by Jim Powell
Everything about the visit was deliberate. That was evident when he invited me over, and it became more evident with each minute. I didn’t associate Franky with deliberation. His excuse as a kid was that everything that happened to him happened by accident. He blundered around in other people’s lives and, gee, how was he meant to know that this or that would be the consequence. That was how he got forgiven, by those who did forgive him. He’d grow up one day, people said. So had he now grown up, or had he always been premeditated, as Marcie believed?
‘Hasn’t changed much, this town, has it?’ he said.
‘No. That’s what I like about it.’
‘Me too, I suppose. Most of the time.’
‘Are you planning to stay?’
‘Yup. You’re stuck with me now.’
‘That’s all right,’ I said.
‘Does Marcie feel the same way?’
‘Why don’t you ask her yourself?’
‘That’s kind of difficult.’
‘Look, Franky, I don’t know what there is between you and Marcie. There’s something. What is it?’
‘She doesn’t like me,’ said Franky.
‘I know that, but it’s not the whole story. You hint at it, and she hints at it, and neither of you will say what it is.’
‘Do you really want to know?’
Did I want to know? I assumed I wanted to know. It’s the sort of question to which you say yes without thinking. The fact that Franky asked it made me suspicious. Maybe I shouldn’t want to know.
‘What do you think?’
‘Let me level with you,’ said Franky.
That was a bad start. The last person who said that to me took me for a hundred bucks. That was also Franky, come to think of it, thirty years earlier. He’d be saying he believed in being honest with people next. If he didn’t already have a reputation for unreliability, he’d have it now, as far as I was concerned.
‘I’m not a natural recluse,’ he went on.
‘I know that.’
‘Yet I find myself in this strange position. I want to see people here, and have a drink with them, but I don’t want them to know where I live. You and Marcie, and Davy, and Arlene, are the only people I’ve been able to talk to. And now Davy has gone.’
‘You seem to have plenty of Arlene,’ I said. ‘That should be some consolation.’
‘Marcie told me a lie,’ said Franky. ‘She said she’d told Arlene where I was living. You were there. Remember?’
I said nothing.
‘I nearly put my foot in it with Arlene. I was getting on to the subject, on the assumption that she knew, when it occurred to me that perhaps she didn’t. That’s the shit sort of way Marcie behaves toward me.’
‘I don’t understand, Franky. Arlene must know you’re living here by now.’
‘No, she doesn’t.’
‘Where do you go at nights?’
‘None of your business,’ said Franky.
‘Why won’t you tell her where you’re living?’
‘That’s none of your business either. I need you to be discreet.’
‘We are.’
‘I wish I could be sure of that.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘In answer to your original question,’ said Franky, ‘I think, in the circumstances, you don’t want to know what there is between me and Marcie.’
That settled it. Now I did want to know.
‘I think I do, Franky. Tell me.’
‘Why don’t you get Marcie to tell you?’
‘Because she won’t. She won’t admit that there’s anything to tell.’
‘Perhaps we should leave things that way,’ said Franky.
‘No, we shouldn’t. It’s too late for that now. Tell me.’
Franky had got me to the point where I was begging him to tell me, against his better judgement. If it backfired – and this had all the hallmarks of a situation waiting to backfire – it would be my fault for making him tell me.
‘Years ago,’ said Franky, ‘a little time before I left town, Marcie made a pass at me.’
‘I thought you and she didn’t get on.’
‘We didn’t. She came on to me real strong, all the same.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing. It was just the once. I didn’t take it further.’
‘So, Marcie made a pass at you. Once. Big deal. Why is it still eating both of you?’
‘You know how I had to leave town because I’d got a girl pregnant?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Bullshit. Total bullshit. The rumours were started by Marcie, to pay me back for turning her down.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Which girl did I get pregnant?’
‘I don’t know. As I remember it, no one knew for certain.’
