by Joanna Rose
The white crane slowed to the point where Pattianne knew that as soon as she looked away, it would stop. She looked away, at Elizabeth, who said, “And Frankie quit.”
Still, she said, “Frankie quit?”
Elizabeth sank down into the beautiful chair. She said, “I hate this town. I hate the St. Cloud School for Boys. I hate Rick Smith. And I hate hating.” And every time she said the word, her voice got lower, and not sounding like hate, sounding colder than that, like something quiet and still down around her heart.
“What happened?”
Elizabeth stretched her legs out in front of her and looked at her blue suede boots.
“Are those your new boots?”
She pulled up the long, dark green wool of her skirt and showed off the new boots. High as her knees. She wore bright orange tights.
“Orange tights? With a green skirt and top? Is that legal here in St. Cloud?”
“Probably not,” Elizabeth said. She dropped her skirt back down. “Frankie and Joseph have been together since Frankie was eighteen. Before that he was a residential student at the school and Joseph was his advisor. Joseph switched him to one of the other advisors, and they’ve been waiting until Frankie turned twenty-one.”
Secret lovers. Pedophile and victim. Frankie as Lolita.
“Waiting for what?”
Elizabeth leaned her head back and looked at the ceiling. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she closed them and shook her head. Her hair looked so perfect against the purple and gold and turquoise stripes of the beautiful chair, and yet her tights clashed.
“Waiting to come out I guess,” she said.
“No one knew?”
“People kind of knew about Joseph. They didn’t know about him and Frankie. Rick Smith didn’t know about him and Frankie.” She opened her eyes. “I guess it was only a matter of time until he figured it out.”
Or until someone outed them.
“What will they do?”
She stood up and shook out her skirts, and the white crane bobbed at her.
“I don’t know.” She shook her hair. “I think they should elope.”
The bells rang, and a woman with a kid came in, both all bundled up in swishy nylon coats, the cold chasing in after them.
The woman said, “UFOs?”
Outside, the icy bits blew harder. It felt like they were cutting into her cheeks. It felt like she deserved it. She had told Michael, Michael must have told Reverend Rick, and it had caused a big mess. She stopped at the Hallmark Gold Crown store and went in to buy paper to cut up for birds. She didn’t even know what administrative leave meant. There were laws. This wasn’t the eighties, or even the nineties. But St. Cloud School was a private school run by Christians, and this was the Midwest, and she had a big mouth. It was about the swan feather, and Emily Dickinson. It was about Tullamore D.E.W.
The only white paper was wedding paper with silvery swirls and bells and doves and roses, all white-on-white, and none of it seemed right until she saw that the designs would be cut up and folded into hiding and that wedding paper would be perfect. That put her in a slightly better mood, distracted by some pretty thing, and she drove home, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” playing on the radio.
The Mithras tree could stay in the O-Bug in the driveway for now.
It was warm in the house, the windows just slightly fogged over, and she went into the kitchen and got out milk, dark powder, sugar, schnapps.
Real hot chocolate.
She even got out Michael’s double boiler, thirty-five cents at a yard sale on the road out past Reverend Rick’s, the road that led to Birch Lake and beyond to the blue trees of Canada, the caves of the cranes, everything. She made hot chocolate for schnapps and spread the paper cutter, the wedding paper, and the origami book all out on the living room floor. She turned the heat up and took off her shoes and socks.
Michael and Rick, a pair of old gossips, riding in the car to the airport, Michael upset and scared about his father and unloading on Rick, Rick goading him for information. She tried to picture it, that hour-long car ride in the dark, the two of them confiding in each other, but what she saw was herself, drunk, giddy over a swan feather, blabbering on about whatever popped into her head. And isn’t that how marriage is supposed to work? You’re supposed to be able to blabber. And didn’t Michael specifically say she shouldn’t repeat that to anyone else? And then he goes and does just that.
It was all about the survival of the tribes out there in the desert back then. They had to spend all their time breeding in Biblical times.
But this was all about his father. This was about a new heart, and she should be there with him, except that he was on his knees saying the rosary in a hospital room, or on his knees outside an abortion clinic. She was on her knees on the living room floor, a mess of scraps and a flock of Mithras cranes all over the floor, which made sense. Cranes everywhere, her fingers making them, easy, not thinking of cranes, thinking of Michael. It felt sacred. It felt right. They were together somehow.
The window was slightly fogged over, and suddenly it filled with light, and the whole room filled with light. She got up off her knees and opened the door to Bullfrog, of all people, out in the yard, and Frankie getting out of the Fiat, and a swirl of thick snowflakes that were only just starting to cover the grass. Bullfrog was bouncing, and her heart bounced too, all the white, in the air, on the brown grass, on the branches of the small trees in the yard, on Frankie’s dark red hair.
“It’s snowing,” she yelled, and he slammed the door of the Fiat, and the door bounced back open and he slammed it again. Bullfrog was up the steps by now.
Frankie’s face split into that grin that was all about that crooked front tooth, and he said, “One must have a mind of winter / to regard the frost and the boughs / of the pine-trees crusted with snow.”
“Huh?”
“Wallace Stevens maybe? I hear you need some help with your lights.”
