Runs in the family (Sisterhood Challenge on ds-flasfiction)
Pairings: Frannie/Ray (sisterly); Frannie/Paul (not so sisterly)
Rating: PG
Size: about 3300 words
Tags: pre-dS; AU
Note: Most of the words of this story were originally intended to end up in a reply to the School Challenge. j_s_cavalante beta-ed the first version and deemed in badfic. Then she tried to help me to rework the fic into something post-worthy. It wasn’t easy. I was still mid-battle when the School Challenge closed. When the Sisterhood challenge was up, I saw a second chance for my fic. The final version isn’t beta-ed by J_S_Calavante, but she put so much effort in beta-ing the story when it was to be a School Challenge reply, that I still want to mention her as my (three-quarter) beta.
Runs in the family
It’s hard to understand the popularity thing. Or the boy thing. There are rules to both, but Frannie thinks they’re rather silly.
Older brothers are an asset when they look cool and when they are doing cool stuff (and what could be cooler than working at a police department and attending the police academy?) but apparently, this only goes when they are sophomores or seniors. It’s very important that they are still boys-older boys, sure, but boys, not men. To seventh graders, boys who graduate from high school instantly become men. And men are very suspicious, because they all “want just one thing”.
It’s stupid really. Ray is twenty-two, but he isn’t like that. And everybody knows that Stevie Willard, Michael Porter, and Rico Lopez hardly ever do anything other than think and talk about ‘it’-and doing it apparently-even if they are only sixteen.
Frannie doesn’t tell anybody she thinks it’s stupid, and she makes sure she doesn’t talk too much about Ray among her friends. Normal is a difficult enough thing as it is.
Most of the time, Frannie worries more about normal than about math. There are a lot of sides to normal. Even figuring out what other people think is normal isn’t as easy as it seems. First of all, different groups of people have different ideas about it. ‘Normal’ among her friends is definitely not ‘normal’ among her relatives, and vice versa. Besides, even if people say they think something is normal Frannie isn’t sure if they are speaking the truth all the time.
Take being in love with Marc Brenner for instance. All her friends say they are in love with him. Frannie says she is in love with him. But if she is faking it (and she definitely is) couldn’t the others be faking it too? Being in love with an older guy (not a seventh grade baby, thank you very much) is a normal thing to do, but you have to be careful to pick the right one. If you choose the same guy others do you can feel safe that it is pretty normal; that you are pretty normal.
But letting others decide what is normal doesn’t always feel right. Frannie does agree with her friends about most things; clothes and music, and who are the cool teachers and who are the dorks. But not about Marc Brenner. And not about Tim Patterson.
She isn’t in love with Tim (he is a classmate, for god’s sakes!) but she often feels she should be nicer to him. Everyone should be nicer to him. Yes, he is a nerd, but that doesn’t give people the right to pick on him.
Sometimes she really wants to give the guys that are bullying him a couple of black eyes. She wants to smile at Tim to let him know that at least somebody likes him.
She never does it. What if he thought she was in love with him? What if her friends thought she was in love with him? She doesn’t want to be laughed at. She doesn’t want to be lonely. And most of the time, she really likes her friends.
They are right about adults, that’s for sure. Adults are stupid, especially relatives. Most of her friends have to deal with two adults on a daily basis-but she has to deal with four! Ray, Tony, Maria, Ma…Frannie is certain they are the four worst adults ever.
But the thing is, she really likes Ray. She hates it that he still calls her ‘pumpkin’ even if she is twelve now and she has asked him a zillion times to stop it-but she still likes him. She has started to call him ‘baldy’ because at twenty-two you can already see that he’ll once be just as bald as grandpa. He looked hurt the first time she did it, but then he smiled at her-the slow smile she so much likes to see on his face-and said, “Yeah, serves me right. Touché, pumpkin.”
Tony is dumb, he really is. Frannie doesn’t understand why Maria chose him as a fiancé. Maybe she did it to piss off Ma. Yeah, for Frannie, that’s a really cool thought.
But she instantly feels guilty about it. Tony is dumb, all right, but he is also the only one in Frannie’s family who treats her like she’s not a baby anymore. The others seem to have missed the fact that she is in seventh grade now instead of first. They’re always telling her what she should or shouldn’t do. Tony often tries to tell them that maybe she’s old enough now to decide for herself. It doesn’t always help, but sometimes it does. And she appreciates the effort.