‘Not good enough. There weren’t many of us in our group, were there? How many girls? Ten? Twelve? I bet we could both still name them all. Not enough to make it easy to keep secrets. So. Tell me. Who did I get pregnant?’
‘It’s not difficult to keep quiet,’ I said. ‘Especially when there are reputations to protect.’
‘What about my reputation? Nobody protected that. My reputation got shredded. That’s why I had to leave town. Darned right, no one knew who the girl was. That’s because there wasn’t one.’
‘Franky, it wasn’t just those rumours that made life tough for you. You weren’t popular with everyone. You got people to do things for you, and you didn’t do anything for them. You borrowed money from people and didn’t pay them back. In fact, you owe me a hundred bucks.’ I deliberated whether to mention the three grand that had gone missing. ‘Maybe more,’ I added, without being specific.
‘I’ll pay you back if that’s the problem,’ said Franky. ‘Look. Be reasonable. I was young.’
‘We were all young. And we didn’t all behave like you did.’
‘So you don’t believe me.’
‘I don’t see that it matters whether I believe you or not.’
‘Of course it does,’ said Franky. ‘It matters because Marcie knows I’m living here and I don’t trust her not to tell people.’
‘What’s that got to do with whether I believe you?’
‘You’re her husband. You can tell her you know what happened, starting those rumours about me. You can tell her you know why she started them. That should shut her up.’
‘But I don’t know.’
‘I knew it was a mistake to tell you this,’ said Franky. ‘You’re a good guy. You’ve always been a good guy. But you’re weak as piss.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I guess I’ll have to hope for the best, seeing that you’re not going to help.’
‘If your story’s true, why should Marcie bear a grudge all these years later? She’s probably glad you turned her down.’ That was me hoping what I said was true.
‘You’ve seen how she behaves with me. It’s a type of flirtation, wouldn’t you say? Don’t worry. I’ll say no again, if the question arises.’
‘You can be a real bastard, Franky. Everybody used to say you were, and they were right.’
‘I tell it like it is. People don’t want to hear that.’
‘What I don’t understand,’ I said, ‘is why you choose to live in this house when you don’t want anyone to know you’re here, and when Marcie lives next door.’
‘It’s complicated,’ he said, and wouldn’t say more.
Marcie was resting, feet on the table, when I got back to the house. I sat down next to her.
‘So what’s today’s bullshit?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know that it’s bullshit,’ I said. ‘It might be true.’
‘If it’s Franky Albertino, it’s bullshit.’
‘He said you made a pass at him before he left town, all those years ago.’
‘He said what?’
‘That you made a pass at him.’
Marcie said nothing.
‘You didn’t make a pass at
him?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I did.’
‘What happened then?’
‘Nothing happened then. Franky wasn’t interested in me.’
I didn’t say anything for a moment. I was trying to work out how some trivial event, several decades earlier, still exercised such a hold over Marcie. I expect I made passes at loads of girls at that age. I couldn’t even tell you their names now. All right, girls didn’t so often make passes at boys in those days, but it wasn’t unknown. I found it hard to escape the conclusion that Marcie had been infatuated with Franky then, that she was infatuated with him now, and that she was covering it up with hostility.
‘Why does it still matter?’ I asked.
‘Because I’m ashamed of it. I don’t think I have much to be ashamed of in my life, but I’m ashamed of that. Always have been.’
‘But it’s such a minor thing,’ I said.
‘What troubled me,’ said Marcie, ‘was that I could never figure out why I did it. I didn’t like Franky. I didn’t trust Franky. So why would I fancy Franky? It made me doubt my own judgement. It made me uncertain who I was.’
‘Do you still fancy him?’
‘You’ve got to be joking.’
‘Well, that’s a relief,’ I said. Marcie didn’t smile. ‘So, when he pitched up a few months ago, what were you feeling?’
‘Horrified. It brought back all the shame. I was counting on never seeing Franky again. I thought I’d put it all behind me.’
