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…
Summer 1987
Loganville, Georgia
The smell of the alcohol hit Beth Anne Rollins first. Then came the harshly spoken words, followed by an ever-predictable, reactive shove to his stomach and a resounding slap back at her tear-stained face.
“You can see a field of a hundred weeds, woman, or you can see a field of a hundred wishes.”
Jim Rollins uttered the saying only once, hurled at his wife in the midst of yet another midday screaming match. The latest spat started over the unmowed yard of their unkempt house on a tiny patch of land on an otherwise quiet street—one that sat both outside of the comforts of town and away from the well-to-do subdivisions springing up left and right outside of Atlanta.
As usual, the words were spewed in front of the couple’s young daughters and on display for the otherwise unassuming neighborhood to see. Amanda and Kim were always watching, soaking up their tiny corner of the world around them with the widest of eyes—learning by proxy the meaning of want and of a love that caused nothing but hurt.
And yet, as drunk and sloppy and condescending as they were slurring from his lips, Jim Rollins’ mantra about wishes, not weeds stuck to seven year old Amanda Rollins like glue.
All summer long, the family’s old rusty ride-on mower sat rotting at the corner of the house while the yard grew up around it, swallowing it whole. Day in and day out, Beth Anne, as prim and proper and sophisticated southern she pretended to be, pleaded and begged and screamed for Jim to do something about the overgrown jungle of crabgrass and dandelions overtaking their rundown shotgun-style home’s front yard.
But, Jim continued to piss his days away on his vices instead of his responsibilities, while she covered up the bruises from the world and her daughter bore witness. For all the pleading and tears, it never mattered. Jim was far too gone on beer and probably more to ride the old tractor—even if it wasn’t a rusted hunk of junk. Beth Anne did her best to wrestle the rickety push mower through the jungle of weeds every now and then but her efforts there too were usually in vain. The Peach Schnapps and Southern Comfort she used to help drown out her screaming toddler and Jim twisting her arm with demands for his lunch while telling her to know her place, womandidn’t help the cause, either.
And while daddy yelled, momma pushed, daddy slapped back, and little Kimmy wailed, Amanda just quietly blinked back the tears and took it all in. And each time, when they were done arguing, Amanda watched as Beth Anne slunk dutifully back into the kitchen to make Jim his sandwich. She knew the routine well. He’d gulp it down with another cold one and a tepid, “I love ya, you know, darlin’,” leaving his wife in tears, the field of weeds untamed, and his little girl alone with nothing but dreams of a different life.
As the summer days faded on, the dandelions multiplied, tickling Amanda’s bare ankles. The overgrown grass grew up her spindly, scrawny legs almost to her knobby, scabbed up knees. The rusted lawn tractor stayed fast at the corner of the rickety old house, broken like her momma’s spirit every time Jim Rollins came home too drunk to push the push mower or make repairs.
Amanda found make-believe beauty and calm in Jim’s notion of wishes—despite her momma’s stifled sobs and the fact that the words were a dig at her veiled wifely attempts at keeping up appearances where there were no appearances to be kept at all. “You can see a field of a hundred weeds, Kimmy, or you can see a field of a hundred wishes.”
Amanda repeated the words each time the girls camped out on a tattered picnic blanket on a patch of trampled grass she’d stomped down on her own accord. She stroked the soft but tangled blond baby hair of her 3-year-old, dirty diaper clad sister, attempting to quiet her down.
She tied the stems of the dandelions with her chubby, grubby fingers to occupy their time—into haphazard bracelets, into necklaces, into crowns. “To pretend we’re princesses who get picked up in a golden pumpkin carriage and never, ever have to come back to this wicked place ever again,” she told her sister, spinning tales she wasn’t sure even the snotty-nosed toddler believed.
They’d sit outside in the hot Georgia sun for hours—using the play-pretend and the dandelions to carry them through. Day after day, they stayed out until their skin was burned a gnarly shade of red and their clothes were drenched in sticky sweet sweat, or until the rain drove them back inside to the reality that was their passed out dad and crying mom and the rest of the collateral damage that came with the name Rollins.
