Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
She didn’t think she’d get herself so worked up about a description of a printing press jam, but here she is. Frannie sighs, camped out at one end of Henry’s dining room table so she can have the printed manuscript, her personal laptop full of notes, and the work laptop all spread out around her.
At the other end of the table, Michael’s sitting with a pile of books, a set of schematics, and one of Henry’s white legal pads, jotting down his own notes. It’s kind of nice, like they’re sharing a big conference room table. Parallel play, her mother said it was called.
But she could definitely use a distraction right now. She opens her mouth—
And Hot Ghost Mom and Bridgette materialize next to the table.
“Jeez,” Frannie exclaims.
“Michael, go watch TV with your sister,” Hot Ghost Mom says, dropping Bridgette’s hand to shift Henry’s manuscript in her arms.
Michael opens his mouth to argue, but she shoots him a look. He knocks his books across the schematics, like that might hide their contents, and jumps up, scurrying to take Bridgette’s hand and haul her away into the living room.
Frannie twists her neck to watch them go. “I brought my old Barbie movies, Bridge, if you want to watch them,” she calls.
There’s a squeal and a simultaneous groan from the living room and Frannie laughs. She turns back to look up at Hot Ghost Mom, who’s staring back at her curiously.
Frannie shrugs. “She mentioned she couldn’t find them all on streaming, and my mom sent them in a box last year, so I figured she’d enjoy them.”
She’s not sure where the woman—ghost—stands with Frannie hanging out with the kids right now. She hasn’t seen Hot Ghost Mom in about four days, since she handed her the printed manuscript she’s currently clutching to her chest.
Hot Ghost Mom nods once, then roughly pulls out the nearest chair, slams Henry’s manuscript abruptly down on the table, and sits down gracefully.
“I have thoughts,” she declares.
Frannie freezes in surprise for a moment before jumping into action. If Hot Ghost Mom has something to say, Frannie wants to hear it. She pulls up a blank Word doc and rests her fingers on her keyboard. “Hit me.”
Hot Ghost Mom deftly opens the manuscript. She tabbed it. There are notes in the margins in the tidiest script Frannie thinks she’s ever seen. Wow.
“Every time the grandson enters the newsroom, it’s like he time travels back to the fifties to speak in a bad transatlantic accent,” Hot Ghost Mom says primly.
Frannie snorts. She has notes all over her own copy about Henry’s dialogue. Okay, she can do this. “His first drafts tend to have a dialogue problem.”
“It’s distracting in this one,” Hot Ghost Mom says.
“I think he watched a few too many news movies.”
“There’s also a not insignificant amount of bad walking and talking,” Hot Ghost Mom continues.
“Yeah, that’s from the two weeks he spent watching The Newsroom,” Frannie says with a laugh. Which led to a full rewatch of The West Wing and a month of Henry shouting “FRANNIE” at the top of his lungs like Josh Lyman. It was … something.
Hot Ghost Mom glances down at the manuscript. “I suppose I’ll skip past the dialogue, then,” she says, flipping pages and scanning her notes.
Frannie waits, tickled by the image Hot Ghost Mom makes, curls a little less coiffed, lip between her teeth, eyebrows furrowed. She’s adorable. Which isn’t something Frannie ever thought she’d think about Hot Ghost Mom. Or any ghost, for that matter.
The opening song of Barbie in the Nutcracker wafts through from the living room. Poor Michael; Bridgette will probably make him watch them all in order.
“The final confrontation with the grandfather doesn’t land,” Hot Ghost Mom proclaims.
Frannie meets her eyes. “How so?” She knows it doesn’t, but she wants to know why Hot Ghost Mom thinks it doesn’t.
Hot Ghost Mom gives her a sardonic look. “Their shouting match goes from zero to one hundred on a dime, and the grandson’s entire argument is based on a discovery that happens off-page.”
Frannie’s nodding before Hot Ghost Mom even finishes the sentence. It’s a perfect note. “I think the grandson needs to discover the grandfather’s plagiarism at the halfway point and really build up his case,” she says.
“Exactly,” Hot Ghost Mom says, eyes brightening, leaning in a little. “Then he can link the plagiarism to the accounts fraud and tie it all into the grandfather having stolen his Pulitzer-winning exposé.”
“Henry wanted the plagiarism to be a big reveal, but it’s really just the tip of the iceberg,” Frannie agrees.
“This is hardly a book for an unsubstantiated big reveal,” Hot Ghost Mom says, almost indignantly.
“He’s just caught up in his own head. He’ll get there,” Frannie says easily. Henry always has to exorcise his cheap story impulses before coming back later to find the genius underneath.
