by Anne Valente
She never had. The branches were too delicate, the trees too high.
“You know, you weren’t a mean kid,” her father says. “You talked a big talk, told your grandpa you were hunting. But we all knew you were just waiting to squeeze one of them, catch a fat raccoon and tuck it into bed with you. Like a big stuffed bear!”
Francie doesn’t know why, but this is something she doesn’t want to hear. The inside of the car has gone completely quiet, so quiet it hurts, and she reaches over and turns up Roy Orbison, to drown this all out, to blink everything back.
“What made you think of—oh, motherfucker!” Her dad slams the breaks, flips his middle finger at a white minivan cutting into his lane. “Go on! Go right ahead! The whole goddamn lane’s just for you, asshole!”
Francie looks out the window, at the strip malls and banks along the road, relieved her grandparents aren’t in the car, glad she doesn’t have to watch her grandma roll her eyes again.
“Sorry, sugarbud.” Her dad stares at the minivan’s bumper. “Christ, what was I saying?”
Over dinner, when her father orders her a glass of red wine too, to let loose!, he says, before the big test next week, Francie feels him peek at her over his plastic menu.
“I noticed some of my beers were gone the other night. You been drinking to sustain your hard habit of study, or has that boy Marcus been by again?”
“He comes by sometimes. Big deal, Dad. I’m almost eighteen.”
“Oh, right you are. A big adult!”
Francie rolls her eyes, sets her menu off to the side of the table.
“Look, France, you can do what you want. It’s not you I’m worried about. I just think that boy’s a goddamn loser.”
Other girls would be annoyed by this, Francie knows. She imagines her friend Holiday hearing it from her own dad, envisions her flipping the table, storming out like a bad sitcom sketch. And though she thinks she could do the same—her dad would actually apologize if she did—she feels the will to do so deflate from her lungs. Her father is not her enemy. He is not her enemy, and he is right.
“You don’t even know him.”
“Oh, and you do? Ha!” He sips his wine, for emphasis, she thinks. “Look, sugarsnap, all I’m saying is you deserve better. That boy’s nothing but a lump of mush.”
Francie waits for her food, and for an indignation that never comes.
Later, after they’ve had dinner, after she’s finished the math section on proofs and has moved on to the verbal chapters, she lies on her bed and looks up at the ceiling, at the place where her grandparents had been. Though she hates when her father is right, hates the haughty jest in his voice, she knows too that when she thinks of Marcus it is not with infatuation, not even with lust, but with the slow palpitation of an irregular heartbeat, a heart not even challenged by the strain of movement.
She hadn’t known him before her mother died. But after the policeman came to their door, after the impact of collision shattered her mother through the windshield and her own life in a moment passed through some irreversible door, she woke up as if in a haze, sitting at her desk in homeroom after the funeral, had looked up sleepy-eyed and there he was.
When Francie’s phone rings, she half expects to hear her grandfather’s husky voice on the other end of the line.
“So you have to sleep over this weekend,” Holiday says, her voice almost breathless. “Julie Sussman’s having a party. Will said he’ll kick Marcus’s ass if he shows up.”
Will is Holiday’s boyfriend, a tall, lumbering fellow who never talks, and Francie has always been distracted looking at him, his forehead too large for his face.
“What?”
“Oh, come on, Francie. Like you haven’t heard.”
Francie narrows her eyes, focuses on the mobile of aluminum airplanes still hanging from her ceiling, airplanes her mother made when she was five.
“Marcus slept with Alicia Traver. He’s been telling everyone you’re too fucked up to date. You know, because of your mom and all.”
Francie stares at the mobile. It’s the last part that hurts, not the first.
“So you’re sleeping over, right?” Holiday is indignant, her voice disclosing all of the rage Francie herself should feel, if she could reach deep into her chest and pull out a glowing ember. But when she thinks of Marcus, of his stooped shoulders and stringy hair, she thinks of only mush, her father’s words, a pile of gray nothing that has smothered the burn to cinder.
