2.

Francine

Morning light edged over the horizon as I awoke to urgent sounds coming from Jane’s room. San Francisco emerged from the night, glistening before me in shades of white, and Jane’s howls of pleasure rose with the sun.

Below my window, furtive whistles called across Dolores Park, while Jane’s laughter filtered through the wall that divided our rooms. I fixed my eyes on the distant Bay Bridge and imagined driving across it for good, soaring east as far as the Atlantic. I imagined a new life in a quiet, charming town she could not find, where I would become stable minded and marry a tall, sensitive man. We would have children and dogs. And money—we would never worry about money. I touched a bruise above my eye, and as if to comfort me, Jane knocked three times on the wall. I pulled a pillow over my head, pressed my knees to my chin, and willed the world away.

A few hours later, Jane stood in my doorway with a smile. I blinked at her perfect silhouette from the cave I’d built with my pillows, and waved a small hello. Climbing into my bed, she drew my arms around her, squirming like a puppy for the perfect spot. With shallow breaths she waited for me to ask about her night.

I said nothing. We lay in silence, cautious, in the aftermath of battle. I knew Jane was already returning to the fantasy of our strange, platonic marriage, and I was once again exhausted and anxious.

“Did someone say pancakes?” she asked

I held my breath. She waited.

“Or … was it waffles?” she whispered hopefully.

I swallowed hard.

“Honey?” She tilted her head to look at me, and I met her blue eyes as they narrowed and searched me for clues. Soon she would read my silence, and her sweetness would turn to rage. But I could not speak.

November was freezing the air outside, stasis before the spring. And I was dormant, too, stilled by Jane and her stare, frozen by my own inertia; paralyzed by the impossibility of escape.

It was close to Christmas then, which meant that soon my family would be gathering in St. Louis. My father and sister would be dressing the house with greens, a tree, and our beloved Santa, who swings in a hot-air balloon and sings “Fly Me to the Moon.” They would recline by the fire, talking medicine, or putter in the kitchen with opera filling the house. My brother would fly in from Washington, D.C., loaded with presents and stories from Capitol Hill, and he’d head straight to the market to buy bagels, yogurt, and five cartons of eggnog, all of which my father would discover sometime in February. My parents’ friends would stop by with food and gifts and report on their children, who, I felt sure, were either getting married, having children, or working their way up ladders of success.

And then there was the Void. The Void would envelop this routine, would dull all of the holiday smells and sounds. It would be what was left of my mother, who had died two years before. It would sit across from my father at the dinner table, stroll our gardens, and sleep fitfully on the sofa.

When I left Jane that morning, I was late to meet a therapist—a woman Jane had found—and I was circling her house when I saw the bruise on my face in the rear view mirror and wondered how I would explain it.

It was a cold, washed-out November, and I was sick. I had gotten used to it, to feeling like I had the flu all the time, but I wasn’t used to the cold. The chill followed me everywhere. It hung near me at work, trailed me home, and crawled under my bed covers at night. It didn’t seem to bother other people, but I was shivering in my car that morning, with the heat roaring full blast.

I felt the bruise. So much for first impressions.

I kept circling, seeing nowhere to park. In all of Berkeley there was never anywhere to park, but this once I was happy to delay my arrival.

I paused in front of her house, and then, as if witnessing one of those comets that appears only once in a lifetime, I watched a car pull out of a spot and drive away. I was known to risk lives to claim such a spot. Like a heat-seeking missile, I would accelerate across three lanes of traffic then slip my little car neatly between bumpers with a finger’s width to spare. This skill had developed over time, after night upon endless night of closing up the bookstore where Jane and I worked, turning away the midnight shoppers, and driving home across the Bay Bridge together, only to search San Francisco’s deserted, car-lined streets in vain, with the moon smiling upon our rootless hunt.

Eventually I started pulling my car up on the grassy median right in front of our building, leaving it for the parking police to laugh at in the morning. Jane left them eloquent notes of explanation, written carefully during the drive home. I stored them in my top desk drawer, next to the piles of tickets I could not pay.

