Four Lucy Fight Club
Fight Club
The advent of the Four Lucy Fight Club was an accident, really. Years of anger and frustration had finally boiled up and over and led to both the greatest event and biggest mistake of our lives. The idea of four housewives pulling off what we almost managed to get away with was mindboggling. I knew that even then. And if it weren’t for one major incident and one tiny detail we might have actually gotten away with it.
My husband Andy has always been a real movie aficionado and one of his favorites is an old film called Fight Club. The number one rule of Fight Club was that no one ever talked about Fight Club. But you know that someone had to be talking about it. Someone always talks. It’s inevitable. Human nature makes us want to tell our mother or our close friend or hell, the guy at the coffee shop, absolutely everything and if it’s a real juicy little tid-bit then forget about it, there’s just no holding back then.
That’s how I ended up here, as a long term guest of the state of Virginia
I like to think I would have made different choices if I had thought things through a little more. Now that I am confined to a ten by ten space of cinderblocks and steel I have a lot of time to think about what I should have done, could have done and would have done if things had been different. But they weren’t different. The great recession of the twenty first century had seen to that.
No matter how much I think it over though I keep coming back to the same question. Faced with foreclosure and ultimately maybe even homelessness, was I so wrong in what I did? Something had to be done before I was tucking my two little boys into bed at night in a cardboard refrigerator carton and cooking dinner over a fire in a fifty gallon drum.
Perhaps there might have been a better way of doing things. I won’t deny that what we did was wrong. I will deny however, that our motives were unjust. It was supposed to be a solution to our problems. No one was supposed to get hurt and we were only taking what we believe was rightfully ours.
It was a stand for the thousands of wives and mothers just trying to make ends meet; tired of swimming up stream all the time. We became our own underground Fight Club, four women on a mission to save our small corner of the world. We took the bull by the horns and shoved it up fate’s hind end. It seemed like we were so damned good at it! Every detail, every aspect- planned right down to a tee. Who would have guessed it could all go so very wrong?
I suppose I should take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Susie Timmons, inmate number 2010450, of the Virginia State Correctional Department. I have just begun my tenure here and expect to become quite comfortable wearing orange and showering with other women before long. What choice do I really have? I mean, I lost all my rights to choose when I made the choice to break the law.
There’s no doubt that I deserve to be here. I knew what I was doing wrong. Years of marriage had provided me with more than the average amount of knowledge of crime. My husband Andy is a ten year veteran of the Virginia Beach Police Department. He is one of the finest police officers on the job and I am damned proud of him. And I hate myself for letting him down the way I did.
And then there are my children. There is no amount of incarceration that will excuse me for what I have put them through. I have two sons, A.J. and Sammy. A.J. is the oldest. He is quiet, studious, thoughtful and sweet. Sammy is my baby. The spitting image of his father, he is the sweetest little angel but with a devil’s grin. He has a heart of gold but a temper of fire.
I am… was… a wife, a mother and a well educated career woman. I know right from wrong. I have never even had a parking ticket and I am not a murderer or a thief. At least, I wasn’t a thief
I have come to terms with the events of the past several months and I know that I deserve my internment here at the women’s correctional center but I have to say, in a way I am proud of what we did. We fought back against the system and we put up one hell of a fight. Unfortunately the system fought back and we lost. Big time.
I would be lying if I didn’t tell you how much I really liked the air of mystery surrounding the Four Lucy’s, the name dubbed to us by the local rag sheet. For a few days we were the center of attention. Investigators were stumped, reporters conjured up theories and identities were speculated about everywhere. It gave me a secret sense of belonging and a feeling that I was like a superhero.
Only I wasn’t a superhero. I was the bad guy. We all were. And bad guys have to pay a price. Fifteen to twenty years of a ten by ten cell and very bad institution food barely make the down payment. I have lost the three men who made my life worth living. Andy will never speak to me again. There will never be another birthday party or a visit from the tooth fairy. I will miss my boys’ first dates. I will never see them go to prom or cross the stage at graduation. Chances are I won’t be up for parole until well after they are married and their own children begin to date.
They will never understand that Mommy became a criminal for them. That I committed several felonies with their best interests at heart and that I did what I did to protect them. They will always ask why, forever hate me for it and they will never really get it. Years of therapy to fix what I screwed up will never actually work and I will have to live the rest of my life knowing that I let them down, even though I was trying only to make them proud. That, my friends is my true sentence
The Beginning
Destiny was something that I just never believed in. The very idea that every facet of my life was already planned long before I ever took a single breath was just way too large to wrap my mind around. Every day we make decisions- choices- that direct the outcome of our lives and there is just no way that those decisions were made by some mysterious being known as fate.
