Chapter 47
Chapter Forty-Seven
FRANKIE
I really hope Danny’s having a fun lunch with his parents. I’m currently hanging out with Ham and Luke, so you can guess how well breakfast with my mom went this morning. It was my fault. I went into it like a siege engine, covered in armor and ready to lob flaming missiles. Mom took one look at me, made her usual sad face, and sighed, “Oh, Frankie.” It went downhill from there.
We didn’t fight because Mom never fights. She asked me polite questions and I gave polite answers. Very short polite answers. I ate toast and eggs, and she ate some seed mixture that she’d created from what she found in Shelby’s pantry. I had a glass of pulp-free orange juice, and she had herbal tea. We had a brief (polite) tussle over who’d do the dishes. I let her win and left the house. Thought about going back to Danny’s and screaming at the top of my lungs, but I knew I’d miss him too much and do weird stuff like pick up his shirts and bury my face in them to inhale his scent. So, I went to see Ham and Luke, stealing some lettuce from the vegetable garden on my way. They grunted happy greetings and made short work of the lettuce. They let me scratch them behind their wire-brush ears and waddled off again.
And now, I’m stuck here. Danny has my car, and it’s four miles into town, too far to walk on a hot summer’s day. So, it’s either hole up in my bedroom or go to Danny’s and sniff shirts. Funnest Sunday ever.
I hear a distant but familiar rumble heading up the drive. Great, that’s all I need. Cam, definitely, and Ava, possibly. If I stay by the pigs, no one will know I’m here. Unless…
As I feared. Here’s Cam. With a bunch of food scraps for Ham and Luke. He spots me, lifts his chin in greeting. I do likewise. He ambles up and chucks the scraps to the pigs who fall upon them oinking and grunting in a way that implies the last time they had food was five months ago rather than five minutes.
Cam grins, and then turns to stare at me – meaningfully, damn him.
“What?” I am not in the mood.
“Here to take your mom to the hospital,” he says.
Am I supposed to comment?
“Ava’s already there,” he says. “She took Nate and Shelby lunch, so Shel didn’t have to eat hospital food. Bought enough for all of us, including you. If you want to come with us?”
“Sit between you and my mom in the Dodge?” Ava already said no thanks to an offer like this, and I don’t blame her.
“It’s roomy enough,” is Cam’s misguided opinion. “But I guess you have your own car.”
“Nope,” I admit. “Danny borrowed it.”
Cam frowns. “Where’s his car?”
“We’re currently in a very complicated car-location situation!” I say. “Okay?!”
“Okay,” says Cam, and after a beat, “Come with us?”
Jesus. I do want to see Shelby. And right now, there’s no other way for me to get to her. Danny won’t be back for a couple of hours.
I huff out a breath. “Alright,” I say. “But I am not sitting in the middle!”
Dumb decision because, of course, that means Mom’s right next to Cam. And I can’t enjoy the scenery out the window because I’m paranoid that as soon as I turn my head, she’ll put her hand on his knee. I stare fixedly at the two of them, frowning like an Angry Bird.
Eventually, Mom turns, and with a small smile, says, “Frankie, dear, I feel like a beetle being scorched under a magnifying glass.”
I mutter something that could be taken as an apology and begin to stare fixedly out the window instead. After a minute or so, I hear strange, muffled snuffling sounds. I turn to see and … oh, shit … Mom is crying.
Cam notices at the same time, and his eyes widen. “Want me to pull over?” he says to her.
Mom shakes her head and starts wiping her face with her hands. I fetch tissues from my bag, and Mom takes them with a little half-laugh, half-sob. Cam’s eyes are flitting anxiously between Mom and the road, and I’m staring with my mouth open. I do not recall the last time I saw my mom cry. She always appears so goddam serene!
Mom blows her nose, sob-laughs again. “It’s nothing, I’m being foolish,” she says. “Ignore me.”
“You never cry,” I say. “So, there must be something wrong.”
Mom looks down at the damp, shredded mess of tissue in her hands. Her long red hair hides her face.
“I’m so tired of feeling like a failure,” she says. “I try my best, but I can’t seem ever to be present when I’m really needed. Physically…” She hesitates. “And emotionally, too.”
“Lee—” Cam begins, but Mom cuts him off.
“No, don’t defend me,” she says, with unusual heat. “Because what you’re about to say isn’t true. I was never truly there for you, even when I appeared to be. Half my mind was always elsewhere, either occupied with the thousand other tasks I had still to do, or away in some neverland of my own imagination. You thought I gave you all my attention and I gave you barely any of it. I listened enough to make the right noises in return. I made it as easy for myself as I could.”
Cam looks genuinely shocked, but before he can respond, Mom turns to me. “Frankie, that’s why I was such a terrible mother to you. I couldn’t give you the time and energy you needed, because I simply didn’t have it. From the moment you were born, I was exhausted. Worse, I resented the fact that you weren’t as easy as your brothers and sister, and I don’t think I did a good job of hiding that at all.”
Tears are falling freely down her cheeks, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She reaches out and cups my face.
“You poor little thing,” she says. “You deserved so much better, and I am so, so sorry.”
I can’t breathe. No, really, I cannot breathe. My chest is too tight, and I can’t get air.
We’re shaken around as the Dodge bumps to a sudden stop on the grassy verge. Cam leans across Mom.
“Frankie, do what I say. Raise up your arms.”
The unexpected authority in Cam’s tone makes my body obey, even before his words register.
“Good,” he says. “Now lower them. Okay, now raise them again…”
That’s it. The breath I’ve been holding comes out in a whoosh.
“Good work,” says Cam. “Now, breathe in again, slowly, while you count to four. Hold it for four – that’s it. Out again for four.”
He makes me repeat the cycle until it’s obvious my breathing has settled.
“Thanks,” I manage to say.
Cam gives me a quick, crooked smile and sinks back into the driver’s seat. Takes a deep breath of his own. He took up quite a bit of space leaning across Mom, but now I can see her clearly. We stare at each other. Her face is tear-stained and her expression is – I’m not sure – despairing? Pleading? Both?
“It’s okay,” I tell her, because it is. It really is. Because now I know why we had the relationship we did, and it wasn’t all my fault.
I open my arms, and she falls into them, cries on my shoulder. It feels like she’s the child and I’m the parent, as I pat her back and shush her. It feels good. I am suddenly weirdly, ridiculously happy.
Cam meets my eye, and gestures with a tilt of his head to ask if we should drive on. I’m grateful to him and should probably apologize for being cranky with him all these years. I settle for a smile, and he puts the Dodge in gear and pulls out again onto the road.