When She Came Home (19 page)

“But not mine. And you’ve said yourself, she’s young.”

“So are you, Frankie. Does that make you incompetent?”

Could she blame her behavior at Three Fountain Square on youth and inexperience? Would an older Marine, familiar with the sights and sounds of death, have behaved differently? Would another Marine have brought her guilt and regret home with her?

“What are you going to do?” she asked the headmistress.

“A number of things. First, I’m going to suspend Glory from school for a week. She needs some time to cool off.”

“That’s so unfair.” Frankie knew she was transparent, unable to conceal her anger and—worse—how perilously close to tears she was. “I’m not going to deny that I’ve had some problems since I came home, but this Colette person is a bully and that’s something else entirely.”

She swallowed to relax her throat and took a deep
breath. Her voice wouldn’t ripple if she could breathe properly.

“She and Ms. Peters’s favoritism are both school problems.” Another swallow. Another breath. “Dr. Scott, I’m doing the best I can. I’ve made some mistakes, but this is your job, not mine.”

If she was aware of Frankie’s struggle to get the words out, the headmistress gave no sign. “I promise you, I will deal with the bullying once I’ve managed today’s events. I will also have words with Ms. Peters. Believe me, I take bullying very seriously.”

“Please, don’t suspend her, ma’am. You know the girls will talk. They’ll say—”

“I know, the rumors will fly. But I can’t stop gossip. Never mind what happens when the girls are in school. Most of them have cell phones and they text all the time. I think the best thing we can do is let the dirty laundry hang out until they lose interest in it. The suspension has to happen. For one thing Colette’s parents are going to want—they will
demand
—some kind of consequence. Before I can address the bullying, I have to take care of that.”

“But Colette started it.” Frankie stopped. “You do believe me?”

“I do, I do.” The headmistress paused, staring thoughtfully into the middle distance. “Now I don’t want you to misinterpret what I’m saying. When it comes to the
bullying, I’m not blaming Glory one bit. But the fact is that not all children get bullied. You must try to understand this. There’s a type of girl, a ‘Colette,’ if you will, who senses vulnerability in others. It’s as if their emotional radar is particularly attuned to it. Glory’s pain and anger are something for Colette to exploit.”

If Frankie had not gone to Iraq, Glory would not be in pain, nor would she be angry. Colette would be bullying another girl instead. Frankie could not deny she was the first cause. The Big Bang.

“I’ll do anything. Whatever it takes.”

She would keep a journal.

She would join a group—for therapy, for support.

“I love her so much.” Frankie blinked hard to stop the tears. “She’s the dearest thing in the world to me.”

Dr. Scott turned her chair and looked out the bank of windows facing onto the playing fields. They watched the girls practicing kicks into the goal. The goalkeeper, a redhead with long skinny arms and legs, stopped about half of them. Frankie was again grateful for the headmistress’s kindness, for how generously she gave space to her feelings. Not just her anger and sadness but the humiliation of tears and helplessness as well.

“You were always such a high achiever, Frankie. I was thinking about that before you got here today. I was wondering if you were a National Merit Scholar because you were smarter than other girls, or if you just worked harder than anyone else.”

At Stanford Frankie had been surprised to discover that the work was not terribly difficult. She had labored over her books so long and hard at Arcadia that the effort required to maintain her scholarship was just more of the same.

“We sometimes mislead our star students and athletes when we heap rewards on them for their achievements.” Scott faced across the desk again. “A girl like you with nothing but success behind her—Frankie, I know how hard it is to admit you don’t know what to do. But that’s often the way it is in real life. Being a mother or father can’t be learned like grammar or algebra. You can’t stay up until two a.m. mastering the art of parenting.”

“But she’s so angry.”

“She’ll get over it.”

“And she won’t talk to me.”

“Tell her the truth about how it feels to be home. About what you’re going through.”

“I want to protect her. She’s too young to understand.”

“Don’t be too sure. Glory is a sensitive child. Deep. She’ll take in what she can and forget the rest and then she might want to do her own talking. If you’re lucky. Listen to her. That’s what we all want, Frankie. To be heard, to be known.”

