Page 14 of Supernova

With these words, she renders her father helpless. “This is not okay, Francesca. I came to this country and worked my tail off—I paid my dues here. You are an American. No one has a right to hurt my children. I won’t tolerate it.” His thoughts are disjointed, his anger growing with every word. “I’ll go there myself and handle him,” Enzo mutters, turning in his seat so that he’s looking back towards the flag that’s waving in the breeze, marking the hole. A cart of men pulls up behind them impatiently and Enzo waves a hand. “Play through!” he shouts at them, ignoring them as they hop out of their cart and go throughthe motions of chipping their balls out of the grass and putting them on the green.

Finally, when they leave, Enzo speaks again—this time more softly. He’s using measured tones, and the anger is held in check. “Okay, Francesca. Okay.” He reaches over and puts his rough hand on Frankie’s wrist and she looks at her dad’s skin, slightly loose and speckled from years of work and sun. Enzo had spent his adult life working for the railroad, and while his physique has softened a bit since retiring, he’s always been wiry and tough. “It’s okay, little girl,” Enzo whispers, and just the sound of his voice breaks Frankie. She leans over, resting her head on her dad’s shoulder as the tears fall. “You don’t have to tell me everything, but you can if you need to. I’ll listen.”

Frankie nods her head as she cries quietly. The secret of what really happened to Frankie in New York has been locked inside of her for nearly five years, and she isn’t quite ready to set it free here on the golf course. It’s too big. It’s too much. She knows the amount of effort it’s taking her father not to climb out of the golf cart and storm away in anger the same way he’d done countless times during her childhood, letting them all know that he’d had enough of whatever was going on, and she appreciates this.

“Does Ed know?” Enzo asks, his breaths coming more evenly now as his daughter rests her head on his shoulder.

“Some of it.” Frankie swipes at the tears on her cheeks but doesn’t lift her head from where it rests on her father’s shoulder. “Not all of it.”

“Mmmhmm. I see.” Enzo keeps his words even. “Maybe that’s for the best. A man can get very angry about things like this. Very angry.”

Frankie nods again. It feels good, sitting her with her dad. She hasn’t opened the floodgates entirely, but she’s turned the valve just a notch, letting off a little steam. Somehow this has eased the tension inside of her, even though she hasn’t givenher father a single detail of the period of her life that nearly destroyed her. Everything that happened had crushed her, taking away her ability and her desire to dance. It had stripped her of her joy, leaving her helpless and hopeless, and—at one point—feeling like she didn’t even deserve Ed’s love.

“We’ll play the rest of this game, and then we’ll go get your mother,” Enzo says, pressing his lips to Frankie’s head and kissing her hair. There’s a protective energy buzzing from him that Frankie hasn’t felt since she was a child. “Okay,cara mia?”

A wash of love and safety passes over Frankie as she sits up and wipes her tears with both hands. She nods. “Okay, Papa.”

As she watches, Enzo climbs out of the cart and chooses his putter, making his way to where his ball rests at the edge of the green. Her parents have been through so much, and have given their children everything they possibly could. Frankie doesn’t want to bring hurt or shame to either of them, and she doesn’t want to break her father’s heart. She appreciates that he’s willing to listen and comfort her, but this terrible secret is hers to carry alone. She won’t burden either of them with it—particularly her tender-hearted father.

“It’s good, no?” Enzo says, turning to look at Frankie in the cart. He’s just putted his ball directly into the hole in one stroke, and though she can see the worry still etched on his face, it’s at least been partially replaced by the thrill of this tiny victory.

It was raining. September 1958, water streaming down the windows, puddles gathering up and down Madison Avenue, Broadway, Fifth Avenue. The sky was heavy and gray, and Frankie had tied her calf-length trench coat over her leotard and thick nylons after the performance. All she wanted wasto get home to the tiny apartment she shared with Catherine and Maryanne, and to wash her face and put on comfortable clothes, so she hadn’t bothered to take off her stage makeup or to unpin her hair.

“Ah, Francesca,” a man said, striding across the lobby of Radio City Music Hall. “My favorite Rockette.”

