Page 86 of Tell Me You Love Me

“We could watch The Simpsons,” Franky volunteers. He moves around his mom and sneaks the Gameboy off the table. But when their eyes meet, and she shakes her head in answer, he puts it down again. “We could take some of the food from Darlene’s and bring it back here. But we should lock the doors, or Aunty Fox will come in and try to make usdance it out.” He flattens unimpressed lips. “Ihatewhen she does that.”

Alana wipes her face and takes his hand in hers, and when I open the door, she rewards me with a gentle smile and leads the boy onto the porch outside, then down the steps and across to her car.

Nice clothes and a dusty old truck don’t really suit.

“Fox’s gonna stay with us for a few days.” She unlocks the car and opens the back door, allowing Franky to climb in. She waits for him tofasten his seat belt before she closes it again. Then she turns and startles when I step in her way.

Her nerves are shot. Her emotions, dangerously close to the surface.

She looks up at me, doe eyes brimming with sorrow. But when I extend my hand and wait, she figures me out quickly enough, placing her keys in my palm and moving around to the passenger side so I can drive.

“I’m gonna be with you guys the whole time, okay?” Which, as I search Franky’s eyes in the rearview mirror, I know isn’t a comfort to the boy who wants only his mother. “I’ll be quiet, and I won’t get in your way. But I’ll drive you where you’ve gotta go and stand nearby to get you anything you need. I want to help you guys through this.”

“Did you know you can hire caskets?” Franky reaches for the book he keeps in the back seat, pulling the pen from the middle and resting the book on his knees. “Because sometimes people choose cremation, but the family still wants to have a viewing and stuff.”

“Ididknow that.” And I’m not pleased about it. At all. “It would be a lot of money to waste on nothing if you don’t need the casket after the funeral.”

“Did you know one million seconds is eleven days, and one billion seconds is thirty one point seven years?”

“Uh…”

“That means the average human life is around two and a half billion seconds long.”

Stunned, I glance across at Alana and find her eyes glassy with tears and humor.

“That’s one way to simplify things,” I decide. Becausefuck, what else do I say? “Chris memorizes these sorts of things, too. I don’t know where you keep it all in your brain, but it hurts mine every time one of you throws numericaldid you knowsat me.”

“Did you know three hundred million cells die in the human body every minute?”

“Alright,” Alana twists in her seat and looks over at her son. We bounce our way out of the driveway and onto the tar road, and in just a few minutes, we’re both brutally aware we’ll be entering the cemetery. “Can we talk about something else? Like, did you know a crocodile cannot stick its own tongue out?”

He smiles. “Did you know the average person eats around seventy insects over their lifetime while they’re sleeping?”

My stomach jumps with disgust. Dread. Remembering the fuckingbugs that openly crawled on me as a child, I loathe to accept the fact my brother and I are probably ‘above average’ on this one.

And, like Alana can read my mind, she places her hand on my stomach and offers quiet kindness when our eyes meet. Comfort, even when she’s the one who needs comforting. Protection, though it’s really not her job.

“Give us fun facts, honey.Fun. Not gross or scary or morbid.”

“Did you know Los Angeles’ full name is actuallyEl Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula? And you can remember which Disney is at which location because Disney World has the OR, for Orlando, and Disneyland has the LA for Los Angeles.”

Bugs are done. I bring the car to a stop at an intersection and glance back to search Franky’s eyes. “Really?”

He closes his book and sets his hands on top, grinning. “Yep. Did you know Maine is the only US state that has a one-syllable name?”

“You just soak all this stuff up and bring it out like a party trick when you have an audience?” Shaking my head, I drive through the intersection when both sides are clear. “I could barely keep up with my actual school curriculum, and most of that is gone, too, but you’re out here speaking a whole new language withEl Pueblo Nuestra something something.”

“You know a bunch of words in Japanese,” he counters. “And how to fight someone, but in a safe way. Some people just swing their arms around and hit things, but you know how to do it for a sport. That’s smart.”

“This is true,” Alana murmurs. “You claimed I was smarter than you, but I can’t speak Japanese, and I don’t remember ninety-nine percent of the names of all the moves you teach in the gym.”

“You forget the names, but you know the actions.” And since her hand is still on my stomach, I place mine over the top. “And you wrote a book.”

“Did you know only three percent of people who start a book actually finish it?” Franky inserts. “And of the three percent, less than one percent of those actually publish it.”

“Well, I haven’t published.” She gently peels her hand from beneath mine and drags down the mirrored visor so she can check her face and hair. “I probably won’t publish it. But maybe I’ll write a different one.”

The cemetery overflows with mourners as I turn off the main road and into the narrow driveway. A sea of black, howling men and women who wish desperately to benefit from the attention of someone else’s loss.Yeah, I know. I’m a prick. Chris and Ollie are already here, hanging out on the fringes, watching, waiting for our arrival. Eliza, too, and their sister, Raquel.

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