In an eerie moment of clarity, serene stillness on the turnpike, he just decides to tell her. Like a bargaining chip. He hopes it'll explain his years of hurt and bad behavior. All the times she's has to answer the phone while she's working just to be told he's in the office again.
He thinks that the chances of this happening again are rare. Everything's aligned perfectly right now; his recollections, the rare time the two of them have alone, the oddly pleasant morning they had together over Dunkin Donuts breakfast. It's the first time he's felt the warm magnetic pull of trust towards her since he doesn't even know when. The sudden fondness he feels for his mom, and the comfort he yearns for in her arms, truly just a moment of peace where he can bury his face in her shoulder and cry, it's literally all he wants. He clicks the stereo off, and instinctively she reaches to swat him away.
"Don't touch my Nora," she says half-jokingly, but Franky insists. The car's quiet, save the obnoxious whirr of her car's power steering as they bend a curve. Franky leans into the turn, his body's pushed against the door, head pressed to the window as some kind of grounding force, the cool of the glass on his scalp a welcome reminder that he's okay, he's safe in here.
All things considered, Mom's never done anything to actually make him feel unwelcome. It's all his sensitivities, his insistence that the world is out to get him, isn't it? He takes a good glance at her as he forms his words, and he searches her face for bits of himself, her nose and eyes, her huge pupils, maybe her eyesight is just from age but he'll attribute his glasses-wearing to her, too. He likes to think that he would look a lot more like her under different circumstances; whatever those may be, he doesn't have the capacity to explore right now.
"I've been thinking about Dad" is the wrong way to bring this up, but it's true, and that's what he says, and he watches her spirit take a few blows in response, her energy dipping as she slides into unease. Immediately she clicks the music back on.
"I don't wanna talk about Dad," she says plainly, definitively.
"I do." The music turns back off.
"Well I don't, Francis, I don't! I left Dad for a reason; I never wanted to have to even think about him again."
Franky screws his face into something awful. "Then why'd you guys even have me? You had plenty of ffffucking time to get rid of me. Now I'm just this constant reminder of a guy you hate!" God, it's insufferable. Every time he tries to reason with her, come to some neutral ground at least, she always gets hysterical like this. How the fuck are they ever supposed to "mend their relationship" like Robbin begs of them when Beth won't fucking budge.
"I don't like talking about Dad, either, Ma. It fucking infuriates me; dude was barely in my life but fucked me up so bad in that time. He fucking......... bullied me and harassed me and b-eat me. Dad fucking raped me, Ma; I don't love talking about him, but I feel like if we don't then, like? What am I supposed to do about all that? Just hold that in?"
Beth quite literally holds her tongue between her teeth. They must drive for a good half mile before she even says anything.
"What do you mean, Dad 'raped' you?" She sounds almost angry. Which is surprising to Franky. He's been almost certain up until now that he isn't the only victim in the car. He averts his eyes out the window.
"I mean. I'm.... I'm pretty sure." He's certain. He remembers it. He thinks about it almost every waking moment, definitely every sleeping one. It loops through the back of his mind like sickly, abhorrent tinnitus.
"When did this happen?"
"I....... I dunno." He does. He remembers every instance. His brain really tried burying it for a while, or reframing it into something maybe more acceptable, easier to explain. But all his confidence evaporates when Beth stares over at him, and the condensate from his convictions is starting to fog the windows of the car.
"What do you mean, you don't know?" She bites. " You can't just say something like 'Dad raped me' and then not say anything else. When did this happen?"
"Like. When I was a kid. Like, all the time. I would wake up and--"
"No."
"--he would be, like...... I mean, he always asked to stay in the room while I, like. He would tell me to touch myself--"
"But that's not rape, Francis, you said rape."
"He did, he did, he--I mean, I shouldn't have to? Tell you details?? I don't want to tell you details, it sucks to talk about!"
"How the hell am I supposed to believe you if you won't tell me anything, Franky, huh?" She reaches across the console to grab his face, turn them towards one another. "Huh? Tell me what Dad did to you."
"I....... it was in my sleep. He did it while I slept, mostly; he always wanted me to sleep with him and I would--ffffff, uuuuuck, I don't wanna... ffucking talk about this with you!!!"
"You brought it up! Francis!! You obviously want to talk about it with someone!"
"I didn't think you were gonna goddamn interrogate me about it, CHRIST!" He rears his fist out and slams it against the car door with all he has, the plastic cracking and caving in, same with his hand.
It does what it needs to do. It quiets the car again. Franky slowly turns himself away from Beth, hunched over in his own private alcove to check the state of his hand. His pinky clicks every time he flexes it. She eventually tells him to cut it out, the noise is annoying her.
The rest of the car ride plays out in silence. They get to whatever family function they promised to be at, and Franky dissociates through the murmurs of his cousins, ducks out to smoke a cigarette every hour on the hour.
Soon the sun sets, they drive back. They both hit their marks; Beth on the couch with some wine, Franky at his laptop with some beer. The family resemblance is even more striking now.
As she's walking to bed, she knocks on Franky's door.
"Yeah," he mutters.
"Can I come in?"
"Yeah," he says. "That's what 'yeah' means."
Slowly she cracks open the door, just enough to peer in through.
"Goodnight," she sloshes.
"'Night."
"I've been thinking about what you told me," she continues.
Franky's fingers stop assaulting the keyboard, a knot tightening in his throat.
"What about it?" he mutters.
Beth blinks through the dark. She's searching his face for something, some grounding reminder that this is just as much her child as it is Larry's. She has a responsibility. She has a love and compassion for him, she swears, though as her eyes flit nervously about him she loses her confidence. He really serves as a perfect visual to what she's endured.
She can't possibly do it all again.
"I don't think you're telling the truth," so she closes the door and goes to bed.