That is what I used to think. And then my life changed irrevocably and fate took the wheel. If I think back I can almost pin point the exact moment that the future of the Four Lucy Fight Club was sealed.
It was a day like any other. The boys had gone off to school and I was dressed in my extremely figure flattering polyester Sub Heaven uniform in preparation for another highly stimulating day of sandwich making. Once the dishwasher was loaded with the breakfast ware, I ran a quick mop across the faded linoleum.
A quick glance at the stack of unpaid bills and late notices on the counter was enough to make me sigh heavily. Even with my pathetic sandwich job and Andy’s double shifts we just never seemed to make any headway. Losing my job in advertising two years ago hurt us horribly. The mortgage was at least two months late at any given time and the electric company was threatening to disconnect if we didn’t make a payment within ten days. Hell, the cable company had cut us loose months ago.
It’s not like I haven’t tried to get ahead. The day I got downsized I applied for unemployment. By the next day I had a resume drawn up and the began applying everywhere and anywhere. Twelve months of rejections later the unemployment ran out and I was still without work. Recruiters claimed I was over qualified, under qualified, overeducated and under educated. The career counselor at the employment commission told me to go back to school, get another degree.
Go back to school?
I can’t pay the mortgage or buy my boys clothes and shoes but I can drop ten grand on tuition?
And so I was reduced to slapping mayonnaise on bread every day from ten till two while my boss, a snot nosed twenty two year old reminded me of how lucky I was that he gave me my big break back into the workforce.
I won’t even try to lie. The job was awful. I smelled like meat and onions most of the time and it was definitely deprecating to my morale. But it was money and we needed plenty of that.
“Honey? Honey! Where are you?”
My husband, a police officer with the Virginia Beach Police Department was barely an hour off of his night shift and was now out in the garage preparing for an undercover detail. Andy worked double shifts almost every day, going undercover on the drug beat, serving warrants and pretty much taking whatever extra work he could. It had been like this for well over a year now and I could see the worry and exhaustion etched in the lines of his face. I wish he didn’t have to work so hard and it broke my heart to see him so tired and beat down all the time but his overtime is the only thing that keeps us from living in a refrigerator box and eating spaghetti o’s for three meals a day.
“I have to leave, Andy! What do you want?” I yelled out the open door through the laundry room.
“I need you! Can you come out here?!” I thought I actually detected a note of panic in his voice.
“All right! Hang on! I’ll be right there!” I grabbed my purse so I could leave after tending to my husband’s apparent emergency.
Andy, a little paunchier in the middle than the young rookies he worked with, was standing sideways, sucking in his gut, his shoulders thrown so far back it had to hurt. It was all I could do to hold back a laugh.
“Susie? Be honest. Does this gun make me look fat?”
Dressed in his usual undercover garb of jeans, a tee shirt and an unbuttoned flannel, I could clearly see the outline of the pistol on his hip.
“Andy, honey,” I tried hard not to sound trite, “I don’t think a handgun is gonna make you look fat.”
His shoulders relaxed instantly. “Oh, good. So, can’t you see the gun then?”
“I didn’t say that. I just said the gun is not going to affect your physique. Just pull your flannel over it, no one will notice.”
“Hmpf!” Andy muttered as he adjusted his shirt to cover the weapon.
I could see the irritation in his expression and that just made me want to laugh again. Knowing better, I bit back the urge. Instead I just kissed him on the cheek and left the garage.
My little car started up quickly despite the chill in the air. Great on gas mileage but small on space, the Ford Focus I drove was the only car we owned. Andy commuted in his patrol car and we utilized public transportation as much as possible to cut down on gas money even more.
Backing out the driveway I waved to Joan, the world’s nosiest neighbor and headed toward Sub Heaven. From my rear view mirror I saw Andy drive away in his cruiser in the opposite direction.
I was barely half a mile from work when fate jumped in and took over. The last thing I remember was the force of the SUV slamming into the side of my little car. They tell me now that the truck hit me so hard the mechanism in my seat belt failed and I slammed frontal lobe first into the windshield.
When I next opened my eyes, the room was dim. Quiet blips and bleeps punctuated the otherwise silent space around me. I had one hell of a pounding headache and everything looked fuzzy. I rolled my head slowly to the side and could see that Andy was slouched in a blue plastic chair next to me, head lolling off to one side, drool running in a thin stream down his chin and on to his brown tee shirt.