She despises Maria, who is trying so hard to be like Ma, to be liked by Ma. Frannie really doesn’t understand that, she has set herself the opposite goal. Ma is everything she never wants to be-with her fake weakness, her so-called inability to learn to speak real English, and the rude way that she prefers boys to girls.
The fifth commandment says, ‘Honor thy father and thy mother’, but Frannie can’t do that, can she? Her father died when she is two years old, and her mother…her mother makes sure she never forgets that she’s just an afterthought, an accident, and worst of all, a girl. She’ll never be a man. She’ll never be someone Ma can lean on, admire, and be proud of.
Frannie hates her mother-which is perfectly normal, any of her friends will tell her that-but sometimes she isn’t sure that it’s really okay, because sometimes she hates her mother so much she can taste it.
It’s a very bitter taste, and it always gets to her mouth without warning. But she’s used to swallowing it away when it happens, and to thinking that it isn’t all that important, that it’s just her mother.
Usually Frannie chuckles when the thought occurs to her that maybe Maria chose somebody like Tony so she doesn’t have to share him with Ma. Frannie might not have a wonderful mother; she has a great brother. That’s the most important thing.
***
When Ray brings home a new friend, Frannie’s focus changes, however. She has never seen a man as handsome as Paul before. He is everything that is beautiful and wonderful and good and perfect. His eyes, his smile, his voice, the way he moves…Frannie instantly knows that this is how being in love really feels.
She can’t stop looking at Paul. She needs to know all about him. She wants him to look back at her, but she can’t seem to make him.
Ma is asking a lot of questions, and for once, Frannie pays attention.
Paul is Canadian. He’s in Ray’s class at the police academy, and he came to Chicago together with his grandmother.
Ma asks if Paul’s parents came along too, but he says they died in a car crash when he was six.
Ma’s face gets a soft look. “Mio povero ragazzo,” she says in the tone of voice Frannie recognizes. Her mother uses it sometimes when she’s talking to Ray.
There is a silence, but then Ma wants to know why Paul and his grandmother have crossed the border, and Ray’s face gets that expression. Frannie knows what it means: ‘Not for Frannie’s ears’.
The adults try to make her leave the room by asking about her homework, but she stays put. She sees the glances between the grown-ups and decides that Paul must have a secret.
It’s stupid that she is left out of it, but she finds she likes to fantasize about Paul’s mystery. Maybe it’s a secret mission. Something very important that will make him a famous hero one day. She likes that thought. She likes thinking about Paul.
She’s very happy that he comes to visit so often. That he drops by three or four times a week.
The adults all like him. Frannie isn’t sure how she feels about that. Of course, it’s no surprise that they all like Paul-he is wonderful. But if everyone likes him so much, does it mean that the feelings she has for him aren’t special? They have to be! She can’t think of anything else than him. When he’s visiting, she feels like she’s floating on a cloud.
She hates the way her mother puts on a show around Paul, pitching her voice high and calling him ‘Paolo’. (Paolo. For god’s sakes, his name is Paul!). She holds her breath when Ma asks Paul to give his grandmother an invitation to come and visit them.
He smiles-he has such a lovely smile, Frannie can feel it in her belly-and says he will pass it on, but he’s afraid she will not accept it because she doesn’t very much like social gatherings.
“Social gatherings,” Frannie whispers softly at the other end of the table. It sounds beautiful. She wonders briefly if it is Canadian.
She’s glad that Paul’s grandmother won’t come to visit. She has to share him with too many people already as it is.
Ma is by far the worst. She has the nerve to want to share recipes with Paul! To Frannie’s great shock, he seems interested. She hates it, but that’s not his fault, of course. It’s her mother’s.
Ma is truly disgusting. Sometimes she calls Paul “innamorato”, and once Frannie catches her touching Paul’s cheek. It makes her want to touch her mother’s cheek. With her nails. Real hard.
“Easy, pumpkin,” Ray whispers to her.
