by PJ Mayhem
‘OK, then. What’s up?’ His voice carries a slight edge of something … defensive disappointment?
‘I’m fine, it’s my—it’s a bit of a family crisis. My family doesn’t usually really have crises, I mean I am the family crisis.’ Jesus Christ, as always with Frankie, my words take on a life of their own, tumbling out without any regard to how I want them to sound. It really is as though they’d felt trapped, holed up inside of me during all the months of not being able to speak to him and now they’re like rebellious kids racing out of school on the last day of the year: unwieldy, excited and free. ‘I’m sorry, Frankie. I can’t believe it, today of all days.’
‘That’s OK, Fiona. I can wait. We’ll do it soon. I hope everything’s OK,’ Frankie says in his soothing way, adding just the right amount of a chuckle at my crisis comment. I’d even appreciated that edge to his voice. Being sweet all the time would make me want to kill someone. Or go off them very quickly at least.
Frankie may be able to wait, but I’m not sure I can. However, there’s no choice.
Next, I call Catherine. There’s so much revenge to be had if I wanted it. So many jabs, so many accusations, so many things Catherine would probably say to me if the situation were reversed.
Her phone rings so long that I’ve nearly given up on her answering when a snuffly voice says, ‘Hello.’
‘Catherine, are you OK? Cancel that, I know you’re not. I just wanted to ring and let you know I’m here, I’m on my way to the school. What do you need me to do?’
‘How about pizza for dinner?’ I ask Sammy and Sonja after surveying the neatly stacked delivery menus that Catherine keeps underneath the phone.
‘Why don’t we have Chinese instead?’ Sammy suggests.
He and Sonja are leaping around the lounge room, still on the high of the excitement of catching a taxi home from school. They’d bought my excuse about their parents having forgotten about a party they were going to and Gran and Oompa being out with the Smithsons so easily, I feel quite guilty. Now is not the time to worry about the bad karma of a lie—as if I’d have done anything else.
‘Great idea,’ I say, high fiving him even though I hate the thought of Chinese takeaway food. It’s hardly going to kill me to suffer it for them. ‘But before dinner, who’s going to help me with Operation Hoover?’ Popcorn had been flying around the room while we watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Catherine will be far less reactive about a stray piece of popcorn than last time but it’s important to act normal, which means cleaning up to conceal the evidence to some degree.
After dinner, we sing and dance to Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘Call Me Maybe’. Sonja’s choice, not really my style, but again, anything for them. Actually, Sammy’s not really dancing, he’s standing on the spot moving his limbs slightly, eyeing the Souths football card collection that he’s lined up on the coffee table. He’s waiting for his turn to call the shots. I’m not sure what we’re going to do; I mean, once you’ve looked at football cards, haven’t you seen them? But like I’ve said, whatever they want.
I barely hear my phone over the music. It occurs to me that I probably should’ve been more responsible about that, in case Mum or Catherine had called, but I’m sure they’d ring the landline.
It’s Frankie.
‘Sorry, did you have to run for the phone?’ he asks.
This is the second time today I’ve sort of been heavy-breathing down the phone to Frankie and I’m not the slightest bit concerned. It’s like Ms Middle-of-the-Road is on cruise control.
‘Oh no, I’m just having a sing and dance off with my niece and nephew.’
‘Oh.’ Frankie sounds confused, which I guess makes sense—it probably isn’t what you expect of a family crisis.
‘It’s a distraction,’ I explain in a whisper.
‘Sounds like a fun sort of distraction.’
‘It is. We love them. Maybe one day you—’ I stop short. These words of mine just won’t behave.
‘Maybe, that might be nice … one day,’ he says.
‘Come on, Aunty Fee, you’re missing my best moves!’ Sonja calls.
‘Sorry, I better go.’
‘I just wanted to see if you—if everything was OK?’
‘Thank you. I am. Everything else I’ll have to explain later.’
I don’t get home until late Saturday, way too late to catch PGGG open. Sunday, going there is the first thing I do—OK, second. I hadn’t had a decent coffee yesterday either. Jack isn’t there. I imagine he’s off with his new girlfriend. He’s smitten with her.
