The idea of admitting to the police, and to Hannah, that she’d found Charley only to lose him again because she’d gone to a coffee shop was too mortifying.
She leaned out the screened door. ‘Wanna go into town for coffee?’
He sat up, as if he’d been yanked on a string. ‘Yep.’
They returned to the car. Charley pulled his seatbelt across his chest, then hesitated before buckling it. ‘If you try and go right back to Milwaukee, I’ll jump out.’
She hadn’t even considered driving back without his permission and she should have.
‘I’m no expert but I bet jumping out of a moving car would hurt.’
‘What do I care?’
This daredevil attitude reminded her strongly of the man he’d been when they met. Willing to take any risk for a story. Go anywhere, do anything.
She felt the familiar whirl of her stomach at the thought of Charley being in danger, of being hurt.
According to Hannah, Charley’s PTSD was to blame for his flirtation with danger. But having a psycho-babble explanation for his behavior, and all the pain it had caused, didn’t make that pain any less real, didn’t make the anger between them any less damaging.
Would either one of them ever get past the past and move on? She thought they had, or at least she had, but here they were right back in the same emotional shit storm they’d lived in so long ago.
When Charley continued to hold the seatbelt buckle above the latch, eyebrows lifted, she started the car with an annoyed flick of her wrist. ‘I won’t drive back to Milwaukee.’
At least not until she had her coffee.
The coffee shop on Main Street was nearly empty. Frankie ordered a dark roast; Charley ordered their flavored brew of the day, French vanilla.
Frankie slipped on to the front porch, where she could see Charley through the window, and placed the call.
‘Find him?’ Hannah asked.
‘At the cottage. Does he still own it?’
From Hannah’s end came the clatter of computer keys, the mumble of voices. Frankie glanced at her watch. 7:00 a.m. Which made it 8:00 a.m. in America’s capital, but still pretty early for so much activity in the office.
‘The cottage where—?’
‘Yes.’ Frankie cut her off before she could say it. Frankie had been thinking it enough already.
‘He still owns it, but he hasn’t been back since. I’ve been bugging him to sell. He ignores me.’
Frankie grunted. Been there.
‘Why did he go to the cottage?’ Hannah asked.
‘You wanna ask him?’
‘I’d prefer not to have a rerun of “Who the hell are you?”’
‘Understandable.’
Charley had found a newspaper on the next table and commenced reading it. Since he didn’t seem to be having a time warp moment, he either hadn’t glanced at the date, or he had and his beleaguered brain had conveniently switched up the year. Frankie almost envied him the ability to see only what he wanted to.
‘Did you just sympathize with me?’ Hannah asked.
‘Makes you feel a little squiggy, doesn’t it?’
Hannah laughed and Frankie found herself smiling. Why was she loosening up with Charley’s wife?
Oh, hell, why not?
‘Do you like flavored coffee?’ she asked.
‘You planning on sending me some for my birthday?’
‘I just …’ Frankie watched Charley sip from his cup. ‘Wondered.’
‘I do.’
‘Do you remember if Charley liked it when you met him?’
‘I …’ Hannah’s voice drifted off. She cleared her throat and when she spoke again her words were softer than they’d been so far. ‘I remember everything about Charley. Don’t you?’
Frankie had thought she had, but maybe she was wrong.
‘Flavored coffee?’ she repeated. ‘Charley like it or not?’
‘He drank it from day one and never complained, although once he said something about the carafe smelling like …’ She paused, then said the rest fast, as if she had to get the words out before she forgot them. ‘Like eight-day-old burned sludge with none of the promised sweetness. Poetic for Charley.’
Those were nearly Frankie’s exact thoughts about flavored coffee. Not that she’d ever considered herself poetic.
Bitchy, maybe.
‘I took that to mean he didn’t like flavored coffee,’ Hannah continued, ‘but he said that he’d developed a taste for it. That he hadn’t liked it and now he did.’
‘Interesting.’