He knows about her feelings for Paul. He likes to tease her. Sometimes he’s looking out the window, saying that Paul is coming. Then, after five minutes, when her cheeks are hot and her heart is racing, he grins at her and says, “Gotcha!”
When it happens, she bites back the tears, throws him a mean look, and wishes him to wake up completely bald the next morning. Usually, he just laughs.
Ray and Paul do a lot of studying together. Frannie asks Ray if they can’t do it in the living room.
He hesitates for a moment, but then he grins. “What? Under your smoldering looks? Poor Paul won’t be able to concentrate.” He ruffles her hair-she hates it when he does that-and adds, “All right, but keep it down, okay? You can look, but you can’t touch. Try to remember that, pumpkin.”
Paul is incredibly smart. When he is discussing police academy stuff with Ray, Ray often mutters, “Yeah, but…” and then, when Paul has explained things to him in a soft but determined voice, he says, “Oh yeah, you’re right.”
Frannie loves to watch them. She wishes that Paul would help her with her homework. Maybe she’d get better grades if he did. Or maybe not. Probably not. She wouldn’t be able to concentrate when he was sitting close and leaning over to have a look at her books.
As it is now, she isn’t interested in homework much. Or in school. But she knows all about Canada.
What she learns about Canada in History class and Geography class seems to be immediately engraved on her brain, to be never forgotten. She can name Canada’s prime minister, Pierre Trudeau. She knows that Canadians are actually also subjects of the Queen of England. She thinks it’s kind of weird, but also kind of special.
Frannie could point out Meadow Lake on a blind map, if people asked her to. She looked it up in the atlas. It’s where Paul comes from.
She discovers that Canadian spelling is different from American in some ways, so she knows that Paul is her ‘favourite’ and ‘honourable’ love. She writes it down on sheets of paper over and over again, adding ‘Paul’ and lots of pink and red colored hearts. She writes her future name ‘Francesca Cavanaugh’ in curly letters on the sheets as well. It looks beautiful. When she whispers it, it sounds beautiful too.
She takes a couple of romance novels from Maria’s room. The men on the covers are not as beautiful as Paul is, of course, but when Frannie starts to read she doesn’t find it difficult to imagine that it’s Paul who behaves and talks like the man in the book she is reading, or to pretend that she is the woman she’s reading about. When she skips the pages with the scenes that are rather disgusting, the novels describe love exactly the way she imagines it: having a man at the center of your life and devote all your thoughts and feelings to him. The books are proof that the purpose of life is to be madly and deeply in love.
Ray comes to her room-Frannie hides the novels quickly-and asks about school. And about her friends. “I’ve noticed that you don’t bring them home anymore, and that you haven’t gone to your friends’ houses lately, either,” he says.
She hasn’t. She doesn’t want to miss Paul when he drops by. She also decided that she didn’t want her friends to meet him. She thought about showing him to them at first, but then she decided it would be better to wait until the thing Paul came to do in Chicago made him famous, and to save it for when he was engaged to her.
“How are your grades?” Ray asks.
They’re fine, she says. He doesn’t believe her.
He’s right, but every time she tries to concentrate on her homework, she finds she can’t.
He reads her mind (he almost always does). “Try harder,” he says. “Everybody experiences their first love at some point, and Paul is great. Just don’t take it too seriously, okay?”
He puts his hand on her hair, not ruffling it but stroking it, like he understands how she feels. She shakes her head violently, and scowls at him. He knows absolutely nothing about it. Nothing at all.
Frannie knows that she’s too young to be Paul’s girlfriend, but she can wait, and she’s certain that he can wait too. He visits her at least three times a week, and he calls her by her full name, which nobody else does. “Francesca” he says, with a soft ‘ch’ sound-like a whisper. She loves it when he does that.
Also, she thinks it’s definitely a sign that he hasn’t had a single date since they met. Paul spends his time only at his grandmother’s, the police academy, or the Vecchio’s house.
Ray and Paul don’t always study in the living room, sometimes they go to Ray’s room. Frannie doesn’t like that, and she allows herself to listen at the door, so she can at least hear Paul’s voice.
Ray and Paul are mostly discussing police academy stuff, but one time they seem to talk about something else. Frannie doesn’t understand exactly what it is about. She doesn’t get all the words, especially Ray’s because his voice sounds so different from what she’s used to. It’s soft and begging, and upset. She doesn’t like to hear her brother like this.
