Two Hearts

Chapter 1-2

They’d been as close as bothers—or maybe something else. Then, one day, seemingly out of the blue, just about the time Frank realized his feelings for Renny were going beyond friendship or any sort of platonic bond, Renny had turned mean. He’d mercilessly tormented Frank, constantly, daily, and often as part of a group. The boy whose mother left him because she was crazy, the boy who had to hang out at the funeral home because his father was away more than he was home, the boy who slept in a camper because he’d burned his real house to the ground making a grilled cheese, the boy who had big, red, scaly scars and only one good ear because of it…There were a great many reasons to pick on Frank, and Renny Watson, once a bright spot in the darkness that was Frank’s everyday life, had taken advantage of every single one.

“Booooo…” Years later, grown Renny made ghost sounds and raised his arms like a mummy. He still felt the need to taunt Frank, apparently, even though they were supposedly adults now.

The others laughed and mimicked the spooky sounds. “Boooo!” “Ahhhh!”

“Ignore them.” Melissa put milk and sugar in Frank’s coffee. She knew precisely how he liked it without even asking. “Big jerks,” she said. “They should have stayed out in the rain. It might wash some sense over them.”

“You’ll make better friends in college,” Frank’s dad had promised. Frank never really had. He was willing to admit that he had closed himself off, maybe because those final years of high school had been so difficult, or maybe because of the scars in his heart, not just on his face. Whatever the reason, all through college Frank had isolated himself. “And here I thought things could never get worse than that!” Frank had recently said into the mirror. “I thought life would get better once we were all adults.”

“Freaky Frank. Freaky Frank. Ghoulish, ugly, faggot Frank.” Only two sang the chant. Not Renny. Not Renny.

Yeah…adults, Frank thought to himself.

“Leave him alone, you nerds!” Melissa was so protective. Frank was sometimes tempted to count her as a friend. She had been once for certain. They were the three musketeers—Renny, Melissa, and Frank—until Melissa had moved away.

Frank had asked Melissa to marry him in Kindergarten. She’d said yes immediately and, come to think of it, they had never officially broken up. That was a hundred years ago, though. Surely she’d had a dozen boyfriends since. Perhaps she was even married. They only spoke two minutes per day since she’d returned to town after college. Anyone else would consider them more like acquaintances. Even Frank knew he had turned it into more in his head, so much more than what it was.

“Do you need a pack of smokes?”

Frank didn’t smoke. Vaughn Hellier did. Sparing Melissa a glance, Frank shook his head.

“No?” she asked.

“No, thank you.”

When they did speak, Melissa did most of the talking, unless she asked Frank what book he was currently reading, then he could go on a bit. His speech had an impediment, something between a lisp and a slur. Plus, he often had trouble controlling his jargon. The more he thought about his words, the more he tried to force in phrases of the day—“Last night’s Beverly Hillbillies was a gas.” “Mary Poppins looks fab.”—the more disingenuous he thought he sounded. Frank smiled, though. He smiled a lot around Melissa, not always on purpose. Frank hated his smile as much as his voice. He couldn’t help himself, though. “How are you?” he asked. “Forgive me for not inquiring immediately.”

“Doing well, Frank. Thank you.”

“Good.” Frank kept his hands in his pockets the entire time, a recurrent gentle cue guiding Melissa to set the coffee or whatever he was buying on the countertop, rather than hand it over. He fished out his wallet once she had, and paid the same way. “Thanks.”

“Don’t touch him!” one of Renny’s buddies said. “You’ll turn into a zombie.”

Renny acted out the warning with a put-on monster walk, then burst out laughing when his cohorts cackled like crows.

“Knock it off, Lawrence!”

“Ooh. Lawrence…” The others turned their teasing on Renny for the moment.

“Dickie! Enough! Sorry about them,” Melissa said again, as if their shenanigans were somehow her fault. “Here.” She held out a thick stack of paper napkins, way more than she probably should have offered. Frank just stood there, looking at them, willing her to put them down on the Formica. He could have grabbed the pile without touching her—probably. The paper napkins were long enough—maybe. Still, he worried. He was wet after all, which made things more precarious.

“Umm…” When Frank took too long to decide what to do, Melissa set the napkins in front of him.

“I know you have a ways to go,” she said. “Keep them dry inside your coat. Next to your heart.” Then she smiled again.

Frank blushed. “Thank you,” he said to the tile floor streaked with muddy shoeprints.

“Hey, Renny,” the one called Dickie said. “Is Freaky Frank tryin’ to mack on your girlfriend?”

“Girlfriend?” Frank wondered if it was so. When he looked to Melissa for confirmation, it was almost as if her expression apologized for that as well.

“We still live in an era where a woman would rather attach herself to the biggest jerk around than be alone,” Vaughn had once said, after a couple had argued non-stop while choosing a coffin for her mother. Ironically, the headline on one of the magazines in the rack beside Melissa’s register asked Is Your Man a Prince or a Frog?

“You got what you wanted. Now beat it, Freaky Frank.” Renny glared, though Frank met his eyes barely a moment. “No one wants you around.”

Frank thought of a quote then, one found in Hamlet most everyone knew. It was the one about protesting too much. Renny was definitely a frog. He wasn’t good enough for Melissa.

