City of Girls

Rich people, I thought. How had Frank been able to tell that Walter and I were rich people? And then I realized: Oh, yes, of course. The same way we’d been able to tell that he was a poor person. Someone not even worth acknowledging.

Frank kept going: “And I’m thinking, they don’t even know I’m here. I’m nothing to these people. Walter Morris isn’t my friend. He’s just using me. And you—you hadn’t even looked at me. Back at the theater, you told me, ‘Take down those two suitcases.’ Like I was a porter, or something. Walter, he didn’t even introduce me. I mean, I know you were all under duress, but it’s like, in his eyes, I’m nobody, you know? I’m just a tool that he needs—just somebody to drive the machine. And I’m trying to figure out how to stop being so invisible, you know? So then I think, Hey, I’ll jump on the bandwagon. Join the conversation. Try to act like him—talk the way he’s talking, the way he’s going after you. So that’s when I said it. That’s when I called you what I called you. Then I see how it lands. I look in the rearview mirror and I see your face. I see what my words just did to you. It was like I killed you. Then I see his face—it’s like he just got hit by a baseball bat. I thought it was gonna be nothing, me saying that. I thought it was gonna make me seem cool, too—but, no, it was like mustard gas. Because no matter how bad it was, the way your brother was reaming you out, he hadn’t used a word like that. I see him try to figure out what to do about it. Then I see him decide to do nothing. That was the worst part.”

“That was the worst part,” I agreed.

“I gotta tell you, Vivian—hand on the Bible—I never used a word like that to anybody in my life. Never in my life. Not before, not since. I’m not that guy. Where did it come from, that day? Over the years, I’ve watched that scene a thousand times in my mind. I watch myself say it, and I think—Frank, what’s the matter with you? But those words, I swear to God, they just came flying out of my mouth. Then Walter clams up. Remember that?”

“I do.”

“He doesn’t defend you, doesn’t tell me to shut my hole. Now we gotta drive for hours in that silence. And I can’t tell anyone I’m sorry, ’cause I feel like I’m never supposed to open my mouth around the two of you again. Like I wasn’t hired to open my mouth around you in the first place—not that I was hired, but you know what I mean. Then we get to your family’s house—and I never saw a house like that in my life—and Walter doesn’t even introduce me to your parents. Like I don’t exist. Back in the car, all the way back to OCS, he doesn’t say a word to me. Doesn’t say a word to me the whole rest of training. Acts like it never happened. Looks at me like he never saw me before. Then we graduate, and thank God I never have to see him again. But still, I gotta think about this thing forever, and there’s nothing I can ever do to put it right. Then two years later, I end up transferred to the same ship as him. Of all the luck. Now he outranks me, no surprise there. He acts like he doesn’t know me. And I gotta sit with it. I gotta live with it all over again, every day.”

At that point, Frank seemed to run out of words.

There was somebody that he’d reminded me of, as he was spinning out his story and struggling to explain himself. Then I realized: it was myself. He reminded me of myself that night in Edna Parker Watson’s dressing room, when I had desperately tried to talk my way out of something that could never be put right. He was doing the same thing I had done. He was trying to talk his way into absolution.

In that moment, I felt overcome by a sense of mercy—not only for Frank, but also for that younger version of myself. I even felt mercy for Walter, with all his pride and condemnation. How humiliated Walter must have felt by me, and how dreadful it must have been for him to feel exposed like that in front of someone he considered a subordinate—and Walter considered everyone a subordinate. How angry he must have been, to have to clean up my mess in the middle of the night. Then my mercy swelled, and for just a moment I felt mercy for everyone who has ever gotten involved in an impossibly messy story. All those predicaments that we humans find ourselves in—predicaments that we never see coming, do not know how to handle, and then cannot fix.

“Have you really been thinking about this forever, Frank?” I asked.

“Always.”

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said—and I meant it.

“You’re not the one who needs to be sorry, Vivian.”

“In some ways I am. There’s a great deal that I’m very sorry about, surrounding that incident. Even more so now that I’ve heard all this.”

“Have you thought about it forever?” he asked.