The Temptations of St. Frank

by Anthony Bruno

“Frank!”

  He might never get laid.

  “Frank!”

  Ever.

  “I am talking to you, Frank! Is there something wrong with you?”

  Frank stared at his mother, her hair wound up in tight little swirls like tiny cinnamon buns all over her head. I got high, Ma, but I didn’t get laid, he thought. That’s what’s wrong with me.

  “I asked you ten times now about that girl. Can’t you answer? Are you ashamed of her? Is there something wrong with her? Did you do something you shouldn’t have–?”

  “What the fuck do you want from me?” He threw what was left of his cake back into the box. “Why are you hounding me? Why do you want to know so much about this girl? It’s the Trombettas’ daughter. You hate them.”

  Carol was staring at him, her eyes wide pools of chocolate brown, her mouth hanging wide open.

  He suddenly realized that he’d been yelling, his arms in the air, fists clenched.

  His mother’s face was crumpling, like Atlantis falling into the sea. She was biting down on the edge of the dishtowel slung over her shoulder.

  A spear of guilt went right through him. The Roman spear that pierced Christ’s side. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to yell.”

  “Never mind,” she mumbled, her eyes brimming. “I’m sorry I asked.” She stood up fast, knocking her chair into the metal cabinet behind her, rattling the silverware inside and the toaster on top. She fled to the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

  Frank rushed to the door. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry!”

  “You’re just like your father,” she wailed through the door. It was a screech of raw emotion, and it scared Frank.

  “Mom, I’m sorry. What can I say?” His guilt was bleeding all over the floor, seeping under the closed door.

  The volume on the radio rose to a deafening level. Phil Rizutto, the voice of the Yankees, blaring, “Two outs, top of the sixth. Murcer is on third, and Thurman Munson is coming to the plate…”

  Frank sat down in her seat and stared at the coffee ring. Phil Rizutto’s voice filled the kitchen, his words like giant, bloated inner tubes that took up the entire space and kept Frank from moving.

  “You shouldn’t have said that,” his sister said. She put down her pencil and picked up Rosary Bead Barbie.

  He nodded. “I know.”

  “That was bad.”

  “I know.”

  “What’re you going to do?”

  Frank shrugged, staring at the coffee ring.

  What’re you gonna do? the coffee ring said.

  Bells rang. High tinkling bells like the six-pack of brass bells that he used to ring at Mass back when he’d been an altar boy, shaking them forcefully but briefly at the moment of Transubstantiation when the bread and wine supposedly turns into the body and blood of Christ. The ringing sound squeezed through Phil Rizutto’s big rubbery words. Frank wasn’t sure it was real until he looked at Carol’s face. Her expression sharpened like a puppy hearing a dog whistle. These were the bells on the Freezee Treat ice cream truck that came around every day in good weather. Frank took this as a sign. A good sign.

  “You want some ice cream?” he asked his sister.

  “Can’t,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Too close to dinner time.”

  “So what?”

  “Mom’ll get mad.”

  “Just tell her you ate dessert first.”

  “No. That would be bad.” She clutched Rosary Bead Barbie to her cheek.

  “I know you like those strawberry shortcake things.”

  “Strawberry Shortcake Stupendos.”

  “Yeah, those things. Come on. My treat.”

  Carol did her best to hide a devilish grin with Rosary Bead Barbie’s long blond hair, but temptation was in her eyes.

  “Come on. Before the Freezee Treat man leaves.”

  She crooked her finger for him to come closer. “Okay,” she whispered. As if their mother could hear with bigmouth Phil Rizutto yammering about the Yankees’ pitching staff.

  They walked softly down the squeaky stairs, not wanting their Grandma to hear them leaving. Grandma was always on the alert for people coming in or out, and she always had something important to tell you or a dish she wanted you to taste, or she needed something from the store. Though it was never discussed, Frank was pretty sure that everyone in the family dreaded Grandma’s cry-baby, sing-song pleas for attention. Frank and Carol slipped out the front door like Hansel and Gretel trying to sneak away from the witch.

