CHAPTER TWO
Mason made the turn from Oak
onto Dale just as Frankie was making the turn from Dale onto
Oak. Mason stopped the car and rolled the window all the way
down. “Hey Birthday Girl.”
Frankie looped the bike away from
the edge of the road. She was wearing her favorite Albert Einstein
tee shirt, her favorite ripped jeans. The tip of her pony tail
tapped one shoulder, then the other. “Hi Mom.” She
stood there straddling the bike. “I’m late. You’re
early.”
“Someone cancelled last
minute. And it’s a good thing, because before that, I
was running late, too.” She reached out and touched the
chrome handlebar. “How was school?”
“Okay. Do you know a Tzetze
fly can kill you? A little fly,” she held her fingers
a smidge apart and made a face, “this big. But I can’t
talk now, I gotta go.”
“Okay.” Mason patted
the handlebar. “You can tell me about Tzetze flies later.”
She patted the bike. “And Frankie? Take it easy, because
there’s plenty of time before we have to leave.”
“I’m always speedy,
Mom, but I never rush. Cuz when you rush, that’s when
you make mistakes.”
Mason nodded. She was used to
Frankie saying the things she was supposed to be saying herself.
“Okay then, see you in forty-five minutes.”
Frankie jumped back up on the pedals and swung away from the
car. “More like forty-seven,” she called out and
then she was gone.
Mason waved at Ida on her way
by, pulled up in front of the mailbox, looked at the house.
The damn gutter was still there. Still hanging at a crazy angle
across Frankie’s window. And after he promised, promised
he was going to fix it today.
The leaves on the maple fluttered
and the gutter lifted then settled back against the wall with
a thud.
“I got lotsa problems to
take care of, ya know, Missus Gilbert? A landlord can hardly
keep up with it all. But because I like you, because you’re
one’a my best tenants, I’m gonna get yours out of
the way first thing in the morning. So you don’t gotta
call me no more, okay?”
She yanked at the mailbox handle.
So maybe it was nothing but a little swampy-side-of-the-lake
cabin, but she kept the grass cut, and the front door was painted
sunflower yellow, and there were morning glories growing up
the light post, and that gutter made the whole thing look so
... pathetic. Morning glories and all.
She glanced at the mail and hesitated
half a second before she slid it out of the box. Of course it
was going to be there, the thick, cream-colored envelope that
always arrived on May 10th, never on May 9th or May 11th, but
exactly on May 10th. As though even the US Postal Service took
its orders from Jeremiah and Cecile Davenport.
She tossed it all onto the passenger
seat and made a U-turn into the driveway.
The trash she’d left piled
beside the house that morning had been reduced by about half.
And it wasn’t piled anymore, it was stacked. Neat. Like
a pyramid.
Don’t you think it matters,
Mom, if you’re going to recycle everything anyway, that
you do it efficiently? I mean, it only takes a second to flatten
a tin can, you know. And what about all those returnables? I
mean, gee Mom, a nickel is a nickel!
Mason could see Frankie stomping
all the tin cans, the plastic milk jugs, stuffing her twenty-seven
copies of The Chronicle into one side of her bike rack and the
deposit cans she’d fished out of the trash into the other.
That’s where she probably was right now, at the A&P,
stuffing her pockets with nickels. Sixty-five cents, Mom, sixty-five
whole cents! And you were going to just throw them away!
She was only nine, correction,
ten years old. How did she get that way? How?
Mason grabbed her bag off the
back seat, glanced down at the fancy black script on the creamy
envelope. Mason Gilbert and Francine Davenport. Francine Davenport?
It was Gilbert, Gilbert, not Davenport. And she knew they thought
that was her doing, too, just like they blamed her for everything
else, when it was Sean who’d made out Frankie’s
birth certificate. Though they’d never believe it in a
million years.
She dropped the mail into her
bag, slipped off her shoes and dumped them over the back of
the seat. The grass was springy, cool against her feet, and
she imagined lying down in it, spreading her legs and her arms,
letting the chlorophyll suck all the disinfectant smells off
her -- Lysol, Mr. Clean, lemon oil. She’d roll around
until she smelled like spring and never put on another pair
of rubber gloves, never have to scrub someone else’s toilet,
never ....
