Be Frank With Me

by Julia Claiborne Johnson

  The nurse exchanged a look with the intern examining Frank. “Are you cold, sweetheart?” she asked. “I can get you a blanket.”

  “I’m not cold,” he said. “I’m embarrassed.”

  “There you are, Mom,” the intern said when he saw me. “Our friend Frank is in good shape now, so if you’ll follow me and sign some papers, we’ll be done here.”

  He showed me to a chair in an empty room and sat down next to me in the narrow space alongside the examination table, underneath a staggering array of monitoring equipment. Without a patient on the slab, the machines were quiet and the lines of colored light stretched flat across the screens. The intern fitted his palms together and stared at them, like some guy who had some very serious praying to do and didn’t know quite how to start. Even to me he looked young. I had to figure he might not have come across a whole lot of kids like Frank in his training yet.

  After he got through studying his hands he looked up at me from under his brows. He had such a kind face. I felt for him.

  “About Tinkerbell,” I said. “I can explain.”

  “I think Tinkerbell is the least of your problems,” he said. “I’m worried about your son.”

  “So am I,” I said.

  BY THE TIME we got done with the talking and the paperwork it was almost dark outside. I tried to hold Frank’s hand on the way to the car but he snatched it away. I decided he’d been through too much already for me to bust him for that this time. Frank got in the backseat and strapped himself in. I got in on the other side, next to him. “You can’t drive the car from back here,” he said.

  “I know. What’s going on with you, Frank? Is there anything you want to talk about?”

  “As a matter of fact, there is. Where is my mother? I can’t help noticing that she keeps missing pivotal moments in my day-to-day life.”

  “She had to go back to work.”

  “On her book?”

  “Yes. She’s very near the end.”

  “How do you know? Have you seen it?”

  “I haven’t. She said.”

  “I don’t understand the delay,” Frank said. “I wrote my book in an afternoon. I certainly hope this project of hers ends up being worth all the Sturm und Drang.”

  “I hope so, too,” I said. “I know your mother wants to finish as soon as she can so she can get back to spending more time with you.”

  “I have had about enough of this for one day,” Frank said. “It’s time for you to stop talking.”

  NEITHER OF US wanted to go home yet. There was a marathon Keaton festival at the silent movie house, so we went there instead. We came in partway through the one on a steamboat where Buster, a poor boy in love with a rich girl who’s the daughter of his father’s steamship archrival, sneaks off his father’s broken-down paddle wheeler in the night to be with his love. To throw his dad off the scent, Buster mounds pillows under the covers of his bunk so his father would think he was asleep there. When his dad ripped the blankets back and uncovered Buster’s ruse, I started laughing and couldn’t stop.

  “Shhhhhhhhh!” Frank hissed when it became clear I wasn’t going to be able to put a sock in it. “I understand that it’s a humorous situation, Alice, but we’ll be ejected for disruptive behavior. The management does that. You will not like it. I know.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Stay here. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

  Out in the lobby, I drank from the water fountain and took some deep breaths to calm myself. Then I called Frank’s psychiatrist and left a message. I hoped Mimi had done that already, but I had my doubts. After that I called Mr. Vargas. He sounded so glad to hear my voice I almost wept.

  “Alice!” he said. “What’s the good news?”

  When I didn’t answer for several beats, he said, “Alice?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “What? You’re breaking up.”

  “I said, how are things there?”

  “It’s Mimi,” I said. “She’s very near the end.”

  “Great!” he said. “See? Patience. Patience and kid gloves. Works every time.”

  I couldn’t help picturing those kid gloves. Red ones. Elbow length. Italian. Beautiful gloves. Not gloves I would have dreamed of before knowing Frank.

  “Alice?” Mr. Vargas said. “Alice? Are you there?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m here.”

  FRANK AND I watched that Buster Keaton movie to the end. And the one that came after it. By the time we got back to the house Frank was asleep. I managed to get him out of the car without waking him and half-dragged, half-carried him into the house and tucked him into bed, tennis shoes and all. I could hear Mimi typing so I didn’t bother to tell her we were back. She could figure it out for herself.

