A very inconvenient scan.., p.20
A Very Inconvenient Scandal, page 20
“Couldn’t possibly be better,” Frankie said, thinking she sounded like a complete ass. “But yes, I failed at earth-goddess baby delivery. So where did you hear that it was rough for me?”
“On the news... Come on, Frankie. Penn told me. Your dad was half out of his mind with worry about you. He was up all night, checking the phone. Penn was calling about you every hour.” Frankie hadn’t known this. She didn’t know how much credit to give it. For this, the first month of Attleboro’s life, she believed otherwise. She visualized all of them in some fancy catered setting... Is that the phone? Who’d be calling on Christmas Eve? Penn? Well, he’ll be here in a couple of days anyhow... Just don’t answer. Oh, whose number? Okay...well, say something to her, I guess. I’m sure she’s just fine... and then back to the second course... “I guess he was worth it, huh? He’s just perfect. Can you believe that we both have little boys, at the same time? And they’re the same family? Who could have imagined? Ben is Attleboro’s uncle. Uncle Ben is pretty little, though! You think we should insist that he calls him uncle?”
Atty Beveque was a big baby, nine pounds exactly. Frankie wasn’t sure how that had occurred, having no memory, for the several months previous to this birth, of eating anything except bread and jam, as if she were a storybook character. She’d spent a luxurious two days in the hospital, where Atty was the only baby. All the nurses made a fuss over him and gave him outrageous things donated by this and that store or individual, some intended to shower the first baby of the New Year. There was a Bugaboo stroller and a Montcler snowsuit and big soft luxurious blankets crocheted by local grannies. Frankie hadn’t even considered having a baby shower. (Why hadn’t she considered having a baby shower?) The only baby clothing she had was her own and her brother’s, things Penn had found in the basement and washed and dried for her. Ellabella brought her a case of impossibly tiny diapers. “You’ll try cloth diapers for a few weeks, but after that, you won’t care if every diaper he poops in takes up a whole landfill. These are biodegradable diapers, so they say. But we’ll never know. Some things, I think you have to just step aside.” Despite her lack of gear, Frankie still thought she should refuse such luxury items. “Oh, don’t!” said one of the nurses, Seneca, a woman so large and imposing and so graceful with her crown of elaborate braids that she made Frankie think of a three-masted sailing ship. “We get dozens of things in here. Like, look, cashmere blanket sleepers! The woman having the baby was mad at her mother and wouldn’t keep them.”
“But there are people who need them more than we do.”
“And we have twenty more for those people too.”
That night, more presents piled up as the nurses, carrying candles, sang carols in the hall. Certainly, this practice was in defiance of something ecumenical, but Frankie didn’t care. Her throat swelled with emotion at the old words about mother and child and in gratitude for the care extended to her. She ate a vegetarian Christmas dinner twice. The nurses called Atty a natural-born nursing champion. How safe and loved she was, and how safe and loved her child! That any baby could be less than adored, on this night of ancient tales of adoration, was so acutely distressing that Frankie cried herself to sleep with her son clutched tight against her chest. When he was laid in his Plexiglas bassinet, an ornament dangled above his head that read I Was a Star at Seaside Hospital.
Home she went then, to a belated Christmas with all her family.
Now, Frankie keenly felt Ariel’s gaze on all the pretty trifles. She wanted to explain, but what for? Ben’s nursery overflowed with luxe objects. Mack had spared no expense. Not sure why she would put herself through the answer, Frankie asked, “Are you going to have more kids?”
Ariel said, “We hope so. At least one more. Are you?” Frankie nodded, suppressing the gusty sigh that rose up unbidden. The we still rankled. “Mack is just great with him. He’s the best father. It’s like he finally got to a place in his life where he has time to appreciate everything...” Ariel stopped, horrified. The newly dried tears brimmed again in her eyes. “I didn’t mean that like it sounded.”
“Sure, you did,” Frankie said. “And it’s true. Everybody deserves a few practice kids before they get it right.”
