“I know.” After a long moment of silence, I said, “I can’t stop thinking about you.”
Whoa.
Back up.
I immediately regretted that admission, adding, “I mean…God, Frankie, to see you after all these years. For me, it was like no time had passed. I’m so fucking proud of you. You always said you wanted to be a teacher. You made it happen. What you do every day, it’s the hardest job in the world.”
“Exactly what do you need in regards to Jonah, Mack?”
Ouch.
“How was he today?”
“He seemed very nervous. My teacher’s aide took him out of the classroom for a brief walk when he appeared to get anxious during a group discussion. But he seemed a bit calmer when they returned.”
I was just about at my wit’s end when it came to my son. I loved him so much, but his anxiety wasn’t something I knew how to handle very well. It wasn’t as easy as telling him to snap out of it, that was for damn sure.
“When he was younger, he was fine. Right around five years old, he started getting panic attacks, anxiety, you name it. My moving out hasn’t helped the situation.”
“What do you mean? You don’t live with him?”
“No. Torrie and I aren’t together anymore.”
In her classroom today, I’d alluded to the fact that I’d be picking him up in the mornings, but she must not have put two and two together.
She didn’t respond right away. Listening to the sound of her breaths, I let her process. I knew she needed to process that piece of information.
“When did that happen?”
“About a year ago. I tried to stick it out as long as I could for Jonah, but it was never gonna work. It wasn’t an easy decision, but I was miserable for a very long time. I couldn’t take it anymore.”
“Moses never mentioned any of this.”
“Yeah, well he and I haven’t really had a chance to discuss it. He knows I’m back here, but he doesn’t know the full details.”
Moses Vasco was our only mutual friend. The three of us once lived together in an apartment above a strip of stores in Boston’s Kenmore Square. After I left, I’d kept in touch with Moses mainly to get information on Frankie, but he and I had never been particularly close to begin with
“Where are you living?” she asked.
“I bought a house in Framingham just off Route Nine. I wanted to make sure Jonah felt like he had a real home when he was with me, one with a yard and a nice bedroom.”
“Where does his mother live?”
“Not far from the school in Newton. She commutes into Boston. Jonah’s with her during the week, stays with a nanny after school while I’m working. I work from home.”
“Am I going to meet her?”
The thought of my ex and Frankie coming face to face freaked me out. But I knew it was inevitable.
“She’s planning on going in to meet with you soon.”
“Does she know about us?”
“No. She doesn’t have a clue that we used to know each other.”
“Okay. I prefer it that way.”
“Of course.” Lying my head against the back of my bed, I sighed and asked the question that had been gnawing at me. “Are you happy, Frankie?”
After some silence, she said, “Yes.”
“Tell me about the old guy you’re living with.”
“He’s not that old.”
“Fifty?”
“Forty-five.”
“Old enough. His balls still in good shape? How low do they hang?”
“Oh, my God!”
I’d almost forgotten how much I loved embarrassing her.
“How low?” I was laughing and was relieved to get the sense that she was, too.
“I see you’re still tactless.”
“I see you still can’t help but be amused by it.” I let out a breath. “Seriously, does he treat you right?”
“Yes. He treats me like gold.”
Why did hearing that hurt my chest? I wanted her to be happy. It shouldn’t have hurt so goddamn much to hear that.
“Good. That’s what you deserve.”
“Do you have anything else you’d like to discuss?”
Do you still shave your pussy?
Trying to ignore the rumblings of my overly excited inner thoughts, I said, “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about volunteering. What can I do to help this year?”
That’s better.
“Well, parents sometimes come in and read a book to the class or talk about their jobs. Teach some kind of lesson. You can really choose whatever you’d like.”
“How about next Wednesday?”
“What did you have in mind?”
“I’d like to read a story to the class.” I totally just pulled that out of my ass. But I’d figure something out.
“Okay, I’ll schedule it in for one in the afternoon.”
Her being so formal with me was weird. It was irking me a little. She was acting like we didn’t know everything there was to know about each other at one time. I just wanted to virtually shake her and say, “Hey, remember that time we got drunk and you begged me to fuck you?” At the same time, her acting this way was a challenge to break down these new walls, a challenge I would gladly accept.
“Alright. Maybe I’ll see you in the morning anyway at drop off,” I said.
“Okay.” After a long pause, she said, “Mack?”
“Yeah?”
“He’ll be okay. We’ll take care of him. Even when he’s having a bad day, we’ll do our best to make him feel safe.”
“Thank you, Frankie. I knew you would. That’s why I’m here.”
For him.
And for me.
For you.
I’m here for you.
I want you in my life again.
Even if all you’ll give me is your friendship.
Fuck that. That will never be enough for me.
Not with you.
There was so much I wanted to tell her but couldn’t.
She’d hung up without saying anything further.
