by Jim Powell
‘Unless they’re Nelson,’ said Franky. I didn’t smile. ‘Do you think it’s possible,’ he went on, ‘that Jack Nightingale is or was the Jack that Arlene’s looking for? That thought must have occurred to you.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s occurred to me. But I’ve no reason to think it’s him. Arlene said it wasn’t when she first came in.’
‘That was a long time ago. Things may have changed.’ Franky looked at his glass, then straight at me. ‘Life’s hard enough to understand when people share the information they’ve got,’ he said. ‘When they don’t, it’s impossible.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘There’s stuff you know that you’re not telling. Ditto Arlene. Ditto Marcie. Ditto me, if it comes to that. And ditto plenty of other people, I expect. If we pooled what we knew, we’d be wiser. None of us are into collaborative ventures, it would appear.’
‘What’s eating you?’ I asked. ‘You seem really worked up over Jack. Not like you to worry about someone else’s problem. Why else are you here?’
Franky smiled. ‘Once I could have said, “No other reason,” to you, and you’d have believed me.’
‘I don’t automatically believe anything you say now, Franky. I seem to remember Henry Ford saying he knew half his advertising budget was wasted, but he didn’t know which half. I feel much the same with you and the truth. Half of what you say is bullshit, but I don’t know which half.’
‘I think I do better than half.’
‘In which direction?’
‘The reason I’m here,’ said Franky, ‘is that I’m about to propose to Arlene. That’s between the two of us. I’m asking her tomorrow, at Halloween. Arlene’s been looking forward to Halloween for weeks. She never went to a parade when she was a kid. I want to make it a really special day for her.’
‘Congratulations,’ I said. ‘I hope the two of you are happy.’
‘You might sound as though you mean it.’
‘Where do you intend to live?’
‘Where do you think? Next door.’
‘Does Arlene know that?’
‘Not yet. That’s a surprise for later in the week.’
‘Well, it’s all very interesting to know,’ I said, a little sourly. ‘But it still doesn’t explain why you’re here.’
‘Our lives are about to change,’ said Franky. ‘I don’t want any baggage from the past cluttering up the future. The biggest piece of baggage is Jack. Arlene is obsessed with Jack. She travels to different places to look for him. She gets sent three or four local newspapers each week. You don’t get to see any of that. It’s what goes on when Arlene’s not at the bar. I want to solve the mystery once and for all because, until it is solved, there won’t be any peace for her or for me. I’d hoped you could help me. It seems that you can’t. Or won’t.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Not my problem. I expect you’ll understand that.’
He looked slowly around the bar. ‘Perhaps it was a mistake to have come back,’ he said.
‘That’s what Marcie said when you arrived.’
‘She was right. Clever old Marcie. Still, I wouldn’t have met Arlene otherwise.’ Franky paused. ‘I suppose you told Marcie what I told you in the house.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She confirmed what you said.’
‘Good,’ said Franky. ‘That’s one thing cleared up.’
We sat in silence for a while. I didn’t know what Franky was thinking. I was trying to decide whether to ask him a particular question. I thought I might know the answer and, if I was right, I wouldn’t ever want to see Franky again, even if he was living next door. No great problem, you could say. I never saw Mr Hammond for decades; no reason I’d have to see Franky. Except I’d always know he was there.
‘I wouldn’t say it was cleared up,’ I said. ‘It’s only cleared up if I believe what you both told me, and I’m not sure that I do. So let me ask you a direct question. Did you get Marcie pregnant?’
‘What the hell makes you think that?’
‘Answer the question, Franky.’
He said nothing for a long time. Just sat there shaking his head.
‘I can’t answer it,’ he said.
‘Why not? It’s a straight question. Give me a straight answer.’
‘I can’t. I never wanted to discuss this. Remember? I said that you shouldn’t want to know about it. You should have listened. What’s Marcie been saying to you?’
Marcie hadn’t said anything about a pregnancy. A number of thoughts had been rattling around my mind and, although they didn’t amount to more than a perhaps, they were disconcerting enough to make me dare to ask the question.
The rumour that Franky had got a girl pregnant had faded over the years, but it had never disappeared. I’d heard it repeated a few times in the previous months. At the time, it had seemed to be more than a rumour, close to an accepted fact. It didn’t circulate only through the young men in our crowd, telling salacious tales about things they would never laugh at now, especially if their daughters were involved. It came from several of the girls too, and they seemed sure of it.
Then there was the ambiguity over what had happened between Marcie and Franky. Both said that nothing had happened, or very little, but I still couldn’t fathom why a non-event should produce such strong emotions all these years later.
Finally, there was what had happened when Marcie and I started dating. I elided time when I mentioned that earlier; made it sound as if one day we took up with each other and after that we were a permanent item. It didn’t happen quite that way. We did begin dating suddenly, unexpectedly even, despite having known each other for many years. For the first two months or so, we were inseparable. Marcie was living at home, on the family farm, ten miles out of town, and working in the haberdasher’s store. She’d come in by bus in the morning. Most evenings, when she’d finished work and I’d finished my teacher training, we’d do things together. If she missed the last bus, I’d drive her home.
One evening, we were due to go to the pictures and I’d arranged to meet her at the store. She wasn’t there. I’d arrived just before closing time, and the manageress told me that Marcie had been taken seriously ill and wouldn’t be in for some while. In fact, she made it sound as if she mightn’t be back at all. Alarmed, I ran home and telephoned the farm. I must have sounded agitated. I couldn’t speak to Marcie. I spoke to her mom, who confirmed what I’d been told. Her mom sounded agitated too. No one knew what the problem was, she said. The doctors were working on it, and in the meantime Marcie had to stay at home and couldn’t see anyone. She was at home for four or five months in the end. I never saw her in that time, and I never got to find out what her illness was. ‘Women’s problems,’ was all her mom said. I didn’t see why that should stop me seeing her. It’s not like she was contagious.
Marcie didn’t say even that much. We talked on the phone, almost every night. What I most remember was her pleading with me not to abandon her. Not that I had any intention of that. She seemed desperate that I should believe it was no reflection on me, that she loved me very much and that, as soon as she was better, we would be together again, wouldn’t we?
Which we were. And we didn’t talk about it then, and we haven’t talked about it since. To start with, Marcie said it was too painful to discuss. She was so fragile and tearful at the time, and so grateful to me for sticking by her, that I didn’t like to press her. Over time, I got used to the idea that it never would be discussed. Of course I wondered, and of course it was peculiar. I don’t think I ever thought it suspicious, at least as it affected me, until recent weeks, when I started reflecting on Franky’s past, and on those old rumours.
I also remembered that it was while Marcie was ill that Franky left town. I remember that because, when she was no longer there to have fun with, I spent a lot more time with the boys, and I was looking forward to spending more time with Franky. He didn’t hang around very long. It must have been soon after Marcie took to her
bed that Franky took to his heels.
All these remembrances were what gave me the courage to ask Franky the question. I told them to him now, or most of them.
‘Until the other day, I never knew how much you knew,’ said Franky. ‘I couldn’t know what Marcie had told you. That’s why I’ve been a bit defensive when Marcie’s around. It’s why I hesitated before telling you what there’d been between us. I was trying to work out what you already knew. When we were at the house, I decided you didn’t know very much, so I told you some of it.’
‘You lied.’
‘To spare you,’ said Franky.
‘Of course. Like always.’
‘Don’t be like that. You’re saying I should have told you the truth. I’m telling you I don’t know what the truth is.’
‘Your refusal to answer the question is telling me,’ I said.
‘That’s not fair,’ said Franky. ‘I’ll tell you what I know. All of it. It’s true that Marcie made a pass at me. It’s not true that I didn’t respond. I did respond. We made love that evening. It was the only time it happened, but it happened. It’s also true that Marcie got pregnant. As to who the father was, I can’t tell you.’
‘Who else could it have been?’
Franky took a breath. ‘Several of the girls we knew were flirts, weren’t they? Some of them were outrageous flirts. Marcie wasn’t one of those, as you know. But she was a flirt all the same, only more discreet. I could name you two other guys for certain who had a fling with her at the same time. Any of us could have been the father.’
‘Who were they?’
‘I’m not telling you that, full stop,’ said Franky. ‘One of them is still in town.’
‘How come you got to know about the other two?’
‘They wanted to brag, and they bragged to me. Guys always wanted to brag to me. I don’t know why. I suppose they thought it would bring them kudos. You did it too, if you remember. Then, when we heard rumours that Marcie was pregnant, the three of us discussed it and we agreed we’d keep quiet.’
‘The rumours all concerned you.’
‘All rumours concerned me. They still do. That’s what I’m complaining about. Anything goes wrong, and it’s let’s-blame-Franky time.’
We sat there, glaring at each other.
‘The funny thing,’ he said after a while, ‘is that I’ve never had kids. None that I know of for definite. I’d have liked kids. I’m hoping to have kids with Arlene.’ He paused. ‘Marcie must have kept the baby, don’t you think? If she’d had an abortion, she wouldn’t have been at home all that time. Four or five months, did you say?’
‘About that.’
‘I don’t suppose you know if it was a boy or a girl?’
‘How would I?’
‘No, of course.’ He reflected for a moment. ‘Did you happen to notice if Marcie had a much younger brother or sister around the place?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘And I think I would have noticed.’
‘In that case,’ said Franky, ‘I guess the baby was adopted.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘I’ve heard it said that farming families try to keep these things within the community. They don’t like anonymous adoptions, through an agency in town. They prefer to find a couple locally who don’t have kids of their own. That’s what I’ve been told.’
‘Franky,’ I said, ‘if I ever hear that you’ve gone nosing around the neighbourhood farms asking questions, I’ll skin you alive.’
‘I won’t,’ said Franky. ‘But the kid might want to know who its natural father is. I would.’
I bit my tongue at that. ‘Perhaps the kid will want to know who its natural mother is,’ I said.
‘Perhaps the kid already does,’ said Franky. ‘Perhaps they see each other.’
I wanted him gone now. There was no more to be said, so we didn’t say it. Franky got up. He shook my hand and then walked slowly through the doors, outbound.
My first feeling when he left the room concerned the enormity of what he had told me. I didn’t ask myself whether I believed him, which is normally the first question when Franky tells you something. I had got most of the way to the answer myself and Franky had pushed me over the line. There would be issues for me to deal with. Most of all, the equality that the deaths of Bobby and Roseanne had bestowed on Marcie and me. Marcie still had a child, or she probably did, and I did not. But how hard for her to lose those two and then not be able to raise the one that remained.
Since Franky’s return, things between Marcie and me had changed. How could they not have done? Even before knowing what I knew now, things had changed. We hadn’t discussed how Franky’s reappearance was affecting us. Partly, on my side, for fear of life unravelling again; partly because there was nothing to be done about it, and discussion seemed futile. For the past few months, Marcie had been forced to share time in the bar with someone who might have been the father of her child. Someone she had thought never to see again. Someone who was now our neighbour. No wonder matters were strained and unnatural between the two of them.
I didn’t debate with myself whether to tell Marcie what I’d been told. This was a time for lashing the boat to its moorings, not for rocking it. Besides, she had made the decision not to entangle me many years ago, and she’d stuck by it, even at times when it must have been difficult. I felt I should respect her decision. Whether it had been the right decision was another matter, but once made, it was made.
Some women might be able to obliterate such a memory. I don’t think that Marcie’s one of them. She will have carried it with her, will always be carrying it. It was possible she did see her child sometimes. Trust Franky to suggest that, to twist the knife further when it was already plunged deep.
