Frannie and Tru (3 page)

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

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 crackling 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—
hello
s and
how are you
s 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.”

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.

Tru had his own bathroom and shower down there, and I started to think he'd stay there indefinitely. Not just tonight but all summer. He would never come out; he would just lurk underneath us, doing whatever he did.

As I was thinking this, Mom came down from upstairs, and I ducked my head toward the unread pages. She walked right over and dropped a pile of towels on my lap, accidentally knocking the book to the floor.

“Take them down, please.”

I knew it should have been the most normal thing in the world, but the idea of taking those towels to him sent my heart racing. This was it. This was my chance. A chance at
what
exactly I wasn't really sure, I just knew I wanted to talk to Tru, to get him to smile at me like he had outside the station.

Yes, Frannie. Very subtle indeed.

Arms full, I walked carefully down into the basement. The bedroom was straight ahead at the bottom of the stairs. The lock had been broken for as long as I could remember, but the door was shut tight.

I knocked lightly, then waited. One second. Two seconds. Three.

“Come in.”

Tru was in Jimmy's bed, sitting up against the headboard, his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle. His things were invisible, either still in the suitcase or tucked completely away in
drawers. There was a book next to him on the bed.
The Great Gatsby
. In his right hand there was . . . something. Something that he was flipping around and around in his fingers, deftly as a magician, making the object appear and disappear from sight. I wondered if it was a little pencil, a golf pencil, when suddenly it was gone, tucked into his T-shirt pocket with a single motion.

He sat up and turned toward me, sitting cross-legged, hands folded neatly in front of him.

“Towels,” I said.

“Thank you,” he said.

I placed them on a desk chair just to my right, realizing that once again I had nothing to say. Seconds passed in silence, each moment humiliating, but I felt madly compelled to stay. I had to. Just yesterday, I'd been sure the summer would be long, miserable, pointless. Now Tru was here, with all his charm and his jokes and his shit-eating grin, and there was a chance that he could give some life to the coming weeks.

So I stood and stood and stood but did not leave.

Tru broke the silence.

“So your dad was saying something in the car right before we pulled up to the house. Something about a new school for you? A magnet school?”

“It's . . . yes. It's because . . . Do you know that my dad's been out of work?”

Tru nodded like he knew, but still, I felt like this was some kind of betrayal. I got defensive.

“Jimmy and Kieran are seniors, so it makes sense for them
to finish at St. Sebastian's, but I have three more years, and we can't . . . ah . . . well. You know. It makes sense for me to go to public school. So I applied and got in. To the public magnet school.”

“In the city?” he asked.

“In the city,” I answered.

Jimmy had been the one to pull me aside, months ago, and ask if I knew what that meant. That most of the kids would be black. “So what?” I'd snapped. “They're just a bunch of dorks like me.” But the week before Mom and Dad pulled the plug on our internet, I'd hunched over the computer to look up the student breakdown and seen that he was right. I felt ashamed for looking it up, and yet I knew without the slightest doubt what Jimmy had been trying to convey: that I'd be some freakish redheaded refugee from Catholic school. That I wouldn't make any friends.

But . . . that wasn't how the world worked anymore. Was it?

The pathetic thing was, I didn't actually know.

For the first time ever, I tried to imagine what it was like for black students at St. Sebastian's, and realized I had no clue. There were about eight hundred kids altogether, and there were, what, maybe a hundred who were black? I wasn't really friends with any of them, even though they hung out with plenty of white kids—sat with them in class and joked with them in the locker rooms and dated them sometimes. But at lunch, most of the black guys and girls sat together, and I had no idea why, if they wanted to or felt pressured to or some combination. All these questions had gotten tangled in my mind with my worries about next year at my new school, the whole mess of it consuming me when I was
trying to sleep. Eventually I'd started calming myself down with an elaborate fantasy.

It went like this: I would arrive at the magnet school and immediately start dating a boy on the JV basketball team. We would take the world's most beautiful homecoming photo, the dark skin of his arms circling my snow-white shoulders. He would have an older sister, who would hover over me with great affection, and the two of them would come to my house, and my parents and my brothers wouldn't know what to do. They would look in awe at the new person I had become, and they would feel proud but also distant from me, because of how much I had changed.
Can you believe
, they would ask each other,
that we ever worried about sending her to that school?
This would be my new, beautiful life, and my boyfriend would never know I was the kind of person who had done secret racist searches on the internet.

I had constructed this drama months ago, reliving it again and again until it grew warm and familiar. Now, as I talked to Tru, the whole of the fantasy flashed through my mind like a movie on fast-forward. He seemed on the verge of asking me more about school, but didn't, and I sensed something in that hesitation. There was understanding in the look he gave me, as if he knew how serious this change was, what it meant. We met each other's eyes, and then he cracked his knuckles, tilted his head, and let out a sharp sigh.

“Frannie, do you know a place called Siren?”

Siren was less than a mile from our house, a dark little restaurant and bar where local bands played at night. I nodded, and
my heart began a trill. I told him it was close, and he said that he knew that. He had looked it up.

“I have a friend, Frannie. She just started as a waitress there. She was a year ahead of me in school, and she's down here for the summer, before she goes off to college, taking some special class at MICA. Do you know MICA?”

MICA was the art college off Route 83. Or as Dad called it, “the planet's single greatest concentration of white kids with dreadlocks.”

I told Tru that I knew MICA.

“Well, then you're probably imagining that she's some kind of artsy nightmare. She's not really that bad, but I make sure to tease her about it mercilessly, just to keep her in line. Anyway, she's just finished up her shift, but she's sticking around to watch a show tonight.” He paused and waved his phone in my direction, a text lighting the screen. “Now, you and I are too young for after hours, but here's the thing. My friend can get us in, and from there we should be fine. I, for one, am agonizingly close to eighteen, and while you are not so close to eighteen, you
are
very, very tall, and I think that will work to our advantage.”

He paused and looked at me. “That would be fun, yes?”

All the blood in my body seemed to be surging up, up, up, as if I were standing on my head, rerouting my insides, looking at the world upside down. I wanted to go to Siren with Tru. I couldn't remember wanting anything more than this in my entire life.

I nodded, and Tru looked pleased.

“All right,” he said. “Now here's the thing, Frances Little. I
don't imagine your parents will be very thrilled with this plan. So this is the all-important question. Is there anywhere acceptable we could possibly pretend to be walking to at nine thirty at night?”

Happiness swelled inside me like a physical force. For once I knew exactly what to say.

“Yes,” I said. “We can tell them that we're going to Stix for Chix.”

He blinked at me several times, as if I were blurry and he was trying to make me come clear. He put his head down and did a quick cough, looked back.

“Well, I can't say we have that in Connecticut. By all means, please tell me more.”