IN RETROSPECT, I wonder if the whole madness with Xander was my way of rearranging the deck chairs at Mimi’s house. The two of us had nothing in common but Mimi and Frank, about whom we talked endlessly in a way I’d like to think neither of us would have talked to anybody outside the wall. I learned from Xander that in the old days before Frank, Mimi was freer with her chitchat than I could imagine her being with anybody. Even with Mr. Vargas.
From the way Xander told it, their “music lessons” consisted of Mimi sitting by him on the piano bench with her hands in her lap, staring at the book of scales on the music rack and talking. Part of it, I guess, was that for such a handsome guy, Xander was an unusually good listener. But the rest of it I attribute to Lonesome-Highway Syndrome, a condition familiar to long-range truckers, Greyhound ticket holders, and regular travelers of endless, underpopulated flatlands. That’s when two unacquainted people sit by each other long enough to be hypnotized by the white line cleaving highway or the vinyl back of a bus seat and say more than they might have otherwise. Same with two strangers lying next to each other, staring at the rafters.
Which is where we were when Xander told me the story of how as a kid Mimi would ride all over town behind her brother Julian on his gray-white gelding Zephyr. How when they got older and bullies made Julian’s life a living hell, Mimi had chalked a target on the side of the barn and taught him to throw. Julian turned out to be a natural, with good speed and dead aim. Mimi took the rap the first time Julian got in trouble for chipping a bully’s tooth with a rock, even though Julian was her older brother and all the kids knew she hadn’t thrown the stone. The upside of that incident was that nobody bothered Julian anymore, and when he started pitching for the high school teams he became a local hero, even if people still found him impossible to talk to.
There was also the story of how Mimi’s mother Banning insisted Zephyr walk in Julian’s funeral cortege, saddled but riderless, as if her son were dead Abraham Lincoln or President Kennedy, and how Mimi was so mortified she sat with her head between her knees so nobody would see her in the backseat of her parents’ car. Or at least that’s what Mimi told herself was the reason she couldn’t hold her head up that day.
But sadder than that to me was how Mimi called her mother months after she’d run away from the funeral and college and the rest of it to tell Banning that everything was going to be okay and that she was living in New York City. “Nothing will ever be okay again,” her mother said. “Have you forgotten Julian already?” Mimi thought that was the perfect time to tell her she’d written a novel that was but mostly wasn’t based on Julian. That, moreover, the novel had been bought by a prestigious New York publisher and was coming out in the fall. She thought the news of her dead son immortalized might make Banning a little happier. Instead she asked, “A book? How could you? Haven’t we suffered enough?” Mimi told her mother she’d used a pen name so no one would know she’d written it, unless Banning wanted people to know. When Banning didn’t respond, Mimi told her the name she’d chosen. “But Banning’s my name,” her mother said. “Mine.” Then she hung up on Mimi. It was the last conversation they had.
Xander was my Scheherazade. I went to him as much for the stories as anything.
“Frank’s not adopted, is he?” I asked him.
“Nope.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then who’s his father?”
Xander shrugged.
“Do you think Hanes might be Frank’s dad?”
“I met Mimi before there was a Frank. I don’t think she’s seen Hanes since I’ve known her.”
“What was the story with Mimi and that guy, anyway?”
“Hanes Fuller was irresistible as long as he was working from her script. Has Frank showed you Public Enemy yet?”
“With James Cagney? Of course.”
“Remember the scene where Cagney shoves a halved grapefruit into his girl’s face because she won’t shut up? Hanes unscripted was like that girl. Mimi has a soft spot for lots of human frailties, but being stupid and boring aren’t among them.”
“I wonder what she hates me for,” I said.
“She doesn’t hate you. How could she? You’re perfect.”
Later, Xander said, “It’s not about you, you know. What Mimi hates is how her life has turned out. It isn’t how she thought it would be back when she was your age and on the top of the world.”
PART IV
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH XANDER?
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