Be Frank With Me (20 page)

W
HEN I WOKE
up it was light out and Frank was howling. I was in the hall outside his room without any memory of running there. He was with Mimi, wearing the Ragged Frank ensemble, his arms wrapped around his mother's calves. Mimi was wearing the typical cardigan ensemble, plus Frank's top hat.

“I don't belong there!” he shouted.

“I'm very near the end,” she answered. There was something flat and dead about her voice that frightened me.

“I don't belong there!”

“I'm very near the end,” she insisted. I realized then that her tone of voice reminded me of Frank.

“Stop it, both of you!” I yelled.

“Alice, wake up,” Xander said. He was shaking me by the shoulders.

I opened my eyes. It wasn't still black night outside, but it wasn't light yet, either. “Okay,” I said. “Okay, okay. What time is it?”

“It's just before six.”

“You have to get out of here, now,” I said. “This never happened.”

I WISH I
could tell you that what actually happened that morning made a whole lot more sense, but it didn't. Mimi told me to take Frank to school. Dressed in a T-shirt and tennis shoes. Also jeans.

“Did you talk to his psychiatrist?” I asked.

“When? I had to spend half the day at the hospital, and after I came home I had to go right back to work. I don't need to talk to anybody's
psychiatrist. Frank will be fine. He has to be. This is not a negotiation. Stop wasting my time.”

Xander stood in front of the garage watching us back down the driveway. He was barefoot and in boxers, something he couldn't do in mid-January in Alabama or Nebraska. He had his arms crossed over his chest, cradling each elbow in the opposite palm. Every line of his body said: “This is a very bad idea.”

“You want to take Xander with us?” I asked Frank, looking over my shoulder.

“He isn't dressed,” he said.

I stayed like that, twisted backward, using my eyes instead of the rearview mirror to guide myself down the driveway. I imagine Xander waved at Frank as we left because Frank gave a sad little salute that didn't seem directed at me. I didn't want to look. I didn't want to see.

INSTEAD OF DROPPING
Frank off at school I parked and got out of the car with him.

“Where are you going?” Frank asked.

“I'm walking you to class,” I said.

“That won't be necessary,” he said. “This time I'm prepared for the worst.”

“You're really brave, Frank,” I said. “I'm proud of you.”

“Thank you,” he said. “It's easier to be brave when you're carrying a knife.”

“Get back in the car,” I said.

I PULLED OVER
at a park. “Oh,” he said. “Are we going to the playground? I love it in the early morning, when the sand is freshly raked.”

“Give me the knife,” I said. I was expecting one of the big sharp knives from the kitchen or maybe the plastic machete, but what he had tucked into his argyle sock was an old-fashioned letter opener shaped like a sword in a battered green leather sheath embossed with gold. “Where did you get this?” I asked.

“From my mother's desk. It belonged to my grandfather.”

“You were in your mother's office? Doing what?”

“Looking for my mother.”

“Wasn't she in there?”

“She was. Asleep on the floor.”

“
I UNDERSTAND WHY
you're upset, Alice,” Dr. Abrams said. “But let's look on the positive side of this. You have to admit it's a feat of imagination for a nine-year-old to get himself rescued from a threatening situation by an ambulance. Really, it's a kind of genius.”

“I'm not sure the ambulance was his idea,” I said. “Anyway, I'd prefer less genius and more judgment.”

“You say that now,” she said. “But you'll be glad of it someday.”

“But I'm here now,” I said. “I won't be around for someday.”

I had called Frank's psychiatrist after I frisked him at the park. “I think it's a good idea for you to talk to Dr. Abrams today,” I told him.

“I don't think it's a good idea at all. I don't want to talk to anyone else,” Frank said. “I just want to talk to myself in the voice of a
1940
s radio announcer. We are at the playground already, so I don't see why you won't let me do it.”