“Hey there, Mason honey.
How you doin this fine day?”
She walked over to the low honeysuckle
hedge that separated the two yards, smelling the punky odor
of Ida’s home-rolled cigarettes, smiled at Ida rocking
on her porch.
“I’m good, Ida. How
about you?”
“Well, I woke up alive,
as my daddy used to say.” She put her head back and laughed,
deep and phlegmy. “I seen Frankie head on out not too
long ago.”
Mason nodded. “I ran into
her at the corner. Couldn’t talk, though. She was running
late.”
Ida laughed again. “Not
hardly.” She took a drag, turned the air smoky in front
of her. “I swear I set my clock by that child. Door bang
shut in the morning, it’s 7:35. See her fly by with those
newspapers, it’s 3:45, no question.” She shook her
head and smiled, then she frowned. “Needs to have more
fun, though, that girl, you know? Not right at her age being
all business like that.”
“I think our idea of fun
is different from Frankie’s, Ida. You know how she is.
But you’ll like what we’re doing tonight. Dinner
out, then bowling, then a movie.”
“For her birthday. Sure
now that sounds like a three dog night.” She waved her
cigarette. “Send her over before y’all leave. I
baked some of my sourdough bread special for her.”
“I’ll tell her, Ida.
Thanks.” She waved backwards over her shoulder, went in
the side door and set her bag on a kitchen chair, took out the
mail and put it on the table, on top of the double stack of
books, her stack, Frankie’s stack. She was going to miss
a chem lab tonight, and you weren’t supposed to miss labs,
but birthdays were a big deal for her and Frankie. Almost better
than Christmas. Definitely better than Thanksgiving.
She turned the gas on under the
kettle, took a mug down from the cupboard, then she walked around
the kitchen twice, avoiding avoiding. Finally she went back
to the table and picked up the envelope, slid her finger under
the flap and ripped it open. There were two smaller envelopes
inside, and she stuck the one with Francine written on it under
a magnet on the fridge. She opened the other one, the one with
her name on it.
Dear Mason,
Jerry and I hope you are well. She took a box of crackers
down from the top of the refrigerator, took one out and stuck
it in her mouth. It doesn’t seem
possible that Francine can be nine years old. I remember Stephen
so clearly at that age. The picture you sent at Christmas shows
such a resemblance to her father. She must be a constant reminder
to you of him.
The kettle whistled and she put the letter down, stuck a tea
bag in the mug and filled it with water. She pulled out a chair
and sat down, blew across the top of the tea and stared at the
letter, letting the words blur. Then the gutter whapped the
side of the house, and the words went sharp again.
In no time
at all, Francine will be a teenager. Things that are unimportant
to her now -- the way you choose to live, your work, your self-imposed
alienation from the only family she has -- will not only become
embarrassments to her, but may actually dictate and shortchange
her future.
She put the letter down, took
a deep sip and burned her tongue. “Damn.” She set
the mug down too hard, and drops of tea splashed her wrist,
the table, stained the cream-colored letter.
We can offer
Francine everything she needs to set her on the path to a successful,
fulfilling future. She is a bright, sensitive child, who deserves
more than you will ever be able to provide. Although, there
is one thing you can provide for her, Mason -- and that is the
freedom to become the best she can be. You can stop hurting
her in order to hurt us. Let her go. Let her come to us. We
can start with a summer. This summer. Let her come after school
gets out, and then, if she wishes, we’ll send her back
before Labor Day. You owe it to her, Mason. You owe it to us.
The clock over the sink ticked.
She folded the letter, slid it back inside the envelope, got
up and opened the cabinet under the sink. She held it over the
wastebasket for a second before she dropped it in.
Lois and Clark were swimming around
and around in goldfish oblivion on the windowsill, and she sprinkled
some food into their bowl. “Do you believe that?”
she asked them. “As if what happened to Sean was my fault.
As if everything was sunshine and morning glories until I came
along and forced their perfect son into a methadone treatment
center for absolutely no reason at all.” She sniffed,
rubbed her nose on her sleeve. More than anything, she hated
how awful they could still make her feel. How small and useless.
