Rowing in Eden (26 page)

When they reached Tanglefoot, Franny directed Peg to the Prohaski house.

Did Franny want Peg to walk up to the door with her?

No. But thanks.

The only time that Franny ever had been to the Prohaski house had been on a night in May when she slept over at Joan Harvett's. Franny did not know Bob Prohaski, then, except as a handsome boy from the school wrestling team, but Joan Harvett had kept saying he liked Franny, and that she and Franny ought to walk through his neighborhood because maybe he'd be outside. It had been pitch dark that night. In Tanglefoot, the streetlights were few and far between, and there were no sidewalks, but by the time Franny announced that she wanted to turn around, Joan Harvett said no, up ahead, the one with the window broken out in front was his, and then Joan began to rummage in a garbage pail that sat alongside the Prohaski garage.

“What're you doing?” Franny had whispered, and Joan whispered back, “I'm trying to find a piece of glass so I can cut myself, and then we can ask to use their phone.” Franny had thought Joan was crazy, but at that point a light had come on at the Prohaski house, and Bob Prohaski stepped out into the garage. The tough look on his face softened once he saw the girls. “What's up?” he asked. While Franny invented a bumbling story of collecting pop bottles for Y-Teens, Mrs. Prohaski appeared in the door behind Bob, and invited the girls inside. All of it had stirred Franny: the yellow Formica dining table and metal chairs, the handsome boy who had apparently noticed her without her doing a thing, the brightly colored drink that sweet Mrs. Prohaski had poured from a can into plastic glasses.

Three months ago.

The sheet of plywood, now blackened and swollen, remained in the broken picture window. Shafts of summer sunshine made their way through the trees overhead and dappled the damp and dark yard below. Franny felt as if she moved inside a minnow bucket.

She paused at the door before she knocked. Wires dangled from the spot where, once upon a time, there had been a doorbell. Through the screen, she could see both Bob and Larry Prohaski on a long couch in the living room. They watched the TV—
P.M. Matinee
—but Larry Prohaski saw her, and he called, voice thick with warning, “What do you want?”

“I want to talk to Bob. Just for a second.”

Bob Prohaski rotated his head her way, then back to the movie, which was one Franny herself knew: Mitzi Gaynor starring as Eva Tanguay in
The I Don't Care Girl.

“Bob?” she said. “Could we talk a second?”

He pushed himself up from the sofa and came to the screen door. He had changed into dry clothes, but his hair remained damp. Instantly, Franny wanted to take him in her arms. Maybe she did love him after all—

“What do you want?”

She drew closer to the screen door. She supposed he would not have told his brother about the ambulance, the indignity, and so she whispered, “I wanted to see if you were okay. I heard—”

“Was you out in that boat?”

“
No.
I was—at the beach.”

“Still, you can drop dead.” He took a whistling in-breath. “I almost died 'cause of you.”

“Oh, Bob.” She pressed her hand to the door. She did not say that if he had died, it would have been an accident. She knew what he meant: His feelings for her had made him fail to treat his life with care.

“Okay.” Larry Prohaski moved toward the door, arm extended, finger pointing. “You had your say. Now get a move on.”

“I'm glad you're okay, Bob.”

Larry Prohaski nodded. “He's fine. Now, go.”

The Prohaskis had no sidewalk, just a few wobbly, concrete circles set into the patchy yard, and as she returned to the car, Franny made an effort to step on each circle, and hoped this conveyed a sense of respect for their property.

“Franny!” From down the pocked road, and across the shady yards, Lola Damon and Joan Harvett now ran her way. “Franny!” they called. Each carried an orange Popsicle in one hand, a cigarette in the other—though Joan Harvett paused to toss away her cigarette as soon as she saw Peg in the Wildcat.

“Hi, Mrs. Wahl,” blushing Joan called to Peg, while Lola Damon said an icy, “What're you doing here, Franny? I thought you and Bob were all through.”

Franny nodded. She could feel the boy, watching from the doorway. His gaze lay on her back and her neck like cold, wet rags. “I just had to talk to him for a second. No big deal. So—you live near here?”

Lola Damon did not answer but waved toward the Prohaski house. “Hi, Bob!” she called; then, with a shrug, “'Bye, Bob.”

“Here comes Diane, Lola.” Joan Harvett pointed to the sedan that now picked its way around the road's numerous potholes; according to Joan, the driver was Lola's big sister.