I distinctly remembered his shirt being red when I left for work.
My arms felt heavy. I tried to lift my left arm but it was too much effort so I let it fall limply on the scratchy, white blanket covering me. The distinct smell of bleach permeated my nostrils, turning my already queasy stomach into tight knots.
Testing my voice, I cleared my throat lightly and whispered, “Andy?” And then again, slightly louder, “Andy!”
Sitting up with a start, Andy swatted at the saliva hanging from his chin.
“What? Oh! Susie! You’re awake!” There was shock in his eyes. Maybe a few tears too.
Smiling was agonizing so I settled for a slight lift of the corner of my lip. The memory of the accident suddenly flashed through my mind. I winced as the throbbing in my head intensified.
“How’s the other guy? He come out of it all right?” I whispered. The humor was lost before the words even left my mouth.
“What? Oh, him? Yeah, he’s fine all right. A blood alcohol of .25, he was so out of it, he didn’t even know he hit you. He’s sitting in jail. Judge wouldn’t release him till you woke up… just in case…”
“In case of what, Andy?” I whispered through parched lips.
I already knew the answer. His eyes were windows to his soul.
He picked up my hand gingerly and rubbed the palm with his large, callused thumb. Years of working his father’s farm had given him the rough hands of a working man, different from those of the young men that joined the force now, fresh out college and without a day’s hard labor in their lives.
“Honey, you hit your head pretty hard. There was a lot of swelling… they… the doctors… they weren’t sure you were ever going to wake up.”
Ever going to wake up? “Andy?” My lips moved but even I could barely hear my voice. “How long have I been … out?”
He cleared his throat, averted his gaze away from mine. “Twenty days.”
My eyes shot wide open. I tried, unsuccessfully, to sit up. The room swam around me and my head throbbed with pain. “TWENTY DAYS!! That’s almost three freakin’ weeks!!! The boys!”
“Relax, Susie, they are fine. Mom came to stay with us for a while to help out.”
“Your job?” A flash of the inside of Sub Heaven ran through my mind. “My job!”
“I have been going to work. Only missed the first couple of days. Don’t worry about Sub Heaven, it was beneath you anyway.”
“That snot nosed son of a bitch fired me, didn’t he?! I’ve been in a coma and they FIRED me? Great! Justin is un- freakin’ believable! Now what will we do? DO you KNOW how long it took me to get that pathetic job?!”
I dropped back against my scratchy hospital pillow and closed my eyes. My damned head was throbbing, the room around me had gone liquid and I felt like vomiting.
Andy struggled for a moment, trying to remain composed. When he spoke, he used his cop voice. The one he used when he meant business.
“Susie. Honey… you have to relax. Getting upset is only going to hurt you. Don’t worry, we will manage. We always do. Please, Susie, relax, ok? For me?”
I replayed the accident over in my mind as tears leaked from the corners of my closed eyes.
Screeching tires.
The sound of bending, twisting metal.
“Oh Andy! The car. How about the car?”
“Don’t worry about the car, Susie. That’s what insurance is for.” He tried to sound lighthearted but his voice wavered and I knew that the car was done for. I was guessing we had lost our insurance coverage as well. Good thing I didn’t have a job anymore, there was no way I could get to it now.
Andy leaned forward in his stiff, uncomfortable hospital chair and picked up my hand again. I wondered how many days he had spent sleeping in that ridiculous chair and then going off to work.
Little beads of sweat broke out on his pale forehead. Andy’s skin was so fair he never tanned, no matter how many hours he sat in the sun. Right now he was as red as after a day at the beach but the flush was caused by something entirely different.
Fear.
Worry.
I wanted to tell him everything was going to work out but I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. Lying was a sin and I was raised a good Catholic.
“Everything is going to be fine, Susie. Don’t you worry. Just concentrate on getting better so you can come home to us. I have to go to work now.” He leaned in and kissed me lightly on the lips. “I will let the nurses know you are awake and I will be back in the morning. I love you.”
“I love you too.” I closed my eyes and listened as my husband left the room. When I was sure he was gone, I let the tears flow as the truth hung large and heavy in front of me.
It didn’t matter how convincing Andy tried to be, the fact of the matter was I knew exactly where things stood.
We were so completely screwed.
Is this the book that was recently sent back to you? I think you have pulled the readers in....
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