Let's Be Frank

by Brea Brown

  Looking away, she says quietly, “Well, that observation was very… astute. And sensitive. But you presumed a bit much.”

  “I’m sorry!” I quickly respond to what feels like a rebuke.

  With a chuckle, she shakes her head at me. “Forget it. Nate…” She seems to think better of finishing whatever she was going to say and merely smiles after a deep breath through her nose. “I’m glad we cleared this up. Now, we have a full patient load this afternoon. Let’s get back to that.”

  I nod and edge toward the door, reaching behind me for the doorknob. My fingers brush against the smooth metal. A welcome cool draft rushes in when I pull open the door. “Right. Thanks.”

  Her attention officially away from me and on her computer monitor, she murmurs, “Mmm-hmm.”

  With that overt dismissal, I slip into the hallway, feeling oddly lighter and heavier at the same time. So she’s not offended I didn’t buy her house, but I questioned her professionalism by worrying she might have been offended. Geez. If I had more time to obsess about this right now, I’d be in trouble.

  As it is, I don’t have time. I rush to the supply room and gather the materials I’ll need to perform Harry’s promised strep test. Back in the exam room, I glove up, apologize for keeping Harry and his mom waiting, and swab the boy’s throat. After sealing the swabs in a plastic tube and tossing my gloves in the trash, I give Mrs. Webster the name of the ear, nose, and throat clinic she can expect to hear from in the next few days.

  To Harry, I direct while tapping the sealed swab tube against my palm, “Stop licking doorknobs, alright, Bud? Didn’t we talk about this last time?”

  He manages to giggle while holding onto his neck and rasps, “I didn’t lick any doorknobs.”

  “Riiiiight. Well, after you get your tonsils out, the doorknobs will shock your tongue. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” When he seems to take me seriously, I wink, and he relaxes, making me wonder if he really does have a habit of licking door hardware.

  Again, with no time to contemplate the odd proclivities of young boys, I let it drop and simply wish them a good afternoon. After they’ve departed for the reception area, I do a five-count and jog in the same direction, toward the front office, where I hold out Harry’s handwritten referral to Lynette, one of the receptionists.

  She stares at it but doesn’t take it from me. “What’s the diagnosis?”

  “Haven’t done the culture yet, but I’m sure it’s strep.” I subtly shake the piece of paper, the international sign for Take it already. “Can you input this, please? I’m so behind.”

  “Yeah, I know,” she acknowledges, finally pinching the slip between her fingers and squinting at my bad handwriting. “The patients are piled up out there, and parents are getting antsy.”

  “Well, I’m not thrilled about it, either. I have that thing tonight.”

  Again, I receive a blank stare from her. Then she blinks and fake-startles. “Oh! That thing. What thing?”

  Smiling tightly, I back away from her and snatch the next patient folder from the tray by the waiting room door. “You know… my blind date.”

  “Right… What’s her name again?”

  Fully aware I’m giving her information she already knows, I nevertheless answer, “Frankie. Frankie Lipton.”

  She giggles, crushing her hand against her mouth and muffling, “So many jokes. Can I just make one about tea-bagging?”

  “No!” I look around us, paranoid someone impressionable may hear her. “No, you may not! Shhh!”

  With an exaggerated sigh, she lowers her hand. “Fine. Hmmm… Now, you’re sure this is a woman you’re being set up with?”

  I narrow my eyes at her but don’t dignify her question with a response, partly because I’ve triple-checked the same thing with my friend, whose friend-of-a-friend works with my mystery date at Quimby-Rex, a pharmaceutical supplier headquartered here in town.

  My reaction only elicits a louder laugh from her. Then she seems to take pity on me and says, “It’ll be fine. And if it’s not, you’ll have a great story to tell us on Monday. Now, get movin’.” She turns away from me and peers at the form I’ve handed her, tutting. “Sheesh… are you sure you weren’t supposed to be a doctor, like your brother?”

  I also don’t dignify that question with a response but open the waiting room door to call the next patient.

  “Yo, Niles! Ooh, that looks like a nasty boo-boo.” As he and his dad walk past me, I lean down and say, “Just so you know, your neck is not a pencil holder. Let’s get that taken care of, Bud.”

