Chapter 17 This Is What It’s Come To
This Is What It’s Come To
After. That’s how Frankie thinks of it; they are in the after, the time without June in the world, a time that has changed drastically from the golden before.
Or maybe the delineation was the dread she saw in Jack’s eyes, because for him to so much as entertain the idea that he’d be capable of hurting June has rattled Frankie and made her wish for the days of innocent certainty.
Again, she hears his voice: You have to let me be a mess.
Even that goes against her instincts, because all she wants to do is mend the tear, and yet she can’t.
Though it’s Saturday, both she and Nico are in the office.
The one time she brings up the reporter, Jerry, and what he said, Nico tells her not to worry and promptly picks up the phone to make a call, swiveling his chair to face the window, an indication he wants privacy.
Through the glass, she catches a studio gardener pause while mowing the lawn, a narrow path of light-green cut grass behind him.
He lowers his head, then takes another step before stopping once more.
Stooped over, he puts his hands on his knees, a reddened patch of exposed skin on the back of his neck.
Frankie’s seen this before; the man is about to pass out.
In seconds she’s at the window, her hand on the glass as, beside her, Nico’s forgotten about the phone and is watching as well, the operator’s voice faint yet demanding through the line.
At last the man raises his chin and trudges forward.
Back at her desk, she answers automatically when her phone rings, but is met with silence. She’s about to hang up when she hears the steady intake of breath, and then a slow exhale. And even that is enough, because she’s spent countless hours beside him, listening to him breathe.
Quietly, she says, “I was just thinking about you. I’ll try to come to you tonight.”
“Don’t. There are still people outside. I just wanted to hear your voice. Tell me one thing.”
“A good thing?”
“Do I need more bad?”
She glances toward the window. “A man I thought was about to faint didn’t.”
A small laugh. “So this is what it’s come to.”
Despite herself, she smiles. His laugh, she’d needed even that.
On the way home, she stops by the little house—her little house—for the reminder that a better day will come, soon.
She’s in the driveway, sitting in her car, when she worries that she shouldn’t be here.
It’s as though she’s treading the line between belonging to this place, and not belonging, perched before a future that feels unearned, as if she’s skipped ahead in a book.
Tucked in the green, the house is shaded by trees, quiet and peaceful.
Fresh white trim against red. A pot of violets on the porch.
This, she decides, is what she would show her mother, if she could.
Not the spotlights and the cameras and the red carpets but a little house that is just hers, with a line to dry her wash that she never needs to keep an eye on, and a front path that will never be littered with cigarette butts or bottles.
Again, she hears Jack’s voice, telling her about the man who jumped, his insistence he could’ve helped.
It’s not always about money, she said to him. You break my heart, he replied.
She never told him about the house. This chance of hers, this correction to her life, to her mother’s life, to everyone like her who’s only thought of treading softly and staying out of the way, whose goals are to not take up much space or cause too much trouble or overstay their welcome.
From that to this. A house that is hers and hers alone.
She sees herself on the porch, reading a script, or in the window, drawing down the shade at night.
This is the salve on a burn, the chance to sit after years of walking.
It’s everything she’s worked for, and it disturbs her that she hasn’t mentioned it to Jack, because he is the one she wants to tell everything to, and yet instinct tells her to protect this little house, to build a wall around it in her heart and keep it clear of all the sadness that fills their days.
And yet the happier she feels about it, the more the omission begins to sting like a lie. When at last she starts the car, she doesn’t look back at the house, as if worried it might not look the same.
The next morning, there is a moment where everything is as it should be. Then it all floods back. Taking even breaths, she pulls back the covers.
In the other room, Susan and Virginia have taken books off shelves and emptied drawers, hunting for mementos or anything June related.
Virginia, cross-legged on the floor, presses a Kleenex to her eyes. “I had those stills. The ones the photographer wasn’t using that I took. Did I throw them away? I wouldn’t do that, would I?”
Susan shakes her head, and swipes a dustrag along a bare shelf. “You wouldn’t do that.” Then she sees Frankie. She stops, arm still extended. “You can cry. For us, it’s strange, I know, because we didn’t know her really, but you did. And you’re not crying.”
“I have to go to work. Now. I have to go.”
Susan eyes the pajama bottoms Frankie’s wearing. “On a Sunday?”
When the phone rings, Virginia doesn’t bother looking up. “Speak of the devil.”
It’s Nico, telling her to stay home. “Rest,” he says, and she waits for him to invite her to his house, to be with him and his family. “No dinner tonight either. This is Gabriella’s first death. Angela’s spending all her time with her so she doesn’t have to go through it alone.”
When Frankie’s mother died, the family who shared the apartment with her had her over to their side for dinner.
The parents cried and the children played and looked confused, and though the mother didn’t speak English, she held Frankie’s hand and didn’t let go even as she ate.
But it was one meal. Then Frankie returned to her side and an emptiness that never left.
“That’s good—that she doesn’t have to be alone.”
There’s silence on the other end as he must hear what she’s not saying. Then he adds, “You could still come over. I didn’t mean you should be alone. I’m just not good company.”
Which is what she needs to remember; he lost someone he’s known for years, someone he vowed to protect and care for. She wraps the phone cord around her finger, watching the skin turn white. “I’m not alone. I have my roommates.”
“If you change your mind, you know where we are. Oh, tomorrow, I want you at the station. Be a fly on the wall. I gave Mickey a talking-to on Friday, but I want you listening for whispers, anything to do with Jack.”
“Nico, I know you said not to worry, but that reporter? Jerry? What he mentioned in the press conference—”
“He’s not invited back.”
“It’s true, then?” Off his silence, she adds, “People overheard my comment?”
“It’s hard to talk now, right? But what he said is nothing crucial.”
“How could it not be?”
“Listen to me. If I was in line at a movie and said I forgot to lock my front door, what are the odds that the very person next to me is going to act on that?”
What are the odds, what are the odds. Over and over, Frankie repeats this in her mind.
That night, a wind is blowing and everything feels cold.
Drafts seep from under the doors and through the windows’ gaps, Los Angeles not equipped for anything close to a real winter.
In bed, each time she nears sleep, a chill wakes her with a shiver.
When the phone rings, she races to get it, her bare feet hitting the cold hardwood floor.
“I can’t sleep,” Jack says.
“Me either. It’s too cold.”
“You’re cold? Is your radiator not working?”
“Apparently not.”
“I’ll get someone to look at it.”
“Don’t do that. I can figure it out.”
“It’s not a weakness to let me take care of you.”
With a glance over her shoulder, she says quietly, “Not to argue the point, but I think I’m the one taking care of you.”
A laugh. “True.”
“Why can’t you sleep?”
“Well, there are the obvious reasons, but it’s too windy. I don’t like the sound. And I haven’t taken anything.”
“Good. Don’t.”
There is a pause, and he says, “You don’t have to talk, but will you stay on the phone with me? I’ll pay for it.”
Frankie listens for her roommates. “Sure.”
Curled into a curved green club chair, she holds the phone against her ear.
And the strange thing is, it doesn’t feel strange to sit with him like this.
Saying nothing, just knowing he’s there.
The sound of his breathing. The steady rhythm.
In her mind, she sees him in bed, the way he likes to have one arm thrown out across the mattress, palm up.
After a while, his breathing slows, becoming softer.
And when she wakes in the morning, the phone beside her is in its cradle—one of her roommates must have found her—and her back is sore from having slept in a chair, but it’s the most she’s slept since this began.