“You can do that all you want,” I said. “In the car.” I stuffed him inside the wagon and dialed the shrink. She picked up my call right away and I stood with my back to Frank while I outlined the situation. “I had a cancellation,” she said. “Bring him now.”

When I got there Dr. Abrams explained that I couldn't come into the room with them since I wasn't Frank's parent. I'd already lied and said Mimi had asked me to bring Frank in, so I didn't push it. They had a muffled, intense conversation that I couldn't quite make out despite pressing my ear to the door. When they stopped talking I hopped into a chair and picked up a magazine. When Frank emerged I looked up at them both with a radiant, guilty smile.

“I have a couple of quick questions,” I said to Dr. Abrams. “Can I duck into your office for a minute while Frank waits out here?” That's
when we had our talk about genius vs. judgment. Also I asked if she thought Frank should go back to that school.

“I really can't discuss Frank any further with you until I've talked to his mother. You understand,” she said.

“Of course,” I said.

I TOOK FRANK
back to that playground and left a message for Paula in the office, asking her to call my cell when she could talk freely. I'd loaned Frank my sweater because I could see he was jonesing for a piece of clothing to cover his bare arms. He'd found a paper grocery bag somewhere and had turned it wrong side out and twisted and crumpled it into the shape of a top hat. To make it hold the shape he'd taken the lace out of one of his sneakers to use as a hatband. I had to give the kid props. He had a gift. But I also had to admit that this particular ensemble didn't make him look
100
percent sane.

I was watching Frank pacing, one shoe flapping, giving
1940
s radio announcer Walter Winchell a run for his money, when my phone howled. “I can keep an eye out for him, but I can only do so much,” Paula said. “I will tell you Dr. Matthews thinks Frank's a nuisance and that he can't possibly be that smart. He likes children who make high scores on standardized tests and smile a lot. He doesn't like Frank.”

“He doesn't understand Frank,” I said. “Frank's light-years beyond smart.”

“I know, honey. But Dr. Matthews isn't.”

“Mimi wants to know what do you think we should do.”

“Frank got off on the wrong foot with Dr. Matthews and Mimi didn't kiss up to him in their conference. I don't think you can get on his good side now,” Paula said. “If he doesn't find an excuse for expelling Frank, he'll drive him out some other way. He's done it to a second-grader already, and let me tell you, Alice, it wasn't pretty. It breaks my heart to say this because I'll miss my little friend, but if Frank were my son I wouldn't send him back here as long as that
man is in charge. To be honest, I may not stick it out here much longer myself.”

I HAD TO
do something.

I wanted to tell Mimi everything Paula had said but I knew she'd get mad at me in a shoot-the-messenger way that wouldn't help a bit. Frank's shrink had shut me out and I couldn't bring myself to tell Mr. Vargas how badly I was failing him. I was running out of people to go to for advice.

Sometimes just explaining your predicament—to a bartender, a priest, the old woman in a shift and flip-flops cleaning the lint traps in the Laundromat dryers—is all it takes to see a way out of it. Trust me, I didn't turn to Xander because I thought of him as a child-rearing sage; honestly, who is? It was just that Xander knew all the characters in our sad little drama and could lend a sympathetic ear. When he suggested a few weeks of therapeutic hooky for Frank until Mimi was done with her novel and could start living in the world outside her head again, I was able to convince myself that it was a spectacular idea.

“How do you propose we do that?” I asked. “Mimi expects me to take Frank to school every morning.”

“You leave with him dressed for school, park around the corner, and I meet you there. Frank changes into Frank clothes in the backseat. The three of us hang out until it's time to ‘come home from school.' Frank changes clothes, you drive up the driveway, I show up later. We'll get through this, Alice. You can count on me.”

I was desperate. I was in.

EXCEPT I DIDN'T
see how we would get Frank to understand he couldn't breathe a word of our plan to his mother. “I'll handle that,” Xander said.

