Ann Patchett - Commonwealth

Caroline would be off in college by now, and if Albie were to guess he would guess that she had plenty of friends who invited her to their houses for the holidays. She probably had some all-encompassing summer job as a camp counselor or government intern that prevented her from ever coming home or even using a pay phone. Caroline had always made it clear that once she got out of there she wasn’t coming back. Caroline was a bitch by any standard, but she was also the one who had organized all the subversive acts of their childhood summers. She hated them all, especially her own sister, but Caroline got things done. When he thought of her cracking open the station wagon with a coat hanger and getting the gun out of the glove compartment, he shook his head. He had never in his life adored anyone the way he adored Caroline.

That meant it would just be Franny. He hadn’t seen either of the girls since summer visits to Virginia had stopped five years ago, but Franny was harder for him to fix in his mind. It was weird since she was the person in the family closest to him in age. He remembered that she was always carrying the cat around, and in his memory the girl and the cat had merged: sweet and small, eager to please, quick to nap, always crawling into somebody’s lap.

Albie stayed on the back patio and smoked while the light turned gold across the suburbs and the cold air pricked his arms. He didn’t want to go in the house and ask his father where he’d be sleeping. He thought about rummaging through his suitcase and finding the generous bag of weed his friends had put together as a going-away present but he figured he’d already pushed the limits of brazenness for one day. It would have been one thing if his lighter were confiscated in a world full of free matchbooks but he didn’t want anyone taking his pot away. He could ride his bike around the new neighborhood, acquaint himself with what was there, but he stayed seated. Thinking about moving was as far as he’d gotten when Franny pulled into the driveway and parked.

She was wearing a white blouse with the sleeves rolled up and a blue plaid skirt, knee socks, saddle shoes, the universal attire of Catholic school girls. She was skinny and pale with her hair pulled back, and when he stood up and dropped his cigarette he had a split second of uncertainty as to whether or not there was good will between them. Franny dropped her backpack on the ground and came straight to him, arms out. Franny, not understanding that he lived on the other side of a thick wall and so no one could take him into their arms, took him into her arms and squeezed him hard. She was warm and strong and smelled slightly, pleasantly, of girl sweat.

“Welcome home,” she said. Two words.

He looked at her.

“Are they making you stay outside?” she asked, looking down at his suitcase. “Can you at least go in the garage?”

“I like it out here.”

Franny looked at the house. The light in Bert’s study was on. “Then we’ll stay out here. What can I get for you? You must be hungry.”

Albie looked hungry, not only in the unnerving thinness that all the Cousins children possessed, but in his hollow eyes. Albie looked like he could eat an entire pig, python-style, and it wouldn’t begin to address the deficit. “To tell you the truth I could use a drink.”

“Name it,” Franny said. She was half-turned towards the house, her mind already considering the secret stash of 7-Up her mother disapproved of.

“Gin.”

She looked back at Albie and smiled. Gin on a Thursday night. “Did I tell you I’m glad you’re here? Probably not yet. I’m glad you’re here. Are you going to come with me?”

“I will in a minute,” he said.

While she was gone Albie looked at the sky. There were animals zipping around up there — sparrows? bats? — along with the near-deafening roar of something cricket-ish. He wasn’t in Torrance anymore.

In a minute Franny came back with two glasses half-full of ice and gin, a bottle of 7-Up under her arm. She topped off her glass with the soda, used her finger to stir it around, and then looked at him, wagging the 7-Up back and forth.

“Pass,” he said.

“Very manly.” They tapped their glasses together the way people did in movies, the way her girlfriends did at slumber parties after siphoning off what could be taken discreetly from the family supply. Franny had had some drinks before, just not at home, not on a school night, not with Albie, but if ever there was a day to break the rules it was today. “Cheers.”

She made a little face at the taste while Albie just sipped and smiled. He lit another cigarette because it went so nicely with the gin. It felt like they were catching up just sitting there not talking. Too much had happened, too much time had passed, to try putting it into words now.

After a while Bert came back out. He seemed so happy to see Franny there. He kissed the side of her head, the cloud of cigarette smoke eradicating the smell of gin. “I didn’t know you were home.”

“Both of us,” Franny said, smiling.

Bert jingled his car keys. “I’m going to get a pizza.”

Franny shook her head. “Mom made dinner. It’s all in the fridge. I’ll heat it up.”

Bert looked surprised, though it would be hard to say why. Beverly always made dinner. He picked up Albie’s suitcase. “You kids come inside now. It’s getting cold out here.”

The three of them went inside just as the deep darkness of night was setting in. Franny and Albie picked up their glasses, the cigarettes and the lighter, and followed Albie’s father through the door.

“So Bert Cousins’s kid was the one who broke you and the old Jew up?” Fix said. They were on their way to Santa Monica, the car windows down. They were going to the movies. Caroline was driving. Franny was in the back, leaning forward between the two seats.

“How have I never heard that part of the story?” Caroline asked.

“Would you please not call him ‘the old Jew’?” Franny said to her father.

“Sorry.” Fix covered his heart with his hand. “The old drunk. May God rest his soul in Zion. Hats off to the kid is my point. He’s finally earned my respect.”

Franny imagined calling Albie with that bit of news. “It wasn’t like I left the house that night and never went back. We stayed in Amagansett all summer.” There was still Ariel and her intolerable Dutch boyfriend and sad little Button to deal with, the entire long, horrible summer of houseguests to endure. The end of Leo and Franny’s relationship played to a full house. It was more than twenty years ago and still the complete misery of that time was fully accessible to her.

“But essentially that was that, right?” Fix said. “The kid put the nail in the tire.”

Caroline shook her head. “Albie identified the fact that the tire had a nail in it,” she said, and Franny, surprised by the accuracy of her sister’s assessment, laughed.

“I should have stayed in law school,” Franny said. “Then I’d have been as smart as you.”

Caroline shook her head. “Not possible.”

“Get over a lane,” Fix said, pointing. “You’re taking a left at the light.” Fix had his Thomas Brothers street guide in his lap. He refused to let Franny put the theater’s address into her phone.

“Do you have any idea how it could have taken this long to make the movie?” Caroline glanced in the rearview mirror then accelerated deftly to get the better of an oncoming Porsche. As with so many other things in life, Caroline was the superior driver.

“It happens. Leo wouldn’t sell the film rights so nothing could have started until after he died. I can’t imagine his wife was easy to work with.” Natalie Posen. They were, miraculously, still married when Leo died fifteen years ago, still battling it out. All those years his wife and now his widow. Franny saw her just that one time at the funeral, so much smaller than she would have imagined, sitting in the front row of the synagogue flanked by two sons who looked like Leo — one from the nose up and the other from the nose down — as if each had inherited half his father’s head. Ariel was on the other side of the synagogue with a very grown-up Button and her own mother, the first Mrs. Leon Posen. Eric was listed in the program as an honorary pall bearer, too old himself to lift one sixth of the casket’s weight by that point. He’d been the one to call Franny with the news of Leo’s death, thoughtful considering all the time that had passed. She asked about the next book, the one of the long-ago advance that he was always supposed to be writing. Eric said no, sadly, it wasn’t there.