When She Came Home (22 page)

“Josie said you were looking for me.” Bo Dekker picked up the pen and handed it to her.

Lost for a moment, she stared at him.

“You’re Captain…”

When she managed to speak her voice was as rough as the old wood bench on the Ocean Beach pier. “Frankie Tennyson. Domino’s my friend.”

Dekker wore his gray hair, thin at the front, combed straight back from his high forehead. Frankie could see that decades ago he had been handsome in the roguish fashion of an eighteenth-century highwayman, but time had eroded all softness from his face, leaving only angles and crags. His eyes were slits of bright blue.

“My brother runs the kids’ clinic in OB. Do you know it?”

“I do.”

“He did a blood test on Candace and found out she’s got hepatitis A. He wants to see her and Domino needs to be checked too. She works—”

“She doesn’t work there anymore.”

The woman at the table said, “You guys want to take it somewhere else? I’m trying to read.”

Dekker said, “Come on inside.”

Frankie followed him down the hall to the room where she had briefly observed his group. At the time she hadn’t noticed a gray metal desk shoved against the far wall. He got her a folding chair from the group circle.

“Domino never said your name.”

She was surprised by how much this hurt.

“But Candace talks about your kid all the time. Can’t shut up about her best friend. Glory, right?”

Frankie wondered if it had always and only been about the little girls.

“You were going to find her a place to live,” she said. “Did you?”

He studied her, chewing his lower lip thoughtfully. “I don’t want to be rude here, but I gotta be honest with you. I’m not comfortable talking about Domino.”

Her reaction was immediately defensive. “What am I, some kind of enemy all of a sudden?” And then she understood. “You’re protecting her from Jason.”

“You know him?”

“Has there been more trouble?”

“Do you know him?”

“No. Of course not. How would I? Why would you ask me that? I told you, I know Domino. We met at the clinic and we’re friends. Even if she never told you my name.” Her voice rose. “Where is she? What’s happened?”

“I’ll take a message.”

“No. I want to see her.”

The drawn-down weariness in Dekker’s expression called forth a physical reaction inside Frankie. Her body felt sluggish, as if she had absorbed through her pores the weight of the stories told in this room, Domino’s story multiplied hundreds of times over.

“My therapist, Dr. White in La Jolla? She wanted me to join one of your groups. Do you know her? She says you’re… good. At what you do.”

“But I haven’t seen you around here. Just that one time.”

She was a scholar and star athlete, the General’s daughter. What was it Harry said?
Born to be a hero.

“I thought I was different.”

“Terminal uniqueness.” He smiled a little. “We all think the same.”

If she wasn’t special, what was she?

“I’ll drive around until I find her.”

“Don’t waste the gas. I’ll talk to her. Give me your number. If she wants to see you, I’ll call and we’ll do it.”

T
hat night Frankie made a picnic dinner of ham sandwiches and salad and they ate on a blanket at Dogs’ Beach. Glory hit tennis balls for Flame, who was a frustratingly indifferent fetcher, preferring to visit with other dogs and chase birds. During the meal Frankie and Rick played their roles: happy mom and dad.

If Frankie thought about how she and Rick had come to this point and if she allowed herself to wonder what lay ahead and what it would all mean to Glory’s future, she dropped into a reality too depressing to bear.

“There’s a few grapes left. Wanna split them?”

He shook his head.

Rick had never clammed up this way, never refused to look at her. When they disagreed their way was to tangle and argue back and forth until they reached a compromise or one of them waved a white flag. This wasn’t the Rick she knew.

Running her fingers through the sand, she stared out to
sea, remembering a story from Iraq. It might not even be true but it had dug its claws into her memory.

A soldier found a runty dog, a poor starving creature with three legs and half its teeth gone and, defying regulations, kept it as a pet, feeding it hamburgers and chicken he carefully picked off the drumsticks served in the mess. Regulations against keeping animals were often ignored in Iraq. War was a lonely business even if you were in a noisy crowd all day. It was comforting to pet a dog and look into its worshipful eyes. One day when the soldier went out in a convoy, there was a sandstorm and an explosion, and he never came back. The dog, left chained to the tent, had been buried alive in the sand. When she thought about breaking up the family, Frankie felt like that dog.

