Rowing in Eden (23 page)

“Come on, Franny!” Christy Strawberry called from her wobbly perch.

“Franny's being a poo-oooop,” Joan Harvett called in a singsong voice, but she was wrong. Franny knew it felt nice to play on equipment. If she could have gone on the horses without someone assuming she did it in order to get attention, she would have.

BOOM.
With whoops and hollers, Greg Hopper and his friends now jumped aboard the playground equipment's little push merry-go-round.
BOOM.
They jumped up and down on the metal plates.

“Franny”—Christy Strawberry abandoned her horse and rushed up to tug on Franny's arm—“come on! Help us talk to them!”

No. Those boys made her uneasy. In June, she had been at Joan Harvett's when Greg Hopper and another boy had come by and, in lieu of conversation, for what seemed like hours, the boys had thrown rocks—successively larger and larger ones—at a metal shed across the alley.

“Come on, Christy!” Joan Harvett and Lola Damon now grabbed Christy Strawberry's arm, and, walking backward, began to pull her toward the merry-go-round. “If Franny doesn't want to talk to them, that's her problem.”

“But, Franny,” Christy pleaded over one shoulder, “don't you at least think Greg's cute?”

“Sure,” she said, but she knew she sounded like her Grandfather Ackerman the time the family had taken the train to the Grand Canyon. “Don't show me
that,”
the old man said if anyone pointed out a pretty bird or a clump of mistletoe or some other item of interest. “I'm saving my eyes for the canyon.”

“Whoa, Nelly!” Joan Harvett stopped in her tracks. Elbowed Lola Damon. “Look at what's coming our way!”

Franny knew it would be Ryan Marvell even before she turned, and so she murmured, “Please, be quiet! Please!”

“
That's
him?” Christy Strawberry yelped.

Biting his lip, pretending to be scared, yet all the while doing a kind of dance of awkwardness that required real grace as he skirted picnic blankets, and coolers, and a little kid who toddled forward onto her hands, diapered rump in the air.

“Do we have chaperones tonight, or what?” Ryan Marvell called ahead of himself.

“Oh, my god!” Joan Harvett covered her eyes with her hands. “He's beautiful!”

Under her breath, Franny begged, “Sh,” while Ryan Marvell laughed and did a little trick with his cigarette; somehow he drew the thing inside his mouth, as smooth as a train into a tunnel, and then made it appear again, standing upright on his tongue, like a little man from a cuckoo clock. Disappear. Appear.

“How do you
do
that?” Lola Damon asked, and smiling Christy looked over her shoulder at the boys on the playground equipment—for a moment, Franny feared Christy might call the boys to come admire Ryan Marvell, too—

“Puh!” Ryan Marvell made a funny face as he tossed the spent cigarette onto the ground. “Believe me, you don't
want
to do that,” he said, “but, hey”—he set his arm around Franny's shoulder—“what about Franny, here? Isn't she great?”

Sure, sure, the others said, at which Franny crossed her eyes; she knew the girls would be angry if she accepted the compliment, which, really, had nothing to do with her, everything to do with Ryan Marvell, who probably could have led those starry-eyed girls down to the shore, walked them right into the lake—

“RYAN MARVELL!”

The crowds on their blankets and everyone else in the grassy middle of the park looked in the direction of the bandshell.

“RYAN MARVELL,” Richie Craft called into the mike, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THAT FEMME FATALE?”

Ryan Marvell laughed. “Is Richie right?” he asked Franny. “Is
your old boyfriend still planning to beat up me, or my boss? Richie told me the guy's a Prohaski.”

Lola Damon stepped up close to Ryan Marvell, almost as if—against her will—she wanted to sniff at his shoulder, lay a hand on his neck. “His name's Bob,” she said. “He's pretty tough.”

“The one named Larry”—Ryan Marvel grimaced—“I know he put out somebody's eye at the Romero.”

Lola Damon nodded. “And Rod knocked out some teeth last week.”

Ryan Marvell put his hand over his mouth and did a jig of imagined pain. “Are you going to get me killed, Franny?”

“I'm sorry,” she said miserably.

“Oh, hey.” He stroked her arm. “Don't get gloomy, now. But, remember, if you come see me at work, you have to use a different name.” He snapped his fingers and smiled. “Something French, maybe?”

