The Half of It, page 8
“Was all this going on when . . . ?”
“The adultery and the booze.”
“Yeah, that.”
“I knew my mother drank too much and my father didn’t love her. That’s why I practically lived at your house.” She smiles briefly at Helen. “I didn’t know about my father’s secret life. Apparently, he’d always planned to leave my mother when the boys graduated from college, but then I came along and adjusted his timeline.”
Helen shakes her head. It’s amazing how much of other people’s unhappiness has been loaded onto Francie’s shoulders over the years. “I should have been there for you.”
“We should have been there for each other. It was a mistake we both made.”
Helen gazes at her friend’s beautiful fifty-eight-year-old face. Thirty-five years of wrinkles and sunspots she didn’t get to see the arrival of. “Let’s not make it again,” she says, and Francie smiles. “But wait,” says Helen, “how did Ricky . . . ?”
“He sold some pieces for pretty good dough before he died. Sculptures. Those are his out along the road. Also, he had a trust fund.”
“A trust fund? His family had money?”
“His family didn’t, but his grandfather did, and he left it to Rick because of some insane, decades-long feud with Rick’s father. When the old man died, the father contested the will and Rick had to pay a lawyer to defend it, which really pissed him off. He decided the best revenge was just to let it sit there collecting interest. He’d send photocopies of the statements to his dad every once in a while. Apparently, it drove the guy completely mental.”
“Did you know about all this?”
“No, he didn’t tell me about it till he was sick. He said it was just another example of how messed up his family was, and I didn’t need any more evidence of that. I got a letter from his attorney after he died. He left me everything.”
“God, Francie, wouldn’t he be thrilled to see you here in this amazing place knowing he made it all possible!”
“He is.” Francie sighs softly. “I feel him here a lot. He’s happy now.”
Chapter 12
1978
Helen and Cal lay there in the grass on Paddow Mountain. It was going brown and thin, and when she turned her head she could see right through to his face, which was turned toward hers.
“How Italian are your parents?” he asked.
She bristled. She’d been teased by those with fewer vowels in their names for most of her life. She’d been called “Anthony!” like the little boy in the Prince Spaghetti ad. And though no one called her Wop Giraffe anymore (even Ricky had switched to just “Giraffe,” which was bad enough but didn’t impugn her ethnicity along with her height), the lingering sting was still there.
“A normal amount of Italian,” she said.
“No, I mean were they actually born there?”
“Yes.”
“How old were they when they came over?”
“He was fifteen and she was twenty-five.”
“Wow.”
“What, ‘wow.’ There’s nothing ‘wow’ about it.”
“Are you kidding? Imagine coming here from another country, where they speak a whole other language and have a totally different way of doing things, and you have to start all over, learning like a baby. That’s pretty wow.”
“My father doesn’t even have an accent.”
“I’m fifteen, and I’m pretty sure if someone dropped me in the middle of Italy and said, This is where you live now. Deal with it, I’d piss myself.”
Helen laughed. “When I get home, I’ll ask him if he wet his pants when he came over.”
“What? No, don’t say that.”
“Why not? He’ll think it’s funny.”
Cal raised his eyebrows. “Your old man must have a better sense of humor than mine does.”
“What’s your dad like?”
“Well, he’s not a guy who moved halfway around the world and learned a second language with no accent, let’s put it that way.”
“Do you get along with him?”
He didn’t answer for a moment, then he said, “Do you get along with yours?”
“Yeah. I mean, they expect a lot of me and drive me crazy sometimes. But you know . . . they’re okay.”
“I bet they’re really proud of you.”
Helen thought about that. They were. Really proud. “I guess.”
“Guess, nothing,” he said. “They’re crazy about you.”
She laughed. “How do you know?”
“From your face. You like them, right? As people?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Well, if you like your parents, then they love the crap out of you.”
“Is that a rule?”
“Pretty much.”
She thought about this. It made sense, actually. Most parents loved their kids, she figured. But most kids complained about their parents. If they actually liked their parents, as she did, then it was a surprisingly happy situation.
“Do you like your parents?” she asked.
“Um, well. I love them. They gave me life. And they’re not, like, abusive or anything. But I probably wouldn’t have picked them.” Cal gazed up at the trees. “Nope, I definitely would not have picked them.”
“Why not?”
“They’re just not . . . We don’t . . . I don’t know. Like, my dad works at the lumberyard, which he complains about, but he doesn’t look for other jobs. He just bitches about the splinters and cracks another beer. He’s not a dumb guy. He’s actually pretty smart about some things. He could probably build a house single-handedly. But he has no idea why I would want to go to college, and he sure as hell isn’t going to pay for it, even if he could afford it, which he can’t.”
Helen was surprised by this. “I thought Velmont was pretty . . .”
“Rich?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Maybe there’s more rich people than average, but there’s poor people, too. We’re not poor, but we’re not the Moriartys, either.” He studied her. “I thought Hestia was kinda . . .”
“It’s no Velmont, but there are a few wealthy families.” She thought of Francie’s house with the stone pillars on either side of the driveway.
“What about your family?” he asked.
