“That’s nice,” Mimi said. She sounded so calm that I suspected the tube taped to her left forearm contained morphine rather than saline. “Please do check me for brain damage, Monkey. The doctors might have missed something.”
Frank handed his goggles to me, moved the visitor’s chair to the head of Mimi’s bed, and climbed up so he’d be tall enough to shine his light down into her pupils. “Nurse,” he said. “Come closer. Let me show you how this is done.”
I was about to suggest to Frank that maybe the nurse knew already, but from the indulgent way she smiled and came to his elbow I imagined she had lots of experience with people in bloody white coats showing her how to do things she already knew how to do.
“See her pupil contract when I do this? That’s a good sign,” Frank said. “With brain damage, I get no response when I flash the light. If the pupils are different sizes, then we’ve got real trouble. The injuries we have here are minor. Superficial scalp lacerations, swelling and bruising, maybe a concussion. We’ll keep tabs on her for the next twenty-four hours to make sure she doesn’t show evidence of an intracranial bleed.” Frank hopped down without turning anything over or bringing the bed curtain down with him. So that was a relief.
“Is that so?” the nurse asked. She winked at me.
“That’s what the paramedic said,” Frank said.
“Pretty much word for word,” I added. “Frank has an incredible memory.”
“Maybe Frank should go to medical school. The triage nurse says he’s told her plenty about cholera outbreaks in London in the nineteenth century.”
“John Snow proved it a waterborne illness by tracing the 1854 outbreak to London’s Broad Street well,” Frank said. “He removed the pump handle and within days the outbreak ended. Would it be all right if I checked you for brain damage, too?”
“Sure,” she said, and settled on the chair Frank had carried over.
Holding that penlight somehow freed him to study her face closely. “You look like Tinkerbell,” he said, then snapped his light on. It was true. She had blue eyes, a pert nose, and pink lipstick, plus lots of blond hair done up in an elaborately casual topknot.
“Thank you,” she said. “Does that mean I’ll live forever and never get old?” I wasn’t surprised by her question. She had a smooth, unworried brow that looked suspiciously younger than her hands.
“I’m just saying you don’t have brain damage,” Frank said.
“Well, if I’m not going to be young forever, then I’d better get back to work.” She checked the bag of fluid flowing into Mimi’s arm and made notations on her chart.
“My father was a doctor,” Mimi said. “Frank would love medical school. But first he has to make it through elementary school.”
“Winston Churchill failed the sixth grade,” Frank said. “Noël Coward—”
“Frank,” I said. “The nurse is busy.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” Tinkerbell said. “I’m done. So, Frank, just to be extra sure your grandmother’s brain is in good shape, we’re sending her upstairs for an MRI. That stands for magnetic resonance imaging. It’s a way of taking pictures inside her brain without actually having to poke a hole in her skull to see how everything looks on the inside.”
“My grandmother?” Frank said. “My grandmother died in 1976. You could look inside her skull through one of the eye sockets without having to poke a hole, but I doubt there’d be much to see in there anymore.” He plunged both his hands into his hair, as if he needed to make sure his own brain was still under there someplace.
“It’s okay, Frank,” Mimi said. Then, to Tinkerbell, “He’s my son.”
“Oh.” Tinkerbell’s eyes flicked from Mimi to Frank to me. “I thought—oh, forget what I thought. Doesn’t matter.”
By then Frank had uprooted a tuft of hair. I took it from him and slid it into my pocket, but not before everyone else had seen it, too. “Stop that,” I murmured, aiming for the tone my mother used on me when I cracked my knuckles in church. I didn’t want to make a big deal of it.
“I’d better see where we are on that MRI list,” Tinkerbell said, hanging Mimi’s chart on the end of her cot and smiling overbrightly before slipping away.
“You two should get going,” Mimi said.
“I don’t want to leave you here alone,” I said.
“This is not a negotiation. You and Frank need to clear out. Now.”
“You aren’t coming with us?” Frank asked.
“The doctors need to keep an eye on me here tonight. Alice needs you at home. She’s afraid of being by herself.”
“It’s true,” I volunteered. “I’m terrified of the dark.”
“There’s nothing in the dark to be afraid of,” Frank said. “It’s out there, and we’re in here. You’re safe as long as I’m with you.”
“I’m lucky to have you then, huh, Frank?” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“So am I,” Mimi said. “I love you, Frank.”
Frank didn’t answer. I could see his shoulders rising. “We need to go, Frank,” I said. “You heard your mother.”
Frank threw his shoulders back when I said that, saluted smartly and said, “Aye-aye, Alice! Tell me, do you have the stupid parking ticket, or are we doomed?”
“DO YOU NEED me to fly out?” Mr. Vargas asked when I called the next night, after Mimi had been released from the hospital. It was pushing midnight in New York. I’d hoped he’d still be awake but I could tell by the groggy sound of his voice that he must have been asleep for a while already.
“No. Don’t worry. I have everything under control now. Sorry to call so late, but I wanted to give you a heads-up in case word leaked out.”
“Did anybody recognize her?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Is she okay?”
While I was formulating my answer, Mimi asked, “Who are you talking to?” I was in the living room, alone I thought, watching a smeary-looking evening settle over the city through the plastic I’d taped over the hole where the door used to be. By some miracle Frank was sleeping, and had been since just before Mimi got home from the hospital in the late afternoon.
As for the patient, I’d convinced Mimi to change out of the blood-encrusted cardigan and jeans she’d worn to the hospital and into a set of my sweats. From my dealings with the laundry I gathered Mimi didn’t own gym clothes. She slept in lacy white cotton nightgowns that I worried would be ruined if her bandages oozed. Mimi was surprisingly okay with wearing my sweats but refused to let me help her change into them. She did let me tuck her into bed, though, where she’d conked out right away. But like Lazarus, she had risen again and materialized behind me, her hands swallowed by my sweatshirt’s overlong sleeves, her hollow-eyed, bandaged head shrouded in its gray hood, a crimson NEBRASKA emblazoned across her chest. I almost fainted when I saw her.
“It’s Mr. Vargas,” I said. “I didn’t want him to worry, in case word got out you’d been hurt. The nurse told me I should fix an ice pack for you to hold to your stitches to keep the swelling down. Now that you’re up I’ll do that.”
“Give me the phone.”
I helped Mimi settle on the sofa and handed her the phone. My hands were shaking as I put a soft pillow behind her back and covered her legs against the draft leaking in the taped-up door. I hustled off to the kitchen to scoop cubes from the ice machine into the ice pack Frank had found for me the night before. It was a pink plaid bag—tartan!—with a metal screw top that looked like something used to cure hangovers in a Doris Day movie. “Why do you even have this?” I’d asked him.
“I requested it for my sixth birthday.”
“Why?”
“It was so hot that year. I wore it to school tied to my head with a burgundy Hermès scarf that belonged to my grandmother. Shall I get the scarf?”
“I think we can make do without it,” I said. “Thanks, anyway.”
As I stood at the sink adding a little tap water to the bag so it would shape to
Mimi’s face more easily, I stared out the window at Los Angeles in the first stages of its nocturnal twinkle. To the east I saw fireworks splayed across the sky, over by the Hollywood Bowl or maybe Dodger Stadium. I thought it might be a concert or a ball game, but then I noticed explosions down at the beach near Santa Monica, and then to the west, above the hills of Malibu. I realized then that it was the Fourth of July.
By the time I was back in the living room Mimi was off the phone and tears were dribbling down her face. I put the ice pack down fast and rustled up a box of tissues.
“Where’s Frank?” she said.
“Sleeping,” I said. “Are you okay?”
“Sleeping? Still? How is that possible?”
“I wrapped him up tight in a comforter, put him on the floor in the family room, piled couch cushions on top of him, and turned the TV to the Korean language channel. Is anything wrong? Does anything hurt?”
“Everything hurts.”
“Here’s your ice pack. I’ll check and see if it’s time for another pain pill.”
“It’s not that kind of pain.” Mimi pushed back the sweatshirt hood and tilted her less-swollen eye at the ice pack in her hands. “This is Frank’s,” she said. “He wanted it for his birthday. First I bought him one of those blue gel packs you keep in the freezer, and he was so disappointed. It took forever to find this one. I almost didn’t buy it. ‘What’s wrong with pink?’ Frank asked me when I told him how I’d hesitated. ‘Pink is the navy blue of India.’” She took a tissue from the box and mopped her face. “I can’t stop wondering what will happen to Frank if something happens to me.”
“But you’re fine,” I said. “The doctors said so. And I’m here.”
“Now. I’m fine now. You’re here now.” She collapsed against the back of the couch. “When I had money, I didn’t worry so much about Frank. Someone will take in a rich kid, even if he’s weird.”
“I’m not leaving. You’ll have money again. Frank’s not weird. He’s different.”
She snorted, then winced and pressed the ice pack to her eyebrow. “At least you didn’t say ‘special.’ Isaac was so right about you. You’re quite the Pollyanna.” The way she said it didn’t sound flattering. Sometimes it was hard for me to fathom why Mr. Vargas was so fond of her.
“How did it go last night, anyway?” she asked. “I was too wrung out to ask you when I got home from the hospital.”
“No complaints.”
For some reason that made her cry again. No leaking tears this time, though. Gut-wrenching sobs.
“Is there anybody you want me to call?” I said. “Relatives? Frank’s dad?” Alice, I thought. Shut up already.
She pulled herself together enough to say, “My relatives are all dead. Frank’s dad is not an option.” She put the pack in her lap, blew her nose gingerly, then stared, glassy-eyed, out the hole where the sliding door had been. She got so still I couldn’t see her breathe. I was a little worried she’d slipped away with her eyes open, like people do in the movies, and was fighting the urge to go find a mirror to hold under her nostrils when she said, “Fireworks.”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s nice that they’re high enough to see over the wall.”
“I bought this house for the views. Can you believe that? Also I knew my mother would hate it.”
“Did she?”
She put the ice pack back on her eyebrow and sighed. “She was dead by the time I bought it. But every day I hear her complaining about one thing or another, so it’s like she’s still right here with me. I’ve lived here more than half my life now. I’m older now than my mother was when she died.”
She seemed to expect me to answer, so I coughed up, “Well, if you’ve stayed so long, you must really love it here.”
“I hate it here. It was crazy to buy this place. I laughed when the real estate agent showed it to me. ‘I’m too famous to live anywhere that has windows where walls should be,’ I said. He assured me this house would work for me because the driveway was so steep and the road that led to it wasn’t on maps thirty years ago. ‘If you were still married to a movie star, your privacy might be a concern. But nobody cares about writers. You’ll be fine.’ Ha! I don’t know why I listened to him.” She held the ice pack to her brow again. “Not that many people care about writers, but for the ones who do—no driveway is too steep.”
“Why did you stay?”
“I didn’t want to give my mother the satisfaction of being right.”
“Wasn’t she dead by then?”
“Yes. Anyway, I called somebody from the studio and they came with a crew and finished that wall in two weeks. Anybody who says you can’t build Rome in a day has never been to Hollywood.” She lowered the ice pack and groped for another tissue. “This is leaking. You didn’t screw the top on tight enough.” She tossed the ice pack at my head.
I caught it, checked the seal, and dried it on my shirt. “It’s not leaking. The wet is from condensation.”
“It’s leaking,” she insisted, and hauled herself up off the couch. I tried to give her a hand but she shook me off and vanished down the hall. The doctor had been very clear that using the ice pack was important to her healing quickly. But Mimi slammed the door and started typing before I could talk myself into going after her. If the swelling didn’t go down in a timely fashion, too bad. I wasn’t her mother. I let her go.
( 8 )
AS NOTED, I am not one for complaining, so I wasn’t about to tell Mimi how my night alone with Frank really went. Our night together went more like this:
It was late and we were exhausted when we got home. We tottered in through the hole where the door had been but only made it as far as the living room couch before collapsing.
“You need to take a bath before you get in bed,” I said after an eternity slumped there. I hoped the little boy on the outside would wrestle down the insomniac old man trapped inside Frank and that both parts would tumble into bed together and fall asleep.
“Why?”
“Because you’re—dirty.” I’d wiped his face and hands before we went to the hospital, but neither of us had bothered to change our clothes. We looked like fugitives from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, a movie I’d never seen and prayed Frank hadn’t, either.
“I don’t want to take a bath,” he said. He reached into his duster pocket. “Cigarette?”
“What?” I thought I couldn’t have heard him right, but he produced a cellophane-wrapped rectangular pack with a label written in French. I was about to hit the ceiling when I noticed the word chocolat. “Where did you get these? I thought they stopped making candy cigarettes.”
“I exchanged them for letters of transit.”
“Casablanca,” I said.
“I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
I drew one from the pack. “Here’s looking at you, kid.”
“We’ll always have Paris.” Frank looked very pleased with both of us. He shook a cigarette from the pack and arranged it between his third and fourth fingers before palming it to his face. Happiness, I’d noticed, was a facial expression that almost came naturally to him. Fear, discomfort, confusion—those made him roll down the shades and bar the door. Which said a lot for Frank, if you ask me. Say you had to pick just one emotion you could convey to others easily. I’d like to think I’d go with happiness, too.
“You know what I’ve always wondered?” Frank said. “Why anyone would join the French Foreign Legion. Aside from the uniform. I like those hats very much. I wish I had one. I have a fez.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“The fez is named after Fez, the town in Morocco that had a monopoly on its production.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Wait, I don’t remember a character from the Foreign Legion in Casablanca.”
“There isn’t one. But my father is.”
“Your father is in Casablanca?” Geez, his dad had to be about a hundred years old by now. Maybe that’s why Mimi didn’t like to talk about
him.
“Not in the movie,” Frank said. “In the French Foreign Legion.”
I sat forward. “Your dad is in the French Foreign Legion?”
“I imagine he might be. Otherwise, why doesn’t he visit?”
Oh. “Have you asked your mom about that?”
He exhaled a plume of imaginary smoke and nodded. “What did she say?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “Nada. Bupkis. Diddly. Zip. Zero. Zilch—”
“I get it, Frank,” I said.
“There are a lot of words for nothingness,’” Frank said. “Love means nothing.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes it is. In tennis. What’s your father like, Alice? Is he the gentleman you’re always referencing?”
I ran my cigarette under my nose like a Havana cigar. “No. I mean, I don’t know what my father’s like. He’s been gone since I was eight.”
“Is he dead?”
I peeled the paper off my cigarette. “No. Maybe. I don’t know. He’s just—gone.”
“Maybe he’s in the Legion with my dad.”
“Maybe he went out for a pack of chocolate cigarettes and never came back,” I said. I wasn’t up for talking about my father.
“People do that?”
“I imagine they do. Now let’s get you in the tub and then into your pajamas and bed.” I ate my cigarette on the way to his bathroom. Frank stood there, mesmerized, watching water cascade from the faucet. “Get undressed,” I said. “I want to soak your clothes overnight so the stains won’t set.”
He turned his face from the water to commune with my elbow.
“What are you waiting for?” I asked.
“Some privacy,” he said.
“I won’t look,” I said. “Come on. Hand over the clothes.”
“Please,” he said. “If you don’t mind.”
I sighed. “Fine. Wash your hair. Scrub your nails. I’ll be outside if you need me.”
I lay down across the doorway in the hall. He’d be okay in there by himself. As long as I could hear him splashing around I’d know he was alive. I’d have to be deaf not to hear him. It sounded like he was wrestling an alligator in that tub.
Be Frank With Me Page 8