Franny turned to the girls to ask, “Why is it guys always think French girls are so wonderful?”

The girls grinned. Ryan Marvell grinned. “It's their mouths,” he said, “the way their mouths go ‘
Je t'adore.
'”

Christy Strawberry's eyes widened. “You speak French?”

“No. But if Franny, here, would like me better if I did, I'd learn! I'd be a regular French-talking fool.”

“Actually, I'm
part
French,” Franny said.

Ryan Marvell nodded, then added with a sweet wink, “I could tell the first time we kissed!”

The other girls' laughter was so perfect—so absent of criticism—that Franny laughed, too. Everything was perfect, really, except for the scowling Roosevelt boys on the playground equipment, one of whom now stuck his fists up under his shirt and strutted across the merry-go-round as if he were a vain, big-breasted mama.

“Uh-oh,” Lola Damon said. “See those big guys over by the Wild Mouse? Well, the one that looks like Bob—that's Larry Prohaski.”

“Shit!” Joan Harvett said. “He's looking right at you, Franny!”

“He doesn't even know me!” All this agitation irritated her. Christy Strawberry jumping up and down like an excited puppy, whimpering, “Oh, Franny!”

“He is looking at you, though, Fran,” Ryan Marvell murmured. “You and me.”

“Come on!” Christy Strawberry pulled Franny toward an opening between a corn-dog booth and a kiddy ride (tiny boats going round and round on dark and noisy water). “You two gotta split up!”

One eye on Larry Prohaski, Ryan Marvell said, “Okay, okay, but look for me when the band takes a break, okay?”

“I don't think the Prohaskis would actually
kill
him, do you?”

“Joan!” Franny protested.

“Sorry. I was just saying what was on my mind.”

The girls sat on the edge of the geranium-filled brick planter that made a border between the sidewalk and the little parking lot in front of the dark offices of Trelore, Wahl, and Wahl.

“They could make it so he got arrested,” Lola Damon said. “For statutory rape. Because you're thirteen.”

“I'm not having sex with him!” Franny protested.

“It doesn't really mean
rape,”
Lola Damon said. “Anyway, I don't think they'd do that. They want their own revenge, you know?” She laughed. “Christ, in Minneapolis, guys kill each other all the time! There's even a gang, the Baldies—they're so bad, they put razors in the toes of their boots, and if they kick you in the shin”—Lola Damon snapped her foot forward—“the razor cuts something and you never walk again.”

Wow, said Joan and Christy. Oh, my god.

Franny stuck her fingers into the deep grooves of the letters chiseled into the law office's wooden sign. Trelore, Wahl, and Wahl. A crisp white sign, the chiseled letters highlighted with gold. Rosamund had told Franny stories about a gang in Miami that were almost identical to Lola Damon's stories. Razor blades. Babies
eaten. Piles of bones. Even the name of the gang was the same. And the rival gang of the Baldies was the Eagles. Wonderfully frightening, Franny had thought when Rosamund first told her the stories, but now she wondered if both girls' stories might be just stories.
Did you ever actually see a Baldie?
She could have asked Lola Damon that. As a means of dimming the admiration on Joan and Christy's faces. But, instead—using Rosamund's deadpan manner for telling such tales—she said, “Where my sister goes to school, in Miami, the gang guys are drug dealers, too, and when they need more customers, they'll just walk along the matinee lines and stick a needle full of heroin into little kids—ten-year-olds, whatever—and, bang, they're addicted for life.”

Joan and Christy looked appropriately horrified; Lola Damon, chagrined. Franny's story had triumphed over Lola Damon's story. Because it was a better story. It was not just evil. It was evil injecting itself into innocence—

“Anyway!” Lola Damon jumped off of the brick planter. “I don't know about you guys, but I am bored out of my mind!”

Just five more minutes
, Franny mouthed at Joan and Christy, and Joan said, hey, why didn't Lola show Christy and Franny her splits and handstands? “So they can see how good you'd be at cheerleading.”

Lola Damon shrugged—“Oh, cheerleading,” she said with a slight sneer—but threw her hands forward and her body followed as she executed a perfect handstand on the law office's sidewalk. She seemed about to perform another, then, hurriedly, she pulled at her disarranged shirt and called, “Hey, Larry!” and stepped straight into the path of that out-size young man she had earlier identified as Bob Prohaski's big brother.

