Be Frank With Me (15 page)

Which is where we were when Xander told me the story of how as a kid Mimi would ride all over town behind her brother Julian on his gray-white gelding Zephyr. How when they got older and bullies made Julian's life a living hell, Mimi had chalked a target on the side of the barn and taught him to throw. Julian turned out to be a natural, with good speed and dead aim. Mimi took the rap the first time Julian got in trouble for chipping a bully's tooth with a rock, even though Julian was her older brother and all the kids knew she hadn't thrown the stone. The upside of that incident was that nobody bothered Julian anymore, and when he started pitching for the high school teams he became a local hero, even if people still found him impossible to talk to.

There was also the story of how Mimi's mother Banning insisted Zephyr walk in Julian's funeral cortege, saddled but riderless, as if her son were dead Abraham Lincoln or President Kennedy, and how Mimi was so mortified she sat with her head between her knees so nobody would see her in the backseat of her parents' car. Or at least that's what Mimi told herself was the reason she couldn't hold her head up that day.

But sadder than that to me was how Mimi called her mother months after she'd run away from the funeral and college and the rest of it to tell Banning that everything was going to be okay and that she was living in New York City. “Nothing will ever be okay again,” her mother said. “Have you forgotten Julian already?” Mimi thought that was the perfect time to tell her she'd written a novel that was but mostly wasn't based on Julian. That, moreover, the novel had been bought by a prestigious New York publisher and was coming out in the fall. She thought the news of her dead son immortalized might make Banning a little happier. Instead she asked, “A book? How could you? Haven't we suffered enough?” Mimi told her mother she'd used a pen name so no one would know she'd written it, unless Banning wanted people to know. When Banning didn't respond, Mimi told her the name she'd chosen. “But Banning's my name,” her mother said. “Mine.” Then she hung up on Mimi. It was the last conversation they had.

Xander was my Scheherazade. I went to him as much for the stories as anything.

“Frank's not adopted, is he?” I asked him.

“Nope.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then who's his father?”

Xander shrugged.

“Do you think Hanes might be Frank's dad?”

“I met Mimi before there was a Frank. I don't think she's seen Hanes since I've known her.”

“What was the story with Mimi and that guy, anyway?”

“Hanes Fuller was irresistible as long as he was working from her script. Has Frank showed you
Public Enemy
yet?”

“With James Cagney? Of course.”

“Remember the scene where Cagney shoves a halved grapefruit into his girl's face because she won't shut up? Hanes unscripted was
like that girl. Mimi has a soft spot for lots of human frailties, but being stupid and boring aren't among them.”

“I wonder what she hates me for,” I said.

“She doesn't hate you. How could she? You're perfect.”

Later, Xander said, “It's not about you, you know. What Mimi hates is how her life has turned out. It isn't how she thought it would be back when she was your age and on the top of the world.”

S
O WE FOUR
bobbed along through the fall and winter. Our days went something like this: I delivered Frank to school each morning. Sometimes he said “I don't belong here” and refused to get out of the car. “Sure you do,” I said, unbuckled his seat belt for him, pried his fingers free of the car door, and aimed him in the direction of the schoolyard. After breakfast, Mimi disappeared into her office and banged away on her typewriter but never showed me anything. Xander puttered around the yard and house, trimming and painting and hammering and doing whatever else gave him an excuse for being there until I was done with my chores. Then quite by accident the two of us would end up together at the Dream House.

When I went to school to fetch Frank, per his instructions I'd stand by the station wagon in the parking lot, waiting for him to cross the playground and climb into the backseat. Even though the schoolyard was a swirl of kids in bright T-shirts and shorts, dresses and skirts, flip-flops and sneakers, you could spot Frank coming from a mile away. He looked like a peacock in a barnyard full of chickens.

I kept hoping to meet the famous Fiona. “So,” I'd ask as casually as I could manage, “what do you and Fiona do when you stay late at school to play?”

“We talk,” he said. “Then we join hands and run from our enemies.”

Though I kept angling for an introduction, I never got one. “So, what does Fiona look like?” I tried another afternoon.

“She wears argyle knee socks and saddle shoes,” he said.

“And?”

“Cardigan sweaters with little pearl buttons. Kilts that look like wool but are actually made of rayon, a wood-based fiber invented in
1855
but not popularized until the
1920
s because until then it was highly combustible. Her rayon kilt feels like cashmere but is more suitable for playground wear as it is machine washable.”

