Frankie sat in one of the big wing chairs.
Her parents sat together on the sofa. Frankie saw her mother reach out to hold her father’s hand.
Frankie thought—oddly—of that night, long ago, when she’d dressed with such care for Finley’s going-away party, in a lavender sheath, with her hair teased to an improbable height. She’d done everything to make these two people proud of her. It was why her father’s dismissal of Vietnam cut so deeply. But those were the needs of a child. She was a woman now.
“I love you guys,” she said. That was the starting and ending point in life: love. The journey was everything in between.
Mom paled visibly. “Frances…”
“No fear,” Frankie said, more to herself than to her mother, who was obviously imagining the worst. She took a deep breath, exhaled. “I’ve had plenty of time to think in the past few months. I’ve worked really hard to become honest with myself and to see my own life clearly, and maybe I still don’t, maybe no one ever does until it’s too late, but I’ve seen enough. I need to find out who I really am and who I want to be.”
“You’ll get your nursing license back. Henry says he’ll write you a recommendation. You just have to start the process,” Mom said. “And you’ve gotten your driver’s license back.”
“I know that. I hope to God I can be a nurse again, but I have to plan for the worst, too, that they deny me.”
“What is it you’re trying to say, Frankie?” Dad asked.
“I’m moving,” she said.
“What?” Mom said. “Why? You have everything you need right here.”
“Can you make it on your own?” Dad said. “Without your nursing license?”
Frankie had asked herself the same thing. She’d never paid rent or found her own place or lived alone. She’d gone from her parents’ house straight to her hooch in Vietnam. The last time she’d lost her shit, Barb and Ethel had bailed her out and given her a place to live. While she’d been in recovery, her father had hired a lawyer and gotten her DUI downgraded to reckless driving and gotten her driver’s license reinstated. She’d never even had her own credit card. “I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m looking for, but you know what? That’s okay. It’s supposed to be frightening to make your way in the world, to leave your family.”
“Oh,” Mom said, looking hurt.
“I need quiet,” Frankie said. “Everything has been … loud since Vietnam. Before that, maybe, since Finley’s death. I need to live someplace where all I hear are leaves rustling and winds blowing and maybe a coyote howling at the moon, where I can focus on getting well. Strong. I want to have an animal, a dog, maybe. A horse.” She paused. “I just want to breathe easily. Thanks to both of you, I have the cottage. I’d like to sell it and use the money to start over somewhere new.”
Her parents stared at her for a long moment.
“We’ll worry,” Mom said at last.
Frankie loved her for that. “It’s not like I’m going to war,” she said with a smile. “I’ll be back. And you’ll visit, wherever I end up.”
* * *
On a hot, late August day, Frankie packed up her repaired Mustang and went back into the bungalow, tossing her keys on the counter. She looked around at the empty room. She hoped a young family bought this place and raised their children here, letting them run as free as she and Finley had, that they loved the tree swing Henry had put up in the backyard and had birthday parties on the beach.
At last, she left the house, closed the door behind her for the last time.
Outside, Barb stood against Frankie’s Mustang, with her arms crossed. In front of her was a FOR SALE sign stuck into the lawn. “Hey,” she said.
Frankie laughed out loud. “Who called you? Mom? Henry? I’m surrounded by snitches.”
“Uh-huh. You didn’t think I’d let you go in search of your life alone, did you?”
“You’re married. With stepkids. You don’t have to sweep in and fill my empty life with your own, you know.”
Barb rolled her eyes. “You’re my best friend, Frankie,” she said.
And that was it.
“Ethel wanted to come, but she’s pregnant again. On bed rest. She said to tell you she’s here in big, fat spirit.”
An ice-cream truck drove past, bells jingling. The neighborhood children wouldn’t be far behind. Frankie turned, tented her eyes; for a split second, she was ten years old again, running along behind her big brother, trying to keep up, both of them gilded in sunlight in her memory.
Frankie laughed and hugged Barb, then jumped in the driver’s seat and started the car. The music came on loudly: “Hooked on a Feeling.”
A few blocks later, Frankie eased her foot off the gas.
Her parents stood in front of the gate, arms around each other, hands in the air. How long had they been there, waiting to catch a glimpse of her as she left town? They’d said goodbye a dozen times and in a dozen ways in the last month.
Frankie waved and honked the horn in goodbye—to her parents, to Coronado, to her childhood, and to Finley. The Mustang rolled through town and onto the bridge, past the boats anchored in the harbor. Frankie saw the postcard beauty of Coronado Island in her rearview mirror.
With no destination in mind, Frankie and Barb drove north, listening to Creedence, Vanilla Fudge, Cream, Janis, the Beatles, the Animals, Dylan, the Doors.
The music of Vietnam.
The music of their generation.
At Dana Point, Frankie turned onto Highway 1 and stayed on the coast, with the endless blue Pacific to her left. In Long Beach there was an accident, so she turned onto a freeway, and then another one, just taking exits when it felt right.
She let the complex web of California freeways become her will; she let them lead her, this way and that. With the new fifty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit, she had to constantly check her speed.
She drove through downtown Los Angeles, with its graffiti and gangs and chain-link fences, and found herself on the glittering Sunset Strip, a world of lights and giant billboards and music clubs.
They drove up the magnificent California Coast, spent a few nights in the Santa Ynez Valley, staring out at the rolling golden hills, and Frankie said, “I like the open spaces, but I need more, and horses, maybe.”
“Northward,” Barb said.
This was how they made decisions; on the fly, by corners turned and roads taken and not taken.
In Carmel, the afternoon fog was too heavy; in San Francisco, there were too many people. The wildness of Mendocino called out to her, but the giant Sequoias hemmed her in somehow.
So, northward.
In Oregon, the green was vibrant and the air was clean, and still there were too many people, even though the towns were few and far between.
They bypassed busy Seattle, listened to radio reports of missing college girls, and turned east, passing through the empty endless wheat fields in the eastern half of Washington, which felt lonely to Frankie, desolate.
Montana.
When they drove into the town of Missoula, singing about time in a bottle, the sky was a vibrant, searing blue that explained the Big Sky Country moniker. A few miles out of town, and the view was stunning: hay fields that stretched toward jagged, snowcapped mountains, their peaks draped in snow, the wide blue Clark Fork river meandering by.
FOR SALE. 27 ACRES.
She and Barb saw the sign at the same time.
It was stuck on a slanted post, looked weathered by time. Behind it: an endless green field, the river running along it, a ragged barbed wire fence in need of tending, a dirt road that led to a stand of tall green trees.
Frankie looked at Barb. “It’s beautiful.”
“And remote,” Barb said.