Frannie and Tru Page 2

  I was standing in a valley the size of a football field, and there was no one there but me. A sharp bark came from somewhere in the thick trees, far off ahead of me and to the right. Slower, more cautiously, I jogged across the expanse of the park until I reached the creek. I turned left, following its rocky edge, looking over my shoulder every few seconds. Still no one. This was the most exciting thing I’d done in weeks, which was ridiculous, but I was just happy to feel my heart pumping as I ran. I was glad for this bit of danger, small as it was.

  The creek led into a huge cement cavern, cars roaring by on the bridge overhead. White walls arched over me, a story and a half high. Every footstep echoed. I made my legs pump faster, faster, faster, carrying me along the thin walkway, the creek trickling alongside. Grafitti screamed from the walls. EVA IS A SLUT 4EVA. BOBBY SNORTS CRACK. (For reals? someone asked just below.)

  I burst out the other end, into the outer edge of the park. Turning toward the trees, I quickly found the one I was searching for, the old beech tree with a knot in the center. I stood at the proper place in front of it, took a right, and walked until I reached a thick covering of what looked like poison ivy but was just a harmless patch of sumac.

  This was it, our perfect hiding spot. Years ago, Jimmy and Kieran had buried an old toolbox here in the dirt. I had stood lookout while they dug, working for what seemed like forever to hollow out a big enough hole. They called it the safe, and they used it to hide fireworks and cigarettes. Plus things I never even knew about, I’m sure. Now here I was, being the bad one. Or at least trying to be. I tilted the bottle back and forth, watching the liquid slide, feeling excited, hopeful. I might actually have a reason to drink this before the summer was out. It might end up being the key to some perfect summer night.

  I tiptoed into the sumac, which I hadn’t dug through in—what? Three years? More? It was insane to think the safe would be still be here, but I pushed aside the leaves and looked. The pyramid of rocks they used to pile up on top was gone, but something was sticking up from the dirt. I kneeled down to look closer, poking it.

  It was the red plastic handle of the toolbox.

  My hands reached into the cracked, dry dirt, and I started to dig.

  With the bottle hidden, I walked slowly back through the tunnel and cut across the length of the park, following a dirt path up and out, back onto the sidewalk.

  I was a block and a half from home, but didn’t want to be there, not yet, not with the twins stomping up and down the stairs, yelling stupid jokes about Tru. Instead, I walked down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. I listened to birds, watched squirrels, kicked an old can. Head down, I circled around and went back a different way than I’d come, taking the alley that ran behind our row of houses. There were backyards on either side, and I peeked over short fences or in between the planks of tall ones, spying on the barbecue grills, sandboxes, and tiny vegetable gardens of our neighbors.

  I was almost home, and I was grimy. I tried to brush the dirt off my knees and hands. I was scraping it from underneath my fingernails when I heard Dad’s voice. He was in the backyard with Mom.

  “Christ, Barb. He’s not my kid. What do I care what he’s into? You think I need a lecture on being nice to my freaking nephew?”

  Mom whispered angrily back at him, spitting each word too low for me to hear.

  Silence. Dad sighed.

  “Well, yeah. It’s bad. It’s a bad situation. It’s a lot to deal with. Your sister needs time. They both need time.”

  Her voice came back softer. Dad cut her off.

  “Look, let’s talk about this later. I don’t want the kids to hear.”

  Another mumble from Mom.

  “No, no! I mean, god. I don’t think we should tell them.”

  The smallest hush, which must have been Mom again.

  “No, don’t tell them any of it. Right? How would we even begin? This is all so, so . . . personal. And what good would it do? The kid’s here for the summer, not forever. You think he’s going to prance home with some new boy toy every night?”

  Boy toy?

  At first I didn’t understand. It was like listening to my Spanish teacher—the words had a hint of meaning, but I had to roll them around to make the connection. . . .

  And then suddenly I did.

  The sun glared down, and I waited to hear more, but they said nothing. Their footsteps moved across the little plot of grass that was our backyard, and the screen door slammed behind them. For several beats, I didn’t move. I stood there in perfect stillness, thinking of the only Truman I could clearly picture—the ghost boy in the school photo.

