Nothing but Blue Skies (43 page)

“I had to talk to somebody who’d know how it felt,” Edward said.

This artificial claim tripped something in Frank. He had had enough. Blank and murderous, he asked, “Who’d know how
what
felt, Edward?”

Edward seemed to examine Frank’s face for intention, sincerity, something. “To be left by Gracie,” he said.

What? Frank tried to hold it down. He wasn’t going to give this guy anything. He leaned back in his chair. Perhaps he could accommodate Edward a little, hands across the abyss. After all, it was something Edward would have to live with. But Edward seemed to be awaiting some payoff, a rare moment. All Frank wanted was verification. He still wasn’t sure.

“You got the gate, huh?”

“I’m afraid I did,” Edward said. “I guess I was just wanting some confirmation that this had anything to do with me in the first place.”

With a new pride and the sense of a pathway perceived at last, Frank told him he was the wrong person to ask. It was enough to know that Edward suspected that he might have been used.

Frank’s mind was racing. He had to find Gracie right this very minute. He wondered if he was getting ahead of himself. It was as if he were making notes for something he wanted to happen, defying postponement. Suddenly, Frank got to his feet. Edward looked on, open-mouthed. Frank ran outside and continued running until he was half a block from his house. He slowed to a walk and caught his breath. He found Gracie walking around the front lawn.

“What a funny house,” she said.

She barely let him talk. He thought they might gaze on the place together. But she was thinking about something.

“Let’s try to find Holly,” said Gracie. “She’s gone back to the one with a ring in his nose. She took down the douche bag and the picture of the
Enola Gay
.” Gracie seemed to be going right on to the next thing. Frank reluctantly saw this as a sign of strength. “Let’s put in an appearance.” She chattered on about the missing piece of time. She’d been to Europe! She’d been back to Louisiana! He lagged behind in one of the gray areas that subtended all his emotional changes of state. That, he was prepared to admit, was a weakness. But if he admitted all the things that got him out of bed in the absence of strengths, wouldn’t he lose what little footing he possessed? He should have taken that chance, he knew, back
when Gracie stood solidly beside him. It was now a distinctly less propitious time for such a housecleaning.

“Gracie, if I had ever really thought about you going off with someone, I wouldn’t have picked Edward particularly as your type.”

“He’s not my type.”

“I guess I’m missing something,” said Frank. Gracie unlocked the Buick and they both got in. She gripped the wheel and looked down the road as though she were already driving.

“You guess you’re missing something! Well, that’s a start.”

Frank said nothing. His head seemed to be enlarging from the unmoving diameter at his shirt collar. He craned around behind the windshield, not even driving, not even knowing Holly’s address.

“I understand your business is falling apart,” Gracie said. “Wouldn’t that be a miracle?”

“I can fix it.”

“Can you.” It wasn’t quite a question.

“Yes, I can.”

“Have I nearly ruined you?” Gracie beamed. Frank didn’t reply. Then she said, wonderingly, and to no one in particular, “Who would have thought?”

They drove down an empty street lined with the fiefdoms of small homes in which discord over colors, shapes and roofing materials, fences, breeds of dog and shrubbery, seemed to end the westward movement in its provisional neighborhoods.

Gracie said, “I had the funniest idea. It was about children, I guess, and how bringing them up causes this sadness. Almost as if their life tells you you’re going to die? I mean, I know it’s love, but it sure is kind of a lonesome thought. You know what I mean? While I was gone, I went back home and paid a little visit to my old indigo plantation, quote unquote. You remember that? And where I used to think about vanished glory, this time I was just in mind of all those people gone. Frank, you know what I figured out?” She looked at him to give him a chance to answer. When it was clear he wasn’t going to say anything, she said,
“There’s nothing crazier than picking up exactly where you left off.” Then she smiled.

Finally, the houses thinned out and dropped away, and the street turned into a long, twisting road, and if there was a stop sign anywhere, it must have been hidden behind the curves.