“Will he get there when it comes to any of the female characters?” Hot Ghost Mom asks, eyes narrowing.
“God, I hope so. That’s most of my notes, really,” Frannie says.
“I found Jonathan’s older gay aunt particularly problematic,” Hot Ghost Mom says stiffly.
“I completely agree,” Frannie says, grabbing her manuscript to flip to chapter seventeen. “Henry and I spent about twenty minutes going back and forth about her. He insists she be included to ‘humanize’ Jonathan’s father going no-contact with the grandfather.”
“You wanted him to cut her?” Hot Ghost Mom asks, meeting Frannie’s eyes in surprise.
“No,” Frannie says, her fingers tapping on the first page of chapter seventeen. “But historically he hasn’t been particularly responsive to my notes when it comes to LGBTQ characters. I like what he’s trying to do, I’m just honestly not sure if he’ll be able to do it well enough.”
Hot Ghost Mom considers her, and Frannie tries to sit tall. In this case, no representation might actually be better than bad representation, but she doesn’t like the idea of telling Henry to cut his only gay character either.
“What did you tell him to change?” Hot Ghost Mom asks.
Frannie flicks through her notes. “That her experience of growing up queer in Louisiana in the 1960s, and how long it took her to build the life she wanted once she got somewhere more accepting, was really interesting. But we never get to know her as her own person, and all her queerness is wrapped up in backstory.”
Hot Ghost Mom nods slowly. “Anything else?”
She’s looking at Frannie so seriously, eyes searching. Frannie needs to get this right, give it the import it deserves, without going too far over the line.
“It would help if she stopped speaking like a bad AI chatbot fed with 1990s queer Mad Libs, to start.”
Hot Ghost Mom snorts quietly, her lips curving up. “It would.”
“I tried to gently communicate that she didn’t need to have friends who identified with every single letter of the Alphabet Mafia to prove her queerness, and she certainly didn’t need to list them all with how they identify. No one talks like that.”
“No, we don’t, and we certainly didn’t then,” Hot Ghost Mom says softly. Her eyes meet Frannie’s again, holding there.
“No, we don’t,” Frannie agrees, going for casual, even though her pulse is jumping from the look in Hot Ghost Mom’s eyes. She was right.
Hot Ghost Mom nods once and looks back down at her pages, her face softer, hair falling to cover her cheek. There’s a warm feeling in Frannie’s stomach, a smile pulling at her mouth that she doesn’t want to let go. It doesn’t need to be a big thing. She shouldn’t make it a big thing.
“Alphabet Mafia?” Hot Ghost Mom’s still looking at her copy of the manuscript.
“Sorry?”
“Who calls it the Alphabet Mafia?” She looks up then, lips quirked.
“The internet,” Frannie says.
Hot Ghost Mom exhales loudly.
“It’s a lot of letters!” Frannie insists.
“It is,” she agrees, her face relaxing, actually smiling a little. “It’s nice, though. There weren’t so many …” She pauses, thinking.
“Options?” Frannie wonders gently.
“Ways to explain,” Hot Ghost Mom corrects. “Language makes a big difference when you’re trying to explain how you feel, how you are.”
And how do you explain how you feel, how you are? Frannie wants to ask. But that would be too much. It’s enough to be part of a “we” right now. To have something they share, no matter what they call it.
“Kind of baffles me, honestly, that so many people simply go with ‘queer’ now,” Hot Ghost Mom continues. “You have all these words, all these different categories and nuances, and so many of you choose to just … not explain.”
Frannie considers her, the crease in her brow, the curl of her hair, the light haze around her skin. She’s been wearing the same clothes for over sixty years—static, unchanging.
“A lot of my friends will call themselves ‘queer’ in public, but get more specific if you ask them privately. A lot of people identify with more than one term, too, so ‘queer’ is a nice umbrella. Though—” Frannie pauses, flushing.
“Sorry, I didn’t even—I know ‘queer’ meant something very different when you were—” Alive.
Shit. Open mouth, insert both feet.
Hot Ghost Mom shakes her head, still regarding Frannie softly. “I like that the … Alphabet Mafia has reclaimed it. Seems like admitting defeat to let the bigots just have it. Though, it’s a great word otherwise, so it does limit its use.”
Frannie can’t help but laugh. “Saw the spot where Henry clearly wanted to use it to mean ‘strange’ and used three synonyms stacked instead?”
“The disastrous ‘odd, other, outré’ moment? Please tell me you cut it,” she says seriously.
“It was the first thing I struck.”
Hot Ghost Mom laughs again, her shoulders coming down. She shifts in the chair, getting comfortable. “How are you planning to get him to beef up Jonathan’s relationship with the intern? It’s a power-dynamic minefield right now.”