Blue

The girl appears permanently shriveled. Her hands stay glued to her pockets at all times. A faded eskimo-sized pink coat shrouds her body from unwanted exploration. An overwhelming shyness penetrates every pore of her being. Her only pleasure comes in checking the mailbox for her letters each day. She shuffles four blocks each morning before school to wait, staring, at the darkness shrouding the office. She’s never counted the minutes, seconds, and nanoseconds aloud before, but this gray morning they fall from thought into voice.

“7:55, 7:56, 7:57, 7:58, 7:59 ... 8:00,” she breathes, folding forward slightly.

Whenever the letters do not come, a crushing disappointment fills her and she must return to the dim vacantness of her lonely room. She is halfway through her first semester as a sophomore in college, and has never left her home town. She fought hard to get not only her own post office box, but also her own apartment. She lives five minutes walk from campus, and her parents call her every day to check in. She ignores them most days, too wrapped up in the pleasures and displeasures of college.

Living alone in the apartment has certainly revealed her inadequacies. The girl walks home with a boyfriend afraid to touch her, whose faint trembling on her lips is his idea of a goodnight kiss. The kisses stand frozen on the tips of her lips, brooding. Almost bruising if the boy could muster the energy, the courage. She leans into them always, forcing herself to feel a sensation, some glimmer of the attraction her sectionmates describe so vividly. She doesn’t feel it. She doesn’t feel anything at all.

Her inert relationship with her suitor translates easily to her domestic activities. An attempt to cook dinner culminated in a burnt mass of corn, rice, and chicken broth. She called her mother in tears to ask how to fix the oven, the blackened edges of the pan, the smoke furling off the overheated food.

She draws when home in her sparsely decorated apartment, vast expansive sketches shaping the people dancing in her head into tangible color. Her favorite is blue. Blue to create sky, blue to create water. She loves the feel of water on her skin, soothing and unchanging. Always the same sensation, the cold, the warm, liquid sprawling on her skin, tears, rain. The softness when she backstrokes through the college pool gives her hope for the kind of tender relationship she longs for, something to give her hope. This is how he should feel, she thinks, as she stares up at the gymnasium’s ceiling, the water providing a tender blanket. This is how a lover should feel.

Sometimes the girl wonders when her shyness will slide off her like a second skin, and she will finally be free to talk to the cute 3rd-year in her advanced art class. She sketches the student, who is in her imagination named Katharine, after her favorite screenstar, out of the corner of her eye every Monday and Wednesday afternoon, trying in vain to summon the courage to invite her out for coffee at the local cafe. Two blocks down, turn left, enjoy tasty treat. How hard could it be? It’s not even a date. It’s just two classmates enjoying a beverage. She doesn’t even have to like me. She could just be my friend.

This illusion of friendship only remains a pretense in Jenny’s mind when she is sitting in class, paying astute attention to the professor so she can avoid sneaking glances at the girl, who she finally realizes is named Melanie. But when she is alone, she lets herself envision herself wrapped in Melanie’s tight embrace, as they come crashing together like waves in the ocean.

She enters the unlocked door, shutting her eyes with a brief, unanswered relief. The lights cast a dim halo on her flushed cheeks as she shrugs off the coat. It falls to the floor, forgotten. She waves, with a boundless cheer, to the mailman.

The mailman, Frank, turns from sorting letters and greets the girl, Jenny, with an unchecked smile. He smiles hugely whenever he sees her, in awkard attempts to make her feel more welcome. He is 39, has three children, and a beautiful, if slightly overweight, wife. He returns home to an empty house, for the children have either moved away or delve into after school activities until late in the evening. He enters to find a wife who sits in the darkness, silently glaring at him with reproach. He hasn’t made love to her in a month, and lately an ancient tyrst with a man intrudes on his thoughts persistently.

He was 23, and lost in a crippling confusion over why his girlfriend’s touches didn’t set his skin on fire. When they are play-acting a couple very much in love sucking chocolate milkshakes under a starry sky, she set down her shake and moved to a different kind of sucking. He closed his eyes and imagined a young Johnny Depp gently teasing him to attention with soft but firm hands. He grunted and told Betty to go faster. As he came, he had to choke back Johnny’s name and ended with an incomprehensible “...y.” She took this as encouragement and as she wiped the stains from her lips, she bravely asked him to go down on her. He complied and wondered what celebrity will guide him through this latest terror. Hmm. James Dean, Rebel Without A Cause. Red shirt taut against bulging chest, cigarette flexed in bronzed fingertips. He relaxed in James’ arms.

