After the Cure, Deirdre Gould [the beach read TXT] 📗

thought she had convinced herself into rationality by the time Frank walked quietly out of the bathroom.

“That smells great,” he said, coming into the kitchen. He rummaged around the cabinets looking for silverware. He was humming something without knowing it. Nella watched him as he set the table. How the hell did I ever think he was ugly? She wondered. He turned around and saw her watching him. He stopped humming and smiled self consciously. “What?” he asked.

Nella blushed and returned his smile. “Nothing. What were you humming?”

Frank thought for a second. “I have no idea. Sorry, does it bother you?”

“No, not at all. I was just curious.” She turned back to the stove and filled their plates so she could blush in private. We should have dinner and then I should send him home. Not should. Will send him home.

But her resolve weakened as the evening wore itself away. He seemed comfortable with her, unwound even, as if he had been screwed together too tightly for far too long. When she met him, she had thought he was too introverted to be a lawyer. He had been friendly but it had seemed rehearsed, like something he often got wrong. But now she wondered if the world had made him that way after the Cure. He had been so subdued with both Dr. Pazzo and Mr. Grant. It was easy to believe Frank was so ashamed of what the infection had done to him that he became deferential to anyone who treated him poorly, that he really thought he deserved it. She was hesitant to shatter what comfort he had found with her by sending him away.

He looked at her intensely for a moment, but Nella's mind was so far away she barely noticed.

“Stop psychoanalyzing me,” he said, “I told you I didn't want you to think about me that way.”

“I wasn't-”

Frank laughed. “You're a terrible liar. But I guess that's good in a doctor.”

“Well how do you want me to think about you then?”

Frank got up and picked up his plate. He leaned over her and paused as he picked hers up too. “Now you're changing the subject,” he said gently and then walked to the sink. Nella's ribs felt too tight. She tried to ignore it.

“What makes you think I was psychoanalyzing you?”

Frank turned the water on and spoke over the splashing, but didn't turn his face toward her. “Because you were staring at me for a while. And I think you've gotten over your revulsion of my scars by now, so it wasn't that-”

“I was never revolted by you-” Nella tried to interrupt.

“You were,” Frank laughed and it was dry and brittle like an old leaf hanging between them. “You tried very hard not to show it, I know. Maybe you even tried very hard not to feel it, but I could see you flinch every time I came near you-”

Nella sprang from her seat and across the kitchen. “I'm not revolted by you,” she said when she reached him. He turned off the faucet and calmly began wiping the clean dishes. Frank looked at her.

“I know. Not any more, anyway. So I know you weren't watching me because you were frightened or disgusted.” He handed her the dry plate and she stared dumbly at it because his fingers had touched hers as he passed it to her and the sizzling it left in her mind made her too dizzy to put the plate in the cabinet.

“But you weren't staring into space, Nella, you were staring at me.” Frank smiled, “All I can think is that you were either analyzing me or you were trying to figure out a way to toss me out for the night without feeling guilty.”

Nella blushed. “I wasn't psychoanalyzing you.”

He handed her the other plate. “If you want me to go,” he said quietly, “All you have to do is say so. Nothing will be different tomorrow. We'll still be friends.”

“I don't want you to go,” she said and then rushed to put the plates away so that she wouldn't see his face.

“Good,” he said, “because I'd like to stay. Your couch is comfortable.”

She laughed despite her anxiety and turned back toward him. “How did you know what I was thinking about?”

“Because I've thought about it too. I'm an adult, Nella, I know how the world works. I'm not supposed to like you. And you are supposed to be impartial and everyone is supposed to play by the rules. If anyone found out that we weren't strangers to each other, the world would riot. And that's just the trial.”

“What do you mean, 'that's just the trial?' Is there something else?”

“You're an Immune. You're supposed to be registering with DHRS and marrying another Immune so you can have lots of little Immune children. And I'm an Infected-” he held up his hand to stop her protest, “whether I've been Cured or not, I'll always be an Infected. I don't have the genetic resistance to pass on to the next generation. I'm supposed to die out, wither out of the gene pool.”