“Sure. I’ll sleep over.”
As she hangs up the phone and crawls beneath her covers, she sees her grandparents peeking in her bedroom window, and a small pail of sidewalk chalk hanging from the airplane mobile, where minutes before there had been none.
On Saturday afternoon, after Francie has plowed through the chapter on analogies, she takes the pail out to her driveway and grinds the chalk into the pavement. She draws a hopscotch grid, the boxes big and angry, and skips through them like she once did in her grandparents’ driveway, stomping her feet heavily against the asphalt.
“What’re you doing there, bud?”
Her father stands on their front porch, a beer in one hand, a bag of cheese puffs in the other.
“Nice lunch, Dad.”
“Well, it sure as hell beats hopscotch, Miss Skip to My Lou.”
Francie picks up another piece of chalk, drags it hard along the pavement, her hair hiding the scowl on her face.
“Look, little britches, I’m just checking in. You seem down these days.”
“Marcus cheated on me.”
She doesn’t know why she says this, since she’s not sure it matters, or if it even qualifies as cheating. Marcus was never really her boyfriend to begin with. But she refuses to look at her dad, at the self-satisfied look that will color his face, and digs the chalk into the ground, expecting him to admonish her or make light of the situation somehow, or at least tell her that Mr. Lump-O-Mush was nothing but bad news anyway.
But oh Francie is all he says, his voice tinged with the filaments of sympathy, and when she looks up again he is standing right beside her, his eyes on the scribbles she’s sketched into the asphalt.
“I’m sleeping at Holiday’s tonight.”
“All right.”
Francie stands and drops the chalk. They both regard the hopscotch grid awkwardly. Her father sets his beer and cheese puffs in the grass. He begins hopping through the boxes, and Francie feels the gurgling urge of both laughter and tears welling impossibly within her. But before she allows either to erupt, she jumps through the boxes behind him, and they hop together without eye contact or words, without her grandfather or grandmother hovering over to watch.
But in the driver’s seat that night, as she and Holiday head to the party, Francie looks up to switch lanes and spots her grandfather peeking at her from the backseat, his image just barely visible in the rearview mirror. The sight doesn’t shock her; she anticipates his presence everywhere now, and she ignores him until they arrive at the party, until the doors slam and the car is locked tight.
“You ready for this?” Holiday asks, heels shaky, clicking against the walkway to the house. She’s already had three beers, the reason Francie drove.
When they walk in, Will is already inside, holding a cup of beer and waiting near the door.
“Marcus is out back,” he says, before they even take off their coats. “Where the fuck have you guys been?”
Francie stares at his face, at his hopelessly large forehead over the top of Holiday’s thick hair as she stands on her toes to kiss him. Will puts his arm around Holiday, beer limp in his hand, and motions them both toward the back of the house. Francie feels her body go numb, her face fall blank, but she cannot stop herself from following them through the crowded living room, the beer boxes that litter the kitchen, on out to the backyard where Marcus stands smoking a cigarette.
It doesn’t take long. Before Marcus turns around, Will hands Holiday his beer, slams his empty fist into Marcus’s jaw. Franc
ie watches the half-smoked cigarette fly from his mouth across the patio, landing somewhere in the grass, out in the dark. Will grabs Marcus by the elbows, holds him pinned and facing Francie, a small line of blood leaking through his two front teeth.
“Here it is, France.” Will’s breath steams from his mouth. “Your chance to get this fucker good, give him what he deserves.”
Francie stares out at the grass, wonders where the cigarette went, whether it could smolder into flames and set the whole house ablaze.
“Come on, Francie, kick him in his fucking nuts!” Holiday yells, eyes swimming wildly between all of them, hands like claws around Will’s beer.