Late in the day, mother and daughter sat at the end of the OB pier on a bench that was rough and salt sticky to the touch. Somewhere over the horizon there was weather brewing, a storm and maybe rain. The brisk air was blowy
and salt stung the corners of their eyes and settled on their tongues, seasoning the ice cream they’d bought at the Koreans’. The bright white of the gulls’ immaculate wings and the sunlight flashing on waves made Frankie’s eyes water. They talked and the wind broke their words into a code each understood. A clear channel opened up between them and they seemed, for a few minutes at least, to understand each other soul to soul.

“Colette told everybody you went to Iraq because you didn’t want to be around me.” Glory licked her spoon. “She said I smell bad and that’s why you don’t—didn’t—love me.”

“And you believed her.”

The wind carried Glory’s sigh toward shore.

“When you hear something over and over, it’s hard not to believe it.”

“That’s why I threw the book at her. I knew she was lying but I got so mad and I couldn’t think.”

Glory stirred her chocolate chip and peppermint ice cream together, making a soup of it.

She said, “You know in the blackbird song you used to sing to me, when the words say
no one here can love or understand me
?”

“That’s how you felt when I was gone?”

“Sorta. Not really, but… yeah.”

They watched the gulls slipping along the drafts over the choppy water.

“How come you don’t sing anymore?”

“My voice can’t find the melody.”

“I used to like it when you sang, Mommy.” Glory leaned into her. Not a lot, but enough to mean something. “Is that part of the PTSD? Not singing?”

“Maybe.”

“So when you’re better you can sing again?”

Frankie lifted Glory’s chin and looked into her eyes. “There’s lots of stuff I don’t know yet and it’s going to take a while for me to figure it all out. But I have a doctor who’s helping me. And I’m going to go to a special group with other people who are having problems.”

“Like Domino?”

Frankie nodded. “My doctor wants me to keep a journal. About what happens and how I feel. Do you want to keep one too?”

Glory shook her head.

“No one will read it, Glory. It’s just a way to sort things out.”

Glory’s eyes held the sea and the sky. “I wish we could be a normal family.”

The words hurt despite the matter-of-fact tone in which they were spoken.

“I’m sorry I bit you, Mommy. Did it hurt?”

“Did it hurt when I slapped you?”

Glory nodded.

Frankie slipped her arm around her. “Me too.”

F
rankie and Glory brought home fish and chips from Crusty’s, and they stopped at the French bakery for half a dozen chocolate-filled cornucopias. Rick raised his eyebrows when he saw these because they always meant a celebration of some kind. He didn’t ask questions, however, and went ahead and made a salad while Frankie changed into pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. In the kitchen she hummed as she warmed the fish and chips in the microwave. They ate on the deck.

“What’s up with you two?”

An uncommon hopefulness, a lightness of spirit.

“And don’t say it’s nothing.”

Frankie lifted Glory’s hair and whispered in her ear. “Start at the beginning.”

Glory went through all the eight-year-old tics that meant she was nervous and stalling the moment when she would have to confess to her father that she’d been suspended from school for a week. She puffed out her cheeks
and petted Flame, she folded her arms across her chest, and pretzeled her legs one way and then another.

Observing this Rick didn’t smile.

“I got suspended cuz I threw a book at Colette.”

In fits and starts she told the story of the backed-up toilet and Rick listened without asking questions or showing emotion, but when she finished he immediately looked around for his cell phone. “We pay a bloody fortune for you to go to that school. I expect better—”

“You can’t call, Daddy. It’s too late. The school’s closed.”

“Then I’m going over there tomorrow morning, first thing. Who is this Colette anyway? Do we know anything about her?”

“Last year I went to her house for a party. Remember, Daddy? Someone came from the zoo and brought a wolf puppy we could pet?”

“That’s the girl who’s done this to you? I thought you were buddies.” The instability of eight-year-olds’ friendships confused him. “Now she says you stink?”

“You don’t have to go to school, Rick. Dr. Scott’s on it and if it’s not settled, I’ll handle it.”

“You?” he looked at Frankie, disbelieving. “You can barely take care of yourself. Yesterday—”

Glory stepped between them. “Daddy, it was my fault.”

“Colette called you names.”

“No, I mean yesterday, when Mommy slapped me. She only did it because I bit her.”