“My dad owns an auto body shop. It’s not fancy, but he does okay. My mom does the books, and she says it’s a cash goat.” Helen laughed.
“A what?”
“She means cash cow, but she doesn’t always get American sayings on the first try. Or the fifth.”
Cal smiled. “She sounds hilarious.”
She is, thought Helen. I’m lucky.
“What about your mom?” she asked.
Cal’s face softened. “Bonnie Crosby is . . . She’s tired a lot. You know, six kids, never enough time to get it all done.”
“Six kids! I didn’t know you had that many brothers and sisters. Where are you in the lineup?”
“Oldest.”
He got quiet then. The guy who always had commentary on everything.
Helen picked a long stalk of grass and tapped his arm with it. “You are definitely going to college.”
“Yeah? How do you know.”
“Because you’re smart and you work hard.”
He grinned. “Maybe I’ll get a cross-country scholarship.”
“Yeah, um, like I said. You’re smart and you work hard.”
He laughed and pulled up some grass and threw it at her.
They were late getting back to the bus, but not as late as Mark and Jerry, so no one really noticed. They were mostly quiet on the ride home. Once, Cal glanced over at Helen and smiled. And she smiled back.
She had made a friend. A real friend, almost as good as Francie. Not a friend she would likely bring home, because her parents would have a hard time understanding that there was nothing fishy going on. (Fishy was a word her mother had learned on the first try.) In fact, Cal himself might take it the wrong way.
So she wouldn’t invite him home to hang out. And it sounded like he wouldn’t invite her over to his house, either. But they could be friends at school and at cross-country.
“You’re going to do indoor track for your winter sport, right?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Gunning for that scholarship. I gotta keep up my skills.”
They tittered over this. Cal and his scholarship.
“Good. Because you are definitely going to college,” she said. “Don’t forget to study.”
The last meet of the season was two days later, and as expected it was fairly inconsequential, except for Helen and Cal, who beat Wendy Moriarty and Mark O’Malley, respectively.
“A moral victory,” Cal murmured to her on the bus ride home.
“Especially for me,” Helen murmured back.
“Geez, you are so competitive. Why is yours better than mine?”
“Because Wendy is the queen of the grade. She gets everything. Except this. I, Helen Iannucci, little Miss Nobody, get this.”
“There are so many things wrong with that statement, I don’t even know where to begin.”
“Come on, you know she’s ridiculously popular, and then she suddenly becomes a sports star, too, without even breaking a sweat? That is just cosmically unfair.”
“Okay, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about you being a nobody, which is not true, you are very much somebody, which I am well aware of by the ass-kicking you give me every day.” Cal lowered his voice to a whisper. “Also, Wendy’s older brother is in jail for getting bombed and driving his car into the lobby of the Velmont Country Club and nearly killing a couple of people last summer, and her parents turned on each other and almost got divorced. So bad shit happens to her, too.”
“Oh,” said Helen. “That’s pretty awful.”
“Yeah. And why does you beating her outrank my beating Mark, who is, might I add, a douchebag?”
“He’s not really a jerk. He’s just jerk adjacent.”
“Jerk adjacent?”
“Yeah, he goes along with whoever he’s with. So he starts hanging out with Jerry and suddenly he doesn’t care about running anymore, even though he’s pretty good. Or Ricky Zugravescu, who is grand theft auto waiting to happen.”
“Z’s not that bad. He just looks bad. And he kind of cultivates that, so it’s not even a real thing.”
“How do you know?”
“I know him.”
“From where? You didn’t grow up with him like I did.”
“From around.”
“The smoking area!”
“Yeah, but I quit.”
“But you still go there.”
“Purely social.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Not even a puff?”
He held up three fingers. “Wheels, I’m tobacco-free, I swear.”
“What’s the three for?”
He quickly put his hand in his lap and shrugged.
“Is that a Boy Scout thing? Are you a Boy Scout?”
“No!” He looked around quickly. “Well, yes, but we try to be cool about it.”
She laughed. “Cool Boy Scout is an oxymoron.”
He stuck his chin out. “It’s actually supercool. We just act like nerds so guys don’t swamp the troop.”
Helen snorted with laughter. “Yeah, it’d be like a run on the bank!”
“Okay, can you shut up now, snorty? You learn a lot of great things in Scouts, and you camp out in the woods and use knives and shit, and if you make Eagle, it helps you get into college.”
“Are you going to make Eagle?”
“Hell, yeah! I’m slaying it! I’m building a bridge over this little stream up at Paddow, and my dad’s getting me the lumber at cost.”
She grinned at him. He was such an adorable little nerd.
“What? It’s awesome.”
“No, it is,” she said. “Hikers will really appreciate it.”
Just before the bus pulled into the CCRHS parking lot, Helen realized she was really going to miss Cal during the three weeks before indoor track started up. Almost a month without his wry observations, and goofy, hilarious stories, and his . . . well, his love for her. She felt loved just for being herself. It was so easy. And she loved him, too. He was a good person and a loyal friend, and he got her. The only other person who really got her was Francie.
