Miss Me When I'm Gone

chapter 24



78 Durham Road

Emerson, New Hampshire

All I really remember about Frank Grippo is the fighting and The Smurfs. I wouldn’t say one is any more memorable than the other, so I’ll start with The Smurfs.

A couple of times, Frank watched me on Saturday morning because Shelly had to go into the pharmacy for a couple of hours. I remember her asking me not to tell Nantie (what I used to call Linda, my mom), and I understood why even then. Nantie had certain ideas about child rearing. They didn’t include leaving the kid with a boyfriend during a monthly weekend visit. But Shelly liked her job at the pharmacy—so much more than the one at the factory—so when her boss asked her to do something, she always said yes. Daughter visit or no. She was trying to be responsible. She knew I’d be okay for a few hours with Frank and the TV.

So I remember watching The Smurfs. I’d gotten up and poured myself a bowl of Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries, my absolute favorite sugar cereal that Nantie wouldn’t ever buy except on my birthday. I always ate the yellow Cap’n Crunch first, saving all the red Crunch Berries for last.

“Good idea,” Frank said to me when he came in the room and saw my bowl of fuzzy red rounds floating in pink milk. “That looks good, Gretch.”

He poured himself some other cereal while I finished mine, confirming my suspicion that he was just joking that my Crunch Berries looked good. Which was fine, I thought. More bowls of Crunch Berries for me.

Frank sat with me on the couch. I remember the squeak of that couch, and how its brown upholstery was threadbare on one arm. He watched with me for several minutes, slurping up his cereal noisily but saying nothing. I remember his big brown eyes and his chiseled jaw, even though at that age I didn’t know the word chiseled. He grunted at one point in the show, glanced at me, but then waited till a commercial to make a comment.

“Why’s there only one girl?” he wanted to know.

“Who? Smurfette?”

“That’s her name?”

“The girl with the blond hair? Yeah. She’s Smurfette.”

“Looked to me like she was the only girl. All those little blue people, and only one girl. Why’s that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“That seems kinda weird, Gretch.”

I told him I’d never thought about it before. He put a hand up defensively. “I didn’t say it was bad.”

“You said it was weird.”

“That’s not the same thing. It is weird. What if there’s a prom, or something? What then? And don’t you wish there were more girl Smurfies?”

“They’re Smurfs,” I corrected. “Not Smurfies.”

“Okay. Don’t you wish there were more girl Smurfs on the show?”

“I don’t know,” I said, growing annoyed that he had to point out everything he didn’t like that I did—the Crunch Berries, the Smurfs. I wanted Shelly to get home.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Frank said, which struck me as a dumb thing to say. If you don’t mean anything, why are you even saying something?

Then he excused himself to go take a shower.

That’s all I remember about The Smurfs.

As for the fighting, I remember hearing two different fights while I was in bed at Shelly’s. One started when Frank came home late, after I’d gone to bed. One after Shelly had taken me out for pizza, and she couldn’t get her car started in the parking lot, so he picked us up. One might have been the very night before The Smurfs, but I don’t recall exactly. I don’t remember much but the screaming and yelling. I don’t remember him ever hitting her, but I remember her calling him a drunk. I knew the word drunk by then, so I remembered it. But I didn’t understand their words well enough to know why they were angry with each other.

Later my mom would ask me if I had ever seen or heard Frank hit Shelly. And if he’d ever hit me. I would not fully understand the context of this question until I was thirteen, when I was told that Frank had killed her. Till then I’d been told there had been a car accident, and it was Frank’s fault. I guess until that point my parents thought that was close enough, a little gentler of a story for a child to swallow.

In any case, to the second question, I’d always say no. On the first, I said no for years. Until I was thirteen. Then I’d say I didn’t think so. I wasn’t sure. Maybe. With all that screaming, I think maybe I did hear a slap or two in there somewhere. I couldn’t remember anymore. And I heard some thumps and bumps around the TV room as they worked themselves up. Maybe it was Frank pushing her around. Maybe. I couldn’t remember anymore. Probably. It was a long time ago. I was seven years old.



McDonald’s Parking Lot

Plantsville, New Hampshire

Frank Grippo now lives in Plantsville, just a couple of turns off the highway.

The Plantsville exit is about ten miles south of the one that leads to the more remote Emerson. When you first turn off, there’s a strip of stores and restaurants that probably survive largely from the traffic drawn in off the highway: McDonald’s, Subway, the Ninety Nine, Motel 6, and the creepy, inappropriately named All Tucked Inn.

Turn off onto Route 5 and it already starts looking pretty rural. Thomas Grippo’s house is right on Route 5, a mile and a half down from the McDonald’s metropolis. Here the houses are spread pretty far apart, but traffic whizzes by on the busy road. Number 140 is made of cinder blocks, painted a clean but nauseating baby blue. I park at the very end of the driveway, next to a slightly crooked mailbox on a thin metal pole. The snow has a narrow, crooked driveway shoveled out of it, with piles of snow so high on each side, they appear to be closing in on the black Taurus sitting between them.

I don’t spend any time sitting there in my car. I’m afraid that if I think too hard about this I’ll turn around and go. The steps and doorway are dilapidated wood, incongruous with the rest of the house—a dark little termite-gnawed vestibule to the institutional concrete.

I try the doorbell twice but don’t hear it ring inside. Then I start knocking. No answer. I step down off the steps and stare up at the house. No light from the windows. As I turn to go back to my car, I hear a door swoosh open.

“Can I help you?”

The voice is soft, rasping. I ignore the sudden hammering of my heart, take a deep breath, and turn.

“Hello,” I say.

