Freaky Green Eyes (5 page)

We'd been living in an older, smaller house closer to downtown Seattle, in what was called an ethnically diverse neighborhood. I had lots of friends there and hated to move. (And I hated the new house. I cried and sulked for days.) Mom kept saying, “It's an adventure! It's like a spaceship.” We were lucky Dad allowed Mom to furnish the lower-floor rooms herself.

Last year Mom converted a room in the guest wing into a small studio. She was taking classes in pottery, weaving, and painting. Her studio wasn't large and didn't have a spectacular view of the lake, but it had a skylight, and Samantha and I had fun helping Mom paint the walls a warm pale yellow so there was the feeling in Mom's studio that the sun was shining, or almost, on even our gloomiest winter days.

In the Pacific Northwest rain forest, which is
where we live, it can rain for weeks at a time. No sun. And if the sun appears, it can disappear within seconds.

Dad had allowed Mom to convert the room into a studio, but he'd never liked the idea. The more time Mom spent at home, in that studio, the less time she had for the kinds of socializing he thought a wife of his should be doing, like lunching with the well-to-do women who ran such organizations as the Friends of the Seattle Opera and United Charities. He complained that, far away at the other end of the house where their bedroom was, he could smell paint fumes. They gave him a sinus headache, damn it! When Mom showed him the first weavings and clay pots she'd made, which Samantha and I thought were very beautiful, Dad just smiled and shook his head like an indulgent father. “This is what you've been doing, Krista? They're fine. Great.” That was all he said. Mom was hurt but tried not to show it.

Soon she stopped showing Dad her new work,
even when she was able to place it in a local gallery and began selling it. And Dad never asked about it, or visited Mom's cozy studio.

Lots of things I'd always told my mom I'd never have told my dad. But lately I wasn't telling Mom things, either. Since Freaky entered my heart, last July on Puget Sound. I wondered if Freaky would have come to me if it hadn't been for Cameron; if I hadn't almost made a terrible mistake and become desperate.
You should see your eyes! Freaky green eyes! You're crazy!
But I wasn't crazy, I knew that. I was stronger, I was empowered. I liked myself better than I ever had before, since I was a small child. Weird thoughts came to me, like
You belong in this world, just like everyone else. Except you're Freaky Green Eyes, so you know it
.

Since starting my period, I'd been kind of disgusted with myself, or ashamed of myself, I don't know. But since Freaky, I didn't feel that way. I remembered how I'd escaped from Cameron, how I'd jogged
back home in the rain, so happy. I stood in front of my bedroom mirror naked, as I'd never done before, liking my hard little breasts with the dimple-nipples, and the pale-flamy swath of silky hairs at my crotch, and my lean muscled swimmer's legs, even my long, narrow, toadstool-white feet. I didn't stare or ogle, I just looked at myself like you'd look at a flower, or a tree, or an animal, anything natural, unclothed. Especially, though, I did admire my carroty-red hair, which I was letting grow long, frizzy and static with electricity, past my shoulders. Most of the time I fastened it into a ponytail to keep it out of my face. (Mom gave me a silver clasp for the ponytail, inlaid with turquoise stones.) Like my eyes, it was Freaky's special sign. But I felt good about it, not secretive.

Was I sad that I no longer told my mother the things that mattered most to me? Twyla said it was the same with her. “Suddenly, one day, I heard myself lying to my mother. Not for any special reason—just I didn't want her to know my heart.”

I said to Twyla, “I don't think I'd ever want
anybody to know my heart. Who could you trust?”

We thought about that. You were supposed to be able to trust people you fell in love with, but that could be risky: people fall out of love all the time. Twyla said, wryly, “Your girl friend.”

It was true. Maybe. If there was anybody I could trust, it would be a close girl friend like Twyla. But that was risky, too.

“Francesca?”

I was in my room, at my computer but daydreaming. Staring out the window at the lead-colored lake and thinking of Twyla, and my other friends I didn't seem to have much to say to lately. Maybe it was what Mom said: I was “withdrawn.”

Is “withdrawn” the same as “depressed”? Or just a mood?

Mom pushed my door open a few inches, hesitantly. She pushed her head inside. “Hon? Are you busy? Can you talk?”

A huge sigh ballooned in my chest.

