Kristy has always known that she was happy with Frankie, her late husband. She was happiest, though, when she had quit their alt rock group the Future of Man and the two of them had retreated to the Bronx. “To the era of No Future,” he had declaimed on their first night at the apartment, raising his bottle of blue Tropical Fantasy soda. “To our child.” She smiled, looking down at the baby that was barely showing in her loose jumper and t-shirt. He was happy, too, even if her father later called him “an angry young punk.” Frankie loved her and their baby and their life outside of the spotlight. Despite what her parents said when they suddenly appeared at the apartment one April evening.
It must have been strange for them to see Tyler, their only grandchild, crawling around on the sea green tile floor without a playpen. But he was happy to see them, his grandparents, this older but not too old couple who cooed over him just like everyone else, his parents and the people in the neighborhood. Frankie, on the other hand, was shy of her parents. He had forgotten that they were coming. Or maybe he had expected them to stay in their realm of Manhattan hotel rooms and dim steakhouses. He and Kristy would clean themselves up and bring Tyler to them, to their pastel hotel room far above the streets’ upper-class buzz and confusion. Frankie didn’t expect them to drop in like grandparents often did.
Instead, her parents took a cab to the apartment far far north of what was considered safe. They dropped in while she herself was working, answering the phone and typing at the nursing home that she loved. She was probably telling the ladies about her son’s adventures around the two-room apartment and occasionally in the park. So her parents’ first sight of Tyler had to have been him crawling around on the sticky floor while Frankie was doing his compulsive pull-ups in the doorway and Carlos from next door sat on the sagging couch yammering a mile a minute about 9/11 and Ground Zero. Of course, Frankie was shirtless. And he had tattoos: a Mr. Yuck over his heart and Popeye and Olive Oyl over his right triceps. He called Kristy, a tall, thin girl with a black French braid, his Olive Oyl. Sometimes she called him Popeye.
Kristy didn’t get home those days until at least six pm. She was always buying diapers and other groceries at the corner store near the bus stop where they called her Mamacita even though she was paler and shyer than the other women her age. So she walked in the door with three or four full tote bags only to find her mother sitting in the wooden chair with a strange grin on her gaunt face. Her father was fuming, pacing back and forth, turning to glare at the clothes on the line on the fire escape and then at Carlos who hadn’t stopped spinning his theories about the traders who had made all sorts of money off 9/11. Frankie had combed his shaggy hair at least and thrown a musty black t-shirt on. He was feeding Tyler one of the bottles Kristy had pumped for him. Tyler seemed to be the only one at ease in that situation, by now on his father’s lap, sucking away at his dinner.
“Kristy, we thought we’d surprise you,” her mother said with her bright, accentless voice. “But, oh, we wanted so much better for you.”
“These streets smell like a urinal,” her father added, thickening his New York accent. “This room smells like goddamned marijuana. Tell that guy the Sixties are long over.”
He jerked his thumb over to where Frankie’s friend was rushing out of the apartment.
“Smells fine to me,” Frankie said with an even voice.
Kristy hurried into the tiny kitchen to put away her groceries. Then she would stack the diapers against a wall in the bedroom. But she kept putting everything--milk, eggs, day-old bread, enormous greens, tofu, tiny oranges, shrimp ramen, instant coffee-- in the wrong place. She wasn’t quite finished when her mother tip-toed into the kitchen, shocking her with how thin and pale she was beneath her makeup. Perhaps that dark brown shag cut without highlights really was a wig.
“Kristy, let’s go out. It will be our treat. It’s been so long.”
Her mother lightly hugged her, then pulled away. Kristy stooped to pick up the diapers on the floor and saw her mother flinch from a flash of pain, then rest her arms on her slightly bulging stomach as if that pain really could go away.
“Should I change?” Kristy gestured at her navy blue and pink paisley dress with lace trim, her navy blue pumps that had fit so well in the morning, her matching panty hose.
“Oh no, you’re perfect. But Frankie…”
Leaving the diapers in the kitchen, the women scurried out to the living room. The men were scowling at each other. Then Frankie stood abruptly and picked up Tyler from the floor, saying that he needed to change him. Kristy tried to remember if there were still any diapers left in the bedroom. To check, she ducked under the pullup bar and dashed into the bedroom where Frankie was changing their son on a card table.
“Mom and Dad want to take us out. Their treat. It’ll be fun to see them. But…do you mind changing? They want to take us to a nice place,” she said.
“Fuck no,” he said, wiping his dirty hands on his cargo shorts. “I’m staying home. I hate steak, and I don’t like watching your father get drunk. It’s not fun. I’d rather eat ramen noodles alone. And it’s time for Tyler to go to bed.”
“No, no, you should come. Please, Frankie. Just change. You don’t have to wear a tie. Mom and Dad really, really want to see Tyler. Mom isn’t well.”
Turning his back to her, he mumbled that it was okay if she took Tyler. He called her Olive Oyl one last time. Her parents had come all the way from Southern California to see their only grandchild, this smiling, happy baby with his almost-black eyes and thick, inky hair. She could imagine Tyler doing pull-ups in the doorway someday. Now that his diaper had been changed, Kristy dressed her son in his newest outfit, the bright blue Bugs Bunny romper from the dollar store. She had forgotten that her father thought that Looney Tunes were low class.
That was the last time she had been in the Bronx, the last time she was in that place where she, Frankie, and Tyler had been so happy. Over a steak dinner in Manhattan that she and her parents barely touched, her mother told her how sick she really was. After finishing his second or third beer, her father had told her how abusive Frankie was, making her live in a hellhole, making her work while he stayed home and smoked pot with his loony friends. He announced that all four of them would be flying from LaGuardia to LAX in the morning. Her mom would ask the desk to bring a crib for Tyler, and then she would call up United to purchase their tickets. Kristy tried but could not tell her parents that if Frankie had gotten the job at JB’s Music Store she would have stayed home with Tyler.
The next time Kristy saw Frankie her parents were there. Her mother was even gaunter and paler than she had been that April evening in the Bronx. Her father did not trust Frankie. And they wanted to spend time with their only grandchild. How much longer did her mother have anyway.
Years later, riding the 2 to the Bronx after Frankie’s funeral, she is trying to remember where she was so happy. She closes her eyes, and she can see those little rooms perfectly: the walls that she and Frankie painted to match the sea-green floor tile, the stars that he stuck to the ceiling, the broken down couch, the old refrigerator, the cranky stove, Tyler’s drawer where he slept, Frankie’s pull-up bar, the clothes they hung in the window, the clothes they dried on the fire escape.
Some nights she dreams that she is back there, tidying up the kitchen, kicking off her pumps, walking into the dark bedroom to find Frankie gone. Sometimes the bed is gone too. She wonders how long he actually stayed there, waiting for her and Tyler to come back, waiting for her mom to finish her treatment, to stay in remission, to die. She laughs. He wasn’t patient enough to stay home like that. He didn’t have the money.
He never even wrote her. He went silent. Until the day of her mom’s funeral. Only then did he show up, dressed in a borrowed suit and tie. Only then did he take her and their son back to his trailer in the desert. She remembered how Tyler had cried all the long drive almost to Joshua Tree, wanting to go home to his grandparents, his Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop. Once he had been so happy with his father. Once she had been so happy with her husband, her Frankie, her Popeye. Once she had been his Olive Oyl.
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