He glances at the girl circumspectly as he sorts through her mail. Her letters come so rarely – he almost wishes he could magic one up for her, from a long-lost aunt or best friend five states away who grows a wild hair and writes a ten-page sprawling missive filled with fifteen different ways to say “I miss you.”

Frank got just such a letter the other day, from the same lovesick boy. His name is Jack, and he is now also “happily” married. Frank hasn’t read past the first sentence “I still think of our last night together and the way you cried in my arms” before deciding this letter was not one to be quickly skimmed in the impersonal mailroom, as he usually decimates many others over the years. One from his sister Carrie, whose daughter is contentedly dating a boy, but blasts the Indigo Girls defiantly from her room. Carrie thinks it only a matter of time before the girl admits her bisexuality, and accepts it in her usual lusty humor.

One from his son, Jon, who confided shakily that college was too much for him, and he could no longer sleep. Please don’t tell Mom, he begged.

He guiltily set his son’s letter aside and rubbed the envelope of the love letter – me getting a love letter - tenderly. Blue ink on white envelope, the same color as their bedroom sheets the last night they were together. He wondered if Jack made the connection. He probably did – he was always the romantic like that.

No. This letter is one to be cherished, to be savored in the privacy of his own home. He will have to hide it. Where?

He shuffles the nagging thought away for now and hands Jenny her letters. She takes them, murmuring a nearly inaudible thank you. It is then that he notices the rainbow bracelet on her wrist.

Frank watches her walk away, daring for an instant to let the hope emerge, fragrant and alive, inside him. If there is one other Other in this small town, he thinks, surely I can read what Jack wrote me. I think I can; I know I can. He felt defiantly like the Little Engine That Could and stopped in his ruminations to glare at the mailroom. No one cares that the usually stoic Frank is chugging like a train. He stops and laughs at his childish behavior. Impulsively, he finds Jon’s letter in his pocket, and scribbles a quick note on the piece of paper lying on the counter. One good thing about working in a mailroom, he reflects. There are always spare pieces of paper.

Jon,
Keep safe. Stay strong. It’ll get better soon, and if doesn’t, you can always come home.
With all my love,
Daddy

Frank stops to stare at this note, wondering if it will appear insincere, as it’s written on a recycled piece of paper. He almost throws it away, before realizing Jon knows where his dad works and probably won’t care what the letter’s on. Still, Frank adds a hasty “Sorry about the paper; you know how it goes, here in the haystacks. And ... Jon, I won’t tell your mother. Promise.”
With a lightened heart, he seals it in an envelope.

The next time he sees the girl, he has allowed hope to build in him, nearly bubbling over. This time when he hands her the mail, he has slipped in a postcard-sized flyer, a queer support group ad.

He is not surprised to see her at the meeting. As everyone says their names, and why they’re here, she stands and with a deer-in-the-headlights expression, whispers, “I’m Jenny, and I just broke up with my boyfriend.”

Frank sags in his chair, and only allows the disappointment to enter for a brief instant. He knows instantly that this is not the all-too familiar “I broke up with my boyfriend because I’m not attracted to him.” She is too scared, and too wary of all the smiling faces. He knows she is not gay, and even if she is, he is no one to give her advice.

After the meeting ends, she comes up to him, and thanks him for the flyer. “I really needed that, so thanks.” She walks away, and he detects a slight bounce in her step.

He allows a brief smile, his first in years, to grace his features. Smiles slide, pinched and subtle, off his lips intermittently. To a wife who does not know the difference between Frank’s unblemished smile and his cheap imitation.

It’s time to read that letter.

He sits on the stoop outside his home, and removes the paper. His hands are trembling. He smoothes it against his knee, and begins to read.

Dear Frank,
Do you ever get the feeling you’re surrounded by dreams? I’ve felt that way the last few weeks. I was cleaning up the house the other day, and I found that picture. You know the one? Your mother took it – two best friends celebrating their last year of high school. When the print was developed, she didn’t think anything of it, the way my hand clasped your shoulder so tightly. The way you stared at me out of the corner of your eye, a faint smile on your lips. I knew then that you were the one for me, Frank. I didn’t care how, but in that instant, as we three all stared at the picture, I just knew. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.

I still want to.