  He was cocking his eyebrow as if to say, What?

  THREE

  The train station was big and beautiful, with old wooden benches like church pews and soaring stone walls like a castle. Standing at its center, I hoped that Tru would be impressed, that he would think Baltimore was somewhere special. Somewhere beautiful, even.

  Then I imagined telling Jimmy and Kieran that, how they would fall over laughing.

  Dad and I waited together, not saying much. He checked his phone repeatedly, looking at who knows what, while I stared at the glowing arrival board and thought of nothing but the conversation I’d overheard in the backyard.

  When I watched TV, it seemed like there were gay people everywhere, in every high school and law office and hospital, but I’d hardly met any at all. There was my old gymnastics coach, Miss Ann, but I hadn’t even known she was gay, not until just last year, when I saw her picture in a slide show online, getting married at the courthouse after Maryland made it legal. She was waving a bouquet over her head, and her new wife was crying, and that made me want to cry, too, even though I hadn’t seen or thought about her in ages.

  So there was her, and then of course there was the only kid who was actually officially out at our little Catholic school. The gorgeous, the quiet, Jeremy Bell. But he was older than me. I’d had class with him once, but never really talked to him. I just knew about him, like everybody did. I knew that he was only really friends with girls, and that last year they ate in the art room together, to avoid the cafeteria and some group of asshole senior guys. I knew that he used to play baseball, but that he quit the same year he started telling people he was gay.

  And I knew he still went to all the big parties at Beau Womack’s house, just like my brothers did, but I’d also heard Jimmy tell a story about how every time Jeremy walked in the door, Beau would say, “No date tonight? Good.” Then he would laugh like that was hilarious. Jimmy clearly thought it was hilarious, too.

  Technically, as Catholics, my parents were supposed to care, were supposed to think it was a sin, though who knows if they actually did. The two of them couldn’t even sign my sex-ed permission slip without blushing, so it wasn’t exactly the kind of thing we’d talk about over dinner. Now that I thought about it, I did remember my mom getting really upset when there were all those stories about bullying and suicides, but she got upset at the news a lot. And I guess she liked that show about the hairdressers, but whenever it was on Dad would say, “My god, not this,” and leave the room.

  Still . . . earlier today in the backyard, when he’d said he didn’t care, even though he’d said it roughly, harshly, I was pretty sure he’d meant it.

  I looked up at him then, watching as he rubbed his eyes with his hand. There was something backward and buttoned-up about the way they whispered in the backyard, but at least it seemed like they could handle that Tru was gay. So why couldn’t Aunt Deb and Uncle Richard do the same? What had Dad said—that they “needed time”? The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I wanted badly to tell Tru how sorry I was. I wanted him to know that I wasn’t like that, not at all, and I wasn’t like my parents either—he could talk to me. I sat there writing righteous little speeches in my head, imagining how relieved he would be to hear me say it, how impressed he’d be by me, how eager he’d be for us to be friends . . .

  The PA system came on, and a cr
ackling voice announced that his train from Bridgeport had arrived. Passengers were already rushing up the stairs from the platform, hurrying and scurrying along.

  There was a big crowd of people, but I saw him right away. He pulled a small suitcase behind him and had a messenger bag slung over his shoulder. Other people were fumbling and straining beneath their loads, but Tru walked easily, as if his bags weighed nothing. He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt, with a pair of Converse sneakers exactly like the ones Jimmy and Kieran had.

  Wouldn’t they be surprised.

  He stopped a slightly awkward distance away, removed from us but smiling. His face was much leaner than in the old picture in the drawer. He had bright eyes, dark but shining, and the kind of perfect skin I wanted for myself. His hair was thick and straight, worn longish but unfussy. And I knew it was kind of weird, but I tried to imagine what the girls I knew would say about him.

  Hot. They would definitely say he was hot.

  He greeted Dad first. They said empty words to each other—hellos and how are yous and “How was the train ride?” and “Thank you, Uncle Patrick, for picking me up.”