And though her daddy had said the yard was full of a hundred wishes, Amanda Rollins only ever made one. She wished beyond wishes that she’d be carried away from this overgrown Georgia jungle on the wind, like the white puff that scattered from the touch of her breath on each dandelion she’d plucked all summer long. She didn’t believe in the miracle of Jim Rollins’ wishes, but she wanted nothing more than to take root somewhere far away and sprout a brand new life—one filled with true love instead of tears and longing.
…
December 2015
Queens, New York
“Woah, hang on. Let me get that for ya, momma,” Dominick Carisi offered, moving past Amanda Rollins and her baby daughter, who was fast asleep in her stroller. He held the door and his hand grazed the small of her back as he ushered her through the doorway ahead of him—always the gentleman.
Carisi had been the one to suggest the spacious but bustling sandwich shop for its location, just far enough a walk from Amanda’s apartment to get the baby down for a nap but not far enough that they’d get too cold if the weather took a turn. Plus, he knew it was just loud enough that Rollins wouldn’t feel the need to rush out if Jesse woke up crying while they ate together.
Rollins was grateful for Carisi’s thoughtfulness. She was far too scatterbrained and sleep-deprived to fully navigate the logistics of her first real outing as a solo parent, but was beyond ready to escape the isolation that had become her apartment during maternity leave.
After lunch, they took their time getting back, chattering about nothing and everything all at once as he walked her and Jesse home. Rollins was not surprised to find, once it was mentioned, how much she’d missed the squad room. Though she wouldn’t trade this time with her newborn daughter for anything, she didn’t hold back from chiming in with thoughts and theories on the squad’s latest case.
And though she had felt the warmth that had bubbled inside her on the walk over when Carisi hadn’t hesitated to scoop Jesse in his arms, she was surprised to find that the feeling hadn’t gone away long after he’d put Jesse down. Even once he was babbling away, regaling her with tales of the Carisi family—his cousin’s newest baby, his mother’s latest recipe, his sister’s recent failed attempt to set him up with another one of her newly divorced friends—the feeling she couldn’t quite put words to remained.
Rollins hadn’t realized how much she’d missed Carisi, but his animated hand motions and incessant Staten Island lilted speech felt like a breath of fresh air and warm, familiar hug all rolled into one.
“Ya don’t see a lot of these in the city,” Carisi smiled, slowing his walk and pausing several steps behind her. “Especially not in December.”
She stopped the stroller on the sidewalk and turned to face him. “What’s that?”
A sudden wave of more bitter, less sweet nostalgia flooded over her as he bent down to pluck two dandelions growing from a crack in the sidewalk.
“Almost stepped on ‘em.” He grinned a lopsided, endearing kind of grin and held the two blooms—one a yellow blossom and one a white poof—out at her.
She looked back at him, gripping tightly onto Jesse’s stroller without a word as decades-old memories threatened to rush in and overtake her.
“It’s a concrete jungle out here,” Carisi rambled apologetically, catching that he’d made her falter. “It just makes it that much harder for them to take root. ‘Specially in the dead of winter.”
She nodded in silent agreement, noting the pink that rose in his cheeks as he took a step forward, his hand outstretched towards her.
“Unexpected,” Carisi said, in a voice she thought was almost bashful in its inflection as he placed the flowers under her nose. “But, obviously not impossible,” he finished with a soft smile after a quiet pause.
“Obviously,” she echoed back, stepping in closer to him, steading her hand on his forearm. Her cheeks were an equal shade of pink she quickly blamed on the warming winter afternoon, looking away quickly as he caught her smiling back.
“They just need a tiny crack. Any weakness. A little dirt. Some water. One blasted day of sun in the cold winter,” he continued rambling animatedly. “And a wish is born.”
