“I would have chosen the suburbs.”
Henry smiled. “You’ve clearly spent no time in the suburbs.”
Frankie heard the distinctive whine of a mortar rocket and the crash of its explosion.
She screamed, “Incoming!,” and dropped to the ground.
Silence.
Frankie blinked.
She was sprawled in the grass in her parents’ backyard. What the hell? She crawled to her knees, feeling weak.
Someone had set off a firecracker. A bottle rocket, probably.
And she’d hit the ground. What was wrong with her? She knew the difference between a firecracker and a mortar round.
Oh my God.
Henry knelt down beside her, touched her shoulder with a gentleness that made her want to cry.
“Go away,” she said, humiliated. This hadn’t happened since the country club, years ago.
“I’ve got you,” he said.
She let him help her to her feet but couldn’t look at him.
“Those idiots who get their firecrackers and bottle rockets from Mexico should be in jail,” he said.
Was he saying it was normal to hear that and hit the ground?
“Will you take me home?” she said. She heard the words and knew they sounded like an invitation, which wasn’t what she meant. She didn’t want him.
Or maybe she did.
She didn’t want to be alone right now.
He slipped an arm around her waist to steady her. “My car—”
“We can walk.”
She led him to the gate, opened it.
Ocean Boulevard was a madhouse of traffic and tourists. The wide swath of sand was crowded with families, kids, students, Navy personnel. All mingling together. Dogs barking. Kids laughing. Tired parents trying to keep their broods close. Soon they’d start setting off more of the fireworks they had bought just across the border in Mexico. Bottle rockets. M-80s. The sky would look and sound like they were under attack.
On the sidewalk, Frankie kept close to Henry, realizing at some point that she had forgotten to put her sandals on when she left the house tonight. She had walked here in her bare feet.
Frankie didn’t know what to say to this man beside her, who kept his hand on her waist, a steadying pressure, as they walked the few blocks to her house.
There, she came to a stop.
The bungalow looked silver in the falling night. The shiny red door, the white-painted brick wishing well. All at once, she saw it for what it was: a home from another era, for a different kind of life. Kids. Dogs. Bikes.
It scoured her with sorrow, that realization.
“I’ll bet you played on Coronado Beach when you were a kid, probably rode your bike on Ocean Boulevard with cards clothespinned to the spokes. What a childhood.”
“With my brother,” she said quietly. She turned, looked up at Henry. “Thank you.”
He gave a dramatic bow. “At your service, milady.”
Frankie felt a surprising spark of desire. The first in years. A desire to be touched, held. Not alone. “Are you married?”
“No. My wife—Susannah—died of breast cancer seven years ago.”
She saw the sadness he’d been through with his wife, an understanding of loss that eased her loneliness, or shared it. “How old are you?” she asked, although right now she didn’t care.
“Thirty-eight. And you?”
“Twenty-six.”
He had nothing to say to that, and she was glad. This—they—weren’t a thing that needed words. Words meant something; she wanted this—them—to mean nothing. “Come inside?” she said quietly.
He obviously understood the question, all of it, and nodded.
She opened the back gate, led him into her backyard, which she’d meant to fix up and never had. Grass ran wild, yellowing in places from the summer heat and her lackadaisical watering. The barbecue she’d bought secondhand had never been used and the oak tree branches longed for a tire swing. The backyard, like her life, was empty.
She closed the gate behind them, and the tinny click was like a starting bell. He drew her close, pulled her into an embrace. She felt the power in him, the desire for her, and it made her feel the same way—wanted. Something she hadn’t felt in a long time.
He drew back, looked down at her.
She held on to his hand, led him into her bedroom. There, she let go, stood back, and faced him, wishing she had made her bed. There were clothes scattered on the floor. Empty glasses on the nightstand. Had she drunk too much last night and stumbled to bed? She couldn’t remember.
He took her by the hand and led her to the bed.
She felt like a virgin again, uncertain, afraid. Slowly, she took off her hot pants and pulled off her top.
She wore a lacy white bra, white panties, and the gold Saint Christopher medal Mom had sent her in Vietnam.
“I’ve only … been with one man, and it’s been a long time,” she said, unsure of why she said it. “And I don’t want … more than this. I don’t have it in me.”
“What don’t you have in you, Frankie?”
“Love.”
“Ah.”
“I’m in love with someone else.”
“Where is he?”
“Gone.”
He pulled her close. She softened in his embrace; their lips touched, tentatively, the kiss of strangers.
At first she could think only of Rye, and what the kiss wasn’t, who Henry wasn’t, and then she lost her hold on that and felt herself falling into a new, slow building of passion.
“There,” she said in a harsh, throaty voice when his hand moved down her bare skin, slipped inside her panties.
It wasn’t love, but for a beautiful moment her body came alive, vibrated, hummed, and it was close enough.
* * *
When she looked back on it, which she did often in that summer of 1972, she wondered how it was that she and Henry had begun actually dating.
In her mind, they had never really started a relationship. They’d simply merged somehow; two people walking on different paths that had somehow—inexplicably—become a single road. It started that first night in her bungalow. Henry knew about pain and loss; after the death of his wife, he said he’d fallen into darkness, drunk too much alcohol, and stumbled. Frankie knew about that kind of stumbling, how hard it could be to right oneself and how careful life needed to be thereafter. They were lonely, both of them, and brokenhearted. She saw the sorrow in his eyes when he mentioned his wife and she knew her voice broke when he asked about Rye, about Jamie, about Finley.
So they stopped saying the names, stopped talking about true love, and let almost-love—passion—into their lives. Frankie went to Planned Parenthood for birth control pills. She tried to feel modern and sure of herself when she walked into the clinic, but when the doctor asked if she was married, her cheeks flamed. She nodded quickly, then shook her head. The doctor had smiled kindly and told her she didn’t need to lie anymore. It was finally legal for single women to get the pill. He wrote her a prescription.
She and Henry met after work for drinks and even sometimes for dinner. Henry was often busy with fundraising for the hospital and its proposed new clinic, and Frankie had no desire to join him at the events.
Neither was ready to merge so completely into the other’s life. Or at least she wasn’t, and so he didn’t push it.
Frankie didn’t tell her mother or her girlfriends about Henry because it felt vaguely wrong, immoral maybe, to touch a man you didn’t love, to sleep in his arms for hours and watch him leave before dawn to go to work.
But she couldn’t stop it. After so many years of loneliness and grief, Henry brought sunlight into her life. And she was afraid to go back to the dark.
* * *
August 1, 1972
Dear Frankie,
Enough is enough. Do you think I am an idiot?
In case you answer incorrectly, I’m not. Your mother called me last night. She tells me that you’re acting even stranger than usual, and you’re wearing perfume again. I know what this means, girlfriend.
Sex.
Who are you getting it from and how is it? Please tell a friend so she can live vicariously.