13. Frankie
THIRTEEN
frankie
Allegra Lombardi is laughing so hard that she's holding her stomach as she doubles over in the middle of Frankie's living room.
"And then," she says, waving one hand around as her husband and daughter sit on the couch, hanging on her every word. "I went up to the counter and the woman said--" She stops herself with her own laughter, unable to go on. "I can't," she says, falling back onto a chair and covering her face.
"Oh, Allegra," Enzo says, his eyes dancing as he holds a glass of red wine in one hand. He's shaking his head and smiling at his wife of more than forty years. That's the thing that Frankie has always loved about her parents: they know how to laugh--at themselves, at life, at each other. They have fun together.
"Now tell the story of the time that you guys went back to Italy to visit your grandparents--in 1920," Frankie says.
She loves to hear them talk about their youth. It's amazing to her that two young people showed up in America with their families, working and scrambling to make ends meet. They'd both devoted themselves entirely to raising their children, to making enough money to get by, and to finding the joy in life in any way possible. Frequently during her childhood, Frankie had looked at her parents' tired faces and known that they were simply summoning the energy to sit at the table with their kids, to help her and her siblings with homework, and to cook dinner or clean up their small apartment in Brooklyn. They both worked so many hours and were willing to take on any extra jobs just to make money, and now, just a generation later, Frankie and her brother and sisters are all living lives of luxury, comparatively speaking.
Enzo sighs, leaning back on the couch with his wine resting on his rounded belly. "Oh, visiting our grandparents," he says with a faraway look in his eyes. “Let's see. Well, I left there as a child and went back as a young man, and my grandmother almost didn't recognize me. When she saw me walk into the village, she said she thought I was a film star who had come to visit."
"Oh, Papa," Frankie says. "You were so handsome."
" Was ?" Enzo asks with mock horror. "I am still the most handsome Italian-American besides Sinatra!"
Frankie giggles at this; she's always loved to get her father riled up by teasing him. "Of course you are, Papa."
"Oh, pshhh," Allegra says, waving a hand again and smiling now that her laughing fit is over. "You're alright for an old man."
"What did you see in me when we were young?" Enzo asks her, lifting his chin defiantly. "You must have been charmed by me somehow, young lady."
The golden light of the lamps in the living room spills over Frankie's parents and she admires them for a moment, capturing them in her mind's eye for posterity. They are both incredibly lovely in their sixties: softened by time, but still strong and proud. They can laugh easily and they appear to have far less stress than they had when she and her siblings were young, but there is a gravity to them borne of hard work and determination, and they both radiate competence. Frankie loves them both fiercely, and having them here has wrapped her in the kind of comfort that she hasn’t felt in years.
"Oh," Allegra says, letting her head loll to one side as she thinks about it. "I suppose I liked your mustache."
Enzo laughs heartily. "My mustache?" he asks. "Okay. And?"
On a sigh, Allegra says: "And I thought you had a good backside."
Frankie's mouth drops open; she's briefly scandalized. "Mama!"
"Oh, you!" Allegra says with a roll of her eyes. "Your father has always had a good rear end."
Frankie puts one hand over her eyes and then knocks back a drink of wine as she listens to their banter.
"Yours isn't so bad either," Enzo says to her, pretending to twist the end of the mustache that he long ago shaved off. "And I fell for your smile, just so you know."
"Awww, my Enzo," Allegra says, her eyes growing soft as she gazes at him. "You're a romantic--always have been."
It's his turn to wave a hand. "I am not. I'm a tough old man. Like a piece of shoe leather."
"Sure, Papa," Frankie says sarcastically, "that's why you cry when your granddaughter shows up for Sunday dinner in her ballet tutu, and how come you always stop to give your change to that old man in the park in Brooklyn."
Enzo's face grows serious. “Okay, then I am half head and half heart. I know when to close off my emotions and get things done, but I know when it's time to let love win."
Frankie hears this, and she knows he's right. "That's true. You are like that."
"I love that you don't yell, Enzo," Allegra says as she looks at him steadily. "Some men, they yell. They shout at their children, they yell at their wives. They rage if dinner isn't ready when they get home, and they don't know how to talk without raising their voice. But not you."