Frankie was both ashamed and grateful that Glory
wanted to defend her, but in that instant there was a mother-daughter connection as if both recalled the conversation on the pier and the promises they had made to each other: to be a better mother, to be a girl who didn’t bite or throw things, to work together to put this bad time behind them.

She dipped a fry in ketchup and held it out to Rick, a peace offering. “A week away from school won’t hurt her.”

“It’ll go on her record.”

“So? Arcadia’s not the Marine Corps.”

“I guess we can all be thankful for that.”

They ate cornucopias for dessert and played a few rounds of Boggle before Glory’s bedtime. But as soon as Glory was asleep Rick shut down. Frankie couldn’t see him doing sit-ups on the far side of the bed, but she heard the huffing and straining.

“Is it me?” she asked, looking down at him. “Are you mad at the school or Colette or me?” Determined not to argue again, she tried to keep her voice light. “We had a good time tonight, didn’t we? Why won’t you talk to me?”

With a groan he stopped exercising and lay on his back, his forearm covering his face. “You can’t slap your daughter and act like it never happened. You can’t insult Melanie, who’s never done anything but be generous and helpful. You can’t throw a fit in front of our friends and pretend it doesn’t matter and today’s just another ordinary Monday. Glory’s been suspended from school for violence. You’ve
got to take responsibility for that and for all the other shit that’s happening in this family.”

Generations of Byrnes rose up in her defense and she struggled against the instinct to fight that was programmed by her genes. Behind her back she made a fist so tight her nails carved scimitars into her palm.

“Did you go to your therapist? Did you tell her what you did yesterday?”

“Of course.”

“You say that like I should know. How should I know, Frankie? How should I know what you do there or anywhere else? You’re a big unknown to me most of the time.” He turned over and balanced in the plank position until his arms trembled and sweat glistened on the fair hairs at the small of his back.

She had always loved his body, the flat belly and narrow waist and broad shoulders he’d kept since college when he’d been a distance swimmer. She remembered long ago, straddling his thighs, facing him, both of them naked after sex. To sit there so exposed and to know that it was safe to touch and be touched, that this man would never hurt her no matter how vulnerable she allowed herself to be: such intimacy had been a wonder to her and she swore in her heart that she would never do or say anything to jeopardize it. But now he was slipping away and how could she blame him? Why would he want her when she barely wanted herself?

“This morning you and Glory weren’t speaking and now all of a sudden, life’s a bubble bath. Only it’s not. For me it’s not.”

“We told you. We went to the pier and talked. She gets how it is with me.”

“How can she? I’m a fucking grown man, I’m your husband, and
I
don’t get you.”

“Yes, you do, you always have.” Frankie stretched out on the floor beside him. “I was awful yesterday. I know I was way out of line. I know it. But you do get me, Rick.” She choked back a growing panic. “You’re the only person who’s ever understood me.”

All day long she had been fighting a terrible thought and now it skewered its way to the front of her mind. Maybe she had exhausted his capacity to forgive and understand; the loyalty she had loved in him from the beginning had worn too thin to depend upon.

They had always talked so well in the dark, but that night, nothing. Frankie stared at the ceiling and though she knew it would only make her more miserable, she remembered the night they met, calling up each detail as if by hurting herself she could prove that the memories were strong enough to hold them together.

In her parents’ house the living and dining rooms had been decorated for Christmas in red and green and gold. On the dining room table surrounded by plates of sizzling canapés, the centerpiece was Great-grandmother Byrne’s
gleaming silver service surrounded by red glass balls and tiers of candy-striped tapers. Candlelight. The glow of Navy and Marine brass. She and Rick had seen each other across the room. He was the tallest man there, she the tallest woman. They came together like pages in a book. As soon as they could politely escape, he had walked her across the street and up through the three levels of his partially constructed house.

Frankie already knew from her mother that neighbors up and down the street had not been happy when wreckers demolished the midcentury house on the property and the new structure began to rise, bigger than any other on the street. But none of them had seen it as Frankie did that night by cold Christmas moonlight. Rick pointed out the rooms, the decks, the wide windows; and Frankie knew that Rick’s house would be beautiful, not garish or ostentatious as the neighbors whispered.