Because to
Marylin a police officer was not merely a uniformed mentor of the law,
designed chiefly to hold up traffic for her passing, and with his night
stick strike security into her heart as she hurried home of short,
wintry evenings. A little procession of him and his equally dread
brother, the plain-clothes man, had significantly patrolled the days of
her childhood.
Once her mother, who had come home from a shopping expedition with the
inside pocket of her voluminous cape full of a harvest of the sheerest
of baby things to match Marylin's blond loveliness--batiste--a whole
bolt of Brussels lace--had bitten the thumb of a policeman until it
hung, because he had surprised her horribly by stepping in through the
fire escape as she was unwinding the Brussels lace.
Another time, from her mother's trembling knee, she had seen her father
in a crowded courtroom standing between two uniforms, four fingers
peeping over each of his shoulders!
A uniform had shot her father from the underpinnings of the freight
car.
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