“Sure, Mom. Come in.”

I hated being invaded like this. Though I'd known Mom would come looking for me. She wasn't one to let things go.

Still wearing the turquoise scarf. And a long-sleeved shirt, buttoned to the cuffs. Her eyes were lightly threaded with blood; the rims looked reddened. “Can I sit down? You're not doing homework, are you?”

“Sort of,” I lied. “But I can talk, sure.”

This was when Mom first spoke of Skagit Harbor. Her “cabin” there: did I remember it?

Skagit Harbor is an old fishing village on Skagit Bay, about an hour's drive north of Yarrow Heights. My mother's grandfather had a small, single-room house there, known in the Connor family as “the cabin.” A few years ago, Mom took Samantha and me up for a weekend, while Dad was covering the World Series in New York. I had a good memory of Skagit Harbor and wondered why we'd never gone back.

Dad hadn't liked it, I guess. He thought Skagit
Harbor was funky and boring. The kinds of people who lived there tended to be pretty ordinary, with what Dad called a “hippie infiltration.” He meant artists who made their living doing carpentry or waiting on tables in restaurants, marginal people in his opinion.

I was taken by surprise. “The cabin? What about it?”

“Well. I've gone up a few times this spring. I've been repainting it, fixing things up. Clearing away the underbrush. It's like a jungle.” Mom paused, smiling faintly. There was some meaning here I wasn't getting, not quite yet. “I'm going to be taking some of my studio things up this weekend. Your father will be away, and . . . I'm wondering if you'd like to come with me. I'll be driving back Sunday night.”

Suddenly I was on my feet. I was furious, and frightened.

“Mom, why are you provoking him? Why are you doing this?”

Mom stared at me. She'd been touching the scarf, making sure it hadn't slipped around. I could see the faint lines in her face, and the metallic-gray cobwebby streaks in her hair.

“P-provoke? What do you mean, Francesca?”

“Mother, you know exactly what I mean.”

“Your—father? You think I'm provoking your father?”

“Aren't you?”

“Francesca, this is out of your depth. This isn't a topic I care to discuss with you.”

Mom was on her feet now, too. I would remember how weird this was: there was actual fear in her face.

I said, on the verge of tears, “Look, you just asked me, Mother, didn't you? ‘What's wrong, Francesca?' So I'm telling you what I think is wrong. You're doing things to deliberately make Daddy angry. You know how he is, and you keep doing them.” My voice was choked. I could hardly breathe. It was like I'd dived into the water but couldn't swim back to the surface—something was dragging at my ankles.

Mom said, stammering, “Francesca, you don't understand. It's—complicated.” She seemed confused. She had a new, nervous habit of turning a ring on her finger, a chunky silver ring in the shape of a dove she'd brought back from Santa Barbara, made by the same Navajo silversmith who'd made my ponytail clasp.

I said, “If you provoke Dad, he'll react. That's his personality.”

“But—don't you think that I have a ‘personality,' too?”

“No. I mean, not like Dad. He can't help it, and you can.”

“Your father and I love each other, honey. Very much. And we love you. But our values are different now. I—I feel differently about things. I want to live, before it's too late.”

“‘Live'? Why can't you live here, like you always did? Why are things different now? Samantha is scared you and Daddy are going to get a divorce. Half the kids in her class have parents who are getting divorced.”

“Samantha thinks—that? Has she said so?”

“No. She hasn't said so. Not in so many words.”

“Have you been talking about this with her? You haven't been frightening her, have you, Francesca?” Mom's voice was shaking.

“No. You're the one who's frightening her. You're frightening me. You seem so—” My face was burning. I had to bite my lip to keep from screaming. “—
unconscious
. Like you're sleepwalking or something. You don't know the effect you're having on Daddy.”

Mom chose her words carefully. I would wonder later if they'd been rehearsed.

“Francesca, honey—I mean, Franky—you know nothing about this, really. I'm so sorry that you've been anxious, and that Samantha has been anxious, but”—she was trying to smile, but the staples had all come out, and the smile was like a fish's grimace, and her eyes were bloodshot and scared as if Dad was standing just outside the room about to rush in—“your father and I have discussed it at length. He understands that I'd like a little more time alone—away
from Seattle, mainly. Not away from my family, but—away from Seattle. Away from this house. He has said I can fix up the cabin in Skagit Harbor, and I can spend time there. Of course, not permanently. I'd always be coming back, every few days. Your father has said so.”