  I don’t know how long I stood there looking at Frank’s face illuminated by a shaft of light falling through the bedroom door. When he was asleep he looked so harmless. He was a beautiful child, really. Just handsome enough to catch a few extra breaks in life, but not handsome enough to be hamstrung by it. It was the way Frank packaged himself that pushed him over into the spectacular. That nobody could take from him, no matter how many small-minded men in horrible shoes might try.

  I lay what I thought of as his Ragged Frank outfit—the blown-out morning pants and tattered tailcoat that were as close to owning sweats as he got—on top of his bedclothes so he’d see that instead of the T-shirt and khakis he’d gone to sleep in. I left his top hat on his bedside table. By that time I was practically asleep on my feet—horses sleep standing up, did you know that?—and put myself to bed, too. I didn’t turn on the light, just tottered over and pulled the covers back.

  Underneath the covers, I found Xander.

  “What are you doing in my bed?” I asked.

  He opened his eyes and blinked sleepily. “Hold on, Goldilocks. This is my bed, remember? I thought you blew town so I moved back in. What’s going on?”

  “I didn’t go,” I said. “Scoot over. Keep your mouth shut and your hands to yourself.”

  I talked, though. Boy, did I ever. I ended up telling Xander all the stuff about the day that I’d wanted to spill to Mr. Vargas. “So then Frank says, ‘Do you know that ancient man was chewing a gum derived from birch tar during the Neolithic period more than five thousand years ago?’ He just scared the liver out of all of us, and he’s talking about the history of chewing gum?”

  Xander raised his hand.

  “What?”

  “Can I say one thing?” he asked.

  “Okay.”

  “Frank couldn’t wear his armor today,” Xander said. “Facts were all the protection he had. Facts were his force field.”

  ( 20 )

  WHEN I WOKE up it was light out and Frank was howling. I was in the hall outside his room without any memory of running there. He was with Mimi, wearing the Ragged Frank ensemble, his arms wrapped around his mother’s calves. Mimi was wearing the typical cardigan ensemble, plus Frank’s top hat.

  “I don’t belong there!” he shouted.

  “I’m very near the end,” she answered. There was something flat and dead about her voice that frightened me.

  “I don’t belong there!”

  “I’m very near the end,” she insisted. I realized then that her tone of voice reminded me of Frank.

  “Stop it, both of you!” I yelled.

  “Alice, wake up,” Xander said. He was shaking me by the shoulders.

  I opened my eyes. It wasn’t still black night outside, but it wasn’t light yet, either. “Okay,” I said. “Okay, okay. What time is it?”

  “It’s just before six.”

  “You have to get out of here, now,” I said. “This never happened.”

  I WISH I could tell you that what actually happened that morning made a whole lot more sense, but it didn’t. Mimi told me to take Frank to school. Dressed in a T-shirt and tennis shoes. Also jeans.

  “Did you talk to his psychiatrist?” I asked.

  “When? I had to spend ha
lf the day at the hospital, and after I came home I had to go right back to work. I don’t need to talk to anybody’s psychiatrist. Frank will be fine. He has to be. This is not a negotiation. Stop wasting my time.”

  Xander stood in front of the garage watching us back down the driveway. He was barefoot and in boxers, something he couldn’t do in mid-January in Alabama or Nebraska. He had his arms crossed over his chest, cradling each elbow in the opposite palm. Every line of his body said: “This is a very bad idea.”

  “You want to take Xander with us?” I asked Frank, looking over my shoulder.

  “He isn’t dressed,” he said.

  I stayed like that, twisted backward, using my eyes instead of the rearview mirror to guide myself down the driveway. I imagine Xander waved at Frank as we left because Frank gave a sad little salute that didn’t seem directed at me. I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want to see.

  INSTEAD OF DROPPING Frank off at school I parked and got out of the car with him.

  “Where are you going?” Frank asked.