  My father towered over him, as he towered over almost everyone. He was absolutely enormous—a great big man with the last name Little, which always made people laugh. His hand was a paw, and it swallowed Tru’s hand whole when the two of them shook. His grip could crush, but I noticed that Tru didn’t flinch, didn’t seem to even blink, and I wasn’t sure if Dad was going easy on him or if Truman simply wasn’t rattled by it.

  I told myself it was stupid to be nervous, but I couldn’t help the blush that rose to my cheeks. I hated that I had to stand here, on display for someone who hadn’t seen me in years. He turned to me, and I was ready for all the obvious comments about how tall I was, how he barely recognized me. I realized too late that I should have been prepared, should have thought of something clever to say. . . .

  “Hi, Frannie.”

  His face was expressionless. He hardly seemed to see me at all.

  I started to say hello back to him, but my mouth was dry, and I practically choked on the words. He looked at me like I was some sort of unfamiliar creature, a bug that he was not particularly happy to have stumbled upon. After that he clucked his tongue. Checked his watch.

  Dad shifted his feet and cleared his throat in a way that seemed loud and unnecessary. He asked about carrying Tru’s bags. There was a pause, and Tru shrugged. It was pretty clear he didn’t need our help.

  We left the train station through the fancy glass doors, heading toward the garage where our car was parked. My mind was a jumble of thoughts, stray puzzle pieces that I couldn’t make fit together. Shit-eating grins. Corpuscles. Boy toys. An echo of Kieran’s voice: Truman is kind of a dick.

  Why had I ever thought he would make my summer better?

  We walked in a straight line: Dad, then me, then Tru. I could hear his suitcase rolling behind him, hitting a seam in the sidewalk every few feet. Then the sound stopped. I turned to see what had happened, and there was Tru, paused in his tracks, caught in a streetlamp’s glow as distant skyscrapers sparkled behind him. He was looking straight up into the air.

  “What is that?” he asked no one in particular.

  The question caught Dad, who glanced back, too. He followed Tru’s gaze and began to giggle.

  My father looked like he should have some deep, echoing belly laugh, but no. He had a high-pitched little giggle. Like a girl, really. I’d seen people jump at the sound, it was so unexpected. Right then he couldn’t seem to stop. He was going like a motor.

  When he’d gotten control, he crossed his arms over the expanse of his chest and looked at Tru. “It’s art!” he said. “Fine art. Can’t you tell?”

  Tru looked again at the object in question, neck craned to see it in full. Seconds passed and then he laughed, too.

  “No, actually. I’m not sure that I can.”

  Dad and I had seen the sculpture a million times, but we came to stand beside Tru so we could look along with him. Two colossal figures, one a man and one a woman, were towering up from the roundabout in front of the train station. Their stiff, paper-doll-like bodies intersected to form an X. They were silver, constructed of shiny, rippling aluminum, and where their chests met, they shared a single heart made of soft lights that changed colors. They were fifty feet tall, a part of the skyline, and the bulbs at their center acted as a strange lighthouse that glowed gently over the city.

  People hated the thing.

  The sculpture had been up for years, and everyone still complained about it—how much it’d cost, the way it clashed with all the old buildings around it. Just last year the newspaper had printed a letter to the editor about how even with some time and perspective, it was still a monstrosity. Dad had read it out loud to us, giggling until there were tears in his eyes. Whenever we drove by it, he rolled down his window and screamed, “CULTURE!”

  Now, after months of being so much quieter than usual, Dad was positively lit up. Devilish-looking. He stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder.

  “Ask Frannie what it means. Her social studies teacher had her class debate the thing last year—it was the tenth anniversary or something. She knows all about it.”

  Tru half looked at me, his eyes already bored. My throat dried up again. There were things I could have said, if I’d wanted to. We’d had to come up with a list of pros and cons and then pick a side, and I’d taken the pro-sculpture side, with just a few other people. I knew the thing was weird, but I kind of liked that it was weird. I liked that it bothered people and maybe even made them think. Plus, at the right time of night, from certain angles, I swear it was actually pretty.