Enzo looks like he loves their adoration, but he also looks like he's about at his limit for flattery. "You girls," he says as he stands up and tops off his wine glass. "I love you. I have a beautiful family, and it's all because I was blessed with a beautiful wife."
All of a sudden, Frankie feels like she shouldn't be there. A part of her wants to slip from the room and let her parents have their moment together, but another part of her wants to observe, to learn, to soak up their love and to figure out how to be as tender to her own husband. She wants her marriage to have the staying power that her parents' marriage does, and it starts by listening to the way they speak to one another.
The ringing phone cuts into the moment and Frankie stands. "I'll be right back," she says to her parents as her dad sits on the couch with one arm around her mother's shoulders.
"Hello?" Frankie says into the telephone as she stands at the kitchen counter with her wine still in hand. Her parents are talking and laughing again in the other room.
"Am I interrupting a party?" Ed asks over the crackling line.
"Hi, sweetheart." Frankie smiles at the way her husband's voice sends a warm feeling flooding through her veins. "Not a party--that's just my parents. We're having a glass of wine after dinner."
"Wow," Ed laughs, "I had no idea you'd be having such a good time without me."
"Oh, it's not that." Frankie pauses as her mother whoops with laughter. Someone puts on a jazz album in the front room, and she can imagine them cuddling up on the couch, speaking intimately to one another in Italian. "But I am enjoying having them around. I haven't spent this much time with my parents in...years."
"Good, good." Ed sounds distracted. "Listen, Frank. Things are getting really interesting out here."
"How so?" Frankie sits on the stool near the phone and sips her wine. Every time they talk, Ed has something new to tell her about the experiments and trials they're running in Seattle, and she's still waiting for him to tell her he wants to move there--a thought that makes her stomach sink.
"You wouldn't believe the long-term physiological effects of being in space for extended periods of time. Seriously. And the inherent dangers involved--think of all the things that could go wrong! Oxygen tank failure, the lack of gravity, meeting potentially hostile enemies--"
"Wait, are you talking about aliens?" Frankie is on her second glass of wine this evening, but she suddenly feels dizzy. Ed has never mentioned that he believes in aliens.
"No, no--more like organisms in the atmosphere that perhaps we've never been introduced to. There are a lot of unknowns, and trying to account for all of them is exciting, Frank. It feels like important work."
She swallows, looking at her wine glass in hand. "Speaking of important work," she ventures, "I've been thinking of doing something totally crazy, Ed."
He laughs, but it sounds nervous. "Okay, hit me."
Frankie feels weirdly on edge about telling him her plans, but she barrels ahead anyway. "Jo came with me to look at an empty business space in town, and I was thinking of opening up a dance studio."
Ed says nothing, but makes a noise like, "Hmmm."
"The rent is about seventy dollars a month, and I think I can easily make that by teaching dance classes to children, Ed," she says in a rush. "And dancing again feels like something I need to do. I need to get that back. I just--" She cuts herself off, letting the unfinished sentence hang there.
"You just what?" Ed probes. "You're not happy?"
Frankie bites her lip. "No, I am happy, Ed. I've really grown to love the weather here--Florida is beautiful. The beach, the sun...and I'm making friends. Real friends." Her eyes well up at the mention of the women she's grown close to, and this surprises Frankie. "But there's a part of me that I want to reclaim, Ed, and I think I can do that if I start dancing again."
There's a long silence and then Ed speaks: "This phone call is probably costing a fortune," he says. "Look, Frankie, I'm not saying you shouldn't do that, but you're essentially talking about opening a business. There's overhead involved in that, and also a permanence to it. I feel like we need to talk about this face-to-face, and I'd like to see the space myself. If this is something you really want to do, then I want to support it, but I also want to crunch some numbers with you and make sure it will work for us."
"That makes sense," Frankie says. A feeling of relief floods through her; she's not sure why, but she'd kind of expected Ed to scoff at the idea. The fact that he's willing to sit down with her and talk about it seriously is validating. "What day are you going to be back?"
"One week from today, my love. I'll be back, and maybe we can take a long weekend and go to Key West or something? Just you and me--what do you say?"
"I'd love that," Frankie says. Her parents are leaving the day before Ed returns, and it will be a nice way to hit the refresh button; a trip to the Keys sounds incredible. "I'll look for a hotel and see if I can book something before you get back."