They had a conference on a park bench. Frank was wearing a loud plaid zoot suit I'd never seen before, with taxi-yellow suspenders,
yellow pocket handkerchief, dice cuff links, and two-toned shoes. Xander, in ancient jeans and a T-shirt, looked like he was having a session with his new bookie, Little Frankie, whom he'd met while working as a grip on the set of a remake of
Guys and Dolls
.

“So when I change my clothes, do I do it in a phone booth?” Frank asked.

“Nope. Backseat of the station wagon. We won't look.”

“Good. Phone booths are hard to find these days. Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Did I get kicked out of school?”

“No way, pal. You're on hiatus. Once your mother and her book are squared away, we'll find you a new school you'll like much better. Until then, let's not tell your mom any of this. She has enough to worry about already.”

“I'll miss my friends,” Frank said. “Paula. Miss Peppe.”

“And they'll miss you. But that's how it is for academic staff. Students come and go like waves on the beach. I guarantee you, Frank, of all the generations of kids that Paula and Miss Peppe have known and will know, you're the one they'll remember best. You're the one they'll miss the most.”

Frank nodded. “You're probably right.”

I had to hand it to Frank. He took it like a champ. And he had been right about Xander all along. There were times when you really could count on him.

“
DO WE BELIEVE
Mimi's almost done with her book?” I asked Xander that night after Frank had gone to bed and we had, too.

“No idea,” he said. “How does that joke about the deer go? The one that ends with ‘no idea'?”

“What do you call a deer with no eyes,” I said. “No idear. I hate that joke. I picture the deer stumbling around in the woods, bumping into trees.”

“I wouldn't worry about that. The coyotes will get the deer before the trees do.” He tried to kiss me but I pulled away.

“She types all day,” I said.

“Alice, she's been typing as long as I've known her. Less since Frank was born, but still. She could have written a dozen books by now. Six, maybe. Four, at least.”

“All that typing and she's never finished anything?” This was very bad news.

“How should I know? The woman is a sphinx.”

“Are you kidding? She tells you everything, Xander. You're the sphinx.”

Xander rolled to his side and narrowed his eyes at me. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“You never tell me anything about yourself.”

“Are you kidding? I'm an open book. What do you want to know?”

“Why don't you have a driver's license?” I asked. “Does it have anything to do with your sister who died?”

He propped himself up on an elbow. “Mimi told you about that?”

“Some,” I said, fishing. “Nothing” would have been closer to the truth.

Xander lay back and stared at the ceiling for a while before he said, “I'm going to go play the piano for a little while.” He pulled on a pair of pants and his T-shirt. “There's this piece I've been trying to get under my belt forever.”

“Xander,” I said. “What happened to your sister?”

“Which one?”

“The dead one.”

“She died,” he said. “A long time ago. I don't want to talk about it.”

After he left I lay there listening for I don't know how long to Xander play something that I finally realized was the theme from
Chariots of Fire
. Had Frank asked him to learn that one? I'd never watched that movie with the kid but I imagined he must like the Jazz Age English menswear in it very much.

YOU COULD COUNT
on Xander sometimes as long as you remembered not to make a habit of it. After our first day of The Three Musketeers Cut Class, he disappeared again. No notes, no postcards, nothing. It didn't seem to worry Frank this time, or even bother him much. I think he was so relieved to be free of school that nothing else mattered. As for me, if I believed Xander wouldn't vanish again, I was kidding myself.

Those abbreviated Southern California winter days Frank and I spent wandering through Los Angeles were a recap of our halcyon time last summer before Xander was in the picture. I chased Frank through museum galleries. We went to the little municipal airport and looked for the yellow biplane. We kicked through the freshly raked sand at the playground. We even went to the beach, where Frank rolled up his Tony Curtis yachting chinos and waded into the gray surf. He stood there for a long time with the waves lapping at his ankles and a look of powerful concentration on his face.

“Let's go, Frank,” I said finally. “It gets dark by rush hour now and I don't want to get stuck in that.”

“Not yet,” he said. “I'm busy.”