  They walked quickly down the long driveway. The big cherry tree in the front yard had dropped its blossoms, which now covered the asphalt like bright pink confetti. Their house was an oddity in a neighborhood that was otherwise borderline ghetto. It was a large, two-story white clapboard structure with a big sloping front lawn. The property faced a row of tenements, and the projects were a block away. Italian-Americans, Italian immigrants, and blacks lived cheek-by-jowl, but the blacks and whites tried not to have anything to do with one another. But one of the few things both groups did share was a taste for Freezee Treats. The Freezee Treat truck was parked at the curb in front of Frank’s house, and a line of kids were waiting—three little black kids and two little white kids. They said nothing to one another and stood in silence with slitty suspicious eyes, clutching their coins in tight sweaty fists, ready to start swinging if anyone of any color tried to take their ice-cream money from them.

  Frank and Carol got in line and waited.

  “What can I get you?” the Freezee Treat man said when they reached the window in the side of the truck. He had a huge rubbery face and a smile that took up the whole window. Frank figured this guy must have a second job as a clown when he wasn’t selling ice cream. Frank could see him working rich-kid birthday parties in places like West Orange and Short Hills.

  Bet he was the entertainment at the Trombettas’ house when Annette was a little kid, Frank thought. She probably had pony parties for her birthdays. Rich kids riding Shetland ponies around the yard. Frank’s father probably had to clean up the pony shit when it was over.

  “So what’ll it be?” the Freezee Treat man said. Frank couldn’t stop staring at his big rubber lips.

  “Ah, let’s see, “ Frank said. “A Strawberry Shortcake… whatever you call it.”

  “Stupendo.” The man reached down into his freezer and pulled out a wrapped pop. “Anything else.”

  Frank scanned the menu board. He zeroed in on the vanilla cone dipped in chocolate and rolled in nuts. The ice cream always sucked on those things, but the sugar cone was chewy and sweet like nothing else he’d ever tasted. He suddenly had to have one. “And one of these.” He put his finger on the picture on the board.

  “One Cone-a-riffic coming right up.” In the blink of an eye the man put a wrapped cone on the counter right next to the Strawberry Shortcake Stupendo. He was like a magician pulling rabbits out of a hat. “A dollar thirty-five, my friend.”

  Frank pulled out his wallet and fished out two bucks. As he waited for his change, he stared into his wallet and felt stupid for not keeping a rubber in there. A lot of guys kept condoms tucked away in their wallets. Just in case they got lucky. Like this morning. Frank came very close to getting lucky today. He should definitely keep a rubber in there.

  Rubber Face slapped two quarters, a dime, and a nickel on the counter. “Thanks for your business, my friend. I appreciate it.”

  Frank scooped up his change and the ice creams, handing the Stupendo to his sister. She unwrapped it fast and held it in front of her face, admiring it. She was in heaven, her favorite ice-cream pop in the whole world in one hand, Rosary Bead Barbie in the other. She glanced up at Frank for approval before she bit into the pop.

  “Go ahea
d. Eat,” he said, and she did, taking a big bite.

  The look on her face was pure joy. Frank was happy for her, but he envied her, too. Things were simpler when he was her age. Black and white. Chocolate and vanilla. And strawberry. He unwrapped his cone and bit into the chocolate crust. All he really wanted was the cone, but if he started at that end, the ice cream would eventually drip all over his hand and make a mess. He thought about eating the ice cream quickly to get it out of the way, but if he did that, he’d get a brain freeze. He watched his sister in her state of bliss systematically licking, licking, licking, then chomping when the piece she’d licked was soft enough to bite into. She knew how to get what she wanted. Apparently he didn’t.

  Just wait till you grow up, he said in his head. Even eating a Strawberry Shortcake Stupendo will be complicated.

  The burping roar of a leaky muffler startled the little kids. They froze where they stood like a herd of deer. Frank’s father’s truck zoomed into the driveway and came to an abrupt squeaky-brake stop. His father gestured at Frank and his sister through the open window. “Whoa!” he called out with a big smile. He was looking at Carol.

