about that call
family angst, angst, marriage issues, phone calls, nostalgia
Francesca receives one more call on that Mother's Day.
ao3 link
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"Hey, Alan? Is that really you?" she asked, putting her flip-phone up to her ear. That was the first time her brother had called her in months, and she was glad, although a bit surprised.
"Frankie! Yea! Hey," he always sounded so cheerful. God, she hated his guts because of it sometimes. Happy and clueless throughout it all. As if he got away without a scratch! "Mum's been blowing up my phone today. Has she been calling you too?"
"Yeah, once. A few hours ago, maybe." Francesca winced at the memory of impulsively breaking the phone. She should've acted more maturely. Surely her mother wasn't going to ruin her day with a single phone call. And yet...
"Gee, that woman has no common sense. It would've been what, like, five AM for you?"
"I get up early anyways," she sighed. It was true. Lately she's been waking up with the birds and going to sleep late, leaving home before her wife woke up and coming back after she was fast asleep.
"Doesn't make it o-kay," her brother pressed.
"I don't care," she said before he could continue on shit-talking. He fell into that habit, perhaps unknowingly, and she despised it. Francesca didn't understand the point of speaking badly about someone. A much better option for her was to not speak of them at all. "Have you been hearing from dad?" she shifted on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Julie was at work, and Francesca had taken a day off. A sudden wave of nausea appeared at the memory of her wife kissing her forehead before she left, thinking she was asleep. She hasn't heard from her father in a long time, and some worry began pooling in her stomach.
"Oh, yeah! He's been calling me twice a week or so. We've been talking football lately, you know, with the—" Alan's voice somehow drifted away from her consciousness, she registered it but wasn't listening. A buzz, a screech, something high-pitched filled her ears instead.
She remembered, when she was thirteen, she was sitting on the couch with her dad in front of the TV, both of them on the edges of their seats, when—
"Bollocks!" Her dad stomped his foot on the carpet in frustration when their team lost a goal.
"Shite," she sighed, but a grin was still plastered on her face.
"Michel! Be quieter, Alan is learning! And don't fu—reaking let Frank swear!" her mother shouted from the kitchen.
"'Course, darling," her dad called back, but to her gave a wink that simply meant 'we can rebel a bit'.
Francesca liked sports, though she preferred volleyball to football and even then wasn't too emotionally invested in it. But it helped her connect with others, with her dad, and so she did love it, in the end. Learned to cherish it, those fleeting moments of camraderie and joy, when shitty snacks laid on the coffee table and electricity was buzzing under her skin. Those were moments for the two of them, just them, because that's how it's always been up until the moment she moved out to live with Julie.
The heaviness of her suitcases that day suddenly weighed her down again, and she was much like a marble statue laying on the mattress, her breath forgotten as she reminisced.
Francesca wished that he could call her every now and again. She knew that she could be the one to call first, but she didn't have the strength anymore. She was tired. She just wanted someone to be the one to call her first, just once. To want to speak to her, to comfort her, to love her. Was it really that fucking hard to lo—
"Frankie? Frankie—!" her brother's repeated calls of her name brought her back to the present, and she felt lost again.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm here," her voice seemed small, suddenly. Inside, she cursed as she heard herself.
There was a moment of silence on the line. She could hear Alan sighing, probably trying to think of something that a good brother should say in a situation like this. He tried, that was true of him. And Francesca? She appreciated that.
"Are you... okay, sis?" he asked, sounding unsure of the words that left his mouth.
"Talk to you later Al, yeah?" she pinched the bridge of her nose.
"Fran—"
"Bye," she cut him off and hung up.
The phone fell from her hand and hit the pillow with a soft thump. Her chest felt tight, and her eyes stung. God, what was she doing wrong?