“Blue lights,” she said. “Want some hot chocolate with schnapps?”
Bullfrog bounced on in the door, and Frankie came up the steps, and it was suddenly not about the beautiful snow and the blue lights.
“Listen,” she said. “I’m sorry about what happened. What happened, anyway? Come on in.”
She didn’t want to close the door on the snow.
“Boy, it’s pretty hot in here,” he said.
“I heard you lost your job.”
“My apartment too,” he said. “I don’t care.”
“How can they kick you out of your apartment?”
“The apartment comes with the job,” he said. “Wow. Origami.”
“For my Mithras tree,” she said. “Here, here’s one for you. It’s a crane. Is that legal, to get fired and all? What does administrative leave mean, anyway?”
“No,” he said. He fingered the crane, opened its wings, folded them back flat. “Joseph could fight it. Should. I just want to leave.”
Then it was suddenly about Frankie being gay, and she saw that she had completely missed that, all this time. He took a cup of hot chocolate.
“It’s not very hot,” she said, and he held the cup out and she poured in schnapps. “You’re pretty good at being a secret.”
“Yeah, well it sucks.” He slurped. “I remember this. You made this for me once before.”
“The first night I met Bullfrog.” Who was sniffing around the edges of the room, his tail wagging easy, like he belonged here. “He’s a very cool-looking dog, you know.”
Frankie’s crooked tooth front disappeared, and his face went blank, and he said, “Yeah.”
Bullfrog got to the braided rug in front of the sink and started going around in circles like he was going to curl up and have a snooze, and then he didn’t. He just stood there, like instead maybe he got dizzy and forgot what he was doing.
“Okay,” Frankie said. “Show me where you want these lights.”
“We need a ladder.”
Frankie drank dow
n the rest of the hot chocolate and schnapps. “Got it,” he said.
She took the schnapps bottle and they went back into the living room, where the blue lights were strung around the couch, the shelves, the floor. The white cranes were vaguely blue, and scattering in the cold wind coming in the open door. Frankie propped his crane on the windowsill.
The ladder stuck out the back of the Fiat, and he pulled it out from where it was worked in all the way to the front passenger seat. She kept trying to see gay in him, and he was just Frankie, but different now. He dropped the ladder onto the snowy grass.
“Extension cord?” he said.
“I’ll get it.” She couldn’t tell if maybe part of her knew all along, how you find out someone is gay and part of your brain goes, Oh, of course, that’s it. The new extension cord and the boxes of doohickeys were on the table. She took it all out to Frankie.
“Check these out,” she said.
“Is that librarian lingo?” he said. He looked at one of the boxes of hooks, and then he looked at the roof of the porch, and then he said, “So, did you keep the receipt?”
The doohickeys wouldn’t work. There were no gutters on the porch roof. He handed her back the box.
“I’ll just bend a nail up kind of at an angle,” he said, and took off his coat and dropped it on the ground. “Those down coats are a pain in the ass,” he said, and he headed on up the ladder. The wind blew his T-shirt, and his long legs leaned into the ladder. He had seemed like he was just this side of being a kid, all skinny and goofy. Now he was someone’s secret lover.
Bullfrog sat in the doorway watching. Pattianne plugged in the first string of lights and handed them up to Frankie.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, and sipped the schnapps. At the end of the first string, she handed him the schnapps bottle while she got the next string.
“I don’t even like Christmas,” he said, and he hiccupped.
“Season of Mithras.”
The schnapps went down, and the blue lights went up, and the snow fell thicker. She put on more hot chocolate, and Bullfrog curled up in the doorway. She fed another string of lights up to Frankie on the ladder, and at the top of the peak, he climbed up onto the roof and straddled it, sitting there like he was on a horse. His white T-shirt glowed in the snowy dark and the blue lights.
He raised the hammer to his face like a microphone.
“The snow had begun in the gloaming, / and busily all the night / had been heaping field and highway / with a silence deep and white.”
“I think you should get down from there.”
A little red car pulled up in the driveway, lighting up the front of the house, and at first she thought, Michael. But Joseph got out and stood there looking up. Bullfrog ran out the door, bouncing like he does, and poked Joseph in the crotch.
Frankie waved the hammer in the air.
“This one goes out to all the pretty boys at St. Cloud School,” he yelled out, and then he crooned, “Call me irrepressible.”
Joseph pushed Bullfrog down. He put both hands on his hips and he said, “That’s irresponsible.”
Frankie stopped and said, “Why?”
“It just is,” Joseph said. “Get down from there.”
She held her breath, and Frankie swung his legs over the peak, quick, too quick for her to breathe, and he got back onto the top of the ladder.
“Almost done here, boss,” he said, the hammer turned back into a hammer. Joseph and Bullfrog walked across the snow to the front door, Bullfrog bouncing and wagging like Joseph was a special friend of his.
“So,” she said. “How are you doing?” And then she wanted to take it back, that casual question that doesn’t mean what it seems to mean, and she was sorry she asked it so free and easy, like nothing was wrong.
Joseph watched Frankie steady himself on the ladder and said, “Pretty good, how about you? I like the blue.”