‘Why is it interesting?’
Frankie almost didn’t tell her. Was it relevant? Who knew? But if she couldn’t share the minutiae of Charley with Hannah, whom could she share it with?
Quickly she told her how Charley had ordered flavored coffee even though he hadn’t liked it when he’d been Her Charley.
‘Your Charley?’
Frankie’s cheeks heated. Luckily no one could see her out here. ‘It’s how I distinguish the way he is now from—’
‘The way he was when he was My Charley. Way back last week.’
‘Yeah.’
‘OK. That is interesting. And weird. You should tell his doctor.’
‘If we ever see his doctor again.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Hannah demanded.
Frankie explained that Charley was refusing to leave.
‘How are you going to get him back to Milwaukee?’
‘Hog-tie him and throw him in the trunk?’
‘You think you can?’
For an instant Frankie thought Hannah was serious and she stood blinking at the empty road in front of the coffee shop, wishing she’d brought a jacket. The temperature felt like a balmy fifty-five.
‘Kidding,’ Hannah said. ‘Though there are times over the last few decades that I’d have helped you do it.’
‘He has that effect.’
They shared a moment of commiserating silence. In the past, Frankie had complained about Charley to Irene, but that had only made Irene detest him more. Not what she’d been after, though what she’d been after she hadn’t known until now.
Sympathy. Empathy. Someone who ‘got’ Charley the way that Frankie did. The only person who fit that description was Hannah.
‘Any suggestions on what I should do?’ Frankie continued. ‘Any tricks of the Charley trade you care to share from your decades married to the man?’
‘Tricks to get him to do something he doesn’t want to? There aren’t any.’
‘Swell.’ That had been too much to hope for, but nevertheless she had hoped. ‘Too bad he can’t get his treatment here.’ Maybe then she’d even be able to convince him to get the treatment.
‘Right. Where would he …?’ Hannah’s voice trailed off. ‘Wait. How close are you to … to … something with a bay. Hold on.’ Computer keys clattered more loudly than before. ‘I was checking out Dr Lanier and I—’
‘Checking out why?’
‘To see if he’s really as great as he thinks he is.’
‘And?’
The keys stopped clattering for an instant. ‘He is.’
The relief in her voice echoed Frankie’s own.
‘I called Kettering. He didn’t have enough accolades for his protégé, said we were better off with Lanier than we’d be with him.’ The clattering started again. ‘Lanier just started a satellite cancer clinic in Sturgeon Bay.’
‘No way.’
While Sturgeon Bay was the largest city in Door County, the county itself had fewer than 30,000 residents. This swelled astronomically during the summer season. However, a cancer clinic wasn’t something folks on vacation often went searching for.
‘According to the website, they serve the peninsula and Green Bay.’
‘What else did the website say?’ Frankie wasn’t quite sure what a satellite cancer clinic was.
‘The place provides care for cancer patients – radiation, chemo, counseling. Lanier has of
fice hours there every other week.’
‘Charley could continue his radiation, start his chemo and see the doctor when he’s here.’
‘You’ll have to ask Lanier, but I’m thinking yes. Especially if the alternative is him being locked in the trunk.’
Frankie let out a half laugh.
‘What about your job?’ Hannah asked.
‘My job is flexible.’
Right now her job was non-existent. She’d finished the assignment on the Basilica and the Greek Orthodox church, and she was fresh out of work. Usually she spent her downtime taking stock photos. She had none of Door County on her website; she could use some.
‘You think you’ll be OK there?’
Frankie hadn’t melted down, shrieked, screamed, pounded her chest, run away. Any of the things she’d thought she’d do if she ever again saw the cottage, or that expanse of water at the end of the dock. Didn’t mean her temporary bout of Zen would continue.
‘I hope so.’
Considering Hannah’s life, her own loss, it wasn’t surprising that she understood what being here might do to Frankie.
‘If you’re not,’ Hannah continued, ‘if you just can’t stand it, call me.’
