I had left my life in New York City and for the past month had been rehabilitating in New Jersey in the half-finished apartment over Frankie’s garage. Our deal was that I’d babysit my niece and nephew on occasion, though it hadn’t quite worked out yet. Frankie stood at the bottom of the stairs to the apartment, balancing a load of laundry on her hip, waiting for my answer. We had the same mass of dark curly hair and we were both slightly pear-shaped with pitted cheeks from long-ago acne.
“Sorry, Frankie,” I said. “But I have a date.”
Slowly, she made a face at me. “Shit on a stick! I’m going to get stuck with Constance Poblanski. Fiona, how much do you want to bet I’m going to get stuck with Constance Poblanski?”
“You’re going to get stuck with Constance Poblanski,” I said.
Frankie sighed.
“Shit on a stick,” I said, sympathetically.
“Well, I hope you get laid,” she said.
“Thank you.”
Yesterday, after the stickup at Wawa where I met Derek Head, Frankie and I had sat at her kitchen table, eating fat-free cream cheese on rice cakes, as I described in great detail Derek Head’s looks, exactly what words passed between us, how I felt talking with him, how I thought he felt, what I thought could happen between us, what I thought the children we would never have might look like, with his hypnotic avocado eyes and all.
“I’m doing darks, got any?” Frankie said, putting down the laundry basket.
I went for a pair of jeans and some shirts, and as I came back to the top of the stairs, she was reaching under her T-shirt and unhooking her bra. She slid one strap off one arm, then the other, and with a fast pull—like a magician—whipped free a zebra-striped padded push-up number and dropped it into the basket. She had a Frederick’s of Hollywood charge account and loved ultra-fancy and lewd underwear—bras that pushed them up and hauled them out or bras that left nothing to the imagination—but over this stuff she wore the jeans, T-shirts and cardigan sweaters of every other good suburban citizen. Frankie wasn’t happy. I wasn’t happy. I loved her more than anyone at the moment. Her sadness was so terrible and tender.
I aimed for the basket and my clothes hit the top of the heap. “Next time I will absolutely babysit,” I told her.
“I look forward to it,” she said, picking up the load. “’Cause,” she said, shaking a finger at me, “I’m going to get stuck with Constance Poblanski.”
Chuck was making spaghetti with garlic, olive oil, and red pepper, and the smell wafted over the garage, drawing me out of my apartment even though I had just taken a long bath and was still shriveled. With wet hair dripping down my shirt, I entered the kitchen where Frankie was on the phone, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. “So, we’ll see you at six on Friday. Don’t be late.” Frankie forced a laughed and hung up. “Guess who we got?” she said in a low, injured voice.
Chuck had just come home from his shift and still wore his police uniform, though he had unbuttoned the shirt. He was muscular and Italian and on the short side, and he stood over the sizzling frying pan. “Don’t get all worked up, Frank,” he said.
“I enjoy getting worked up,” she said, hotly.
“I enjoy watching you enjoy getting worked up,” I said and smiled. I took Chuck’s spoon and had a little taste.
“Two cuckoo birds,” Chuck said, flashing us a smile.
My sister could only ever get the lackluster Constance Poblanski to babysit when she wanted the sweet Laura Rossi. Frankie would always call Laura first, but Laura, without fail, would already be booked with the Andersons. Both girls lived in the neighborhood and were headed to Rutgers in the fall, and they seemed to be great friends, which was incomprehensible to Frankie. Laura Rossi was sweet and radiant while Constance Poblanski burned at a lower wattage, raising her plucked brows and flaring those elegant nostrils in a vague scorn. Laura was a nailbiter, her only beauty aids a dab of lip gloss and a plastic barrette. She had, we all agreed, an astonishing smile. God had been equally kind to Constance, though Constance fooled with Mother Nature, yanking and spraying that mass of hair to unnatural heights and streaking it an orangey-blonde. But Constance wasn’t the issue here. The issue was the Andersons—Lord and Lady Anderson, as Frankie called them—who were able to get the good babysitter. Frankie saw the whole situation as the inequitable universe dispensing the fair and virtuous Laura to the fair and virtuous Andersons, while she got stuck with Constance.
Frankie had had this petty but debilitating obsession with the Andersons for as long as they’d been her neighbors. It seemed to Frankie that the Lord and Lady were everything she and Chuck weren’t. The Andersons had money, but more importantly they acted as though they had the secret knowledge that abundance would always be their lot. Their rhododendron had grown to the size of an African elephant and bloomed flowers the size of your head. They had an interior designer who dabbled in feng shui and made sure that any bad energy that got dumped in their living room would be swept right out the front door and wouldn’t spill into their hallways and soak into their walls. They had their house professionally painted an enticing mix of beiges and browns that made me think of cake mix and icing. Frankie and Chuck had gotten on ladders and slopped their own house a color resembling French’s mustard. Well, it didn’t look that way in the can. They couldn’t quite afford the neighborhood but Frankie had insisted they try. Chuck was not infected with Anderson obsession. He was a shy, easygoing cop who loved his wife and wanted to please her. Their house was big and old and weather-beaten. With its sagging gutters it wore a frown similar to Frankie’s.
Lord Anderson was a young, stocky rheumatologist with close-clipped hair, resembling his manicured lawn. He had a kindly, long face with a full-bodied nose and a habit of standing with his hands on his hips. In the warm months he liked to pull out the garden hose and wash and wax his Infiniti. Lady Anderson had girlishly shiny hair and freckled skin. She didn’t wear makeup and her teeth were a bit jumbled, but she had glamorous bones. They often strolled the block hand in hand, their daughter Dana, the heiress, trailing them on her bike, pink and white streamers dangling from the handlebars.
As luck would have it, the heiress and my niece Melody were in the same class in the same private school, which my sister and brother-in-law couldn’t really afford. During Dental Awareness week, Melody had been cast as a cavity in a skit on personal hygiene while the Heiress Anderson got to charge in with a large paper toothbrush saving the day. “Why does that kid get to be the savior while mine gets to rot?” Frankie later yelled. It didn’t matter to Frankie that Melody was a perfect cavity. I knew this because I sat with Frankie in the audience, watching the impish and wiry Melody do her decay dance. “Some people just seem to live charmed lives,” Frankie said, shaking her head. I had to say, now that I was living with Frankie and Chuck, I enjoyed the Anderson obsession. I liked hearing tale after tale about the Lord and Lady. This preoccupation kept me from my own thoughts.
We sat down to eat, and Chuck herded the kids to the table and tied a dishtowel around Marcus’s neck. “You guys like Constance Poblanski?” Chuck asked.
“She lets us watch naked butts,” Marcus said, forking up one strand of spaghetti.
“Not real live naked butts,” Melody said. “Baboon butts. The Discovery Channel.”
“Still,” Marcus said, cocking his head to the side.
“A naked butt’s a naked butt,” Chuck said, winking. Frankie smiled. She and Chuck had been together for almost eighteen years. They met in a human sexuality class at the community college, where as an icebreaker on the first day the teacher asked the students to come up with slang terms for genitalia. When they were doing female genitals the guy Frankie had been dating volunteered, “bearded clam.” Romantically, it was over for her after that. Chuck squirmed and blushed when he was called on and finally whispered, “pussy.” Frankie, too, could barely get out “wang.”