Be Frank With Me (14 page)

I
T'S NOT LIKE
I meant for anything to happen.

That first day we were lying in a tangle of sheets in the atelier's big painted bed, me curled up against Xander with my back to him because the fact of him close up was a lot to take in. I had to laugh at the absurdity of somebody like me ending up in the altogether with a guy who looked like him.

Xander propped up on his elbow and wiped the perspiration off his face with a corner of the sheet. “What's so funny?” he asked.

All I could think to say was, “You don't appreciate just how yellow everything is in here until you've lived it for a couple of hours.”

“Welcome to the Dream House,” he said.

“The Dream House?”

“Frank told me that's what you call this place.”

“I do?”

“Barbie's Dream House meets van Gogh at Arles,” he said in an uncanny imitation of Frank's monotone.

“Oh. I had forgotten about that.”

“How could you?” he said. “It's perfect.” He picked up my hair and wrapped it around his wrist. My braid was the first thing he'd undone before we started. It had seemed to take forever, in the very best way possible. “You have the most amazing hair,” he said. “You should wear it down more.”

“It gets in my way,” I said. “It's a distraction.”

“Your hair isn't the distraction. You're the distraction.”

Later, after we'd had a chance to catch our breath again, I asked, “So, what else did Frank tell you about me?”

“That you're five feet, eight inches tall, weigh a hundred twenty-seven pounds and were born October twenty-fifth. He wouldn't tell me what year because he said a gentleman never discusses a lady's age.”

“How does he know all that?”

“He also mentioned you don't need corrective lenses to drive and that you're an organ donor. Make of this assortment of facts what you will.”

“Frank's gone through my purse?” I sat up in bed, clutching the sheet to my chest because I felt more naked then than I had a few minutes ago. I guess my purse wasn't the Fort Knox I'd thought it was.

“So what? So have I. How could you not have tissues in that Mary Poppins satchel of yours? Aside from the usual purse stuff, you have a set of tiny screwdrivers and a flashlight and Band-Aids and a box of raisins and a pair of argyle socks and a notebook and dental floss, but no tissues. Explain that to me.”

“I ran out of tissues.”

“Ah. So I guess you aren't completely perfect after all. Listen, Alice. Don't get mad at Frank. The kid can't help himself. He lacks executive function. Although when I was growing up they called it other things.”

“Like what?”

“Impulsive. Irresponsible. Eccentric if you were born rich. Crazy if you weren't.”

“There's nothing wrong with Frank that can't be fixed,” I said.

“If you ask me, there's nothing about Frank that needs fixing,” Xander said. “I'm a big fan of crazy. Without it there'd be no van Gogh at Arles. For all we know, no Barbie's Dream House, either.”

“Frank's not crazy,” I insisted.

“Fine,” he said. “He's eccentric. Come here.”

I slid out of bed and started dressing. “I can't,” I said. “I have to go.”

“What's your hurry?”

“I have to make Mimi's lunch.” I turned my back on him while I buttoned my shirt. He sat up on the edge of the bed and grabbed my wrist.

“Aren't you the responsible one,” Xander said. He turned my hand over and kissed my palm, then folded my fingers over the kiss for safekeeping and slid his fingers up my arm. If he did that to make sure every follicle on my body was at attention, I'm guessing he wasn't disappointed.

“I really have to go. Right now.”

“Not so fast, Suzy Homemaker.” He stood up and put his hands on my shoulders, then eased one around to cradle the nape of my neck. I couldn't help noticing that I was dressed but he was still naked. The few boyfriends I'd had in my life, no Apollos they, had always been careful to cover themselves as quickly as I did after they relinquished the sheets. Xander pulled my face to his and kissed me again and then I didn't have any clothes on either. After that, I showered in the copper teacup-sized tub, dressed, and scrambled down the ladder before he could talk me into another round.

When I looked back over my shoulder before I left the garage, Xander was at the atelier railing watching me go. He stood in a shaft of sunshine from the skylight that had turned his hair into a halo but wasn't doing his face any favors. He looked completely different from below, all hollows and tendons and long afternoon shadows. How old was he, anyway? I realized then that I'd paid more attention to Frank's lectures on movie magic than I had realized. For the first time ever I appreciated the importance of flattering angles and carefully orchestrated lighting.

