Frannie and Tru

by Karen Hattrup

  “It’s an important sociological experiment to identify racist authority figures. And I didn’t come up with it, Devon did!” P.J. spun around in his seat, scanned the stands behind us, pointing to the security guard who stood at the top of our stairs to the section. “Pudgy bald white dude. He didn’t stop me when I came down. Keep an eye out!”

  He patted my knee and then loped away, taking the steps two at a time, while Tru and I turned back to Sparrow.

  “So I’m pretty sure I can figure it out, but explain, please?” Tru said.

  She crossed her arms, huffed a bit. “Black Guy, White Guy is a game they play. They want to see if the guy who didn’t stop P.J. stops Devon and asks for his ticket. They do this shit all the time. In stores, at restaurants, wherever. They think it’s hilarious.”

  Tru was laughing. “And you don’t?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I’m guessing that a lot of people fail Black Guy, White Guy?”

  “Why, yes they do, Truman,” she said. “How insightful of you.”

  “So then what happens?” Tru asked, already turning around and waiting for Devon to appear. “I hope they have a sticker or a button or something to pin on the person’s chest. Just, like, a big red circle that says RACIST.”

  “No, Devon usually does this comically overly polite act to whoever the person is, and then the two of them laugh their asses off about it later.”

  Tru bit his lip, thought for a second. “I still like the idea of stickers. Maybe I’ll make them stickers. Oh, shit, here he comes!”

  Now we were all watching, joined in tense anticipation as Devon emerged from the tunnel doing a casual saunter and pulling his O’s visor a little farther over his eyes. As he grabbed the railing and hit the first step, I exhaled, positive that everything was going to be fine. . . .

  Then the guard leaned forward, tapped his shoulder, beckoned him back.

  “Oh, what an asshole!” Tru said in delight, while Sparrow gave an angry little hiss. We all watched as Devon hopped back up to the landing and turned around, a bright, innocent smile on his face. The two of them spoke briefly to each other, and then Devon started scanning the crowd for us. We waved our arms, and he waved back. The guard gave an awkward minisalute, gesturing at him to go ahead.

  A minute later, he was sliding into the seat beside me.

  “Hey there,” he said.

  “Hey,” I said back.

  He leaned over, met eyes with Tru and Sparrow, who were elated and angry, respectively.

  “What a world we live in, my brother,” Tru said.

  “Oh, did P.J. give you the heads-up?” Devon asked. “Just doing my part. Keeping tabs on the man. Don’t look at me like that, Sparrow.”

  “I just don’t understand why it’s amusing to you. Do you watch the news? Do you know what happens to black kids because of the way people look at them? It seems like just this quiet, subtle thing to you, and a lot of times it is. But that’s why it’s so insidious.”

  “All right, all right,” Devon said, tugging at his shorts, adjusting his visor again. “Don’t break out the SAT words on me. I hear you. I feel you.”

  “I don’t know if you do feel me,” Sparrow said.

  “Listen, I know. I get it. I live it. Excuse me if I need to laugh about it every once in a while, okay? You’re a girl and everyone thinks you’re perfect-looking, so trust me when I say the situation is not quite the same.”

  She wanted to say more, I could tell, but instead she gave him a dismissive little wave, mumbled something about having her own shit to deal with, and sat back in her seat. Tru rolled his eyes and leaned over my lap, asking Devon about his Blondie T-shirt, which got them going about a million bands I’d never even heard of. They kept talking about New Wave, which Tru said he thought of as poetic, intellectual punk, and Devon said, “Exactly, which makes no sense, which is why it’s so perfect and great.” At first I tried to mentally note everything they were saying, so I could steal the songs from Tru’s collection later, but then I got distracted thinking about Black Guy, White Guy. I was cataloging my family members, my old friends, my old teachers, deciding who would pass. By the time I got to myself, I really didn’t want to play anymore. I was reminded of searching for the racial breakdown of my new school and was newly ashamed. Then I remembered watching the band practice, how that somehow had made me think everything would be magically fine, and now suddenly that seemed naive and embarrassing, too. My mind was a jumble, and I tried to clear it by focusing instead on Devon’s hands. His palms looked soft and were the rosy pink color of a seashell. He had calluses everywhere from the strings of his instruments, and I kept wanting to touch them with the tips of my fingers, to see how they would feel.