  Chapter Two

  Crashing and cursing through my front door nearly three hours later, I kick off my shoes and peel off my Buzz Lightyear scrubs as I rush down the hallway to my bedroom. The afternoon patient load was relentless, so not only am I home late, resulting in very little time to prepare for my date with Frankie, but my bladder’s about to explode. This is how people get bladder infections and kidney stones, you know? Well, maybe you don’t know, but I do.

  In the bathroom, I run the water in the shower while I stand in front of the toilet, moaning as if experiencing a completely different kind of release. “Better than sex,” I try to convince myself, shaking off the last drops and flushing without thinking. Damn. Now I’ll have to wait for the water to return to below skin-searing temperatures.

  Rushing naked into my bedroom, I stand in front of my closet and fret over my pathetic wardrobe. Not many people can say they wear glorified pajamas to work, and something tells me my first date in… well… a long time… warrants wearing pants with a zipper and button. And possibly even a belt. Although drawstrings do lend a bit of whimsy to any outfit…

  Outfit?! Whimsy?!

  Ay-yi-yi… Maybe I should lay off the chick lit for a while. Next, I’ll be calling my clothes ensembles, with the true French pronunciation.

  If memory serves (and I have to think way further back than I’d like to admit), the semi-casual first date—which I’ve been assured this is—calls for khakis and an Oxford shirt. And nice shoes. Not tennis shoes. And no tie.

  Gosh, when was my last date? It must have been sometime fairly soon after… Oh. Right. Well, I won’t be thinking about that tonight. No siree. Tonight is about the present, not the past. Anyway, that was a depressingly long time ago. Like, I might qualify for born-again V-card status.

  I throw what appear to be the only date-worthy clothes from my closet onto the foot of my bed and sink down next to them. My shoulders slumped, I let my hands dangle between my knees like Cro-Magnon man and stare into space, wondering if tonight will be just another bad date or the beginning of something I’ve almost stopped daring to hope will happen.

  This house is proof my Leave it to Beaver fantasy is dying faster than a skin cell in winter. When the dream was alive and well, only a few short years ago, I determined I’d do things in the right order… wife, house, kids. Well, I’m a grownup (most days) and grew tired of renting, so I’ve put the house before the wife. And as happy as I am with my new place, it’s still just a house, and it sucks that age is requiring me to manage my expectations.

  Not that thirty-two is old, by any stretch, no matter what Harry Webster thinks. Sure, my parents were married, well-established in their private psychiatry practice, and had both Nick and me by the time they were my age, but times are different now. Nowadays, we’re not in as much of a hurry. We take time to figure out who we are and what we want out of life before we settle down.

  So, at this rate, I’ll be about… oh, eighty, by the time I’m ready.

  I was ready once, though.

  Snapping from my indulgent reverie, I gasp-whisper, “Shit!” when I realize how much water I’m wasting and that I have a blind date in less than an hour. And a lot of grooming to do between now and then.

  My cell phone rings in my carrier bag as I walk past it. “Fuck,” I continue my stream of obscenities, digging through the bag for the device. With any luck, it’s Frankie calling to cancel. Her luck, anyway. Let�
��s face it; she’s not going to be missing out on any charming conversation, based on my vocabulary tonight.

  When I see my brother’s name flashing on the screen, I carry the phone into the bathroom with me, set it on the edge of the sink, and activate the speaker phone, despite his immediate protests.

  “Speaker, Bro? Really?”

  “I’m jumping in the shower, so it’s either speaker or nothing,” I insist.

  He sighs. “Fine. Whatever. You can’t delay your de-boogering for five minutes to talk to me? I get it.”

  I step into the stall and pull the door closed behind me. “No, I can’t. I just got home, and I’m supposed to be meeting a date in less than an hour.”

  “Oh, yeah… That’s tonight. Where you taking her? Please, don’t say Chuck E. Cheese’s. It’s not the best way to show you’re a fun-lovin’ guy. It doesn’t say, ‘I love kids;’ it says, ‘I’m a pedophile.’”