This was a surprise. I hadn't expected this.

“He has? Dad has?”

“And there's no talk of divorce, dear. If Samantha ever speaks of such a thing, Franky, please tell her: there is no talk of your father and me getting a divorce, now or ever.”

It was strange, how Mom uttered these words.
Now or ever
. Like they weren't hers but someone else's.

Mom turned, wiping at her eyes, and left my room. I wanted to call her back. I wanted to hug her, and feel her arms around me. At the same time, I wanted her gone; I couldn't bear looking at that smile any longer, or the fading plum-colored bruise just visible beneath her jaw.

       
Hi Todd.

       
Sorry to bother you (again).

       
Did you know, Mom is fixing up the cabin in Skagit Harbor, & she'll be going up there sometimes? She just told me.

       
But NO DIVORCE she says. NOW OR EVER.

       
I guess this is good news. (Isn't it?)

       
I mean, the way they've been. Since last winter. Let me know what you think, or what you know.

       
(Are you in contact with Dad?)

       
Hope things are OK there at Pullman.

       
Franky

Todd never replied. Actually, I'd thought this time he would.

Except they weren't.

It was never like people thought.

The Pierson family was not
breaking up
.

Dad explained to Samantha and me. Taking our hands in his hands, and speaking matter-of-factly but gently: “Your mother is in her own zone, girls. More and more, that's where you'll find her.”

Mom was away for two days in a row. Then she returned, and next time she was away for three days. She took Rabbit with her in the station wagon. The house was strange and sad and lonely without them.
Almost you could hear the echoes of voices, and of Rabbit's little panting yips.
In her own zone. More and more. Where you'll find her
.

It felt wrong, to return from school and Mom wasn't there. You couldn't help but think bad things.

Samantha said, “Franky, doesn't Mom love us anymore?”

“Ask her. How would I know?”

“Sometimes I hate her!” Samantha's small face crinkled with an impish defiance. “I don't care if she ever comes home.”

Later, Samantha said, worriedly, “Franky? What if Mom doesn't ever come home?”

“Don't be silly. Mom is coming home day after tomorrow.”

“She is?”

“You know she is.” I pretended to be exasperated with my dazed little sister.

Samantha smiled, poking her thumb at her mouth. “Oh, well. I guess I did. But I forgot.”

We didn't miss her! We went to school like always. We had our friends. We had our school activities that mean so much when you're involved in them, though afterward you'll hardly remember why. It felt good to be out of the house and at Forrester, where I was a lanky, red-haired, ponytailed sophomore who had a quick, just-slightly-scratchy-sounding laugh and never gave the impression of taking myself too seriously. “Franky, what's up?” friends would call out to me, swinging along the corridors between classes. I was numb much of the time like I'd been injected with novocaine. In lavatory mirrors I'd catch myself smiling Mom's cheery stapled-on smile.

People like you when you're upbeat, a little rowdy, unpredictable. They don't like you when you mope.

Dad began saying to Samantha and me, “You know, nobody likes girls who mope.”

You know, Franky's going through this thing
.

What thing?

Her mom and dad
.

I wasn't sure if I heard this, exactly. At Forrester. In the locker room, before our last swim meet of the season.

No, what? That's why she's been so spaced out?

At Forrester, I was on the yearbook committee, and I belonged to the Drama Club and the Girls' Sports Club. Although I wasn't one of the stars on the swim team, I had my isolated, unexpected moments when I swam like a suddenly crazed/demonic fish.
Freaky Green Eyes racing for her life
. I helped our team win a crucial meet, but I wasn't big enough or strong enough or good enough to be consistent, which means reliable. Yet Meg Tyler, our swim coach, was sympathetic with me, and had a way of taking me aside as if I was someone special, or should have been. At the last meet, which Forrester won, if just barely, she said, “Franky, good work! Next year you're going to come into your own, I predict.”

Next year, I hope I'll be here
.

I told Miss Tyler thanks. I told her she was
a terrific coach. I was touched by her faith in me though I didn't believe it for a nanosecond.