  After half an inning, Devon got up to leave, annoyed with Sparrow and ready to go back to P.J. and the groupies. Before he left, he made sure Tru and I were coming to the battle of the bands. I felt myself blushing when I told him yes.

  The whole time he was there, I’d been clutching the Cracker Jack box so tightly it was practically crushed to oblivion. Tru snatched it from me again, shook out the final crumbs. The prize landed in the middle of his hand, and he feigned excitement, telling me, “I win again. I always win, Frannie.” He held the little treasure up to the evening light—a stupid fake tattoo. Still, he kept it aloft for a moment, bending it carefully between his thumb and index finger, seemingly deep in thought.

  THIRTEEN

  After the Thursday-night game, the weekend was a bust, Tru out with the twins doing god knows what—he wasn’t always in the mood to report back. It was now the middle of July and miserably hot, but Tru had started running in the mornings, and on Tuesday I decided to go with him. For ten minutes or so we jogged in relative quiet, but then he went flying, a block ahead of me in half a minute, new shoes shining, not a word or glance back in my direction. Sweaty and annoyed, I made my way home alone, waited for everybody to leave, then hit the shower, thinking as I did that there was no need to tag along again. I’d never really liked running and wasn’t particularly good at it. Tru seemed to have all this fire spurring him on, so that was fine. I’d leave him to it. With the shower on full blast, I sang loudly, thinking of P.J. and Devon.

  Over at the Harts’, Duncan had gotten a new haircut, shaved shorter on the sides. Somehow it made him look infinitely more grown-up, but we still played the same games. Mazes. Trains. Twenty questions. I tried to stay patient, but my mom’s words about my temperament still chafed me. When he brought up the chicken for the fifth time, I snapped at him, “I know!”

  That night, Tru and I walked over to the busy street where Siren was. We went in a shop to look at records and comics but didn’t buy anything. Sparrow was working and came out to say hi. Tru asked her when we could come back in, and she said we had to wait until there was a band worth seeing and one of the nicer bouncers was working.

  The sidewalk was crowded with smokers, and I stood awkwardly close to Tru the whole time, keeping an eye out for the beer-bellied man, and wishing I weren’t so freakishly tall and red-haired and conspicuous.

  Wednesday night there was a blowout at The Mack’s house, but when I asked Tru about it the next morning, he said the crowd had been pretty dull. I asked if Jeremy Bell was there, and he said, “What? I don’t remember. No,” and then quickly disappeared down to his room.

  But that afternoon, he was home a little early from campus, waiting for me on the front steps.

  “I was afraid you might call the authorities, turn me in for neglect and abandonment soon,” he said. “So I called Sparrow. The good news is she wants to hang out tonight. The bad news is she wants to go the movies.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “One of her type of movies.”

  After dinner we met Sparrow at the indie theater, the one I’d been to a couple of times with Mom for Sunday matinees, when they showed old classics. But tonight we were coming to see an art-house film, a biography of sorts about a painter I’d never heard of. At the ticket booth
, we had to pay with cash, and at the concession stand, we bought coffees instead of soda. They directed us to a small theater in the back that had a real purple curtain that covered the screen.

  Two minutes into the movie, Tru announced that that this was some special version of hell. Twenty minutes in, he asked us, in a too-loud whisper, why nothing was happening except grass waving in the breeze and light glinting off windows. Sparrow finally shot him a look that shut him up for good, and he spent the rest of the movie messing around on his phone.

  When it was over, we made our way back to the cars, both parked a couple of blocks away. The two of them walked in step behind me, Tru still complaining, Sparrow telling him all the reasons he was wrong. I didn’t really get the movie either, but I did like the way everything looked. Like real life seen through some kind of hyper lens. I even liked the grass. Still, I didn’t think that Sparrow would be able to disarm him. It just always seemed like Tru was right . . . or at least he had all the words to convince you that he was.