"Good thinking." Ed pauses. "Frank...I love you, okay? We're in this together. You and me."
Frankie's eyes sting but she doesn't cry. She wants to ask him which part of things they're in together, but she knows that he means all of it. Every last bit. When she'd said no to his marriage proposal that cold December day in New York she'd whispered her truth to him--most of her truth--and it hadn't scared him away.
"You and me," Frankie says softly as she slides off the stool in the darkened kitchen. Her parents are still chattering in the front room, though they've grown a bit quieter.
"You and me," Ed says one more time before they hang up.
The thunder that night wakes Frankie from a deep sleep. It's rumbling in the distance, a low, angry growl that rattles her bones and fills her with a static energy.
She climbs from bed as a bolt of lightning illuminates the sky outside her bedroom window, and then wraps herself in a robe that she belts over her thin nightgown.
Outside on her back patio she sits in the darkness, listening to the night sounds all around her. Insects in the grass, living things slithering and chittering in the trees and bushes. In the distance she swears she can hear the ocean rolling onto the shore and retreating, its waves undoubtedly lit by the moon and the occasional lightning bolt.
Frankie pulls her bare feet up beneath her and wraps her arms around her upper body. Normally she wouldn't go out in a storm, but the time between the thunder and lightning tells her that the storm is far off, and that there is no imminent danger.
She'd gone to sleep just two hours earlier, but the second glass of wine had roused her, and now she can't sleep for thinking about Ed potentially going into space and encountering dangerous things. Maybe he should take a job in Seattle, keep his feet firmly planted on Earth. She tossed and turned for a bit, picturing herself dancing on stage, but all that had done was to poke at the memories that she prefers to keep dormant and tucked away.
Another bit of lightning pierces the sky, and in a darkened corner of her backyard, Frankie swears she sees the image of Whit Evans, standing near the fence with his hands in the pockets of his dress pants. She startles, but the lightning vanishes and the yard is black again. Frankie shivers, though the night is muggy from the storm and not cold at all.
It would be just like Whit Evans to haunt her for the rest of her life. She wants nothing more than to delete him from her mind and her heart, but he got into her head and crashed around, breaking things as he went that she has no way of repairing. Ed helps; just his presence helps. His love, his acceptance, and his patience. Her parents help--the way they love her and believe in her, and the way Frankie watches them and it fills her with hope to know that it's possible to create a lifetime of love and partnership. Her friendship with Jo has helped too, though she hasn't yet been able to peel back all the layers of the onion and to truly tell Jo what she'd gone through in New York.
In fact, no one but Frankie and Whit truly know what happened there, and maybe it's for the best that she keeps it that way.
Another crack of lightning splits the sky and Frankie's eyes dart to the fence to see if Whit appears there again, but instead, he is sitting in the chair next to hers, watching her with his dark, knowing eyes. When the light dies down, she is alone again.
“Did you think I’d forget you?” Whit asked when she opened the door of the car that was idling outside of Radio City Music Hall. The red taillights were reflected on the wet pavement, and drops of water ran down the windows of the car and landed in Frankie’s hair. “Get in.”
Frankie took one look up and down the street, but there was no one to save her. There was nothing to do but climb in, so she did.
“How’s tricks, kid?” Whit asked as the car pulled out onto the street. The driver, who wore a black cap, did not meet Frankie’s eyes in the rearview mirror, though she prayed that he might look at her and realize that she was in danger. Instead, Whit slid closer to her on the bench seat, putting one hand on her leg. He pushed her long coat aside roughly, stroking her inner thigh through the thick pair of tights she still wore with her leotard. “I’ve missed you.”
Frankie fought off what she knew would be a visible shudder, forcing herself to sit still and not reach for the door handle. At that point, she might have jumped right into moving traffic just to get away from Whit Evans.
“Things have been fine,” she said in a measure tone. Her eyes stayed on the street ahead, and on the way that people bent their heads against the rain. I haven’t missed you at all , she thought, but didn’t say.
“We’re going to have some fun tonight,” Whit said, his fingertips moving even further up her inner thigh. Finally, Frankie flinched. Whit laughed. “Oh, don’t be afraid, Francesca. I wouldn’t hurt you.”