“It’s getting pretty slick to be up on a ladder,” she said, chattering away like she wasn’t socially inept. “So, are you here to help with the blue lights, or the white birds?”
“I’m here to apologize for being a jerk at the bookstore,” he said.
“That’s okay. I mean, you weren’t being a jerk.”
“I knew it would come to this sometime,” he said. “Nobody gets away with anything in this town.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Well.” And she went past him, out into the blue snow, out toward the road, all the way to the mailbox, and then turned and looked. The sharp peak of the porch roof was just as she imagined it would be.
Joseph said, “You guys must be freezing your tails off.”
She said, “We’re fueled by peppermint schnapps and hot chocolate.” The hot chocolate. “Shit,” she said, and ran up to the door and through a flock of paper cranes that scattered on the living room floor behind her. The hot chocolate was just about to boil over, and she grabbed the pan off the flame and only got the top part of the double boiler and dumped the boiling water in the bottom part right over her hand.
“Shit,” she said to the empty kitchen, a big red welt was rising across her palm and fingers.
She held her right hand under cold running water and poured hot chocolate into a mug left-handed. Turned off the water and opened the schnapps with one hand. Poured in some and then some more and took it back out front.
She held it out to Joseph.
“Schnapps?” Joseph said. “Great. You guys are drinking and climbing around on the roof in the snow?”
The blue lights strung over the peak of the porch roof were at least three different shades of blue.
“Are these Sears lights?” Joseph said.
“No,” she said. “These are real lights.” Her line.
“Now,” she said. “The tree.”
She made footprints through the snow over to the O-Bug and managed to unhook the bungee cords with one hand but her burned hand really hurt if she so much as bent it, and she tugged at the tree one-handed and gave up. Joseph stood still in the middle of the yard, looking up at Frankie, his face lit with blue, and the fat snowflakes coming down into the blue light. Bullfrog sat at his feet, watching Frankie, too, or maybe he was watching the snow coming down, and then he yawned a big squeaky yawn and got up and headed for the porch. She followed him, leaving Joseph in his beautiful blue snowy moment.
She went in the bathroom and looked for something for her hand. The light was oddly yellow and bright, as if the only good lights in the world were blue lights, but she found the aloe vera ointment from last summer’s sunburn and worked it onto her palm. It was an ugly red burn, and it hurt like the dickens. One of her favorite sayings. Yes, Michael, I burned my hand and it hurts like the dickens. If you were here, you could do this for me. She slathered on the ointment and then opened a roll of gauze, which she should have done before getting ointment all over, and which was easy compared to getting out the adhesive tape and the nail scissors and trying to lay snips of tape along the counter so she could tape the gauze once she had it in place.
They had the blue lights up around the window when she went back out to the living room. The window from inside was as perfect as it was from outside, since she had never fucked it up with curtains. Joseph and Frankie were out in the yard looking at the house. She stood in the blue window and waved at them.
“Come on in,” she yelled, and she turned off the lights in the living room so the blue would shine, and shine it did. Joseph came in, and Frankie followed him with the two empty cups.
“More hot chocolate?”
“No, we should probably get going,” Joseph said. But Frankie said, “Sure, I’ll have another cup,” and Bullfrog laid himself down with a groan. She took the two cups in one hand.
Frankie said, “What happened to your paw?”
She waved her bandaged hand at them. “Attacked by a double boiler.”
They stood there in the center of the window, framed in blue lights like a movie marquis.
“But it’s perf
ect,” she said. “I’ll get some more hot chocolate.”
She went in the kitchen, and turned back to ask Joseph if he wanted schnapps in his or not. The window was clear, and the snowflakes outside were thinning. Frankie had put his arms around Joseph’s neck. He was drunk, maybe just a little, vamping it up. They were the same height, and when they kissed, she thought of how cool that would be, to be the same height. She had never had a short boyfriend. Then the window behind them lit up like a movie screen, them in the middle with their arms around each other, two beautiful boys kissing, lit up for all the world to see.
Except it was not all the world. It was Michael and Reverend Rick, pulling up in the driveway.
What he said was, “What the hell are you thinking?”
That was after Rick drove away, and after Joseph and Frankie and Bullfrog left, Pattianne saying, “Thanks for the help,” and “Don’t forget your crane,” and she stood in the kitchen wiping up hot chocolate with her unbandaged hand. The refrigerator stopped humming, suddenly, the way refrigerators do.
“We need you,” Michael said. “We all need to be together.”
She just said okay. She could tell by the way she said it that she was giving up. She just didn’t know what.
“I’m home with my father, you’re here drinking with Angela in the middle of the day with your faces painted up and feathers in your hair? Rick said she wasn’t even dressed.”
“Nothing, that wasn’t anything. Our faces painted?”
He went into the living room. Extension cords trailing across the floor, boxes from Christmas tree lights, paper bags with poinsettia stencils. He kicked an empty box, and it went pretty far, more than you might think an empty cardboard box would go, and the paper cranes scattered. “That boy was drunk,” he said, and he kicked at the roll of wedding paper. It unrolled across the floor, wedding bells and doves and hearts. “Wedding paper?”