  “I’m walking you to class,” I said.

  “That won’t be necessary,” he said. “This time I’m prepared for the worst.”

  “You’re really brave, Frank,” I said. “I’m proud of you.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “It’s easier to be brave when you’re carrying a knife.”

  “Get back in the car,” I said.

  I PULLED OVER at a park. “Oh,” he said. “Are we going to the playground? I love it in the early morning, when the sand is freshly raked.”

  “Give me the knife,” I said. I was expecting one of the big sharp knives from the kitchen or maybe the plastic machete, but what he had tucked into his argyle sock was an old-fashioned letter opener shaped like a sword in a battered green leather sheath embossed with gold. “Where did you get this?” I asked.

  “From my mother’s desk. It belonged to my grandfather.”

  “You were in your mother’s office? Doing what?”

  “Looking for my mother.”

  “Wasn’t she in there?”

  “She was. Asleep on the floor.”

  “I UNDERSTAND WHY you’re upset, Alice,” Dr. Abrams said. “But let’s look on the positive side of this. You have to admit it’s a feat of imagination for a nine-year-old to get himself rescued from a threatening situation by an ambulance. Really, it’s a kind of genius.”

  “I’m not sure the ambulance was his idea,” I said. “Anyway, I’d prefer less genius and more judgment.”

  “You say that now,” she said. “But you’ll be glad of it someday.”

  “But I’m here now,” I said. “I won’t be around for someday.”

  I had called Frank’s psychiatrist after I frisked him at the park. “I think it’s a good idea for you to talk to Dr. Abrams today,” I told him.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea at all. I don’t want to talk to anyone else,” Frank said. “I just want to talk to myself in the voice of a 1940s radio announcer. We are at the playground already, so I don’t see why you won’t let me do it.”

  “You can do that all you want,” I said. “In the car.” I stuffed him inside the wagon and dialed the shrink. She picked up my call right away and I stood with my back to Frank while I outlined the situation. “I had a cancellation,” she said. “Bring him now.”

  When I got there Dr. Abrams explained that I couldn’t come into the room with them since I wasn’t Frank’s parent. I’d already lied and said Mimi had asked me to bring Frank in, so I didn’t push it. They had a muffled, intense conversation that I couldn’t quite make out despite pressing my ear to the door. When they stopped talking I hopped into a chair and picked up a magazine. When Frank emerged I looked up at them both with a radiant, guilty smile.

  “I have a couple of quick questions,” I said to Dr. Abrams. “Can I duck into your office for a minute while Frank waits out here?” That’s when we had our talk about genius vs. judgment. Also I asked if she thought Frank should go back to that school.

  “I really can’t discuss Frank any further with you until I’ve talked to his mother. You understand,” she said.

  “Of course,” I said.

  I TOOK FRANK back to that playground and left a message for Paula in the office, asking her to call my cell when she could talk freely. I’d loaned Frank my sweater because I could see he was jonesing for a piece of clothing to cover his bare arms. He’d found a paper grocery bag somewhere and had turned it wrong side out and twisted and crumpled it into the shape of a top hat. To make it hold the shape he’d taken the lace out of one of his sneakers to use as a hatband. I had to give the kid props. He had a gift. But I also had to admit that this particular ensemble didn’t make him look 100 percent sane.

  I was watching Frank pacing, one shoe flapping, giving 1940s radio announcer Walter Winchell a run for his money, when my phone howled. “I can keep an eye out for him, but I can only do so much,” Paula said. “I will tell you Dr. Matthews thinks Frank’s a nuisance and that he can’t possibly be that smart. He likes children who make high scores on standardized tests and smile a lot. He doesn’t like Frank.”

  “He doesn’t understand Frank,” I said. “Frank’s light-years beyond smart.”

  “I know, honey. But Dr. Matthews isn’t.”

  “Mimi wants to know what do you think we should do.”