I know you probably think I’m an old softie, writing the “come back to me” letter for the boy who got away. You were always the sensible one, weren’t you Frankie boy? After all, you’re the one who broke it off. Launched into that ridiculous marriage with Betty, left me to scream at you like a fool as you drove off with her to your, I’m sure, blissful honeymoon. Frank, it started to rain as you drove away. I stood in the rain for two hours, staring uselessly at the pinprick of light where your car used to be. After that humiliating experience, I went home and fell into my bed, and tore the damned sheets apart. Blue and white, yeah. My mom – fucking clueless to the end, right? Well I lay there, clutching those sheets, trying so fucking hard to hold onto the last memory I had of you, pinching my skin, your eyes so moist. We certainly fit the gay stereotype, didn’t we?

So yeah, my mom comes in, asks what’s wrong, and I can’t tell her. I can’t say a god-damned word, but somehow she knows. She held me, she hugged me, and let me fall to pieces. I have this ... in my head, so clear. She clutched my hand, kissed it, and then you know what she says? You’ll love it.

She says to me, “Jackie, there’ll be other boys.”
So much for our big fucking charade, Frankie. She knew the whole time. I bet your mom knew too.
I think you loved it. The secrecy. I think you loved the possibility of getting caught more than you ever loved me.

I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just ... hurt. How does it feel? Knowing you’ve left me like this?

I hope for your sake that you’ve stopped kidding yourself and aren’t still with Betty, Frank. You’d both be better off.

All my love,

Jackie


Jenny walks back from the queer support group, cradling the flyer in her hands. Air puffs out of her mouth, framing the image of the pink triangle – it’s grown cold outside. She reaches her apartment, and fumbles for her key. A normal girl her age would be worried about possible muggers, but she didn’t take that self-defense class for two hours brutal a week last semester for nothing. She enters the apartment, turns on the lights, and for the first time does not re-enact the Michelle Pfeiffer scene from Batman Returns, saying softly “Honey, I’m home.”

Not for the first time she strides over to her currently off computer, and looks up the woman in her art class, whose name is actually Melissa.

When Jenny first learned Melissa’s name, she almost cringed at the ordinary structure of it – such an ordinary name for such a beautiful woman. But then again, Jenny is a pretty ordinary name.

Maybe two ordinary people have something in common. Jenny finds Melissa’s phone number from the campus directory, and nervously dials it. She hopes it’s not too late at night.

She waits an impossible fifteen seconds before she hears Melissa’s voice, choked with sleep.

“Yeah, it’s Mel.”

Mel. Jenny loves the short syllable uttered on Melissa’s lips and cherishes it.

“Hi Mel,” she says quickly. “It’s Jenny from um, art class? I was just wondering if – how are you doing tonight?”

Mel’s voice grows brighter, and she squirms out of bed to sit up. Holding the phone against her ear like a treasure, she replies, “Jenny! Hi! What have you been up to? I’m great. What did you think of that assignment last week? What is he thinking? Abstract art is just not my strong suit.”

Jenny straightens her shoulders and chuckles.

“I ... actually really like abstract art. It reminds me of a rainbow. Like the colors splashing everywhere – they feel like home.”

Mel grimaces at this answer, and makes a mental note not to be so disparaging in future. She almost asks the question, but stalls.

“Jenny,” she says softly, rubbing the back of her neck in a sudden shyness. “Do you wanna – “

“Do you want to go out for coffee tomorrow night?” comes the sudden explosion of words. Jenny draws in breath quickly, hardly believing she’s actually said it.
“Yes,” Mel says into the phone. “I would love to. I’ll see you tomorrow. How does eight sound? Okay, great. Bye.”
Jenny hangs up and smiles at the phone for several seconds. She can think of nothing to say except, “Wow.”


In the quiet dawning of day, Frank wakes to smooth back Jack’s hair. He kisses his forehead tenderly and falls into quiet contemplation of the beauty of Jack’s pulsing throat. He lets one finger draw its path down Jack’s arm. Jack awakens and kisses him tenderly.

The dream has unsettled him. Frank gets out of bed in the middle of the night and crosses the room to stare out the window, stars glinting in the distance. His wife stumbles behind him. He presses both hands against the glass and silently allows the sobs to overtake him. He does not know when he will leave her, but he will. He can no longer allow the charade to continue. Frank thinks of Jon stumbling through college. He thinks of Jenny and her budding confidence. He thinks of his sister’s daughter, secure in her identity. He pictures himself as a ghost, flitting through each room of his house, stern and insubstantial. He wonders how long it will be before the last bit of The Man Named Frank will disappear. He wonders how much longer he can stand his wife’s unhappiness, infiltrating his soul.

