Chapter 32
FRANKIE
“I have a book hangover,” Logan says as soon as he picks up. “I don’t get book hangovers. I didn’t even know that was the term for it until I talked to my sister this afternoon.”
I lift my eyebrows in surprise. “You read so much, though.”
From my phone screen, he gives me a funny look.
I frown at him. “You did read all those books, didn’t you?”
He laughs out loud. “Yes. But I have a confession to make about this book.”
I set my phone down against the fruit bowl and rest my forearms on the kitchen counter. “What?”
“I tried it last year and didn’t make it very far. So I didn’t expect to love it so much this time around. It’s my favorite book in years.”
I grin. “That’s really funny.”
“No, it’s terrible.”
“Are you pouting?”
“Francesca Wilson, you’re a witch.”
“I’ve never been called a witch before.” I preen. “Thank you.”
He grins. “What should we read next?”
“You pick the best books,” Logan says the next night. It’s seven on the west coast, ten back in Buffalo, and once again, he’s keeping me company while I make dinner.
“No spoilers! I haven’t even started!”
A notification flashes at the top of my screen, and reflexively, I make a face.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Logan shakes his head. “How am I supposed to learn anything about my wife if you don’t tell me what you just reacted to?”
I sigh. “It’s my mother.”
He settles in as if there’s about to be a story time. “Tell me more.”
“No thank you.” I swipe away another notification.
“We can compare mom tales if you want.” He pulls on his bottom lip. “Actually…” He laughs and grabs his phone, rolling over so he’s on his back and I’m looking down at him.
He pops one arm behind his head, his biceps flexing as he settles in to tell me something that from the look on his face, he thinks is hilarious, but I suddenly feel queasy and lightheaded.
“What is it?”
“Our moms are going to meet.”
“What? When?” I turn the stove off, abandoning dinner, and I slump in a chair at the table.
“Next week when we do a road trip down to Florida. It’s the mothers and mentors trip. And your mother is travelling with the team, too. She’s in charge of the social events for them.”
“Of course she is.” I flip over to my messages, expecting the messages to be another forwarded video clip.
Instead, they’re about Vegas and my residency plans.
“Don’t worry, I won’t let on that there’s anything out of the ordinary about them meeting. Or meeting again, since they would have known each other as WAGs back in the day when your dad played in Minneapolis.”
“Hang on,” I say, distracted now. “I need to read this, sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’m just going to watch you be all cute and serious.”
I can’t fully ignore the fact that Logan is watching me read my screen, but my attention is ninety-seven percent on the texts from my mother, which are still coming in.
Mom
Your father finally told me about your dinner
Mom
I’m sorry that you quarrelled about your residency plans
Mom
Of course I understand that you love California
Mom
It’s just that you’re so far away
Mom
But I imagine that feels safer for you
An unexpected tear slides down my face.
I stare at the messages, my throat tight. It’s the most honest my mother has been with me in years. Maybe ever.
And I hate that, because where was this honesty when I was sixteen and scared? Where was this I understand you need to feel safe when she was packing my bags for boarding school?
“Frankie?” On the tiny picture-in-picture screen, Logan jackknifes upwards. “Fuck, why are you crying?”
“I’m not.”
“Liar.”
I swipe at my face. “Your wife is a bit of a cry baby.”
“That’s okay. What’s wrong?”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. At first. But Logan just waits me out, until I’ve taken a few deep breaths, and then everything spills, fast and furious.
How hurt I felt when she took my dad’s side when I was a teenager, how she let him lay down the law with me, and told me that boarding school and a women’s only college might be what a girl like me needed.
How reluctant I was to move home for my master’s degree, but I thought it might bring us closer together, so I could understand her, woman to woman.
Instead, it was a frosty year of stilted communication.
And how I’ve mostly made my peace about us being fundamentally different people, but…I still clearly have some unresolved feelings about her, because now I’m a blubbering mess.
“I begged her,” I whisper. “I begged her to stop him. To talk to him. To do something. And she just...” My voice breaks.
“She chose him. She always chooses him, lets him have his way. You want to know why my name is Francesca? Because when they found out they couldn’t have more children, and I would be their only baby, my dad wanted to literally name me Frank Junior.
She didn’t want him to do that, but she couldn’t bring herself to suggest any other name, either.
So she just feminized his name, and he immediately shortened it to Frankie anyway. ”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“Did she call you Francesca, then?”
I laugh bitterly. “Oh, no. I wasn’t Francesca again until I went away to school.
Melissa Wilson doesn’t rock the boat, even in secret.
So I don’t know how to take these texts.
My mother isn’t that deep, you know? She loves me, in her own way, but she communicates exclusively in memes and self-help videos that are all passive aggressive commentary on my life choices. ”
“So she doesn’t really communicate at all.”
“Exactly. And so…what the fuck is this?” I take a deep breath and take a screenshot of the messages so I can send it to him.
“She doesn’t usually write messages like that?”
I shake my head. “Never.”
Logan is quiet for a long moment. Then he says, very unexpectedly, “I owe you an apology.”
“What? For what?”
“I now understand better why you ran in Vegas. You had every reason to think I would choose my career over you. Because that’s what your parents taught you to expect.” His face tightens. “And that’s bullshit. You deserve so much more than that.”