  So, sure, I could have told Tru about how the artist was a big deal and had his work all over the country and the world. And I could have explained how a lot of his pieces were these giant paper-doll people, and they were supposed to be superhuman and spiritual and symbolic.

  Instead, I said none of these things, because I knew with a deep and sure instinct that Truman didn’t give a damn. He wanted to laugh at this thing, not hear a thesis on it.

  I looked for a way to escape this conversation. I opened my mouth to say, Nobody cares, Dad, but wasn’t able to do it. This was my father, he’d lost his job, and he was fragile now in a way that he hadn’t been before. I stewed in a fierce silence, as none of us made a move to leave. Dad turned to me.

  “C’mon, Frannie. You don’t want to school your cousin on the finer points?”

  Next to me, Tru’s indifference was a great invisible wall, a force field between us. I looked at the sculpture through his eyes, and there, in that moment, I started to hate it a little bit, too. The thing was a joke, the silly dream of some stuck-up artist who thought he was deep and smart. As I watched the heart’s muted glow turn from magenta to lilac, it seemed uglier to me than ever before. Ugly and embarrassing, just like everything here, everything in my life that Truman was about to see. For the first time, it struck me that the whole idea was childish and simple—the two figures, male and female, joined together like it meant something.

  So when I finally spoke, I spoke as sarcastically as I possibly could.

  “It’s a man and a woman made into one thing,” I said, waving an arm in its direction. “So it’s superugly, but it’s a superbrilliant commentary on, you know, gender or whatever. Very subtle.”

  In that moment, something happened to Tru’s posture. He straightened a bit and glanced in my direction. He started to grin, really grin, his face transforming into something delighted and wicked, like a handsome version of the Grinch.

  He looked . . . pleasantly surprised.

  He cocked an eyebrow, just like in the photo, and turned his gaze back skyward.

  “Yes, Frannie,” he said. “Very subtle indeed.”

  FOUR

  We’d been in the house only minutes, but Tru seemed to have already defused the anger and sarcasm bomb that was Jimmy and Kieran. It happened right in front
of me, and I still couldn’t explain how he did it.

  On seeing them, he had nodded instead of shaking their hands, and stood in front of his suitcase, seeming to take up very little room. He refused offers of a drink, didn’t make a move to sit, and didn’t ask where he would be sleeping. His eyes had connected with a lacrosse stick in the corner and he’d made an offhand comment about how Connecticut kids couldn’t play lacrosse for shit.

  He’d actually said those words. For shit. He’d then sent an embarrassed, apologetic, totally charming smile in my mother’s direction.

  To my amazement she’d smiled back and said nothing.

  Over the course of the next few minutes, everyone talked a little more, Jimmy’s face relaxing a bit and Kieran’s growing almost warm. They actually asked Tru if he wanted to come with them to the basketball courts down the street for a pickup game. He seemed to consider before declining by saying he was “kind of beat.” With that, the two of them were out the door, and Dad disappeared after them, saying he needed a beer, would be home soon.

  Then it was just the three of us. Mom had been scrubbing the bathrooms and picking up the basement, and she was still wearing her cleaning getup: an old pair of the twins’ gym shorts and an Orioles jersey. One of those dumb pink ones they make for ladies. Her hair was swept into a wild mess of a bun that leaned awkwardly to the side. I was afraid she was going to say something corny about how happy we were to have him and how much family means, blah blah blah. But she didn’t say anything. She just walked over to Tru, put her hands on her hips, and let out a sigh. Then, with a pained, stiff motion, she reached her arms out and gave him a hug.

  After swearing that he’d eaten a perfectly fine sandwich on the train, Tru was allowed to escape to Jimmy’s old room and begin moving in. He’d been down there now for half an hour, and I’d been sitting on the living room couch, trying to begin the first book of my summer reading. I couldn’t get through one paragraph. My whole body was on alert, aware of the presence rumbling in the basement. Like a dragon was shifting its bulk and whipping its tail, searching for room in the confines below.