Faster and faster the days went. Everybody was looking forward to summer. I tried to feel that way, too. I stayed up late finishing papers for English and social studies that were overdue, telling myself
Freaky can handle this. Like a tricky dive: take it slow
. Studying for exams, cramming my head so it felt almost good. With Mom not home much, I could stay up half the night and nobody would know. (Dad was often out. He'd come back around two
A.M
. some nights.) I took my exams, walked out of school with my mind wiped blank like a blackboard.

I did okay. I didn't fail any subject. Actually I raised my grade in honors English to A–, where I'd been dragging along with Bs and incompletes all semester. Samantha did okay, too. Finished fifth grade with all As and a single B (gym). I was proud of her, and I hoped that Mom and Dad were, too.

“When can we come with you, Mom?” Samantha kept asking. And Mom would say, “When your school is out.” But when school was out, and Samantha asked, Mom said evasively, with a nervous flutter of her eyelids, “When I'm finished painting the cabin. When your father thinks it's appropriate.”

Samantha said, jabbing her thumb at her mouth, “Franky and I can help you paint, Mom. You let us last time. You said we painted your studio really well.”

“Yes, honey. You certainly did. But . . .” Mom paused. For a moment she seemed confused, as if she couldn't remember what she was supposed to be saying. “. . . it's another time now, honey.”

I wanted to ask her what painting her cabin had to do with Dad's opinion. And how long was it taking to paint her cabin, which was the size of a single room? But resentment for this woman was like a big clump of hot dough in my throat.

Go away then. Stay away
.

You don't love us. You love the “zone” you're in
.

As soon as the station wagon pulled out of the driveway, know what I did? I made certain my cell phone was turned off.

For hours each day, except when Maria was here (Maria was the Filipino woman Mom had hired to oversee the household in her absence), I kept the family phone off the hook, too. Mom called home at least twice a day; she could leave a message in our voice mail.

So I wouldn't be waiting for the phones to ring every minute I was home.

I stopped bringing my friends home. With Mom away, the house was deadly quiet like a museum nobody ever visits. Even Maria banging around vacuuming the big rooms overhead (that didn't need vacuuming, but Maria had to do something to earn her salary) was a kind of dead absence of sound. Rabbit's nervous high-pitched yipping, which Dad disliked, I kept imagining I heard, but at a distance, as if Rabbit was somewhere in the
neighborhood, lost. Samantha and I kept thinking we saw him in the kitchen by his food and water dishes. We heard his toenails clicking on the tile floor, and his eager panting breath.

Samantha said, “It isn't fair, Franky, is it? Rabbit is our dog, too.”

“I guess Mom isn't thinking of us right now. ‘She's in her own zone.'” I spoke lightly, not sarcastically.

Samantha asked, “What's a ‘zone,' Franky? Daddy didn't say.”

“Her own space, like. In her own head. Doing what she wants to do, not what other people want her to do. I guess.”

In fact, I didn't know. But I knew I hated that zone.

Pretty soon we figured out the schedule: Mom was gone two or three days a week, and most of this time Dad was home. (When he wasn't traveling, he worked in downtown Seattle. He covered local sports
events when they “impacted” on the national scene.) The day after Mom returned, Dad would leave. There was always some overlap. A family meal together, an evening. Samantha was nervous a lot, not knowing what was going on, exactly; I tried to be neutral. I guess I was stiff with Mom, feeling she was betraying us. With Dad, when all he wanted was his “good girls” laughing at his jokes, it wasn't so hard.

I wondered: did Mom and Dad sleep together any longer? In the same bed?

It was weird—some nights at dinner they got along really well. Called each other “honey” and “darling” and were extra nice. Then, next day, Dad would be flying out to Miami, Chicago, Austin. And when he returned, it would be time for Mom to pack up her things, kiss us good-bye, call, “Rabbit! C'mon, boy,” and drive off in the station wagon to Skagit Harbor. Once Samantha stood in the driveway yelling after Mom, “It isn't fair, it isn't! Rabbit is our dog, too.”

Sometimes when Mom was gone, the house was suddenly noisy upstairs and out on the redwood deck. Dad was “having friends over for drinks.” They'd arrive around six
P.M
., and around nine
P.M
. they'd leave for dinner in one of the trendy Seattle restaurants Dad took Samantha and me to sometimes. On his way out of the house, Dad always came to see us downstairs to inform us he was “going out for a bite to eat” with his friends, and not to wait up for him.

