“Mother!” Frank said. “Please! I’m asking you for help.”
“All right, all right. Tell me what’s going on.”
Frank misted the window with his breath and absently wrote his name in cursive.
“We’re pitching for a new client,” he said. “An energy drink called Kapow!”
“Asinine name,” said his mother.
“You’re telling me,” said Frank. “The exclamation point is part of the name.”
“I could hear that,” she said. “Somehow I could hear that.”
Frank laughed.
“Anyway, if we win it, I’m going to be traveling a lot more, even more than I am now. And, well, I’m worried about leaving her.”
“What are the odds you’ll get it?”
Frank smiled in spite of himself.
“We’re the underdog, but we’ve got a shot. It’s money, Mom. Like pay-the-rest-of-Zoe’s-college-tuition-and-get-a-bigger-apartment kind of money.”
“Good for you, Frankie.” He heard her exhale smoke. “Go after what you want in life, no matter what anyone says.”
“Mm,” said Frank. “Like you did?”
Growing up, his mother was always on some ski trip or another. And, before she stopped drinking, at some bar or other. She didn’t like the heat, so she packed him off to a Christian summer camp in Minnesota every year and spent August in Zermatt, Switzerland, where there was snow 365 days a year. She didn’t like the other mothers, so she never went to his school plays or diving meets when she was home. Just tell me about it afterward, Frankie. I’ll enjoy it more hearing it from you.
“I took care of myself,” she said. “And I don’t apologize for it.”
“You sure don’t,” said Frank. He rubbed his name off the window with his sleeve.
“I know!” said his mother. “What about a pet? Remember how I got you Brigitte to keep you company? You loved her.”
“Brigitte ran away,” said Frank sulkily.
“Nonsense,” said his mother. “Brigitte died of thyroid cancer. I just told you that so you wouldn’t be upset. Do you still believe she sent you those postcards too?”
After Brigitte disappeared, he’d been inconsolable. His mother’s cat, the arthritic Mooshi, who appeared to be prepared to outlive them all, had been no comfort. His mother herself had, of course, left for one of her trips soon after. A few days later, he’d found a postcard in the mail from Brigitte. She apologized for leaving and explained that she’d been invited to tour her off-Broadway show, a spin-off of Cats about her own life, around the world. A week later, there’d been a card from the Ritz Paris, then London, and later another from Zermatt, Switzerland.
“I’d forgotten,” said Frank. “I loved those cards.”
“Get her a cat,” said his mother. “It will do you both good.”
“She’s allergic,” he said.
“Then get her a hairless one. Get her a lizard! We all need something to look after.”
“What about someone to look after us?”
“You’re not children. You can look after yourselves.”
“Yeah, but I was a child, Mom,” said Frank. “I was one.”
Frank hung up the phone a little while after and spun his chair round and round, watching the ceiling turn. Talking to his mother bewildered him. He wished he loved her a little more or hated her a little less, something to tip the scale. Instead, he lived in the fraught balance between the two, each increasing the intensity of the other: the more he longed for her, the more disappointed he felt by her; the more disappointed he felt, the more he longed. He tilted his head back, closed his eyes and exhaled a long fuuuuuck.
“That’s pretty much what I want to do every time I talk to a client too,” a voice behind him said.
Eleanor. Frank had once seen an image of a tsunami wave carrying hundreds of species of sea life within it, sharks and stingrays and schools of silver-backed fish, all lifted high in the wave’s arc before crashing onto land. That was what it felt like whenever he was near Eleanor. They had never touched, never kissed, but his response to her was titanic. Everything in him rose to meet her.
“What about after talking to your mother?” he asked.
He opened his eyes and swiveled to face her.
“Ah.” Eleanor nodded. “The original difficult client.”
“Except she doesn’t have any money.”
“Come on.” Eleanor grinned. “How bad could anyone who birthed you be?”