Catch 26 Page 8

  But she answered aloud, “Frannie. My name is Frannie.”

  She would never, ever, forget him. Or this night. If it had all been real, if she’d been allowed that priceless second chance, this was the man she knew she would love.

  “Frannie,” he laughed aloud. “Canny Frannie! I love you!”

  He hugged her hard once more.

  A little delighted, a little scared, she gracelessly freed herself.

  “Listen. Thanks so much for the offer of the free drink,” she smiled up at him, “but I think I ought to go home now. I’ve had a very big night.”

  And casting a bewildered glance around the room, searching for, suddenly … she didn’t know what. “I wish I could tell you what kind of night it’s been.”

  “Well how about my night?” he countered. “Thanks to you, I think I’ve won something like …” he clicked expertly through his stacks of chips. “… $22,000. My God.”

  Again he stood. “Why not let me walk you to your car, anyway?”

  But Frannie was afraid to be alone in the dark with a stranger – even this beautiful, desirable stranger – and when she’d cashed in her own chips, she might have a good bit of cash on her, too.

  “No. No thanks. I’ll be just fine.”

  Looking pointedly at her watch, she lied. “Someone’s picking me up in a few minutes anyway.”

  “I’m so sorry you have to go,” he replied. And swiping at some feathers of downy-white hair, he offered her something that seemed like a bow and almost whispered (she must be imagining this, she thought.) “It’s been totally amazing, Frannie. I’m incredibly lucky you decided to sit beside me.”

  “I’ve felt kind of lucky all night, too,” Frannie replied. “Well … almost all night.”

  Walking away, she couldn’t help but look back. He was blowing her a kiss.

  Giddy, and probably tipsy, she wandered, first, into a dark mini-dining area and then into a vacant private gambling room, until ultimately she found her way to the cashier’s window, cashing out her winnings – $35,640, omigod! – and picking her way through the still-dense crowds to the quiet of the shadowy stairs. Despite the fiasco with Randi – which seemed days ago already – Frannie was euphoric. A beautiful young man had just hugged her, kissed her on the lips and asked her name. Wonderful! Ludicrous!

  And she’d won a lot of money as well.

  As she made her way to the street, it occurred to her that now, if she wanted to – and, yes, she did – she had more than enough to buy that old painting.

  The drive home felt long – so long that all her elation was melting away.

  Stanley. Should she tell him? And if she didn’t, how could she possibly explain all this money? She touched the envelope beside her, to be sure it was there. And on top of everything else, there seemed to be a problem with the car: its heater was running uncomfortably hot and the heat was making her itch. Her chest. Her belly. Her thighs. Beneath the sleeves of her good navy coat she felt poison ivy, maybe, or major mosquito bites. But this was March and poison ivy was dormant, so what could have bitten her? Insects weren’t around now. But her scalp and neck were suddenly driving her crazy, too. Crazy enough that at the first stoplight she came to, Frannie tore off her gloves, stuffed them into her tote and scratched herself fiercely all over. She scratched and rubbed until it hurt, but none of it seemed to help. She’d need to get that heater checked tomorrow. Maybe some kind of mold in the vents? She turned the heater off and accelerated. She wanted to get home. But still, she felt queer. Too close to the steering wheel, for one thing. And so, on Washington Avenue, right near Tucker, Frannie pulled the little car to the curb because her shoes were also hurting her madly and she needed to kick them off her feet, right away. In the weird green glare of the overhead streetlight, she leaned down to yank off one pump, but straightened up so fast her head banged the steering wheel hard. Her right foot was huge! She leaned down to feel it again. Her stocking was torn, in fact, and it seemed her long second toe was gone! But wait, Frannie said to herself: it was dark down there on the floor. She had to be wrong. Bending to remove her other shoe, she noticed her sleeves. Her wrists stuck out well beyond them. Frannie grabbed at the hem of her skirt and pulled it up off her thighs. Then she swung both legs over to the passenger seat and turned on the roof light.

  Long, long legs. Long, long legs with slender ankles and incredibly narrow feet. No long second toes. Vomit rose in her throat. She threw the money in back and examined these legs and those feet. They were slim and lean and there, on the inside of that left ankle, she could almost make out a sort of mark. A mole? Something small and very odd. Frannie scrabbled again in her purse, found her glasses, jiggled them on. But now everything got blurry, so she jerked them off and, crossing her left leg over her other knee, she examined that ankle up close.

