“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
Cleo thought about pursuing this line of attack, then remembered Anders with a hot flush of shame and dropped it. Frank was racking his brains for how Cleo could have found anything out about Eleanor. He had never touched her, never told anyone about her, barely acknowledged his feelings for her to himself. They had not even spoken for the past month. So what could it be? Did Cleo know his heart that well?
“I can’t believe anything that comes out of your mouth,” she said, retreating to generalities.
“Fine, you don’t trust what I say,” said Frank. “But where are my feet? I’m still here, Cleo. At least give me some credit for that. I’m here.”
Cleo clutched her chest and gasped. “You want credit for not leaving me? Are you joking? Sorry, Frank, but you married me. For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. That was the deal. You said those vows. You made those promises. And now you want credit for, what, living by them?”
“We both know why we took those vows, Cleo. I was richer, you were poorer.”
“Oh, fuck you. Don’t give me that binary bullshit. And now what? I’m sickness, and you’re health?”
Frank was about to say something, thought better of it, and retreated through the arched doorway to the living room. Cleo followed after him and pushed his shoulder to turn him back around to face her.
“What? What is it, Frank? Say it!”
“Don’t push me, Cleo—”
“Say it!”
He exhaled slowly.
“I was going to say that I am not the one wearing a hospital bracelet.” Cleo looked down at her wrist in surprise. She had been wearing the bracelet for so long she had forgotten it was there. How humiliating. She grabbed the plastic and began yanking at it.
“You’re delusional,” she spat.
The bracelet would not give. She clawed it into a tighter bind around her wrist. “Your sickness became my sickness,” she said, still wringing the plastic band.
He grabbed her hands. “Look, stop. Just, just wait—”
He disappeared into the bathroom, then came back to grab a candle. “Too dark,” he muttered.
Cleo glanced out the window. The sun had indeed begun to set, and the room was cast in a low gloom. Frank returned with a pair of nail scissors and beckoned for her to lift her wrist. Very gingerly, almost tenderly, he cut through the plastic. It felt like freeing the paw of some skittish wild animal from a trap. Frank looked at her bare wrist. The bracelet fell to the ground between them, spiraling like a slice of apple peel. He did not want to let go of her.
Cleo could not bear the look on his face. She closed her eyes. When he did speak, his voice was soft.
“Why did you do this to yourself?”
Cleo murmured something that was barely words.
“What?”
“You did this to me,” she whispered.
He dropped her wrist and stepped back as if struck. He felt struck. “You’re just trying to hurt me.”
She shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I’m trying to survive you.”
Frank took another step back.
“Survive me? What are you talking about? I supported you. I gave you everything I had. Survive me? How could you say that?”
“Your drinking,” said Cleo quietly. “I’m not talking about what you did for me financially. I’m talking about your drinking.”
Frank was shaking his head in disbelief as he listened to her. Yes, it had gotten bad last week. Worse than before. But she couldn’t know that. He’d missed work for the first time ever, with a hangover. Started drinking a little in the morning too, a new one for him. But who could blame him when every time he closed his eyes, he saw Cleo bleeding out on that wet black mound? Alcohol had soothed him, numbed him, loved him, when no one else could. Without it, he would not have survived last week. She had no idea what she was talking about.
“I always looked after you,” is what he said.
“Not when you were drunk.”
“I don’t believe this.” Frank spun away from her. “You want to know what surviving an abusive alcoholic looks like? It’s being raised by my mother. She used to fall asleep with a lit cigarette in her hand. She used to forget to pick me up from school—” He stopped himself and took a deep breath. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Cleo looked around the room in mock surprise. “Could it be? Are we back here again? At the Frank pity party?”
“You’re hilarious,” murmured Frank. “No really, that’s hilarious.”
“I wish I was joking,” said Cleo. “How many times do I have to hear this? Poor little Frank wasn’t raised right. Nobody loved you the way you needed. Join the fucking club. So your mother was an asshole. Big deal! My mother killed herself.”
“I wished my mother would kill herself.”
Cleo snorted with disgust.
“Do you hear yourself?” she said.
“Do you hear yourself? Are we seriously fighting about who had the worst childhood?”
“We’re not fighting about it, because I know I did.”
Frank threw his hands up. “Fine, you win. You’re irrevocably damaged. Your life’s been hell, and mine’s been a cakewalk.”
Cleo grabbed the hair either side of her temples.
“I can’t talk to you! You’re impossible. No one is saying your life has been easy, although let’s be honest, it has. But at least you still have a mother.”
“And you know who your father is! Mine never even acknowledged my existence!”
“Oh, and it’s been such a blessing to have my father,” said Cleo. “You met him, Frank. You know what it was like for me.”
“And you know what it was like for me.”
They were at an impasse. Frank dropped himself to the sofa and stared up at the ceiling. “Do you have any idea how it’s felt to be married to you?” he said quietly. “I could feel your disappointment in me from ten blocks away.”
“No, you could feel your disappointment in you. Proximity to me just made you aware of it.”
“See, you state that like it’s a fact, like you have some higher knowledge of my psyche that I’m not privy to, but it’s just your interpretation.”
“It’s the interpretation of someone not drunk half the time, Frank.”
Frank shot up and stormed over to the fire to throw another log on it. Sparks flew back in his direction. He turned back toward her, his face flushed. She always managed to make him aware of how he was failing, how he came up short. It was demoralizing.
“I was never what you wanted,” he said. “Right from the very start.”
Cleo circled the coffee table so she could face him directly. She could see the machinations of his mind constructing this new narrative that he had been destined to fail. She was not going to let him let himself off the hook like that.
“Why would I have married you if that was true?” she asked.