I stared at the open spot, put on my blinker, and lit a cigarette. I could either take the bridge back to San Francisco, or park. The first scenario had a lot going for it, except that Jane might be home, and this visit was, she said, for both of us. Part of me suspected that she was somewhere close, hiding in the bushes maybe, watching to make sure I went in. I took the spot. Francine’s small brown shingled cottage glowed yellow in the foggy air. I wondered who awaited me. I didn’t know much about her, just that she had written a book on Eastern philosophy that Jane liked, and on the book flap Jane saw she was a therapist living in Berkeley. The next thing I knew, I was scheduled for an appointment.

I put a mint in my mouth and rubbed lotion on my hands to hide the cigarette smell. The front door of the house opened, and I slid down in my seat. An elderly woman picked up a newspaper from her porch and waved it in my direction. She was no taller than a child, with long white hair tucked behind her ears.

“Coming in?” she yelled.

She opened the paper, peering at me over the headlines. I pulled sunglasses down from the top of my head and tried to smile as I crossed the street to meet her.

“Caroline,” she said. “Hello.” Her lips drew back into a lopsided smile and she pointed me through her door.

Inside it was warm, and a fire was making loud cracking sounds in a small living room off the front hall. I thought right away of a hobbit’s house, with its small, dimly lit rooms, knitted blankets draped over chairs and sofas, and wooden furniture cluttered about. For that matter, Francine looked like a wise old hobbit herself.

I made quick use of her bathroom and felt my way through the shadowy kitchen and study, arriving in the living room, where Francine sat by the fire, still reading the newspaper. She pointed to a small brown sofa across from her. The room smelled of burning wood, and I removed my coat cautiously, welcoming the heat.

“I’ll let it go this time,” she said, lowering the paper as I took my seat. “You are supposed to be here at ten.”

She nudged bifocals onto her forehead like a pair of headlights. There was not a clock to be seen in the room or even a watch on Francine’s wrist. Maybe she told time by the sun.

I apologized and sat down, holding my pen with the top that clicks.

“So,” Francine began.

“So,” I nodded.

Some time passed, then she said, “Why don’t you start.”

“Oh that’s okay,” I said. “You can start.”

A smile rose and fell like a sigh across her face.

“Well, you have the advantage over me,” she said. “Only you know why you are here.”

“Well I’m here because Jane called you,” I said. “This is her idea.”

“She said you’ve been … not yourself lately,” Francine said. “I think that’s how she put it.”

“Not myself,” I repeated.

There was a dog bed by the fire and a half-chewed bone on top of it. By the size of the bone, I figured the dog must be large.

Lately. That part made me chuckle.

Francine followed my eyes to the dog bed.

Whatever. Jane would have probably said I was cracking, and that cracking ran in my family, so Francine should be on the lookout. Jane read a lot about ailments, and she had diagnosed me with one thing or another just about every month. Earlier in the year she had thought I had digestive problems, and before that I was anemic. I withstood acupuncture, boiled herbs, and weeks of chard, kale, liver, and collard greens before Jane resorted to a gentle-looking hobbit.

“What’s with the pen?” Francine asked. I had been clicking, and stopped.

“It’s comforting,” I said.

Francine smiled. Her right hand was shaking, and she anchored it in her lap. She said, “Jane also mentioned that your mother died recently.”

I looked warily at Francine. “Yes.”

“How recently?”

I turned my eyes to the ceiling. The further away I got from the day, the more that question pained me. It’s not that I couldn’t have answered. I could have recited the day, hour, and minute that my mother died. I could have described the eerie order of my parents’ bedroom, Dad leaving for his morning run, and the sheer cotton nightgown Mom wore, damp with sweat. Had Francine asked me to describe the angle of Mom’s head, I could have told it. Or the quality of light? Pale dawn. The world had been silent around us that morning, until my mother began to fight for air, and I heard myself scream.

“Where’s your dog?” I asked.

“She’s out back.”

“What kind?”

“Springer Spaniel mixed with something. Her name is Sherry.” Francine stifled a yawn, and for a second I thought she might return to her newspaper.

“What’s with the sunglasses?” she asked.