Paul’s voice is quiet and persuasive. Frannie makes out that he is saying he understands, and that Ray doesn’t need to be ashamed of himself. “I’m still your friend,” she hears Paul say, “but I’m not…I can’t…I’m very sorry, Ray.”
The words make her feel sad, although she’s not exactly sure why. Frannie decides not to listen at Ray’s door anymore.
Ray and Paul still study in the living room sometimes. When they do, Frannie tries to focus on the sound of Paul’s voice, and on how he looks and moves. She tries to forget what she overheard. Most of the time, she succeeds.
***
Then three things happen. Paul doesn’t come to visit for a few days. Frannie fears that he has a girlfriend, and her shock is mixed with relief when Ray tells her that Paul’s grandmother has died. A week after that he announces that Paul is going back to Canada.
Frannie’s world collapses. “Why?” she cries out.
He’s homesick, Ray says.
“How can he be homesick when he has us?” She doesn’t understand.
Ray sighs. “I don’t know, pumpkin. Apparently, we’re not enough.”
“But he hasn’t done yet what he came to do in Chicago, has he?”
“No, he hasn’t,” Ray says. “He has different priorities now. He wants his grandmother to be buried in Canadian soil.”
For a moment, she feels hopeful, but Ray shakes his head. “I wouldn’t count on it, Frannie. I don’t think he’s coming back.”
She swallows against the tears. Ray puts his arms around her, very tightly and for a very long time. He’s almost suffocating her.
“You can let go of me now,” she says to him. “I won’t cry.”
He smiles at her. It’s a smile so sad it clenches her stomach. “I know,” he says. “You’re a tough gal.”
***
Paul leaves in a hurry. They all see him to the airport. Ma is crying. “Oh, Paolito. Poor, poor Paolito,” she whines over and over again, like a broken record.
Frannie doesn’t cry (she is not like Ma) not even when the moment comes to say goodbye to Paul.
She walks him away from the others. They are standing close together. She tilts her head to look at him. He is very tall.
“Don’t go,” she says. “Don’t go, Paul, please, I am-”
She can’t finish her sentence, because he quickly takes a step back, leans over and kisses her cheek. “Goodbye, Frannie,” he says.
She swallows against the disappointment. Her last chance of a kiss from him, and he didn’t even consider kissing her on the lips. She wasn’t expecting him to use his tongue (in fact, she hoped he wouldn’t do that, because it seemed kind of gross to her), but it hurts to realize that he never even intended to kiss her on the mouth. And that she isn’t Francesca to him anymore, either.
She turns and walks away quickly, so he can’t see the tears that are running down her face. She doesn’t want to cry, but she can’t help herself.
From a distance, she watches Ray and Paul say goodbye to each other. Ray looks very pale and they both look sad. Ray wraps his arms around Paul, and Paul pats Ray’s back. He’s saying something Frannie can’t hear. Finally, Paul pulls away from Ray’s hug and walks through the gate to board the plane. He turns and waves. The rest of them all wave back, like a bunch of stupid, obedient kids.
Frannie doesn’t. She dries her tears, and stares after Paul until he is completely out of sight.
When Paul has gone, Ray comes over to her. Only now, she notices just how terribly pale he looks. There are tears in his eyes too. That’s a shock; she has never seen him cry before.
He puts his hand on her shoulder. “It’s going to be all right, pumpkin,” he says. “We are Vecchios. We’re the toughest Vecchios of the pack, you and me. We’ll cope.”
Ray’s hand is squeezing her shoulder very tight. His voice sounds strange, and he looks sadder than she ever saw him look. He just said goodbye to his best friend, but Frannie feels that Ray is suffering beyond that.
She recalls the look on his face when he hugged Paul, and suddenly she understands. Not all of it, maybe, but enough to put her arm around Ray’s back, rest her head against his shoulder, and tell him that everything is going to be all right.
Ray needs her. He’s her ten-year-older brother, but right now, he needs her more than he needs anyone else. Only she understands how he feels.
As Ray’s cheek rubs her hair and something wet trickles on her head, Frannie makes up her mind. She’s going to be the best sister she can. The best sister Ray ever had.