My next feeling was one of horror that Franky would now be our long-term neighbour. The fact that Arlene would be with him made it worse in a way. I shouldn’t have been surprised when he first came back. For all the big talk, all the bravado, Franky was a small town boy, like me. When he was young, he gave the impression of someone who wanted to take the world by storm. He hadn’t. I continued to believe he was Hammond’s son, and in that case the immediate impulse for his return had been his father’s death and the house. I felt he wanted to come back in any event. The bigger world was too scary. This place was his backyard and his comfort zone.
Maybe I should have told him about Riessen and Nightingale, but I was wary of getting drawn too deeply into Franky’s world. I could defend him to Marcie, if I needed to, but I was finding it difficult to defend him to myself any longer. I wanted shot of him, and shot of all the entanglements that came with him. I would have to ban him from the bar, close him out of my mind and pretend he wasn’t living a few yards away. Marcie would somehow have to find a way of doing the same.
We would deal with this, because we would have to deal with it. I felt relief that I now knew what had happened to Marcie during those four or five months. One day, I would be stronger for all this, and Marcie and I would be stronger together.
I felt the churning of oceans begin to flood back into my life.
We had chosen to row upon tideless waters, Marcie and me. It was a choice made years ago. We made it together without discussing it much. With near wordless consent, we had rejected the turbulence of whirlpool and eddy, the undertow of strangling weeds and uncertain forces. By a sheltered pool we had rested. It was not too late for us to have had other children. We didn’t want to take that risk. We needed certainty, and there was no certainty.
It’s true that I did want to have a bar. I also wanted to do other things, and so did Marcie, and I think we would have done them, but for, but for. Something froze after that. To stick where you are is as much of a gamble as to move on, only it doesn’t feel that way, so we stuck where we were. As things have turned out, it hasn’t proved much of a gamble. I shouldn’t be saying things like this. I’m talking like an old man. I’m not much past fifty. There may be a way to go yet.
Let’s
be positive. There is a way to go. It’s not too late to sample another life, to become slightly different people. The question is whether we can muster the strength to do it. We carry a load of baggage around with us. It is shared between us, but a weight on both our shoulders. It would feel like a betrayal to dump it, and I don’t know if we could. Unless we do, we’re not going anywhere.
We could sell up and I was beginning to feel that we should. I get offers from time to time, and some of them are tempting. Nothing holds us to this town except memories and the bar, and the memories are now sour. It has never seemed to be the right time to do it. We’re too young to be doing nothing; too old to be learning new ways. It’s a young world these days. But maybe this is now the right time.
What I need to do first is to go to Colorado. I should go to Colorado with Marcie. Not to stay there, but at least to go. It’s been my choice not to do that, and it’s out of cowardice. Marcie has been braver. The longer I leave it, the harder it gets. At the moment, it feels impossible. However, it’s not impossible and it should be done. If that can be achieved, who knows what else might be achieved, and will be achieved, and what rutted cart tracks might be smoothed.
The swing doors swung again and Marcie walked in, face pink from exercise and arms laden with parcels. I gave her a hug, in so much as I could reach her. We smiled.
‘Wait till you see this,’ she said. ‘Boy, are we going to stand out tomorrow night.’ She started unwrapping the parcels.
Halloween is a big night around here. Main Street would be a fancy dress parade. There would be werewolves and ghouls, and rampant phantoms. There would be presidents and pop stars, sportsmen and actors, and people dressed as items of furniture. We would jostle with monsters, ghosts, skeletons, devils and the rest of the living. We would join clowns and bearded ladies, and a calf with two heads. Random quirks of nature and manufactured frauds: they all look alike in the end. We would become part of the stream of consciousness flowing down Main Street: a seething mass from this world and the next, come to party the night away. Everyone going for it. Everyone going somewhere, anywhere. Everyone pretending to be someone else.