AFTER FRANK GOT the tape off his eyebrows, he’d refreshed himself with a pass through Wardrobe. Now he was wearing an outfit more suited to an afternoon’s motoring: white canvas duster over chinos and a white shirt, leather aviator’s cap and goggles, a silk scarf and old-school binoculars around his neck. He had his plastic machete stuck in his belt and his pith helmet under his arm. “Is that what you’re wearing?” he asked.
“What’s wrong with it?” I had on a T-shirt, Bermuda shorts, and tennis shoes, my New York-via-Nebraska idea of standard Southern California daywear.
“Everything,” Frank said. “I know just what you need. Tartan! Let me get you my plaid cravat.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m not big on plaids.”
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked. He launched into a brief-for-Frank disquisition on the importance of tartans as clan signifiers in Great Britain from ancient times forward, which segued into a history of the evolution of the striped necktie as a means of differentiating university rowing teams from afar. He paused to take a breath and I groaned, figuring this might go on a while. Instead, Frank used the air he’d taken in to bellow, “Gentlemen, start your engines!” Then he whipped the machete from his belt and charged the station wagon, carrying the pith helmet in front of him like a shield in his left hand and brandishing the machete in his right.
After I got over my surprise at his enthusiasm for our adventure I was pleased to see how eager he was to go. So of course the car wouldn’t start. “Why?” I asked the ozone.
Frank, mouthpiece for the ozone, answered me. “The battery’s dead. If an automobile isn’t driven for weeks or months, the cables should be disconnected to prevent the charge leaking out. However, my mother refused to allow me to perform the necessary operation. She said disconnecting the battery was abject capitulation. And that I would get grease on my cuffs.”
“Abject capitulation to what?”
“To her not driving.”
“Does she ever drive?”
“Sometimes not for weeks or months. As if the driving weren’t bad enough, once you reach your destination you have to find a place to park. God help you if you end up in a parking garage because chances are you’ll never find your car again. If you do find your car, then you’ve lost the stupid parking ticket. That’s it. You’re doomed. Why did you ever leave the house? Better to stay home. According to my mother.”
“Don’t you ever go anywhere?” I asked.
“We do,” he said. “In taxis.”
After an eternity—or maybe what just seemed an eternity to me, as Frank was lecturing, not briefly, on the ins and outs of internal combustion engines, which segued into an explanation of Nikola Tesla’s alternating current (A.C.) engine, which, I don’t know if you know this, revolutionized the delivery of electricity over long distances, much to the chagrin of Tesla’s archnemesis and purveyor of the direct current (D.C.) delivery system, Thomas Edison—a guy from roadside assistance showed up at the gate carrying a briefcase-sized battery to shock our engine back to life.
“Drive your car at least half an hour before you turn the engine off again,” he said once he got it up and running.
“It’s not my car.” I signed the papers on his clipboard while he unclamped the jumper cables. “But don’t worry. We may not stop driving until we get to Belize.”
The guy eyeballed the pair of us. “Not yours either?” he asked, nodding toward Frank.
“Nope,” I said. “I’m the chauffeur.”
“Nice gig,” he said. “Enjoy Belize. Don’t forget your sunscreen.”
After the gate clanged shut behind the guy, Frank said, “I don’t think my mother would like it if you took me to Belize.”
“I was joking.”
“Your jokes are not funny. I wish you would say ‘knock knock’ when you’re trying to make a joke so I would know.”
“Great idea,” I said. “Listen, Frank. I was going to take you to a museum today but since it’s getting late, let’s just go for a drive along the beach. No getting in the water, though. Okay?”
“Just as well. The lifeguards say I swim like a drowning man. I don’t see why that matters as long as I don’t in fact drown.” He handed me the pith helmet. “This is for you, Alice. Sir Howard Carter didn’t wear sunscreen in the Valley of the Kings.”
In that small gesture I saw another leap forward in my acceptance into the Banning household. “Thank you, Frank,” I said. “That’s sweet of you. Let’s leave the machete at home, okay?”
And without complaint or hesitation, he flung the machete straight up into the air. I cringed and covered my head with my arms—I know it was plastic, but that sucker looked heavy. When it didn’t thunk to earth again I peered at the sky, wondering if he’d somehow launched it into orbit. But there it was, lodged in the upper branches of a tree where, I noticed for the first time, a number of other items hung camouflaged by leaves and branches. A pair of kid’s sneakers I couldn’t imagine Frank ever wearing tied together by their laces, a Hula-Hoop, a tennis racket, a jump rope.
“We ought to get a ladder out one day and take all that stuff down,” I said.