  It was a tattoo.

  She didn’t need glasses to see what it was.

  A small red pitchfork.

  Frannie tore out of the car and now, barefoot, stood on the cold, prickly grass of the verge. By resting her arms on the roof of the car and bending a little at the knees, she was able to lay her forehead against the driver’s-side window. Her ragged breath was fogging the glass. Did she belong – not to Randi now – but she couldn’t remember that other, peculiar, name? Mrs. Someone? Had she actually sold her soul? My God.

  She needed to get home.

  Closing the front door softly, Frannie crept into the hall. No lights. No TV. Stanley seemed to have found his way to bed.

  She paused inside the bedroom door to listen for his chesty breathing before feeling her way around both their beds and into the bathroom. Once there, in the dark, she quietly stripped off her clothes and pulled the door behind her, turning on the light. Her heart hammered hard in her chest as she turned to the bathroom mirror.

  She was someone else.

  Someone with a wavy mass of coppery hair who had to bend her knees to see it all, because this … person … was extraordinarily tall. She had an oval face, small ears, and hazel eyes (not the familiar brown). Her nose was straight and fine, her mouth was full, and her neck was, yes – Frannie allowed herself the word – swanlike.

  A flawless face on the perfect body of a very young woman looked back at her.

  Frannie took in the broad, smooth shoulders, the incandescent skin. And the breasts! Her breasts! They were pinkly-nippled and sitting high and heavy on a long slender torso bisected by – she could just make it out, the vertical shadow of trim, sound, muscle. And her stomach. She touched it. Porcelain-white and flat, it swelled ever so gently before disappearing into a wild russet growth of pubic hair. Turning her back to the mirror, she could see – over her shoulder – the buttocks of a Callipygian Venus.

  Omigod. Omigod.

  She needed to go somewhere to think. She needed to leave this house right away.

  Naked, she was just trying to tiptoe out of the bathroom, when, somehow, her unaccustomed body bumped the bedside table. Something glassy fell to the floor and broke.

  Which was when Stanley sat up in bed. And saw her.

  “Uh, me …”

  The utterance trailed away as, in the semi-darkness of – was it already dawn? She watched his eyes grow wide and round. Then she saw him push himself up, try to rise, and instead, fall off his bed and onto his knees. His unchecked weight hit the floor with a muffled thud while an errant gleam of light picked out tears of surprise in his eyes. A peculiar noise issued from his mouth, a terrible high-pitched whinny, and Stanley rolled awkwardly onto his back.

  “Stanley. What’s wrong?” Frannie felt her way around the twin beds and knelt at his side.

  “What can I do? Stanley?”

  Was he gawping at the strange naked woman cupping his face? His mouth was skewed to one side and from it, as she watched, a trail of glistening saliva slid haltingly toward his ear and slipped familiarly within.

  A stroke? Had he had a stroke? His eyes were fixed on hers. Was he angry, she wondered? It looked
like he was terribly angry. At her? What had she done?

  “Come back, Stanley,” she cried. “Don’t leave.”

  Jamming her hands into his damp armpits, she tried to heave him toward the bed, but he was heavy! So much heavier than she’d imagined. Now his left arm dropped across her bare shoulder and seemed to be sliding down her side. Frannie sat back on her heels and wept, and the arm fell to the floor, but after a minute or two of shoving and grunting with the effort, she managed, at last, to maneuver him into a semi-sitting position against the wall.

  “Stanley! Wake up, Stanley.”

  Fumbling, she buttoned his pajama top up to his neck and patted it smooth against his chest. She chafed his chilled hands and her fingers slid across the ridges of his nails. She knew there was a vein in the neck somewhere, but where? Feeling along his unshaven throat up to just below his ear – what pale, thin, fingers she seemed to have! – he found … nothing at all. She didn’t know where that vein should be. His eyes were open. She could see tears on his cheeks and her own tears were cold on her face, as, stroking his temples, she crooned and keened, “Don’t go, Stanley. Don’t go.”

  But he was still.

  Oh God. Oh, God. Oh, stupid! Call 911!”

  Leaping to her feet, Frannie snapped the little lamp on and snatched the bedside phone.

  A woman’s voice.