Even though moving to Boston had been a huge adjustment for my son, for the first time in years, I’d felt like myself again. I’d only spent a few years here in my early twenties, but those were the best years of my life. I felt like I was finally home again. If only my feelings for Frankie didn’t feel like they were stuck in a goddamn time machine. I feel no differently about her today than I did the day I left our apartment in Kenmore Square and never looked back.
She said she was happy with this guy, but I knew Frankie. She’d tell me that even if she wasn’t. I needed to really know for sure that there was definitely no chance for us. The only way to do that was to earn her trust again, show her what kind of a man I was now since becoming Jonah’s dad. Be her friend. Then she’d tell me the truth. I just didn’t know if I could handle it. I didn’t know if I could handle going back to being only friends with her if she ended up marrying this guy.
I loved her.
She just never knew that.
“Hey, Mrs. Migillicutty!” I said, waving as I rolled in my trash barrel from the curb.
My next-door neighbor was an eighty-year-old widow who lived alone in the house she’d owned for fifty years. She’d spent the better part of the past month trying to get me to date her divorced granddaughter despite my repeatedly turning down her offers to help set us up.
“Mack, why don’t you come over for some Italian rum cake?”
“Thank you, but I’d better get back to work.”
“Come on. You work from home. You’re your own boss. Give yourself a break and have some goddamn cake.”
Chuckling, I conceded. “Well, okay then. I guess there’s always time for cake.”
I followed her into the house, which was a dated, split-level design. It had the same layout as the house I’d bought, except mine was much more modern inside.
“I can save a piece of cake for Jonah when he comes this weekend. T
here’s not really that much rum in it.”
“He’d love that. Thank you.”
I couldn’t help the fleeting thought that a little rum might do some good for my son’s mood.
“How’s he been adjusting to the new school?”
“Whenever I ask, he tells me his day was okay, but he wouldn’t tell me if it wasn’t.”
“Every day will get a little better.”
“Thank you. I hope so.”
“What is it you do for a living again?”
“I’m a business intelligence analyst.”
“Sounds fancy.”
“Yeah. Well, it’s just a fancy way to describe someone who gathers data. It allows me to not have to go into an office, and since I work for myself, I can be there for my son when he needs me. His mother has a different kind of job. She travels a lot. So, it’s more important for me to have flexibility so he never has two parents gone at once.”
“What does she do?”
“Before we moved here, she was a political consultant in D.C. She started out working as an aide to my father.”
“Who’s your father?”
“Michael Morrison, the Virginia senator.”
“Wow.”
The last thing I wanted was to talk about my father. “We won’t get started on him,” I said. “Anyway, Torrie sort of moved her way up in the ranks over the years and was just recruited by a public affairs and advocacy firm in Boston, which is why we moved.”
“Wow. Smart people, you folks are.”
“Not really. It might sound like it, but no. Far from it. We’ve made a lot of mistakes,” I said, playing with the whipped cream frosting on my cake.
“What’s wrong, Mack?”
Her question caught me off guard. “What do you mean?”
“You seem to have something preoccupying you.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Just a sense I get.”
“It’s nothing, Mrs. M.”
She put her fork down, and it clanked against the table. “I’ve got the time, Mack. Does it look like I have anything better to do? I’m a lot cheaper than a shrink. I have no one to even tell your secrets to. Take advantage of me. Lord knows, if I were younger, those words might have meant something else. But I’m old enough to be your grandmother.” Sliding a glass of milk toward me, she said, “I could use some drama.”
She was making me laugh. “Alright. You ready for a doozy?”
“Shoot.”
You asked for it.
“I’m in love with my son’s teacher.”
“Already? You move fast.”
“It’s not what you think. It’s much more complicated than that.”
“Lay it on me. I can take it.”
“Frankie was my roommate back when we were both in school in Boston several years ago. I was in grad school studying political science. She was undergrad for teaching. We have a long history.”
“You’ve already banged her.”
I bent my head back in laughter.
She seemed surprised by my reaction to her bluntness. “What?”
“I just don’t expect certain things to come out of your mouth.”
“Like this?” She reached into her mouth, took out her teeth, and cackled.
I laughed even harder.
This woman was a trip.
She positioned her dentures back into place and said, “Look…I have grandchildren and cable. I know the terminology.”
I wiped the tears of laughter from my eyes. “Gotcha.”
“So, you banged your son’s teacher.”
“Actually, no.”
“No?”
“No.”
“We were just friends for a long time. Then things gradually changed. I never expected what happened between us to develop. But it never got to that point with Frankie.”
“Why not?”
“That’s a story for another day, Mrs. M.”
“Maybe real rum instead of rum cake for that conversation?”
Taking a bite full of my cake, I said, “Without a freaking doubt.”
I was unable to concentrate. Mack was coming in this afternoon to read to the class, and that was preventing me from focusing.
The students were working on some math worksheets, and I looked over at Jonah who had finished before everyone else. That was typical; he was one of the smarter kids in the class. His social anxiety certainly had no bearing on his academic progress.
