I say, “I don’t know if I’d call him broken; I mean, he functions. You guys . . . we’re relatively rich. He has a successful marriage with Momma.”
“Maybe if you consider a marriage is successful because of its longevity,” Marvin says, “but do you think my mom’s happy? Can he have a successful marriage if she doesn’t?”
“She’s happy with you, Marvin. With us.”
“That’s motherhood,” he says, “not marriage. Geez, can we walk a minute?” He’s down to two big words per breath.
“You could run better if you’d quit talking.”
“Why would I run without talking?” he says. “How boring is that?”
We switch to a relatively fast walk.
“So all this came from you watching Frankie play?”
“Sometimes it’s hard to shut my mind off,” he says. “But yeah, ‘If you want to see how something works . . . ’”
We walk in silence for a block or so, and just as I’m about to suggest that we break into a jog . . . “I’m worried if my dad is broken, I might be, too.”
I’ve had that same thought about Nancy and me, especially when I look at Sheila. “I guess everyone with messed-up parents thinks that at one time or another.”
“I heard my dad say if they find Frankie, he’ll be banished from our home.”
I hate that word. I say, “He thinks Frankie connects you guys to my family. He told me not letting Frankie come back is for my good as well as yours.”
Marvin snorts. “My dad does nothing for somebody else’s good. If they do find Frankie and Dad won’t let him come back, I’m running away.”
I laugh. “You better run faster than this.”
“I just miss him.” He chokes on it.
“I miss him, too,” I say. We break into a slow jog, get another block, and I have to say it. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Yeah, I can keep a secret.”
“I mean from everyone, but especially from your folks.”
“For sure.”
“They found Frankie.”
He stops. “What? Alive?”
“Yup.”
“Oh, God, where?”
“I don’t know for sure, but somebody does.”
“Do the cops know? Did anybody call ’em?”
“No. It’s not a cop thing; at least I hope not. But serious, Marvin, you can’t tell anyone. I told you because I know how it feels to wonder. Swear, buddy. Nobody hears this from you.”
“I promise. I promise; I swear. God damn. But a time will come, right? Like when everyone knows?”
“Yeah, there’ll be a time.”
I really hope it’s not a time when I’m visiting Walter in jail.
“Cell phones on the table,” Wiz says, and I dig mine out of my pack. Walter removes his from his leather vest.
Wiz places his beside them. “Can’t afford to see this conversation popping up on YouTube,” he says, and leans his forearms on the conference room table. Wiz is one of those guys whose body is as strong as his mind—lean and sinewy with, like, zero body fat. He inspires trust. “I may have found a way out of this that works for everyone, Frankie especially.”
Now Walter leans forward, too.
“If it doesn’t work,” Wiz says, “let’s hope you and I get a cell together, Walter.”
Walter grimaces. “I don’t want you—”
Wiz holds up his hand. “All due respect, I didn’t craft this little piece of trickery for what you want.”
Walter turns his palms up.
“I ran this past my wife about two-thirty this morning. She’s a pediatric nurse, so it was probably no fun losing the sleep, but she’s been telling me for years to get into another line of work. This is the first time she thought maybe my career choice wasn’t completely ill-thought-out.”
“Seems like a righteous way to make a living to me,” Walter says. He probably means relative to selling motorcycles, working intermittent night shifts at convenience stores, and doing odd jobs under the table.
“Yeah, well, righteous doesn’t always get the job done. They pay you lower-middle-class wages, which is no big deal—no one figures to get rich off hurt kids—but then they put you in a strait jacket. They won’t fund treatment programs they know would work because they cost too much, and the courts cater to parents’ rights over kids’ rights every time. We’ll run a kid back and forth till they’re exhausted just because the public defenders get some brand-new fresh-out-of-college, know-nothing therapist to say the parent is ‘making progress.’ You want to know what kind of progress Nancy Boots was making while she was trying to get Annie’s sister back? She learned to sneak somebody else’s pee into the bottle. She got smarter and smarter in parenting classes because she’d taken them so many times. Even Rance—he who doesn’t leave a footprint—got infinite chances. We knew. We had the best child developmentalist in the region, gave us cutting edge information on attachment. We should have taken Nancy into foster care and the kids with her; Rance if he was willing to go. If I remember right, that was Annie’s idea. But that would be run by experts, and experts expect to be paid a decent wage. See, if Nancy messes up in that situation, the kids’ needs are still covered. And if she can’t make it, they see her not making it, instead of hearing that she can’t, and having to listen to her lies about evil caseworkers during hour-long visits, and getting confused thinking there’s something they could do; or should have done.” He looks directly at me, sweat trickling down his temple. “What the hell,” he says. “I’ll get off my soapbox.”
“But you’re headed someplace with this,” Walter says calmly. “To your idea about Frankie.”
“Yes I am.” He sits back. “Look, the only people who know Frankie’s real situation, other than whoever’s got him, are sitting here in this room. What if he reappears? Somebody brings him into social services, and I’m the one they bring him to. I get my expert to do the forensic interview, work with Officer Graham to let that interview stand for them as well as us; we provide the police a transcript. We place him, keep the placement confidential for
