“When have you broken somebody?”
“I slammed a taxicab door on my mother’s hand once and broke her finger. Also, there was an unfortunate incident with a jump rope in preschool that sent a girl flying across the playground. But I was exonerated of that. I’ve never understood why the girl got upset. Doesn’t everyone dream of flying, Alice?”
While the way he said it made me think maybe somebody shouldn’t have been exonerated, I have to confess I was thrilled to hear Frank drop my name. After Alis wore off his hand he’d been saying “Excuse me?” to get my attention.
“Here,” Frank said, handing his book back to me. “Take this book in lieu of the one my mother promised. You can leave today. I will call a cab while you pack.”
It seemed our relationship wasn’t progressing as well as I thought.
AS FOR MIMI’S book, it was hard to know how it was getting along. Around noon each day Frank and I would eat together, then I’d arrange her lunch on a tray while Frank went outside to pick a flower to go with it. We’d put his offering, often badly mangled, in a juice glass on the tray and I’d carry the whole thing to her office and leave it on the floor just outside her closed door. I always made Frank swear to wait for me in the kitchen, but he’d trail me in the hall like Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief, pressing himself into doorways to hide if I happened to look over my shoulder. After I put the tray down and knocked, I’d hear a mad scramble behind me as Frank hotfooted it back to the kitchen. I’d count to ten before I returned to give him time to arrange himself under the table with a book and catch his breath. Then we’d have a cookie.
He wasn’t the only one trying to fake me out, though. As soon as my knuckles connected with her door I’d hear a burst of typing from the other side—Mimi didn’t use a computer—which always made me think of those recordings people have of dogs barking in place of a doorbell. I guess she was worried I was keeping tabs on her output. Which, in fairness, I was. Mr. Vargas had worked up a schedule to keep her on track, and part of my job was to somehow make sure she turned in pages, however rough, once a week or so. I was supposed to enter her typescript into “Mimi’s computer,” a tool that lay fallow as far as I could tell except for when she used it to order things online or trawl eBay for Frank’s outfits. Then I was to e-mail the pages to Mr. Vargas. He wasn’t looking for high polish or even any polish. Just evidence of a story, coming together, not coming together, whatever.
Except Mimi hadn’t surrendered pages yet.
When I texted Mr. Vargas to confess as much, he answered with one word: Patience.
PART II
OUR ADVENTURES BEGIN
( 5 )
AFTER MUCH OF June spent under house arrest, I decided it was time Frank and I staged a jailbreak. I put a note on Mimi’s lunch tray that said: “May I borrow the car keys?” Frank and I had climbed in the Mercedes a few times to watch a movie on my computer and pretend we were at a drive-in. Other than using it as a stage for imaginary adventures, though, no one had touched the car since I’d been there. The crud accumulated on its windows and dead leaves puddled under its wheels were a testament to how long it had been since it had moved. “Does this thing drive?” I asked Frank.
“Yes. But not by itself, in the way my piano plays itself. I would be an enthusiastic supporter of such technology except that the self-driving car gives my mother less incentive than ever to buy me a horse.”
Mimi emerged from her office while Frank and I were having our after-lunch cookie. Frank jumped out of his chair so quickly he knocked it to the floor and flung himself into her arms with such force that she staggered back a few steps.
“Careful, Frank,” she said. “Where did you get the black tape?” Frank was wearing his alternate, unragged tailcoat and intact morning pants, and had applied black tape to his eyebrows and upper lip in the manner of Groucho Marx.
“What black tape?” he asked.
“The black electrical tape that I hid from you so that you wouldn’t put it over your eyebrows again. Remember how much it hurt getting it off last time?”
“Oh, that black tape,” he said. “You can have it back.” He started peeling it delicately from his upper lip.
“Where do you need to go, Penny?” Mimi asked.
“Alice,” I said as automatically as you would say “God bless you” to a stranger sneezing. “I don’t need to go anywhere. But I thought Frank would enjoy getting out. I figured we could find a playground where Frank could hook up with other kids and—”
“—No!” Frank and Mimi all but shouted in unison.
I must have looked startled because Mimi was quick to explain, “Frank doesn’t like waiting his turn at the swings.”