I DON'T THINK
I'd ever been happier to hear Mimi's typing. It meant she hadn't noticed I was running late. I hoped. I made an omelet and a salad faster than you could say I'll-have-a-double-cheeseburger-with-a-side-of-fries and delivered it to her office. By the time I got there the typing was over so I knocked my lunchtime knock. Mimi must have been just inside the door because she opened it immediately.

“There you are,” she said when she took the tray. “Finally.”

Busted. “I made you eggs,” I said.

Mimi eyeballed me at length, which I only mention because she hardly ever looked at me at all. “I've never seen you with your hair down,” she said. “Why are you so flushed?”

Had she looked out her window and seen me running across the yard from the Dream House, giggling? “I was exercising,” I said.

“I guess that's why your hair is wet,” she said.

“Yes. I took a shower after. I lost track of time. I'm sorry.”

Mimi stared at me so long I worried she would fire me on the spot. Had she sent me packing even yesterday I might have been excited. Getting kicked off the mountain today would have been more of a mixed bag.

“I'm so happy,” Mimi said.

I hadn't seen that coming. “I can make you eggs more often if you like.”

“It's not the eggs, Alice. I just got a call from Frank.”

“Oh, no. What's wrong? Do I need to go pick him up?”

“Nothing's wrong. He called to ask if he could stay after school. He's made a friend, and they want to play.”

“That's wonderful, Ms. Banning,” I said. I meant it, too. If she had been Mr. Vargas and hadn't been holding her lunch tray, I would have hugged her.

“Isn't it?” Mimi said. “One friend is what he needs. One friend is enough for anybody.” Mimi's hair had grown out to a ragged pixie by then, and her face was doing something that almost suggested smiling. If you covered up the eyebrow that was growing back in white, she looked like Book Jacket Mimi again. “Alice,” she added. “Ms. Banning sounds like some mean old lady who calls the police on the neighborhood kids if they cut across her lawn. Call me Mimi.”

I was so shocked and pleased I couldn't answer. Not that she gave me the chance. Her hands were busy with the tray so she kicked the door shut in my face.

“
SO, HOW DID
you meet your friend?” I asked when I picked Frank up after school. I checked him in the rearview mirror to gauge his mood. His facial expression was as inscrutable as ever, but the outfit he was wearing—a navy blazer with a gold insignia over the pocket, shirt plus cravat, captain's hat and owlish horn-rimmed glasses—made him look as jaunty as Tony Curtis pretending to be the rich yachting guy wooing Marilyn Monroe in
Some Like It Hot
.

“I was indulging in one of my favorite pastimes,” Frank said, “pretending to be Captain Edward Smith on the bridge of the
Titanic
.”

“Ah.”

“Did you know that the Internal Revenue Service, more commonly identified by its monogram, IRS, selected April fifteenth as the date for the annual filing of personal income taxes as a tribute to all the wealthy individuals who died in that tragic event?”

“Is that true?”

“One of the richest men in America at the time, John Jacob Astor IV, age forty-seven, went down with the ship. As did Ida Straus, sixty-three, and her husband, Isador Straus, sixty-seven, a co-owner of the Macy's department store. Also dry-goods retailer and Omaha resident Emil Brandeis, forty-eight. As a fellow native of Nebraska, I thought you might be interested in that fact. When Mr. Brandeis's remains were fished from the ocean, he was still wearing his diamond cuff links. I have often wondered what became of those cuff links.”

“I bet you have. But that thing you said about the IRS choosing April fifteenth to commemorate all the dead rich people. Is that true?”

“It's held by many experts that the imposition of the graduated income tax in
1913
, hard on the heels of the sinking of the
Titanic,
also sank the ordinary American's ability to amass great personal fortunes. So I imagine it's true.”

“You didn't tell me how you met your friend yet.”

“As I said, I was indulging in one of my favorite pastimes, reimagining the last moments aboard the
Titanic
. She asked if she could join in.”

