Every morning when Frankie woke up, the first thing he saw was the slit of light coming in through the living room window in his parents’ house .
The second thing he saw was his wheelchair. By then, he’d remembered about the accident. So he knew that he was living back home with his parents even though he was 28 years old, that he couldn’t walk up the steps to his old bedroom and that the next thing he’d hear would be his father in the kitchen making coffee, shuffling around in the stupid Garfield slippers his sister Jan bought him for Christmas.
The sad thing wasn’t that Jan bought them- it was that his father really wore them every morning. If Frankie leaned up on his left elbow, he could see Garfield’s head bobbing up and down across the kitchen floor. Some mornings he enjoyed watching this, as if his leftover teen rage at his father could be assuaged by the ridiculous figure Frank Sr. now cut as he aged.
But this morning Frankie just found it sad. He didn’t bother to lean up on his elbow to peer into the kitchen as he heard the water running into the coffee pot or the whoosh of his father scooping grinds. Nor did he look out the window to see his next door neighbor Ellie come out in her half open robe like she did every morning to get the paper.
Why bother? It was the same thing every day and whether it was his father’s Garfield slippers or even shapely Ellie, it got old.
Frankie remembered the movie with Bill Murray about the guy who woke up every day and the same thing happened over and over again- Groundhog Day, it was called. That was how it was living with his parents. Dad made the coffee, Mom came down and poured out cereal. She got Frankie out of bed and they ate. Then Dad left for his part time job until 2 p.m. Mom put on the TV for him while she did housework, then brought him a sandwich after Dad came home. Sometimes Dad brought him a magazine or a DVD. They had dinner, watched more TV.
The only days that were different were when he had a doctor’s appointment or his physical therapist came to the house. On the weekends his sister Jan stopped by with pizza on Saturday for dinner – 1 pepperoni pie and 1 anchovy pie because his father was the sole person in the world they still made anchovy pizzas for. On Sundays she brought Chinese. Jan talked about her job as a fifth grade teacher and how she didn’t have time to date to keep her parents off her back. She was in her early thirties and their mother Pat kept telling her she would regret not getting married younger.
“It’s not natural,” Pat always said after her daughter left as she tossed out cardboard food boxes.
Thinking of the additives, Frankie always nodded. But he knew what his mother meant. Jan should be married by now – the big Should. A few times he asked his mom to get off Jan’s back, but her response was “Why should I? I’m her mother.” Frankie realized it didn’t do any good to discuss the matter.
“And you – you confined to a wheelchair from that damn drinking you do with your friends. And where are they now?” his mom would ask.
That was the worst part of all this. He’d wrapped his car around a tree on the way home from the bar after a Sunday night football game six months ago. Although his insurance paid his medical bills, he couldn’t sue a tree so there wouldn’t be any big settlement for him. Frankie had lost everything – his apartment, his job – even his car. He got hit with a driving while intoxicated charge and lost his license to boot. And had to move back home. On most days all of that was far worse than being “confined to a wheelchair” as his mother called it.
His physical therapist told him that he might walk again but probably not well enough not to use a wheelchair. The bones in both his legs were shattered and despite numerous surgeries, the doctors weren’t optimistic.
His dad, on the other hand, acted as if he had a medical degree instead of a GED. He kept telling Frankie that he’d walk if he wanted to – the exact opposite of his mother’s melodramatic reaction and overcoddling.
It was typical of his parents to go to polar extremes, as his sister pointed out last Sunday when they were finishing up the last of the dumplings. “Remember when I wanted to quit the high school band because I hated playing the clarinet?”
He nodded. Jan had cried and carried on her freshman year so much that he remembered it well.
“And Dad said it was fine and Mom said I would never learn responsibility and I had to keep playing the clarinet through high school because we bought it?” Jan rolled her eyes. “I almost died when I heard that. Imagine having to play that three more years?”
“Awful,” Frankie said, spooning chicken chow mein into his mouth.