  “Help! Please! My husband may be dying. My husband might be dead. Send someone! Hurry!”

  A maddeningly unruffled voice sounded maddeningly impassive as it pried her address from her, and Stanley’s name … her name … his age … her name … her age …

  Why didn’t the stupid bitch just send someone?

  “Send someone right now, will you? Please! Please! Hurry!”

  Frannie dropped the handset near Stanley’s bare foot. His scowl had disappeared. He was looking almost pleased.

  “Help is coming,” she whispered.

  Help was coming.

  He had looked at her and died of shock.

  Now their bedroom was grayed with watery light and she couldn’t be here when the ambulance came.

  Throwing open the closet door, Frannie grabbed for her best winter dress, but it looked huge! Too huge! Shaking, she stepped into it and felt it billow about her body, until, frantic with haste, she managed to dig out one of Stanley’s old belts and pulled it close. That ought to keep the cold out, she thought.

  But her shoes wouldn’t fit. She needed shoes.

  Glancing at the clock radio, she calculated. No more than seven minutes since she’d phoned and whatever could be done, they would do. She knelt and shook her husband’s shoulder gently. His chin had settled on his chest.

  Frannie stood and grabbed the photo of the two of them, then stuffed it and her winnings down to the bottom of her oldest tote. Hooking it over her shoulder, she raced to the front closet, jammed her bare feet into an old pair of Stanley’s rubber boots and slipped her incredibly long arms into her navy coat. They stuck out way beyond the sleeves, of course, and the coat was far too short now, but it was the only one she owned.

  Oh, Stanley. God! Stanley! She half-turned towards the bedroom. But there was nothing she could do. She needed to leave.

  Outside, the streetlights stuttered off one by one, and on the horizon, just above her neighbors’ roofs, an ugly dawn was beginning to soil the leaden sky. The snow they’d been expecting had started falling at last, and Frannie stopped on the porch, with the front door still ajar. The street was silent. In the living room, their lights and TV were off forever now.

  Stanley was dead. There’d be no going back. She had killed her husband.

  And Randi was real.

  Boot tops smacking at her calves, she ran to the car. The engine of the Ford caught obediently, as Frannie Turner – or not Frannie Turner – pulled out into the empty street.

  On the highway, she passed St. Louis Rescue in the opposite lane, its sirens breaking the day.

  “To be happy in Married Life … you must have a Soul-mate”

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  “Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.”

  Robert Browning

  ONE YEAR

  CHAPTER 5

  In the tatty old tote on her shoulder now, this lovely new wallet has appeared. It’s small and soft and red. It is in there along with the Bank of the West checkbook with Fernanda Turner printed in one corner. And in that account is $31,682.30.

  Over the past several hours, Fernanda (Fernanda!), along with stopping at the bank, has bought a plane ticket to Manhattan (despite Randi’s possible presence there), abandoned the Ford in a parking garage, and taken a taxi to Saks to buy some New York City clothes. At Saks, she allowed a sleek, skinny salesgirl to choose for her and on the whole, she’d done quite well. Although there is this one black dress – “the perfect LBD (whatever that might be)” – the girl had called the dress. But it fit “like a second skin” and exposed a good deal more of Frannie – Fernanda – than she’s ever thought to display before. Wonderful, though, she thinks. She hopes.

  She purchased a suitcase and a new black purse there, as well. Not a purse, she was politely corrected by the saleswoman, but a “bag.” That bag is in that suitcase now and her tote is nicely plump with, in addition to the handsome red wallet and the checkbook, a pair of gloves that fit her new hands, a pretty scarf and a sweet pink plastic ladies’ razor, razor blades, and Tampax – three items she’d never expected to buy ever again. Hailing a cab to the airport, she’d asked the driver to make a stop at Aunt Teeks, where she treated herself to the painting.

  Sally wasn’t there.

  Fernanda paid in cash.

  The painting cost $3647.87, with sales tax.

  But Fernanda has a new Social Security number and a Missouri driver’s license, too, and some credit cards, all of which – rather like the monogrammed handkerchief at the casino – appeared in her wallet last night. After Stanley died. These documents inform airport security and bartenders and desk clerks and anyone at all who might need to know that Ms. (Ms!) Fernanda Turner – age twenty-six – has red hair, hazel eyes and stands six feet one in her narrow, stocking-less feet. The feet aren’t mentioned, of course, but the license does include the requisite headshot, depicting – notwithstanding the usual degraded image – an impossibly exquisite young woman. A head-turning woman. Even in New York.

