6. Frankie
SIX
frankie
Ed is in Seattle. He calls Frankie nearly every night with brief updates: it's cold; it's raining; all he can do to chase away the cold is to drink cup after cup of hot coffee, which Seattle seems to have an abundance of. Of course he misses her, but she can hear in his voice that he's thrilled and exhilarated to be working on the project he's been asked to join, and she's happy for him. To have an exciting, important career and then to be rewarded for your hard work and expertise must be incredibly rewarding, and Frankie is proud of him.
"Francesca," her father says, "hand me a four iron." Enzo Lombardi is standing next to the golf cart wearing plaid pants and a golf glove on one hand. He's chomping on a cigar and looking as much like the other retirees on the rolling green course as he possibly can, though Frankie knows him well enough to see through it all and right to the heart of Enzo Lombardi.
For her entire life--for his entire life, really--Enzo has been hardworking and something of an outsider. As an immigrant to America, he's always seen himself as standing just beyond the circle; looking through the window, but not quite being invited in. Enzo had retired from a long career working for the railroad and while he is incredibly proud of the years he put in working on the infrastructure of America, he also sees himself as lower on the totem pole than many other men he knows. He's never indulged in pastimes like playing sports, golfing, or joining a country club, and to see him now, dressed in the uniform of an upper-middle class retiree, tugs at Frankie's heartstrings.
"Okay, Papa," Frankie says as she slides out of the passenger seat. She's dressed in a pink minidress and white Keds, and while she has no interest in actually swinging a club, she's having a nice day on the course with her father so far, and she's thrilled to see him taking part in an activity where he can both get exercise and be around other men his age.
"I think the wind is blowing this-a-way," Enzo says, taking the cigar from his mouth and waving it around like Frankie cares about the direction of the wind. "And I have a clear shot to the green."
"Uh huh," Frankie says with a half-smile. It would insult his manhood to hear it, but Frankie has always found her father's gruff exterior adorable. She sorts through the clubs in the bag that he's attached to the back of the cart, hunting for a four iron. "And when exactly did you take up golf, Pop?"
Enzo sets his cigar on the roof of the golf cart and takes the club from his daughter, inspecting it with narrowed eyes like he's some sort of a golf pro. "I started playing last year, Francesca. Why--you think a guy like me doesn't belong on the links?" He looks around. "Am I the only Italian out here?"
Frankie hears the warning note in his voice and realizes instantly that it's not her he's feeling defensive towards. There are times and places where her parents—though they immigrated to the United States in 1914--look as though they feel like foreigners. They grow uncomfortable, bashful even, as if everyone's eyes are on them. But that's never the case--at least not in Frankie's experience.
"Papa," Frankie says gently. "There is no 'guy like you'--you're one in a million."
Enzo's face softens. "Thank you, Francesca." He walks over to his ball and positions himself. "I went to the course in Flushing Meadows with Mr. O'Connell last summer," he says, naming a man who Frankie has known for most of her life. Mr. O'Connell and his family have been their neighbors in Brooklyn for years. "And I took a shine to the game." Enzo shrugs. "What can I say? I'm a regular Alfonso Angelini."
"Who?" Frankie smiles at her dad as he bends over his ball, getting his club into position.
Enzo swings and whacks the ball, sending it flying over the emerald green grass, and between the palm trees. The blue winter sky is the perfect backdrop for the white ball as it sails towards the flag on the third hole.
"Alfonso Angelini is the best Italian golfer there ever was, Francesca. He has won tournaments, and he has played in the World Cup. Mark my words, I will play one day with Angelini. You'll be so proud of me." Enzo holds a finger in the air as he walks back to the cart to put his four iron in the bag and retrieve his cigar.
Frankie doesn't laugh at this; she knows better. "Okay, Pop," she says. "Why not."
They get back in the cart and Enzo lets out the brake so that they can glide down the fairway.
