Seven Ways of Looking at a Thief

It’s never just about the mascara.

I followed the directions of the night watchman to the backroom of the pharmacy, my briefcase bucking against my leg, and the smell of pine-scented cleanser intensifying as I hurried. I had just delivered my regular Thursday evening history lecture and my suit felt rumpled, sweaty, still humming with debate.

Sniff.

In the backroom corner a wiry green-haired girl was wound like a worrywart’s twist-tie on a high metal chair. I knew better than to expect a hug from Sue, or even a small “Hi, Dad.” She contorted herself in the opposite direction from me, which was difficult to do—she was handcuffed to the chair.

Denial

The security guard, an officious, compact chickenhawk, introduced herself as Jennifer. “You’re the father, are you?” she asked. Her beady eye roved over my suit and concluded hers was the better uniform.

A chest-wrenching sob escaped from Sue, who kept her face turned toward the shelves of cleaning products stacked inside a wire enclosure.

 “Yes. I am the father.” I feigned composure and offered my hand. “Edward Hessen,” I said. Interesting: the not-so-delicate distancing of being “the father.” The forces of law and order were already trying to carve out a weak antelope from the herd. I put my briefcase down between me and the security guard.

 “I need to confirm some details,” Jennifer said. I regarded the screen as she read from it. “Suzin Hessen, age 15, address…”

I broke in. “Actually, my daughter’s legal name is ‘Sue-Ellen.’” I thought how much I relished that phrase “my daughter,” an incantation that brings to mind a lively girl, a little girl, with golden ringlets and laughing eyes.

Sue-Ellen swivelled her head to glare at me. Hey, at least it was eye contact. Sue-Ellen hated her name; she claimed it sounded hokey, deep-South. (It’s Charlene’s mother’s name.)

Sue’s eyes were red and puffed into slits. Not the CoverGirl black-fringed, expertly outlined “windows to the soul” that I saw every morning before she left for school. My wife Charlene seldom wears even lipstick, but Sue won’t stick her head outside without full make-up. Sort of like an astronaut needing a spacesuit for a lethal environment.

Jennifer continued, “I have Sue-Ellen Hessen here because at 8:40 pm tonight I caught her stealing…”—and here she paused to gain my full attention—“a tube of mascara.”

 “There must be some mistake. My daughter does not steal,” I said. I mentally summoned that nine-year-old flower girl with golden ringlets, at the apogee of her innocent laughing-eyed girl-ness. Although of course I did not know it then. We were at some cousin’s wedding. Sue-Ellen was dressed in frilly white and wore oversized white sateen slippers that, a moment later, caused her to slide uncontrollably on the church carpeting. She crashed into the unforgiving oaken pew. Her nose erupted in a bright red splash, gushing over not only the front of her dress, but also the tuxedo of the five-year-old ring-bearer, whom she had been chasing. Further caught in the spatter were the fancy dresses of Charlene and two bridesmaids who’d rushed to help. We’ve been caught in Sue-Ellen’s spatter one way or another ever since.

“No,” said Jennifer. “There’s no mistake.” My attention skidded back to the mascara, the boxes of pine-scented cleanser that surrounded us, the teen handcuffed to the stool. I could tell Jennifer enjoyed this moment of revelation, when the molly-coddling parent gets to see the greedy jaybird he’s been harboring all these years.

Jennifer transformed into witness-under-cross-examination mode. “At 8:30 PM I observed Sue-Ellen standing in front of the MAC eye-makeup display. I saw her touch many boxes, then select one…”

As she rattled on, I straightened to full height. I thought: “Swiss cheese.” Any decent lawyer could poke holes in this testimony. Holes having to do with bias, angle of observation, and jumping to foregone conclusions. Green-haired Sue-Ellen looks like someone who challenges the system, therefore Sue-Ellen must be challenging the system…. I backed away, shaking my head. Not my golden-ringlets daughter. “No,” I said, “Sue-Ellen does not—”

Sue barked at me. “She saw me steal it! I stole it, okay?”

“Watch what you say,” I blurted. I had a fantasy of arguing this successfully in court. I wanted Sue to stop reinforcing the perception of guilt. Please: no words like “steal” and “stole”! It was not real. My baby girl was not a thief, any more than I was an undersea welder.

