“I wasn’t coolheaded, Frank,” I said. “I was in shock.”
“Well, whatever it was, you kept your cool. Like you didn’t even care. Meanwhile, I’m sweating bullets, wondering, is this how you people talk all the time? Is this what rich people are like?”
Rich people, I thought. How had Frank been able to tell that Walter and I were rich people? And then I realized: Oh, yes, of course. The same way we’d been able to tell that he was a poor person. Someone not even worth acknowledging.
Frank kept going: “And I’m thinking, they don’t even know I’m here. I’m nothing to these people. Walter Morris isn’t my friend. He’s just using me. And you—you hadn’t even looked at me. Back at the theater, you told me, ‘Take down those two suitcases.’ Like I was a porter, or something. Walter, he didn’t even introduce me. I mean, I know you were all under duress, but it’s like, in his eyes, I’m nobody, you know? I’m just a tool that he needs—just somebody to drive the machine. And I’m trying to figure out how to stop being so invisible, you know? So then I think, Hey, I’ll jump on the bandwagon. Join the conversation. Try to act like him—talk the way he’s talking, the way he’s going after you. So that’s when I said it. That’s when I called you what I called you. Then I see how it lands. I look in the rearview mirror and I see your face. I see what my words just did to you. It was like I killed you. Then I see his face—it’s like he just got hit by a baseball bat. I thought it was gonna be nothing, me saying that. I thought it was gonna make me seem cool, too—but, no, it was like mustard gas. Because no matter how bad it was, the way your brother was reaming you out, he hadn’t used a word like that. I see him try to figure out what to do about it. Then I see him decide to do nothing. That was the worst part.”
“That was the worst part,” I agreed.
“I gotta tell you, Vivian—hand on the Bible—I never used a word like that to anybody in my life. Never in my life. Not before, not since. I’m not that guy. Where did it come from, that day? Over the years, I’ve watched that scene a thousand times in my mind. I watch myself say it, and I think—Frank, what’s the matter with you? But those words, I swear to God, they just came flying out of my mouth. Then Walter clams up. Remember that?”
“I do.”
“He doesn’t defend you, doesn’t tell me to shut my hole. Now we gotta drive for hours in that silence. And I can’t tell anyone I’m sorry, ’cause I feel like I’m never supposed to open my mouth around the two of you again. Like I wasn’t hired to open my mouth around you in the first place—not that I was hired, but you know what I mean. Then we get to your family’s house—and I never saw a house like that in my life—and Walter doesn’t even introduce me to your parents. Like I don’t exist. Back in the car, all the way back to OCS, he doesn’t say a word to me. Doesn’t say a word to me the whole rest of training. Acts like it never happened. Looks at me like he never saw me before. Then we graduate, and thank God I never have to see him again. But still, I gotta think about this thing forever, and there’s nothing I can ever do to put it right. Then two years later, I end up transferred to the same ship as him. Of all the luck. Now he outranks me, no surprise there. He acts like he doesn’t know me. And I gotta sit with it. I gotta live with it all over again, every day.”
At that point, Frank seemed to run out of words.
There was somebody that he’d reminded me of, as he was spinning out his story and struggling to explain himself. Then I realized: it was myself. He reminded me of myself that night in Edna Parker Watson’s dressing room, when I had desperately tried to talk my way out of something that could never be put right. He was doing the same thing I had done. He was trying to talk his way into absolution.
In that moment, I felt overcome by a sense of mercy—not only for Frank, but also for that younger version of myself. I even felt mercy for Walter, with all his pride and condemnation. How humiliated Walter must have felt by me, and how dreadful it must have been for him to feel exposed like that in front of someone he considered a subordinate—and Walter considered everyone a subordinate. How angry he must have been, to have to clean up my mess in the middle of the night. Then my mercy swelled, and for just a moment I felt mercy for everyone who has ever gotten involved in an impossibly messy story. All those predicaments that we humans find ourselves in—predicaments that we never see coming, do not know how to handle, and then cannot fix.
“Have you really been thinking about this forever, Frank?” I asked.
“Always.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said—and I meant it.
“You’re not the one who needs to be sorry, Vivian.”
“In some ways I am. There’s a great deal that I’m very sorry about, surrounding that incident. Even more so now that I’ve heard all this.”
“Have you thought about it forever?” he asked.
“I thought about that car ride for a long time,” I admitted. “Your words especially. It was hard on me. I won’t pretend it wasn’t. But I put it away some years ago, and I haven’t thought about it in a long time. So don’t worry, Frank Grecco—you didn’t ruin my life, or anything. How about we just agree to strike this whole sad event from the books?”
Abruptly, he stopped walking. He spun and looked at me, wide-eyed. “I don’t know if that’s possible.”
“Of course it is,” I said. “Let’s chalk it up to people being young, and not knowing how to behave.”
I put my hand on his arm, wanting him to feel that it was all going to be all right now—that it was over.
Again, just as he had done on the first day we met, he yanked his arm away, almost violently.
This time, I must have been the one who flinched.
He still finds me repulsive was how I read it. Once a dirty little whore, always a dirty little whore.
Seeing my expression, Frank grimaced, and said, “Oh, Jesus, Vivian, I’m sorry. I gotta tell you. It’s not you. I just can’t . . .” He trailed off, looking around the park hopelessly, as though searching for someone who was going to rescue him from this moment, or explain him to me. Bravely, he tried again. “I don’t know how to say this. I hate like heck to talk about it. But I can’t be touched, Vivian. It’s a problem I have.”
“Oh.” I took a step back.
“It’s not you,” he said. “It’s everybody. I can’t be touched by anybody. It’s been that way ever since this.” He waved his hand in a general way over the right side of his body—where the burn scars came crawling up his neck.
“You were injured,” I said, like an idiot. Of course he was injured. “I’m sorry. I didn’t understand.”
“Yeah, that’s okay, why would you?”
“No, I’m very sorry, Frank.”
“You know what? You didn’t do it to me.”
“Nonetheless.”
“Other guys, they were injured that day, too. I woke up on a hospital ship with hundreds of guys—some of them burned even as bad as me. We were the ones they pulled out of the burning water. But a lot of those guys are fine now. I don’t understand it. They don’t have this thing I have.”
“This thing,” I said.
“This thing of not being able to be touched. Not being able to sit still. That thing I have about enclosed spaces. I can’t do it. I’m okay in a car as long as I’m the one in the driver’s seat, but anything else, if I have to sit still too long, I can’t do it. I have to stay on my feet, all the time.”