“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Frank told me you were clearing out at four A.M. You didn’t think I’d let you get away without saying good-bye, did you?” He reached for my cheek but I leaned away. I didn’t want Frank to see. Not that he was looking at us. He’d remembered his flashlight and was using it to signal his close personal friends in outer space.
“Frank told you?” I asked. “How?”
Xander looked puzzled. “How? He called me on the telephone.”
“But Frank’s terrible at memorizing phone numbers. He told me so himself.”
“Who said anything about Frank knowing my number? When he needs to talk to me he hijacks Mimi’s cell and calls me. When he calls, I come running. If I can.”
Frank was going to be okay.
Or not.
I sighed and told myself to let it go. Energy spent on worrying about a future you can’t control is energy wasted. It doesn’t do anybody one bit of good.
I knew then I’d lived in California too long. I’d gone native.
“Of course,” I said to Xander. “Mimi has you in her cell phone. I hadn’t thought of that.”
As for Xander’s number, of course by then I sort of had it, too. I knew that you could count on him sometimes, just not always. He would never pick up the check because he couldn’t cover it. Xander wouldn’t fail spectacularly at anything because he didn’t have it in him anymore to try hard enough for that to happen. But we all have our strengths and weaknesses. Xander had a good heart and a knack for being happy. He assumed everybody he met would like him because everybody usually did. At first, anyway, before he decided he’d only be a disappointment if he stuck around.
Xander, to his credit, had found his people, ones who understood and loved him the only way he could be understood and loved. Mimi and Frank gave him broken things to fix so he could feel like he was taking care of them. He had them to circle back to when his life felt like it didn’t add up to all that much. Mimi and Frank would keep Xander from disappearing, and he’d do the same for them.
The alarm on my watch sounded. “I have to get myself together,” I said. “I don’t want to miss my plane.”
“We’ll take you to the airport,” Xander said.
“You will, huh? Who’s driving? You or Frank?”
“What I meant was we could go with you in the cab.”
“What about Mimi?” I asked.
“I don’t need my mother with me anymore to take a cab,” Frank said. “As long as Xander’s around.”
“I’ll always be here, pal,” Xander said. “Sooner or later.”
“Well, I can take a cab all by myself, so that’s what I’m going to do. And you, Frank, have to put your grandfather’s doctor bag away before your mother realizes it’s missing.”
Frank ran for the house as if coyotes were at his heels. By the time Xander and I got back inside, the bag had been dealt with and Frank had called a cab for me.
“You called a cab for me already?” I asked. “Gee, Frank, thanks. Is that your way of saying, ‘Don’t let the screen door hit you on the way out’?”
“What screen door?”
“Knock knock,” I said.
I let each of the boys carry one of my bags out the gate for me.
“We’ll wait with you until the cab comes,” Xander said.
“No,” I said. I’d had enough of a struggle already, getting myself together. “Absolutely not. It’s cold out here. Go back inside. This is not a negotiation.”
“You’re starting to sound like Mimi,” Xander said. “I guess it really is time for you to go.”
That made me laugh. Which was good, since it could have gone either way for me about then.
“Here,” Frank said, and handed me his pocket square. “From the configuration of your facial features, I gather you may need this soon.”
“Good noticing, Frank,” I said. “Thank you. I’m so proud of you. You know that, right?”
“I know,” he said. “You should be.”
Acknowledgments