by Deb Caletti
“Sexy,” Frances Lee said. Sprout laughed.
“That was later. When he was in his twenties.”
“He had a future behind him,” I said.
“Oh, he did. And then there was Dennis what-was-his-name in college, and I cried over him for months,” Elizabeth said. “See? I don’t even remember his name now.”
“Susanne Renowski,” Andy said. “Bawled my eyes out for three weeks straight because she dumped me. Sophomore year. She was the most important thing in my world then, and I care more about the mailbox now than her. Saw her at the twenty-five year reunion, and she’s cleaning aquariums at the West Van Pet Mall.”
“Terrence Vinnigan,” Frances Lee said. “I dumped him, and still I cried for a week.”
Elizabeth leaned back and sighed.
“Tired, babe?” Andy said.
“No, I was just thinking about Barry. You guys came all this way. Is there something you want? Were there things you wanted to know?”
“Just…,” I said. I wanted to say, everything. “The story,” I said instead. Sprout nodded.
“Well,” she thought. “We dated all through our senior year of high school, part of junior year, too, come to think of it. And we were serious. I thought we were serious. He was the first guy I thought I loved. Oh God, his mother hated me. She thought the sun rose and set on him. Don’t laugh, but I pictured us getting married. Barry had this charisma, you know? I don’t know how he ever graduated, because I don’t think he ever wrote a paper himself. He was one of those people who always gets let off the hook.”
“Meaning they never learn consequences,” Andy said.
“Meaning the rest of us are suckers. We had fun together, though. He had big, crazy ideas that made you laugh. I’m feeling weird about this. This is your father.”
I looked at her, her cheekbones two ridges against her skin. “We just want the truth, whatever it is,” I said.
“All right,” Elizabeth said. Still, she paused, maybe to sift through what she would say and not say. “Things started to fall apart when I realized Barry would lie to me about stuff. He’d tell me he’d be going out with a friend, and he’d be really going to some girl’s party. He’d lie about…a lot of things. Sometimes it felt like everything. And then he started to put me down in little ways, hurtful things, telling me how he thought I laughed too loud or how great some other girl dressed or how my goal of being a writer was too far beyond my actual talent.”
“Honey, I’ve been meaning to tell you, you laugh too loud,” Andy said from over by the stereo.
“So basically, what he was like at seventeen is how he stayed,” Frances Lee said.
I squeezed my fingernails into my palms, tight. I wished she wouldn’t do that, crucify him at every turn. I wanted to learn more about him, I guess. Even the bad stuff. But I didn’t want to go on the Slaughter Dad Road Trip.
“I have to say, though, that it was my fault too. Because I let him say these things. I’d keep my mouth shut, because I was afraid he’d get mad and leave. I took him back after other stuff happened, too, other girls…”
“Ouch,” Jake said.
“Well, I thought love was supposed to be unconditional.” She said the word as if it gave her a bad taste in her mouth. “And whose idea was unconditional love, anyway?” She shook her head. “Man, how dangerous is that? And why are we still taught it? It should go the way of hitchhiking and smoking in public places.”
Right then, I had an internal snag of wrong at her words, as if she’d just stated the opposite of some well-known fact—that you shouldn’t treat others like you want to be treated, or that you shouldn’t help other people less fortunate. Shouldn’t love be unconditional? Even though Mom had drowned us in warnings about making good choices, I still held the solid thought that love meant you gave it everything. Wasn’t “unconditional” pretty much the same as “commitment”? What was love if it wasn’t the permanent and forever resting place of our best intentions and whole-hearted generosity? Held-back love seemed like second-place love. Runner-up love. Not the full-out, give-everything, succumb, fall-in love that real love was supposed to be.
“Parents and children,” Andy said. “Unconditional love should be there.”
“Well, sure. Of course,” Elizabeth agreed. She plucked at some fuzz on her pink socks before speaking again. “Of course. But otherwise? Unconditional love is like a country of two with no laws and no government. Which is all fine if everyone is peaceful and law abiding. In the wrong hands, though, you got looting and crime sprees, and let me tell you, the people who demand unconditional love are usually the ones who’ll rob and pillage and then blame you because you left your door unlocked.”
She was getting a little carried away, gesturing with a thin arm. She had things to say, you could tell, things to say still. She had set her scarf askew, exposing a patch of downy baldness on the side of her head. Andy noticed, came over, and stood behind her; he straightened her scarf and then leaned down to kiss her forehead.
“Love should have conditions,” she said, more softly now. “And the biggest one is that you should be able to look in someone’s face and respect what you see.” She tilted her head back and looked up at Andy, and he took her face in his hands and kissed her again.
I felt a wave, a tsunami, of emotion inside. If you wrapped all love and disappointment and hurt and outrage and the desperate need for healing and for things to work out like they should—if you wrapped up all of that, that’s what I felt. If you took those largest of things and put them into one person, that was me then. It was the cosmos stuffed into a glass jar, and the only thing to do with all that feeling was to force the lid down hard with the palm of your hand, hold your heart away in some place. Some place where it would be safe, safe and undiscovered.
ELIZABETH BENNETT:
I had always had a little problem looking out for myself in love. I was afraid people would leave me. So I sort of clung on and did everything possible to keep someone around. I didn’t have a hard talk with myself about who I was keeping around, what I was keeping around, as long as someone was around. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out—my mom died when I was twelve, and my dad was pretty distant from us. I clung to people like human life preservers. I thought I’d die if someone left me. It’s ironic, because now I’m the one who’s leaving.
So I put up with bad behavior in the name of loving the way I thought you were supposed to love. Darryl, my long-term partner before I married Andy (whom Andy calls Public Enemy Number One), was moody and remote, and I did everything I knew how to keep him connected to me until I realized I’d finally better protect myself because no one else was going to, especially not Darryl. It makes me so mad—all those nights you spent hurting. You wonder later, all the stuff you hold in. The impact on your health, you know.
I met Andy at a grocery store. We were both buying gum. Really. We got into this silly, great conversation. Big Red versus Dentyne cinnamon. We reminisced about Chicklets, and those packs of little tiny Chicklets you don’t see anymore. He told me about saving Bazooka comics for a magic kit that turned out to be a wand and a sad little pamphlet of tricks. I think we just wanted to keep the conversation going. We just talked and loved and laughed from that moment on.
I wasted all this time with the wrong people. And now there’s Andy, and I wish like anything I could still keep that conversation going.
Andy walked us to the door to say good-bye. Jake was the only one brave enough to ask what I think we all wanted to know.
“Will she be all right?” he asked.
Andy rubbed his jawline with his hand. “No,” he said.
Everyone was silent when we got back into the truck. The light was twilighty-tender as we drove back through Granville Island. Even the sight of Bob’s big checkered pants in the back of the truck made me feel like my heart could snap, as did his cartoon hair against the backdrop of the setting sun. The colors of Granville Island, the yellows and blues and reds, they w
ere bright on the way back through town in those moments of sunset, so bright I had to blink.
Chapter Thirteen
We were staying the night at the Sandy Beach Resort, which was owned by Frances Lee’s aunt Sandy, who was one of those people you called an aunt even when they aren’t related to you. Sandy Beach Resort was actually eight small cabins in a half circle, with a barbecue pit and picnic tables in the middle, all of which sat at the edge of a rocky beach on Puget Sound. It was one of those places where families might come every year, Grandpa Ed and Grandma Eileen in one cabin; Uncle Brian and Aunt Jenny and their two perfect boys in another; Mom, Dad, and daughter-son and their dog, Scruffy, next door, all joining together in the evenings for hot dogs and games of Hearts and remember when–ing. At least that’s what I imagined.
All those people, though, they must have had their family reunion on another weekend, because the place looked pretty empty—the parking lot held only a car with Just Married painted on the rear window, and a minivan with a baby seat in the back. Frances Lee parked the truck so that Big Bob would have a good view of the water.
Aunt Sandy gave Frances Lee the cabin key on its sea horse key chain, along with several foil packages of coffee and a cake she’d made us, set on a plate and covered in waxed paper. Her boys would be having some friends at the place for the weekend, so she hoped they wouldn’t be too noisy for us when they came in later.
“Her boys—Chris and Michael,” Frances Lee explained when she opened the door of the cabin and let us in. “Twin dumb shits. I always got stuck hanging out with them growing up. Mom thought I needed siblings. They tried to get me to drink beer when I was six. They told me they’d give me a dollar if I did. Totally out of control, not that Aunt Sandy ever saw it.”
I guess even family that wasn’t family had their problems.
“Hoodlums,” Sprout said.
“Delinquent losers,” Frances Lee said.
“Yeah, but did you drink the beer?” Jake asked. That’s what I was wondering too.
Frances Lee ignored him, surveyed the small room. “Nobody better snore.”
Sprout snored a loud pig snort and Jake joined in. I dropped our bags on the floor. There were two beds and a scratchy woven couch, and one chair with a scratchy woven seat. A table with a TV on it, one of those ancient, huge kinds with an antenna. Small kitchen, with an olive green Amana Radar Range, which sounded like something they used to give away on old game shows. Jake opened the refrigerator. “Hey, look,” he said. It was completely empty except for a box of baking soda and a can of Coors. He held up the beer in his hand. “Frances Lee, I’ll pay you a buck.”
“It’s all yours,” she said. I expected him to crack the top right there and down it. He was probably a drinker and a drugger, girlfriends, sex…Guys who looked like that generally weren’t exactly wholesome. Good looks too often meant, I expect to be forgiven. It was too bad his appearance made my eyes so happy—the rest of him would likely make me miserable.
Sprout emerged from the bathroom. “The counter has gold glitter in it,” she reported.
“Fancy,” Frances Lee said.
I finally got up the nerve to check Mom’s messages while everyone got ready for bed. Two Call me’s. And the last, more firm, but slightly guilty-sounding message: I’m concerned about something here. Something you said yesterday. I’d like a call back right away. Something I’d said yesterday? I ran through the possibilities. I’d talked to her for all of two seconds. I’d said it had been a long day. Well, whatever it was, she seemed to be fine about it now. No more messages, anyway.
I got into my big T-shirt, climbed into the creaky bed beside Sprout. I didn’t know a mattress could have so many springs—I felt each one under my back. Frances Lee was outside, talking to Gavin on her cell phone. The windows were open, and we could hear everything she said.
“Love you, miss you, love you, miss you,” Jake said loudly.
“Smoochie, smoochie,” Sprout yelled from beside me on the bed.
After a while, Frances Lee came back inside, slammed the door. “Jesus, would you guys grow up?”
Her words stung. They stung me, anyway. We knew each other well enough to tease a little, but not to be pissed at that teasing. She seemed once again a person easily irritated, maybe even hard to get along with. Maybe Dad had tried. Maybe he tried and tried until he couldn’t. I didn’t know—we really didn’t know each other at all. I wondered for a moment if this would be the last I’d see of Frances Lee. One trip, and that would be enough for us all. Everyone was quiet. But Jake had known Frances Lee longer than we had. He didn’t seem particularly bothered. He’d put in the time required that allows you to make a smooth shift past a bad moment.
“They had a fight,” he told us. He sang it. “They had a fi-ight.”
“We did not have a fight,” she said.
“For sure they had a fight. Frances Lee always gets bitchy when they fight,” he said. He was lying on the couch, which opened up to a bed. The edge of his bed almost touched ours. His voice sounded lying-down. It was different than his upright voice. Huskier. Slower.
“Gavin can’t understand why I’m taking five days out of the summer to do this,” she said.
“I’m not sure I really get that either,” Jake said. “Your dad has fucked up relationships. You visit his exes…It’s a bold move. So, why?”
“He’s a mystery,” Frances Lee said. She looked over at us for help, but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t exactly know why I was doing this either.
“You know him, though,” Jake said.
“Knowing him isn’t the same thing as knowing him. Even if you know him, you don’t know him.” I understood what she meant. Maybe we were the only ones who could understand that. “It’s like grabbing at air,” Frances Lee said.
“Hot air,” Sprout said.
“Sprout,” I said.
“She’s always trying to get me to be nice when I’m just telling the truth,” she said to Jake and Frances Lee.
“Your truth is not everyone’s truth,” I said.
“Your truth is not everyone’s truth,” Sprout copied in a brat voice. God, I hated when she did that.
“If you start this game, you’re dead,” I said.
“If you start this game, you’re dead,” Frances Lee said. Sprout cracked up.
“You know what you all sound like?” Jake said. “You sound like sisters.”
We were all quiet then. For a long time. But it was a nice, pleased kind of quiet. A quiet you didn’t want to break with words. Frances turned off the lights. She climbed into bed.
“Crickets,” Sprout said after a while, and she was right. I lay there and listened to the threeep, threeep.
“I remember the first time I met you.” Frances Lee’s voice was soft from across the room.
“At the pancake place,” I said to the darkness. “That restaurant.”
“No, way before. You didn’t know we met before then? He brought you over when you were maybe a year old. I was six. First grade, my teacher was Mrs. Silver, and that seemed funny because her hair was orange. But he came over, this was before we moved out to the island, and he had you in a backpack. He took us to a park. And I just sat there on the bench and you toddled around and he tried to get me to go play, but I think I already felt too old. Maybe that’s just me thinking that now, but I just sat there, I know, and watched you plop down in the dirt on your diaper because you were just learning to walk. He’d put his fingers in your hands and stand above you and lead you around, and then he’d let go…”
“And I’d fall,” I said. I tried to imagine it.
“Yeah, and I sat there on that bench and watched and then we left. And he put you in the car and you both went home. Sometimes you wore a red coat. And he started to do that every now and then, come and visit.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“For maybe a year, on and off. And what I remember most was when he’d put you in the car. He had his red Corvett
e.”
“Still has.”
“I can’t think of him with any other car. He is that fucking car. And he’d put you in there, and off he’d drive, and I always wondered, you know, where you went and what it was like there, and if he put you to bed at night. I wondered what your house looked like, and what your mom looked like. Then they got married, and I saw her, and she was pretty, but different than I imagined. Really young. And really pretty. And then he stopped coming over not long after.”
“I didn’t think we’d ever met,” I said.
“Yeah. We went to that fucking park a lot. I didn’t know why he stopped coming. My mom said that maybe it was hard for your mom. That it wasn’t me, just adults having a hard time being adults. I tried to think of that young, pretty woman keeping him from seeing me, but it never felt right in my mind. And now I think that maybe he just makes a mess, and then he shuts the door. The mess is too big. Like when your room gets that way. You shut the door, and then finally clean it one day after you can’t stand it anymore. But he never comes back to clean. Instead, he shuts the door and then sells the house.”
Sprout grabbed my hand.
“I kept wondering what your kitchen looked like, and if you had a dog,” Frances Lee said. “Where you went to school. He stopped coming over, but I didn’t stop imagining.”
I woke up in the middle of the night because I heard a car door slam, and then another, and then some loud laughter. I laid there and listened. “Steven, you’re walking funny, you dumb shit,” someone said, and they all laughed.
“Look at that,” someone else said. “What the fuck is that?”
“I’ve had too much to drink,” someone else said. “Because I’m seeing a fucking giant with a fucking giant hamburger.”
“Jolly red giant,” the first guy said again and laughed.
“I didn’t know giants ate hamburgers,” a third guy said.
