Saving Francesca

And then a train comes and nobody gets off. Not one single soul, because everyone’s home. I don’t know whether they’re happy there, or angry with the people they live with, or waiting for something good to happen, but they’re someplace better than here. I want to go home. I go back to saying Woy Woy over and over in my head until I realize that it’s Mia’s name that I’m saying, and my dad’s and Luca’s and Will’s and Justine’s and Siobhan’s and Tara’s and Jimmy’s and Thomas’s and Ms. Qui

And in that dark silence where it seems that everyone is someplace but me, it all comes back. Mia and me on the beach when I’m twelve. She’s telling me a story of when I was five and I almost drowned. She calls me Frankie the Brave.

“I don’t remember,” I tell her as we watch my dad and Luca out in the surf on the boogie board.

“You had this gorgeous pink bikini with flowers attached at the side and shoulders, and you were throwing yourself across the surf like the insane kid that you were and then ru

“All of a sudden, we heard a scream and we realized that someone was out there drowning. Robert raced down the beach and I knew he’d be okay and that he’d get whoever was out there. But then you bolted down after him. You pulled those flowers off your suit and threw them to the side, and you ran straight into the water because you had to save your father. You went under and I couldn’t see you and I was screaming and screaming, but you didn’t come up again and I thought, my baby’s dead… .”

I remember. Being Frankie the Brave and then years later being Francis the Fearful. But more than anything, I remember my dad’s hands. Out there in that surf. I knew they were his, even with all that water pounding in my ears and down my throat and even though every wave was like a giant punch against me, I knew his hands. And then I was holding on to his shoulders, my arms tight around his neck, my legs wrapped around his waist, and the fear just vanished.

I stand up, sure of one thing and one thing only. That my father will come and get me. He won’t give me a lecture, he won’t try to teach me a lesson. He won’t ask a thousand questions or ask me to apologize. He’ll just come and get me. I find a telephone and put in the two-dollar coin and the phone only rings once and I say, “Hello.”

“Just tell me where you are.”

I don’t know how it happens, but not even a minute later the police pick me up from the phone booth. They take me back to the station and make me a cup of Milo, and they are so kind.

“Your father will be here soon.”

When I grow up, I think I’m going to be a cop. They’re nicer when you see them up close, and I love the idea of driving around neighborhoods picking up teenagers who have sworn at their fathers and evaded train fares.

It’s well after midnight when my dad walks into the police station and I start to cry. Just seeing his face makes me cry. He hugs me and doesn’t say a word, and then I’m in the car and he’s driving me home.

On the way, we stop at one of those rest stops for gas and food, and we sit at a table opposite each other. I can’t speak. I’m scared to. I’m scared that anything I say will make him look the way he did yesterday, and I’m scared he’ll leave because of me.

“I didn’t want the baby.”

I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing. I let him speak because I have a feeling that it’s the first time he’s said it out loud.

“But Mia was ecstatic and she’d say, ‘This is a sign, Robert. My father’s died and we’ve been sent this baby.’ Then she had the miscarriage and I felt so guilty, as if I had willed it to death.”

I shake my head. Is this what he’s carried around all this time? This guilt and sorrow?

“When she wanted to talk about it, for me it was a reminder, so I’d brush it off.”

His voice sounds choked and I can’t bear it.

“‘Everything’s going to be fine,’ I’d tell her. ‘If you want, we’ll try again.’ Because I’m sure that’s what someone who’s been pregnant for twelve weeks wants to hear. That the baby she had lost could be easily replaced.”

I touch his hand and he grabs mine and squeezes it, not letting it go.

“I don’t know what to do,” he says. “I don’t know how to make this right.”

And it’s that very moment, looking at him up close, that I realize the truth.

“I’ve been scared all this time that we’d lose her,” I say to him. “That maybe we’d come home one day and she would have killed herself or something. But then I guessed she wouldn’t, but I just felt scared inside all the time. And then I realized that it wasn’t just losing Mummy that was scaring me. It was losing you, too. I thought, just say he gets sick of it all? Just say he leaves? I always thought Mummy kept things together, but you did, Papa. You always did and I just don’t know whether we’d cope without you.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Frankie. What’s happened to Mia”— his voice cracks and there are tears in his eyes and I can’t stop crying—“it kills me. But I would never give up on Mia or you or Luca. Just don’t give up on me.”

“Fathers in the movies always say they won’t leave and then next minute they’re packing their bags and moving in with uncomplicated women who spend a lot of time at the gym.”

“I’m not a father in a movie.”

“It’s because you’re our optimist,” I explain to him. “And most of the time that’s fantastic, but sometimes you don’t let us talk about how we’re feeling. If we feel scared, you say, ‘Nothing to worry about, guys,’ but that doesn’t make it go away. It makes it grow. And that’s what I was trying to say yesterday. That maybe she wanted to talk to you about the baby and about No

“That sounds too simple.”

“No, it’s not. I think not being able to talk to you is probably the scariest thing in the world for her. If I couldn’t talk to you, I’d want to die.”

He’s crying and although I can’t bear it, I try hard not to cry.

“I think it’s about her grieving and you have to let her talk and you have to talk to her back.”

“When did you get so smart?”

“Oh yeah, I’m so smart. That’s why I’m God knows where and my friends who I thought were my friends aren’t, and the ones who are my friends, who I never considered my friends, aren’t talking to me, and the guy I’m in love with isn’t happy enough putting a girl between us but now has to put a body of water between us.”

He looks a bit stu

“I’m not being dramatic. It’s the truth.”

“Your friends are at the house.”

I sit up straight. “Who?”

“I don’t know. Weird people. The Sullivan girl, whose father got the Gosford police to pick you up.”

“Siobhan?”

“And another one who’s making cups of tea for everyone and keeping the boy who’s telling Luca fart jokes away from the girl who says he’s ‘the last bastion of patriarchal poor taste.’ ”

“Justine, Thomas, and Tara.”

“And the drug fiend, Jimmy, is keeping Mia calm, and the Trombal boy’s called about ten times. I don’t like his ma

“You won’t like any guy’s ma

He slides out of the booth and takes my hand, pulling me against him as we walk out.

“Tomorrow, let’s try to get Mummy out of the house,” he suggests.

I nod. Saturday morning at Cafe Bones doesn’t sound too bad.

“Do you think I look like Sophia Loren?” I ask him as we get into the car.

“I used to tell your mother she looked like Sophia Loren.” He looks at me, frowning, and then it registers. “Oh God, some guy’s using that line on you, isn’t he?”