I removed them, revealing the bruise.

“Ah,” she said.

I felt my whole body tighten and seal like Fort Knox.

Jane and I had been passing each other in the hall of our apartment when she saw the bruise above my eye and pressed me against the wall to look closer. Her expression had been polite incomprehension at first, followed by fear.

“What happened?” she’d demanded.

I had hoped my face would speak for itself, but in that moment, as if dropped without a parachute into reality, I realized I’d crossed a bad line.

Jane gave me a dismissive laugh and went to run a bath.

I followed her.

“I’m not feeling right,” I admitted.

The bathroom door closed in my face. Minutes later I hadn’t moved, and Jane opened the door. Steam flooded behind her.

“Do you think I’m blind? Stupid? Look at who you’re talking to.” She shut the door, then opened it again to finish the thought. “You are way out of your league,” she said. “Only a novice would do it so it shows.”

She closed the door again and I leaned against the wall

“I’ve been thinking.” I said, “Maybe I should go.”

I heard the water shut off.

“Jane?”

I waited.

The door flew open and knocked me down. Jane was on top of me before I could speak, hands around my neck and knees on my chest. Her expression was pure terror, eyes wide, teeth bared.

I froze beneath her, completely still. She released her grip and stood, disgusted.

“Snap out of it!” she yelled. “You are supposed to be the stable one—Lucy and Ethel—remember?”

I inched away, adrenaline racing.

“Ridiculous,” Jane muttered. “No one is leaving.”

She went into the bathroom, and when I heard her climb into the tub I grabbed my purse and stumbled out the door, eventually arriving at the bookstore where we worked. When I returned to our apartment hours later, I found Jane curled in a ball on my bed, watching Oprah. The underside of her arms and tops of her legs were lined with thin red cuts. Her eyes were wet and glazed, fixed on the television. She didn’t speak until I sat next to her on the bed and said, “I’ll stay.”

“Good,” she said softly. Then, falling asleep, she mumbled, “Ethel.”

Ten minutes went by, or maybe it was an hour. Francine was making comments, I saw her lips moving, but I couldn’t speak.

“And I’ve lost my glasses,” she said.

I pointed. “They’re on your head.”

“Ah!” She pulled them down, then disappeared.

I heard a door open and then nails tapping on the hardwood floor. A minute later Sherry came trotting in with a tennis ball. She dropped it at my feet and crouched with anticipation. I tossed it back. She leapt, caught the ball, then watched me like a lifeguard. After a few minutes Francine returned with mugs of tea.

“First visits can be awkward,” she said to Sherry.

She placed the tea in front of me and stirred hers, blowing on the top. From outside we would have looked like two old friends visiting on a winter’s morning.

I sipped the tea and shuddered as heat spread through my chest.

“Are you a therapist by training?” I asked, trying to make it sound friendly. I suddenly thought it was very possible that Jane had told me I was going to a therapist when really she’d set me up with some wise-looking person she’d met in a supermarket.

Francine said she was a multi-degreed psychotherapist, trained to lead people through therapy but not prescribe medication.

“Do you think I might need medication?” I asked.

“I haven’t a clue,” she said. “But I doubt it.”

I peeked at my watch.

“Do you have somewhere you have to be?” she asked.

“Not really. Our shift starts at two. We work at Moby’s books.”

“Our? We?”

“Jane. Me.”

Francine nodded. “I love Moby’s. Impossible parking, though.”

Two points for Francine.

I sipped my tea, and the sweet, comforting scent reminded me of home and holidays. I wished I could stay overnight. I wished I could stay forever.

“So,” Francine said. “Is that a bruise?”

I was quiet again.

After a while she broke the silence. “I should mention a couple of ground rules,” she said. “The first is easy, arrive on time. The second is, try to answer my questions, and answer them truthfully, or else we won’t get very far.”

I nodded, suddenly afraid of not being allowed back.

“Good,” Francine said. “Great.” She waited. I clicked my pen.

“What was the question?” I asked.

Francine waited.

Finally, I said, “We’re not well,”

“How do you mean?” she asked.

