“You’re not.”
“Okay,” said Frank. “I’m sorry. You’re too fragile to have this conversation right now.”
Cleo turned on her heels and stood up. “I am not fragile.”
“I didn’t mean fragile.” Frank waved his hand as if he could dispel the word like smoke between them. “Sensitive.”
“I am not sensitive. You’re sensitive.”
“All right, whatever you say, Cleo.” He turned away from her again. “I’m going to go chop some more wood.”
Cleo restrained herself from saying anything derogatory about this display of manhood. After he left, she stood shivering in the living room. Soon she could hear the heavy, rhythmic sound of the ax. She lit a few more candles and stoked the fire with the poker, looking into the flames for a long moment. She had been so desperate to leave the hospital, but now she was out, she didn’t know how to act. She knew Frank was trying to help, but it just made her feel like an invalid incapable of helping herself. She had spent so many years trying not to be defined by what her mother did, trying to be whole, trying to be happy and light. Now she had undone it all. She dropped the poker and turned to follow him outside. She was going to act normal. She was going to make nice.
Frank was at the back of the house, where a wooden porch and small garden overlooked the slope down to the lake. He looked up to see her standing by the rusty porch swing, lighting a cigarette. She tucked the pack back into her pocket as she watched him. Where had she squirreled those away? He certainly hadn’t brought any for her. Cleo saw him notice this and smiled to herself. She had charmed one of the nurses into giving her his pack before leaving, which was why she was deigning to smoke Camels instead of her usual Capris. She considered it the only real success from her time in hospital.
Frank, who had noticed this smile and assumed she was mocking him, decided to keep on chopping the wood as if she wasn’t there. Of course, he missed the next swing, sending the ax skidding down the side of the chopping block to the ground. He couldn’t do anything right. Swearing under his breath, he wrestled the blade out from where it was embedded in the earth. Cleo pinched the cigarette between her lips and clapped her hands, which were white from the cold.
“Give it another go,” she called. “What do Americans say?” She affected a nasal accent. “You got this.”
He checked her face to see if she was making fun of him, but her eyes were shining faintly with good humor. He looked away, grinning to himself, then swung. He split the piece of wood in a perfect half. When he looked back at her, the eagerness was all over his face.
“Good job,” she said, still in her twangy accent. “That was great.”
“So you’re American now?” he asked.
“Only when I’m being peppy,” she said. “You know my favorite Americanism?”
“What?”
She lowered her voice to a gruff southern baritone. “Winners win and losers lose.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
Cleo smiled.
“That American man from our honeymoon said it.”
“He would,” Frank scoffed.
He picked up the pieces of wood he had just chopped and cradled them in his arms. The thought of their honeymoon brought a terrible sadness. That was before he met Eleanor, before he bought Jesus, before anyone had irredeemably hurt anyone else. Back then, he did feel like a winner. He walked up to the porch and set the wood back down between them.
“I know you think I’m a loser,” he said. “You wouldn’t have done what you did otherwise.”
Cleo looked up and exhaled smoke to the gray sky, shaking her head. “That’s not why I did it. It was bigger than just you.”
“Just me? I found you. I thought you were—”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” said Cleo. “I meant—”
Frank dropped to the porch swing and put his head in his hands. “I thought you were dead, Cleo.”
She didn’t know what it had been like for him while she was in there. First, the horror of finding her. His hands convulsing as he called the ambulance. Holding a towel to her wrist, feeling her blood throb through it. Still couldn’t get the stains off the sleeve of his coat. The only thing that stopped his hands from shaking now was a drink. Then the days and nights without her, longing for her and hating her and worrying about her. The terrible, stultifying hospital visits where she barely seemed to recognize he was there. Lost, he felt as if he had lost her for good. Santiago, the only other person who knew, had left for LA. Eleanor had been avoiding him at the office since the Kapow! party. He had been desperate to confide in her, she who he trusted above all others, but he held himself back out of loyalty to Cleo. At least at the hospital, they knew. Outside, he had no one. Heading straight home after work, shedding his false smile along with his coat at the door. The relief of a drink. The relief of not having to pretend anymore. The relief of falling apart until the next morning, when he would pick up his bloodstained coat and worn-out smile and do it all over again.