Blame

“I’ve called the police,” Jennifer said. “They’ll decide how to proceed. They have other calls; this is low priority. I’m sorry; you’ll have to wait a while.” She bustled about to show she had better things to do. A cute touch: that fake “sorry.” She was obviously glad we had to wait.

 “Where’s Gavin?” I asked Sue. He was the boyfriend she would normally be hanging out with while I was lecturing and Charlene was at the PTA. I blamed all of this on him—that neighbor child devoid of charm, ambition, or any discernible moral compass. Although he was a terrible influence on Sue, Charlene had warned me: “do not interfere. If you forbid someone, you will drive them closer.”

“He had an urgent family matter,” Sue said. Fast and glib, I noticed—as if rehearsed.

I stifled a laugh. Gavin? I couldn’t picture that slacker going anywhere in an “urgent” fashion. I inferred he simply didn’t want to see the aftermath of whatever he’d put Sue up to.

Confiscation

“I don’t know what is taking the police so long,” Jennifer said, twirling her hair. She wanted to underline the waste of my time, the wreckage of my evening. She wanted the father to resent the daughter.

In fact, I was awash with post-lecture relief: an introvert glad to be done with the stress of performance, still hyped about some controversial points raised during the Q&A.

Stealing was wrong, both legally and morally. Moreover, it’s a stupid thing to do—but didn’t my daughter know that already? On another level, I was fascinated by this event, occurring as it did just after my lecture on “historical interpretations of the penal code.” Theft is a major part of the criminal code and here I was seeing it played out in real time.

Theft. Break-in, burglary, embezzlement, extortion, fleecing, fraud, heist, holdup, larceny, looting, misappropriation, mugging, peculation, pilferage, piracy, plundering, poaching, purloining, robbery, shoplifting, snitching, stealing, stick-up, swindling, thievery. I drummed the side of my briefcase.

 Sue blinked unhappily at me. Her denuded skin was blotchy and her nose moist and red. “Can I have my phone back?” she asked.

“Ask the guard,” I said. Of all the things Jennifer could do, I’ll bet cell phone confiscation has the greatest leverage. If so, she would not give back the phone; deprivation is what “the criminal process” is all about.

In reply, Jennifer folded her arms across her chest.

Apples

No mystery about Jennifer, but I was baffled by Sue-Ellen. She wanted to get a part-time job—and this could ruin her chances. Was this a one-time occurrence, or did Sue routinely get her cosmetics via the five-finger discount?

My stomach growled, reminding me I’d skipped my usual post-lecture snack. I balanced the briefcase on my knees and extracted two Honeycrisp apples. “May I offer my daughter a snack?” I said. I remembered when Sue was a little girl, and Red Delicious apples were guaranteed to banish any cloud in her sky. She always counted the bumps on the bottom before biting in.

Jennifer smirked. “Sure.”

Sue said, “An apple?”

“I’m all out of cyanide pills,” I said, eliciting a sharp sidelong glance from Jennifer. “But maybe you can’t eat it with the, you know, handcuffs.”

“Shows how much you know,” Sue scoffed. She twisted herself around to take a bite of the apple I put into her manacled hand. I’m sure it tasted twice as sweet, since it proved Dad was yet again wrong.

Reconsideration

I rummaged for reading material: the scholar’s habit. My briefcase contained a dog-eared copy of Robert Hughes’s magnum opus, The Fatal Shore, and back issues of The Economist. I gave Sue the book.

“God, what is this?” she hissed, as if I’d put a brick of dung in her lap.

“The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia’s Founding,” I read the title out loud to her, and said, “Time to learn about our ancestors.” She bent her head, more from embarrassment than curiosity, I would guess. After a long moment, I heard the book creak open. Tucked into the book were a few pages in my father’s handwriting: notes on the personal history of Dubby Hessen, a man who was caught poaching a hare on an English lord’s estate in 1795.

My eyes strayed from the pages of the Economist to the wall behind Jennifer that had six mounted walkie-talkies—did they still call them that?—and four computer screens. The tools of those in power changed, as did the details of the offenses, but the essential conflict—the haves versus have-nots—did not.

Jennifer turned to me, her face smeared with disappointment: Sue-Ellen and I were reading. Reading! We were not fussing and chafing at the restriction of our liberty; we were nicely making use of our “down time.” The pleasure of handcuffing a thief to high metal chair in the chemically reeking backroom was spoiled by our moment of togetherness.