“Jane cuts herself, on purpose, with razors. And she gets in trouble with everybody. And I haven’t got any money left. And I think she’ll be fired soon. And I just want her to be okay, you know?”

I waited for the heavens to open and strike me dead.

“Oh,” Francine said.

I kept going. “Her mother is coming to visit, and I don’t think we’ll survive it. And I can’t make rent next month. And it’s so cold. Isn’t it cold? Everywhere.”

Maybe it was the fire that did it to me, or Sherry snoring at my feet, but I couldn’t get the words out fast enough.

Francine took some time to think about this.

“What about you?” she asked.

“Me? But I just told you.” What more need I share? I thought. That Jane was carrying a knife around the house? That she was writing poetry that made Sylvia Plath sound cheery? That I was too scared to sleep?

Suddenly I started to smile. It was happening more and more; I would smile and laugh at all the wrong times. It was embarrassing.

Francine blinked at me as I was possessed by a canyon-size grin.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I said.

“Really?” She leaned forward, intrigued.

“I don’t know why I do this,” I admitted, covering my mouth.

“Maybe something is funny?” she suggested.

“No. Nothing is funny,” I assured her.

I was clicking my pen faster and faster, and for some reason I felt like throwing it right between Francine’s sympathetic eyes. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs. I wanted to smash everything in sight. I wanted to cry. Francine must have seen something in my expression because she raised her hands in surrender and said, “Whoa.”

“I’ll tell you what I’m thinking,” she offered. “I’m thinking that, based on what you’ve told me so far, there’s a missing piece here.”

I stayed quiet.

“Are you and Jane a couple?” she asked.

“Well … not in the way that you mean,” I said.

“In another way?”

“We’re … close,” I said cautiously.

“And you’re not related. . . .”

“Oh, no.”

I waited for more, but Francine was quiet.

I said, “So why don’t I just leave?”

“Do you think you should leave?”

“Well, I can’t leave.”

Francine waited.

“No, we are not a couple, and no, she’s not family, but for some reason we are stuck with each other. It would be easier if there was a category for us, believe me.”

“Maybe that’s it,” Francine mused. “Maybe that’s the missing piece. The for some reason.”

I looked at her doubtfully.

“Shall we look for it?” she asked.

“For what?”

“Well, if we knew, it wouldn’t be missing,” she noted.

Right.

When I stood at Francine’s door to leave, she asked me to bring props next time if I wanted, photographs or artifacts that were significant to me. She said I was on her calendar for the next Wednesday morning, and the next one after that, and the next one after that. I said that was fine with me.

When we stepped onto the porch, I saw Jane’s sky blue Volkswagen double-parked beside my car. Her eyes were closed, her head tipped against the window, facing us. Even from that distant angle I thought she looked rare—not just beautiful, though her intense, poised features were that—but heightened and raw, as if she embodied emotion itself, in all its extremes.

“There’s Jane,” I said.

Francine lowered her bifocals to look, then gave me a supportive smile as I trotted down the stairs. Her figure was reflected in Jane’s window as I tapped on it. Jane cracked an eye, rolled the window down, then turned my wrist and checked the time.

“Cripes, that was long,” she said, yawning.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“I want a full report. Let’s get some lunch at Café Flore.” She glanced at Francine and whispered through her teeth. “Why is she still standing there?”

“Because we’re fascinating,” I whispered back.

Jane nodded. “True.”

“I’m out of cash for Café Flore,” I added.

Jane pulled a handful of bills from her coat pocket and handed them to me. I slipped them in my pocket, unsure where the money came from, but money was money. Money was good. I took this mantra with me to the passenger side and met Francine’s eyes one last time before climbing in.

At the café, I did my best to spin a good yarn about the appointment, adding the kinds of details Jane loved But the whole time I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had done something wrong in there, something traitorous and irreversible.

That night, buried under my giant comforter and piles of blankets, I fell asleep thinking of Francine’s crooked mouth saying, “There’s a missing piece,” over and over again.

But my last waking image was of my mother, always my mother, a little more faded every time.

How did I get here?

The city lights dimmed with her face.

And of course, she didn’t answer.