“You’ve got a great face for bangs,” he says.
“Sure,” I say. “Let’s go crazy.”
*
Crazy, that’s what I am. Crazy. No one looks good with bangs. Bangs are just a beard on your forehead, a hair hat that you can never take off. As soon as I get into the car, I check the rearview mirror to see if it’s as bad as I thought. Even in that little sliver of reflection, the results are clear: I am a boiled egg in a wig.
*
Frank comes over that night promptly after work.
“Why are you wearing a baseball cap?” he asks when I answer the door.
*
Luckily, I have less time to worry about what Frank is thinking of my hair because I am now worrying about the fact that my mother has insisted on making us dinner. The dinner is stir-fry in a wok, which is the only thing my mother can make except meatloaf.
“Looks great,” says Frank when he sees what’s happening in the kitchen. “Wok ’n’ roll.”
“You are an advertiser,” my mother says, then tells him to find the cutlery and set the table.
*
“You look pretty tonight,” says Frank as we’re clearing the plates away. “Did you change your hair?”
“I look like a boiled egg in a wig,” I say.
“Hey,” he says, grabbing my shoulders. “I want us to try something.”
We are looking directly at each other, his hands tight on me. This is the longest we have ever touched each other. My heart is a jackhammer.
“Okay,” I say.
“I’m going to say ‘You look pretty,’” he says. “And then you’re going to say ‘Thank you.’”
“But—” I say.
“No boiled egg jokes,” he says. “No jokes of any kind. Just ‘Thank you.’ Can you try that for me?”
I nod mutely.
“Eleanor,” he says. “You look very pretty with your hair like that.”
I want to slither down the sinkhole, turn on the garbage disposal, and grind myself into nonexistence.
“Thank you,” I choke.
He laughs.
“You’re welcome,” he says. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”
*
I forgot to tell Frank what the rabbi said about “Thank you” being a prayer. A prayer can be a hope, a request for help, and an act of faith. When I say it to Frank, “Thank you” definitely feels like a prayer.
*
A few days later, we’re back in the garden. The hose is sprawled between us, lazily watering my mother’s rhododendron bush. The bees weave happily from flower to flower. It is the last week of summer.
“It’s been different without you,” Frank says. “At the office, I mean. No one to give me shit about my bad puns. My confidence is skyrocketing.”
“Soz about that,” I say.
“What’s that?”
“Soz.” I shrug. “It’s how British teenagers say sorry.”
“How sorry can you be if you can’t even spring for the second syllable?”
“Since when was word length correlative to sincerity? ‘I hate that’ sounds a lot sincerer to me than, say, ‘I anathematize that.’”
Frank laughs. “Like ‘There’s truth in that’ versus ‘There’s verisimilitude’？”
“Exactly. Or ‘I love you’ versus …”
I stop. So I said it. Accidentally and to illustrate a linguistic point, sure, but I said it.
“… I can’t think of a longer way to say that,” I say.
“Adore,” says Frank softly. “Cherish.”
“Love is better,” I say.
“It is,” he says. “And I do too. Love you, that is.”
*
I am in his arms.
“Soz about how I acted after we got the Kapow! account. I was an idiot. And scared.”
“Soz I disappeared on you. Soz I didn’t say goodbye.”
“Soz I let you go. I should have handled it differently.”
“Soz I didn’t give you the chance.”
“Soz I waited the whole summer to tell you Cleo left.”
“Soz Cleo left.”
“Soz your father died.”
“Soz you never met him.”
“Soz I made such a mess of it all.”
“But not for this? You’re not soz for right now, are you?”
“No. Right now I have never been less soz for anything in my life.”
And then he kissed me.
*
Frank tells me about how his mother used to pick him up from school drunk. He tells me how Cleo’s mother died. He tells me about finding her bleeding out on their living room floor. He tells me what happened to their sugar glider. It’s not pretty. He tells me that a couple of weeks ago, he stopped drinking and started going to meetings. He tells me he always thought he would hate AA because of his mom, but actually he feels like he’s beginning to understand himself for the first time, maybe in his whole life.