“I don't care about that-”

“You might not. Your friends might not even care. But the rest of the world will. People like Mr. Grant will. Maybe we'd lose our jobs or be shunned or cheated at the market. Maybe we would have to live in more dangerous places than this.” Frank sighed. “I know you aren't naïve Nella. I realize you've thought about this already. That's what you were thinking about before I interrupted you. I just don't know what you decided.”

“What did you decide?”

Frank leaned against the counter and crossed his arms as if he were preparing for a blow from her. “That I gave up caring what the world thought of me a long time ago. That I already took the bitter leavings the world tossed at me every day, why shouldn't I accept the beautiful things it put in my path too?” Frank reached out to touch her face, but stopped short and pulled back. He stopped looking at her and looked toward the door, expecting to be walking through it. “But I still care about what the world thinks about you and what it would do to you if I were involved with you. This life is hard enough as it is. We both know that. I don't want to make it any harder.”

The sink plinked a sorry tune between them as Nella thought about what she wanted to tell him. “Frank,” she said at last, “the world isn’t just nasty people like Mr. Grant and his cronies. It's also people like Sevita and Wells and Johnson. The world has always had bigots in it. I think it always will. If the Plague proved anything, it proved that. Even when we're on the point of extinction we still waste energy on hating each other. Living according to the standards of the Mr. Grants of the world isn’t going to make them go away. And it will only make you- us miserable.” Nella reached up and touched the scar on Frank's cheek with the fingertips of her bandaged hand. “How could I ever be revolted by you? If I ever did, I'm sorry for it now. You've shown nothing but kindness and patience, even to people who treated you badly. Even to people that I couldn’t bring myself to be patient with or kind to. How could you make my life anything but better? If the judge wants me to recuse myself I will. If the Mr. Grants of the world want me to stop practicing, I'll do that too. But I don't want you to go.”

Nella was a little amazed to realize how much she really meant it. She smiled and looked up at Frank. But his face was grim and still. He hadn't moved, even when she’d touched him. Nella's smiled withered away. “What's wrong?” she asked before her throat could snap shut with panic.

“I'm not what you believe. I'm not patient and I can be cruel, Nella. I can't do this.” He gently moved her aside and walked toward the door.

“Frank wait.” The lamp sparkled on his face like frost. The rest of him in shadow, slipping away, his hand already turning the door knob.

“Wait,” she said again, but she was calm, not pleading. He waited, turning toward her, but didn't move from the door. The light behind him made his face a dark room she couldn't see into.

“It's not for you to decide,” she said, “You may think you are protecting me from some mistake by leaving, but it's my mistake to make,” she smiled, but her eyes felt pinched and there was a rough stone in the base of her throat. “And it's already been made.”

Frank's shoulders sagged. He shook his head. “You don't know me. You don't know what I've done.”

She wanted to tell him she didn't care, that whatever it was, it couldn't be that bad. But in the world that remained after humans had slaughtered each other with their bare hands and sick people had been executed not only to insure safety, but also for sport even after the Cure, in this world, that wasn't true anymore. The little voice in the hollow still place of her chest said that, yes, it could be that bad. So she was calm, too rational to tell him what she really meant, when she said, “How will I know if you never tell me?” She took a step toward him. “You can stay the man you’ve made yourself into, and I’ll never know what you were before. No one’s going to betray you, no one’s going to tell your secrets.” Nella paused and crossed the remaining space between them so she could see his face in the dim light. “Or you can tell me what it is you think you've done. You can spill it out in the most wretched language you like and be free of it. And let me decide.”

He was silent. She desperately wanted to watch his hand on the knob, as if it, alone, decided what happened next. Her hand ached to take his away from the door. She forced herself to focus on his face. He shifted his weight and she shut her eyes so she wouldn't see the door open. “It isn't a kindness, this way Frank. It isn't sparing me anything to just leave with things half said.”

She felt his sigh like a slide of warm sand shifting against her side. She opened her eyes and he had let go of the doorknob.

“There was a kid, Nella. That's why we were Infected.” he sat wearily on the couch.

 

 

“You had a child?”

“You had a child?”

Frank shook his head. “No, this was after the Plague started. We had this bomb shelter. It’d come with the house when we bought it. I just kept it stocked because it seemed like a good idea and