"I was proud of you, you know," Enzo says, eyes pointing ahead as he drives. "When you were in New York, I was the proudest father there ever was. I told everyone I know, 'My daughter is a Rockette! She's going to be on Broadway--you'll see!' And they all got tired of listening to me." Enzo waves a hand to dismiss the naysayers as he stomps on the brake of the cart. "I was proud, Frankie," he says, turning to look at her. "And then you stopped dancing and I don't know why."
"Papa," she says pleadingly.
They'd left Allegra at the beauty salon near the butcher shop so that she could get her hair washed and set, but Frankie suddenly wishes her mother was there to turn the conversation around. Without a doubt, Allegra would point out here that dancing on stage isn't for respectable women, or that Broadway is just a place for over the hill women who never want to marry, and for men who prefer the company of other men. And she would definitely agree that Frankie marrying a military man was a better life choice than being on stage.
In the absence of her mother's opinions, Frankie swallows and then takes a deep breath. "Yes, I did leave, Papa," she finally agrees. A light breeze picks up and Frankie shivers. She's got a sweater next to her on the bench seat of the cart, and she picks it up and wraps it around her bare shoulders. "I wanted to settle down and make you and Mama proud."
Sitting in the cart, Enzo squints at the group of four men climbing into their own cart and pulling away from the green. "We've been proud of you since the day you were born, Francesca. We lived a lot of life before we had you, and when you came along, you filled our hearts with joy."
Unexpectedly, Frankie feels like crying. "Well, I'm proud of you, too," Frankie says, blinking to hold back the tears. "I know how hard you and Mama worked your whole lives, and you made sure we always had everything we needed."
"Maybe not everything you wanted ," Enzo says, wagging a finger at her, "but yes, everything you needed." He's pensive for a long moment. "So then why did you leave it all, Frankie? When you finally got the things you wanted, why did you get married and stop dancing?"
Frankie looks at her hands as she twists them together in her lap. Why had she left? She knows why, but in this moment, she can't imagine why she let anyone else dictate her value, her worth, her future. She shrugs. "I just did, Papa," she whispers.
Enzo shakes his head. The smell of cigar smoke fills the air around them. "Not good enough," he says, tapping the steering wheel with the gloved hand that holds his cigar. "You gave up your dreams and now you're here, and you don't even have children to raise and keep you busy." Enzo holds up a hand to stop Frankie before she starts speaking. "And I'm not hounding you like your mother does about having babies, I'm just saying--a woman without children underfoot needs something to do. Lounging by a swimming pool and drinking wine isn't enough."
Of her two parents, Frankie's father has always been the one to really see her—to see who she is. Never once in her life has she felt as though she's gotten away with anything when Enzo Lombardi was around, but, by the same token, she’s never had to suffer through anything alone, because somehow her dad always knows when something is wrong.
"I know it’s not enough," Frankie says. She's picking at the edge of the sweater in her lap. "I'm thinking about what to do, Pop."
"But again, Francesca, I ask: why did you leave New York? Why did you give it all up? A million girls would love to be a Rockette. You had it—you had it all, and you threw it away.“
Frankie smiles as she remembers the times her parents had come into the city to watch her at Radio City Music Hall, and the way her father had beamed with pride as they waited for her to come out from backstage. The first time they'd come, he'd brought her a bouquet of pink lilies from DiFranco's supermarket in Brooklyn, and she'd turned the same shade as the flower petals as the other Rockettes had filed past, oohing and aahing over Frankie's adorable parents in their finest clothes.
There are reasons she'd left the stage, and even more reasons why she'd fled New York, but Frankie isn't sure that the golf course on a sunny day is the place to get into them. "I just had enough," she says. "Everybody thinks they own you, and at some point, you just want to go back to owning yourself."
Enzo frowns at this and Frankie can see that he's not satisfied with this answer. "Who thought they owned you, Francesca? Who?"
Frankie's breath catches in her throat. She had never intended to talk to her parents--or anyone--about him, and the fact that his name is this close to escaping her lips in front of her father-- her father- -is almost incomprehensible.