END
Rating: PG
Size: about 3300 words
Tags: pre-dS; AU
Note: Most of the words of this story were originally intended to end up in a reply to the School Challenge. j_s_cavalante beta-ed the first version and deemed in badfic. Then she tried to help me to rework the fic into something post-worthy. It wasn’t easy. I was still mid-battle when the School Challenge closed. When the Sisterhood challenge was up, I saw a second chance for my fic. The final version isn’t beta-ed by J_S_Calavante, but she put so much effort in beta-ing the story when it was to be a School Challenge reply, that I still want to mention her as my (three-quarter) beta.
Runs in the family
It’s hard to understand the popularity thing. Or the boy thing. There are rules to both, but Frannie thinks they’re rather silly.
Older brothers are an asset when they look cool and when they are doing cool stuff (and what could be cooler than working at a police department and attending the police academy?) but apparently, this only goes when they are sophomores or seniors. It’s very important that they are still boys-older boys, sure, but boys, not men. To seventh graders, boys who graduate from high school instantly become men. And men are very suspicious, because they all “want just one thing”.
It’s stupid really. Ray is twenty-two, but he isn’t like that. And everybody knows that Stevie Willard, Michael Porter, and Rico Lopez hardly ever do anything other than think and talk about ‘it’-and doing it apparently-even if they are only sixteen.
Frannie doesn’t tell anybody she thinks it’s stupid, and she makes sure she doesn’t talk too much about Ray among her friends. Normal is a difficult enough thing as it is.
Most of the time, Frannie worries more about normal than about math. There are a lot of sides to normal. Even figuring out what other people think is normal isn’t as easy as it seems. First of all, different groups of people have different ideas about it. ‘Normal’ among her friends is definitely not ‘normal’ among her relatives, and vice versa. Besides, even if people say they think something is normal Frannie isn’t sure if they are speaking the truth all the time.
Take being in love with Marc Brenner for instance. All her friends say they are in love with him. Frannie says she is in love with him. But if she is faking it (and she definitely is) couldn’t the others be faking it too? Being in love with an older guy (not a seventh grade baby, thank you very much) is a normal thing to do, but you have to be careful to pick the right one. If you choose the same guy others do you can feel safe that it is pretty normal; that you are pretty normal.
But letting others decide what is normal doesn’t always feel right. Frannie does agree with her friends about most things; clothes and music, and who are the cool teachers and who are the dorks. But not about Marc Brenner. And not about Tim Patterson.
She isn’t in love with Tim (he is a classmate, for god’s sakes!) but she often feels she should be nicer to him. Everyone should be nicer to him. Yes, he is a nerd, but that doesn’t give people the right to pick on him.
Sometimes she really wants to give the guys that are bullying him a couple of black eyes. She wants to smile at Tim to let him know that at least somebody likes him.
She never does it. What if he thought she was in love with him? What if her friends thought she was in love with him? She doesn’t want to be laughed at. She doesn’t want to be lonely. And most of the time, she really likes her friends.
They are right about adults, that’s for sure. Adults are stupid, especially relatives. Most of her friends have to deal with two adults on a daily basis-but she has to deal with four! Ray, Tony, Maria, Ma…Frannie is certain they are the four worst adults ever.
But the thing is, she really likes Ray. She hates it that he still calls her ‘pumpkin’ even if she is twelve now and she has asked him a zillion times to stop it-but she still likes him. She has started to call him ‘baldy’ because at twenty-two you can already see that he’ll once be just as bald as grandpa. He looked hurt the first time she did it, but then he smiled at her-the slow smile she so much likes to see on his face-and said, “Yeah, serves me right. Touché, pumpkin.”
Tony is dumb, he really is. Frannie doesn’t understand why Maria chose him as a fiancé. Maybe she did it to piss off Ma. Yeah, for Frannie, that’s a really cool thought.
But she instantly feels guilty about it. Tony is dumb, all right, but he is also the only one in Frannie’s family who treats her like she’s not a baby anymore. The others seem to have missed the fact that she is in seventh grade now instead of first. They’re always telling her what she should or shouldn’t do. Tony often tries to tell them that maybe she’s old enough now to decide for herself. It doesn’t always help, but sometimes it does. And she appreciates the effort.
