The Tangle of It

Reid MacDonald 109,300 words 553 Valim Way Author’s personal draft Sacramento, CA 95831 Printed on 11/5/14 (626) 354-0679 [email protected] THE TANGLE OF IT by Reid McFarland THE TANGLE of IT by Reid McFarland ⁂ For Vickie We’ve been apart for some time now I don’t know how to navigate these waters I love you and hope we can find some calm harbor ⁂ Herein tells a story where not all times and places match Forgive me those who are in the know So goes the way of memory and invention ⁂ McFarland / The Tangle of It Chapter 1. FRANNY'S CANDIES “I roll the Kettledrum candy in my mouth.” Franny pictures herself chewing on Boston Fruit Slices and her jaw flexes automatically. “Chewy wedges taste lemon and lime and go BOOM-bah-BOOM when I bite into one.” She adds, “When I unwrap a second Kettledrum out of its tight parchment, I examine the sour and sugar-copper rind. They are better enjoyed in pairs. Tomás, why aren’t Kettledrum candies hard? Like Lifesavers or Butterscotches? When they clink against your teeth, they could sound like a snare or a top hat. I can hear a soft bass rumble a tympani symphony deep within me. I swear, the Kettledrums make my voice go baritone when I sing BOOM-bah-BOOM after eating one. It’s true: I’ve tried it!” Franny confesses this to me under her gummy-bear breath and I agree unconditionally the way a best friend must. We come here because most of her schoolmates do not make their way down the block to Doña Dolce. She explains that they prefer the American treats sold at the Commissary. Imported, still fresh from the factories in Hershey, PA and Mars, Incorporated. Franny cannot afford them. Instead, she uses the 1 McFarland / The Tangle of It last of the tarnished pesetas she grabbed from an oversized glass Planters peanut-jar used to collect loose change. She once admitted to me, “I enjoy the seclusion of Doña Dolce.” I’m her captive listener. The Kettledrums are her favorites but she surveys the rest of the sweets. Her gaze rises and falls across the selection of cakes and tejeringos resting under the scratched plexiglass; she keeps an eye on the rectangle of reflected light cast from the store’s front door. She likes to look at the packaging of the foreign candies even though she cannot understand the names written across the thin cellophane. Her eyes widen at the squiggles of rays from sunrises and sonrisas of the paper children drawn on the wrappers. She is as bright as primary colors. She breathes in the sugar air and exhales. Her hands slow-tango the itsy-bitsy spider. “I’d avoid the Tom-Tom toffees, Tomás,” she advises with an assertive nod, “they’ll stick awful to your teeth, I tell you. I enjoy the frills, rolls and flourishes Tom-Toms add to any performance. See there, the Cello Chiclets are better for chewing: every smack a fugue. If I could sing while blowing a bubble, POP! Nobody could resist my crescendo.” She tells me of her triumph and taps her index finger contemplatively on her front tooth. Then her eyes dim. She sighs when reality catches up to her imagination. Avoid reality, Franny. 2 McFarland / The Tangle of It “See, the other girls at school, they like the double-bubble Voce Sopranos. They sing real sweet but lack any depth for the piece. Maybe tomorrow I’ll audition for The Music Man and I’ll show ’em. I sing better than they ever can.’ Franny hopes to audition for the choir. She hums to me when she thinks nobody else is around. She hums when we walk to the back of Doña Dolce. The shopkeep watches us slink down the aisle before turning the page on his ¡Hola! magazine. Franny would like to learn an instrument and try out for the orchestra, she whispers and I shake my head vigorously in agreement. Percussion, woodwind, string and horn. We discuss but can’t decide which instrument she would be best. In her secrets of secrets she’d like to take up her mother’s viola. It sits dusty and exhausted in her attic — the instrument exiled there by her father, the Diplomat — and she’s forbidden from playing it. Franny conjures the memory of her mother by humming, an act the Diplomat also forbids, so she hums solely outside the apartment. Some days she hums Beethoven’s Fifth, or Vivaldi’s Seasons, and others days Brahm’s Fantasies. Her repertoire is extensive for a young girl. No memory of rehearsals and concertos can replace the sounds of Mother winding up the strings in the parlor. A morning ritual performed so many years before today. Franny awoke