As they were filing off the bus into the darkened parking area, and everyone was starting to disperse, Helen was ruminating on how the two of them could hang out—maybe just once, or even twice—before indoor track, when Cal said, “Hey, Wheels, can I ask you something?”
A prickle went up her neck. It was coming.
No, she wanted to say. Please. I love you. I need you in my life! Please don’t make me hurt your feelings.
She kept walking down the sidewalk, as if pretending she hadn’t heard him might stop this runaway train that was about to derail and kill all the passengers.
“Wheels?”
She turned around. “Yeah, what’s up?”
“So, um . . .” He pulled himself to his full height, which was still a couple of inches shy of hers, and took a deep breath. “Can I take you to the Homecoming Dance?”
“As friends?” Helen said in a desperate, last-ditch effort to avert catastrophe.
He locked his blue eyes onto hers, and forever afterward—even despite everything that happened later—she would credit his bravery in that moment, because he did not veer off course, despite the fact that he could surely see that this would not end as he hoped. He understood her so well; he could read her like a book. He knew.
And yet he said, “No, not as friends. As a date.”
“Cal.”
“Yes.”
“Cal, I really like you.”
“Good.”
“You’ve become one of my best friends.”
“Ditto,” he said.
“But I just don’t . . .”
“What.”
He needed her to say it. And that was fair. If he could muster the courage to ask, she could bring herself to answer truthfully. For his sake. In the hope that if she hurt him a little bit now, they could get past it sooner.
“I don’t feel that way about you.”
She watched that land like a punch to the solar plexus. He looked as if he’d forgotten how to breathe for a moment. Like oxygen was a tricky concept and he couldn’t quite recall how it worked. And then he nodded. “Okay,” he said, as if it might not be that surprising after all. That he’d seen it for the long shot that it was for a guy like him. He nodded again, and smiled a no-hard-feelings smile, and walked away.
“How’s he doing?” Helen asked Francie a week later.
“Ummmmm,” Francie hummed to buy herself time. “He’s fine.”
“No, seriously.”
“Well, he’s not exactly the Lucky Charms leprechaun these days, but I don’t think we have a jumper on our hands.”
“Ugh, Francie, what am I going to do?”
“Not make it worse.”
“How do I do that?”
“By not trying to make it better and making it even worse.”
“How are the kids at the smoking area treating him?”
“They pretty much leave him be.”
“Well, that’s good at least.”
“Except Ricky. He started calling him Archie, you know, from the comics. Because of the . . .” Francie pointed at her hair.
“God, that guy is such an asshole!”
“Helen Elizabeth Iannucci! We do not swear!”
“You swear all the time.”
“Then I didn’t mean me, did I?”
“Seriously, why does he have to be such a frickin’ jerk?”
“He’s not being a jerk, Hellie. He’s actually being nice. Everyone feels so sorry for Cal, they’re not even calling him names anymore. At least Ricky shows some respect.”
“By taunting him?”
“Of course. It’s actually kinda brilliant. Archie’s dopey, but Betty and Veronica think he’s hot.”
“They’re cartoon characters, Francie! That is not respect!”
“Except in Guy Land. You don’t have brothers. You have no idea how fucked-up their worldview is.”
Helen didn’t go to Homecoming. She had wanted to before Cal asked her. She had thought maybe they might have a dance or two (fast ones, not slow!) and she might let loose a little. A very little. But he would get it, and he would crack up. She had really wanted to make him laugh.
But after he asked her, she felt so sad and awful, she couldn’t bring herself to go. Francie didn’t go either, but rabid emus couldn’t have dragged her there. “Not my cup of Darjeeling,” Francie said. “I might probably hang out with Ricky.”
“You might probably?”
“You could join us.”
“I’d be a third wheel and I’d stick out like a sore thumb.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I would. A third thumb.”
“He’ll be okay,” Francie said.
“Ricky?”
“Oh, Ricky’ll be fine. I meant Cal.”
“Yeah, I know. But still.”
Helen did not go to the dance, and she did not hang out with Francie and Ricky. She went for the longest run of her life, got a little bit lost, sat down behind a mailbox, and had herself a good hard cry. Then she asked directions and made it home just in time to keep Annabella and Luigi from activating the National Guard.
“That’s it! No more running!” said Annabella.
“Sweetheart, you scared us,” said Luigi.
She was sorry, she told them. So very sorry. That seemed to be her permanent state.
Occasionally Helen saw Cal passing in the hallways, and he’d give her a little head bob, but he kept on walking. She wanted to say, Come on. Enough now. Let’s go back to being Match and Wheels. Francie told her to give him some time, he’d come around when he was ready. But that had barely held her back.
It was that awful Ricky Zugravescu muttering “Heartbreaker” at her in Am Lit one day that had stopped Helen in her tracks. She had broken sweet little Cal’s sweet little heart. Who was the criminal now?
Indoor track started the week after Thanksgiving. Helen couldn’t wait. She went out shopping for a T-shirt to wear that might make Cal laugh and break the ice. She picked one that said, we don’t care how they do it in new york city, with a drunken worm hanging out of an apple.
