Cleopatra and Frankenstein(91)
Inside, the house was dark and silent, with the thick, still quality air that develops when it has not been disturbed for many weeks. Cleo stood in the entranceway, shivering, and pulled her coat tighter around her.
“It’s colder in here than out there,” she said.
“The power’s out,” said Frank, toggling the light switch on and off. He walked into the kitchen and checked the taps. “The hot water works, at least. It must have just gone.”
“Lucky us,” said Cleo.
“We’re in the country.” Frank sighed. “It happens. It should come back on tomorrow.”
Cleo thought that this suggested knowledge of country living was pretty rich, coming from a man who had just had paroxysms over the sight of a dead deer, but she decided against mentioning it.
“Do you have candles at least?” she asked.
“In the credenza. I’ll make a fire.”
Cleo looked at him over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow. “You know how?”
Frank shrugged off this slight. “If the cavemen managed it,” he said.
The cabin was not grand, just a living room, kitchen, and eating area with two sparse bedrooms upstairs. It was a summer house really, built for the warmer months, with a simple, unadorned interior designed to lead the eye outside, through the large windows, down the tree-studded hill in the back to the sparkling body of water that lay beyond. Frank had bought it over a decade ago mostly for this view of the lake, which was spectacular. Today, however, the water was covered in a layer of ice the flat, dirty gray of uncooked shrimp. It did not sparkle. Cleo returned with some tapered candles and a bag of tea lights. She looked around the room at the scuffed brown leather sofa, balding beanbag chair, and plain wooden coffee table.
“It’s different than I remember,” she said sadly.
Frank felt a mixture of defensiveness and deflation for this house, the first piece of property he’d ever owned.
“We’ll make it cozy,” he said.
They both fell silent, thinking of the last time they had come here, that happy sunlit weekend in May. It was as if they could dip their hands beneath the surface of the day and feel the current of that other life, only nine months earlier, running just beneath it. There was Cleo running naked through the living room, dripping lake water across the floor, and Frank laughing just behind her, trying to grab her slippery limbs. Here was the kitchen where they had eaten fresh fruit, cereal, or sandwiches for every meal because neither of them could cook. There was Frank dozing on the sofa, a book tented on his bare chest, and Cleo gently setting it aside to lay her head in its place. It was on the train home that he had asked her to marry him. She’d lifted her cheek from his shoulder in wonder. How did you know that was what I wanted? He’d laughed. So that’s a yes? Yes, she’d said, a thousand yeses, yes. And it had felt like the beginning of everything.
Now, Frank stood with the fire starters in his hand, staring blankly at the empty blackened fireplace. He remembered vaguely being told how to do this, something about creating a base. Truthfully, he was lost. Cleo looked over at him and frowned.
“You have to check the damper,” she said.
“The what?”
“Here, let me.” She maneuvered him aside and dropped to her knees, poking her head up the chimney and reaching inside to adjust something. “If it’s closed, the smoke all billows into the room. Should be good now.”
Frank was struck, again, by the breadth of things he did not know she knew. She sat back on her heels and rolled balls of newspaper from the pile in the basket to stick into the grate, then stacked the kindling in a crisscross pattern on top.
“You’re good at this,” he said uneasily.
It was emasculating, just hovering there behind her. He picked up a large log from the basket and made to put it on top of the kindling, but she intercepted him and grabbed two others, arranging them in a tepee shape. In one deft movement, she lit several matches at once and placed them in the nest of newspaper balls.
“We had a working fireplace when I was growing up,” she said, blowing on the flames that emerged. “My mum taught me.”
This mention of her mother surprised Frank. He could not have known that, though Cleo had been assigned roommates at the hospital (a compulsive skin picker followed by a bipolar bulimic), her real living companion that week had been her mother. Her mother had sat with her during the long, leaden hours, waiting for the day’s scant activities, either group therapy or art class, to start. Her mother had leaned against the sink as she scrubbed her teeth until her gums bled each night, an act of rebellion against the numbness taking over her body. Her mother had wedged herself between Cleo and Frank on each visit, leaving Cleo to peer round her to catch a glimpse of him. Worst of all, when Cleo looked in the mirror, it was her mother who now stared back. She was fighting to think of them both, her mother and herself, as something other than broken and suicidal. They were women, at least, who could make fires.
She kept blowing until the flames began to crackle, then wiped her hands on her jeans and looked up at him. Even in winter, her eyebrows were barely visible, almost white. She raised them now as if to say, Don’t look so surprised. Her sternness was offset by a black stain of soot on the end of her nose. Frank thought she looked like some adorable chimney sweep. Very gently, he touched the tip of his finger to the smudge. Cleo recoiled as though he had held a lit match to her skin.