Samantha would say primly, “Daddy, you already ate with
us
.”

Increasingly, a woman unknown to us would be hanging on to Dad's arm and would want to say “hi!” and “good night” to Dad's daughters. (Samantha camped out in my room until she went to bed next door in her own room. She wasn't too much of a nuisance, except if I was talking with friends on the phone; I didn't like her listening and butting in.) Samantha thought this woman was always the same person, but I knew there was more than one woman. It was easy to confuse them because
they were all blond, glamorous, and years younger than Mom. They looked like TV news or weather girls. They looked like models. Dad never introduced them to us; maybe he didn't remember their names. He'd knock on my door, push it open even as I called out, “Come in,” and he'd come inside just a few steps, and the blond woman would be beside him, but just slightly behind him, and he'd say proudly, “See? My good girls. Sam-Sam, the little one, and Franky, who's a star swimmer at Forrester Academy. Terrific, aren't they?” The blond woman would gaze earnestly at Samantha and me as if we were specimens of some rare unnamed species, and she'd squeeze Dad's upper arm through his sports shirt and say breathily, “Oh Reid, gosh,
yes
. They take after their
daddy
.”

Once, Freaky Green Eyes intruded. Saying, “Actually, we take after our mom, too. Have you met Mom?”

The look Dad flashed me, even as he smiled, and laughed!

Saying his usual, “Okay, girls. Don't wait up for your old dad.”

Samantha was okay, I guess. Learning to adjust to the New Schedule. I felt sorry for her. I could see she was crying in secret, because she knew that crying annoyed Dad; and sometimes, I have to admit, I got impatient with her, too. (Seeing Samantha cry made me want to cry. No thanks!)

Samantha had friends from her school, but they didn't live close by us, so when Mom wasn't here to drive her, she was sort of stuck at home. She was lonely, and emotional. Just to get attention, sometimes, five or six times a day she'd ask if Mom had called, if I'd checked our voice mail. Actually coming into my room in the middle of the night—when I'd finally fallen asleep—pleading, “Franky? Did you double-check the messages for tonight?”

Of course, we could call Mom. But Mom rarely answered her phone, and she didn't have voice mail. I asked her why, and she said evasively, “Phones
make me nervous. You never know who might be calling.”

Mom wasn't an e-mail person, either. She said computers made her nervous, so she didn't take her laptop to Skagit Harbor.

And Dad, too. Often he was out of reach. Sometimes an assistant would call. “Francesca Pierson? Hold for Reid Pierson.” After a long wait, and a series of clicks, Dad's voice would come on the phone, loud in my ear and sounding harassed. “Hi there, sweetie. What's up?” Somehow, wherever Dad was in the country, he had the idea I'd called him.

“But Dad, you called
me
.”

“I did?” Dad sounded vague, bemused. He'd laugh, as if a third party had played a joke on us both, and Reid Pierson was too good a sport to take offense. “Well. Just saying hello, honey. Is your mother anywhere near?”

If I said yes, Dad would say quickly, “No-no, Franky. I don't need to speak with her. Just checking, see?”

After Dad broke the connection, I'd stand holding the receiver to my ear like a hypnotized person, waiting for a voice to return.

Then in June, my mother's older sister, Aunt Vicky, who was my favorite of all the Connor/Pierson relatives, began e-mailing me. Aunt Vicky had called me four or five times and I guess I'd never called her back, for some reason.

(Maybe I didn't want Aunt Vicky to hear something weak and frightened in my voice. She was sharp and picked up on things that even Mom didn't.)

Well, I didn't. I resented Aunt Vicky butting in.

Wondering what Mom had told her. Wondering if there was some secret about my mother and father that Aunt Vicky knew and I didn't.

Quickly I typed out:

I stared at the computer screen for five, ten minutes. . . . Finally I added:

(Why was I so angry with Aunt Vicky? Actually, I loved Aunt Vicky. We got along really well together, liked the same kind of jokes, liked swimming and the outdoors. Aunt Vicky had taken me lots of places including, when I was twelve, on an unforgettable trip to the mountains of northern Mexico to observe the monarch butterfly migration. She was crazy about Samantha, too.)