At home Glory wanted to watch a video in the great room. Rick disapproved.

“You aren’t on a holiday.”

Glory’s face wilted. “Please don’t be mad at me anymore, Daddy.”

It’s me he’s mad at, not you.

“I don’t think you realize how serious it is, to be suspended from school.”

She stomped upstairs to her room.

“And no computer,” he yelled after her.

Frankie asked him, “Would you like some tea? And a cornucopia? There are two left over.”
From last night when I thought we could be happy again.
“It’s cool tonight. Maybe the weather’s changing. Finally, huh? Shall we have a fire?”

“I’m going to work out.”

She was reading in bed when he came in later, dripping sweat.

“How far did you go?”

“Not far enough.” He went into the bathroom and closed the door.

She tried to pay attention to the mystery open on her lap: Los Angeles, murder, mayhem, and an angsty cop with a fondness for jazz; but her feet were cold, and her mind would not settle. She closed the book and let it drop off the side of the bed. Pulling the comforter around her shoulders, she waited to see what would happen next.

Rick came out of the bathroom, releasing a whoosh of steamy air into the bedroom as he did. Wearing a towel slung low on his hips, he moved about the room picking his clothes up from the floor and lobbing them into his closet. He stopped at the foot of the bed.

“Melanie gave her notice today.”

For a moment Frankie could not remember who this was.

“She said she was too embarrassed to stay. Apparently everyone in the office thinks there’s been something going on between us. Thanks to you.”

“What’s she going to do?”

“Is that all you’ve got to say?”

“I’ll call her. I’ll apologize.”

“Don’t bother. She doesn’t even blame you. She’s too nice for that. She says she knows you’re not well.”

At Rick’s feet, Flame rolled over, wanting her tummy rubbed. He obliged her though he probably didn’t even know he was doing it. He needed to keep moving, doing something, anything to stay out of bed, away from her. In the same way she wanted to keep talking because so long as they were talking about everyday matters, she didn’t have to say what was most important.

“I heard from Harry today. Candace has hepatitis.”

“The thief.”

“He asked me if I knew where to find her. I went down to the Veterans’ Villa. There’s a man there she knows, but he wouldn’t tell me where she is. Not right off anyway. He’s protecting her from her ex.” She talked on, filling the emptiness with people and lives Rick didn’t care about. She knew better but she couldn’t stand the silence.

Rick sat in one of the easy chairs that faced the television. His back to her.

“Are you going to watch TV?”

He turned it on and then immediately off again. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said and left the room.

He did not come back to bed and was out of the house before she awoke the next morning.

Frankie relented to Glory’s logic and let her stay home alone while she went to La Jolla for her appointment with Dr. White. Before leaving she reviewed the rules. Glory was not to leave the house or use the stove or microwave oven. She could go in the back garden but not on the decks.

“Keep Flame with you.”

“Why? She’d just lick a robber to death.”

“Don’t let anybody in. Don’t even answer the phone.”

“Even if you call me? Even if I see your name on caller ID?”

“Okay. Me or Dad.”

“What about Gramma or Uncle Harry?”

“You know what I mean, Glory. Use your good sense.”

“Why is everyone so mad at me?”

She found a parking space on Herschel, next to the most beautiful automobile she had ever seen. Before going up to the office, she stood on the sidewalk and admired the sea-green Bentley convertible as if it were a piece of sculpture in a gallery. The car gave her something to talk about during the warm-up minutes of her appointment when there was always a slight awkwardness; but her therapist wasn’t a car enthusiast and, really, neither was Frankie so the small talk got smaller and eventually vanished.

She stared out the window at the palm trees. When the wind blew the fronds brushed against each other and made a sound like rain.

She burst into tears. “He’s given up.”

“Frankie, I’m so sorry. Things must have gotten much worse.”

Light danced off the palm fronds.

“Talk to me, Frankie.”

