J

“Cleo and Frank could not make each other happy, no matter how hard they’d tried.”
― Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

“He squeezed into one of the pews and knelt. It had been a long time since he had been here. What should he say? Phrases from his childhood came to him, dusty and inchoate. Out of habit, he began reciting the Lord’s prayer, but the real thoughts, his actual prayers, interrupted before he finished. He asked for his grandmother to rest in eternal peace. He asked for God to watch over his parents. He prayed that Cleo not be in pain. He prayed for her and Frank to be happy again. He asked for mercy for Anders. He prayed that Lila be allowed to dance, wherever she was. His grandmother had always told him not to pray for himself, but at the very end he did. He prayed for the courage to talk to Dominique. He asked for love to come to him again. Finally, he humbly asked God for the strength to bear his hungry heart , the heaviest weight of all to bear.”
― Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

“It was as if they could dip their hands beneath the surface of the day and feel the current of that other life, only nine months earlier, running just beneath it. There was Cleo running naked through the living room, dripping lake water across the floor, and Frank laughing just behind her, trying to grab her slippery limbs. Here was the kitchen where they had eaten fresh fruit, cereal, or sandwiches for every meal because neither of them could cook. There was Frank dozing on the sofa, a book tented on his bare chest, and Cleo gently setting it aside to lay her head in its place. It was on the train home that he had asked her to marry him. She’d lifted her cheek from his shoulder in wonder. How did you know that was what I wanted? He’d laughed. So that’s a yes? Yes , she’d said, a thousand yeses, yes. And it had felt like the beginning of everything.”
― Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

“Only then, in the quietness beneath, did the new feeling arrive. It was shame . Shame that she had quit her job, shame that she did not paint, shame that she had married Frank, shame that he was in love with someone else, shame that she had run to Anders for comfort, shame that he had discarded her, shame that Frank drank like he did, shame that they let Jesus die, shame that Frank had let her tear apart the whole apartment looking for her before coming clean about what he’d done, shame that she’d covered for him and told everyone that Jesus had escaped, shame that it was her secret now too, shame that she was too afraid to leave him when she said she would, shame that her mother was dead and she could not ask her for advice, shame that her mother didn’t want to be her mother enough to not be dead, just shame, shame, shame.”
― Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein