The Temptations of St. Frank

by Anthony Bruno

  “Whatever you say, Mr. Ianelli.”

  Frank stepped over to the window and tossed the Vaz’s scalpel out. Vitale ran over and threw his out next. Then Gdowski, then McMann and Schmidt and Paldino and Keefe and just about everyone else in the class. Frank could hear them clattering on the blacktop below. Molloy was about to get up and toss his when Frank grabbed his sleeve to stop him. He shook his head, warning Molloy with his eyes not to do it.

  The Walrus King roared from down in the quad. “WHAT IS GOING ON UP THERE?”

  Boys crowded around the windows and looked down. Twenty-some-odd shiny slivers of metal reflected the sunlight. The Walrus King stood near them, looking up, shielding his face with his arm.

  “STAY RIGHT THERE!” he roared. “EVERYONE IN THE BIOLOGY LAB STAY PUT!”

  He ran into the building, his raincoat whipping behind him.

  “Shit!” Vitale said.

  “See,” Mr. Ianelli said. “I told you. I told you these things were dangerous. You boys don’t ever listen.”

  In under a minute the Walrus King charged into the room, huffing and puffing, ready to blow the house down. Frank was amazed he’d made it up to the third floor that fast.

  “All right, who did this?” He wheezed and snorted, struggling for breath.

  No one said a word. Except for Chestnut who chattered in fear, cowering in the far top corner of her cage.

  Whalley stalked the room like Grendel in the mead hall, itching to tear off somebody’s head and guzzle his blood like a can of soda.

  “Who did it?” he snarled.

  “A lot of them did it,” Ianelli said. “I don’t know exactly who, but it was a lot.”

  Whalley ignored him. “Open up your dissection kits. Show me your scalpels.”

  Whalley stomped down the aisle along the windows and went directly to Molloy and Frank. There was blood lust in his beady gaze. And a touch of gleeful anticipation. But when Molloy lifted his scalpel, the Walrus King slowed his advance, and when Frank showed his scalpel, he looked downright disappointed. Frank bit the insides of his cheeks to keep from grinning.

  The next nearest student was the Vaz who wasn’t looking well, his brows slanted back, his face flushed and sweaty. An Easter egg that had just been pulled out of the red dye. Whalley stood over him. “Your scalpel, Mr. Vasily—where is it?”

  The Vaz picked through is kit, pulling things out one by one. “It was right here. I had mine. I didn’t—“

  “Show it to me.”

  “I will. I—“ Frustrated, he turned his kit upside down and dumped the contents onto his notebook.

  The beady walrus eyes examined the pickup-sticks jumble. “I don’t see it, Mr. Vasily.”

  “But I had it. It was right here. I didn’t throw it out the window. I didn’t. Really.” The Vaz was on the verge of tears.

  Frank felt bad. But not bad enough to say anything. Especially if Vaseline Boy was writing love letters to the girl Frank liked and the other girl he kind of liked.

  “Walking jug, Mr. Vasily.”

  “But—“

  “There will be a special session for the missing scalpel boys. Today at three o’clock sharp.”

  “But, Mr. Whalley, I have a chess club meet today—“

  “Not another word, Mr. Vasily. Unless you would like an additional walking jug. Perhaps all by yourself.”

  The Vaz pressed his lips together, desperate to keep it together, but it was obvious that the Easter egg was turning to goo inside.

  Whalley edged his bulk into the row, squeezing past the Vaz so he could loom over Gdowski and Vitale. “Where’s your scalpel, Mr. Vitale? And yours, Mr. Gdowski?”

  Gdowski dropped his chin to his chest and frowned like a sad clown.

  Vitale just shrugged. The jig was up, and he knew there was nothing he could do about it.

  “Then I’ll see you two at three o’clock with Mr. Vasily.”

  The Vaz cringed, hearing his name lumped with two of the biggest chuckleheads in school.

  Whalley worked his way through the class, rounding up all the scalpel-less miscreants, repeating the punishment for each new capture. When he was finished, he stood at the front of the room and let his anger simmer silently for effect. “You boys who did this should be ashamed of yourselves. You’re a disgrace to St. Anselm’s Prep.”

  The bell rang, but no one moved.

  “Anyone who tries to cut jug will be automatically suspended,” he said. “Now get to your next class.” He stomped out of the room, raincoat tails flapping.

  Frank stood up and collected his books. The Vaz’s head was bent in shame as he packed his book bag. Frank craned his neck to see what he’d been writing in his notebook. It was all in Spanish. He’d been doing his Spanish homework.

  Fuck, Frank thought. He hadn’t been writing love letters to Yolanda and Tina. Frank felt bad.

  “Way to go,” Molloy said as they shuffled toward the door.

  “Yeah,” Frank said, glancing at the Vaz as he passed by. So maybe he wasn’t putting the moves on Yolanda and Tina. He was still an arrogant little prick, and he deserved walking jug for accumulated past sins. Sins of pride, ruthless ambition, and class domination. By the time Frank stepped into the hallway, he didn’t feel so bad.

  Chapter 11

  The loud monotonous grinding sound of the lawnmower insulated Frank and his thoughts, encasing his head like a big wet towel. He pushed the mower to the edge of a flower bed and caught a whiff of chocolate. Cocoa bean hulls to be exact. It was the fad flower-bed ground cover that year. None of the ritzy Short Hills ladies wanted peat moss or wood chips in their beds. They all had to have cocoa bean hulls. God knows how many crunchy burlap bags of that stuff had been dumped around these suburban mansions this spring, and now the whole town smelled of chocolate. It was just something else Frank couldn’t understand. People were starving all over the world, and these rich assholes were spending bundles to have their gardens smell like the goddamn Hershey factory.

  Frank pulled the mower backwards toward the driveway, making perfectly even lines just the way his father wanted it. But if it were up to Frank, he’d mow curse words into the thick green grass. Better yet he’d pee curse words into the lawn, so that when the sun beat down and scorched the grass where his urine had penetrated the roots, it would say “fuck” and “cunt” and “dickhead” in dead grass. This was the kind of shit he thought about whenever his father made him go to work, mowing rich people’s lawns.

  He wiped the sweat off his brow with the tail of his tee shirt. The sun was rising in the sky, and there were no clouds whatsoever. He guessed it was only about eleven o’clock, and the sun was already brutal. He took off his tee shirt and tied it around the mower handle. He was fucking pissed because he didn’t want to be there. His father had shaken him awake out of a sound sleep at 6:30 that morning.

  “C’mon, get up,” his father had said. “We gotta go to work.” He was sitting on the edge of Frank’s bed in his work clothes which smelled of gasoline and grass stains.

  Frank groaned and turned over, but his father wouldn’t let him go back to sleep.

  “C’mon, let’s go,” he whined. “We gotta do Mrs. Trombetta’s house today. She’s having a party.”

  Like Frank gave a shit about Mrs. Trombetta’s party.

  “C’mon, it’s springtime. The grass grows fast, can’t keep up with it. I’m gonna be behind. You don’t understand. C’mon, I’ll buy you breakfast. C’mon, c’mon…” And he kept talking and whining and cajoling and complaining until it was no use thinking about getting any more sleep. Frank opened one eye and peeked out from under the covers.

  “Atta boy,” his father said. “C’mon, I’ll get you a cheese Danish. I know that’s what you like.”

  Pulling the mower, Frank got mad all over again.
Supposedly every man has his price. So what was his? A fucking cheese Danish and a cup of coffee. And not even sitting down at a diner. No, squeezed into the front seat of the truck with the stick shift threatening his crotch, his father behind the wheel and Raul, his Uruguayan worker, by the door, heading to the Trombettas’ house, feeling every bump and dip in the road, hot coffee sloshing all over his pants.

  The Trombettas’ driveway was lined with twenty-foot poplar trees. Raul mowed the lawn on the other side of the drive, moving through the spaces between the trees like a character in an old-fashioned nickelodeon. Raul always wore a serious expression, but he was a nice guy and very easy to get along with. He enjoyed having Frank on the job because he wanted to improve his English and Frank helped him. Raul always asked Frank’s father to speak to him in English and correct him when he said something wrong, but Frank’s father had a habit of lapsing into a mix of Italian, which he spoke fluently, Spanish, which he didn’t, and broken English, unconsciously mimicking Raul. Raul had confided that he understood only about half of what his boss said, but like all Italian-Americans, Frank’s father spoke with his hands, and his gestures usually got the message across.

  As Frank approached the end of the lawn, he turned the mower a bit to keep the grass clippings off the driveway. Something else his father insisted on. Mr. Trombetta’s black Lincoln wasn’t there, but Mrs. Trombetta’s two-tone bronze and tan Eldorado was parked in front of the garage doors next to a metallic blue Mustang. Trombetta’s son’s car, no doubt. Bet he gets to sleep as late as he wants, Frank thought. Nobody wakes him up on a Saturday to mow somebody else’s grass.

  Frank pushed the mower forward, starting a new row. This was so incredibly boring, he thought. He wanted to be someplace else. He wanted to be playing guitar. In a band. Playing Beatles songs. He wanted to be a Beatle. John Lennon doesn’t have to mow fucking grass. George Harrison doesn’t have to mow fucking grass. Paul McCartney doesn’t have to mow fucking grass. Ringo doesn’t have to—

  Something caught his attention as the rear of the house came into view. Jesus! he thought. His father was standing on the flagstone patio with Mrs. Trombetta, but the woman was wearing a teeny-weeny yellow bikini and high-heeled sandals with big plastic sunflowers on the tops and nothing else except for a pair of oversized movie-star sunglasses. Frank tried not to stare, but her shiny dark red hair was like sniper bait in the sunlight. Her skin, which was the color of caramels, glistened with suntan lotion. She kind of reminded Frank of Ann Margaret but older. He knew his father had to be telling her one of his long stories because he was gesturing all over the place. He seemed oblivious to the fact that the woman’s big tits were straining to get out of her skimpy top, that she had legs like a Rockette, that she radiated sex like nuclear fallout, and that she was married to a mob guy who could have him whacked just for being within arm’s reach of his wife’s nipples.

  And what the hell was wrong with her? Was this supposed to be like Lady Chatterley’s Lover, seducing the gardener?

  As Frank pushed the mower, more of the patio came into view. Two lounge chairs were set up side by side, facing the sun. A teenage girl who Frank assumed was Trombetta’s daughter was stretched out on one of them. Frank knew her name was Annette and that she went to Our Lady of Mercy because Dom talked about her. Unlike her long-legged mother, she was kind of short, but like her mother she had big rack. And a Nancy Sinatra flip. White-rimmed sunglasses covered her eyes. Frank couldn’t tell if she was sleeping or just lying there soaking up the rays. Two cans of Tab and an open magazine sat on the small wrought-iron table between the chairs. Frank wished she’d take off the glasses so he could see her face better.

  Frank pushed the mower up to the flowerbed, then reversed direction and started pulling it back toward the driveway. He tried to get another look at the girl, but his father was waving to him, waving him over. Frank slowed down. He was all sweaty, and his shirt was off. He did not want to go over to Mrs. Trombetta in her bikini, but his father was waving like a man shipwrecked on a desert island, gesturing for him to turn off the mower.

  Fuck! Frank was already embarrassed knowing that Mrs. Trombetta was looking at him now and his father was doing some kind of crazy semaphore to get his attention.

  He slowed down to a snail’s pace, hoping his father would stop waving to him. But he didn’t. He waved more. He cupped his hands around his mouth and started shouting. “Frankie! Come over here. Come on!” His father had a loud voice, and he was used to shouting over the noise of running lawnmowers.

  Fuck! Frank thought. There was no getting out of this. Unless he ran across the beds and into the woods behind the house. Then what? Start a new life as a wild man? In the suburbs of north Jersey?

  “Come on!” his father shouted. “I gotta ask you something,”

  Frank exhaled like a deflating balloon. He shut off the engine, untied his tee shirt from the handle, and pulled it over his head.

  “Come on! Hurry up!”

  As he walked toward them, his eye was on Annette. He hoped she was asleep. He didn’t want to be seen like this. Not all dirty and sweaty. Not as the gardener’s son, the help.

  The closer he got to Mrs. Trombetta the less she looked like Ann Margaret. Her caramel skin wasn’t smooth and creamy. It was more like pterodactyl leather from all the tanning she did. She smiled at Frank as if she knew him well when in fact he’d never seen her up close and she’d only given him a friendly wave once or twice when he’d been here working.

  “Hi, Frankie,” she said. She had a husky smoker’s voice. An open pack of Parliaments sat next to the Tab cans on the little table.

  Without warning, his father threw his arm around Frank’s shoulder. “I was telling Mrs. Trombetta about the cross Grandpa made. In Italy. When he was your age. Tell her.”

  Frank looked sideways at his father. He looked at Mrs. Trombetta. They were both smiling with anticipation, showing their teeth.

  Why does he need me to tell the story? Frank thought. Shit.

  Frank was sick to death of the cross story. His father told it all the time, to everyone he met. He was surprised Mrs. Trombetta hadn’t already heard it a million times. The most interesting part of the story was that Frank’s grandfather never told it. Never. And it was his story.

  “Go on, tell her,” his father said. “Tell her how my father lived with his aunt on her farm because his parents had died, and all the old ladies used to walk along the road by the farm every day because they had the Stations of the Cross on the road and the Tenth Station was right by their house. Christ Dies on the Cross. But the cross was old and it kept falling down, and the old ladies would prop it up with stones, but it kept falling down. Go on, tell her.”

  Frank shrugged. He sneaked a glance at Annette who hadn’t moved. He wanted to disappear.

  “Come on, tell the story. You know it. How Grandpa cut down a big tree and split it and made a cross. All by himself. When he was sixteen. He carved Christ and the nails and the cuts in his body and the blood dripping and flowers and little animals at his feet. Then he moved it to the road and got some men to help him put it up because it was so big. Go on, tell Mrs. Trombetta.”

  “Well, you kinda just told it,” Frank said.

  “No, you tell it better. You’re the writer.”

  Frank almost fell down on the ground. He was shocked to hear his father say this. At home he criticized Frank for wanting to be a writer, said it was a stupid thing to be, there was no money in it.

  “A writer! That’s so wonderful,” Mrs. Trombetta said. Her smile was frozen on her face, her eyes hidden behind the dark glasses.

  “Go on, tell her the story.”

  Annette scratched her ankle with her foot. She was awake. She was listening.

  “Come on, tell it.”

  Frank didn’t want to just stand there like a dummy. He had to say something. “Did you tell
her the part about the priest?”

  His father threw up his hands and glared at Frank. “Forget that part. She doesn’t want to hear about that.”

  “But that’s the best part.”

  “Nah! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “No, tell me,” Mrs. Trombetta said, putting her hands on her hips. The skin under her arms was flabby. When she got older, it would get worse and turn into pterodactyl wings. It was starting already.

  “Well,” Frank said, ignoring his father, “my grandfather’s aunt wasn’t married and she had this big farm. I guess she was kind of getting old ‘cause she went to the local priest and told him she’d donate her farm to the church if they would agree to send my grandfather to school for as far as he wanted to go. He was a good student, and she thought he would go to a university and become a professor. So the priest said sure, no problem, they’d pay the tuition and make sure he got all the education he wanted.”

  “This isn’t that interesting,” his father frowning. “Mrs. Trombetta doesn’t want to hear about—“

  “No wait,” Frank said. “So my grandfather’s aunt changes her will and leaves the farm to the church. Two years later she dies—my grandfather is, like, eighteen now. The church gets her farm, but the priest tells my grandfather sorry, we’re not gonna send you school. They totally reneg on the deal. My grandfather was totally screwed by the Catholic Church.”

  “Enough,” Frank’s father said. “She doesn’t care about that.”

  “That’s terrible,” Mrs. Trombetta said. “How could they do that?”

  “They should’ve been sued,” Frank said, catching his father’s glaring eye. “My grandfather is so intelligent. He reads all the time. He’s a real scholar. But the church wouldn’t let him go to school. They denied him his true calling.”

  Frank’s father’s eyebrows were mad caterpillars, bushy and angry.

  “I just don’t know how they could do that,” Frank said. “It was a crime.”