The gutter whacked the side of
the house, made her jump. “Okay,” she said, “that’s
it. That’s really it.” She slammed the kitchen door
on her way out, went around to the front of the house and managed
to grab the end of the gutter on the third jump. She pulled,
twisted, twisted harder, but the damn thing wouldn’t let
go. She yanked hard, scraped her hand against the torn metal
edge, looked at the drops of blood gathering along the thin
puckered tear and pressed her palm against her shirt. Then she
grabbed the gutter one more time, and finally, on the fourth
pull, it came away and she and the gutter went flying backwards.
She landed on the ground, closed her eyes, pulled out a handful
of grass and held it to her nose. She tried not thinking about
anything at all.
“Mom, what the heck are
you doing?”
She smiled. “What does it
look like I’m doing?”
“Lying in the grass. But
why?”
She opened her eyes. “Because
it feels so good, that’s why.”
Frankie looked at her for a second,
then she stuck her fist into her pocket and took out a handful
of money. “Twenty-two dollars and eighty-five cents,”
she said. “And that doesn’t even include the deposit
nickels.”
Mason looked at her daughter’s
upper lip. At the nice little cleft developing under her nose.
Just like hers, like her own mother’s, and her grandmother’s.
“How come so much in tips?”
Frankie grinned. “Maybe
because I left notes last week saying it was my birthday today?”
Mason pushed herself up onto her
elbows. “You what?”
“Well, I didn’t just
say, ‘hey, it’s my birthday.’ I thanked them
for their continued patronage through yet another year of my
life. You know, sort of like when the bank had their anniversary
and they gave out air fresheners at the drive-up window?”
“Oh, Frankie.” She
sank back down and closed her eyes. “You’re shameless.”
Frankie dropped down beside her.
“I’m an entreprenoor, Mom. I have to keep on top
of things.”
“You’re ten years
old, Frankie. The only thing you should be on top of is a jungle
gym. Now I want you to try something. Close your eyes. I want
you to relax and let the ground pull all the entreprenoorship
out of your muscles. Feel like you’re floating.”
“The grass tickles.”
“It’s very yin.”
“It’s making me itchy.”
“Gramma and Grampa sent
you a card.”
“I know. They always do.”
“They want you to come live
with them for the summer.”
A bee droned close, then faded
away.
“But I already have something
to do this summer. I’m starting a new business. I’m
gonna make bird feeders out of milk jugs. Next week I’m
passing out flyers with my papers, and I already have a whole
ton of ‘em in my closet.”
“A whole ton of flyers?”
“A whole ton of milk jugs.”
Mason turned to look at her. “Is
that the smell coming out of your room lately?”
Frankie shrugged. “Why don’t
they come and visit us?”
Mason looked back up at the sky.
“They’re different from us, Frankie. They’re
not comfortable here.”
For a while, they lay there not
talking.
“Was my dad like them? Did
we make him uncomfortable, too?”
“No. Your dad was like us.”
“I don’t have to go,
Mom, do I?”
“Not if you don’t
want to.”
“Pissa.”
“I thought I told you not
to say that anymore. But, Frankie, maybe you should think about
it … it’s only one summer and …”
“There’s ants all
over me!” Frankie jumped up.
“There’s no ants.
Frankie ...?” She sat up.
Frankie wiggled, scratched. “Tzetze
flies, Mom, what if they’re Tzetze flies?”
Mason laughed.
“Mom, you know, there’s
nothing funny about Tzetze flies.” Then she smiled.
“Time to get ready, kiddo.
And I almost forgot, Ida has some bread for you. Better run
over there first.”
“Ida’s bread. Pissa.
I mean, excellent.”
“And don’t forget
to say thank you.”
“Mom, do I ever forget to
say thank you?”
Mason shook her head. “No,
I guess you don’t.” She watched her run across the
yard, watched her take Ida’s steps two at a time. Then
she got up, grabbed the gutter and carried it behind the house.
She’d have to remind her to take all those milk jugs outside
and wash them. But she’d save that for tomorrow. Tonight,
they were just going to have fun. |
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