Francie looks at Marcus’s shoes, at the softness of his belly exposed by the angle of his elbows, and for a flashing moment she feels rage—not for love, but for the indecency of what he’s done. But when she sees her grandfather hovering just behind Marcus, off in the dark grass, watching her from behind a set of patio furniture, she thinks of nothing but her mother, a strange memory at this moment, her mother testing the water for her bath once when she was four, making sure it wouldn’t scald her, filling the tub with rubber whales and toy ducks, the kind that kicked through the water if wound just right.
“Let him go.”
Will looks at her, body rigid, struggling against Marcus’s strained arms. “What the fuck did you just say?”
“I said let go. You heard me.”
Before Will can protest, before he and Holiday tell her how much Marcus deserves this, how they’ve waited three days to catch him here and make him pay, Will shoves Marcus onto the grass and Francie walks back inside.
“Hey, where are you going?” Holiday sounds annoyed, voice garbled by beer, and Francie wonders whether she will even remember this tomorrow, after Will has driven her home, after she’s vomited the night across her bedroom carpet.
“Home.”
They do not stop Francie as she walks back through the kitchen, the living room where Julie Sussman pulls a keg stand off her own couch, and out the front door into her car where, as she turns the key in the ignition, she sees a pogo stick in the rearview mirror, laid gently across the backseat.
Her father is not watching television when she walks in the front door, as she half expects him to be. She hears music wavering from the upstairs office, the muddled sound of Patsy Cline.
“Is that you, butterbean?” he yells down the stairs. “Early night?”
When she walks into the office, he’s sitting in front of the computer playing solitaire. He’s changed the card deck to the haunted house pattern, along with a three-card deal, though Francie prefers the beach.
“What’s that you got there, a party favor?”
She doesn’t know what he’s talking about until she feels the pogo stick in her hand, resting at her side.
“Something like that.” She thinks of the pogo sticks her grandparents kept in their garage, how she’d once spent a whole afternoon with her grandmother bouncing up and down their street until the sun sank behind the trees, until they went inside for pot roast and ice cream floats.
“Dad?”
“What is it, sweet pea?” His back is turned to her, his eyes on the screen.
“Can we watch a movie?”
He takes his hand off the mouse, looks at her, and for the first time she sees something sad in his face, something not unlike the way his entire body had collapsed once their guests left the house after the funeral, after he’d scraped the last of the deviled eggs and ranch dip into the waiting, open trash can.
“Sure, France. We can watch a movie.”
He makes popcorn while she changes into her pajamas, and when she meets him downstairs in the living room, he’s already settled on the couch, the title menu for Mary Poppins cued up on the screen.
“Mary Poppins?”
He peeks at her over the back of the couch. “You got a better idea?”
He hits the play button and grabs a handful of popcorn, and she sits down next to him on the couch, reaches for the popcorn too.
“Can you still take me to the test?”
“Sure, sugar beet.”
She thinks of the pile of flashcards she’s made, a series of analogies, vocabulary words.
“Can you help me tomorrow?”
He nods, grabs another handful of popcorn, his eyes on Mary Poppins sitting on a cloud, high above London.
“Next Saturday, if you want, we can get lunch after the test, maybe even a couple of blizzards from the Dairy Queen. My God, look at Miss Umbrella float on down to town like that! ”
Her grandparents do not appear again that night, but the next day, while she and her dad sit in the living room going over flashcards, a knock rattles the door and her grandparents are both suddenly there, sitting on the loveseat, holding hands and smiling.
“Who could that be on a Sunday?” Her dad looks out the peephole, then his body stiffens and he lowers his voice. “It’s that goddamn mistake of a human being, France. You want to see him, or you want me to break some kneecaps?”
Francie ushers her father into the kitchen before she lets Marcus in, but can still hear her father grumbling mush to himself, just loud enough for her to hear through the closed kitchen door. She lets Marcus into the foyer, doesn’t offer him a seat. Her grandparents are on the couch, and she doesn’t want him to stay.
“I just came to say sorry.” His hair hangs across his cheek, not long enough to hide his bruised lip, crusted teeth.
Francie says nothing, stands uneasily as her grandparents shift on the couch, both of their faces expectant and eager.