‘And you’ll come to my rescue?’
Hannah let out a short, sharp breath. ‘I don’t know. Unless the chemo makes him remember me, wouldn’t my coming only make things worse?’
Frankie had a feeling that the chemo was going to make Charley not care about much.
‘Let’s cross the bridges as we come to them.’ Frankie paused. ‘So if you weren’t planning to come to my rescue, why would I call you?’
‘Who else are you going to talk to about this? About him? Irene?’
The sarcasm as she said Irene’s name should have annoyed Frankie, but Hannah was right. Talking to Irene about Charley was never productive. But could she talk to Hannah about him? A week ago the suggestion would have made her laugh. Today …
She didn’t feel much like laughing.
Silence pulsed. Frankie waited for Hannah to say goodbye, or maybe just hang up.
‘This is an impossible situation.’
Hannah sounded so adult. Really, she always had been despite Frankie’s memory of her as a child.
‘We’ve survived them before.’
‘Have we?’ Hannah asked.
‘We’re still breathing.’ Even though Frankie remembered, very clearly, times she wished she wasn’t.
‘Breathing just means we’re living,’ Hannah said. ‘Surviving is something else all together.’
‘Fancy?’
Frankie spun. Charley stood right behind her.
When had she turned her back, taken her eyes off him? What if he’d decided to wander away?
‘Who are you talking to? Irene? Don’t tell her hi.’ He winked.
‘I … uh … I’ll be right there.’
‘Your coffee’s cold. I’ll have them warm it up for you, baby.’ He leaned over and kissed her cheek, smiled, then set his palm against it too. ‘I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you.’
The soft intake of breath from the other side of the line made Frankie wince. Hannah had heard everything, or at least the last part.
Charley strode off to have them ‘warm it up for you, baby’.
Frankie stood there uncertain what to say. ‘He … uh … thinks it’s 1989.’
‘That doesn’t make it any less true.’
‘Make what?’
‘He never did love anyone the way he loved you.’
Charley
Fall of Saigon. April 30, 1975
Vietnamese poured from the stairwell as the helicopter lifted from the roof of the US Embassy. They raced across the concrete. A few tried to jump up and catch the landing skids.
Charley’s finger tightened on his camera. The motor drive whirred. This was why he’d talked his way inside the embassy walls last night instead of heading to the USS Mobile with the rest of the journalists.
Now he was on the last flight out with the last of the Marines that had been guarding the place. The things he’d seen, the things he’d photographed … Despite the danger, Charley’s blood seemed to course faster. The ‘I’m so alive’ feeling made him dizzy.
Charley leaned out the open door to take one last picture and—
Shots were fired. The helicopter dipped and swayed.
He was falling.
Charley woke himself shouting, ‘No!’
Which was all he’d been able to shout before one of the Marines had snatched him back as he tipped over the edge, then thrown him into a seat.
‘Jesus!’ the man had snapped. ‘You’re so much trouble I’m about to toss you out myself.’
There, in the darkness of the night, in his house in Whitefish Bay, on his first visit back since the funeral, Charley wished the man had done it. If he had, Lisa would not be dead.
If he had, Lisa would never have existed. Would that have been better?
Sometimes, when the pain was almost too much, Charley thought so. Then he’d remember her laugh, her smile, her voice, her tiny fingers and equally tiny but no less perfect toes, her hair that was just like his and her eyes that were just like Frankie’s, and he’d know that wasn’t true.
He’d give anything if she would only exist again, but she wouldn’t. How did he live with that? How did he get over that?
Maybe he didn’t.
His heart still pounded; he’d broken out in a cold sweat. He could smell himself, that same rank scent of fear in the jungle. He could still hear the whoop-whoop, see the refugees streaming across the roof below them, feel the lurch as he fell.
In the past, whenever he’d woken screaming, sweating, panting in this house, Frankie had been there. She had held him, touched him, sung to him, soothed him.