  “You don’t understand female directors,” Sparrow said. “They work differently. They’re more sensual.”

  “Sensual? There was a stunning lack of sex in that movie.”

  “I don’t mean it in that way. I mean sensual. Arousing the senses. Being one with the senses. The beauty of details. Don’t tell me that wasn’t a beautiful movie. Don’t tell me it wasn’t different from that crap we went to see with Devon. It’s more than plot. It’s evocative.”

  He laughed. “Okay, okay. Maybe I just like to give you a hard time. I get what you’re saying. I appreciate the evocative. I like detail. I’m pretty sure F. Scott Fitzgerald is the master of the perfect detail.”

  Sparrow clucked her tongue and looked at him.

  “Seriously? Still with the Gatsby?”

  “What? I finally think I’m getting somewhere. I’m approaching genius levels of literary understanding.”

  “That book is depressing. If you keep reading it, I think it’s going to warp your mind.”

  “It’s not depressing. It’s passionate.”

  “Passionate? Okay, now I think it’s too late. You’re officially warped.”

  “Gatsby’s just Gatsby. You know? He’s fucked-up but weirdly beautiful. It’s possible to be both.”

  Sparrow responded with a skeptical look.

  “Look, maybe we just have different tastes. I enjoy the finest in modern American literature. You like sexy grass or whatever.”

  She laughed at that, but I couldn’t help dwelling on Tru’s tone. For a moment there, he hadn’t sounded like himself. He’d almost sounded unsure.

  As if he could read my thoughts, he called ahead to me, interrupting them.

  “C’mon, Frannie. We’re waiting for your insightful commentary.”

  I’d actually just been dreaming that one day I’d be able to debate like they were doing. I didn’t know people who talked about movies like that. They said they liked them or they didn’t; the movies were cool or they weren’t.

  For a few moments, I fumbled with what to say. I almost told them that the movie felt like a poem to me—something beautiful that I liked without really knowing why. But then it seemed like a silly, girly thing to say.

  And wasn’t Tru right, after all? The movie was a little ridiculous. Nothing happened.

  “I’m not sure,” I finally answered. “I’m still thinking about it.”

  Behind me, Tru spoke to Sparrow in a faux whisper.

  “That’s code speak for something. Either I didn’t understand a thing or That movie was shit, but I don’t want to be mean to Sparrow.”

  She came up and put an arm around me.

  “It’s actually perfectly fine to take time and think, instead of running your mouth right away about everything,” she said, speaking loudly for Tru’s benefit. “And if you did hate my movie, that’s okay. I happen to think everyone is entitled to their own opinion.”

  “And I,” Tru chimed in behind us, “am entitled to tell them they’re wrong.”

  On Friday night, Tru disappeared with the twins somewhere, and I was stuck home with Mom and Dad, watching a movie they picked. There was no sexy grass to be seen, no glimpses of light glinting off windows, just two people coming together, against all odds. It seemed kind of silly and obvious, like a million other movies I’d seen before. That was the first time I’d really thought about how alike they all were.

  Though if I was being honest, I still liked it, despite all that. I still rooted for the odd couple, wanting them to make it.

  Saturday finally rose, full of blazing, screaming sunshine. The battle of the bands was hours away. Endless hours. I was glad when Tru asked if I would come for a walk with him after lunch, because I needed something, anything to pass the time. He waited for me on the front steps, while I went to find Mom or Dad and let them know we were going out.

  I saw Dad first, through the kitchen window. He was busy in the backyard—a place where he was managing to spend hours and hours this summer, even though it stretched all of fifteen feet by twenty feet. He mulched and planted. He patched the concrete walkway. Now he was building a trellis from some old scrap wood in the basement. I watched him for a moment from the back window. He was hunched over, sweating, his face hidden. He was usually a big whistler, but today he was quiet.

  I decided to go tell Mom instead.

