The Temptations of St. Frank (17 page)

Frank zeroed in on the conspicuous space after his father's name, the space for “& Son.”

“Whatta ya got there?” his father said to Carol.

“A pop.” She went to the truck and extended the Stupendo to him. “Wanna bite?”

“Of course I wanna bite.” He took the pop from her and took a bite. A big bite. In a flash half of her Strawberry Shortcake Stupendo was gone.

Frank looked at his sister, concerned that she would be upset by this, but she just smiled her beatific saint smile. She was definitely Daddy's girl. He could do no wrong.

Exhaust from the idling truck filled the air. Frank was used to it from pushing a lawn mower all day, but he worried about his sister and the other little kids. He thought about the toxic smoke from the landfill.

“You wanna ride in the truck,” his father said to Carol.

“Ah-huh.” She ran around the front of the truck, and Frank's heart stopped as he imagined his father's foot slipping off the clutch and the big truck lurching over her.

But it didn't, and his sister climbed in on the passenger side, happy as could be, sitting high in the cab with her daddy.

A liquid bead of vanilla ice cream had formed at the edge of Frank's cone, threatening to drip onto his hand. He heard the grind of the truck gears as his father worked the stick shift.

“Listen,” Frank blurted out before the truck pulled away. “Grandpa showed me something a little while ago.”

A look of panic flattened his father's smile. Frank's parents feared that his grandfather would turn him into a communist. Grandpa was actually more of a socialist, but Frank's parents thought one was the same as the other.

“He showed me your violin.”

The panic disappeared from his father's face, but he just shrugged.

“I never knew you were that good,” Frank said.

His father waved the thought away. “That was a long time ago.” He held up his dirty hands. “Before this,” he said. His fingers were short, thick, and calloused. They seemed too clumsy for the violin's narrow fingerboard.

“You tried out for the New York Philharmonic. What happened with that?”

“Nothin'. What do you think?”

“Yeah, but you were really good.”

“Forget about that. I told you, that was a long time ago.” Frank Sr. turned to his daughter. “Can I have another bite?”

She nodded, and he took her pop, chomping off another big hunk. It was down to about a third of its original size.

“So why didn't you stay with it?” Frank said.

“What?”

“The violin. You could have been a professional.”

“Is that what Grandpa told you?”

“I read the newspaper articles.”

“Don't worry about that stuff. It's not important.”

He ground the gears, shoving it into first, then revved the engine and drove up the incline of the driveway, leaving Frank in a cloud of exhaust.

The bead of vanilla on Frank's cone had become a full-fledged drip, and it had left a white line along the side of the cone straight to Frank's knuckles. He licked the drip. His sticky fingers reminded him where they'd been that morning. They could have gotten a lot stickier if it weren't for Mrs. Trombetta and his father. He pictured Annette in her bikini on the psychedelic sheets, her Nancy Sinatra hair splayed out on the pillow. He looked up at his house to the windows of his room on the second floor.

Can't beat off now, he thought. Everybody's home.

He bit off the bottom of the sugar cone and tossed the rest over the cyclone fence into the thick blanket of pachysandra that bordered the lawn.

He started walking up the driveway.

Guess I'll play guitar for a while.

The Rolling Stones' most famous lick came out of nowhere and flew into his head. Dah-dah, dah-dah-dum… dah-dum-dum… “(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction.”

He kneaded the purple rubber gorilla as he brooded. His mother was still in a snit. Had been all weekend, refusing to talk, acting like a wounded martyr. And his father was bugging him every ten minutes about Annette. Worried, on the one hand, that Frank had “done something” to her, implying that he had gotten her pregnant, but on the other hand, asking him over and over again if he'd called her and asked her out on a date yet. Frank was totally confused about her and didn't know what he was going to do. Annette didn't seem to have much going on between the ears, but he couldn't stop thinking about her bod and her bitchin' hair and the fact that she'd let him get to third base. If that was what third base was—he wasn't exactly sure how the baseball analogy lined up with what he had accomplished with her. To him it seemed more like a rundown, him on the line between second and third, trapped between his father and Annette's mother.