Who now proceeded to drive her sedan directly up against the front end of the Wildcat.
Bump.
Bumper tapped bumper. Looking both impressive and silly, Peg rose up out of the driver's seat to peer over the windshield at Diane Damon and the hoods of the two cars.

Diane Damon—bigger, and with bigger hair than Lola—gave a hoot of laughter at Peg's concern. “Come on, girls,” she called in a voice that was almost a parody of those weary mothers who managed to retain a little spunk despite where they found themselves in life, and Franny noticed that Peg used this same voice when she said, “Yes, come on, let's go, Fran.”

T
HOUGH SPEEDBOATS STILL SHOT ACROSS THE LAKE, AND
mothers continued to lug home bags of briquets for picnics, and girls and boys in swimsuits lined up at the window of the Dairy Queen, there was no denying that the winding down of summer had begun.

According to Rosamund, this was a good thing since she no longer wanted to spend time with anyone in Pynch Lake—“Present company excluded, of course.”

Franny smiled at this—she was elated, just then, walking with Rosamund toward City Park and a meeting with Ryan Marvell—still, the season's changes pressed on her heart as if they were not the result of the tilting of the earth in relation to the sun, but, instead, messages of consequence. Not that she could say precisely what the messages might be, but she did feel more alive in their presence. She sensed a swelling in the world, a sensitive skin. She sometimes found herself leaning against things in an oddly cozy way, stroking the bark of a tree, even pressing her lips to the refrigerator door as she took a call on the telephone.

“I appreciate you bringing me into town, Roz.”

Rosamund wrinkled up her nose. “What else do I have to do on a Saturday night? Oh—there he is!” She gave Franny's elbow a squeeze. “I forgot how darling he is!”

Darling, darling, darling—

“I hope you girls won't hate me for this.” Looking sheepish, Ryan Marvell gestured toward the band shell and the barbershop quartet now singing for a tiny audience.

The girls laughed and took seats on the grass. Rosamund said, “Actually, one of my friends”—she raised her eyebrows at Franny in a way that let Franny know that Roz referred to Turner Haskin—“he says it's interesting to look deeper at things that might just seem corny on the surface. Like, you could ask, what do some people like about a barbershop quartet?”

“Maybe it reminds them of music?” Ryan Marvell said.

The look that Rosamund gave him was one that Franny knew well: a pursing of the lips that suggested disapproval followed by an upturning of the corners of her mouth that showed amusement.

Franny herself was so pleased to be with both Ryan Marvell and Rosamund that she hardly felt jealous that the pair talked to each other as much as they talked to her. It was Franny's knee, after all, upon which Ryan Marvell rested his head—pure treasure—while he explained to Rosamund that he had taken a lot of ribbing about enrolling at SFF but his parents wanted him to stay near home so he could learn about the family business. In case he ever took it over.

He had never told Franny any of this, and she was impressed by how grownup he sounded. Rosamund seemed impressed, too. They were having a nice time, weren't they? When Ryan Marvell took out his package of cigarettes, he offered one to Rosamund, and Rosamund, who never smoked, said, okay, and they all laughed at the way she exhaled like a little kid blowing out birthday candles.

But then, in the middle of a sentence about a movie he had been to see—
What's New, Pussycat?
—Ryan Marvell looked up at Franny and smiled and said, “You know what, Roz? I can hardly eat since I fell in love with your little sister.”

Which turned out to be a mistake.

Immediately, Rosamund stood. “I don't want to hear about that,” she said. “I can't be party to that.” She stared off at the barbershop group and their friends, all of them now standing at a fold-out table and eating slices of neapolitan ice cream.

Ryan Marvell lifted his head from Franny's knee and sat up, then. “Listen, Roz,” he began, but Rosamund cut him off.

“
Okay
,” she said, quite loud. She looked only at Franny, as if
Ryan Marvell had disappeared altogether. “I'm supposed to get a few things at the Red Owl. I'll be at the car in ten minutes, Franny. You be there, too.”

“What was that all about?” Ryan Marvell asked as Rosamund strode off across the park.

Franny shook her head. “I guess she wants to think we're just friends.”

