Cleopatra and Frankenstein

Everyone I know is either more successful or more interesting than me. This realization is nothing new. In fact, it used to feel like everyone I didn’t know was more successful and interesting than me too.

Everyone I know is either more successful or more interesting than me.

Why did she feel the need to make everyone, even this waiter, like her? What a thing it must be to be indifferent to indifference.

Fun was fine when you were young, but as you got older it was kindness that counted, kindness that showed up.

“When was the last time you were with a straight man, I’m talking any straight man, and he said something more interesting than what you were already thinking?”

“You didn’t pick someone like me.”
“No. Eleanor’s not like either of us.”
“How is she different?”
“You really don’t mind talking about her?”
“I’m curious.”
“Okay, well, Eleanor has this mother. She intimidated me at first actually because she just—she’s fierce. Fiercely loving. And Eleanor grew up in a house in the suburbs with a garden and something called a visitor’s couch and, you know, three different types of bird feeder.”
Cleo nodded. “The height of domesticity.”
“Exactly. And it wasn’t perfect—her parents divorced when she was young, and she had this weird relationship as a teenager with an older guy—but I could tell she felt safe in that house. She grew up feeling safe and fiercely loved.”
When he looked up, he was surprised to see that Cleo’s eyes had glazed with a thin film of tears. “That sounds nice,” she said quietly.
“And you and I didn’t get that, not because we didn’t deserve it, we just got dealt something else. But the people who did get that love, they grew up to be different from us. More secure. Maybe they’re not as shiny or successful as you and I feel we have to be. But it’s not because they’re not interesting. They just don’t feel they have to do the tap dance, you know? They don’t have to prove themselves all the time to be loved. Because they always were.”
Cleo smiled sadly. “But how do you stop tap dancing if you’re like us?”
“I just got too tired, Cley,” he said. “The shoes didn’t fit anymore. And when I stood still, Eleanor was there standing with me. And I think you deserve to be with someone like that, who can provide that safety and that stillness for you in a way I never could. Even though God knows I wanted to, Cleo. I really wanted it.”
Cleo took his hand across the table. Frank’s freckled hands. She remembered them always in motion, flitting across surfaces, adjusting his glasses, accentuating words in the air with an emphatic, flared-palm gesture that was, just, him. She squeezed his fingers between hers.
“I know you did,” she said. “I wanted to do that for you too.”

Frank began to laugh. Cleo had once mentioned offhandedly that it was a tradition in England on the first day of the month to say “Pinch, punch, first of the month!” As long as the victor declared “And no returns!” afterward, they were free to enact these pinches and punches without retaliation. The loser then had to wait a whole month before having the chance to say it first again. Frank, who had a taste for the nonsensical, had sprung upon this game with a fanatical competitiveness, waking up early on the first of every month and hovering over Cleo’s sleeping figure until, at the slightest sign of awakening, he would launch his attack, screaming the singsong rhyme with the kind of zeal that, Cleo was sure, caused middle-aged men to have heart attacks.
“I forgot about that.” He chuckled. “You sucked at Pinch Punch.”
“Because I didn’t want to set my alarm for the crack of dawn on the first of every month like a maniac!”
Frank looked at her seriously. “That’s what it takes to be a Pinch Punch champion, Cleo.”
He tried to maintain a straight face, but they were both quickly reduced to laughter.

“I never thought I’d be able to visit Rome and not drink,” he said, as the beaded glasses were placed before them.
“Wine is the least interesting part of Rome,” Cleo said. “And of you.”
Frank gave her a defenseless smile. “Thanks, Cleopatra.”
“You’re welcome, Frankenstein.”

And she was discovering that the slower pace of Rome soothed her. She was industrious, but never exhausted. She slept deeply and alone. She had not yet taken a lover, though one of the other artists, a shy Swiss designer her age, had confessed his feelings for her late one night in the studio. She needed more time, she’d told him gently. In the afternoons she drank espresso standing at the bar and watched the Italians flit busily around each other like butterflies. She had finally learned to be by herself in public without thinking about what others were thinking of her. It was a relief to live from the inside out at long last

And there it was, the feeling she had been trying to deny, the dark, oily jealousy rising in her that Frank would do for Eleanor what he would never do for her. Eleanor got this version of Frank, the sober, thoughtful man who took her suggestions, while Cleo had endured the drunken predecessor like a fool.