Frankie had to shift in her chair so she could see Hannah, who continued to pace behind her – face set, eyes a bit wild. Was that sweat running down her cheek?
Hannah’s twin brother had died not too long after Lisa. All that dying had been the reason Charley and Hannah had gotten so close. Or at least that’s what Charley had said. Frankie thought they’d been close for a while before that. By then the reasons, the truth, hadn’t mattered.
‘You’re picking your magazine over Charley?’ Frankie asked.
‘Since he doesn’t know me, he isn’t going to care.’
‘That’s cold.’
Hadn’t Hannah nursed her brother through AIDS? Of course that woman and this one were very different. For that matter so was Frankie. So was Charley.
Hannah paused and leaned against the wall. ‘Says the woman who kicked him when he was down.’
‘That’s how you see it? I kicked him?’
‘Didn’t you?’
Frankie wasn’t getting into a discussion of who had kicked whom. Not now. Not here. Preferably not ever and not anywhere. Definitely not with her.
‘You broke his heart, Francesca.’
Frankie refused to admit that he’d broken hers first.
‘Let him stay with you while he’s having his treatments,’ Hannah said.
‘No!’
Hannah kept talking as if Frankie hadn’t even spoken. ‘When those are done, he’ll either be better – which means you’ll be back in long-term memory where you belong. Or …’ She didn’t go on.
‘Or he’ll be dying and he won’t be able to stop anyone from doing anything that they want to.’
Hannah didn’t answer, but she didn’t disagree.
‘Why on earth would you think I’d do anything for you?’
‘It wouldn’t be for me and you know it.’
‘Why would I do anything for him?’
‘Wouldn’t you have once? Done anything?’
Frankie didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. They both knew she would have.
Once.
‘You always wanted him back,’ Hannah said.
‘Not always.’ It had taken a while, sure, but Frankie had moved on. She wasn’t going back. And nothing this woman could say would make her.
Hannah’s phone buzzed and she glanced at the display, frowned. ‘I need to take this.’
She lifted the phone in Frankie’s direction, but her gaze was already on the door leading to the hall. She slipped through it as she answered. ‘What is going on now?’ She shut the door before Frankie heard any more.
Silence settled over the room, broken only by the low rumble of male voices from the exam area, an occasional sally from the nurse. She probably should have gone in with them so that …
‘Shh,’ Frankie hissed. She probably should have gone anywhere but here.
Yet here she was and here she’d stay until the appointment was finished, then she needed to … what?
Frankie glanced at the door through which Hannah had disappeared. For a while she’d also heard the rise and fall of Hannah’s side of the phone call. Now all she heard was the occasional thump and clank of someone grabbing supplies, a nurse greeting a patient, calling for a doctor.
No Hannah.
Frankie glanced into the hall. Still no Hannah.
She hailed a passing medical assistant. ‘Have you seen a woman – blond, late forties, phone stuck to her ear?’
Hands full of medical supplies and obviously frazzled, the girl nodded. ‘Great outfit, killer heels?’
Frankie sighed. ‘Yeah.’
‘She left.’
‘Left?’ Frankie echoed.
The medical assistant headed past her, picking up speed. She lifted her chin to indicate the EXIT door. ‘She ran out that one.’
Hannah had probably gone in search of coffee, maybe taken her call into the main halls of the hospital, or even outside. Perhaps she smoked.
Frankie wasn’t going to chase after her. She’d come back.
Except she didn’t.
After ten minutes, Frankie called Hannah’s cell. It went straight to voicemail. She frowned at her own phone as if it were at fault, then tried the number again with the same result.
She went to the EXIT door, opened it and stared down a long, empty corridor. When she returned to Lanier’s office, she ran into the receptionist.
‘There you are. This was left for you.’ She held out a folded piece of paper.
Frankie’s chest suddenly felt both tight and cold.
She thanked the woman, took the paper, went into Lanier’s office and shut the door. Then she opened the note.
I can’t.
H
Frankie crumpled the paper and tossed it into the trash.
She considered fleeing. Oh, how she wanted to. But within the hour, Charley would only be knocking on her front door.
Charley walked into the office. ‘Miss me?’ He leaned over and kissed her on the head.
The déjà vu was killing her.
Charley
Disneyland, Anaheim, California. June, 1984
Charley needed to finish this assignment and head home. Not only because one more minute photographing Donald Duck’s fiftieth birthday party might send him over the edge, but Frankie was due any day now.
When Ray had told him about this assignment, Charley had decided to try something new. Something cheery and festive and light instead of the massacre in Amritsar that his boss had originally suggested.
What the hell had he been thinking? This place depressed him more than Amritsar ever could.
And what did that say about him? Nothing good, he was certain.
He couldn’t help it that tragedy made better pictures. Tragedy, presented just right, could change the world.
Charley fired off a few frames of Dick Van Dyke, who was hosting the television special of the parade, and smiling wider than any kid in the place. Charley had already taken shots of some of the other celebrities attending today.
Who wouldn’t want to attend an extravaganza like this? Music, floats, dancing, laughter – the very air smelled like spun sugar.
