Saying Goodbye (What the World Doesn't Know) (20 page)

            “You’re going to allow this in our house?”

            “What are they doing?” she asked with a yawn.

            “Watching a movie, eating snacks.”

            “Sounds more like a slumber party with a bunch of girlfriends then hanging out with a date,” replied Geraldine. “They should be making out.”

            “I can’t have this in my house,” Marcus said, getting riled up.

            Geraldine lifted herself up in bed. “Here’s what you do: turn the hallway light off, sit at the top of the steps, and if they do anything inappropriate, like hold hands or God forbid kiss, you can be right there to intervene. But take note: you will forever be the bad guy to Frankie.”

            “My daughter’s reputation is worth playing the bad guy,” said Marcus.

            “What it is about him that is so bad?” asked Geraldine. “Was he rude or offensive in any way?”

            “No, I just don’t like the way he looks—the long hair, those dark eyes. He looks like someone you’d come across in a dark alley,” replied Marcus. “The kid reminds me of a Molly Maguire gangster; he even has a black eye.”

            Geraldine laid her head down and closed her eyes. “The very reasons you don’t like him are the same reasons that Frankie does. Get used to it, Marcus, this is just the beginning.”

            Marcus shrugged heavily and lay down beside Geraldine. He was exhausted by the lateness of the hour and the stress he felt. But finally he fell asleep, but then woke around 5:00 a.m., thinking that Alex had surely already left by then.

            He climbed out of bed and walked past Frankie’s room only to find her bed had not been slept in. He carefully descended the stairs, fearful of what he might find. He turned the corner and saw Alex and Frankie both asleep, passed out on the couch. The television station was off the air and only static was visible.

            Marcus walked over and shook Alex on the shoulder. “Okay, date’s over!”

            Alex woke up, blinking his eyes, and then rubbed his neck. For a moment he didn’t know where he was.

            Frankie lifted her head and looked around. “What time is it?”

            “Time for your date to leave,” Marcus said.

            Both Alex and Frankie stood up and she walked him to the door, following him outside where dawn had just begun to show in the sky. Alex rapped on the car window to wake Chase. Chase sat upright behind the wheel of the car, immediately ready to go. When Alex turned around, Frankie wrapped her arms around him. They kissed, not wanting to part.

            “Wrap it up!” yelled Marcus from the front door.

            Alex glanced up at Marcus and then down at Frankie with a sad discouraged look.

            “What’s the matter?” she asked.

            “I feel like I’m losing my very best friend,” he said.

            “You’re never going to lose me. I’m always going to be your friend.”

            Alex dared to kiss her once more. “I’ll call you when I get home.”

            “I’ll be waiting,” she said.

            Alex stepped away from Frankie. He felt he needed to say something to Marcus, but not sure of the words. He settled for, “Goodbye, Mister Robinson.”

            Marcus said nothing and merely waited for Frankie to return to the house. She didn’t until Chase had pulled out of the driveway and the car was out of sight. She turned and said to Marcus, “I can’t believe you were so rude to him.”

            Marcus didn’t care; Alex Rowley was on his way home to England and away from his daughter.

 

            It was a beautiful, sunny morning in September when Alex headed back to England. The plane lifted off from New York’s newly named John F. Kennedy International Airport and circled the city until it reached its proper flight elevation and leveled out. As Alex sat looking out the window, watching the city get progressively smaller below him, a knot formed in his stomach. Somewhere down there, amongst the masses of metal structures and countless streets, he had left his heart. It was the last thing he had intended to happen when he first came to America. He had certainly expected to break a few hearts by the end of the tour but never imagined his own heart would be broken.

            Alex didn’t want to go home; he didn’t want to be in the band. At that very moment he didn’t want to exist at all. He couldn’t believe that leaving a girl could make him feel so empty. Frankie was the only one he had met who truly understood him. And he had meant it when he told her he felt like he was losing his very best friend. In actuality he was.

            Meanwhile, at the same time Alex’s plane was taking off, Frankie was driving her mother’s silver 1963 Cadillac De Ville out to Rockaway Beach. She parked the car, slipped off her sneakers, and walked out to the shore.

            The beach was sparsely dotted with various walks of life. Besides the sandpipers and seagulls, there were a few elderly couples walking hand-in-hand, the occasional beachcomber strolling along the sand, and a number of stationary individuals who appeared to be searching for answers to questions in their minds by staring pensively at the waves. Frankie felt that she could relate to these most of all—here she was, twenty years old, feeling melancholy, and already sensed that she had lost her soul mate.

            She raised her hand above her eyes and strained to see if she could find Alex’s plane in the sky. When she saw no trace of any plane, she stepped a few yards away from the waves and sat down in the sand, resting her chin on her knees. She thought of how much she and Alex had in common—both of them were teenaged performers, who loved to swim and eat heartily, and shared a wry sense of humor along with an independent, rebellious streak. She never knew she would meet a boy so much like her who lived so far away. She couldn’t help thinking that while she had been living here, going to school, attending dances, taking ballet lessons, and working,  Alex had been growing up at the exact same time on the other side of the Atlantic. She wondered how their lives would have been different had they grown up together or lived in the same town and dated as students.

            Questions like these plagued Frankie’s mind as she leaned back, placing her hands in the sand. Of all the men she had dated or experienced mutual admiration with, only Alex measured up. It was he who had captured her heart.

            She wondered if she would ever see him again.

 

            Alex and the other Dark Knights arrived home to England only to be greeted by a flood of fans when they landed. At the airport Alex did his best to produce a slight smile and give the mobs a friendly wave of acknowledgment. Security guards did their best to push all the band members through blinding camera flashes and microphones being thrust into their faces as they escorted them toward a black sedan waiting to take them to another press conference. Alex secretly wondered why the world never seemed to get enough of their stupid responses to reporters’ inane questions.

