriage.
    He took the crosstown shuttle to Times Square and then the subway home to Ninety-seventh Street. He knew that Sunday night was Bea’s bingo night at the church, so he was safe. He walked in, no tiptoeing, and made his way up to his apartment at the top of the stairs.
    Upon entering, he threw his keys onto the dining room table and checked his phone messages, his nightly ritual. The machine sat on the counter that separated the galley kitchen from the dining area. He went into the kitchen while the tape rewound and took a beer from the refrigerator.
    â€œYou have two new messages,” the disembodied voice announced. The first message clicked on, but nobody spoke. He could hear breathing on the other line and then silence as the line disconnected. The second message came on immediately. “Bobby, it’s me.” Fred. Crawford listened to the message, detailing Peter Miceli’s visit to Alison, and then hit the button that told the day and time of the call—it had come in right after he had left for Grand Central that morning. Fred said that he and Max were on their way to Alison’s to check on things.
    He grabbed his keys and left the apartment.
    He found himself speeding through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, not sure how he had gotten there but completely aware of where he was going. Everyone knew where Peter Miceli lived; his house had been used during a movie shoot and its location had been both published in every New York paper and broadcast over every major news station in the area. Crawford knew exactly where he was headed, even if he wasn’t really sure why he was going.
    Staten Island is really part of New Jersey, Crawford thought, and flashed back to the secession movement that had gripped the borough in the late eighties. It borders the really ugly part of New Jersey and is virtually impossible to get to from the five boroughs. It’s an island only in the most literal sense without all of the attendant lushness and beauty that usually accompanies the word. Crawford had found out—after they had gotten married—that Christine’s late mother’s family lived way out on Staten Island. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembered Christine casually mentioning her family out there, but when push came to shove, he would swear under oath that he never remembered her saying that they visited said family twice a month. He, Christine, and the twins had spent many a Saturday afternoon sitting in traffic on the Gowanus Expressway, inching their way closer to hell: Christine’s Polish grandmother, her spectacularly bad Polish food, and her small, overheated, figurine-filled Cape Cod house. Trying to keep toddling twins away from a display of Precious Moments figurines almost became Crawford’s full-time job during those days; an ill-timed trip to the bathroom to relieve himself of the cheap, domestic beer he consumed while there could spell disaster. And a Polish curse on his house from his suspicious grandmother-in-law.
    He wondered, just for the sake of argument, if failure to disclose Staten Island relatives was a reason for annulment.
    He exited the Staten Island Expressway and made his way onto Richmond Road, where small, attached homes eventually gave way to old, big, expensive estates. Peter Miceli’s Italianate stucco monstrosity was somewhere off Richmond Road and Crawford knew that he