These thoughts slip through him like water, and the water carries him out of his house, into the garden where he feels the grass sliding against his bare feet, and finally into his car. He gets into the car and drives away.

He stops at an intersection, and feels his hair slide against his skull, slim and greasy. He hasn’t showered in days, too wracked with guilt over the stirring of feeling Jack’s letter caused inside him. With blurred vision, Frank gazes at the red light, dancing in front of his eyes like ballerinas. He rubs his eyes and shakes his head to focus. He decides he’d better pull out of the intersection to not cause anyone harm, and so he finds himself resting in a deserted parking lot – he barely remembers how he came to be there. He lingers in the lot for several minutes before driving back to his home. He crawls into bed next to his wife, feeling the soft peal of her breath against his cheek. He lays there, trembling, alive with fever. The taste of Jack’s imagined kiss still lingers on his mouth. Gritting his teeth, he shuts his eyes and falls into uneasy slumber.

The next morning, Betty has risen before him. She usually does, to halfheartedly but diligently cook him breakfast. He returns from the shower, toweling his hair dry, and greets her with a gruff, “Good morning.”

“How did you sleep?” she questions, not looking up from the eggs.

Frank exhales, and hangs the damp towel on the back of a chair.

“Not well,” he answers. “Betty, we need to have a conversation.”

“Fucking took you long enough,” she replies, finally squinting up at him. Her hair stands at all ends, her robe is only partially closed, and her eyes are smudged with sleep. He realizes what an endeavor it is for her to cook for him each morning, and he feels the guilt strike him anew.

“We’ve been needing to have a conversation for months, Frankie. Years, even.”

Frankie. The nickname, though spoken so derisively, reminds him of Jack. Frankie and Jackie. The names slid from their tongues and caressed each other – it was their secret language. In the darkness of a bedroom with a mother vacuuming five feet way, Frankie and Jackie were the only times they got to be beholden and beloved to each other. To be one in each other’s eyes, completely seperated from the rest of the world.

Tracing the curve of Frank’s cheek with shaking hands, Jack teases him with a relaxed kiss.

“Are you as nervous as I am?” he whispers, a tremble against Frank’s ears.

A small moan escapes Frank as he collapses against Jack’s searching hands.

“More, Jackie. More.”

“Just remember ...” Jack swallows and looks down shyly at the bedspread. “I love you, Frankie.”
The memory sits, shimmering shiny, behind his eyes, as he jerks himself back into the present to stare at his resigned wife.

“Yes,” he manages. “We have. Betty, I’m sorry. I just – I don’t know how to –“

“You don’t need to say it,” she replies sharply. “I know. You think I’m blind as well as a selfish bitch who didn’t see fit to – “ She throws her hands out in exasperation. “release you from the terrible burden of marrying me. Go fuck yourself, Frank. Or better yet, go fuck another man.” she continues, roaring past his gaping confusion.

“You think I didn’t know?” she mutters, hardly even seeing him. She stirs the eggs with a vengeance, laughing bitterly. “I can’t believe this shit. Frank, go. Just go. Be happy. Be queer, be with whoever you need to be. But don’t stand there and look like you’re so surpised I knew. All those years, listening to the wives babble endlessly about how amazing their husbands are in the sack, how much earthly pleasure they got in bed.” Her voice softens. “And I’d come home to you, and you wouldn’t even touch me. You wouldn’t kiss me goodnight unless I asked you. And even then, it was an obligation to you. I could feel it in every touch. I knew you didn’t want me. You never have.”

“Then why? Why didn’t you say something?” he asks, holding his hands out in supplication. Why didn’t you set me free?

“Oh, please. You’re actually gonna stand there and ask me why I didn’t leave you, why I didn’t let you gallivant with your boyfriend. That’s rich, Frank. Real rich. Did you ever consider for a second that maybe ...” Betty looks at him in disbelief. “I loved you, dummy” she whispers. “I loved you.

“I kept hoping I could be what you needed, that I would learn to please you. Besides, it’s not like I had any other options. We were married. The scandal if I divorced you ... and then I would have nothing. No husband, no livelihood, and no prospects. I had to stay. I had no choice.”

