Frankly in Love (Frankly in Love, #1)(80)

Three marble signature stamps and a lacquered black compact that unscrews to reveal a vermillion-red ink pad





Everything about this spy suitcase makes me want to cry, and I know why. Because it’s such a small, light case—luggage was smaller back then—and yet it contains all there is.

Dad will be gone soon.

One day Mom will be gone, too.

Maybe I’ll have kids one day. They’ll ask me all about my life. It’ll be easy to give them answers. We will speak the same English. We will be able to look up all my shit on the Internet, if we’re still calling it the Internet. We’ll talk about my hopes and dreams and fears and how they compare with their hopes and dreams and fears. Then we’ll openly say I love you and hug, because Americans are huggers, dammit.

Then they’ll ask me about all the stuff in this suitcase, and I won’t be able to explain half of it. Not even close. This small, light suitcase will be to them what it is to me.

A wunderkammer.

Buzz-buzz. I parked down the street, says Joy. Coast clear?

I wipe my eyes and stand.

I’ll be at the front door, I say.

When I open it, there stands Joy in the outside heat in all her summer dress glory.

“Hi,” I say.

Joy grabs my head and kisses it, and for a moment it’s the only sound in the whole house.

“What’s wrong?” she says, because Joy can tell when she’s kissing a statue.

I want to tell her. But not here. I will for-sure cry. I will become dizzy with tears and fall, and my head will strike the nearby bronze figurine of a bronco bucking an astonished infant cowboy and inflict a debilitating concussion. So I say, “Wanna see some cool old stuff?” and lead her to the spy suitcase.

“Are you okay?” says Joy.

“Yes,” I say, walking. “No.”

“Last night was a shit show.”

I sit her down on the soft, nonconcussive carpet before the suitcase.

“Huh,” says Joy. “Is this all your mom-n-dad’s old stuff?”

I nod. One small suitcase. My eyes sting with tears, so I lie down and let them pool as if I were catching raindrops.

“Hey,” says Joy. She leans over me and caresses my cheek. “Hey, hey, hey.”

I sniff. I have the crazy urge to lay into her dad, right here in front of Joy, for talking shit about me. But I keep it cool. “What did your mom-n-dad say about last night?”

Joy jets her hair again. “Something about your dad not having a sense of humor. Dad implied it’s because your mom-n-dad are from the sticks. Are they?”

I blink away the raindrops. “Apparently they are.”

“From the sticks.”

“And apparently, your mom-n-dad have been making fun of my mom-n-dad basically for their entire friendship.”

Joy recoils at this news. “So my mom-n-dad are king dicks?”

King dick is an old joke of ours, because king is wang in Korean and wang is dick in Casual English Vulgar, and you could therefore say it wang wang if you wanted to. Even now, even in the state I’m in, I just have to laugh a tiny laugh.

That’s Joy for you.

“Either that,” I say, “or my dad’s a psycho with an inferiority complex.”

“What the fuck,” says Joy.

“Or both,” I say.

“These are our parents?” says Joy.

“Apparently,” I say, and latch the spy suitcase shut. I push it away into the crawl-in and close the closet.

Joy stares at the flattened rectangle of carpet where the case had lain. “I hate them right now.”

“Someone once told me you have to hate your parents in order to leave them,” I say.

“That makes absolutely no sense,” says Joy. “I’m just saying I hate them right at this moment, not forever, because hopefully they’ll figure it out and quit being dicks.”

She has on this defiant look. She can do this because she doesn’t know the whole story. I wish I could be defiant, too. It would be simpler.

“My dad, he’s . . . ” I begin, and the tears creep back.

Joy holds me still. “Hey. Their relationship is their relationship, and it has nothing to do with ours. Okay?”

She’s right, but this is not the problem really, not really at all, but she doesn’t know that, and I don’t want to talk right now. I can’t bear the thought of talking right now.

So I kiss her. The kiss astonishes us both so much that we must kiss again to make sure we both felt the same thing, and then again and again. Each kiss washes warm water over my racing mind. Calming it.

I let her lay me down. I let things happen, as slow as they need to. There is no rush. There is no expectation. I let myself drift from sensation to sensation.

And afterward, as we both lie in a parallelogram of dusty light, I cling to her because it turns out this is what I need right now: to be naked and vulnerable but safe in her arms at the same time. We take long breaths. Before me I see the bright corona of her eyes, the wispy baby hairs at her temple, a little mole on her chest. The air in the room seems to attenuate to the rising and falling of our chests.

“So listen,” I say finally. “My dad has cancer.”

“What?”

“The doctor said six to twelve months.”