But Yolanda was still on his mind. She was always on his mind. And so was Tina, a little bit. They were girls with substance. They were smart. Tina was witty, and Yolanda had an elusiveness that made her a puzzle he wanted to solve. Annette was obvious. She was a type. Frank didn't see himself with a type.

BUT…

Annette put out. He had a feeling, under the right circumstances, Tina might. And Yolanda—it was hard to tell. She seemed like a good girl, someone who would only go so far with a guy. Second base, tops.

But he still liked her best, and that's why he was up here, like a moth drawn to a yellow back-porch light bulb. He wanted to see her, talk to her, get to know her better. He wanted to see if there was any possibility that he and she could go plural and become a “they.”

But as Frank kneaded the rubber gorilla, he stared down at the back page of his open ring binder, the page crowded with more doodles than the tattooed lady's back, the page that contained the codes to Frank's secret goals and desires, one of which was to get laid before he graduated from high school, which was five weeks away, and it was highly unlikely that he would achieve that goal with Yolanda. Annette was a much better bet, but he had a feeling that if he slept with her, he'd be stuck with her. And he didn't see himself as half of a plural pronoun with John Trombetta's daughter.

He dug his fingers deeper into the gorilla, gouging his belly and contorting his face. Actually Tina might be his best bet, he thought. He liked her. She was easy to talk to, easier than the other two. And she just might put out. Maybe he should focus on her.

But Yolanda was the one he thought about all the time, the one who gave him a boner before he went to sleep every night.

Shit, he thought, this was fucking hard.

He looked at the door. Yolanda and Tina were probably on the other side of it right now, waiting for their physics class. Unless one of them was out sick. He hadn't peeked through the transom the way he usually did. He was afraid to. He was too confused. He'd had his middle finger just millimeters from the inside of Annette's snatch. They might know. They might smell it on him. Girls are like that. They have special powers that boys don't have.

His glance drifted up to the transom, which was open a few inches. It was always open because it had been painted open a long time ago. All the better to hear the Walrus King coming. And all the better to hear Yolanda and Tina and the rest of the Mother of Peace girls. He could hear them now, chattering and giggling like a bunch of squirrels with a bag of peanuts. He couldn't make out what they were saying, but he could hear them.

Frank lifted himself out of his seat and quietly climbed over the desktop, careful not to make any noise. He took the only other chair in the room, a gray metal straightback with a torn plastic seat, and carried it to the door, setting it down without a sound. He stepped up on it and slowly raised his head until he could see through the dirty glass, ready to drop down out of sight if one of the girls spotted him or Mr. Whalley showed up.

The Mother of Peace girls sat on the floor in a row against the wall, their bare legs extended, ankles crossed, books in their laps. The nerdiest of the nerd girls was writing in her open binder, her unibrow furrowed, her expression intense. Two others girls were huddled head-to-head, giggling about something. Yolanda and Tina were doing the same. Frank studied their faces. They were both pretty when they laughed, but Yolanda was pretty even when she looked mad or bored. Whenever he saw her with her serious face, he always wanted to do something to make her laugh. But Tina had a way of making
him
laugh—or at least grin—with her sly little cat face and the crazy things she said.

Frank raised his head a little higher so that his ear would be closer to the opening in the transom. He strained to hear what they were saying, but the heavy scuff of leather soles coming up the stairs drowned out their words. From where he was standing, he could see straight down the staircase to the landing below, and suddenly he saw a bald head rounding the landing and coming toward him. It was fucking Whalley! As usual he was wearing his raincoat, hauling his big fat about-to-have-a-heart-attack ass up the stairs. Frank ducked out of sight. If Whalley caught him in the building before eight again so soon after having been warned, the punishment would be walking jug. Maybe double walking jug. In the hot sun. In the rain. Bataan Death March jug.