“You know it’s nothing like that.”
“It’s just the truth, Ari.”
Ariel said, “No, it isn’t.”
“Since you’re here, please tell your mother thank you for me,” Frankie added. “I never got to say that on Christmas Eve, for obvious reasons.” Ben beamed up at her, and Frankie resisted the impulse to snatch him up and cuddle him closer. He was clearly watching her reactions, trying to summon her heart.
She told Ariel that she’d invited Carlotta to dinner before everything else happened and about how Carlotta had tried to help ease her pain. Ariel said that was kind and how troubled she’d been when Mack didn’t want her mother to join them in North Carolina, a reluctance Frankie now fully understood, even if Ariel still did not. “She’s been really helpful with the baby,” Ariel said. “I guess she’s changed. Can people really change? Maybe she just finally grew up and recognized what a mistake she made.” When Frankie didn’t join her in speculating, she pressed her lips together and said, “You know, maybe she left because she got sick of people sitting in judgment of her. Assuming she was one way so she’d always be that way. Because people aren’t willing to let you be anything except what you used to be.” She crossed to the back wall of the cottage and stood looking out that window, her fingers clasped behind her waist. “And I have to believe her, even if I don’t want to. Because other than Mack, she’s all I have. I’m not like you. I don’t have a grandmother and a grandfather and aunts and uncles and cousins. Just her. Especially with your mom gone.” She came back and faced Frankie. “Anyhow, part of why I came, now, is to tell you that your grandfather’s arriving tomorrow...”
“Day after tomorrow.”
“No, tomorrow. Mack moved the flight up because the weather’s supposed to be bad again.” On the phone, Penn had told her how, when he finally got to their grandfather’s place several days after Christmas, Ariel told him how she longed to see the blizzard, how alien she told him she felt on Christmas Eve wearing a sleeveless dress and walking to a fairy-lit restaurant patio ringed by sweet gum trees instead of huddling in her parka on the widow’s walk atop the Saltwater office, searching the moody ocean for the lights of ships. She’d done that so many winter nights in her life, many times with Beatrice.
“Penn could have told me about the change.”
“Penn promised to tell you. But then your father started loading him down with all kinds of stuff he had to do and get, so he’s away for the next couple of days. I thought he might forget. Do you think you and Gil would come to dinner?”
“Thanks for letting me know,” Frankie said.
“Okay, I get it.”
“Now, I should feed him.”
Ariel said, “He’s asleep.”
“Well.”
“Do you have life insurance?” Ariel asked.
“Why? Are you going to kill me?”
“No, it’s just, you have to. We do,” Ariel went on, that we again. “You have dangerous jobs, like Mack. You’re always underwater and on boats and flying places in small planes. Both of you,” she said. “My mom brought this up, and she’s right.”
“They gave me some forms at the hospital,” Frankie said.
“Fill them out. I’ll mail them for you.”
For the next short while, then, under Ariel’s gaze, she filled out forms. “Gil says life insurance is a scam. That the companies count on most people living.”
“That’s not a scam, Frankie. That’s just an actuarial reality.” Math, Frankie remembered, was Ariel’s strong suit. “You have to get insurance for the baby too.”
Frankie was aghast. “What? Why?”
“Not expecting him to die. See? This kind here.” Among the sheaf of papers in the hospital packet were insurance forms from the world’s largest baby-food manufacturer. “We got two policies for Ben. Well, my mother got them for him, two hundred thousand bucks each. And the way this works, when the policy is mature, either that’s good, your kid already has life insurance and never has to worry about qualifying for it, or you can cash out the value, not the big value but some value. It’s like a college fund.” Ariel paused. “Unless you’re the kind who’d contribute regularly to a college fund.”
Frankie knew she wasn’t and neither was Gil. Their incomes were too variable and intermittent—and so were they.
So Frankie filled out those papers too and wrote checks.
“You have to make a will too, and the baby has to have a guardian and a backup guardian. You don’t even have to have a lawyer to write a will. It’s legal if you and Gil just sign it.”