  Frank’s eye went to the lettering on the door right under his father’s well tanned arm.

  Frank Grimaldi

  Landscape Gardener

  Frank zeroed in on the conspicuous space after his father’s name, the space for “& Son.”

  “Whatta ya got there?” his father said to Carol.

  “A pop.” She went to the truck and extended the Stupendo to him. “Wanna bite?”

  “Of course I wanna bite.” He took the pop from her and took a bite. A big bite. In a flash half of her Strawberry Shortcake Stupendo was gone.

  Frank looked at his sister, concerned that she would be upset by this, but she just smiled her beatific saint smile. She was definitely Daddy’s girl. He could do no wrong.

  Exhaust from the idling truck filled the air. Frank was used to it from pushing a lawn mower all day, but he worried about his sister and the other little kids. He thought about the toxic smoke from the landfill.

  “You wanna ride in the truck,” his father said to Carol.

  “Ah-huh.” She ran around the front of the truck, and Frank’s heart stopped as he imagined his father’s foot slipping off the clutch and the big truck lurching over her.

  But it didn’t, and his sister climbed in on the passenger side, happy as could be, sitting high in the cab with her daddy.

  A liquid bead of vanilla ice cream had formed at the edge of Frank’s cone, threatening to drip onto his hand. He heard the grind of the truck gears as his father worked the stick shift.

  “Listen,” Frank blurted out before the truck pulled away. “Grandpa showed me something a little while ago.”

  A look of panic flattened his father’s smile. Frank’s parents feared that his grandfather would turn him into a communist. Grandpa was actually more of a socialist, but Frank’s parents thought one was the same as the other.

  “He showed me your violin.”

  The panic disappeared from his father’s face, but he just shrugged.

  “I never knew you were that good,” Frank said.

  His father waved the thought away. “That was a long time ago.” He held up his dirty hands. “Before this,” he said. His fingers were short, thick, and calloused. They seemed too clumsy for the violin’s narrow fingerboard.

  “You tried out for the New York Philharmonic. What happened with that?”

  “Nothin’. What do you think?”

  “Yeah, but you were really good.”

  “Forget about that. I told you, that was a long time ago.” Frank Sr. turned to his daughter. “Can I have another bite?”

  She nodded, and he took her pop, chomping off another big hunk. It was down to about a third of its original size.

  “So why didn’t you stay with it?” Frank said.

  “What?”

  “The violin. You could have been a professional.”

  “Is that what Grandpa told you?”

  “I read the newspaper articles.”

  “Don’t worry about that stuff. It’s not important.”

  He ground the gears, shoving it into first, then revved the engine and drove up the incline of the driveway, leaving Frank in a cloud of exhaust.

  The bead of vanilla on Frank’s cone had become a full-fledged drip, and it had left a white line along the side of the cone straight to Frank’s knuckles. He licked the drip. His sticky fingers reminded him where they’d been that morning. They could have gotten a lot stickier if it weren’t for Mrs. Trombetta and his father. He pictured Annette in her bikini on the psychedelic sheets, her Nancy Sinatra hair splayed out on the pillow. He looked up at his house to the windows of his room on the second floor.

  Can’t beat off now, he thought. Everybody’s home.

  He bit off the bottom of the sugar cone and tossed the rest over the cyclone fence into the thick blanket of pachysandra that bordered the lawn.

  He started walking up the driveway.

  Guess I’ll play guitar for a while.

  The Rolling Stones’ most famous lick came out of nowhere and flew into his head. Dah-dah, dah-dah-dum… dah-dum-dum… “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”

  Chapter 16

  Frank sat in the cockpit behind the desk in the Summit office. It was ten minutes to eight on Monday morning, and of course he wasn’t supposed to be there, but he didn’t give a shit. The door was closed and the lights were out. Dim light sifted in through the dirty window over the transom, which made the small office seem like a subterranean prison cell. Which was totally appropriate for the way he felt.