Frank froze where he was, crouched on the chair, listening for the Walrus King to start bellowing. But he didn't do that. And Frank couldn't hear his footsteps either. He must have stopped by the Mother of Peace girls. But what did he want with them? They had permission to be in the building before eight.

Frank listened hard. He was dying to know what Whalley was up to. He slowly raised his head so that he could see out the transom, but all he could see was Whalley's backside and his big raincoat. He was standing in front of Yolanda and Tina, blocking the view. He seemed to be talking to them.

One of the girls was sobbing. What the hell did that lard-ass bastard do? Give them jug? Did he tell them they were going to hell for something they'd done?

Frank got up on his toes so he could get a better look. All the girls were on their feet, clustered together. They were gathered around Yolanda who was the one crying, tears streaking her cheeks. Frank's heart pounded. What the hell was wrong?

Whalley put his hand on her shoulder. His sympathetic expression was something Frank had never seen. Whalley was acting nice for a change. Tina picked up Yolanda's books from the floor and handed them to Whalley. She gave Yolanda a big hug, then Whalley took Yolanda's arm and led her to the stairway. Together they walked down the steps. He's taking her to the electric chair, Frank thought.

Frank watched until they disappeared down the stairs, then he got down off the chair and opened the door a crack. The girls were huddled in a tight pack like spooked chickens.

“Tina,” he whispered. “Tina. What happened?”

She turned around. Her cat face wasn't sly, and her eyes were red with tears.

“Yolanda's grandfather. He died. She just found out.”

“The guy I met? The old guy with the white hair?”

Tina nodded and stepped toward the door. “They took him to the hospital early this morning, but I guess they couldn't do anything for him. I saw him the day before yesterday. He was having such a hard time breathing.” Her face crumpled, and she buried it in his shoulder. He hugged her, and she cried. She smelled nice. Her skin on his cheek was soft. He started to get hard and felt like a real shit. This was no time for that.

The other girls stared at them with sad faces. Did they want hugs? Frank wasn't ready for that, not with nerd girls, though he did feel bad about Yolanda's grandfather.

“Was it the pollution from the landfill?” he asked.

Tina shrugged. “I don't know… Probably.” She disintegrated into sobs and started trembling, and that made Frank nervous. Was she okay? Was she gonna faint? What should he do? If she was gonna have a breakdown and he had to rescue her, couldn't she just wait till the eight o'clock bell rang so he wouldn't get in trouble for being in the building?

Not knowing what else to do, he rubbed her back. Her shoulders were thin, the bones delicate. He moved his hand to the middle of her back and, without even trying, felt her bra strap.

Oh, Christ! he yelled at his penis. Not now!

She turned her head, and he could feel her tears turning cold on his cheek. It sobered him up, and he genuinely felt sad. His throat tightened, almost as if he could shed a tear himself.

“Fucking bastards,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “The landfill. That's what killed him.” A deep shiver went through her body and shook him, too. She hugged him tight and couldn't stop sobbing.

He felt that he should do something, that he
had
to do something. But what?

Brrrnngggg!

The eight o'clock bell rang. Instinctively Frank wanted to hustle to lock up the yearbook office and get to his first class, but Tina was still holding onto him, so he held onto her.

She lifted her head off his shoulder and looked him in the eye. She was kissing distance away. “That fucking smoke is gonna kill everyone,” she said with a sniff. She let go of him and picked up her books from the floor, wiping her nose with a soggy Kleenex. She filed into the physics lab with the other sad-faced girls and didn't look back at him.

Had he done something wrong? he wondered. Was there something he was supposed to say that he didn't? Was she mad? Or just very upset about Yolanda's grandfather?