Wishes not weeds, Rollins thought, and the tone of her father’s voice she’d been fighting to stave off echoed through her head, reminding her that wishes really were just frivolous and fanciful. As much as she enjoyed the present company and new motherhood, she could not cast away the realization that her Georgia dreams of far, far away hadn't really been a fairy tale come true, either.
“Are you okay,” Carisi asked, his face drooping in concern as he recognized the still stoic look creeping back across her face.
She stuttered over her tongue, trying to find her bearings. “Old memory,” she apologized, shaking her head in an attempt to stave off the feeling.
He held the white cottony bloom out to her again with a soft offer. “Make a wish?”
Despite the memories of her past, the request felt somehow less loaded and more filled with whimsy slipping from Carisi’s lips.
And though she didn’t believe in the power of wishes, Rollins made a single silent one anyway. She blew a breath of fresh air sending the seeds parachuting into the wind, but closed her eyes and dared not watch them go, lest she’d hope her wish might someday come true.
This time Rollins’ wish was not for her. This time, as Carisi watched on without question, she made a wish for her tiny daughter he’d cradled so tenderly in his arms— a wish for a future free from traumas and filled with the purest kind of love.
She felt his gaze upon her when she opened her eyes, but didn’t offer an explanation of her thoughts or wishes as they continued to walk.
“I thought I was ready for motherhood,” she finally confessed, as Jesse started to whimper. “I knew it was gonna be a lot, ya know, but I underestimated how much of an impact my own childhood would have on my own trust in myself as a mom.”
“You've got nothing to worry about, Rollins,” Carisi promised. “You’re already one of the good ones. She’s lucky ya know…to have ya.”
She gave him a halfhearted grin in return and led the rest of the way home in silence. When they arrived back out front of Rollins’ apartment, Carisi bent down and placed a gentle kiss to a cooing Jesse’s forehead before leaning in to Amanda for a reassuring goodbye hug.
“Thanks for getting me out,” she said softly. “It means a lot.”
Rollins found herself stalling as he shifted from foot to foot in front of her. She finally leaned into him and he let out an awkward belly laugh as she placed her hand on his chest and picked an errant white wisp of a dandelion seed from where it landed, hooked on the wool of his dark winter coat.
She let her hand linger over his heart for the briefest of seconds and when she pulled back she rubbed her fingers together. She couldn’t help but repeat her wish as she set the last vestiges of it free.
“Anytime, Rollins. I mean it,” he offered shyly. She realized he still gently twirled the single yellow dandelion bloom between his thumb and forefinger.
Stepping forward once more, he quietly tucked the bloom behind her ear. A soft, “see you later Rollins,” slipped from his lips as he walked away.
She didn’t find the flower until hours later, wilted and tangled in her hair, when Jesse was wailing and another ferberizing attempt had failed miserably. She paced back and forth across the tiny apartment, bouncing Jesse extra at the knees—grateful for Carisi’s advice, even if it wasn’t the miracle cure.
When Jesse finally quieted, Rollins found herself absentmindedly tucking the wilted blossom between two pages of a heavy forensic psychology journal collecting dust on her bookshelf. She refused to think about the larger implications of such a tiny, insignificant action, but somehow, it felt like a memory worth saving for someday.
….
Summer 2022
Staten Island, New York
“Stop the car,” Amanda Rollins yelled, digging her nails inadvertently into Dominick Carisi’s thigh as the car came to a screeching halt.
He wondered for a second if she’d gone into cop mode, and his feet hit the pavement just a split second after hers once the Jeep is barely in park alongside the sidewalk-adjacent curb.
His breath caught low in his gut when she didn't take off running, but instead stopped in front of a swinging “for sale” sign heralding a “coming soon” banner just two car lengths behind the Jeep not far from a street light just starting to flicker on.
The sign stood just before a faded white picket fence surrounding a modest gray, single-story rancher, complete with freshly painted shutters and a bright yellow front door. They were just two streets over from his childhood home where they’d just finished Sunday dinner with Serafina and the rest of the Carisi crew.
“It’s perfect!”
He looked over at her to find that she was all smiles.