Who would be Atty’s guardian? Longingly, Frankie gazed at Ariel, cuddling Atty, but she would elect Penn and one of Gil’s brothers, probably Luc, as an alternative.
“That was very useful,” Frankie said. “Thank you. And now, I guess...”
“I don’t have to leave yet. But if you want me to leave, you can just ask me to leave.”
I don’t really want you to leave, Frankie thought, and if you’re here one minute longer, I’ll want to tell you everything that has happened and everything I haven’t said for the past four months and maybe even about Sailor Madeira and we’ll end up talking for hours, but instead she said, “Well, I don’t want to be rude.”
“How long does this have to go on, Frankie?”
“Don’t ask me.” She shrugged.
“What’s it going to take?”
Before she spoke, Frankie took a full minute to compose her thoughts, what she’d planned a dozen times to say. “I can tell you exactly what it would take. It would take my father to apologize for humiliating Penn and...well, me too...at the Saltwater banquet by making it all about you and his new-and-improved child being the future of the organization that my mother started.”
“He didn’t mean it that way.”
“Oh good! Then, it shouldn’t be difficult for him to apologize.”
“You know he doesn’t have the...ability to see it that way.”
“Well, you would say that. You’re one of his minions now, Ari. Of course he has the ability to do that. He has the skills. He can get adults and children all over the world to understand complex ecological realities and see how those realities indeed affect their everyday lives. He takes pride in giving the complex a relatable face. Mack Attleboro is a scientist who really gets it. That’s what he says.”
“But he won’t know...”
“Won’t. That’s the key word, Ariel. Not he can’t. He won’t. And I won’t either. I won’t overlook this. I won’t let Penn and I won’t let myself be one of those pesky little bumps in the road Mack just rolls over. No. No, thank you.” She stopped and took a deep breath. “That’s what it will take. Some recognition that the family that didn’t quite live up to his expectations still exists.”
“Frankie, that’s a horrible thing to say. You know your dad loves you more than—”
“You’re the one saying that. He’s not. He hasn’t even seen his only grandchild. He didn’t even want me there in the hospital! Actually forbade me to see him, when he could have been dying. He hasn’t called, hasn’t sent a gift. He’s sent a messenger. If he even sent you.” Something in the atmosphere slipped open and then snapped closed. “He didn’t even send you, did he? He wouldn’t want to know you were here, would he?” Frankie softly zipped Ben back into his snowsuit, helped secure him in the front pack and then crossed and opened the door. Go, she thought, go fast before I change my mind. Ariel stepped through the door, looking back quickly, as if to add one more thing, only to turn away again and make her way through the snow.
Then she stopped.
She took a few steps back toward the cabin.
“You know what, Frankie? There’s another reason that your dad didn’t call. Ben was sick. He was really sick... He was in the hospital for a day and a night. You didn’t even know.”
“What? How could I have—no one told me, Ariel. Was this when you were in North Carolina?”
“No, since we’ve been back.”
“Well, what was wrong? Did he have a virus?”
“The doctors don’t know for sure. That’s the best they can tell. He was dehydrated, and then, it all stopped. He got better. He was terribly sick with diarrhea and throwing up. He had a high fever. We were all there with him.”
“Penn should have told me!”
“I asked him not to. Maybe that was petty and stupid. In fact, I admit that it was petty and stupid. But if you don’t even care enough on your own, and you live right down the street, why should I have to send messages? He’s your little brother, Frankie. And okay, you didn’t want that. But now, that’s the way it is. Nothing will ever change it.”
“Look, Ariel, I’m not some monster. If I knew that your baby was sick, I would have tried to help. I think you know me better than that. I think my father and even Carlotta know me better than that.”
“Well, good. But the fact that I couldn’t turn to you is not my fault. It’s yours.”
Frankie said nothing.