Tonight, he was alone.
‘Frankie?’ he whispered.
The bed was empty, even though when he’d fallen asleep she’d been clinging to the edge, as far away from him as she could get and still remain on the same mattress.
This visit home had not gone well. His wife walked around like a wraith. She barely spoke, slept or ate that he could tell.
He crept through the house as if he were an intruder; he felt like one. This house had never been his, and now he didn’t think it ever would be.
Wearing only his white boxers and white socks, a chill whispered over his damp skin. Probably because the place appeared haunted, the silver-gray light of the moon shining through every window, making the furniture cast shadows that seemed to dance like black flames.
Too bad he didn’t have a camera, but he’d left them all in DC. Hadn’t picked one up since …
On the landing, preparing to head downstairs, he glanced into Lisa’s room. A shadow lurked near the window; this one did not move.
Was Lisa here?
Joy filled him. He didn’t even care that she’d be a ghost; all he cared was that she might be …
‘Nightmare?’ Frankie asked.
Disappointment flooded him; shame followed. How could he be disappointed that the shadow belonged to his wife?
‘Yeah.’ He scrubbed his hand through his hair, surprised at the length. When had he last gotten it cut?
Before.
Would everything now be divided into before and after he’d let his little girl die?
He stepped tentatively into the room. He hated being tentative. It went against his nature. But lately, that’s all he seemed to be.
‘Are you …?’ He stopped. She wasn’t all right. Thanks to him.
‘We used to watch movies every Saturday night.’ Frankie sat in the window seat, her legs drawn up under her long flannel nightgown.
When had she started to wear flannel nightgowns? He had no idea. There were a lot of things he had no idea about. Like movies on a Saturday night.
‘I’d make popcorn and Kool-Aid. Her favorite was grape.’ Frankie laid her cheek on her knees, staring out the window into the silvery light and
not at him. ‘I’ll never forget the taste of popcorn in my teeth and grape Kool-Aid on my tongue, but I’ll forget the way she laughed. Won’t I?’
Charley’s throat hurt; he couldn’t speak. Probably shouldn’t.
‘Her favorite movie is—’ Frankie’s breath caught, both pain and surprise, as if she’d stepped on a bumblebee, barefoot, in the middle of a patch of clover. ‘Her favorite movie was The Sound of Music. Whenever it played on TV we had to make sure we were home and that there was lots of popcorn. She’d go to bed singing “My Favorite Things” and we’d change the words to sunshine on dandelions and cuddles with kittens, or some other silly combination. She would laugh so hard.’
Frankie lifted her head from her knees just a little. ‘Hear that?’
All Charley heard was a car driving past on the street.
She laid her head back where it had been and continued. ‘She hated hot dogs. She wanted a black kitty – a real one, just like her stuffed one.’
It was then that he noticed Frankie had Black Kitty tucked tightly between her breasts and her drawn-up knees; her chin just touched its head.
‘Why didn’t I get her one? Kittens are easy. But I didn’t want to deal with it. I was selfish.’
‘No, Fancy, you …’
She kept talking as if he weren’t there.
‘She hated it if I took a picture of her when she was crying. All I had to do to get her to stop was raise my camera. I always wanted to know why that was.’ She breathed in, long and slow, then breathed out. ‘Now I never will.’
Frankie’s voice alternated between matter-of-fact and wondering, as if in talking about Lisa she was discovering things she’d never known either, though that couldn’t be true. The only person who’d truly known Lisa Blackwell, the only person who now ever would, was Frankie.
‘She always snatched the green game piece whenever we played Candyland. If she didn’t draw Queen Frostine, she pouted. She snored a little sometimes. She smelled like …’
Charley breathed in, trying to remember. All he smelled was a ghost of the bay that had killed her.
‘Graham crackers,’ Frankie said.
Silence descended, broken only by the crackles and creaks of a house he didn’t know any better than he’d known his own child.
Just Once Page 26