“Easier said than done.”
“Not for me.” He holds up his hand. “But I get it. I don’t expect you to take my word for that. I’m going to show you, and I won’t pressure you to believe me any faster than whenever it clicks in for you that I mean it. We have all the time in the world, Frankie.”
I don’t argue with him. There’s no point.
He’s had a life that has led him to be confident in what he believes.
My experience has made me a lot more pessimistic, and the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
But he’s right about one thing—I’m not ready to see it from his point of view. Not yet.
As if he can read my mind, he shifts the subject.
Not that far, but away from me. “You know, my sister has had a rockier relationship with our mom than I have. Ironically, my sister is also the one to communicate in memes and self-help videos, but it’s in conjunction with a long-ass lecture.
But something that I think has been hard for her to accept about our parents is that they come from a certain generation where being nice is valued above almost everything else. ”
I blow out my cheeks in frustration. “Yeah, that’s my mom exactly.”
“I don’t know if this is also true for her, then, but I know it’s hard for my mom to get around that veneer and be real.
So when she does, it’s worth rewarding.” He gives me a crooked smile.
“In much the same way I like to be called good boy in the right circumstances. Everyone likes a solid pat on the head.”
“I’m not infantilizing my mother.”
“Of course not. She’s supposed to parent you, not the other way around. But if she ever does something that feels like it’s in the right direction, a bit of positive feedback there might help.”
“That sounds suspiciously like something she’s sent me in a video at some point.”
“I’m pretty sure I learned it from my sister the same way.” He touches his phone screen. “I wish I could hold you right now.”
“I really hate those videos she sends,” I admit.
He nods. “So let her know that you like the real texts.”
I change the subject to how his practice went, and his game tomorrow, when his sister’s fiancé’s team is coming to Buffalo.
But the whole time we’re talking, I’m thinking about my mom, and when I finally say goodnight, I flip back to her texts.
Frankie
Thank you for saying that
I type out I miss you too, but then delete it.
Because I miss the idea of my mother, from when I was young, before I disappointed my parents in an unredeemable way.
I miss the notion of having a mother who would actually love me unconditionally.
But I can’t miss the woman who didn’t stand up for me when I needed her the most, and who has never apologized to me or tried to repair our relationship.
Frankie
I’m glad that you can see my future is in California and how that is right for me
It’s not the bridge-building response Logan would probably encourage. But it’s honest. And that has to be enough for now.
Logan’s game the next day against St. Louis is at four in the afternoon on the west coast, so I can’t watch it live.
By the time I get home, it’s half over, but that’s a blessing in disguise, because I don’t have to listen to the inane pre-game scripted talking heads who seem to think that after a year and a half of tough love, my father’s coaching style is suddenly working in Buffalo.
But just before I tap the fast forward button, one of the analysts surprises me. “I have to disagree,” he says with an affable smile to the camera. “Some of the analytics show that Buffalo is having success despite the coaching there, not because of it.”
Okay, now you have my attention, I think. I sit down and put my chin in my hand.
His panel partners all laugh.
“Hear me out. Compared to the teams ahead of them in the standings, Buffalo’s problem is that they don’t have possession of the puck enough. Which could be a sign of general weakness, but if we drill in more…”
And this is clearly planned, because there are matching graphics on the screen now.
“Logan Granger can score, obviously. But first, he needs to get possession of the puck in the D zone and carry it all the way to the other end. When you compare him to the top scorers in the league, including his brother Camden, who is having a better than a point per game season in Minnesota, there’s a startling difference. ”
The graph on the screen switches to a comp chart of eight forwards. Logan has almost fifteen percent fewer offensive zone starts compared to the others.
“And if we adjust those stats for expected O zone starts, it’s clear that Wilson is giving most of those starts to other forwards on his team. He doesn’t trust Granger to win the face-off, and that is hurting Buffalo’s scoring chances.”
I fast forward past the national anthem, then watch the first period, paying attention to which line gets put out in the O zone by my father when he has the choice.
It’s never Logan’s line.
The front door opens, and Liz comes in. I pause the game and wave hello. “How was your day?”
She blows a giant raspberry. “Merry is coming over for a bit, though, so it’s going to get better.”
“Do you want to order pizza for dinner?”
“Yeah, could do.” She glances at the screen. “Who’s winning?”
“St. Louis, because my father is an idiot.”
Her eyebrows lift. “Oh?”
I try to explain what the analyst said, but Liz’s eyes glaze over pretty quickly. “It doesn’t matter. I’m fast forwarding through the game at this point.”
“I’m sorry, hon. I hope his next game is better!” She jumps up when there’s a gentle knock at the door.
I grab my phone. “I’m going to walk to get pizza, and listen to the rest of the game on the way there and back. You guys can have the living room if you want.”
By the time I get back with two pizzas, Buffalo has lost to St. Louis, 0-2.
Liz is fast asleep on the couch, her head in Merry’s lap, her girlfriend quietly watching a documentary on the TV.
I text Sloane that we have pizza, and open my computer.
I might as well do an hour of studying before Logan gets home, so I have something to talk to him about that isn’t my blistering outrage over how unfair this whole situation is.