“What did she want to do?” I asked. “Rearrange the deck chairs?”

“I don't understand. The deck chairs were about to be swept out to sea, so what would be the point of rearranging them?”

“Knock knock.”

“Oh. Ha-ha. At any rate, my new friend asked to join in and I told her she would be most welcome if she could hum the melody the orchestra was playing when the ship went down. She asked, ‘Song of Autumn' or ‘Nearer My God to Thee'? I opted for ‘Song of Autumn' of course.”

“Why ‘of course'?”

“There's some controversy about which the orchestra played. A wistful, minor-key waltz wildly popular in the day? Or the rather too on-the-nose hymn? When I said ‘Song of Autumn,' my friend answered, ‘Correct!' She knew both and understood which was the better choice. It shows her to be a person of unusual intellect.”

Of all the gin joints, she walks into his.

“Anyway, we enjoyed ourselves so much that she asked if we might have another sinking after the school day ended.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “What's your new friend's name?”

“I don't know.”

“How could you not know?”

“I can tell you that my friend broke her arm the first day of school. She is still wearing a cast and a sling, though the cast is supposed to come off in a day or so. She intends to keep wearing the sling after that because she feels it lends her an air of tragedy. Also she can hide snacks in it.”

“Fiona,” I said, experiencing the kind of exhilaration Frank must feel every time he unearthed a shiny fact he'd squirrelled away in his vast mental warehouse. “I think your new friend is named Fiona.”

“That sounds right.”

I was dying to meet Fiona. “Invite your friend over to play sometime,” I said without thinking. I couldn't imagine Mimi's reaction to
a strange child in the house. But a child who was willing to be Frank's friend? I had to think Mimi would be as eager to meet her as I was.

AFTER I RETIRED
to my stateroom that night, I fired up my computer and checked the roster of the passengers who did and didn't survive the wreck of the
Titanic
. I'm sort of embarrassed to say it, but I choked up scrolling through the list. I guess I'd never thought about the real people much. For one thing, it happened about a century ago so everybody alive then would be dead already anyway. For another, I'd seen the movie with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, who had zero chemistry if you ask me, so despite all the hoo-ha over it when I was just entering my teens, the film hadn't moved me.

But that list! Just the victims' names, ages, and hometowns. It told you almost nothing, yet so eloquently. Here are the facts, the list seemed to say. Break your heart on them as you will. When I finally went to bed I couldn't stop thinking about Mrs. May Fortune, sixty, and her daughters, the Misses Ethel, twenty-eight, Alice, twenty-four, and Mabel, twenty-three. They survived. Mark Fortune, sixty-four, and Charles, nineteen, didn't.

In the middle of the night I woke up just as Xander or the player piano was working through “Nearer My God to Thee.” I decided I had to be dreaming. I didn't know what “Song of Autumn” sounded like, so my unconscious, obviously, had to go with the too on-the-nose hymn. When I closed my eyes again I saw Miss Alice Fortune bobbing in the current in her lifeboat, wondering if she'd ever see her father again and whether her only brother would swim to safety or be swallowed up by the sea.

IN RETROSPECT,
I
wonder if the whole madness with Xander was my way of rearranging the deck chairs at Mimi's house. The two of us had nothing in common but Mimi and Frank, about whom we talked endlessly in a way I'd like to think neither of us would have talked to
anybody outside the wall. I learned from Xander that in the old days before Frank, Mimi was freer with her chitchat than I could imagine her being with anybody. Even with Mr. Vargas.

From the way Xander told it, their “music lessons” consisted of Mimi sitting by him on the piano bench with her hands in her lap, staring at the book of scales on the music rack and talking. Part of it, I guess, was that for such a handsome guy, Xander was an unusually good listener. But the rest of it I attribute to Lonesome-Highway Syndrome, a condition familiar to long-range truckers, Greyhound ticket holders, and regular travelers of endless, underpopulated flatlands. That's when two unacquainted people sit by each other long enough to be hypnotized by the white line cleaving highway or the vinyl back of a bus seat and say more than they might have otherwise. Same with two strangers lying next to each other, staring at the rafters.