It was all so fake, Charley’s chest hurt. Did anyone realize the duck wasn’t real? For some reason, Disneyland made him twitchy. Other assignments held the possibility of dying by landmine, pipe bomb, gun, knife – pick one. He wasn’t going to get hurt or killed here, unless he did damage to himself just for the hell of it. Yet he’d slept horribly, dreamed constantly and woken up shouting more than once.
He’d also broken out in a cold sweat the instant he’d stepped out of his hotel and seen the crowds. There was nothing at Disneyland that resembled Saigon, except for those crowds and his reaction to them. Why could he photograph a riot and be A-OK as soon as he lifted his camera to his face, yet dancing ducks and hundreds of children made him weak at the knees?
A shrink could probably explain it, but who had the time?
Charley had managed to do the job he’d been assigned by begging a space in the cherry picker one of the camera crews had brought in to get shots of the parade from the air. He thought Ray would be thrilled with the different angle of his photographs, more so than those of any other shooter on the street. That Charley would probably have passed out if he’d had to be on the street was something he would keep to himself.
He rubbed a thumb over the side of his camera. None of the pictures in there mattered. At least to him. Maybe the duck would like them.
He’d flown to Milwaukee rarely since the visit that had followed Beirut. He wasn’t proud of himself, but every time he saw Frankie she was bigger, rounder. She seemed like an alien. Probably because she was growing one.
And there was a thought he should keep to himself. He had a million of ’em.
Charley took a cab to the airport, shipped his film and got on a plane. He’d promised Frankie he would be home by June ninth, a week before her due date. He was afraid that if he broke that promise he might break their marriage irr
eparably. It had already cracked pretty deep.
He’d been back for Christmas. When he walked into the house, he thought he had the wrong one. In all the years they’d been married, they’d never had a Christmas tree, or any of the other decorations that had been placed all over the house. Where had they come from? Why were they here?
Frankie had come out of the kitchen. She was just starting to show.
It scared him. Which was the only reason for his answer when she’d asked him how the house looked.
‘Like Santa’s workshop puked all over it.’
Things had slid downhill from there.
When he’d gotten a call the day after Christmas about the USSR performing a nuclear test, he’d been on the next plane. Then there had been rioting in Tunis, an oil fire in Brazil, a miners’ strike in the UK. He’d managed another quick trip home in April. By then he couldn’t even hug Frankie without getting a belly bump, and while he had, the alien had moved.
He’d done his best to avoid hugging after that.
He knew he was hurting her. He wished he could stop.
He’d spent a lot of time talking to his old service buddy, Jim Colby. Jim had five kids. He lived in Austin and had his own business – a donut shop near the university.
‘Why do you have five kids?’ Charley asked.
‘Because we don’t want six.’ Jim’s chuckle dissolved into a cough. ‘Although what happens, happens.’
Jim had never given up the cigarettes they’d smoked one after the other in Vietnam. Not only had smoking been something to do while waiting around to shoot or be shot, it had been one of the few constants in a world of very few. No matter where you were, you could have that cig in your mouth. Even if you couldn’t light it, because you were either hunting or being hunted, you could hang one off your lip and you felt … like you. Or maybe you felt like every other guy.
Yes, a cigarette was a security blanket, a pacifier, an oral fixation. So what? It was Vietnam.
However, once Charley had returned to the States, he’d finished the pack he had on him and that was it. Cigarettes were Vietnam and he was done.
‘What’s wrong? Tell Uncle Jim all about it.’
Charley had taken to calling his friend while waiting for planes. He used to call Frankie.
‘Everywhere I go I see an example of why we shouldn’t bring more children into this world.’
‘Like what?’
‘Prejudice and bigotry, religious zealots, air strikes, riots, murder, assault.’
‘If you wait for all that to be done, you’ll never have a baby.’
‘That was the plan.’
Jim lit up, took a deep drag, let the smoke trail out. For a minute Charley could have sworn he smelled spent tobacco hovering over that eternal scent of vegetative rot that had characterized the jungle.
‘You mad at Frankie because she ain’t followin’ your plan?’
Was he mad at Frankie? A little.
‘You’re scared.’
‘Hell, yes, I’m scared. What if …?’ He couldn’t put into words what he held deep inside.
‘It ain’t 1866. It’s 1984 – the year the future begins. Women don’t die in childbirth these days.’
‘You know that’s not true.’
‘And you know the chances are damn slim.’
He did, but he wasn’t just worried about losing Frankie in childbirth. What if everything went fine and he lost her because he could not be a father? No matter how he tried to talk himself into it, he didn’t want to be one.
‘You’re being selfish,’ Jim said softly.
Why had he called Jim again?
They talked about the mundane after that – sports, the weather. Anything to pass the time until Charley’s flight was called, which, eventually, it was.
He deplaned at Mitchell Airport at midday on June tenth. He was a day late, but he had left a message on their answering machine, unreasonably happy that he wouldn’t have to tell her directly that he’d somehow confused the dates and was now arriving late due to a cartoon duck’s birthday party parade.