  “Did you have a purpose for this call?” I prompt, squeezing shampoo into my palm and rubbing it vigorously into my hair.

  He’s quiet for a few seconds, so I think the call’s been dropped. “Hello?” I check.

  He clears his throat. “Uh, yeah. I actually do have a reason for calling. I… Well, it’s funny…”

  While he dithers, I place my head under the stream to rinse and wait for him to get on with it. It’s unusual for my self-confident big brother to have such a hard time expressing himself, so I figure this must be about someone of the fairer sex.

  Sure enough, he finally says, “I’m calling to invite you to something. Something important.”

  “Yeah?” I massage conditioner into my head. “Well, I already told you I’m never going to one of your girlfriends’ interpretive dance recitals ever again, so if that’s what this is about… I’m busy. Whenever.”

  I expect him to laugh, so when he doesn’t, I hold my hands still against my head and stare at the tiled ceiling. “Aw, man! No. Tell me you’re not back together with that nutjob. What’s her name? Zanzibar?”

  “Zaskia. And no, I’m not going out with Zaskia.”

  “Zaskia! That’s right.” I continue conditioning. “Oh, my gosh… Thank God. She was crazy! Remember how proud she was of being from Transylvania, and she always said she was here to meet and marry a rich American, because that was what she always dreamed about, growing up? And that recital… that wasn’t dancing, by the way. That was—”

  “Nate!”

  I freeze, then pinch water away from my eyes. “What?”

  “Bro. Shut up. Just… Okay, here’s the deal. I’m inviting you to my engagement party on Sunday.”

  “Hardy har har. Good one.” I tilt my head back under the water again, and warn, “Seriously, if you don’t have something real to talk about, I need to let you go. I haven’t even thought about what I’m going to say to this woman tonight that doesn’t have to do with puking kids or our weirdo parents.” I turn to face the stream and grab the bar of soap from its shelf on the wall.

  “I’m serious. I’m getting married, and the engagement party is on Sunday.”

  None of this computes. None of it.

  Well, I take that back. Some of it does. Now that Nick’s finished with med school and is part of an elite surgical team at the area’s biggest hospital, it makes sense he’s settling down in his personal life, too. Everything goes according to plan with Nick, after all.

  “Where’s this party going down?” I inquire, still waiting for him to say, “Just kidding!”

  “At the Plotzlers’ house,” he answers matter-of-factly.

  I don’t want to think about my former fiancée or her family tonight, of all nights, so his mention of them is extremely unwelcome. That being said, I can’t ignore it or pretend it’s completely normal for that name to come up in everyday conversation between the two of us. Gripping the soap as if my life depends on it, I stare at the rushing water in front of me while I try to make what Nick’s said make sense.

  “You there, Bro?” his voice cuts through the steam.

  “Um. Yeah. But… wait a second. What… I mean, why are the Plotzlers hosting your engagement party? To this person I’ve never heard about, much less met?”

  The growing cramp in my intestines tells me I’m sure I know why, and I don’t want it confirmed right now, so I quickly say before he can answer, “Listen, I bet it’s a funny story, but you’ll have to tell me later.”

  Unfortunately, it occurs to me I can’t reach my phone from in here, so there’ll be no hanging up on my brother before he says, his voice shaking a bit, “I’m marrying Heidi.”

  I say, equally shaky, “You’re not marrying Heidi.”

  As if staying in motion will mean none of what he’s saying is true, I scrub the now-mangled bar of soap against my chest to work up a lather.

  His tone is firmer, more like him, when he says, “Yeah, I am. I’m sorry to tell you on the phone, but… it’s not an easy conversation, you know? I’ve been trying to think of how to tell you for a long time.”

  The soap slips from my grip and lands squarely on the top of my foot. I barely register the pain. And it’s just as well I’ve dropped it; I need both hands to brace my weight against the wall as he explains about running into Heidi at The Cheesehead “a while back” and how they didn’t mean for anything to come of it, and he hoped it wouldn’t be weird, because “the last thing we want is to hurt you, Bro.”

  A part of my brain comes alive and helps me say, albeit in a more robotic manner than an acting coach would have preferred, “Of course. It’s fine. I’m happy for you two. Obviously.”