            The press conference soon became such garbage that Alex and the rest of the band began to make up answers, or often retorted with questions of their own. It was as if five young working-class lads were expected to have all the answers to the world’s problems. Deep down, they knew that what they were meant to do was distract people from the world’s true hardships
—
poverty, violence, oppression, and war.

            At twenty-one years of age, Alex had absolutely no clue what any of it meant and honestly didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, everyone else could figure it out; all he wanted was to be left alone. The press conference ended not a moment too soon.

            As the sedan drove through the crowd of screaming young women, Alex recalled his youth. It seemed like only yesterday he was skipping school, hanging out, and smoking with a bunch of like-minded pals. There really wasn’t any more to it than that, except for his guitar.
Funny,
he thought,
to have known that learning to play the guitar would change my life so dramatically.

            He could have ended up just like any of the other blokes
—
landed a square job, taken a wife, and pumped out a few kids. He sometimes imagined how life would be if he held a square job and had fallen in love with a local girl who might have inspired him to stay home. But Alex had none of that; ironically, it was his
wanderlust and lack of discipline
 that had bought him to the height of success. Perhaps that was the big joke.

            The driver of the sedan dropped Alex off in front of the house he shared with his girlfriend Sarah. Upon seeing him arrive home, she immediately rushed out of the house, ran across the green manicured lawn, and fell into his arms.

            “Oh, it’s so good to have you home again,” she said and then kissed him on the face.

            “Yeah,” he sighed, pushing her away. He really couldn’t handle any woman hanging on him at this moment. “I’m really exhausted.”

            Sarah picked up his bags. “Of course . . . I understand.”

            Alex walked straight to his bedroom and collapsed face-down on his pillow. It felt good to rest in his own bed, but Sarah hovering over him made him uncomfortable.

            Sarah crawled into bed alongside him and ran her fingers through his hair, down his back, and over his butt.

            “What are you doing?” he mumbled with his face in his pillow.

            “I just want to be with you; you’ve been gone so long.”

            “Sarah, honey,” Alex said, “I really just want to be alone right now and get some rest. I didn’t get much sleep on the road.”

            “Okay,” she said. She rose from the bed and then reached for his suitcase.

            “
Now
what are you doing?” he asked sternly.

            “I was going to wash your laundry.”

            “It can wait,” snapped Alex.

            Sarah slowly released her grasp of his suitcase. “All right, I’ll leave you alone.” She closed the bedroom door and walked into the living room. She missed him so much while he was away and now that he was home, all she wanted to do was be with him. Even though he had locked her out, Sarah forced herself to maintain a positive attitude that at least he was home and in their bed.

 

            Unlike Frankie, Sarah no longer had any support, love, or guidance from her father. Devon Moore was a dashing BAF pilot
—
tall, with wavy dusty-blond hair, a big toothy smile, and the daring, “here today, gone tomorrow” demeanor. While Devon physically had returned home from war, he remained emotionally adrift. His own personal space became precious and even though young Sarah, her siblings, and her mother all longed for his attention, Devon seldom had much to give. Her father soon became bored with civilian life and abandoned his family in pursuit of more exciting adventures and affairs.

            Devon’s abandonment of his family wrecked his wife’s emotional state. She blamed herself for not being beautiful or charming enough, for not keeping a clean house, and a number of other imagined shortcomings. She cried constantly for her failings and it was her older daughter, Sarah, who was there to pick up the pieces. As Sarah tended to the chores that her mother formerly performed and looked after her younger siblings, she vowed to achieve perfection in all her endeavors; no man would ever run off on her. She would fashion herself into the perfect package that no man would be able to resist.

            Much like her father, Sarah grew into a tall, dashing woman with a great deal of charisma. She dreamed of obtaining an acting job in film or  television. This was partly due to her desire to be in the limelight, but mostly it was because she hoped her father would see her and regret ever leaving.

            As Sarah grew up in Shepherd’s Bush, a working-class neighborhood of London, she followed the latest fashion trends and pop-culture fads, especially any news regarding the glamorous lifestyles of American actresses like Katherine Hepburn and Lana Turner. In Sarah’s mind, if she could create a personality for herself that included Katherine Hepburn’s smarts and Lana Turner’s style, she was bound to attract the perfect man.

            After Sarah completed school, she pursued a career as an actress. The only paid work she could find, however, was the meager job of a waitress. It didn’t stop her, though; she went on photo shoots, casting calls, and anything she could find to get noticed. She attended parties with other models and actresses, hoping to meet an up-and-coming actor or rock and roller. Certainly she loved the attention of many admirers and received minor work on shows as an extra, but her big break came in the form of being a fill-in host for the teen music hit parade show
Stage Door Five
.

            All the big bands and singers had gigs on the show. It was the one place for anyone looking to get noticed. A girl could be in the audience and get picked out by either a guy in the band or a producer looking for new talent, and tonight Sarah was set to host. The band she would be interviewing was known as the Dark Knights.

            The Dark Knights were fighting for place on the charts with the other bands and like many other bands they had difficulty busting through the Beatles strong hold at the top. For some bands it was discouraging and seemed unfair, for Alex and the other Dark Knights it was a challenge. They didn’t find themselves of lesser talent, but weaker representation. Darren was a good manager, but like many managers at the time always had their eye open for the next big talent and the Dark Knights were not as pretty as the Beatles, except maybe for Robbie.

            Despite not having being the top of the hearts and having the heart of every screaming pre-teen girl, it was a bit of a relief not being at the very top. They had the freedom to play their own version of edgy music that would be frowned upon in most conservative households. The Dark Knights reveled in being musical rebels. They were of course the Dark Knights and their rebellious fans loved them.