“Lola!” the girls hissed, but Larry Prohaski stepped around Lola Damon without giving her a glance.

“Woo! Aren't you hot stuff?” Lola Damon laughed. “I'm new neighbors to you, but if you don't want to meet me, how'd you like to meet Franny Wahl, here?”

Immediately, Christy Strawberry and Joan Harvett took off,
running. “Come on, Franny!” they shouted, but Franny shook her head and the girls edged back, muttering,
Jesus, Lola, what are you thinking, Jesus.

Larry Prohaski stepped closer to Franny. His appearance of strength was rendered more frightening—mindless—by the fact that he wore glasses so thick they gave his eyes the gray and filmy look of shucked oysters.

Lola Damon laugh nervously. “She's scared you're going to hurt her new boyfriend!”

Larry Prohaski nodded. “She should be scared.”

“Please, don't hurt him,” Franny said. “I didn't tell him about Bob. It's not his fault.”

Lola Damon stepped closer to Larry Prohaski. “You see how it is, Larry? Franny's in
love
with this new guy.”

Larry Prohaski rocked his head from side to side, as if he had a kink in his neck, a casual gesture that unnerved Franny. Didn't boxers do something like that before they went into the ring? “You,” he said to Lola Damon, “I'm not talking to you,” and he motioned for Franny to follow him between a pair of carnival trailers that sat in the parking lot of Pynch Lake Savings and Loan.

“Don't go with him, Franny!” Christy Strawberry and Joan Harvett cried, but Franny was sick of their silliness, and if for no other reason than to disassociate herself from it, she went after Larry Prohaski.

“I'm sorry if I made Bob feel bad,” she said when the two of them had moved out of earshot of the others.

Larry Prohaski turned his head to one side. The streetlight caught on the thick lenses of glasses and turned them white. “It's girls like you make guys hate women,” he said, though not in her direction. “You Wahls. You think your shit don't stink. Darren Rutiger's my buddy. I know how your sister Rosamund treated Darren once she went off to college.”

Automatically, Franny protested that Darren was her friend. “Artie Stokes, too. You ask. And I did like your brother—”

“Hey.” Without warning, Larry Prohaski pulled her into his
chest. “You're not going to cry, are you?” he murmured. He turned her chin up to his face with roughened fingers. He smiled, then. “My brother said you cried a lot.”

Did he mean to kiss her? Should she let him kiss her? The question occurred at some unanswerable, appalling distance from her watery knees, where the kiss could occur before she even summoned the answer. In shame, she lowered her eyes.

“Franny Wahl.” Larry Prohaski pressed his cheek to the top of her head. “You're lucky you ain't a guy, Franny Wahl. If you was a guy instead of a pretty, sweet-smelling girl, I'd have kicked your teeth in.” Then he took a noisy breath through his nose and stepped back from the girl.

“Okay.” He rapped his knuckles on the metal side of a trailer that read H
AMILTON
S
HOWS
. “We don't hurt your boyfriend, but you stay away from Bobby, right?”

She nodded. “Oh, thank you, Larry. Thank you so much.”

“Don't thank me.” He shook his head. “Just—go on back to your friends before I change my mind.”

“Franny!” Christy Strawberry, looking as fay and dark-eyed as some fairy-tale changeling, jumped down from the law office planter. “Are you okay?”

“I'm okay.”

Christy held out her hands to the deserted sidewalk. “I'm the only one who waited.”

“Well, thanks.”

“So
you
better not ditch
me!”

“Of course not.”

They found Ryan Marvell with Tim Gleason in a group that watched a man with a waist-length beard bring down the sledge at the “Test Your Strength” booth. Ryan Marvell smiled at Franny, then said something to Tim Gleason and, alone, started their way.

“That Tim probably doesn't want to come over because I'm here,” Christy Strawberry whispered.

“No, he's mad because he wants Ryan to get back with his old
girlfriend. And because Roz hasn't been hanging around with him lately.”

Something in the roll of Ryan Marvell's gait suggested he had been drinking since she had seen him before, and when he drew near, his breath confirmed the fact. Peppermint schnapps. She knew the scent from car trips with her father. Her father always drank schnapps on car trips because he said it smelled like mouthwash if a cop pulled you over.