"A man, Papa. Just a man. He...hurt me," she says, smoothing the thin sweater against her bare, tanned thigh in an effort to stop her hands from shaking. “It’s nothing.”
Enzo turns in his seat, his eyes boring into Frankie as she looks at her lap. “Someone hurt you? Who did this? Why?” Enzo nearly thrums with pent up frustration as he waits for his daughter to answer. Frankie can actually feel the anger radiating off him in waves.
She shakes her head. “I left, Papa. It doesn’t matter now.” She can feel her father breathing in and out raggedly next to her. “No one knows, and I don’t want to talk about it.”
With these words, she renders her father helpless. “This is not okay, Francesca. I came to this country and worked my tail off—I paid my dues here. You are an American. No one has a right to hurt my children. I won’t tolerate it.” His thoughts are disjointed, his anger growing with every word. “I’ll go there myself and handle him,” Enzo mutters, turning in his seat so that he’s looking back towards the flag that’s waving in the breeze, marking the hole. A cart of men pulls up behind them impatiently and Enzo waves a hand. “Play through!” he shouts at them, ignoring them as they hop out of their cart and go through the motions of chipping their balls out of the grass and putting them on the green.
Finally, when they leave, Enzo speaks again—this time more softly. He’s using measured tones, and the anger is held in check. “Okay, Francesca. Okay.” He reaches over and puts his rough hand on Frankie’s wrist and she looks at her dad’s skin, slightly loose and speckled from years of work and sun. Enzo had spent his adult life working for the railroad, and while his physique has softened a bit since retiring, he’s always been wiry and tough. “It’s okay, little girl,” Enzo whispers, and just the sound of his voice breaks Frankie. She leans over, resting her head on her dad’s shoulder as the tears fall. “You don’t have to tell me everything, but you can if you need to. I’ll listen.”
Frankie nods her head as she cries quietly. The secret of what really happened to Frankie in New York has been locked inside of her for nearly five years, and she isn’t quite ready to set it free here on the golf course. It’s too big. It’s too much. She knows the amount of effort it’s taking her father not to climb out of the golf cart and storm away in anger the same way he’d done countless times during her childhood, letting them all know that he’d had enough of whatever was going on, and she appreciates this.
“Does Ed know?” Enzo asks, his breaths coming more evenly now as his daughter rests her head on his shoulder.
“Some of it.” Frankie swipes at the tears on her cheeks but doesn’t lift her head from where it rests on her father’s shoulder. “Not all of it.”
“Mmmhmm. I see.” Enzo keeps his words even. “Maybe that’s for the best. A man can get very angry about things like this. Very angry.”
Frankie nods again. It feels good, sitting her with her dad. She hasn’t opened the floodgates entirely, but she’s turned the valve just a notch, letting off a little steam. Somehow this has eased the tension inside of her, even though she hasn’t given her father a single detail of the period of her life that nearly destroyed her. Everything that happened had crushed her, taking away her ability and her desire to dance. It had stripped her of her joy, leaving her helpless and hopeless, and—at one point—feeling like she didn’t even deserve Ed’s love.
“We’ll play the rest of this game, and then we’ll go get your mother,” Enzo says, pressing his lips to Frankie’s head and kissing her hair. There’s a protective energy buzzing from him that Frankie hasn’t felt since she was a child. “Okay, cara mia ?”
A wash of love and safety passes over Frankie as she sits up and wipes her tears with both hands. She nods. “Okay, Papa.”
As she watches, Enzo climbs out of the cart and chooses his putter, making his way to where his ball rests at the edge of the green. Her parents have been through so much, and have given their children everything they possibly could. Frankie doesn’t want to bring hurt or shame to either of them, and she doesn’t want to break her father’s heart. She appreciates that he’s willing to listen and comfort her, but this terrible secret is hers to carry alone. She won’t burden either of them with it—particularly her tender-hearted father.