It was Whitmore Evans, better known as Whit, and also better known as a total cad. Frankie knew from the backstage gossip that at least two of her fellow Rockettes had fallen for his lines and been reeled in by Whit’s offers of expensive dinners, by his little gifts and trinkets, and by his powerful position in their world. Frankie hugged her arm across her body more tightly, pulling her purse to her as if a man whose family owned at least half the Eastern Seaboard might be interested in her subway tokens, lipstick, or the keys to her fourth-story walk-up.

“You have favorites?” Frankie shot back, holding her head high. Whit and his brother Xavier had been trying to hire the Rockettes to tour the country with them as Xavier made a bid for the presidency, but as far as Frankie had heard, this was entirely farfetched—both the idea of renting the Rockettes to perform at political rallies, and Xavier Evans’s notions of reaching for the White House. But aside from that, the Evans brothers had plenty of family money sunk into Broadway shows, playhouses, and (or so Frankie had heard) even Hollywood. They were very powerful men.

“Of course. Everyone has favorites in life. Don’t you?” Whit put his hands into his pockets in a way that looked mildly disarming, and Frankie let go of the strap of her purse. They were standing in the lobby of Radio City, after all. It was entirely unlikely that he’d try to kiss her or make a pass at her right there. “What’s your favorite food?”

Frankie could feel her shoulders sag a little; she was tired, but she’d also been tasked with representing the Rockettes as an organization, and being rude wouldn’t do. “Italian,” she said. “My mother’s cooking.”

“Well,” Whit said, “I can’t replicate that, I’m quite sure. But I’d like to take you out to dinner. There’s a wonderful little Italian place not far from here.”

As if he’d been summoned, Xavier Evans and another Rockette—a girl named Evelyn—emerged from a side door and crossed the lobby. Evelyn laughed, throwing her head back. She, too, was wearing a trench coat over her nylons and heels.

“We’re about to eat now. You’ll join us?” He made it sound like a question, but Frankie could tell it was not. If she denied a man as powerful as Whit Evans while on Rockette turf, she knew it would get back to management.

Frankie nodded tersely. “Okay,” she said, gripping her purse tightly across her body again.

Dinner was piles of handmade pasta with freshly grated, fragrant parmesan, bottle after bottle of red wine, and candles burning down to their waxy nubs in clear glass votives on the red-checkered tablecloths. Evelyn got drunk quickly, and her black leotard revealed a long strip of lush, ripe cleavage each time she leaned forward across the table to tell a story about life as a Rockette, or the way her ex-husband still stood around outside her apartment at night, hoping to catch a glimpse of her coming home with another man.

“We could have him handled,” Whit said smoothly, refilling Evelyn’s glass yet again.

The young woman’s eyes danced mischievously in the candlelight. “Oh?” She giggled, lifting her wine glass. “What—you’ll put him in a pair of cement shoes and then take him for a swim in the Hudson?”

Whit lifted an eyebrow carelessly. “I was thinking more of a warning, but I like the way you think.”

Xavier frowned at his brother. “Less talk about cement shoes, yeah?” he said in a low voice, swirling his wine around in his glass as he eyed Evelyn and the way her breasts bounced when she laughed. “I’m a politician and we’re in public.”

“Aspiring politician,” Whit corrected with a wink. It seemed that the wine had brought out their sharp tongues, as Frankie had heard them sling barbs at one another all evening. “And it’s a joke—something you should learn how to take, little brother.”

Frankie took another minuscule sip of her drink, her eyes volleying back and forth between the brothers. Waiters circulated with white napkins draped over their arms, and their handlebar mustaches were waxed into place. A man playing a violin stood on a tiny Juliet balcony on one side of the restaurant, and every time the kitchen door swung open, another glorious tray of pastas and soups emerged.

“Let’s settle up here,” Whit said, pulling his wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket and sliding a few bills from it. He tossed the money on the table. “Maybe a night cap at the bar on the corner?” he said, mostly to Frankie as he offered her a hand. It was clear that he had lost patience with his brother and the drunken girl on the other side of the table.

“I should really—“ Frankie accepted his hand and let him pull her gently to her feet, where he held her coat for her to slip into. Diners glanced in their direction, no doubt taking in Frankie’s wholly inappropriate outfit of a leotard and tights with a small chiffon skirt tied around her waist. She quickly belted her trench and followed Whit to the door in an attempt to stop making a spectacle of herself.

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