“He’s cold now. He’s never been cold before.”

“What does that mean?”

“He won’t look at me. Or talk to me. He slept downstairs last night.”

Once sex might have been a bridge over a stressful time, but they had not been intimate in six weeks. Frankie’s choice. She couldn’t relax in his arms and lying beside him, not touching, his desire was like an unpredictable animal. At first he had been patiently understanding. Twice she’d forced herself to have sex out of guilt, both times were disasters worse than abstinence. The rejections hurt him, she knew, but she couldn’t keep saying she was sorry all the time.

Dr. White handed her the tissue box and she remembered Trelawny Scott doing the same thing a few days earlier. She had cried more since she came home than in the previous two years, five years, maybe her whole life. Tears came when words were inadequate. Tears came gushing out of sorrow and resignation, out of hopelessness.

“He’s given up on me and I don’t blame him. How can I? Talking to Glory’s headmistress, I realized it’s all my fault. Everything. Glory’s problems, Rick’s and mine. I’ve asked him to be patient and give me more time, but I really haven’t done anything to make things better.”

“You come here twice a week. I think that’s something.”

“Why? I sit in your office and cry.”

“Therapy’s a new language, Frankie. It takes time to learn how to talk about all the things you don’t want to talk about. In the meantime, you cry.”

This was the nut of it:
All the things you don’t want to talk about.
This was what closed her throat and killed the songs, sent the black crows flying through her thoughts and into the past, circling over Three Fountain Square, the forbidden territory.

“I met that guy you recommended. Bo Dekker?”

“You went to his group?” There was no missing the hope in White’s question.

“Because of Domino. I thought we were friends, but he didn’t even know my name.”

“That hurt you.”

She began crying again. “Damn, I hate this.”

“Catharsis is real, not just something the Greeks invented to make their plays more interesting. Even a general’s daughter needs it.”

Frankie sneaked a look at the clock. Thirty minutes remaining. She blotted her tears and began shredding the tissue.

“What are you thinking?”

“Nothing. Everything.”

Dr. White laughed. “Sometimes they can feel like the same thing.”

“I left Glory home alone.”

“And you’re nervous about this.”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“Are you?”

“She’s a good girl and she knows not to talk to strangers. Besides my mother’s across the street.”

“But something still bothers you.”

Tears again. “I don’t want her to grow up. She’s on her way out the door before I even had a chance to be her mother.”

“Did you want to be a mother?”

“You know the answer to that.” Rick had been the one eager to begin a family. “But now that she’s going—”

“Frankie, you left her home alone for two hours. There’s a long way between that and ‘going.’ ”

“You don’t have children. You don’t know how the time flies. He’ll be gone and so will she and I’ll be alone.”

“You could have another baby. Have you thought of that?”

“I just told you. He’s finished.” And so cold, he chilled the house.

“Has he told you he wants out of the marriage?”

“I know, I can tell. He’s already gone.”

She imagined their divorce. At first they would make every effort to keep it amicable, but it couldn’t stay that way because Rick would want Glory. He would argue for her in court. A judge would determine that Frankie was an unfit mother.

“I left her and went to Iraq.”

“Men do it all the time.”

“A judge wouldn’t care.” A judge would feel as the General did. She was
unnatural.

“It strikes me that you’re spending a lot of time looking ahead to what might happen in the future. Maybe there’s
somewhere else you can put your attention. Something you can deal with right now.”

She told her about Domino. “I’m just waiting to hear from Dekker.”

“I agree that it would be good if you could help your friend. I think it might boost your confidence. But I was thinking of something closer to home, Frankie.”

“Like what?”

“Well.” Dr. White settled herself. “You could ask Rick straight out if he wants a divorce.”

B
unny’s dark blue BMW was in the driveway, blocking the garage door. Frankie parked on the hill and rushed up the stairs onto the deck. Through the wall of windows she saw into the living room. Glory sat cross-legged on the floor, Bunny on the couch. Between them on the glass-topped coffee table was a Monopoly board.

As Frankie let herself in Glory bragged, “I’ve got three hotels on Park Place.”