Amy Letter Tempting Frances by Amy Letter

Amy Letter, “Tempting Frances”

“Tempting Frances,” Amy Letter 2009 First appeared in Quarterly West

Tempting Frances

I The sound of rain. The preternatural clarity of the morning after. Where am I? I reach out to the gray window glass over the bed, see my fingers on it, but I feel warm cardboard. The rain fades to silence, broken by two coughs and some hasty whispers. The light on my hand is too hot. I turn slowly, the female figure of dread turned on a spit by pygmies, and no hero to save the day. But there you are: my public. You break into

Amy Letter, “Tempting Frances”

uproarious applause. You stop when she enters, stage right. Her face is a round white freshly peeled apple in the stage lights. Her dress is blue gingham, no doubt the costume designer’s revenge for some slight. “It’s the big day, Frances,” she says, a broad, booming announcement to the room. “You will be made up beautifully, like a flower raised to the sky to cup its light and nourishment. I’ve already cooked your breakfast, griddle cakes stacked high, half to the roof! You must have been too excited to sleep!” I watch her, striking her with my silence. She continues tidying my mock room, sorting clothing in the cardboard dresser drawers, moving some items onto small stacks on the foot of the bed. “Oh, yes, Frances!” she finally says. “I know how much trouble it is for you to sleep when

Amy Letter, “Tempting Frances”

you’re excited!” I sit up in the bed. A voice from behind me, just behind my gray cardboard window says, in a desperately tiny, uninflected voice, “and-this-will-be-the-best-day-ofmy-life.” I hate the voice behind me. I try to remember why, or whose voice it is, but it’s time for me to speak. “And this will be the best day of my life,” I say. “This-emptiness-in-me-will-fill-with-love.” “This emptiness in me will fill with love.” “Oh, a beautiful wedding,” the mother-player says, finally letting the stacks of clothing go. “First the griddle cakes, half to the ceiling! Then you and your father will go to the shops to pick up the wine and cake.” The lines are terrible, the acting worse. I consider walking off. Surely an understudy salivates just offstage,

Amy Letter, “Tempting Frances”

waiting to replace me. I examine the curtains, left and right, my route of escape, but dull gunmetal blackness stops my eye, and my heart tightens. “I-believe-in-the-blood-and-the-body,”

the

voice

behind me says. But I say, “which way to the griddle cakes?” The mother character raises her head in alarm. “Why darling, you know we have to pack first, and discuss your schooling. . . ” these are not her lines, and ad-libbing doesn’t suit her. “I mean your wedding,” she laughs. “See, you’ve got your mother all confused.” I cross to the right curtain, where she’d entered. “Over here?” I ask. “What are you doing?” “Griddle cakes. I’m ready for breakfast, mom.”

Amy Letter, “Tempting Frances”

“It’s pig head and cornmeal.” “What?” “You don’t want to eat it. You never want to eat it. It’s pig head and cornmeal. We’re going to fight, like we always do.” “Well, I’ve got to eat something,” I say. I draw the curtains. There stands a man in a black metal vest and leg and arm plates, his black helmet’s visor hiding his eyes. He whispers to me in that desperate, uninflected voice, “tellme-about-my-wedding-mommy.” I turn. “Tell me about my wedding, mommy,” I say, and cross back to the actress and keep her close, as though she were my mother and might protect me. But his voice is just behind my head, still small and pinched and hard as steel: “tell-me-will-I-be-happy-there?”

Amy Letter, “Tempting Frances”

The stagelights burn and the audience’s breath seems to rise up on us wave after humid wave. The actress in gingham looks beaten down, focused on surviving this scene. Then father enters, stage left. He wears a cheap shirt and dress slacks, no tie, no jacket. He looks drunk, and angry. “Is she ready to go?” he says, and he throws himself into a chair. My “mother” answers quickly, meekly, “yes, yes, here are her things all packed!” I feel safe with her, and am afraid of the man offstage, though I can’t remember why. Furthermore, this “father” looks like hot-pressed distress. “I won’t go!” I shout. “I refuse! I’m staying here, with my mother!” I feel the audience inhale, and the stage cool. I hear

Amy Letter, “Tempting Frances”

the audience mumble, “yeah!” and “that’s right!” and “you tell ‘em girl!” The father stands to face me. “You don’t want to say ‘no’ to me,” he says. “Darling, your husband is waiting, your lovely doctorhusband, your wedding!” the mother says. “You know what’ll happen if you say ‘no’ to me,” he says. “Just do it, baby, think of the wine and the cake, the guests!” “This is how dreams become reality, reality is the dream,” I say: long practiced lines, thick in letters I write to myself. I leap up on the table, but it’s a cheap prop, and it collapses. I jump off it and land between them. “I have left the desire for a father behind, like thumb-sucking and bedwetting, and you would rather I sit fatassed as an infant

Amy Letter, “Tempting Frances”

factory with eyes raised to an empty sky, praising the collective wishful thinking of mankind.” I run round and round, looking for a way off stage, but every way is blocked by flat gun metal black. You all stand, applaud like mad. I run towards you and bow and bow, until I feel the hand on my head, cinching tight my hair. Then I close my eyes, and let myself be thrown onto the bed.

