Cleopatra and Frankenstein(60)

“Look, I’ve got someone I want you to meet,” he said. “She’s been waiting very patiently, and—”

“Oh, Frank, you didn’t bring someone home,” groaned Cleo. “I’m not in the mood. Can we ever just spend time just us two?”

Frank picked up the box from the floor and held it in front of Cleo’s furrowed face.

“Open it,” he said.

Cleo widened her eyes. With the tips of her fingers, she lifted the lid. There, sitting in a little bed of sawdust, was the baby sugar glider. She looked up at Cleo with her big black eyes. Cleo shrieked. Frank felt his heart drop. She hated it.

“Oh Frank, you didn’t!” The words came out all in a tumble. “You’re crazy! You’re nuts! What were you thinking? I love it! I love you. How could you—what are we going to do with it? We need food! What does it eat? I love it, really I do. It’s beautiful but … What on earth is it?”

“It’s a sugar glider,” said Frank, grinning with relief. “It’s kind of like a flying squirrel crossed with a chinchilla. Except small and cuter.”

“It flies?” Cleo threw her head back in delight. “You’re crazy, Frank. It’s perfect. I love it.”

“You’ve got to a pick a name for her,” said Frank.

He couldn’t stop smiling.

“It’s a her?”

“Mm-hmm,” he said. “A baby girl for my baby girl.”

Cleo wrinkled her nose in distaste. She hated that kind of talk, he knew, which she deemed infantilizing. But sometimes he couldn’t resist. Even in this disheveled state, there was something so disarmingly feminine about her, so undeniably girlish, it seemed crazy that he was never allowed to recognize it.

“Can I hold her?”

“Of course,” said Frank. “She’s yours.”

Cleo scooped the sugar glider out of the box and cradled her to her chest.

“Hello, darling. What are we going to call you? What is your name, hmm?”

“What about naming her after that painter of yours?” asked Frank. “What was her name? Berthe?”

Cleo looked down at the creature in her arms, who was attempting to clamber up her sweater and into her hair. Aside from her tail, she was no larger than a packet of Sweet’n Low.

“I don’t know,” Cleo said. “It seems like an awfully serious name for such a crazy little thing.”

“So … Not Berthe?” Frank was disappointed. He’d been pleased with himself for thinking of it.

“She can’t have a human name,” said Cleo. “She’s too magic for a boring old human name.”

“What do you want to do, then?” said Frank. “Give her a sign language name or something?”

“I love that!” said Cleo. “Do you know how to say anything in sign?”

“You’re serious?” he said. “Well, I know this.”

He made the movements with his hands.

“What does that mean?”

“‘Oh Jesus, how I adore you.’”

Cleo rocked with laughter.

“Why on earth do you know how to say that?”

“Because my insane mother used to send me to a fundamentalist Christian camp every summer, where they taught us to sing the hymns in sign. That’s the only part I can remember. Ironic for a half Jew, I know.”

“All right,” said Cleo. “Show me again.”

Frank showed her how to spell out the words with his hands. They both looked down at the sugar glider.

“Oh Jesus How I Adore You,” said Cleo. “Welcome to our little family.”

That first night they went to the Petco, which inexplicably stayed open until midnight on weeknights. They left Oh Jesus How I Adore You in her shoebox with a single peanut, which they read she could eat one of a day as a special treat.

“Do you think she’ll be okay without us?” asked Cleo as they walked to the store. She was already taking to her role as anxious mother.

“She’ll be just fine.” He put his arm around her shoulder. “We’ve got to get her some food and a nice big cage to live in.”

Cleo nuzzled her face into his neck. Her nose was running from the cold. The rain had stopped, but an icy wind was barreling down the avenue, buffeting their coats and scarves about them. He’d forgotten his gloves. He put one hand in his pocket and reached the other farther around Cleo, pushing it between the buttons of her fur coat. It nestled against the warm wool of her sweater. She kissed the freezing tip of his ear lobe poking out from beneath his hat.

“I love you, Frankenstein,” she murmured into his ear.

Inside the fluorescent-lit Petco the smell of cat litter and stale fish tanks encircled them. The place was almost completely empty, long vacant aisles stacked with neon chew toys and huge sacks of dry food. Frank loved it here; it was a welcome relief from ordinary life. They looked around and managed to root out one of the Petco staff somewhere near the birdcages.

“Excuse me, do you work here?” Frank asked.

“Work here? I’m the junior manager,” said the Petco junior manager.

He had a long pallid face, made even longer by a waxed and pointed goatee.

“Great,” said Frank. “Which of these, hypothetically, would you say is the best cage for a sugar glider?”