Rosamund was quiet in the car, but when she and Franny got home, she acted friendly. She showed Franny that, along with eggs and bread, she had picked up a bottle of fudge sauce and a can of whipping cream so they could make sundaes. “We do this at the dorm sometimes,” she whispered, then opened her mouth wide, and squirted it full of whipping cream.

Martie was out with Deedee Pierce the evening Rosamund and Franny visited Ryan Marvell and made sundaes. She did not arrive home until four the next morning. At breakfast, Peg declared to Rosamund and Franny and Brick that she had no sympathy for a girl with a hangover; and, not long after, she posted herself outside the girls' upstairs bathroom and detailed what chores Martie needed to do as soon as she finished vomiting.

This was at about the same time that Ginny Weston arrived and began to vacuum the bedrooms. Brick had left for the day when Martie appeared in the kitchen. Martie made no effort to appear perky that morning. Her wet hair hung in limp noodles down either side of her face? So be it. She slumped at the table, smoking a cigarette and rolling her eyes at Peg's clanging of pots and pans. However, it was possible, just then, for Franny and Rosamund to exchange smiles, as if the household were—amusing. A fresh pot of flowers sat on the table. Birds could be heard in the yard. The air outside the house, and in, was sultry, as if some thread had been pulled free from whatever stitching bound each summer day to the fate of the days before, and now it was no longer the end of August, but June again, June once more.

Franny did not really mind her chore: rubbing the dining room
furniture with sweet O-Cedar oil. Rosamund and Peg polished silver in the kitchen, and that was the best job as its results were visible so quickly; still, at least Franny had not been sent with Martie to sweep the garage and, now and then, Rosamund added a little festivity to the work by putting a song on a record player, something Peg would not mind too much: “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “Scotch and Soda,” “You Better Love Me While You May.”

Franny was singing along with the latter—moving Peg's milk glass pieces out of her way on the breakfront—when Peg called from the kitchen, “Telephone, Franny. For you.”

A girl. Someone with one of the fake, breathy voices that advertisers liked females to use on television and radio. The Julie London voice. A product all wrapped up in a feather boa and a wreath of cigarette smoke. A voice very much like that of the woman who sang “You Better Love Me While You May.”

“Franny,” that voice said after Franny said yes, this is Franny, “we're going to kick your face in, Franny. We're going to rip your tits off, slut.”

Franny set the receiver back in its cradle. Brick's old emergency siren sat on the cookbook shelf above the telephone, and it held a reflection of Franny's white face, warped across the siren's curve. Nauseated, ashamed, she hurried back to her chores.

As soon as she was free, however, she walked down Lakeside to tell Susan Thomas about the call—she had to tell someone—but telling Susan did not help. That evening, when dinnertime came, she excused herself from joining the others. She lay in her darkened bedroom until Rosamund came upstairs again; then she crossed the hall to Rosamund's room.

“What do you think? Should I tell Mom and Dad?” she asked after explaining about the call.

Rosamund looked up from addressing a letter to Turner Haskin. “Well,” she said, “given how angry Mom was at Martie this morning, you might want to wait awhile. Most likely, the calls were just pranks. I used to get prank calls in high school. Remember? Remember how people used to TP the house?” Rosamund smiled
and opened her eyes wide, as if there were some pleasure to be found in all this. Then she asked if Franny would like to ride into town with her while she dropped a letter at the post office.

Ryan Marvell would not be working at Mother Goose that night, Franny knew; still, she could not help looking at the golf course as they passed, just in case. What Franny wanted, at all times, was more chances to see Ryan Marvell. Any road she walked down, let him be there. Any store she walked through, she walked through with the hope of seeing his face. Could he be around the next corner?

As she and Rosamund drove along Lakeside in the dusk, she studied the grilles of all approaching cars, hoping for the grille of the brown and white Ford. She studied the people on the sidewalk in front of the Romero. She glanced in at houses with their curtains open. For split seconds, she imagined she spotted him in men too old and boys too young to have possibly been him.

“I wonder if Martie and Deedee are there,” Rosamund said as they passed the Top Hat Club. “Martie likes to think her going there, now, is just the same as when Mike took me as a guest. It's so pathetic.”

Franny turned to look back at the Top Hat. A modest place, but its white and red neon script always appeared magical at night. She doubted Martie would meet Darren Rutiger at the Top Hat. If she did not want people to know she were seeing him. But, then, Franny had no idea if Martie had seen Darren Rutiger at all after the night at the carnival. He might be in the service now. Maybe he was off in Vietnam, living in the jungle.