  “Frank got off on the wrong foot with Dr. Matthews and Mimi didn’t kiss up to him in their conference. I don’t think you can get on his good side now,” Paula said. “If he doesn’t find an excuse for expelling Frank, he’ll drive him out some other way. He’s done it to a second-grader already, and let me tell you, Alice, it wasn’t pretty. It breaks my heart to say this because I’ll miss my little friend, but if Frank were my son I wouldn’t send him back here as long as that man is in charge. To be honest, I may not stick it out here much longer myself.”

  I HAD TO do something.

  I wanted to tell Mimi everything Paula had said but I knew she’d get mad at me in a shoot-the-messenger way that wouldn’t help a bit. Frank’s shrink had shut me out and I couldn’t bring myself to tell Mr. Vargas how badly I was failing him. I was running out of people to go to for advice.

  Sometimes just explaining your predicament—to a bartender, a priest, the old woman in a shift and flip-flops cleaning the lint traps in the Laundromat dryers—is all it takes to see a way out of it. Trust me, I didn’t turn to Xander because I thought of him as a child-rearing sage; honestly, who is? It was just that Xander knew all the characters in our sad little drama and could lend a sympathetic ear. When he suggested a few weeks of therapeutic hooky for Frank until Mimi was done with her novel and could start living in the world outside her head again, I was able to convince myself that it was a spectacular idea.

  “How do you propose we do that?” I asked. “Mimi expects me to take Frank to school every morning.”

  “You leave with him dressed for school, park around the corner, and I meet you there. Frank changes into Frank clothes in the backseat. The three of us hang out until it’s time to ‘come home from school.’ Frank changes clothes, you drive up the driveway, I show up later. We’ll get through this, Alice. You can count on me.”

  I was desperate. I was in.

  EXCEPT I DIDN’T see how we would get Frank to understand he couldn’t breathe a word of our plan to his mother. “I’ll handle that,” Xander said.

  They had a conference on a park bench. Frank was wearing a loud plaid zoot suit I’d never seen before, with taxi-yellow suspenders, yellow pocket handkerchief, dice cuff links, and two-toned shoes. Xander, in ancient jeans and a T-shirt, looked like he was having a session with his new bookie, Little Frankie, whom he’d met while working as a grip on the set of a remake of Guys and Dolls.

  “So when I change my clothes, do I do it in a phone booth?” Frank asked.

  “Nope. Backseat of the station wagon. We won’t look.”

  “Good. Phone booths are hard to find these days. C
an I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did I get kicked out of school?”

  “No way, pal. You’re on hiatus. Once your mother and her book are squared away, we’ll find you a new school you’ll like much better. Until then, let’s not tell your mom any of this. She has enough to worry about already.”

  “I’ll miss my friends,” Frank said. “Paula. Miss Peppe.”

  “And they’ll miss you. But that’s how it is for academic staff. Students come and go like waves on the beach. I guarantee you, Frank, of all the generations of kids that Paula and Miss Peppe have known and will know, you’re the one they’ll remember best. You’re the one they’ll miss the most.”

  Frank nodded. “You’re probably right.”

  I had to hand it to Frank. He took it like a champ. And he had been right about Xander all along. There were times when you really could count on him.

  “DO WE BELIEVE Mimi’s almost done with her book?” I asked Xander that night after Frank had gone to bed and we had, too.

  “No idea,” he said. “How does that joke about the deer go? The one that ends with ‘no idea’?”

  “What do you call a deer with no eyes,” I said. “No idear. I hate that joke. I picture the deer stumbling around in the woods, bumping into trees.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that. The coyotes will get the deer before the trees do.” He tried to kiss me but I pulled away.

  “She types all day,” I said.

  “Alice, she’s been typing as long as I’ve known her. Less since Frank was born, but still. She could have written a dozen books by now. Six, maybe. Four, at least.”

  “All that typing and she’s never finished anything?” This was very bad news.

  “How should I know? The woman is a sphinx.”

  “Are you kidding? She tells you everything, Xander. You’re the sphinx.”

  Xander rolled to his side and narrowed his eyes at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”