‘How old were you when it happened?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Marcie. ‘About nineteen, perhaps. It wasn’t long before I started dating you.’
‘Why didn’t you ever tell me this, honey?’
‘It wasn’t your problem,’ said Marcie. ‘It was between me and Franky. And I felt ashamed, like I said. And Franky was your friend. It felt like a betrayal.’
‘But it wasn’t. We weren’t dating then, you said.’
‘No. I know.’ Marcie sighed. ‘Let’s just leave it there, shall we?’
‘Sure.’
I didn’t have much choice but to leave it there. I didn’t want to leave it, but there was no point in pursuing it. I had asked questions, of Franky and of Marcie, and I’d got answers. The answers tallied. I could believe that Marcie was ashamed of what she did at the time. And embarrassed, probably. Perhaps humiliated. What I found harder to believe were her feelings all these years later.
Marcie couldn’t stand Franky. That was beyond doubt. But she was not indifferent to him, nor he to her. Love and hate aren’t strangers to each other. Marcie might dislike Franky; that didn’t mean she wasn’t attracted to him. I felt that the ball of string was still unravelling.
13
One Sunday evening in late October, soon after these conversations, Marcie and I took a walk through the streets of town. We did that from time to time, especially on a Sunday. It was our day off, and Steve was left in sole charge until the evening. We had another reason to take that walk now: we wanted to take a look at 7 Pine Street, the address that Arlene had scribbled on the back of her shopping list.
It had been one of those dead and bluesy days, a day for half living. With the evening had come a fog. That was weird. We almost never get fog round here. Maybe the moon was blue, if we’d been able to see it.
The fog was thick: not thick enough, when we started walking, to blanket houses, to erase landmarks, but thick enough to render them in outline only, to take away what was familiar, and leave them as husks of something or other, I’m not sure what. It was the first cold night of the season. Our breaths steamed ahead of us, mingling with the fog, as if the fog was the cumulative total of the town’s breath that day. As if the purpose of life had been to cloak ourselves and each other in the fogs of our own breathing.
‘Is this Cross Street?’ asked Marcie.
‘I’d say so.’
I think it was Cross Street. It could have been McKinley, or Main even. Not the shopping bit of Main, but some bit. Streets that had been intimate to us since birth, that were discrete arteries in the body of which we were a part, fused that night into each other, losing shape, coherence, and a solid identity. We walked them as strangers, attempting to make out what we could not see, wanting to impose an order on the amorphous objects that presented themselves and then withdrew, like giant squids rolling their way across the ocean floor. Trying to take what had long been familiar and to make it familiar again. No one else thought it was much of a night for being out and about. We didn’t pass a soul.
‘We haven’t seen much of Arlene recently,’ I said. ‘She’s hardly been in since she took up with Franky. I miss her.’
‘What is there to miss?’
‘I thought you liked her.’
‘I do,’ said Marcie. ‘But I get tired of people who appear to have depths and who never reveal them. I want to know what’s there. I suspect it’s usually things they haven’t managed to resolve yet, and never will. Still, at least it means we don’t see much of Franky.’
‘You sure have a down on him, don’t you?’ I said.
‘To me, the astonishing thing is that you don’t. Despite the fact that he’s stolen three grand of our money. Nothing seems to alter your opinion of Franky.’
‘We don’t know he stole our money.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ said Marcie.
‘Some opinions got set a long, long time ago,’ I said. ‘They’re beyond changing. I’m sorry, but I can’t help it.’
‘Forget it,’ said Marcie. ‘Franky’s not going to come between us. Just don’t expect me to share your opinion. I suppose one day we’ll be shot of him.’
Marcie came to an abrupt halt, so I did the same.
‘What’s up?’
‘I thought I was about to walk into a tree,’ said Marcie. ‘Is that a tree there?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll take a look.’ I groped my way forward, arms stretching out and sideways. ‘I don’t think there’s a tree,’ I said. ‘I haven’t found one yet.’