She is positive her heart will break and bleed in front of him if she meets his gaze any longer. She drops her gaze to the ground and tries to block out the impression of him, his heat rising towards her. She knows the eggs are burned black, mottled with brown; she doesn’t care.

She steels herself, resolute. “And now I do. I’m leaving you.”

“I’m sorry,” he answers. “I’m sorry I didn’t love you back.” He lets the regret sit in the air between them, and almost wants to reach out to stroke her cheek. His hands stay by his side, and for one moment, he loves her.

He tries to speak, but words fail him.


Frank scribbles names on paper in the darkness of a pre-dawn day. He stops when he hears a noise behind him – his wife? He ignores the interruption and again cradles silence in his hands like he cradled the child Jon in his arms. The boy’s smile comes to him now, an unforced, freeing burble that releases in him an easy joy, so sorely missed.

“Jon,” he murmurs. He scratches his head with a nervous energy and impulsively decides to call his son. He has to force the number to the forefront of his consciousness – in an age of inadequate financial aid, Jon often uses a phone card to call and save the family long distance charges – he dials like he’s never used a phone before. Though it is nearly four in the morning, he vaguely recalls a time zone discrepancy in Ohio.

The phone rings once, twice, three times. Frank has nearly given up when he hears a sleepy, “Hello?”

“Johnny. Johnny boy.” he calls his son a nickname he hasn’t used in years. “How are you, son?”

“I’m fine, Dad.” comes the trembling response. “I’m holding up.”

“Jonny, are you sleeping okay?” he asks, part parental concern and part acknowledgement that he read and received the letter. Frank has been many things, and shitty father is at the top of the list. “Are you sleeping, well, period?”

He is met with a self-deprecating chuckle. “Yeah, Dad, yeah. You woke me up, actually.”

Frank curses his blunder, and rubs his neck self-consciously. He always manages to fuck things up.

“Oh, you know what I meant. From your letter it ... you scared me a little, you know.” he pauses, choosing his words, hating the warm but formal tone that always settles on their conservations. “I was worried, that’s all. I was just worried.”

Jon sighs and imagines his father staring, fumbling for words, for phrases that hold any meaning at all.

“Dad.”

“Yeah?”

“Stop trying so hard. I’m doing okay – sounds like you’re not. Look, I gotta go. Take care of yourself. Love you.”

The phone falls gently from his hands into the cradle and he slumps back into bed, to be embraced by the half-awake woman beside him.

“Who was that?” she mumbles.

“My dad.” he answers, yawning slightly. “Checking up on me.”

“How is he?” she asks, her voice a mere whisper – she is falling quickly into dreams.

“Fine ... I hope.” Jon frowns as he says this, slowly falling back to sleep. I wonder what Dad was trying to tell me.


Frank watches the phone sitting on the cradle, and berates himself for his stupidity.

“Fuck,” he murmurs quietly. “I fucking woke him up.”

He rests his hands on the desk and stares out the window.

“Jack, where are you?” he whispers.

He presses his fingertips against the cold glass and traces his hands against the night.

Frank steps back suddenly, overcome with a sudden longing. He has to see Jack right now.

He closes his eyes and hears the last remnants of his life snap free. His wife is packing in the bedroom; she will mail him the divorce papers. Jenny is well on her way to being an independent woman. Jon is content as he can be at college. There is nothing holding him here.

He can leave. For the first time in his life, he can leave.

Frank opens his eyes again and stares at the room with new vision. Surely some traps waits. Hiding beneath the rug, ready to leap out and keep him here. Some new crisis will emerge, some new guilt will eat him whole.

Like a child Christmas morning, he waits.

Nothing.

Frank finds the letter. He stares at the address. At the date, two weeks prior. He contemplates the amount of gas he has in his car, how much money he has in his savings account.

He stops. It doesn’t matter anymore. Regardless of the cost, he needs to find Jack. To look him in the eyes and explain the past twenty years. To look him in the eyes and beg forgiveness.

To look him in the eyes ... to look him in the eyes.


The sorrow burned in him like a bullet. The paper sits in front of him, mildly accusing. He reaches for the pen and briefly contemplates destroying the letter with hard, angry swipes, excess ink spilling over the words. He stares again at the overly maudlin words, the precise subtle pleading for Jack to show up on his doorstep, tearful, begging forgiveness. Asking him back.

Jack doesn’t know how he would react, to find that child turned man standing in front of him.