She despises Maria, who is trying so hard to be like Ma, to be liked by Ma. Frannie really doesn’t understand that, she has set herself the opposite goal. Ma is everything she never wants to be-with her fake weakness, her so-called inability to learn to speak real English, and the rude way that she prefers boys to girls.
The fifth commandment says, ‘Honor thy father and thy mother’, but Frannie can’t do that, can she? Her father died when she is two years old, and her mother…her mother makes sure she never forgets that she’s just an afterthought, an accident, and worst of all, a girl. She’ll never be a man. She’ll never be someone Ma can lean on, admire, and be proud of.
Frannie hates her mother-which is perfectly normal, any of her friends will tell her that-but sometimes she isn’t sure that it’s really okay, because sometimes she hates her mother so much she can taste it.
It’s a very bitter taste, and it always gets to her mouth without warning. But she’s used to swallowing it away when it happens, and to thinking that it isn’t all that important, that it’s just her mother.
Usually Frannie chuckles when the thought occurs to her that maybe Maria chose somebody like Tony so she doesn’t have to share him with Ma. Frannie might not have a wonderful mother; she has a great brother. That’s the most important thing.
***
When Ray brings home a new friend, Frannie’s focus changes, however. She has never seen a man as handsome as Paul before. He is everything that is beautiful and wonderful and good and perfect. His eyes, his smile, his voice, the way he moves…Frannie instantly knows that this is how being in love really feels.
She can’t stop looking at Paul. She needs to know all about him. She wants him to look back at her, but she can’t seem to make him.
Ma is asking a lot of questions, and for once, Frannie pays attention.
Paul is Canadian. He’s in Ray’s class at the police academy, and he came to Chicago together with his grandmother.
Ma asks if Paul’s parents came along too, but he says they died in a car crash when he was six.
Ma’s face gets a soft look. “Mio povero ragazzo,” she says in the tone of voice Frannie recognizes. Her mother uses it sometimes when she’s talking to Ray.
There is a silence, but then Ma wants to know why Paul and his grandmother have crossed the border, and Ray’s face gets that expression. Frannie knows what it means: ‘Not for Frannie’s ears’.
The adults try to make her leave the room by asking about her homework, but she stays put. She sees the glances between the grown-ups and decides that Paul must have a secret.
It’s stupid that she is left out of it, but she finds she likes to fantasize about Paul’s mystery. Maybe it’s a secret mission. Something very important that will make him a famous hero one day. She likes that thought. She likes thinking about Paul.
She’s very happy that he comes to visit so often. That he drops by three or four times a week.
The adults all like him. Frannie isn’t sure how she feels about that. Of course, it’s no surprise that they all like Paul-he is wonderful. But if everyone likes him so much, does it mean that the feelings she has for him aren’t special? They have to be! She can’t think of anything else than him. When he’s visiting, she feels like she’s floating on a cloud.
She hates the way her mother puts on a show around Paul, pitching her voice high and calling him ‘Paolo’. (Paolo. For god’s sakes, his name is Paul!). She holds her breath when Ma asks Paul to give his grandmother an invitation to come and visit them.
He smiles-he has such a lovely smile, Frannie can feel it in her belly-and says he will pass it on, but he’s afraid she will not accept it because she doesn’t very much like social gatherings.
“Social gatherings,” Frannie whispers softly at the other end of the table. It sounds beautiful. She wonders briefly if it is Canadian.
She’s glad that Paul’s grandmother won’t come to visit. She has to share him with too many people already as it is.
Ma is by far the worst. She has the nerve to want to share recipes with Paul! To Frannie’s great shock, he seems interested. She hates it, but that’s not his fault, of course. It’s her mother’s.
Ma is truly disgusting. Sometimes she calls Paul “innamorato”, and once Frannie catches her touching Paul’s cheek. It makes her want to touch her mother’s cheek. With her nails. Real hard.
“Easy, pumpkin,” Ray whispers to her.
He knows about her feelings for Paul. He likes to tease her. Sometimes he’s looking out the window, saying that Paul is coming. Then, after five minutes, when her cheeks are hot and her heart is racing, he grins at her and says, “Gotcha!”