“Jesus, Rollins,” he said, slowing to catch his breath before bending over in laughter and relief over her grin.
“What? Don’t ya think,” she asked playfully.
“The yard needs a lot of work,” he said, rationalizing and trying to hold in a giddy smile of his own he could barely contain. “A little far from work, a lot close to my Ma.”
Rollins looked beyond the overgrown grass and the myriad of dandelions that had first captured her attention. She shrugged, unafraid of the implications of both of those things.
“You can see a field of a hundred weeds, Sonny, or you can see a field of a hundred wishes,” she chided playfully, and Jim Rollins didn’t even cross her mind once as the words left her lips.
“Looks like it hasn’t even hit the market yet,” Carisi said, taking out his phone. “But, l–”
“Let me guess, you went to high school with the realtor,” she said with a knowing smirk.
“Sunday school, but yeah,” he chuckled, his grin widening. “Lemme call her quick.”
Rollins reached over the gate and unlatched the latch, making her way up the walkway as Carisi helped Billie and Jesse scramble out of the back seat of the car.
“Rollins wait,” Carisi laughed, equating her eagerness to an almost B&E.
“Are we gonna live here?” Billie asked with a yawn, having grown beyond bored of looking at Manhattan apartments in the weeks prior.
“Look momma, there’s even a swing set and a playhouse of our own,” Jesse cheered as the two girls followed their mother up the walk.
Carisi followed behind, with a shake of his head shutting the gate behind him. “She says it’s fine,” he called out, placing his hand over the microphone of his cell.
The girls quickly began running in the grass while Carisi joined Rollins on the small front porch. “Thanks Nina,” Carisi said with a nod, keying in the code on the lock box hanging from the door knob. “If you’re sure you don’t mind, we will see you soon.”
“Can you believe the listing is supposed to hit tonight at midnight? Owners already moved overseas and they are ready to sell asap,” he explained, swinging the front door open wide. “Apparently it’s quite the deal.”
Carisi stepped through the threshold and reached for Rollins’ hand, pulling her close. But, when Amanda Rollins turned around to call her daughters to come in, she stopped in her tracks.
Pulling Carisi back out onto the porch, she stood and watched with tears glistening in her eyes. Through the tears, she saw two little blond girls, happy and healthy and carefree—laughing and giggling as they ran through the yard of weeds.
“Make a wish Silly Billie,” Jesse shouted joyously, holding a single white dandelion puff out, much to her younger sister’s delight.
Billie blew the dandelion before plucking one of her own. “Your turn, Messy Jesse,” she giggled back as Jesse blew and they danced while seeds rained down around them.
Gone were the days of Amanda and Kimmy and the traumas that plagued them from childhood into adulthood. Instead, Billie and Jesse Rollins’ play pretend was just for fun and not a survival plan of escape.
Those days of old were not forgotten, just packed away as relics of a past that led to choices for a better future.
Looking out with Dominick Carisi by her side, Amanda Rollins saw a future where her girls would spin in the yard full of wishes, unafraid and free. She saw a life where she knew disagreements would end with kisses and compromises, and not at the bottom of another bottle—a life where their greatest vice was only their love for one another.
Someday soon, they’ll all move into this tiny home, sheltered by a white picket fence and surrounded by the love she’d so desperately wished for even when she thought all hope was lost.
They’ll tuck their daughters in, safe and sound each night. They’ll go to school at St. John’s and play their first softball games on the very same field where Carisi hit his first little league home run.
They’ll have grandparents and cousins and Sunday dinners galore. They’ll live a life where mom and dad take turns with the push mower and keep the yard cut fresh—but don’t spray for weeds so the dandelions grow.
Carisi will wear dandelion chain bracelets and necklaces and crowns, even after long days at the office and Rollins will press all of her tiny stem-tied bouquet gifts before they wilt.
Above all, Billie and Jesse Rollins will grow up with a mother and father who make sure they know that in a field of hundred wishes, they are the greatest come true.
…
Dandelion, into the wind you go
Won't you let my darling know?
~Ruth B.