Maybe he would smirk and slam the door haughtily. Retreat to his room to block out the incessant knocking as Frank pounds the door, pleading with him. Or maybe he would let his emotions hang out, and answer with a defeated sigh, asking him, begging him, Why now? It took a letter for you to come find me? What, did you have amnesia all these years?

Jack has called Frank numerous times over the last twenty years, if only to hear his voice, his gruff hello, the impatience barely kept at bay. He has never said anything on these calls, except once, when vodka made him brave.

He shoves that shadowed memory away, back into the depths of his mind, and tries once more to concentrate on his work.



The knock is loud and immediate. Jack, architect extraordinaire, pauses in his careful contemplation of the wood etchings in front of him. He answers the door, hastily rubbing his hands together to clear them of sawdust.

Jack opens it.

Standing before him is the boy he never stopped loving, the irrestible Frankie. He exhales, and tries to catch his balance against the doorjamb. He wants to laugh, to cry, to hug, to kiss, all at once. He stands still and tries to maintain his composure.

“Frank,” he says coldly, clinging resolutely to the last vestige of his pride. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Frank wavers on the steps, and shifts his feet awkwardly.

“I came to see you,” he manages. “I came to –“

“What?” Jack asks, laughing harshly. “To fall down in front of me, and beg for forgiveness? Sorry, sweetie, those lines don’t work anymore.” The words hit hard on Frank’s face, and Jack hates himself for causing to that pain. But he can not face this man, not so immediate and near him. It was one thing to write a simple letter, knowing that Frank would never have the balls to leave his sham marriage and come visit him. It was one thing to hover over the envelope lovingly, dreaming of Frank’s fingertips brushing the ink. It was one thing to write a letter. It is quite another thing to have Frank standing in front of him. He clings to the door, willing it shut.

“Jackie,” Frank replies. “I don’t want anything from you. I just needed to ... tell you that I ... got your letter.” He curses his inability to speak without fear.

“Oh, did you.” Jack states. “Did you indeed.”

“Yeah,” he answers. “I got it, and I met this girl, and I was trying to find you, and then I broke it off with Betty, and my son hates me, and –“ He wishes he could choke back his meaningless words. He doesn’t know what to do. He had no plan beyond finding Jack. Now that he has, he doesn’t know what to do next.

“You met a girl. Always the great pretender.”

“No, it’s not like that. She’s just a child, Jon’s age, and she needed to be more out, and I helped her, and now she’s even dating women, and – “

“You? You, Frankie boy? The patron saint of closeted queers everywhere? Give me a break. Give me a fucking break.”

“Don’t call me that!” Frank exclaims with renewed vigor. “Don’t call me that. Don’t stand there and scream that name.”

“What? Frankie?” Jack taunts. “Sure suited you back then. Are you too good for it now? Too good to fuck a cast-off for old’s time sake?”

“Why do you think I came? I came to show you that I’ve changed! I’m different now!”

“Twenty years too late, kid! You think you can just waltz in here and expect me to, what, uproot my love and run away with you to some lovefest? You’re out of your mind. You have completely lost it.”

He can put up a front, he can scream all he wants, he can hate and hate and hate, all for nothing. Jack will never be able to say such hateful words and mean them. He is beginning to break under Frank’s loving, uncertain eyes. Frank is not giving into his assault. He is standing up and taking the abuse, and not running away. For the first time since Jack can remember, Frank is no longer afraid to face him.

Jack lets the reassuring wood guide him, calm him. He would like nothing more than to close his eyes and have Frank disappear, melt back into the abyss.

Go. Just go. Go, baby, go.

"No.” Frank whispers. “No, baby, no. I’ve found my mind. For the first time in a long time, I’ve found it. I just needed you to see that. I’ve done what you’ve asked. And I’ll go now. I won’t bother you anymore. I’m glad you’re doing so well ... I m-missed you.”

Frank stops speaking and stands silent on the pavement. He looks Jack in the eyes, and is surprised to find them damp with tears. Moved by impulse, he caresses Jack’s cheek. With exquistite tenderness, he cups Jack’s face in his hands and kisses his chin before finding his lips.

A quiet moan reaches Frank’s hearing. Tentative, he relaxes his grip and steps back.

“Goodbye, Jackie.”

He turns away and is halfway down the driveway before he hears Jack’s voice.

“Wait.”

Frank looks back.

“I want to show you something. Come inside.”