“I figure none of this really matters,” Marcus continues, “and if you wanted, you could be my girlfriend. Like, for real.”
Francie looks at him, her heart slowed to a dull murmur, nothing more. She glances over at her grandparents and they are laughing, with silent, wide-open mouths.
“So?” Marcus asks. “You want to?”
Francie feels her own laughter bubbling up, a laughter that could have been loud and free, like her grandparents’ might have been, had their vocal cords produced sound. But she swallows the gurgle back, suppresses the urge so he will leave, her face passionless, indifferent to make him go.
“No,” she says. “No, I don’t.”
Marcus looks up, his eyes cracked with hurt, a hurt that no longer penetrates, its shards small and useless at Francie’s feet. He stands for a second, his mouth open as if to speak; then he seals his lips and turns, baggy jeans dragging on the carpet as he goes.
When Francie closes the door, hears her dad yell That’s my butterbean! from the kitchen, she’s too distracted to be annoyed, by the exhilaration of making Marcus leave, but also by the emptiness that suddenly bounces from the living room walls. Her grandparents are not on the couch. They’ve disappeared as quickly as they first came, without leaving any proof they might have been here, no cookies, no milk, no grappling hooks strewn across the couch.
“Dad?”
“You want a turkey sandwich for lunch?” The sound of his voice fills the room.
“Sure,” Francie calls, then grabs her flashcards and takes them to her room.
Her grandparents are not there either, not in the windows, not on the ceiling; no pails of chalk, no pogo sticks along the floor. But as Francie sits on the edge of her bed, knowing this might be it, that she must grow accustomed once more to seeing their faces only in yellow-edged photographs, she leans back and her hands brush something rubbery, something plastic, something inflated.
She turns to find a pair of orange floaties, the water wings she once wore, though she knows these are not remnants from her grandparents’ house, but from the baby pool that once graced her own backyard. They are the water wings her mother placed carefully on her arms, puffy rings encircling baby fat, protection even in two feet of water in case she ever slipped.
Francie does not know if these floaties will stay, or if they will disappear by the time she tucks herself into bed as the chalk, as th
e pogo stick and grappling hooks have all done. But she curls herself around them and hugs them to her chest, until she almost falls to sleep next to them, until her father at last calls her down for lunch. She leaves them upon her bedspread, their rubber tangible as memory, her mother’s hands holding up her arms, and keeps them in her sight until the doorframe swallows them, until she passes from the room and lets them go.
A TASTE OF TEA
On the day my father told my mother he wanted a divorce, she went to the computer and ordered a pile of tea. He’d been seeing his dental hygienist for six months, something my parents didn’t tell me, but which I heard anyway, listening to their terse discussion in the kitchen from the top of the stairwell. My mother called him a dirtbag but didn’t sob or scream, and after my father stormed out of the house I peeked through the wooden banister and saw my mom down in the living room, sitting in front of the computer, staring blankly at a screen full of teas. I don’t know how she found the website, or even why a company would offer a service like that. She didn’t cry, just sat there punching credit card numbers into the keyboard, and three days later, as I was doing my geometry homework for summer school, I heard a shaking rumble outside and looked out the window to see a delivery dump truck backing across our lawn, unloading a giant mound of green tea in our backyard. The pile was the size of a safari anthill, and my mother was sitting next to it, laid back in a reclining lawn chair.
“What are you doing?” I asked, coming outside to see it.
She pulled her sunglasses down and looked at me. I could hear the dump truck down the street, roaring away.
“It’s tea, Kevin. For me.”
“But what’s it doing here?”
“What wasn't it doing here, before?”
I stared at her. “Okay,” I said. Then I walked back up to my room and sat at my desk, and watched her out the window, lying there next to the tea, her body sprawled across the lawn chair, her face turned toward the sun. The pile sat like a big dark Grimace next to her, and every once in a while she’d reach over and pat it firmly on the top, its dry leaves sticking to her fingers.
