A Mother's Embrace

I know it’s a complication… He won’t have a choice…Because he loves us…You focus on the shipment. I’ll­­­ focus on—

     Flick’s finger shakes as she presses stop. The­ scratchy recording is fifteen years’ old, made using a child’s pink Barbie cassette player. She retrieved it from a box of her childhood belongings, carefully stored by her mother after Flick moved out of home and into a shared house, close to the Victoria Police Academy.

     It’s her niece’s sixth birthday on the weekend. Luna is Flick’s favourite human. She’d give her the world but knowing Luna love of all things Barbie, Flick’s been on her knees, hunting through her mother’s attic in search of what is left of her own meagre collection. Flick was never one to play with toys and knows there’s a mint condition campervan somewhere in the boxes.

     Kind, patient, joyful, girlie; Luna is the opposite of her aunt. Helping her sister raise Luna may be as close as Flick will come to motherhood. Ravaged by endometriosis, doctors have told Flick she is unlikely to conceive a child naturally. Through therapy, and lots of screaming into her pillow, Flick has come to accept her fate. She loves her job, has ambitions to become a detective, wants to one day lead a homicide squad and bring pride back to her family’s policing heritage.   

     Shuffling away from the cassette player, Flick’s hands are still shaking as she looks inside the storage box. The recording was the last one she made; it was still in the player. There are at least ten more cassettes. All labelled with the date and time the recordings were made. She doesn’t know why she stopped making them.

     Or maybe she does.

     Flick loved playing detective when she was young. Her father, a real-life police detective, was her hero. She wanted to be like him when she grew up. A strong, brave, crime fighting bad ass. It was her father who gave Flick the Barbie player. It was Flick’s love of her father that had her using the player’s record function to spy on her family. Hiding the player in rooms her family frequented, Flick would put in a tape, press record and wait for their secrets to be revealed.

     She quickly learned the best positions for recording juicy intelligence. Like the time she recorded her sister talking on the phone to a friend about a boy at her school she was crushing on. Flick was able to leverage that information into a week free of chores, thanks to her sister’s fear of public humiliation.

     Then there was the time she recorded her parents planning a surprise beach vacation for the family. Flick traded the intel for cash, her sister grateful for the opportunity to update her bikini before hitting the beach.

     The worst was the recording she made of her parents arguing about her father’s continued absences. His obsession with a case had him away from home for days on end. When he was home, he was distracted and short tempered. Through her Barbie player’s speaker, Flick heard her mother give him an ultimatum. His job or his family.

     Flick knows that would have been an unbearable choice for her father.

     He loved his family. He also loved his job. Being a detective was in his blood. His father and grandfather were homicide detectives, but Flick’s father was the best of them. Leading the state’s most complex murder investigations, solving cases many considered unsolvable, he was a hero on the force and to Flick.

     Until the case that kept him away from home changed everything. His team were tasked with ending the city’s gangland killings. The killings were linked to a new player in town, Roman Payne. Payne was trying to muscle in on Melbourne’s illicit drug and tobacco markets by removing the competition. Her father was dogged when it came to his cases. The ongoing killings were taking a toll on him and his reputation.

     When a case stalled and he needed a fresh perspective, Flick’s father would bring his files home, create a new murder board in his study and, whiskey in hand, pore over the investigative reports late into the night.

     Unknown to her father, Flick would sneak in and hide in the corner. She’d listen to him mutter to himself as he broke down the case, rewatched interviews and retraced suspect’s movements. A few times she set her player to record in his study, hoping to learn how he worked his magic. All she heard was long stretches of silence with the odd expletive, which always made Flick laugh.

     She once recorded him throwing his whiskey tumbler against the wall. The next day, she found shards of glass buried in the carpet fibers. Flick practiced her evidence collection skills with her sister’s tweezers, carefully placing the pieces in a jar and sealing the lid.

     Around the time of her mother’s ultimatum, rumours of her father’s involvement with Payne started being whispered over drinks at a local cop bar. A journalist got wind of them and started investigating. When his story appeared in The Age, despite it not naming Flick’s father directly, the damage to his reputation was done. Two months after the recorded argument, Flick’s father resigned under a cloud of suspicion. Her parents divorced the same year, and Flick’s family split in two.

     Her father moved to Sydney, got a job with a security company, worked nights and weekends, drank most days and rarely came home to visit. The last time Flick saw him was at Christmas. It was confronting to see him broken and adrift. She’d begged him to come home, to be present in Luna’s life, in her life. He left without making plans to return.

     When joining the force, Flick considered hiding who she was by using her mother’s maiden name. But she believed in her father’s innocence; was determined to return honour to the Price name. She wore her badge with pride from day one.