  Naturally, Fernanda needs to find somewhere to live in New York, and after two days at a Midtown hotel, she discovered – online – a furnished one-bedroom. Its rental is easily accomplished via her newborn and seemingly osmotically acquired computer skills, for which she is surprised and very grateful. She’s a little less grateful for the apartment she’s rented, however. It is painfully small by St. Louis standards, and what’s more, it’s been decorated in a blandly neutral style that isn’t “her” at all. Or wasn’t. Before. It’s $159 per day, too – an amount Fernanda believes, wholly unironically, that would have given Stanley a heart attack.

  So, almost settled in now, almost sorted out, she’s been thinking of finding men, getting a job – maybe in the art world, maybe at a gallery somewhere – and meeting people. Making friends, maybe. Not necessarily in that order. Although this is New York, so nothing will come easily, she supposes.

  Recently, however, she believes that someone in her elevator has noticed her: a wispy young woman – about her own age (it’s very hard to tell anymore) – who lives somewhere above her and who seems to spend a great deal of time walking a smallish long-haired dog. The woman may have noticed Fernanda because her dog does: it whines when she enters the car.

  “I’m sorry,” says its owner one afternoon. “Bean’s a little spooky. She was mistreated by her former owners, I’m pretty sure.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it.”

  Fernanda hears her own voice for the first time today. The city can be lonely.

  ‘Although,” she adds, because of that, “if I’m going to worry your dog, we ought to introduce ourse
lves.” She offers her hand. “I’m Fra … Fernanda Turner, on nine.”

  “I’m Marcia Welliver. On twelve. You’re new in the building, aren’t you?”

  “I am new. New to New York City, in fact.”

  “Oh wow. And how’s that going? I can’t imagine. I’m a native. ‘Borough-bred’, we call it.”

  “No kidding! It never occurred to me that anybody has ever actually been born here!” Fernanda laughs aloud, her first wholehearted laugh, she thinks, since That Day. “Maybe you’d show me around sometime?” The elevator doors open at the lobby and as the cab empties out, Marcia stoops to tuck the trembling dog beneath her arm and hollers “Sure” at Fernanda’s retreating back.

  A friend, Fernanda thinks, nodding shyly at the uniformed doorman.

  Her height makes her conspicuous on the sidewalk, unfortunately, but it also allows her to see over other pedestrians, which she finds to be a useful, yet peculiar, sensation. And everyone’s looking at her, she’s sure. But no one’s looking at her, too, she’s sure. She seems to have a full-blown case of adolescent paranoia. Really bizarre at sixty-six.

  Still, it isn’t just the height of her head. It’s her legs. They’re so long and so foreign and unmanageable, that often, Fernanda feels like she’s about to fall forward and tries to catch herself. And she’s always misjudging stairways and curbs, and when she sits – just to get them out of her way – she has to wind the legs up: either around each other or around the legs of her chair. She keeps forgetting to duck, too. Which is why she almost daily discovers purplish bruises on her brand-new forehead or accidentally runs a comb over those tender bumps on her scalp. And her voice sounds different, of course. At least to her: it’s low and suggestively creamy, but almost pretty when she sings. In fact, when Fernanda isn’t marveling at herself in the tub, watching the water slide across her ivory thighs and perfect breasts, she occasionally breaks into song. Really softly, though. Stephen Foster. Joan Baez. Folk songs from her youth. Perfect for the bath.

  And she’s also begun running. On the street and in Central Park. She’s never been an athlete, but lately, she’s concluded that, having always been useless at softball, dodgeball, basketball, and volleyball, running must be her sport. It doesn’t require a ball, for openers. Then, too, with these long, new legs, she just might have the knack. When it turns out that she actually loves to run, aptitude doesn’t matter a bit. It’s something about getting out there at 6:00 a.m., she thinks. Before the morning traffic builds up and the weight of the day kicks in. She shares her own hour with other runners, bikers, carriages, speed walkers, in-line skaters, and dog-walkers, and runs and runs around the reservoir, and breathes. Now and then, someone even waves. Fernanda waves back. And breathes.