As the weeks passed, he was around more and more. I watched him with my mom on the couch, her bare feet in his lap, or in his truck out front, laughing together at the end of a date. I watched with that odd blend of jealousy and envy. I couldn't remember my mom smiling like that before.
My mom was an elementary-school art teacher-pretty, casual, a touch of hippie. She was what old people would call a character. Callie Horrigan with her bushy ponytail, her paint-spattered men's shirts, her band of freckles across the nose. Her students called her Ms. Callie, and since I'd spent most of my preschool years tagging along, finger-painting and pasting glitter onto pinecones, I'd developed a habit of calling her by her first name, too.
One morning Callie left early for work, and I caught Frank at the table, hair damp from the shower, suit jacket draped over a chair, shirtsleeves pushed back. The first concrete evidence that he'd spent the night. He was drinking from my mom's coffee cup, steam curling up. I poured myself some cornflakes, sat across from him, and ate in silence. My eyes kept drifting to those weird ideograms on his muscular forearm, faded blue beneath the faint blond hair. He watched me for a while, watched my eyes. And then he said, 'You're curious what that says?'
' 'I'm a dumb round-eye'?'
He sort of smirked-Frank never laughed, from what I'd seen-and then he sipped his coffee. I slurped my cornflakes. The Garfield clock over the sink ticked away, pivoting eyes and pendulum tail.
Finally, defeated, I asked, 'Okay, what's it say?'
He looked down at it, as if reading it for the first time. ' Trust No One.''
I ate some more, my face burning. 'My mom know that?'
He nodded. 'After Vietnam I was stationed in Okinawa. A couple of us went out and got these. Thought we were real hot shit. Had it all figured out. Idiots.' He shook his head. 'I learned a lot of lessons the hard way. And this?' He tapped the tattoo. 'As a life philosophy? It doesn't serve. Now it's just a reminder of how stupid I am most of the time.'
'Still?'
'You tell me.'
I cleared my bowl, reserving judgment.
A few months later, Callie and I moved to Frank's house, a two-bedroom bungalow in Glendale. It was tiny but impeccably finished. Frank had laid down the hardwood floors himself. The crown molding he'd put up was razor straight. The books on the floating shelves above the TV were arranged by size.
My mom rushed around adjusting furniture and trying her framed charcoals against various spots on the wall, and Frank grimaced but held his tongue.
I liked him for that.
While she reorganized the refrigerator, I went out back. A porch, a swing, and a small square of grass, summer brown, not big enough to kick a soccer ball on. My boxes of stuff were in the other bedroom, but I held one in my lap. Baseball cards, a trophy that had broken at the base, the Punisher's first appearance in Spider-Man, and the photo of my dad. I stared at that loose, happy grin, the cigarette my mom had tried to hide with the thick frame. I heard the creak of the screen door beside me, and there Frank was, looking down at me.
'There will always be a place for your father in this house,' he said.
The rest of the night, I stayed in my room, getting used to the space, the furniture, the view from the high rectangular window. I unpacked a little but kept rearranging my stuff among the drawers, like a dog circling before bedding down. I didn't like the brown carpet or where the desk was or the new smell of a new house.
There was a knock, which I assumed was my mom since it was Frank's house.
I was slouched on a beanbag she'd bought for me at a garage sale and re-covered in corduroy. 'Yeah?'
Frank came in, looked around. I was expecting him to be mad that I'd put the desk at a slant in the corner, but instead, he said, 'What are you scared of?'
I looked at him blankly. He smelled like aftershave.
He pulled his mouth to the side, then rephrased: 'What do you want me to not do?'
So I told him. Room off-limits when I'm not here. Don't act daddish. Don't mess with my comic books.
When I was done, he nodded. 'I can manage that.'
He closed the door behind him, and I thought I'd probably live my whole life and never be that goddamned wise.