“Her kilt feels like cashmere? You touched her kilt?”

“Of course not. She let me try on the sling that matches the tartan of one of her kilts. She alternates that one with another she has, in houndstooth. I liked her sling very much. I never realized before what a responsibility it is for the forearm to support the wrist and hand.”

“What does Fiona's face look like?”

“She wears oversized hair bows,” he said. “I believe they're made of taffeta.”

I thought about pressing for more details but doubted Frank could fill me in on the color of her eyes or even her hair. Besides, how many little Los Angelenos who looked like they'd stepped off the set of
Brigadoon
could there be on that playground?

I was proud of summoning that reference from my mental warehouse. In case you're unfamiliar with it,
Brigadoon
is a
1954
film starring Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse that's about some town in Scotland that doesn't really exist. I'd fallen asleep watching it with Frank back in July.

When we got home in the afternoons, Frank leapt from the car and ran to Xander. The two of them would go indoors to sit side by side on the piano bench, galloping through scales and melodies until it was time for dinner.

NONE OF THE
stories Xander told were about Xander. For example, when I asked him what he did for fun when he was a kid, he said, “It was a small town in Vermont. I helped my dad fix things around the house. There wasn't much else to do.”

“Is that why you ended up playing the piano? Your parents trying to keep you out of trouble?”

He said, “You want to see trouble? I'll show you trouble.” Xander put his mouth over mine and after that I was too distracted to ask him anything else.

Another time I asked how he came to have a long thin scar down his right arm. “I broke my arm. In a couple of places. I needed surgery to fix it.”

“When did it happen?”

“When I was a senior at Julliard. I never finished school because of it. It hurt too bad.”

“Does it still hurt?”

“Every day. Not as much out here.”

“Does it hurt when you play the piano?”

“Especially when I play the piano.”

“What happened?”

“I was doing something stupid and I broke my arm. I really don't want to talk about it.” He sat up and put his T-shirt back on.

“I didn't realize you never graduated,” I said.

He shrugged. “It's not the kind of thing you brag about.”

“Mimi never graduated from college either, you know,” I said.

“I know. I guess that's one reason we hit it off.”

“How did you meet Mimi, anyway?”

“I was on the crew that put the wall up around the house. After the crew left, she decided she needed a handyman. I'm handy. I needed money. Simple as that. Any more questions?” He pulled on a pair of shorts, slung his jump rope over his shoulder, and headed for the ladder.

IT HAS BEEN
over four months, Genius. Still nothing?

I had just gotten out of the teacup shower and was sitting on the edge of the yellow bed, braiding my hair, when I noticed the message light flashing on my cell. I bound my braid with an elastic I had around
my wrist and hunched over my phone. Xander was still in bed, running his fingers slowly up and down my naked back.

Zilch,
I typed.

Xander's fingers crept along the crease where my left leg met my torso. “Stop it,” I said to him. “I'm texting my boss.”

Xander sat up. “Mimi?” he asked.

“Yes. I'm just telling her where we both are in case she's looking for one of us.”

His hand fell away. “You're kidding.”

I turned around and looked at him. “Are you kidding? Of course I'm kidding. It's Mr. Vargas.”

“I was kidding, too,” he said. He got up and went to the Lilliputian loo.

My phone flashed again.
How is boy?

Frank? Speaking of genius. Never met anyone with so much random knowledge at fingertips. Unlike anybody. Have decided he's next rung on evolutionary ladder.

Genius not everything cracked up to be. Intellectual prodigies not known for getting dates to prom. Stumbling block to becoming next rung on evolutionary ladder.

Frank has a girlfriend now.

Isn't he a little young for girlfriend?

Friend who is a girl.

Ah. Well. Everybody needs a friend.

Indeedy
.

Heard any good jokes lately?
Mr. Vargas texted.

Nope. You?

How do you know when you've met an outgoing mathematician?

Tell me
, I texted back
.

He stares at your shoes. Instead of at his own shoes. Get it?

Ha. I get it. Frank stares at my eyebrow.

So things are looking up for him.

Yes.

Ask Mimi for pages.

I sat there on the edge of the bed trying to decide how to respond to that. Xander opened the bathroom door. “The walls are closing in on me,” he said. “With this shut I can't raise my elbow while I brush my teeth.”