I walked over to him. “Your dad told you he’s coming in today, right?”
“Yeah.”
“That should be fun.” I smiled.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Does that make you nervous?”
He nodded his head yes.
“Don’t be.”
Jonah very rarely offered anything without being asked, so I was surprised when he said, “He’s going to embarrass me.”
I laughed inwardly at the fact that I was expecting him to be calm about Mack coming in when I was a nervous wreck about it myself—for totally different reasons, of course.
The firm knock made me jump.
Mack offered a smile and a wave through the narrow window of the classroom door.
Lorelai looked giddy when she spotted him there, which prompted me to roll my eyes at her.
It was show time.
When I let him in, the broad smile that spread across his face brought on a sudden feeling of nostalgia. So much had changed in our lives, but the intense emotions that pummeled through me whenever I looked at him were very much the same. They were just mixed with sadness, too, now.
“Sorry I’m a few minutes late. Lunch-time traffic on Route Nine.”
“It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not,” he insisted.
His eyes lingered on mine, and suddenly I was back in college again, looking into the eyes of the first guy who’d ever broken through my walls, made me comfortable in my own skin, then broke my heart. Mack still had the ability to take my breath away. I’d missed looking into those gorgeous, hazel eyes that were a mix of green, gold, and caramel with brown borders. I had to look away because I sensed he wasn’t going to be the first one to break the stare.
This was going to be the longest year of my life.
Turning my attention toward the students, I cleared my throat. “Class, this is Mr. Morrison, Jonah’s dad. He’s going to be reading to us today.”
Knowing Jonah was embarrassed, Mack grinned sheepishly at his son. “Hi, Jonah.”
The boy simply turned red but didn’t say anything.
“What are you reading?” I asked.
“It’s a children’s story I wrote myself, actually.”
“I didn’t know you wrote children’s books.”
“Neither did I until this past week.” He winked.
What?
Mack situated himself on the chair I’d set up in the middle of a circular rug. The children gathered on the ground around him. Lorelai grinned over at me. She still didn’t know anything about us; she just thought he was hot.
“So, today, I’m going to tell you a little story I wrote and illustrated myself. It’s called Frankie Four Eyes and the Magic Night Stick.”
My breathing stopped for a moment.
Frankie Four Eyes.
Great.
He’d made me into a book character.
He started, “Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Frankie Jane, but people called her Frankie Four Eyes because of her gigantic, purple glasses.”
Giggles could be heard all around as I started to break out into a cold sweat. Of course, the kids had no clue it was based on me.
Mack continued, “Frankie was scared of other people and often hid behind her glasses. One night, she decided to take a walk in the dark without her spectacles.”
“What are spectacles?” one of the girls interrupted.
“Spectacles are glasses. Just another word for them.” He resumed reading. “But Frankie was blind
as a bat. She couldn’t see a thing. In the darkness of the night, it was even worse. Suddenly, a stranger crossed her path. At first, she was scared of this man. When he saw how frightened she was, he assured her that he wasn’t dangerous. He even offered his nightstick for protection.”
Nightstick. There was only one other time I could recall Mack using that term. This story sounded awfully familiar—vaguely like our first encounter. It occurred to me that this was just his own twist on it—one that was appropriate for children. I have to give it to you, Mack. Very clever. I couldn’t help but laugh to myself.
Mack continued, “The man said the nightstick was magical and claimed it held the power to protect her from anything she was ever afraid of. The only thing was…she needed to hold onto it and never let go whenever she felt she needed it.”
He looked at me. My face must have been turning red. I shook my head at him.
Seeming amused, he continued telling the story. “Frankie believed the man’s tale and after that day carried the magic nightstick around with her almost everywhere she went. That is, until she spotted the man again in broad daylight, selling the nightsticks on a street corner for practically a dime a dozen. It was then that she realized her nightstick wasn’t magical at all. It had all been an illusion. Frankie then realized that she never needed anything to protect herself other than a new point of view. She believed something, and therefore it was.”
Wow.
Mack turned the page. “Frankie walked over to the man and gave him back her nightstick. She wasn’t mad. She just didn’t need it anymore. If anything, she was grateful. He’d given her a gift: the realization that she needed nothing but her own inner strength to be the person she wanted to be. Frankie now understood the power her own thoughts had over her. The magic wasn’t in the nightstick. It was inside of her all along. The End.”
In a way, I wanted to smack him, but honestly, it was brilliant. He’d completely morphed tidbits of our history in with Jonah’s situation. And the kids, who were clapping, loved the story and the funny illustrations that he’d drawn in crayon. They weren’t half-bad, although he’d made me look sort of like Peg from that PBS show, Peg and Cat.
Mack spent the next several minutes answering some questions and interacting with the kids about the meaning behind the story. Jonah remained quiet the entire time but seemed calm overall.