“It’s good, no?” Enzo says, turning to look at Frankie in the cart. He’s just putted his ball directly into the hole in one stroke, and though she can see the worry still etched on his face, it’s at least been partially replaced by the thrill of this tiny victory.
It was raining. September 1958, water streaming down the windows, puddles gathering up and down Madison Avenue, Broadway, Fifth Avenue. The sky was heavy and gray, and Frankie had tied her calf-length trench coat over her leotard and thick nylons after the performance. All she wanted was to get home to the tiny apartment she shared with Catherine and Maryanne, and to wash her face and put on comfortable clothes, so she hadn’t bothered to take off her stage makeup or to unpin her hair.
“Ah, Francesca,” a man said, striding across the lobby of Radio City Music Hall. “My favorite Rockette.”
It was Whitmore Evans, better known as Whit, and also better known as a total cad. Frankie knew from the backstage gossip that at least two of her fellow Rockettes had fallen for his lines and been reeled in by Whit’s offers of expensive dinners, by his little gifts and trinkets, and by his powerful position in their world. Frankie hugged her arm across her body more tightly, pulling her purse to her as if a man whose family owned at least half the Eastern Seaboard might be interested in her subway tokens, lipstick, or the keys to her fourth-story walk-up.
“You have favorites?” Frankie shot back, holding her head high. Whit and his brother Xavier had been trying to hire the Rockettes to tour the country with them as Xavier made a bid for the presidency, but as far as Frankie had heard, this was entirely farfetched—both the idea of renting the Rockettes to perform at political rallies, and Xavier Evans’s notions of reaching for the White House. But aside from that, the Evans brothers had plenty of family money sunk into Broadway shows, playhouses, and (or so Frankie had heard) even Hollywood. They were very powerful men.
“Of course. Everyone has favorites in life. Don’t you?” Whit put his hands into his pockets in a way that looked mildly disarming, and Frankie let go of the strap of her purse. They were standing in the lobby of Radio City, after all. It was entirely unlikely that he’d try to kiss her or make a pass at her right there. “What’s your favorite food?”
Frankie could feel her shoulders sag a little; she was tired, but she’d also been tasked with representing the Rockettes as an organization, and being rude wouldn’t do. “Italian,” she said. “My mother’s cooking.”
“Well,” Whit said, “I can’t replicate that, I’m quite sure. But I’d like to take you out to dinner. There’s a wonderful little Italian place not far from here.”
As if he’d been summoned, Xavier Evans and another Rockette—a girl named Evelyn—emerged from a side door and crossed the lobby. Evelyn laughed, throwing her head back. She, too, was wearing a trench coat over her nylons and heels.
“We’re about to eat now. You’ll join us?” He made it sound like a question, but Frankie could tell it was not. If she denied a man as powerful as Whit Evans while on Rockette turf, she knew it would get back to management.
Frankie nodded tersely. “Okay,” she said, gripping her purse tightly across her body again.
Dinner was piles of handmade pasta with freshly grated, fragrant parmesan, bottle after bottle of red wine, and candles burning down to their waxy nubs in clear glass votives on the red-checkered tablecloths. Evelyn got drunk quickly, and her black leotard revealed a long strip of lush, ripe cleavage each time she leaned forward across the table to tell a story about life as a Rockette, or the way her ex-husband still stood around outside her apartment at night, hoping to catch a glimpse of her coming home with another man.
“We could have him handled,” Whit said smoothly, refilling Evelyn’s glass yet again.
The young woman’s eyes danced mischievously in the candlelight. “Oh?” She giggled, lifting her wine glass. “What—you’ll put him in a pair of cement shoes and then take him for a swim in the Hudson?”
Whit lifted an eyebrow carelessly. “I was thinking more of a warning, but I like the way you think.”
Xavier frowned at his brother. “Less talk about cement shoes, yeah?” he said in a low voice, swirling his wine around in his glass as he eyed Evelyn and the way her breasts bounced when she laughed. “I’m a politician and we’re in public.”