When the Wildcat passed the China Castle, Franny wondered if she and Ryan Marvell had ever sat in the same booth at the restaurant. No doubt they had. She wished the China Castle were open now. That she and Rosamund could go sit inside the cafe, near the window, and that Ryan Marvell might drive by and see them there.

She did not want to go home. Just let her drive around the lake, around and around, make circles in the circles in which he moved.

“Damn,” Rosamund said with a groan as she turned in beneath
the Poddigbattes Camp sign and started up the drive. “Mike Zanios is at the house.”

The music on the stereo was quite loud—some old Louis Armstrong thing—and when the girls stepped into the kitchen from the garage, they found Brick there, smiling, singing, using his index fingers to conduct Martie and a pretty woman Franny did not recognize (French twist, pink spaghetti-strap dress).

Martie nodded at Franny and Rosamund, and opened her arms wide. “Join in, you guys!”

Rosamund pressed her two palms together, then raised the hands to one cheek and tipped her head: sleepy. She climbed the stairs while Franny went to look in the refrigerator for something to eat. Lately, she was hungry all the time. That morning, she and Susan Thomas had eaten an entire loaf of bread made up as cinnamon toast, and they could have eaten more if there had been more bread—

“Hey, Frances Jean!”

She turned as Mike Zanios entered from the den. “Where's Roz?”

“Oh, she was real tired. She went up to bed.”

Mike Zanios consulted his wrist watch. “Tired—at nine-fifteen?” He glanced at the woman in the French twist and she smiled. His date? A new girlfriend? Franny remembered that the singer from the club was a brunette, but this woman's hair was the same champagne color as Rosamund's.

“So, tell me, Frances,” Mike Zanios continued, “has your sister been hiding from me lately?”

Franny was too flustered by the question to answer, but Brick laughed and said, “What's all this, Zanios?”

Mike Zanios smiled in a way that showed both his upper and lower teeth—a wincing kind of smile, though surely he did not mean it to look that way. “I was just asking Frances, here, if your eldest had been hiding from me,” he said.

For a moment, Brick's mouth went slack, but, with a little effort, he rooted up another expression: dubious amusement. A smile delivered with a creased forehead as he bent to rinse a shot
glass beneath the tap. “Now, why would she hide from you, Zanios?” he asked.

Mike Zanios grinned and looked down into his drink. “I thought she might be—embarrassed.”

“Aw, Mike.” Brick shook his head. “Why don't you just come out and tell us what you mean?”

“Well, I assume she figured out that her Prince Charming and our chanteuse went off together.”

Her eyes wide, Martie asked, “Turner Haskin?” and a small “Huh” escaped Brick:

“But, how could that be?”

“Oh, hell.” Mike Zanios put his arm around the woman with the French twist. “They went off to Minneapolis, and spent a week at the Radisson. She came back, alone—sadder, but no wiser, I'm afraid.”

“I can't believe it,” Martie cried, and looked beseechingly toward Franny, who realized that like Martie, she, too, had tears in her eyes.

The woman with the French twist coughed into her hand. “One of us should go keep Peg company,” she said, and exited the kitchen.

“Now, tell me, Zanios,” Brick said, “by what lowlife did you come by this nonsense?”

“It's not nonsense, Brick. I had a drink with them before they left town. Very sophisticated of me, right?”

Brick shook his head. “You may find your part in this amusing, but that's our little girl upstairs. We don't laugh about somebody hurting our little girl.”

Mike Zanios shrugged, but his face was chalky. “I didn't know that you didn't know,” he said. He set his half-full drink down on the kitchen's central island. “Hey, Dorothy,” he called toward the den, “we ought to get going, babe.”

“But, how do we know it's true?” Peg asked when Mike Zanios and his date had gone and Brick told her the news.

“It's true.” Brick poured himself another scotch. “Mike had a drink with them the night before they left town. And to think of him telling us that in front of a stranger! Practically—gloating!”

“His pride's hurt,” Franny said—like the others, keeping her voice low. “He probably wants Roz to feel bad, too. He was mad she liked Turner more than she liked him.”

Brick reared back with a dramatic “What?”

“Mike,” she said. “He
liked
Roz.”