  “Really?”

  Injecting a skosh more enthusiasm into my tone, I claim, “Yeah. I mean… it’s been three years, right? It’s not like I still… Anyway! This is great news!” I’m on a roll now. “Of course, I’ll be at your engagement party… on Sunday. Wow. You weren’t kidding about waiting to tell me.” I reanimate, retrieving the soap from the stall floor and getting back to the task at hand.

  “And you’ll be my best man, right?”

  Again, I pause, my hand hovering protectively over my foamy private parts. I close my eyes and count to three, silently begging my voice to remain steady when I answer, “Sure. Absolutely. If that’s what you want.”

  “I do,” he solemnly states, then chuckles. “Ooh. Good practice, huh? ‘I do.’ But really, I’d really like that, for you to be my best man.”

  His repeated use of the word “really” tells me something else, but I don’t push it. I can’t possibly continue this conversation another minute, anyway.

  “Great. It’s settled then. I’ll see you Sunday, huh?”

  “Yeah! And, hey, good luck on your date tonight. Lief Heineman says he knows this Frankie chick, and she’s hot.”

  Normally, I’d ask how the heck Lief “I-still-live-in-my-parents’-basement-and-think-hockey-mullets-are-the-height-of-style” Heineman knows anyone “hot,” but I simply say, “Good to know. Thanks,” and I’m glad when Nick gets the hint and hangs up without any more lingering goodbyes.

  Fortunately, this is yet another thing I don’t have time to obsess about right now. I can’t get too carried away, imagining what everyone in our families is thinking and saying about all this. I can’t worry about the pitying looks I’ll be receiving at the wedding, at the reception—at Sunday’s engagement party, I think with an audible groan as I rinse the suds from my body, turn off the water, and fumble for the towel hanging over the shower door. I can’t think about how many times people—namely, my mom—are going to ask me if I’m okay. I can’t think about how “Heidi Bingham,” a name I’d relegated to my list of “could have beens,” will be. Just not because of me.

  I can’t.

  I lurch from the shower, drying off while I walk into my bedroom, where my uninspired clothes still await, looking blander than ever. Whatever scant hope I had for tonight (a one-night stand would have been cheap and sleazy, but at least it would have been a result) fizzles. After all, what’s this
“hot Frankie chick” going to see in me? My clothes are the generic dust jacket on a textbook about abnormal psychology.

  Historical events prove I’m incapable of normal interaction with the opposite sex. I’m going to babble about the bread sticks or confess I don’t like football or admit my addiction to chick lit or blurt my desire to get married and have kids as soon as possible. Or any number of other things that have had past dates nervously eyeing the door and muttering excuses about “early mornings.” Early mornings that have nothing to do with waking up next to me.

  Gosh, I’m suddenly about a million times more insecure than I was before I talked to Nick. This date holds so much more—yet so much less—significance somehow. A part of me wants to call her and cancel; nothing’s going to come of tonight, anyway, except more opportunities for me to humiliate myself in front of a stranger. But another part of me taunts that this could be my last chance at that life I desperately want.

  I have three choices: I can stay home and sulk, go on the date and do my usual sabotage job, or show up and prove everyone wrong.

  I dress with the urgency of someone escaping a burning building, my fingers shaking as they work feverishly on my shirt buttons. Screw sulking.

  Chapter Three

  Good news: I haven’t made any of my usual first-date verbal gaffes so far.

  Bad news: That’s because I haven’t been able to get a word in edgewise.

  Worse news: I don’t care.

  Worst news: Sulking at home alone would have made for a more interesting, enjoyable evening.

  So I nod and make encouraging noises from my side of the table while Frankie yammers on and on about her job as a traveling corporate trainer for Green Bay’s only pharmaceutical drug supplier, and I swallow the food I don’t taste, and I pray for time to speed toward a socially-acceptable date-ending hour.

  It’s not that she’s awful; she’s actually quite attractive, or “hot,” as less evolved members of my sex would say. And I suspect her verbosity has more to do with nerves than her natural personality. But my heart’s not in this. My heart is at home, under the covers, wallowing.