Frankie was in the yard pulling weeds when the taxi dropped him off. She’d planted flowers seemingly everywhere that wasn’t covered in grass, trees or bushes. The riot of colors was so bright and cheery that Charley’s teeth ached.
She got to her feet. The dancing giraffe in the middle of her lemon-yellow maternity top seemed to be teetering on the edge of her enormous belly; her white Bermuda shorts were dirty. As he approached she stretched her back and grimaced.
‘Should you be doing that?’
‘No one else does.’ She headed for the kitchen, where she poured two glasses of lemonade.
The temperature on this side of town, nearer the lake, was sixty-five degrees. Low for June, but still not atypical. Her face appeared redder than it should be for the temperature.
‘How long were you out there?’
‘Not long enough. But I’ve got things to do in here too. How was your flight?’
‘Not bad.’
Charley hated this surface talk, which was all they had these days.
‘How are you … uh … feeling?’
‘Like a beached whale.’
‘You don’t look like one.’
‘Liar.’ She smiled and for an instant everything felt almost normal.
Frankie picked up a broom and started sweeping the kitchen floor, which already appeared swept.
‘Does that need to be done now?’
‘Is there something else I should be doing?’ She continued to sweep.
Only last year they would have spent the first several hours of his arrival home in bed. That hadn’t happened since …
His gaze dropped to her massive middle then jerked away.
‘We could get something to eat?’ He wasn’t hungry but it would waste some time. And since when was DelMonico’s about hunger anyway? It was their place. Maybe if they went there, they’d actually enjoy being together the way they always did, at the same table they always shared.
‘I just ate.’
The disappointment he felt over those three words was disproportionate to the actual words. He stood there, flexing his hands, trying to figure out what to say or do next.
Frankie swept back to the place she’d begun and started sweeping the kitchen all over again.
Charley gently pried the broom from her hand. ‘Let me. Sit, OK?’
‘If you really want to help, you can put together the crib.’
He stood there trying to figure out what, exactly, to say to that. Using a camera? He was the man. Using a screwdriver? Utterly inept.
‘I’m probably not the best choice for that.’
Frankie slid away from him – something she seemed to be doing not only physically lately – and sat on the arm of the sofa, sipping her lemonade. ‘I should have put it together before I got so huge, but I kept thinking it was something that we …’ She glanced at him and drank more lemonade.
She’d thought it was something they should do together. But he’d never come home.
‘I’ll check it out.’ He already knew this wasn’t going to end well, but he had to try.
Frankie gave him a little smile – either she was really tired, or she knew he was placating her. Probably both. She set down her glass, held out her hand. He stared at it for several seconds before he understood she needed help to stand.
‘Sorry!’ He leaped forward, smacking his hand into hers before he managed to grab it and pull.
When she was on her feet, she kept hold of his hand and led him to the stairs. It took her so long to climb them, even with his help, that he started to wonder – and worry – how the hell she’d been climbing them for the last month.
At the top, she turned into the room on the right. He followed, then stood gaping. The last time he’d been here the room had been painted white. The bed – a queen – had been covered with a peach pastel comforter; turquoise pillows had been placed here and there at the head. The wall
s had been dotted with photos she’d taken, surrounded by turquoise frames. Peach candles had graced the oak dresser and nightstands.
All of it was gone, replaced by white baby furniture – a chest of drawers, a changing table; the large parts of a crib were strewn across the floor. A rainbow had been painted on one wall; the others now shone the same shade of yellow as her shirt. The ceiling sported fluffy clouds and a ceiling fan where each blade represented a color on that rainbow.
‘Tell me you didn’t drag all that furniture out of the house by yourself.’
‘Of course not!’ She hauled two plastic tubs out of the closet. ‘I dragged it into the spare room.’
‘What about the painting?’
‘I like to paint.’
He opened his mouth to … what? Scold her? He knew better. If he didn’t want her to do things for herself, he should make sure he was here to help. Or send someone else to do so. Though Frankie had told him on several occasions that money couldn’t solve everything, it solved this kind of stuff really well.
She struggled to pull a third tub into the center of the room to join the other two. He shouldered her aside and did it himself, then pulled off the lids. Gazillions of tiny diapers, T-shirts and socks filled one; tiny footie pajamas, shorts, pants and shirts filled another, the third held towels, washcloths, receiving blankets.
‘I’ve been hitting the rummage sales. You wouldn’t believe the stuff! A bunch of these still had the tags on them.’ She picked up a tiny – so, so tiny – blue sock. ‘I shouldn’t have bought anything in pink or blue, but some things I just had to. Babies don’t know. I figured once he or she is here we can get more sex-appropriate clothes. And people will send stuff.’
She stared into the tubs, pulling out this, folding that. Her expression …
Where was his camera?
Downstairs in the bag with all the others. He’d been so discombobulated by everything he hadn’t even thought to take one out. So unlike him, but she was behaving so unlike Frankie.
Frankie didn’t clean unless she had to. She didn’t go to rummage sales. She didn’t overbuy. She also didn’t get the look on her face that she’d just had for anyone but him.
‘You didn’t need to buy used clothes.’ She also never did that.
Just Once Page 15