“Aspiring politician,” Whit corrected with a wink. It seemed that the wine had brought out their sharp tongues, as Frankie had heard them sling barbs at one another all evening. “And it’s a joke—something you should learn how to take, little brother.”
Frankie took another minuscule sip of her drink, her eyes volleying back and forth between the brothers. Waiters circulated with white napkins draped over their arms, and their handlebar mustaches were waxed into place. A man playing a violin stood on a tiny Juliet balcony on one side of the restaurant, and every time the kitchen door swung open, another glorious tray of pastas and soups emerged.
“Let’s settle up here,” Whit said, pulling his wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket and sliding a few bills from it. He tossed the money on the table. “Maybe a night cap at the bar on the corner?” he said, mostly to Frankie as he offered her a hand. It was clear that he had lost patience with his brother and the drunken girl on the other side of the table.
“I should really—“ Frankie accepted his hand and let him pull her gently to her feet, where he held her coat for her to slip into. Diners glanced in their direction, no doubt taking in Frankie’s wholly inappropriate outfit of a leotard and tights with a small chiffon skirt tied around her waist. She quickly belted her trench and followed Whit to the door in an attempt to stop making a spectacle of herself.
Outside, the rain had turned cold as it fell in pellets that felt like sleet. Fallen leaves in autumnal colors clogged the gutters as rain rushed down the street, and Frankie clenched her body against the chill. Whit put an arm around her protectively as her teeth chattered, guiding her down the street wordlessly. Frankie had barely had any wine, but already she felt unsteady on her feet.
The bar itself was dark and full of wood and velvet and discreet wall sconces. At every tiny booth sat a man and a woman, and Frankie scanned them all quickly, noting that, for some reason, none of the couples looked like the kind of people who belonged together. At one table the man was much older and distinguished-looking, while the woman was dressed in a revealing dress with garish red lipstick that looked tarty against her bleached blonde hair. In another booth was a couple that didn’t appear to be talking to one another or making eye contact; instead, they glanced around the bar anxiously, sipping amber liquid from short crystal tumblers.
“Is this where you bring the women you don’t want to be seen with?” Frankie joked, giving in as Whit helped her off with her trench coat yet again. It suddenly occurred to her that she knew nothing about Whit Evans beyond the fact that he was overly involved in the theater and the performing arts.
Whit chuckled nervously. “Francesca, every man would want to be seen with a Rockette.”
While she got comfortable in her side of the booth, Whit ordered them both French 75s. She wasn’t sure that statement was even true; sure, being a Rockette was fun and it held a certain cachet, but there were plenty of people of a certain caliber who might have thought that dating a woman who danced on stage in layers of makeup and hairspray was a little déclassé.
Whit leaned back in his seat as he lit a cigarette. “Want one?”
Frankie shook her head as she held up a hand. “No, thank you.”
“Now, tell me more about you,” Whit said, exhaling a stream of smoke towards the ceiling as the waitress set their drinks on the table. “What does a gorgeous woman like you want out of a mean city like New York?”
Frankie sipped her French 75 and glanced at Whit over the rim of her glass. This was her chance. A man like Whit had money. Power. Connections. She didn’t want to sleep with him, but she knew that his approval and his guidance could take her places that she wouldn’t even have access to on her own.
“I want to be on Broadway,” she said boldly, holding the flute glass by its stem. “I want to act and dance and sing.”
Whit kept the smirk off his face, but just barely. “Of course you do,” he said. “And I believe you can get there.”
Frankie brightened; maybe having dinner with Whit Evans hadn’t been such a bad idea after all. “You do?”
“Sure.” Whit motioned for another drink, glancing at hers, which was still mostly full. “But the real question is, what are you willing to do to get there?”
Of course that was the question, Frankie thought, the excitement in her stomach plummeting like a sinking stone. Of course it was.