Not that Frank was a saint. He was a little jumpy, a touch paranoid. He had double dead bolts on all the doors and an alarm wired to the windows that gave off a low tone from a monitor by his side of the bed. You could only disarm it using the touchpad in the master or a circular key he kept in a waterproof magnetic box adhered inside the garbage disposal where the blades couldn't get it. And nights he'd make me sleep with the window closed, even when my room was baking. 'But it's so uncomfortable,' I'd say, and he'd say, 'Comfort matters. But security matters more.'
He kept his service weapon, a Glock, in a gun safe in his closet, the loaded magazine in a hidden location. You'd think an intruder could kill us all before Frank could unlock and load, but my mom and I'd hear the wind rattle the screen door during Carson and a half second later Frank'd walk out of the bedroom, calm as anything, gun held in both hands and aimed at the ground six inches wide of his right foot.
One day I was digging through his steamer trunk in the coat closet and came upon a picture of him from the war. Tiger-stripe fatigues, aiming a Stoner 63 into the middle distance. He had face paint on and wore a squint and his faint smirk, his cheeks stubbled. It looked like something out of one of my comic books. I wondered hard and long about that picture. Was he posing? Not Frank.
I took the picture and hid it in the frame behind the one of my dad.
There were more photos in that trunk, images of Frank's past, but I didn't look through them. Maybe I liked how Frank was mysterious. Maybe I wanted to keep him that way.
They got married in a backyard ceremony with a few friends and some cold-cut platters from the deli. Callie wore one of those awful wedding dresses with the poofy shoulders, but Frank didn't seem to mind. His voice caught once when he was giving his vows, and until that moment it had never struck me that Frank might need anyone or anything.
When he worked late, which was whenever Caruthers was in town, Callie and I'd eat on the back deck. After, in the moth-spotted glow of the porch light, I'd watch her sketch, leaving charcoal smudges on the glass of Crystal Light that went everywhere with her. It always seemed like magic the way the lines and shading suddenly took shape as a bowl of fruit, an old man's face, a woman's bare body. She'd look over and smile at me a touch self- consciously, using the heel of a hand to shove her curly hair out of her eyes. 'Isn't this boring?'
I'd just shake my head.
When Kinney and Caruthers were reelected, Frank's responsibilities in the L.A. office increased. Any chance I got, I'd sit in the garage and watch Frank wand down his truck for bugs. I loved listening to him talk on the radio, loved the protocols and call signs. When the vice president came in for a weekend, Frank'd say, 'Looks like Firebird's gonna pull a doubleheader at the west nest.' It was like something out of a spy movie-just as cool, just as reassuring.
I made the high-school baseball team and became a pretty good utility infielder. I could go the other way and pull for power, and I had a backhanded pickup worthy of a Venezuelan. If I kept on it, I could maybe be a bench player at a Division I, and my grades wouldn't present a recruiting coach any hurdles. The UCLA baseball coach pushed for me, and Callie prepped me endlessly for the SATs. When I opened the acceptance letter my senior year, she pressed a fist to her mouth and turned away so I wouldn't see her crying.
I worked hard, practiced late. Sometimes I'd come home to find Frank sitting in his armchair in the dark, watching a recording of the Zapruder film over and over, memorizing those twenty-six seconds. I'd always slide past him into my room. If it was anyone else, I'd think I'd gone unnoticed.
One night as I sneaked by, he paused the tape. 'What do you see?' he asked.
I froze behind him. Lifted my eyes to the familiar rise of grass, the grainy limo, Jackie's pink hat.
'JFK's head getting blown apart?' I said.
He made a sad, thoughtful noise deep in his throat, and I felt like an asshole. He nursed his coffee-Frank loved his coffee. He used to drink bourbon, but he'd stopped drinking after he hooked up with my mom because he knew that the smell upset her.
Instead of continuing to my room, I walked around and sat on the couch. 'Why, what do you see?'
'Clint Hill.' 'Who?'
He pointed. 'Secret Service agent on the left front running board of the Queen Mary. The car behind the