When it happens, she bites back the tears, throws him a mean look, and wishes him to wake up completely bald the next morning. Usually, he just laughs.
Ray and Paul do a lot of studying together. Frannie asks Ray if they can’t do it in the living room.
He hesitates for a moment, but then he grins. “What? Under your smoldering looks? Poor Paul won’t be able to concentrate.” He ruffles her hair-she hates it when he does that-and adds, “All right, but keep it down, okay? You can look, but you can’t touch. Try to remember that, pumpkin.”
Paul is incredibly smart. When he is discussing police academy stuff with Ray, Ray often mutters, “Yeah, but…” and then, when Paul has explained things to him in a soft but determined voice, he says, “Oh yeah, you’re right.”
Frannie loves to watch them. She wishes that Paul would help her with her homework. Maybe she’d get better grades if he did. Or maybe not. Probably not. She wouldn’t be able to concentrate when he was sitting close and leaning over to have a look at her books.
As it is now, she isn’t interested in homework much. Or in school. But she knows all about Canada.
What she learns about Canada in History class and Geography class seems to be immediately engraved on her brain, to be never forgotten. She can name Canada’s prime minister, Pierre Trudeau. She knows that Canadians are actually also subjects of the Queen of England. She thinks it’s kind of weird, but also kind of special.
Frannie could point out Meadow Lake on a blind map, if people asked her to. She looked it up in the atlas. It’s where Paul comes from.
She discovers that Canadian spelling is different from American in some ways, so she knows that Paul is her ‘favourite’ and ‘honourable’ love. She writes it down on sheets of paper over and over again, adding ‘Paul’ and lots of pink and red colored hearts. She writes her future name ‘Francesca Cavanaugh’ in curly letters on the sheets as well. It looks beautiful. When she whispers it, it sounds beautiful too.
She takes a couple of romance novels from Maria’s room. The men on the covers are not as beautiful as Paul is, of course, but when Frannie starts to read she doesn’t find it difficult to imagine that it’s Paul who behaves and talks like the man in the book she is reading, or to pretend that she is the woman she’s reading about. When she skips the pages with the scenes that are rather disgusting, the novels describe love exactly the way she imagines it: having a man at the center of your life and devote all your thoughts and feelings to him. The books are proof that the purpose of life is to be madly and deeply in love.
Ray comes to her room-Frannie hides the novels quickly-and asks about school. And about her friends. “I’ve noticed that you don’t bring them home anymore, and that you haven’t gone to your friends’ houses lately, either,” he says.
She hasn’t. She doesn’t want to miss Paul when he drops by. She also decided that she didn’t want her friends to meet him. She thought about showing him to them at first, but then she decided it would be better to wait until the thing Paul came to do in Chicago made him famous, and to save it for when he was engaged to her.
“How are your grades?” Ray asks.
They’re fine, she says. He doesn’t believe her.
He’s right, but every time she tries to concentrate on her homework, she finds she can’t.
He reads her mind (he almost always does). “Try harder,” he says. “Everybody experiences their first love at some point, and Paul is great. Just don’t take it too seriously, okay?”
He puts his hand on her hair, not ruffling it but stroking it, like he understands how she feels. She shakes her head violently, and scowls at him. He knows absolutely nothing about it. Nothing at all.
Frannie knows that she’s too young to be Paul’s girlfriend, but she can wait, and she’s certain that he can wait too. He visits her at least three times a week, and he calls her by her full name, which nobody else does. “Francesca” he says, with a soft ‘ch’ sound-like a whisper. She loves it when he does that.
Also, she thinks it’s definitely a sign that he hasn’t had a single date since they met. Paul spends his time only at his grandmother’s, the police academy, or the Vecchio’s house.
Ray and Paul don’t always study in the living room, sometimes they go to Ray’s room. Frannie doesn’t like that, and she allows herself to listen at the door, so she can at least hear Paul’s voice.
Ray and Paul are mostly discussing police academy stuff, but one time they seem to talk about something else. Frannie doesn’t understand exactly what it is about. She doesn’t get all the words, especially Ray’s because his voice sounds so different from what she’s used to. It’s soft and begging, and upset. She doesn’t like to hear her brother like this.