II Rain again, persistent multitudes of polite tapping. I see the cardboard window and feel the voice move around my neck into my ear, slippery and hot. Slowly I turn to face your renewed applause. My left jaw is swollen and tender. I’ve obviously been punched. The mother character enters, this time uptight from the start. “Darling. . . your father. . .

Amy Letter, “Tempting Frances”

griddle cakes. . . sleep. . . ” but I cut her short. “I refuse to be a part of this.” “Attagirl,” mumbles the audience, “yeah, you tell ‘er right!” “The audience sees me leaving,” I tell her. “Do you see the audience?” “Frances, you’re scaring me. You don’t want your father to see you like this. This is the day you dreamed of, your wedding. . . ” “There is no wedding!” I say. “I refuse to be a part of this. I’m quitting. I quit!” You whistle, you cheer—you stand to applaud. “What are you quitting, Frances?” “I’m quitting gingham and drunk dad and pig head and cornmeal. I’m quitting cardboard and stage lights and.

Amy Letter, “Tempting Frances”

..” “And the audience, do you quit the audience too?” The audience makes a low “Oooo” and several people shush each other. You want to know what I will say. “The audience wants me to get away,” I say, approaching the front of the stage. “They want me to walk among them, signing autographs, and singing songs to their little ones in the lobby. . . ” The crowd erupts into whistles and cheers. I smile and bow, smile and bow. “You want me to come out there?” I say. You yell your yeahs and hurrahs. I start to climb down. “No!” the mother screams, her godly screech. She grabs me by my arms and legs and face and hair, and I realize there is more than just her there: the actor playing my father has run out in his underwear, the man in flat

Amy Letter, “Tempting Frances”

gun metal black leans over me, his gloved hand gripping my head like a football. I cannot resist. I let go.

III Rain, thick and steamy, waiting for the split of lightning that never comes. The mother enters, but it’s a different actress. “Who are you?” I say, as awfully as I can. I want to expose her to the world for a fraud. “It’s the big day, Frances,” she begins, and I run towards her like to rip her head off, but she is bigger than the last actress, and meaner. She swats me flat, hitting me right where my jaw is swollen. As I lie on the floor, she continues her lines. I let her get as far as “griddle cakes stacked high, half to the roof!” before I yell, “pig head and cornmeal! You feed me pig head and cornmeal!”

Amy Letter, “Tempting Frances”

I crawl to you, my audience. “Isn’t that insane?” but you just watch me. A man in the front row digs in his nose. The mother’s arms fall on my shoulders. “We’re pigfarmers dear, and we eat every part, like the noble Prairie Indians”—she puts her hand flat to her forehead and moves it slowly outward in a vaguely Native gesture implying respect and distance. I turn and stare into her eyes, thinking the evilest thoughts I can. “Oh dear,” she says, tugging with her fingers at the knots in my hair. “You desperately need a comb. Your father will buy you one when you two go to buy the wine and cake.” I feel a tightening in my chest as I realize she’s returned us to the script. I hear my own voice saying, “To Hell, wine and cake.” “To Heaven, the blood and body of your Holy Father,

Amy Letter, “Tempting Frances”

Frances.” “I used to wonder why God was so useless: nothing but wine and cake and unanswered prayers, Sunday after Sunday, and for nothing. And then I realized, God is nothing. We worship the emptiness, without, within.” Her lips narrow to a line. She smacks me hard across the face. My face is numb, the world is flashing, I crouch so I won’t fall. “We cannot know what God is, Frances, but we know you will be lovely as a lily lifted to the sky, and filled with His blessings.” Now the gunmetal voice comes through me, while I listen, helpless: “Tell me about my wedding, mommy. Will I be happy there?” She smiles and cradles me. “So happy and peaceful, from now on. Good people will understand you and take

Amy Letter, “Tempting Frances”

care of you.” “Who will take care of me?” “You will be wed to a wonderful doctor who will visit you every day. He will make sure you’re doing well. And you will be beautiful, robed in white, and everyone will love you and make sure you stay well.” “I am a hatchet dressed in lace, made-up beneath these soft blond curls.” “You will be so, so happy,” she says, and pinches my cheeks, and pets my hair. She stands and puts all of my belongings in a case. I hear rain again, and look at my gray window, at its fogged glass, at the heavy raindrops streaming down. I lay one finger on the cold, slick glass. Father enters and throws himself into a chair. His neck is scratched and bruised, his eye blackened. “Will she

Amy Letter, “Tempting Frances”

be Godly, Nurse?” “This therapy often inspires in patients a sudden belief in God.” I look more closely at her face. Is she a different actress? I can’t tell. The gingham print has faded to a starched white dress, thick and shapeless. “Poor Frances,” father says. “You believe all the wrong things.” “Cavemen believed in fire; today, we understand. Understand?” But he does not. I look for the audience, I look for you, but light burns my face. I hear coughing, whispering beyond the wall of white. “Are you out there?” I say, in a stout stage-whisper. There is no response. “Are you. . . ?” I start. And you shout, “Run!”

Amy Letter, “Tempting Frances”

“What should I. . . ?” “In through your eye,” you yell. “Blood-syrup tears. Griddle cakes!” But, too quickly, they have me by the arms.