to the yawning the strings made while being tightened. She would leap out of bed, lightheaded from sleep, giddy from the electricity she felt coming off the friction in the wires. A 3 McFarland / The Tangle of It racket poured out of the instrument as her mother twisted each peg and arched the horsehair bow across the strings evoking a groaning and popping not unlike that Grandpa Tom made when he pulled himself out of his brandy-leather Manhattan armchair. Tuning the viola sounds like a non-sensical question: Drone, crack and snap, fawn- huh-moan? As the strings raised their pitch, Franny twirled and when her pirouettes buckled, she’d break her fall with a deliberate tap-dance. A, D, C, and G. Twirl, tap, pirouette, and step. Franny greeted the final creaks the strings made against scroll with a slow soft-shoe (even though her tiny feet were bare). In that last moment she squealed, bounced in the air, and launched an attack on a stranger’s footsteps she imagined ascending up the old flight of mahogany stairs. As Franny went into an fit of squeal-like giggles, peeking around the banister, her mother let the fleetest wink flutter out the corner of her left eye, and broke out the scales — A, D, C, and G — while she tested and touched the final adjusters. Before Franny knew what her next dance-steps were, her mother would launch into free-form jazz, plucking the strings, impromptu, voila-style. In the back of the Doña Dolce, Franny hums a tune I cannot place: a melodious piece broken by spats of syncopation. I listen to the wind rattle the leaves of the wild olive trees outside. How they sound like the hush of rain. The Spanish sun beats through the storefront windows and betrays any idea of wet weather. The sun’s rays catch Franny’s hazel face and I focus on her. She 4 McFarland / The Tangle of It finds me coming out of my reverie. She sweeps away her hair, Shirley Temple curls, full of ringlets and waves of brown and darker brown and auburn so dark it’s nearly black. She lends me a true smile before she takes it back. Her lips are pursed, corners clutching towards the bottom of her chin. She holds a sob inside and gulps. Hold it in, Francesca, hum on, I think. Don’t let them see you’re hurting. She arranges her dimples the way other girls apply make-up. “Consider the Dolce Dulcimer Divinity,” she says, a scratch in her voice, “I like how the fudge is light and fluffy. With these, I’ll make an appropriate first impression on the school band. The bassist and drummer and that guy on electric guitar. They’ll take a bite and sign me up as their lead singer. We can call ourselves ‘Francesca and the Foreigners.’” “I know a batch of Bassoon Butterscotches could get me in after the show. Maybe I should buy some cream-filled Concertina cakes, sell them at the bake-sale to raise money for the orchestra recital?” Her brittle excitement crumbles upon itself. Her expression seizes up, “No, they’d think I’m a clown, something else to laugh at.” “I’d pass up those other sweets, Tomás, the licorice Lyres, the mandarin Mandolin macaroons half dipped in milk-chocolate. Also those Jingle jellies filled with strawberry, raspberry, and blueberry jams. Mmm, how the flavor is so complex… would they be too weird for anybody at school to like? I say the Kettledrums are the clear winners: it’s all in the choosing.” 5 McFarland / The Tangle of It She hums Chopin’s Minute Waltz. She serenades me by picking up Chupa Chups lollipops for a microphone. “FRANNY’S PANTIES SCRUNCHED IN A BUNCH!” The shout is loud but Franny doesn’t hear it. She hums along to her inner soundtrack and into the lolly. She doesn’t notice Samantha and Lourdes as they make their way down the aisle of the candy store. Franny bursts into a drumfire of Tomás-this and Tomás-that and drowns out any indication I can give. Her schoolmates are watching her talk to herself. They smirk with self-righteousness. “FRANNY EATS EVERYONE’S LUNCH!” Samantha and Lourdes stand directly behind Franny. They are the rich brats of Benalmádena High. The ruling class high above the kids of expats, children of diplomats. Skinnier than any fourteen year-old, they’re dressed up with button-down blouses and silk-slacks. Each of their mouths are slathered with four shades of lipgloss. Samantha has pink Bonne Bell lip-smackers, Lourdes’ is purple. They each wear sixty-dollar mannies and tap their Mary Janes without acquiring a scuff.

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