Chapter 16
Despite a traffic jam in Barstow, Gail is still awake when Frank gets in from Vegas. She puts down the book she is reading and smiles.
"Any luck?"
"Nope. Guy didn't know a thing."
"Sorry."
Heading for the bathroom, Frank shrugs. "No big. I'm gonna get the dust off of me."
She spends as much time as she can in the shower, hoping Gail will be asleep by the time she's done. But she isn't and Frank gets into bed beside her. Gail closes her book and turns the light off. She snuggles into Frank, and Frank accommodates the doc's head on her shoulder. Gail caresses Frank in a way that used to drive her nutty. Now Gail's touch is almost repulsive. She's relieved when Gail quits.
"Talk to me," Gail whispers to Frank.
Except for a mad desire to be back on the highway, Frank feels nothing.
"I can't," she confesses.
"Why not?"
"I just can't. There aren't any words inside me."
"Just empty?" Gail sympathizes.
Frank thinks again about the frozen quarry. "Yeah. All empty."
This seems to satisfy Gail but then she asks, "Is it Noah? Is it still missing him so much?"
The answer that leaps to mind is worse, and Frank is furious. Furious at Gail for bringing up what she's worked so hard to ignore, furious at this invasion of privacy, furious that Gail cares, furious that she can't go to sleep, furious that she has to constantly defend herself. Inside, she is a raging ball of self-contained fiery hell. Outside she is a sheet of glass—cold, rigid and just as fragile.
"I can't talk about this," she manages.
"Why? What would happen if you did?"
"You're asking the impossible, Gail. Do you want to see me crack into a million pieces? Is that what you want? To see me all busted up like Humpty Dumpty? You'd be stuck with a thousand broken pieces and you'd have to sweep me up with a broom and put all my pieces into a paper bag where they'd scream for all eternity, and you'd have to hear that and I'd have to hear that and we'd go crazy with all the endless screaming. Is that what you want?"
Gail soothes, "Do you really believe that?"
"Yeah. I do. Don't ask me to go there."
Frank feels Gail nod. Still she asks, "Would the same thing happen if you talked to Clay?"
"Don't you remember? Once Humpty Dumpty breaks, it's all over. No one could put him back together again. Not all the King's horses, not all the King's men. He shattered beyond all hope. If he'd just stayed on the wall, he'd have been all right. So I'm hanging on to the wall."
"What if the wall's crumbling?"
"The wall's not crumbling," Frank insists. "Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. He jumped or slipped. Maybe he was pushed, but the wall didn't break."
"Frank, Humpty Dumpty's a fairy tale, and you're not an egg. If you break, you'll heal. If you don't break, you won't heal. Don't you know that by now? Isn't that what happened with Maggie. You didn't break and look what happened. You ended up in Clay's office. He broke you properly, like a bone that was badly set, and helped you mend. You've got to break in order to get everything out or you'll explode trying to keep all it in. Do you want to go through all that again?"
Frank argues, "Fairy tales are metaphors for real life. If Humpty had just minded his own business and paid attention to staying on that wall he'd have been okay. But he slipped. He started snooping around in places where he had no business. He was an egg trying to be something he wasn't. I'm a cop, trying to pretend I'm not. I'm trying to pretend I can live like other people. That I can deal with life by talking and feeling, and I can't. For me to do what I've got to do I can't feel it and I can't talk about it. I've got to bag up my shit and dump it like the trash it is. Then forget about it. I'm hanging on to the wall, Gail. I'm bagging up the trash. I'm not going to fall off into that touchy-feely never-never land. I tried that. It doesn't work for me."
"Oh, I see. Alcoholism and workaholism are so much healthier. Is that it?"
"How many times do we have to have this conversation?" Frank sighs into the dark.
"You tell me."
"You're the one that keeps bringing it up."
Gail separates her body from Frank's. She lies motionless on her side of the bed. Frank silently begs Gail to fall asleep. She believes her wish has been granted until Gail demands, "Are you satisfied with our relationship?"
Lacing her fingers under her head, Frank breathes, "Fuck."
She should have known better. Gail's a pit bull in an argument.
"Are you?"
"Not right now, no."
"Generally?"
"Generally it's fine."
"Tell me what you like about it."
"Gail, why are you doing this?"
"Because I need to know. What do you like about our relationship? From what I can see, it doesn't look like much. Half the time you beg off seeing me, and when you do deign to grace me with your presence you're remote, aloof and unapproachable."
Frank notes the triple redundancy of Gail's description, thereby making her guilty of only one fault.
"And in case you haven't noticed, we haven't made love since Noah died. I don't think you even like breathing the same air as me! But you're perfectly happy."
Guilty as charged, Frank thinks. Gail is absolutely right. Frank doesn't want to be with her. It's more effort than she can manage right now. It's not fair to drag Gail down to her level, but neither is it sporting of Gail to demand Frank meet her bar. Searching the air above the bed, Frank knows she must choose. Gail or the wall. Falling or staying. She makes her decision, but her words are halting.
"You deserve better, Gail. Someone who can go through things with you. I can't. I just can't. I'm not built that way. I'm sorry." She rolls her back to Gail. "Good night."
To ensure she won't fall, Frank has crucified herself to the wall.
Chapter 17
Frank's commute always gives her time to reflect, and the next morning she will go so far as to say she's a heavy drinker and sometimes she drinks too much. Who doesn't? But there is drinking, and then there's problem drinking. If drinking doesn't interfere with her daily functions, then there's no problem. If it does interfere, then it's a problem. Frank can't see how her drinking is a problem. She does the same things that teetotalers do—she gets to work on time, does a good job, pays her bills and keeps her house up. What more does Gail want?
To prove she has no problem, Frank vows to stay sober for a week. If she can get through the week without seeing purple spiders or ending up in the Betty Ford clinic, then she must be okay. If she can't, then she has a problem. She tests herself the week Foubarelle goes out of town. Being on call the whole week is good incentive to stay sober. The days are easy, the nights a little harder. Around four or five o'clock, her body nags that it's time for a drink. She distracts herself with work. She spends the hours interviewing residents along the street where the Pryce family used to live. She knocks as late as eight o'clock and then spends another couple hours writing notes. Twice she sleeps on the skinny vinyl couch in her office. The other nights she slips in next to Gail for what is little more than a nap and change of clothes.
When Fubar returns, Frank celebrates her week of sobriety at the Alibi. Tossing off a double, she orders another. Johnnie joins her and at midnight Nancy asks, "Want me to call you a cab?"
Frank thinks, you can call me anything you like, but says, "Good idea."
Next morning her hangover is exquisite. She wonders how she got that drunk. She didn't mean to, and scolds that she should've had dinner. She resolves to go easy tonight. Two beers, max, she tells herself.