     It didn’t take long for the old timers to target her. Soon she was fighting, not only to keep her badge, but on some shifts, to stay alive. Many of her father’s ex-colleagues remained bitter about what they thought of as her father’s betrayal and were intent on making an example of her.

     With shaking hands, Flick returns to the cassette player and presses play.

     …my husband.

     Through the Barbie speakers, Flick hears her mother replace the phone on the handset and walk away, her footsteps fading into the distance.

     Heart pounding, Flick reaches out to turn the player off, but she hears the recording of approaching footsteps, the rustling of clothing, and her hand pauses mid-air. The buttons of a phone keypad beep, there’s silence, then her mother’s voice comes through the player’s speaker.

     It’s time…listen, Dec…wanted…brother out…how you repay me… team…King Street...it’s time…story…the pages.

     A drop of sweat runs down Flick’s brow. She stops the tape, rewinds it, turns the volume up to its maximum and plays it again. Placing the cassette’s speaker against her ear, Flick blocks out all other sounds, focusing her attention on the words on the tape.

     It’s time for you to step up…Listen Dec, you wanted your brother out. This is how you repay me…My husband’s team is raiding the King Street club tomorrow. It’s time your story hit the pages.

     As the attic walls close in on her, Flick presses stop.

     She knows from researching her father’s story, one of the things he was accused of was leaking police intel to Melbourne crime reporter, Declan McKenna. The same reporter who broke the story about her father in The Age.

     Declan died twelve years ago. Killed in a suspected mob hit. His killer was never found.

     ‘This cannot be happening.’ Flick wipes sweat from her eyes.

     Feeling trapped within the confines of her mother’s attic, Flicks places the cassette player under her arm and shuffles back to the ladder, climbing backwards down to the first-floor landing. Pacing the length of the hallway, she passes her own and then her sister’s old rooms. When she reaches the end of the hall and her mother’s bedroom, she stops and rests her head against the closed bedroom door.

     Her mother has been her rock since her father’s move to Sydney, encouraging Flick to follow her passion, to never give up, even when the harassment at work landed her in hospital with two broken ribs. Flick was made to break up a bar fight between members of rival bikie gangs, without backup.

     ‘What does it mean?’ Continuing her pacing, Flick forces her memories back to that time in her life and tries to recall more of what she overheard at home. She never listened to the last recording. Why? Did she fear what would be on it? Or did she know, deep within her young lizard brain, that to look any closer would ruin them all?

     She was eight, going on nine when her father was forced to retire, her sister twelve. Her home-maker-mother went back to work when their father moved out. She got a job as a bookkeeper with a local accounting firm. Worked from home while Flick and her sister were in school, and most nights after dinner. Taking over Flick’s father’s study, her mother turned it into her home office. She put a lock on the door, telling Flick it was to protect her clients’ privacy, added a second phone line, direct to the office.

     It was in her mother’s office where Flick hid the cassette player, the last time she used the recorder.

     Has her mother been lying about who she is?

     Is she to blame for destroying her father’s life?

     Flick knows, if the recording gets out, no one on the force will believe Flick is clean.

     Shaking her head, Flick looks down at herself. ‘Am I clean?’

     Her mother asks her about her job, but don’t all mothers? Flick can’t remember how much detail she shares. Has she ever breached protocol? Told her mother more than the police standards allow?

     If she shares the tape with anyone on the force, Flick may be forced to quit her job.

     A job she’s dedicated her whole life to. A job she loves.

     ‘More than my own family?’ She runs her fingers through her hair.

     And what of the shame? Flick joined the force to bring honour to her family, not add to the rumours of corruption and become another Price shunned by the policing fraternity.

     Flick’s close to taking the next step in her career, she’s been studying for the detective’s exam all year. Plans to sit it next month. Is confident she will ace it.

    Sweat pools between her breasts and in her armpits. She can feel every pulse of the veins at her temples. Fearing she may vomit; Flicks takes three deep, steadying breaths, tries to focus her thoughts.

     She can’t lose her father and her mother.

     She can’t lose her job.

     The front door opens. Her mother calls out. ‘I’m home. You still up there?’

     Flick looks down at the cassette player. Knows she’s holding her and her family’s futures in her hands.

     ‘Flick?’ Her mother’s voice is closer now, she’s at the base of the stairs.

     Rushing to the ladder, Flick returns to the attic, places the cassette player in the furthest corner, rewinds the tape and presses record.

     Flick knows what she’s done will change everything. She may be able to scrub the tape clean, but she’ll never erase what she’s heard from her memory.

     On jelly legs, she climbs down the ladder, stepping away from it as her mother reaches the top of the stairs.

     ‘There you are, love.’ Flick’s mother opens her arms. ‘Will you be staying for dinner? I can do a roast.’

     Flick hesitates briefly before sliding into her mother’s embrace.