me at night, but on one roastingly hot day in the summer of 1966, I got a call from him in the middle of the afternoon, asking if he could please see me immediately. He sounded frantic, and when he arrived at L’Atelier, he leapt out of the car and started pacing in front of the boutique with more nervousness than I’d ever before witnessed. I quickly handed over my work to an assistant, and hopped into the car, saying, “Let’s go, Frank. Come, now. Just drive.”
He drove all the way out to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn—speeding the entire time, and not saying a word. He parked in a patch of dirt at the end of a runway, where we could watch the Naval Air Reserve planes come in for landings. I knew that he must have been profoundly agitated: he always went to Floyd Bennett Field to watch the planes land when nothing else would calm him. The roar of the engines settled his nerves.
I knew better than to ask him what was wrong. Eventually, once he had caught his breath, I knew he would tell me.
So we sat in the crushing July heat with the car off, listening to the engine tick and cool. Silence, then a landing plane, then silence again. I cranked down my window, to bring in some air, but Frank didn’t seem to notice. He hadn’t yet taken his white-knuckled hands off the steering wheel. He was wearing his patrolman’s uniform, which must’ve been sweltering. But again, he didn’t appear to notice. Another plane landed and shook the ground.
“I went to court today,” he said.
“All right,” I said—just to let him know that I was listening.
“I had to testify about a break-in last year. A hardware store. Some kids on dope, looking for things to fence. They beat up the owner, so there were assault charges. I was the first officer on the scene, so.”
“I understand.”
Your father often had to appear in court, Angela, on some police matter or another. He never liked it (sitting in a crowded courtroom was hell for him, of course), but it had never caused him to have a panicked reaction like this. Something more troubling must have occurred.
I waited for it.
“I saw somebody I used to know today, Vivian,” he said at last. His hands were still not off the wheel, and he was still staring straight ahead. “A guy from the Navy. Southern guy. He was on the Franklin with me. Tom Denno. I haven’t thought of that name in years. He was a guy who came from Tennessee. I didn’t even know he lived up here. Those southern guys, you’d think they would’ve all gone back home after the war, right? But he didn’t, I guess. Moved here to New York. Lives way the hell up on West End Avenue. He’s a lawyer now. He was in court today, representing one of the kids who broke into the hardware store. I guess that kid’s parents must have some money. They got a lawyer. Tom Denno. Of all people.”
“That must have surprised you.” Again, just letting him know I was there.
“I can still remember Tom when he was brand new on the ship,” Frank went on. “I don’t know the date—don’t own me to it—but he come on in something like early forty-four. He came straight off the farm. Country boy. You think city kids are tough, but you should see those country boys. Most of them, they came from such poverty, you never saw anything like it. I thought I grew up poor, but it was nothing compared to these kids. They never saw food before, like the amounts of food on the ship. They ate like they were starving, I remember. First time in their lives they hadn’t shared dinner with ten brothers. Some of them had hardly ever worn shoes. Accents like you never heard. You could barely understand them. But they were tough as hell in battle. Even when we weren’t under fire, they were tough. Fighting with one another all the time, or mouthing off to the marines who were guarding the admiral, when the admiral was onboard. They didn’t know how to do anything except come at life hard, you know? Tom Denno was the hardest of them all.”
I nodded. Frank rarely talked in such detail about life onboard the ship, or about anyone he’d known in the war. I didn’t know where this was all going, but I knew