My uncle’s bar is in Midtown, at West Peachtree and Eleventh Street. The frontage is all dark green and windows, Ronan’s etched in glass above the black front door. Uncle Gavin named it after where he and my mother were from, Cill Rónáin on Inis Mór, an island west of Galway. Uncle Gavin thought Ronan would be easier for people to pronounce. We always went in a service door on the side, which opened onto a short hallway with worn wooden floors. There was the scent of beer and fried food and the zing of some sort of industrial cleaner. We would pass a private room or two, then go through a swinging door that led past a staircase before entering the kitchen. That’s where I worked that summer, and then all through high school, washing dishes.
Uncle Gavin’s business partner, Ruben Gutierrez, essentially ran the bar, at least the day-to-day operations. I can remember him standing in the middle of the kitchen in dark slacks, a maroon shirt, and a black fedora pushed back on his head, his hands moving expressively as he talked. The first time Susannah and I met him, soon after our parents’ funeral, he gripped my hand firmly, like one adult to another, and he clasped Susannah’s hand in both of his, as if about to get down on one knee and propose. Ruben was theatrical, perhaps, but I could see sorrow in his broad face. I was surprised, would continue to be surprised for a time, by being the subject of such sympathy. It’s not that I was a cynic—I understood why people were reacting this way to my loss, how it was a kind, human gesture. But I did not know the protocols of grief, or how to react.
Ruben’s son, who was my age, also started working at the bar that summer. He was named Francisco, although he told me to call him Frankie. Some people are like a bright flame in a cave, rendering everyone else in flickering shadow, and that was Frankie. Within seconds of meeting him I felt self-conscious about the old pair of Target-brand jeans and the indistinct polo shirt I’d put on. Frankie wore crisp Levi’s the color of midnight and a bright-red short-sleeve button-down. He needed only a black fedora to complete the picture of his father. It took me a week to realize that Frankie alternated wearing the red shirt and its identical twins in yellow and green, but he wore the exact same pair of jeans every day. Eventually Frankie told me he washed those jeans every night to get rid of the stink of food, but he washed them in the sink so they wouldn’t fade. “Always gotta look good, man,” he said. “That’s my motto. They’ll put it on my tombstone.”
As we washed dishes and racked clean glasses and plates, Frankie would talk nonstop about Braves baseball, the Twilight movies, crunk music, how there was going to be a Hispanic comic-book Spider-Man, the relative hotness factors of the bar’s waitresses, his eternal love for Salma Hayek and Lindsay Lohan, his utter hatred of The Old Man and the Sea (“Guy finally catches the fish, and then the sharks eat it, the end—¿qué chingados es eso?”), and the ’71 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am his father was teaching him to repair.
One day, after a couple of hours of spraying pots and pans and cleaning down the grill after the lunch rush, Frankie said, “My dad told me about your parents, man. That sucks.”
A sudden sorrow rose in my throat, threatening to squeeze it shut. I pushed a rack of dishes into the dishwasher and pulled the door down, starting the cycle. “Yeah,” I managed. My eyes prickled, but I wouldn’t cry. I glanced at Frankie. He was looking at me, but it wasn’t the look of someone who was waiting for me to share the gruesome details. “Yeah, it sucks,” I said.
Frankie nodded. “My Aunt Josie died two years ago. My mom’s sister. Mom was brokenhearted, you know? Wouldn’t get out of bed.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Was your aunt sick?”
“Drive-by. Wrong place, wrong time.” Frankie frowned, stacking clean glasses on a shelf. “My mom’s been sick for a while now. Josie was a nurse, would take care of everyone when we got sick. Now …” He shrugged, then picked up a stack of plates. “Gonna take these out to the wait station.”
“You just want to get a look at Sally’s culo,” I said. Sally was one of the waitresses—cute, blonde, and in her twenties.
Frankie grinned, a flash of big white teeth. “Listen to the güero speaking the Spanish!” he said—güero meaning “white boy” or “blondie,” a joke aimed at my red hair. “I’m so proud.” Then he dropped his voice into a Barry White register. “But Sally does have a sweet ass.” He walked out of the kitchen, still grinning.
I watched the dishwasher vibrate, listened to the water shooting around inside it. Frankie was the first person my age I’d met who had some sort of ability to understand what had happened to my parents, to me. He hadn’t pressed for details. And when Frankie had opened up about his aunt and I’d made a lame joke about Sally because I was awkward about sharing anything personal, Frankie had gone along with it. I realized, listening to the dishwasher churn, that Frankie might be the kind of friend you kept for life.
NOW, STANDING AT the urinal in the men’s room of the Palms, which is paneled in dark wood and smells of disinfectant and beer, I think about Frankie, Susannah’s words echoing in my head: He’s your friend. You think Frankie wasn’t alone? I pee, hoping to void the guilt as well, and mostly failing. Susannah and I had been making a yearly pilgrimage every Thanksgiving to Morgan, Georgia, to visit Frankie in Calhoun State Prison, up until two years ago when Susannah went AWOL. I told Susannah it hadn’t felt