“Okay, laugh if you want, but they always do that. One says black, the other says white. It’s very confusing.” Jan shook her head. “Like Dad says behind your back that boys will be boys so it’s fine that you were drunk. And Mom acts like you’re on the Bowery like uncle – uncle-“
“Al. Her brother. Never met him. She always says I remind her of him.”
“Well you did meet him, but you were young. She kept him away from us because,” and here Jan leaned closer to him so their parents who were out on the porch couldn’t hear “he was homeless. And a drunk.”
“Really?”
“It’s true. He had a family at one time – two kids, a wife and owned a car dealership. Drank it all away. His wife left him. I was about eight – and you were maybe two years old. I remember Mom crying and begging Dad to let Uncle Al live here for a while and Dad kept refusing. Suddenly Uncle Al disappeared – our cousins too. Never saw him again.”
“Wow.” Frankie put his spoon down and looked out at his parents on the porch swing. He could see their profile – his mother crocheting, his father smoking his pipe and looking out across the yard toward the street, telling his mother about something or other. He found it hard to imagine a conversation between them where his dad told his mother her own brother couldn’t stay here.
“That’s okay, Frankie. Dad can’t kick you out, no matter what. You’re his son.” Jan stood up and stretched. “I better go. Papers to grade.”
After Jan left, Frankie rolled into the living room and turned the TV on, waiting for his parents to come inside. He half expected his father to sit in his recliner, look at him and ask him when he planned to move out.
Instead, as usual, his mother asked him to switch the channel to a show that wasn’t “blood and guts” and they spent the evening watching a Hallmark movie and not talking about anything meaningful at all.
Which, Frankie realized as he thought about it now as his mother came toward him to help him get out of the hospital bed, was a good thing since he had no plans.
“Mom,” he said, after his father left for work, “maybe we better talk.”
“About what, dear?” she asked, holding a duster in her hand she’d bought on TV. It was her favorite cleaning tool. She used it on everything –computers, the TV, even light fixtures. One day he’d caught her trying to dust the cat. When he laughed, she said tht the guy did that in the commercial.
“My plans.”
“Oh,” she said cheerily, “you have plans?”
“Well, no, I don’t,” he replied.
“Then I don’t see why we have to talk about it.”
“Just because I don’t know what to do doesn’t mean I don’t want to do something,” he replied, feeling exasperated with her.
“Well, now you’re just upsetting yourself, Frankie,” she said, dusting a coffee mug on the counter.
“Stop that!” he shouted. “I’m trying to talk to you.”
Pat stopped in mid-movement, her Stepford Wife act halted. “Franklin, don’t use that tone with me. I swear, you remind me of your Uncle Al.”
“Why do you say that to me?” Frankie asked. “I know what happened to him. Jan told me.”
“Did she tell you he’s dead?”
“Mom, I didn’t know-”
Pat turned and put her hands on the counter. Slowly she reached for a mug and poured herself a cup of coffee. She took a sip, then turned toward him.
“He died last winter from exposure. Drunk out of his mind, sleeping outside on a park bench. The police called us, asked me to come down and identify the body. It was right after your accident. I was beside myself. ” She shuddered. “But I went. It was him. He looked like he was eighty years old. I could have walked right by him and maybe not have recognized him – except for one thing. He had two scars on his right arm from when we were kids that he got on a metal chain from a swing. ” She took another sip of coffee. “The morgue. Is that what’s going to happen the next time with you, Frankie? Is that your plan?”
“I’m sorry,” Frankie said.
“Well, I thank you for that anyhow.” Pat turned toward the sink and poured the rest of the coffee down the drain slowly, then methodically rinsed out the mug. Carefully she put it back on the counter and picked up her duster again. She started out of the room, then turned to face him. “I always wondered if we’d taken Al in if it would have made a difference. I blamed your father all these years, you know. Thought it was his fault – and my fault- for what happened to Al. But now – after all this with you – I’m not so sure. Maybe we just try to do too much.”
Frankie couldn’t look at her. He only heard her go through the living room and upstairs.
Then he rolled out to the living room, picked up the remote and put on the TV.
Copyright 2007 Ruth Harrigan