Paul’s voice is quiet and persuasive. Frannie makes out that he is saying he understands, and that Ray doesn’t need to be ashamed of himself. “I’m still your friend,” she hears Paul say, “but I’m not…I can’t…I’m very sorry, Ray.”
The words make her feel sad, although she’s not exactly sure why. Frannie decides not to listen at Ray’s door anymore.
Ray and Paul still study in the living room sometimes. When they do, Frannie tries to focus on the sound of Paul’s voice, and on how he looks and moves. She tries to forget what she overheard. Most of the time, she succeeds.
***
Then three things happen. Paul doesn’t come to visit for a few days. Frannie fears that he has a girlfriend, and her shock is mixed with relief when Ray tells her that Paul’s grandmother has died. A week after that he announces that Paul is going back to Canada.
Frannie’s world collapses. “Why?” she cries out.
He’s homesick, Ray says.
“How can he be homesick when he has us?” She doesn’t understand.
Ray sighs. “I don’t know, pumpkin. Apparently, we’re not enough.”
“But he hasn’t done yet what he came to do in Chicago, has he?”
“No, he hasn’t,” Ray says. “He has different priorities now. He wants his grandmother to be buried in Canadian soil.”
For a moment, she feels hopeful, but Ray shakes his head. “I wouldn’t count on it, Frannie. I don’t think he’s coming back.”
She swallows against the tears. Ray puts his arms around her, very tightly and for a very long time. He’s almost suffocating her.
“You can let go of me now,” she says to him. “I won’t cry.”
He smiles at her. It’s a smile so sad it clenches her stomach. “I know,” he says. “You’re a tough gal.”
***
Paul leaves in a hurry. They all see him to the airport. Ma is crying. “Oh, Paolito. Poor, poor Paolito,” she whines over and over again, like a broken record.
Frannie doesn’t cry (she is not like Ma) not even when the moment comes to say goodbye to Paul.
She walks him away from the others. They are standing close together. She tilts her head to look at him. He is very tall.
“Don’t go,” she says. “Don’t go, Paul, please, I am-”
She can’t finish her sentence, because he quickly takes a step back, leans over and kisses her cheek. “Goodbye, Frannie,” he says.
She swallows against the disappointment. Her last chance of a kiss from him, and he didn’t even consider kissing her on the lips. She wasn’t expecting him to use his tongue (in fact, she hoped he wouldn’t do that, because it seemed kind of gross to her), but it hurts to realize that he never even intended to kiss her on the mouth. And that she isn’t Francesca to him anymore, either.
She turns and walks away quickly, so he can’t see the tears that are running down her face. She doesn’t want to cry, but she can’t help herself.
From a distance, she watches Ray and Paul say goodbye to each other. Ray looks very pale and they both look sad. Ray wraps his arms around Paul, and Paul pats Ray’s back. He’s saying something Frannie can’t hear. Finally, Paul pulls away from Ray’s hug and walks through the gate to board the plane. He turns and waves. The rest of them all wave back, like a bunch of stupid, obedient kids.
Frannie doesn’t. She dries her tears, and stares after Paul until he is completely out of sight.
When Paul has gone, Ray comes over to her. Only now, she notices just how terribly pale he looks. There are tears in his eyes too. That’s a shock; she has never seen him cry before.
He puts his hand on her shoulder. “It’s going to be all right, pumpkin,” he says. “We are Vecchios. We’re the toughest Vecchios of the pack, you and me. We’ll cope.”
Ray’s hand is squeezing her shoulder very tight. His voice sounds strange, and he looks sadder than she ever saw him look. He just said goodbye to his best friend, but Frannie feels that Ray is suffering beyond that.
She recalls the look on his face when he hugged Paul, and suddenly she understands. Not all of it, maybe, but enough to put her arm around Ray’s back, rest her head against his shoulder, and tell him that everything is going to be all right.
Ray needs her. He’s her ten-year-older brother, but right now, he needs her more than he needs anyone else. Only she understands how he feels.
As Ray’s cheek rubs her hair and something wet trickles on her head, Frannie makes up her mind. She’s going to be the best sister she can. The best sister Ray ever had.
END