Cleopatra and Frankenstein

Her beauty was a mild source of concern for Frank, stemming from an inchoate sense that every really attractive woman he knew was secretly deeply unhappy.

Her beauty was a mild source of concern for Frank, stemming from an inchoate sense that every really attractive woman he knew was secretly deeply unhappy.

They don’t have to prove themselves all the time to be loved. Because they always were.”

but I could tell she felt safe in that house. She grew up feeling safe and fiercely loved.”

Their whole marriage, she had submitted to other people’s versions of her, retreating into the shape of their desires.

He wanted his mother, not his actual mother, that self-involved drunk, but his real mother, still unfound, the woman who could truly take care of him. He wanted Eleanor.

She loved New York, but it was not her city, she knew that now.

Cleo and Frank could not make each other happy, no matter how hard they’d tried.

“Sweetheart, love is humiliating. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that?”
“Who would have told me that?”
“Do you know the word humiliate comes from the Latin root humus, which means ‘earth’? That’s how love is supposed to feel.”
“Like hummus?”
“Like earth. It grounds you. All this nonsense about love being a drug, making you feel high, that’s not real. It should hold you like the earth.”

“People are like this too, you know,” he says eventually. “We break. We put ourselves back together. The cracks are the best part. You don’t have to hide them.”