Life_ An Exploded Diagram - Mal Peet [116]
“It wasn’t difficult. I came across one of your books. Months ago. On the back flap, it said, “Clem Ackroyd lives in New York City.” I rang Information, and guess what? There were only two C. Ackroyds listed. One was an upholsterer. So the other had to be you.”
“You looked for me.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t look for you.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
She said, “You were always apologizing, Clem. I thought you might have grown out of it by now.”
“I’m . . .”
I stopped myself, and she laughed. I laughed, too, sort of.
I said, “I’m . . . It’s amazing to be talking to you, Frankie. It really is.”
“How damaged were you, Clem? I never really knew.”
Like introducing a normal topic of conversation, such as, How’s the weather where you are?
I took a breath and said, “I lost most of my left ear. Left side of my face pretty screwed up. Skin grafting was still a primitive science back then. I look pretty good, right profile. Left profile, more like a map of the Norwegian coast. A pink glacier sort of a thing. I lost two fingers of my left hand. Also, I’ve got a gimpy left leg.”
After a small quietness, she said, “You married, though. Julie.”
“How’d you know that?”
She made a humorous sound before she answered. I saw her, imagined her, lift her shoulders and smile.
“Borstead is still the headquarters of the Norfolk CIA.”
“Right,” I said, then, not wanting to, afraid to, “How about you, Frankie?”
“How much do you know?”
“Not a lot. They flew you to America. After that it was just, I dunno, wisps. Rumors. Nobody would talk to me.”
I sat, quietly cracking up and worrying about the time, while she told me her story. Her tone was droll and matter-of-fact.
She’d spent ten months in a clinic in Los Angeles, then another year in California as an outpatient. Nicole had stayed with her all that time. Her father had flown out for both Christmases, and on three other occasions. The doctors and cosmetic surgeons had done a great job, and it had cost a fortune. Unfortunately, they hadn’t been able to save her eye.
“Oh, no, Frankie. No. You lost an eye?”
“Yes, the right one. It’s okay. One gets used to it. The fake I wear these days is rather brilliant, in fact. You wouldn’t be able to tell, unless I’m watching tennis.”
She hadn’t thought that anyone would be interested in her. But was surprised by how many men seemed to find a girl with a glass eye and a limp attractive. When she was twenty-four, she married “a rich chump” and for nine years went by the name of Françoise Chamberlain before leaving and later divorcing him. They had a child, a daughter, now twenty-eight, a textile designer, living in Paris. Her name is Clementine.
Frankie paused after telling me this, as if waiting for me to comment.
“I don’t have any children, myself,” I said eventually.
Her parents’ marriage was, according to Frankie, a late victim of what she called “our accident.” Nicole had not wanted to leave California. She’d liked the climate, hadn’t wanted to return to the twin bleaknesses of Norfolk and her marriage. She used Frankie’s “condition” to make excuses for delaying their departure.
“Besides,” Frankie said, “I think she had a little thing going on, if you know what I mean.”
“Really? A man, you mean?”
“One of my surgeons, believe it or not. I don’t know. Maybe I was imagining it. He was a lovely man. I was a bit in love with him myself.”
And, at last, a worm of jealousy stirred in my chest.
Gerard had issued an ultimatum, then another. All the same, it was another year before Frankie and her mother returned to Bratton Manor. Things turned nasty almost immediately. For reasons Frankie couldn’t understand at the time, each of her parents blamed the other for what had happened to her. And they both blamed Frankie.
“So there was this triangle of blame, Clem, you see? We couldn’t get outside of it. If one of us did get free for a while, the other two would drag her back in. Or him. Because that’s the only way we . . . it was the only relationship we had.”
“So, uh, how were you at the time? Like, physically, I mean.”
“Oh, I was fine. Well, I was fine