  The vacuum roared upstairs, and I followed the noise to my room. I stepped through the door and almost ran right into her. The on/off switch was broken, so she had to pull the plug to hear me. I told her that Tru and I were going to go for a walk and that we might be gone awhile, but we’d back to have dinner and change before the battle of the bands. She smiled at me, but her face sort of scrunched when she did. She looked tired. Or maybe she looked sad. I could always tell when she was about to begin one of our rare serious talks, and I tried to rush out before this one began. Too late.

  “You’ve been nice to your cousin. Thank you,” she said. “Is he being nice to you, too?”

  My cardinal honesty must have kicked in, because for a second I genuinely couldn’t answer. But I thought about everything that had happened since he’d gotten here, how never in a million years would I give that up for the former peace of my sad, lonely summer. I was able to mumble something like Yes, of course. She stepped closer, looked me in the eyes, which meant she had to perch under me and peer up. I was five inches taller than her, at least.

  “You met some kids from your new school, through his friend?” she asked.

  I realized I’d hardly seen my mother at all in the past two weeks. She worked and worked and I babysat or went out with Tru or hid, brooding, in my room. I looked at her now and saw lines creasing her face like rumples on morning sheets. Again I mumbled some vague affirmative, but her eyes and her mouth didn’t soften. Forcing a smile, I said the one thing I thought she’d want to hear.

  “Yes. I met some nice kids. Really nice. One goes to my school. But he’s just, like, a friend. Not whatever. He said I can eat lunch with him.”

  Before I left I wrapped my arms around her, hunching down to bury my face in her neck, the two of us clinging to each other. Then I bounded down the stairs and didn’t look back.

  Tru started walking, and I followed. We were headed in the direction of Siren, and he seemed to be moving with purpose, but when I asked where exactly we were going he only shrugged.

  Tru was in good spirits, delightedly recounting the events of last night, another sloppy party at The Mack’s house, where Jimmy had apparently gotten blasted, Tru had gotten mildly buzzed, and Kieran had stayed sober so he could drive. “They take turns doing that. Not a drop all night! A little Boy Scout streak they have. I find it kind of inspiring.” He also told me that Jimmy currently had two decent-looking girls wrapped around his finger—an achievement made purely by acting like a jerk.

  “He somehow has more game than Kieran. Can you believe that? High school girls, Frannie. Sometimes there’s just no accounting for their ta
ste.”

  I was surprised to hear him draw this distinction. I’d assumed the twins were one and the same to him, that he couldn’t care less about them, but clearly that wasn’t quite the case. I pondered that as we walked on, while Tru continued to spin tales about his night out. He told me he’d seen Jeremy Bell again. Apparently, Jeremy had come straight from his job at the pool and was wearing his swim trunks and lifeguard tank top.

  “There was a point when we were right across from each other, on opposite couches, and I gave him the look.”

  “The look?” I asked. Beside me, Tru had a hop in his step. He was as happy as I’d ever seen him.

  “If I’m trying to get a read on a guy, I use my eyes. It’s the only real way to bridge such a delicate subject between teenage boys. You look at each other and linger a beat too long and that says it all.”

  “So did something happen?”

  “No, no, no.” He chuckled. “That’s really, ah, not on my agenda right now. Trying to keep a low profile around your brothers and stay in your parents’ good graces. Later, when he tried to give me the look back I stared back at him like he was insane.”

  “You didn’t really do that.”

  Tru just laughed.

  I wanted to tell him that was a terrible, mean thing to do, that I barely knew Jeremy, but he seemed sweet. Plenty of people were nice to him, but others made jokes behind his back or sometimes to his face. At St. Sebastian’s, Jeremy was the only one. Or rather, the only one everybody knew about. The only one brave enough to be that open. I was searching for the words to explain all that, while also trying to summon the confidence to argue with Tru. But then I saw them.

  Mary Beth, Dawn, and Marissa were heading right for us.

  “Oh god,” I said.

  “Oh god, what?” Tru asked.

  “My—my friends. Or my not-friends. The girls I never hang out with anymore. The Stix for Chix girls.”

  Tru peered ahead. “Those three?” He gave a snort. “Looks like we’re going to have to talk to them. Put on your friendliest smile!”