“Mr. Hessen. Let me explain the restrictions to you,” Jennifer said, harsh and bossy. “There will be a fine to pay.” She named the sum; it was ten times Sue-Ellen’s weekly allowance. “Or, you can take it to court. Either way, the girl will be barred from entering the premises of any one of our stores for the next year. She will not be permitted in this mall area for the next month.”

The premises. Dubby Hessen had been barred from entering “the premises”—the thousands of acres of the lord’s estate.

“Wait-wait-wait,” I said, grabbing a yellow legal pad. “When you say ‘mall area,’ do you mean the parking lot, too?”

“Dad,” whined Sue, “could you please just once not be so damn anal?”

A smile flickered on Jennifer’s face—delighted to be driving a wedge between us.

To the contrary, I welcomed Sue’s words. This sounded more like the old, scrappy, don’t-take-any-guff Sue.

“Everybody takes a shortcut across this parking lot,” I said. I heard echoes of Dubby Hessen’s plea: “Milord, everyone walks through your forest at high tide.” It was the trespassing on forbidden premises, in addition to his poaching, that led to his eventual “punishment by transportation,” namely, a slow boat to Australia. He had been marked as “incorrigible.”

But that was two hundred years ago; I had to live in the now. I said to Sue, “Do you want to be tripped up on a technicality? I mean, with a head of Amazonian green, you’re a walking target.”

           She looked daggers at me. I shrugged.

“Of course it includes the parking lot,” Jennifer said. A burst of static on her walkie-talkie interrupted us. “They’re here,” she said, grinning.

Two cops entered, stamping around with anticipatory righteousness. I introduced myself, and as I shook their hands, the hackles of my neck rose. I could feel Sue-Ellen’s stare on me. Hypocrite, two-face, sell-out.

More apples

I felt an out-of-body experience take over: I hovered above my own father, some three decades earlier, shaking the hand of the policeman who had arrested me. I did not understand then that my father was trying to ease my way. As a young man, I was doing all manner of illegal things: graffiti, dope, unlicensed driving. That night, though, I was charged with theft under $500. Not for mascara—not for a thing that even bore a price-tag. I had collected windfall apples—from an abandoned apple orchard—bags and bags of fallen apples to share with my friends. I was hungry for apples, no doubt as Dubby Hessen was hungry for hare. I was gathering apples under cover of darkness not because I was hiding a crime—but because it did not look cool to be trekking about with yellow PriceWatcher bags. Eventually I was released, and no charges were laid—but I hated my old man for grovelling.

Yet now, here I was, repeating that same firm handshake, that same nod, and that same hollow guarantee: “Thank you officer, our family does not condone such acts, I assure you. We will discuss this further at home.” Note my use of dog-whistle words like “family” and “home.” My father’s method worked for Sue, too: no charges were pressed.

I had despised my father then. But if he had not rescued me that night, would I now be a respected academic specializing in the history of property rights in English law?

Mascara

On the way home Sue-Ellen continued to read the book: a clever tactic to avoid the standard parental lecture. When we got home, she took the book to her room. The PTA was in the middle of an embezzlement scandal, so Charlene was too preoccupied to be curious about Sue’s bare, spotty face.

The next day after school Sue-Ellen sidled into my study and said, “So Dad, tell me about the Australian side of the family.”

“I’ll tell you about Dubby Hessen if you tell me about the mascara. Deal?” I said, gladly putting down my marking pen. Was it just the lighting, or was she wearing less make-up today?

She blew a puff of air. “It’s no biggie. Gavin dumped me. My make-up got ruined.”

Gavin was out of the picture? I gasped but tried to pretend it was a cough.

“Afterward I really wanted to go to Teen Club Nite. But I needed make-up.” Her voice faltered. “I’ve said too much.”

I cocked an eyebrow. My daughter, my laughing-eyed daughter.

Her voice thickened. “I guess you want me to say I’m really sorry about it and it was horribly wrong and I’ll never do it again.”

I suppressed a nod. I didn’t want words—just empty words. I had lain awake for hours last night wondering, as usual, why I was mishandling yet another event of my daughter’s life. Then I worried about giving her the book: was learning about lawbreakers in the family tree going to encourage her anti-social tendencies?

She scowled. “You’ll have to wait. I need to think this through before I promise anything anymore again.”

Think. Think through. Yes, I would settle for that.

It’s never just about the mascara.

THE END