He ran back into the office and grabbed his book bag. As he was about to pull the door closed behind him, his eye went to the scratched gray file cabinet in the corner, and something occurred to him. He reached into his book bag and rooted around the bottom until he found what he was looking for, the newspaper clipping that Yolanda's grandfather had given him. He had shoved it in there when he got home that night and had intended to read it. EXPERTS CLAIM BURNING LANDFILL IS HEALTH HAZARD, the headline said. The guy who wrote it was named Arthur Brown.

Maybe there
was
something he could do, he thought.

Brrrrnnggg! The second bell rang.

Shit! He had to get moving. 4H guys from the honors physics class were climbing the stairs. Frank rushed to the file cabinet and yanked open the top drawer.

Mr. Pomeroy, Frank's math teacher, stood on one of the radiators, posture as straight as a ruler, surveying the classroom like the statue of St. Anselm on the front lawn. The only difference was, St. Anselm had his hand raised with two fingers extended to give a blessing and Mr. Pomeroy's arms where crossed, one hand holding his pipe. He managed to climb up on the radiators at some point during every class he taught.

“All right,” he said, his teeth clenched on the pipe stem. “Which among you would care to astound me with his genius and solve the first problem on the board? What does
X
equal? Anyone?”

No one raised his hand. The sound of Mr. Pomeroy's pipe stem clacking against his yellow teeth filled the silence.

Mr. Pomeroy was stick thin with long legs, and whenever he stepped up on a chair to get onto a radiator, he reminded Frank of Dick Van Dyck on the rooftops of London in
Mary Poppins.
Pomeroy's only major quirk was that he liked to stand on the radiators when he taught, which was kind of difficult for a math teacher. Every math teacher Frank had ever had constantly wrote on the blackboard to show what he was teaching. But Mr. Pomeroy spent the first ten minutes of every class filling the blackboard with what he was going to teach that day so he could climb up on his perch for the rest of the period. If anything needed to be added to the lesson he'd put on the board, he would call on a student and tell him what to write.

There was no official reason for Mr. Pomeroy's habit of standing on radiators, but there was a rumor. Mr. Pomeroy, like a lot of the lay teachers at St. A's, had been a “sem,” a seminary student, when he was college age. The other sem teachers had dropped out before taking their vows, but supposedly Pomeroy made it all the way through the program. He was all set to take his vows and become a priest, but on the big day he went AWOL. Totally disappeared. He was eventually found standing in a tree at the edge of a corn field doing God knows what, and it took some doing to talk him down. Of course, this rumor was unconfirmed—the school didn't want parents to think they had a nut case teaching math as well as coaching the track team.

Frank took a look at the first problem on the board. 4 sin
³
+ 2 sin
²
– 2 sin X – 1 = 0. He had no idea where to begin, and he suspected his classmates were probably in the same boat. That's why they were all so quiet. Frank didn't understand trigonometry, and with a little over a month left till graduation, he didn't care if he ever understood it. There was nothing real about trig. The way Pomeroy taught it, trig was abstract and theoretical and had no real-world application. If you could use trig to do something useful, like putting out the underground fire at the landfill, then Frank would pay attention, make it his business to learn trig. But it couldn't, so he didn't.

“Anyone?” Mr. Pomeroy raked his bottom teeth with the pipe. The sound made Frank cringe. A skeleton playing the xylophone on himself. It was almost as bad as scratching a fingernail on a blackboard. “Mister…. Mister…” Pomeroy shaded his eyes like a sailor looking for land as he scanned the classroom. “Mr…. Vitale! Dazzle us with your acumen.”

Vitale's face sagged. Sitting on the other side of the room, farthest from the windows, he heaved a deep sigh and hauled himself out of his desk.

“Please, Mr. Vitale. Embrace the challenge. I firmly believe that today is your day to shine.” Pomeroy pointed to the section of blackboard he had left blank for student calculations. “Just as the pagan Saul was struck down from his horse and saw the light, facilitating his miraculous conversion to the illustrious St. Paul, I am convinced that you will shake off your cocoon of ignorance and show yourself to be a resplendent chrysalis.”