There are two reasons I haven’t phoned ahead to see if Frankie is at work today:
1) I like the sense of anticipation; and
2) I want to surprise him.
‘It’s me,’ I say to Frankie who, as timing would have it (thank you, Spirit), is singing along to Men At Work’s ‘Who Can It Be Now?’.
‘Fiona.’ He spins around, a smile spreading across his face. ‘Is everything sorted out?’
‘In a way.’
Catherine and Brian had eventually got it together enough to return home. The plan is that Sammy and Sonja will stay with Mum and Dad and everyone will pretend that Catherine and Brian are off on another little holiday while the investigation is carried out. Why the kids can’t just be told that Daddy is taking some time off work, I have no idea, but things have a way of getting unnecessarily complicated once everyone gets involved. I find that a lot in life.
‘So,’ Frankie says.
‘So.’
‘That Friday night thing. You know it needs to be rearranged.’ Frankie looks around, perhaps to double check that no one can hear, or maybe to check no one’s about to interrupt us.
‘Yep.’ I feel myself heating up as I look at him, trying not to smile too broadly but failing. Playing it cool is overrated anyway.
Frankie raises an eyebrow. ‘Are you free tonight? We could go for dinner.’
‘I’d prefer home delivery. I see on your sign out there that you offer it.’
I don’t know who is more shocked, me or Frankie. I can’t believe I said that—well, in a roundabout way, I sort of can. I really am quite tired after the last couple of days and would prefer home delivery. Not that I want to appear like a sure thing but given that the Universe created such extreme circumstances to get out of going a date, I have to take my chances. Acting hard to get at this point in time seems unnecessary, and since when had things gone the normal route where Frankie and I were concerned anyway?
47
At 7.05pm there’s a knock at my door. It’s exactly the knock I was meant to give on the PGGG door on Friday night, so there’s no mystery who it is.
I’m already smiling when I open it and see Frankie standing there, holding a pot of my yoghurt. It’s got a stick-on bow on top of it.
‘Thanks,’ I say through my laughter as he holds it out to me. ‘Have you ever tried it?’
‘No, not that one.’
‘You really should, it’s delicious. I only ever eat it for breakfast.’ I cannot believe I maintain a straight face as I say that but I do and I look at him in the eye.
‘So.’ Frankie seems a little nervous as I close the door and we go into the lounge room.
‘What happened … did you break up with your boyfriend?’ I nod in the direction of BIG’s bakery. Someone else may think me a sarcastic bitch but I sense it’s exactly the sort of thing Frankie needs to help ease his nervousness.
Frankie gives a huge guffaw. ‘Something like that.’ He leans towards me and kisses me and, oh great Ganesha have mercy, it’s back to Departure Day and more.
‘We should talk,’ Frankie says, pulling away.
Fucking pent-up-frustrations hell—he wants to talk? Talk? Seriously, can’t we talk later? But then I hear Angela’s voice in my head, reminding me that we set the way things are going to play out from the start. I should encourage conversation.
‘Great place,’ Frankie calls as I run my yoghurt out to the fridge (pri
orities). I’d noticed him looking around at my rather eclectic Chinese-themed decor.
‘Thanks. Would you like a drink? I can offer you water or water or water. Sorry, I’m not very organised at the moment.’
I can’t believe I didn’t go and get stuff in but I got caught up on the phone with Mum about Situation Family Crisis after I got back from PGGG.
Actually it’s a bit of a Ms Middle-of-the-Road coup for me to keep it basic. Normally I would have got about fifty different beverages and at least a hundred snacks. I do have tea but Frankie doesn’t seem the tea type. If I’m being entirely honest, I had maybe taken more than the absolute essential amount of time to get ready. I tried on multiple outfits, even if they were all jeans, and different hair styles, and adjusted my make-up and then there was the critical element of the playlist. Flight Facilities’ ‘Crave You’ wasn’t getting as many plays these days, Mallrat’s ‘Groceries’ certainly was, still it felt a bit too obvious—so I started off with Kira Puru’s ‘Tension’, followed by Major Lazer’s ‘Powerful’ and took it from there. But all of that was part of the process of getting into the mood.