With effort, the man takes a step out of the house. He is skeletal and pale, with a delicate blond fuzz growing on his mostly bald head. There is a nasty brown mark high on his forehead—either a birthmark or some kind of abrasion. None of this is familiar, but his ears and his eyes are. Big ears that stick out. Small, dark, close-set eyes.

“Can I . . . ?” he begins to repeat, then stops and stares at me.

“My name’s Gretchen Waters,” I say. “I believe you knew my mother.”

At that moment, while I wait for his response, the words “My name is SUE. How do you DO?” run through my head.

“Oh my God,” he says. “Last time I saw you . . . you want to come in?”

“I want to talk,” I say. “But I want to talk out here.”

I almost feel bad saying it. He looks terribly unsteady on his feet. Still, I’m not going into that cartoon-insane-asylum house, not in a million years. Not with Frank Grippo.

Frank sighs heavily and lowers himself onto the stoop. I stay standing.

“What do you want to talk about, Gretchen?” he asks.

“Shelly,” I answer. “What else?”

Frank rubs his head, then his eye. He looks very tired.

“It’s good to see you,” he says. “You look good. You look just like her. It’s nice to see you turned out good.”

“You don’t know I turned out good.”

“Yeah, I do. Linda wouldn’t have it any other way.”

This makes me angry. As if raising someone well were a tedious or bourgeoisie sort of goal.

“I wanted to talk about Shelly, not Linda.”

His face goes blank for a moment, his eyes dull.

“I’m going to go in and get my coat,” he murmurs. “It’s too cold out here.”

When he returns, he asks, “What about Shelly, then?”

“I want to know why you two fought so much. I remember you fighting. The neighbors heard it, too.”

“That’s what you want to know about?”

“To start.”

Franks shrugs. “She thought I drank too much. She said she was going to have to get rid of me if she was ever going to get custody of you back.”

“That’s all?”

“No.”

“What else, then?”

“I was pretty sure she was spending some time with her boss.”

“Spending some time?”

“Yeah. With Phil Coleman. The pharmacist.”

“Cheating?”

“I didn’t say that. I don’t speak ill of the dead like that.”

“But you thought she was cheating.”

“Isn’t that what all the lawyers and the newspapers said?”

“What do you say?”

“I say she was looking for an upgrade. She was trying to change her life around. She wanted you back. A man like that fit with the plan better than me. Put her in a whole different financial category.”

I shiver but try not to look cold.

“And that made you angry?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Frank replies simply. “Yeah, it did.”

“So what happened that morning?”

“She and I both went out that night. Me with my friends. Shelly with hers. I wasn’t in a rush to get home to Shelly. It wasn’t fun between us anymore. Because I could tell she was fixing to break up with me. Just a matter of time. And when I got home, she was lying there in front of the couch, blood coming out of her head. The worst thing I’d ever seen.”

We are both silent. A dog barks in the yard next door. A weird, howling bark that makes me think the dog might be in pain. Or maybe smelling that he is about to see someone murder someone else.

“So I couldn’t stand to let her be with someone else, is that what you think? Is that what Linda told you all these years?”

“Linda’s never said much. This isn’t about Linda. Linda didn’t send me here.”

“No. No, Shelly’s sister wouldn’t do that. What do you want, Gretchen?”

“I want you to tell me what really happened that morning.”

“I just told you.”

“I need you to tell me. Just between you and me.”

He shakes his head, scoffing.

“If I had some big confession to make, do you think that’s all it would take? You showing up here and asking? That’s almost as dumb as the idea of me killing her, running off for a couple of hours, then coming back home and calling the police.”

“Not so dumb. That way you could look oblivious. Your friends are the ones who said you weren’t at home all night, but what did they know? They were drunk, too. And maybe you figured that was a better bet than running and getting caught. Seeing how the verdict went, looks like it was a good bet.”

“Sure, Gretch. Things turned out real well for me.”

“Better than for Shelly.”

Frank rubs his eyes with both hands, then stares at me again. His eyes are ringed with purple. He really does look awful.

“Jesus, you look so much like her. You must hear that all the time.”

“Only around here. Where I live, where I grew up, no one ever knew Shelly.”

“I’m sorry for what happened to your mother, Gretchen. I never would have wished something like that on her.”

An old, sick feeling comes over me in a wave. I stand there for a few seconds trying to determine what this feeling really is. Anger? Fear? Do I want to punch him? Stab him? Run?

“So you really found three thousand dollars on my mother’s mail table, huh? Just before you found her body.”

“I don’t know if I should answer the question, if you’re going to ask it like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you don’t care what answer I give. You’re not going to believe me anyway.”

“Tell me, Frank. Did they let you keep it when the trial was over?”

“Of course not. It was evidence. It wasn’t mine.” Frank stares at me. “Any more questions?”

“No. I think I should leave,” I say. “It doesn’t seem like this is a good idea.”

Frank coughs. “Probably not.”

I turn and take a few steps toward my car. The dog continues to bark—less desperately, less painfully now. Just a mindless woof woof woof.

“Just like that, huh?” Frank calls hoarsely. “That’s all?”

“That’s all,” I say softly. I’m sure he doesn’t hear me.

I get in my car and drive to the McDonald’s, parking so I can take a minute to stop shaking.

It’s not fear or hatred, I decide. It’s frustration.

It’s the same frustration I’d feel, deep down, whenever I’d hear the Smurfs theme—years and years after that morning with Frank in my mother’s TV room. La LA la la la laaaaaah! The feeling was frustration at Frank for being right when I didn’t want him to be. That a man so horrible could be right. But truly, what the f*ck was up with The Smurfs?

What the f*ck was up?