“Frankie, I’m going to tell you this one time. I’m not Mack’s minion. But I’m not your minion either. Not anymore. I’m not your poor, sad, abandoned pity friend. Did you think I was going to just sit here and wait until you decided to come around to celebrate another one of your many triumphs? People can change. I changed. I made my own life. It’s a good life. I’m proud of it. I know who I am. And maybe—don’t say anything, Frankie—maybe you should figure out who you are before it’s too late.” When Frankie didn’t reply, Ariel went on. “There’s one more thing. Mack rewrote his will. I didn’t want him to. It was his wish, after the accident he had. He left everything to me just as Beatrice left everything to him, including the house. Penn tried to joke about it, but I know he’s upset. To be honest I am a little too, I know how much you both love the house and how connected it is to your mother. But what am I supposed to do? I have a son to think of now. It’s in there that he’ll make some kind of provision for you and Penn. But if you want that provision to be anything of substance, try being a decent person.”
When Gil arrived back a few hours later, he found Frankie curled around the baby. She scooped him up and handed him to Gil and wordlessly disappeared to take a long and thorough shower. When she had toweled off and dried the snazzy bob cut she’d maintained over the months and put on makeup and new leggings and a long red satin shirt—as if she would soon be heading out for a fancy dinner, she appeared back in the living room.
“You are trying to seduce me?” Gil said.
“Early days for that kind of action,” she told him and then asked, “Am I an evil person?”
“I won’t touch that one with a barge pole,” Gil said.
“I’m serious.”
“Do you think I’d be married to an evil person? Or have a child with an evil person?”
“Some sophisticated sophistry, sir.”
“Some sensational series of syllables.”
“I’m not illiterate, just because I’m not a bilingual writer.” When she told him that Ariel had come over and what she’d said, Gil suggested a walk or a ride. They’d just purchased a new car, a small and sleek minivan with all the trimmings, and Gil, who hadn’t owned a car since he was twenty, and never a new one, kept inventing errands that would take him to Hyannis or better yet, to Boston and beyond. Once they were settled with their coffee cups and doughnuts in the deserted parking lot at The Beachcomber, high on the dunes above Cahoon Hollow Beach, with Atty nestled in his car seat, Gil turned to Frankie.
“You’re not evil. You’re good and bighearted and kind. Most of the time. Some of the time, you’re complicated.” Frankie breathed out slowly. That was code for you’re a bitch. “These events have not produced the best in you. I don’t think there is a person who would have just passed through them without feeling some...some derangement. But this keeps getting bigger and bigger. Now there’s the matter of inheritance, which is this subject that somehow always makes people angry. And all I’m worried about is that, finally, it will be your custom. You’ll get hard on it.”
“I don’t even know how to correct the phrasing there in that last part, sweetie, but don’t say that outside our house. People will misunderstand. You mean, it will become a permanent way of being. I’ll be set in my ways, like old people say. Set, like harden.”
“C’est ça.”
How was it different, Gil asked then, before all this happened? When her mother was alive? Frankie had to think for a long time before she replied. She told Gil about how things had made sense then. It was as though Frankie had been part of a big, sturdy wheel with Beatrice as its hub, and however it turned, however slowly or quickly, it never lost its orientation or its shape. Now, it felt as though all of those parts were moving without synchrony, failing to mesh, bashing against each other, sparks sizzling into the mechanism and into the air. “I came home thinking that there would be a way to save that feeling, of being part of something strong that lasted forever. I thought maybe I was even bringing home the next generation. But instead, there was a new wheel, and I wasn’t even on it.”
Gil pulled Frankie closer to him. “No, you’re on it, you’re just not the center of it.” People who have interdependent lives sometimes have to make compromises, he went on, so preachy that, for one of the few times in their short life together, she had to fight the urge to snap at him. It didn’t look that way from the outside, he said, but they were probably putting up with all kinds of small and large sins. Saint Gil, Frankie thought. It’s easy when everyone in your family takes the usual course and also reveres you and each other. Gil and his brothers were like the March sisters in Little Women, except for their being only three brothers instead of four sisters.