‘Maybe water.’ I hear the smile in Frankie’s voice.
‘Here, have some water.’ I return from the kitchen and pass him his glass. I set mine on the coffee table beside the couch and take my spot, not quite as close to him as I’d like to. I have to sit on one hand to stop myself reaching out and touching him again. It’s all I can do not to say, ‘So you wanted to talk, talk—and hurry up about it.’
‘You certainly aren’t listening to Love Song Dedications here, Fiona.’ Frankie chuckles as the Middle Kids’ ‘On My Knees’ comes on.
If I hadn’t happened to say, ‘You forgot my name,’ at exactly the same time, I might have made a joke about bringing his musical taste into this decade, but I’ve grown rather fond of his Retro FM ways. As for forgetting my name, I can’t believe I said that, it was just another one of those things that fought its way out.
‘I just said your name.’ Frankie seems totally confused. Actually, beyond confused, he looks a little wounded and the way his hair is tufting out at the sides after our ‘greeting’, he looks quite vulnerable. Gah! It’s impossible to really feel mad at him.
‘No, when I originally told you, you forgot it.’ I try to act a little huffy at least.
‘Oh. Oh, yeah.’ There’s a dawning across his face and he looks at the floor. ‘That wasn’t good. I had a lot on my mind. I guess I should explain.’
‘If you want.’ Hell yes, spit it out and make it snappy. I’ve been dying to know what’s going on here since, like, forever.
‘I’ve sort of got a wife.’
How does one ‘sort of’ have a wife? Why is he on a date with me if he’s married? I think I’m really going to have a stroke—blood has begun to pound in my head.
‘It’s OK, Fiona, we’re separated,’ he continues, which is just as well as I’d lost the ability to speak there again for a second.
‘Oh.’
He tells me everything as though he wants to get it all out of the way at once so we don’t ever have to go back and talk about the past again. Which suits me just fine, though I feel a bit like I’m in a confessional.
‘We’re separated now but it was playing out over the last ten months,’ is where Frankie begins. ‘It’s a long story but, basically, there were some problems that meant things went downhill.’
I nod and look at him. I really don’t know what to say. Of course I’m more than dying to ask the obvious questions that any woman would want to ask and also whether it’s Ms Terse-at-the-Till—this one is essential information for my personal safety but beyond the inappropriateness of an interrogation, I need to let him explain without interruption—that’s what he seems to want to do.
‘It was kids,’ Frankie continues. ‘We couldn’t have them. We tried the whole IVF thing for years and it just didn’t work.’
OK, I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to say, ‘Well, sorry, I better not waste your time.’ Honestly, how cruel could fate be? But Frankie’s not finished.
‘It wasn’t so important to me. I mean, I love kids but my—well, she really wanted them.’ He scuffs at the floor with his sneaker. ‘It was so much pressure in every sense. And in the end, it was me: I shoot blanks.’
I’ve heard and seen what IVF does to a lot of the couples who go through it. There’s the financial pressure, the emotional pressure, the physical toll, tests, poking, prodding, prescriptions, the clinical nature of the process, the hope, the disappointment, the dreaded question asked time and time again by everyone who knows they’re trying, the complete overtaking of the couple’s life.
‘My ex, she’s a midwife, so it’s particularly hard for her.’
At least now I know his ex isn’t Ms Terse-at-the-Till.
‘In the end, everything just seemed like a disappointment for her, especially me. I couldn’t do anything right. I was just an irritating reminder, right down to the way I breathed. All we did was fight.’
Frankie doesn’t go on to call his ex a bitch or say anything nasty about her, which is yet another thing for my mental list of Endearing Things About Frankie.
I know it’s a dangerous thought to have about a guy, considering Angela and Tiffany’s approach to men, but I really don’t want Frankie ever to feel like just being him is wrong again. I know what that’s like.