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m here.’
‘Where’s here?’
Now I went off looking for Marcie, as I’d looked for the tree, arms spread to find her, like it was a game of blind man’s bluff. And she did the same to find me, and we called out names and tried to judge if the voice of the other sounded near or distant. After a while, I felt a hand touch my waist and, after we’d grappled around a bit, and ascertained that we had indeed found each other, we paused, arms round shoulders.
‘You take me to the nicest places,’ said Marcie.
‘It’s got a lot worse. How the hell are we going to find our way to Pine?’
‘Never mind Pine. How are we going to find our way home? Where do you think we are?’
‘There’s a neon sign winking over there,’ I said. ‘Let’s take a look.’ I held Marcie’s hand tightly and we made for the light like two stray moths.
‘What on earth are you doing now?’ Marcie asked. I was dancing a jig on the sidewalk, so you couldn’t blame her.
‘This is Micky’s gas station,’ I said. ‘So we’re on the corner of Pine. Would you believe it? What a fantastic piece of navigation on my part. Right up there with Christopher Columbus.’
‘Columbus didn’t know where he was going either,’ said Marcie.
‘The trouble is,’ I said, ‘I don’t know if there’s much point in going further. We won’t be able to see Mrs Riessen’s house, assuming we can find it.’
‘There’s every point. Now we’ve got a pretext to knock on her door and say we’re lost.’
‘We can’t do that.’
‘Why not? We’ll never get a better chance.’
‘She’ll think we’re nuts.’
‘We are,’ said Marcie. ‘Which way do the numbers run on Pine?’
‘I’ve no idea. I guess it’s odd numbers one side and evens the other.’
We started with the first house on the left. We groped around looking fo
r a number on the mailbox or somewhere; couldn’t see a thing.
‘Have you got your lighter on you?’ asked Marcie.
‘I’ve given up the cigars, like I told you.’
‘Have you got your lighter on you?’
I rummaged in my coat pocket. ‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘It seems I have. That’s lucky.’
Marcie snorted. At least we could now see the number, and it was number 1. We counted up three driveways and checked again. Number 5, for some reason.
‘Close, but no cigar,’ said Marcie.
‘I’m glad we’re not looking for number 87.’
The next driveway belonged to number 7. We didn’t see the lights from the front room until we were five feet from the house. We walked up to the front door. I flicked the lighter again and saw a plaque with the name of Riessen. I rang the bell.
The woman who answered the door was, on average, in her mid-sixties. That is to say, I thought she was around sixty and Marcie thought she was around seventy. She peered at us suspiciously, as well she might. I explained who we were, and what had happened, and asked if I could use the phone. I rang Steve to tell him we wouldn’t be back for a while. Steve said we weren’t missing much. The place was empty except for Mike and Franky. Our involuntary hostess said we could stay for a while until the fog eased off.
While I was waiting for Steve to answer the phone, I surveyed the room and the word that came to mind was comfortable. Everything was comfortable. None of the contents was showy, but none of them would have come cheap. Next to the telephone was a silver frame with the photo of a distinguished-looking man with a pencil moustache. I looked at it in an absent-minded way. And then I looked again. Darn me if it wasn’t Jack Nightingale. There was another photo of him on the wall, kitted out in the strip of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
But for the fact that this woman was called Riessen, I would have said we were in Jack’s home and this was his wife, or more likely his widow. However, Jack had said he lived in the bastard town next door and was divorced. He used to show up in the bar with a redhead on his arm sometimes. A variety of redheads, in fact: he said he had a thing about them. Our hostess looked like she’d been ginger once. It could have made sense if she’d married a Mr Riessen after she’d married Jack, and Jack had then moved to the bastard town. If that had happened, why would she have pictures of her first husband on display? I looked at the photos, and then at Marcie. Marcie looked at me, and then at the photos. There needed to be a question. The difficulty was how to phrase it.