I went back to texting Mr. Vargas.
Would request be better coming from you?

“Don't stand in front of the mirror,” I said to Xander. “Spit into the toilet instead of the sink.”

The last time I asked her for anything,
he texted,
Mimi decided to stay in Los Angeles.

I COULDN'T BLAME
Mr. Vargas for sweating me for product. He was back there in New York with winter setting in and the publicity department hovering. While I was here in the land of milk and honey, doing what?

Xander, mostly.

Here's the joke I decided I ought to tell Mr. Vargas: I ask Mimi for pages. She smiles and hands over completed novel. In the acknowledgments, she thanks me for my computer skills and inspiring “Pollyanna” outlook on life.

See, the way a joke works is that it presents you with an impossible situation. Your brain recognizes the situation as impossible so you laugh at the absurdity of it. Here's what really happened when I asked Mimi for pages. She said, “When I am ready to give you something of mine, I will be sure to let you know.”

THEN JUST LIKE
that it was Christmas.

This isn't to imply things didn't go on in the interim. Things happened. But if you'd like to keep believing in the perfection of Xander Devlin, kind of in the way I kept trying to convince myself Santa was
real after I saw the guy in the red suit having a cigarette out back of the Westroads Mall, you'll need to ignore certain events that occurred during this time:

To give me a break from my routine and to prove he is a stand-up guy, Xander offers to pick Frank up from school one Friday afternoon. I am moved and grateful, and spend the stolen hour conditioning my hair and giving myself a pedicure. When I emerge the car is in the driveway and I can hear them going at it on the piano. I decide not to interrupt and go to fold laundry and get dinner started.

After I slide the stuffed shells into the oven I smooth back my newly glowing hair and pad barefoot into the living room, where as it happens the piano is playing by itself. So I wander through the glass house and then into the Dream House looking for Frank and Xander, my panic gradually increasing to a crescendo when I find Xander in the yellow bed, napping.

“Where's Frank?” I ask.

“Frank?” he echoes, still stupid from sleep.

I am in the station wagon, barefoot and burning rubber, before Xander can finish speaking the sentence “I must have fallen asleep.”

I am grateful that Frank, having decided he'd been forgotten and that he'd better walk home, chooses the route we take in the car. Did I say “walk”? Because after several blocks, Frank decides to hitchhike. I find him on the corner of Bellagio Terrace and Linda Flora Drive, right hand hiking up right trouser leg to expose a tempting expanse of burgundy and navy argyle sock, left thumb awag. A pose, Frank explained once safely ensconced in the backseat, combining the hitchhiking techniques of both Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert from that famous scene in
1934
's
It Happened One Night.

“That was the first film to win all five marquee Oscars, a feat not repeated until
1975
's
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
, a movie I have never watched,” Frank says.

“Don't,” I say.

“Okay. The Gable/Colbert scene is so famous that it was mimicked in a Laurel and Hardy bit as well as a Looney Tunes short. It inspired generations of hitchhikers to prevail upon the kindness of strangers to help them reach their final destinations.”

As mutilated corpses stuffed into drainage ditches, I do not say. What I do say is, “It's illegal to hitchhike before you're twenty-one years old.”

“Oh. I didn't know that. I know it's wrong to indulge in criminal activities, but I do like those black-and-white-striped suits and matching caps that convicts wear. They'd make excellent pajamas. Do they let you keep them once your time is served?”

“Convicts wear orange jumpsuits that zip up the front now. The cut is not slimming, and a redhead like you should steer clear of head-to-toe orange,” I say.

“I will never hitchhike again.”

Miraculously, Frank and I arrive home without being discovered by Mimi, and well before the stuffed shells are ready to come out of the oven. “That looks delicious,” Frank says as I pull the pan out of the oven and slump, exhausted and relieved, against the counter. “Why aren't you wearing any shoes?”

Xander disappears for days, without explanation. It is none of my business what he does with his free time, which is of course every hour of every day. Still this seems vaguely impolite, particularly when I have prepared a dinner for four centered on a kale-feta casserole that Frank hates but Xander loves.

The upside is that when Xander returns he has new, lunatic photographs to add to Frank's collection in the gallery. When I ask Xander where he snapped a shot of what appears to be a woman's back bearing a shoulder-to-crack tattoo that matches the mural she's standing in front of, he says, “She's just a friend.”