‘It was over, it is over, but you came along in the middle of it ending and I thought maybe there was a chance to salvage it somehow, so it was tricky. I know I was …’
A fuckwit, Jane would say here but I leave Frankie to continue.
‘It wasn’t an easy time and I was … confused, I guess is the word. Not that I was weighing up my options. I wasn’t going to do anything till it was over, and I really didn’t think I’d stand a chance with someone like you. But then you were so … you weren’t the way you looked or seemed, with all your running into things and stuff.’
I snort as though to prove his point. Which breaks the atmosphere as well, thankfully. As appreciative as I am of Frankie being honest and opening up, it was heavy-going. Naturally, I would quite like him to list all the things he thought I was but there’ll be time for that later. There’s only one thing I need to ask immediately.
As though I’m a kid in class, I put up my hand and say, ‘Excuse me, Mr Frankie, can I ask a question?’
In hindsight the whole kid thing may not be ideal but Frankie laughs and nods.
‘Can I kiss you again now?’
I’m already clambering onto his lap when he nods again, enthusiastically. I press myself against him and lean in to kiss him but before I do, I take a chance and whisper, ‘I’ll tell you a secret: I don’t want kids.’
To say it was the best sex I’ve ever had would be a big call, but, oh sweet Goddess above, it was so beyond the best sex I’ve ever had that I can’t believe it. By Monday morning, I am one very satisfied customer indeed.
MY LIST OF 20 THINGS
I WILL KNOW
TWELVE MONTHS FROM NOW
(In no particular order)
Confucius was right: ‘Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.’ I love my new job working as a teacher’s assistant.
Ms Middle-of-the-Road can be a state of automatic transmission—sure I’ll always have a dramatic imagination but Lionel was right, working with kids will help balance that.
Happiness is the greatest chakra aligner there is.
Frankie will always sing his feelings, and we’ll have a secret language that no one else understands, even as we understand each other perfectly.
GI—these two letters can say more than I ever thought possible when Frankie and I look into each other’s eyes and say them to each other: ‘I want you’, ‘Sorry’ (Frankie won’t ever say it in its five-letter form), ‘Love’, ‘Don’t be mad at me’, ‘You’re crazy but I love you for it’, ‘You’re hopeless but I love you for it’, ‘All is forgiven’,
and so much more.
Jane won’t quite get what I see in Frankie but we’ll be fine with that—and when she sees us together, she’ll get that there’s something.
Everything with Brian will have been a false alarm. Well, there won’t be enough evidence to prove otherwise, however, he will move onto a job with a less prestigious firm because in people’s minds, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Not everyone learns from their experiences—Catherine won’t change. It’s just the way she is.
Jane can stay Jane and still be a fantastic mother. So long as Baby Jane can cope with having a lot of special uncles, everything will be great.
When I look into Frankie’s eyes, I will always feel a bit like Alice falling through the looking glass.
Take your happiness where you can get it, and don’t spend too much time analysing it—just enjoy things for what they are. There is very little point to overthinking things.
Frankie doesn’t snort, he’s more of a guffawer.
Frankie will always have a terrible memory and run late—these things will drive me insane but in an endearing way and I won’t ever be able to stay really mad with him.
Frankie will never be able to say the name I give the dachshund puppy he buys me—Xin Xin (Faith)—properly. I won’t care because it’s more than enough that he gave it to me.
The Universe did Jack and I a favour by letting him find the woman he’s going to marry.
I won’t believe it of myself, but each week during the NRL season I’ll know whether South Sydney win or lose. It’s not pretending to be someone I’m not—it’s about embracing someone else’s passion, being scooped up in the dragnet of their excitement and enthusiasm, and wanting to share their happiness. Still, I won’t ever go to a game with Frankie—Sammy will.
Frankie and I will sing and dance together even when there are no kids around.
I love lists and while, yes, 236 items of What I Want and Need in my Next Male Love Relationship list was ridiculous, there’s no need to give them up entirely.