  He kneaded the purple rubber gorilla as he brooded. His mother was still in a snit. Had been all weekend, refusing to talk, acting like a wounded martyr. And his father was bugging him every ten minutes about Annette. Worried, on the one hand, that Frank had “done something” to her, implying that he had gotten her pregnant, but on the other hand, asking him over and over again if he’d called her and asked her out on a date yet. Frank was totally confused about her and didn’t know what he was going to do. Annette didn’t seem to have much going on between the ears, but he couldn’t stop thinking about her bod and her bitchin’ hair and the fact that she’d let him get to third base. If that was what third base was—he wasn’t exactly sure how the baseball analogy lined up with what he had accomplished with her. To him it seemed more like a rundown, him on the line between second and third, trapped between his father and Annette’s mother.

  But Yolanda was still on his mind. She was always on his mind. And so was Tina, a little bit. They were girls with substance. They were smart. Tina was witty, and Yolanda had an elusiveness that made her a puzzle he wanted to solve. Annette was obvious. She was a type. Frank didn’t see himself with a type.

  BUT…

  Annette put out. He had a feeling, under the right circumstances, Tina might. And Yolanda—it was hard to tell. She seemed like a good girl, someone who would only go so far with a guy. Second base, tops.

  But he still liked her best, and that’s why he was up here, like a moth drawn to a yellow back-porch light bulb. He wanted to see her, talk to her, get to know her better. He wanted to see if there was any possibility that he and she could go plural and become a “they.”

  But as Frank kneaded the rubber gorilla, he stared down at the back page of his open ring binder, the page crowded with more doodles than the tattooed lady’s back, the page that contained the codes to Frank’s secret goals and desires, one of which was to get laid before he graduated from high school, which was five weeks away, and it was highly unlikely that he would achieve that goal with Yolanda. Annette was a much better bet, but he had a feeling that if he slept with her, he’d be stuck with her. And he didn’t see himself as half of a plural
pronoun with John Trombetta’s daughter.

  He dug his fingers deeper into the gorilla, gouging his belly and contorting his face. Actually Tina might be his best bet, he thought. He liked her. She was easy to talk to, easier than the other two. And she just might put out. Maybe he should focus on her.

  But Yolanda was the one he thought about all the time, the one who gave him a boner before he went to sleep every night.

  Shit, he thought, this was fucking hard.

  He looked at the door. Yolanda and Tina were probably on the other side of it right now, waiting for their physics class. Unless one of them was out sick. He hadn’t peeked through the transom the way he usually did. He was afraid to. He was too confused. He’d had his middle finger just millimeters from the inside of Annette’s snatch. They might know. They might smell it on him. Girls are like that. They have special powers that boys don’t have.

  His glance drifted up to the transom, which was open a few inches. It was always open because it had been painted open a long time ago. All the better to hear the Walrus King coming. And all the better to hear Yolanda and Tina and the rest of the Mother of Peace girls. He could hear them now, chattering and giggling like a bunch of squirrels with a bag of peanuts. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he could hear them.

  Frank lifted himself out of his seat and quietly climbed over the desktop, careful not to make any noise. He took the only other chair in the room, a gray metal straightback with a torn plastic seat, and carried it to the door, setting it down without a sound. He stepped up on it and slowly raised his head until he could see through the dirty glass, ready to drop down out of sight if one of the girls spotted him or Mr. Whalley showed up.

  The Mother of Peace girls sat on the floor in a row against the wall, their bare legs extended, ankles crossed, books in their laps. The nerdiest of the nerd girls was writing in her open binder, her unibrow furrowed, her expression intense. Two others girls were huddled head-to-head, giggling about something. Yolanda and Tina were doing the same. Frank studied their faces. They were both pretty when they laughed, but Yolanda was pretty even when she looked mad or bored. Whenever he saw her with her serious face, he always wanted to do something to make her laugh. But Tina had a way of making him laugh—or at least grin—with her sly little cat face and the crazy things she said.