But he would. He had. She tried to swallow the urge to scream for help. After all, she’d gotten a call to audition for a small part in a Broadway production after the last time he’d picked her up, and while she hadn’t even gotten a callback, it still felt like a step in the right direction—one that she knew she’d only been able to take because Whit had pulled strings. Maybe if she just stayed the course, if she played along with him—maybe then she’d get an audition and then win a part on her own merit. And once things started to take off, she’d be getting jobs because of her talent, and not because Whit Evans had any sway over her. All she had to do was stick with it; grit her teeth and deal with his demands.
“We’re going to the party of a friend,” Whit explained as he leaned forward to give the driver an address. He sat back in the seat and eyed Frankie’s outfit. “But this won’t do. Here,” he said, leaning forward and pulling a shopping bag from the floor of the car. “Put this on.”
Frankie looked at the bag dumbly. Where was she supposed to change out of tights and a leotard and into whatever was in the bag?
“Just change here,” Whit said. “Bobby isn’t paying any attention, are you Bob?” He patted the back of the driver’s seat and the driver shook his head.
“No, sir,” Bobby said, hands at ten and two on the steering wheel, eyes ahead.
Frankie wanted to cry. She opened the bag with hesitation, then pulled a tiny black beaded dress from it that looked like some sort of truncated flapper’s costume. “This?” she asked in a small voice.
“That,” Whit said. “Bare legs, high heels, no panties.”
Frankie’s head and heart both begin to pound. “No.” She said the word before she could stop herself. “No way.”
In one swift and unexpected movement, Whit slapped the side of her head; even Bobby winced, though he didn’t turn his head and he didn’t apply the brakes.
Frankie cried out in surprise, putting one hand to her head.
“Get changed. Now.” Whit slid away from her just enough so that she had room to wiggle out of her dance clothes and slip the dress over her head. The beads clicked all around her as she pulled the dress over her head, and then Whit zipped the back. “Panties off,” he said again, nudging her leg.
If she didn’t want to get slapped again, Frankie knew she’d have to comply. Regretfully, she slid her black underwear off from beneath the dress and tried to fold them up to put in her purse. Whit snatched them from her and tucked them into the breast pocket of his coat instead.
“You’ll be performing this evening,” he said to her, patting the back of Bobby’s seat again. “We’re here. Pull over at the curb,” he commanded.
“Performing what?” Frankie asked. She was exhausted already from being on stage all evening with the Rockettes, and couldn’t even imagine what Whit had in mind.
“You’ll see,” he said, opening the car door. He slid out and offered her his hand, which she knew was more to ensure that she got out on the curb side of the car rather than bolting into traffic. He held her hand tightly. “The answer to any request you get tonight is ‘yes,’” he said. “Do I make myself clear?”
A sob escaped from Frankie’s throat and she nearly fell to her knees, already terrified of what he might mean.
As she recalls this scene, real sobs rack Frankie’s body, though she doesn’t even realize that she’s crying, nor does she notice that the storm has broken as the thunder and lightning move off in the distance, leaving a hard rain in its wake.
“Francesca?” Enzo stands there with the sliding door open, watching his daughter as she sits in the rain on the patio. “Frankie? Come in here!” he shouts, stepping out into the onslaught and reaching for her.
Frankie can barely hear her father’s voice over the sound of her own crying and the pummeling of the rain against the pavement and the roof. Water slaps against water as rain pounds the pool. She stands and reaches for her father’s hands, letting him wrap her under one of his arms and pull her into the house. Enzo slides the glass door closed behind them and then stands there, watching his daughter shiver and cry as water drips onto the kitchen floor.
“Francesca,” he says gently, worry in his voice and all over his face. “My darling, what’s wrong? Why are you out there?”
“Oh, Papa,” she says as she falls into his arms.
Rather than pushing his soaking wet daughter away, Enzo holds her tightly. “You can tell Papa anything,” he croons, holding her with puzzlement and worry. “You can tell me.”
Frankie knows she can tell him, but she also knows that she shouldn’t. It would break her poor, hardworking father’s heart to hear the kinds of things his little girl had gone through. And so she stands there, shaking like a leaf until her dad walks her back to the bathroom, turns on the hot shower for her, and then promises that he’ll sit up for the rest of the night in the front room—just in case she needs him.