“Lawrence, be nice.”

Perhaps in private he was more like the Renny Frank had once known. That had to be it, that or Vaughn’s theory.

“I should get going,” Frank said. He knew another round of lightning was fast approaching. “Thanks again.”

“Take a spoon. You know…to stir.” Melissa held one out.

“Thanks.” Frank carefully took the handle from between her thumb and index finger. He shuddered, but wasn’t afraid. The feeling was a pleasant one.

“And don’t forget your change.” Melissa scooped it into her fist.

Frank pulled away then. “Keep it. Or put it in the charity box at church.” Frank always said that now, not because he had a magnanimous soul, but because he was unable to take the coins. How could he? It would be nearly impossible to do so without at least brushing against Melissa’s flesh. Fortunately, the spoons she passed were throwaway plastic, not metal. Otherwise, Frank would simply have to politely refuse those as well, even if she did lay them down.

“Neato. Thank you, Frank.”

“You’re very welcome.”

“‘You’re very welcome,’“ Renny mocked. It immediately turned Frank’s smile.

“Freaky Frank. Freaky Frank. Freaky four-eyed faggot Frank.” That time there were three voices, and Frank’s heart broke.

As he exited the store, back out into the rain, he could hardly believe he had ever had a crush on Renny Watson—yet could hardly deny he still did. Frank was a virgin, and destined to remain one, it seemed. Though the guys back at the store had only been teasing, Renny and his buddies had been right. Melissa shouldn’t touch Frank, and Frank could never touch her. He couldn’t touch anyone. After last summer, for a while, he’d even been afraid to touch himself.

The entire sky turned iridescent blue just as Frank entered the woods west of Hellier’s. The lightning amazed him. He didn’t fear it, not anymore, though it did quite often still anger him. Sometimes, as jagged yellow streaks shot straight down at the ground, Frank would even tempt it. “Go ahead. Take me.” He’d raise his arms skyward, in amongst the trees and woodland creatures, sometimes naked, soaked from the rain, aroused from temptation. “Who would miss my presence?”

The odds of it happening again were supposedly one in three hundred and sixty billion. Frank had discovered that alleged fact in the L encyclopedia he’d asked Vaughn to bring down to the mortuary from his living space upstairs. Was it true? He didn’t know. Not a single article, paragraph, or sentence had referenced his affliction—his curse. How much could he trust anything the book said considering that?

It had taken several hours for Frank to realize the cause and effect between the lightning strike and some of the odd occurrences that happened next. He’d eventually blacked out that day, and when he’d come to, the tree he had still leaned against was literally smoking. Frank’s arm and neck hair had been prickly. All of his body hair, actually, and his mouth had tasted of wood smoke.

“Hmm. Bizarro.” That was what Frank had said. Then he’d picked up the shoes and socks he’d removed, got to his legs, and walked home. He was grateful he could, and happy to feel the sharpness of rocks and the roughness of gnarled roots on the soles of his feet, remembering just minutes ago he hadn’t been able to feel anything at all.

He hadn’t thought much about any of it afterward, not until suppertime, when he’d called Vaughn Hellier as he always did, and told him what had apparently happened. “I surmise I was struck.”

Vaughn had immediately panicked. “Go to bed! Directly.”

“What is that going to accomplish?”

“Phone me before dark. And again before you retire for the night.”

“It’s dark already, and you just told me I must go to bed now,” Frank argued.

“Do not. Stay awake,” Vaughn amended. “In case you have a concussion. Come back to the mortuary, perhaps, so that I may keep a watchful eye on you.”

“Vaughn, be assuaged there’s nothing wrong. I assure you, I am fine.”

“But how can you be certain? Your mind may not be right.”

“Has it ever been?”

Vaughn offered no response.

The next time it stormed, later that same night, Frank was quite jittery. Who wouldn’t be nervous about lightning once struck? But the storm passed, and everything seemed normal, until Vaughn called quite early the following morning. “You did not phone. I was worried.”

“I was sleeping.”

“Would you like the day off from work, son?”

“No. It is a beautiful day.”

“Did anything occur during last night’s storm? Did nightmares trouble you about what happened in the afternoon?”

“Nothing. No. And I need my work, Vaughn. There is no cause for a sick day. I am normal as can be.” A fly buzzing around Frank’s head as they chatted annoyed him. When it landed on the window glass, Frank cupped his hand over it, trapping the insect in place. The next thing he knew, a strange tingle tickled his insides, small, like the shock from a bad lamp. Following the small jolt—poof!—the fly spontaneously combusted, leaving a black spot on the pane. Frank gasped. “Whoa! I must go now, Vaughn.”

“So suddenly? Is something amiss?”

“Yes. No.” Frank touched the mark on the window, astonished at what had transpired. “I will see you later…at the mortuary.”

As Frank thought back on that day, he reflected on one word in particular. “Normal? How wrong I had been,” he said to no one in particular. There wasn’t even a bug close by to chat with. “No matter how much I wish for certain things, Renny was correct. I am that dangerous, monstrous, abnormal being, one who should be locked away in solitude.”

Frank struggled still to accept the inexorable, inarguable fact that for the rest of his miserable life, as much as he yearned to love and be loved, he could never touch or be touched by another living soul.