The Misfortunes of Lolita

18 | when lolita held

Frank wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer to him, and she put her arms around him, shaking violently as she cried. "I love you, Frank. I don't want to leave."

He closed his eyes. "It's okay."

"It's not," she said. "It's not okay."

Frank didn't know what it was - he just knew that he felt like he could breathe again. It was as though her words were washing over him like enchantment, and he felt like he could close his eyes in peace again. He felt like he was alive again, like breathing her in was a medicine working in his body.

Frank leaned back, taking her face in his fingers. She looked up at him with her black coffee eyes shining under the moonlight, and he was in love. He was goddamn in love. "It's okay. You can leave. It- studying biology is your dream."

"You're my dream too," she said.

He rested his forehead on hers, revelling in the sharp twist of pain in his heart. "Don't worry about it, right now. We have time."

Time. Yeah, they had time - a month and a half - that was time. But forty five days could not be enough. You couldn't see every corner of the earth in forty five days. You couldn't even see every corner of America in forty five damn days. You couldn't do anything in forty five days.

Frank couldn't just have Lolita for forty five days.

He thought he'd have her forever.

"Yeah," she said. "Time."

Frank brushed his fingers along her arm, feeling the fine hairs on her skin raise, and then he held her bruised hand gently. "We need to get that bandaged."

Lolita laughed, wiping her eyes with her other hand. "Oh, Frank."

He smiled, a little. "Come on."

-

Frank watched as his mother pressed her palms to her face, her eyes wide as she stood at the threshold of his father's room. Everything about her was uncharacteristically unruly, starting from her hair and ending at the muddled up flats snug on her feet.

"Oh my god," she mumbled. "Oh, god...Tom."

Cora stood behind her mother, watching her frame shake softly as she breathed in and out, trying to calm herself.

Frank's eyes moved from Martha back to Cora, noticing the soft pink under the skin of her pale eyelids. She again, held no emotion in her eyes. She'd shut down again, like she always did when she was stretched thin enough to snap.

Cora would never cry in front of their mother. It had always been this way for them, for Frank and Cora. They swore to each other that they'd never cry when Martha was around, especially when it was about their father. But she had been crying, he knew that for certain, alone in her own company.

Cora stepped closer to her mother, putting her hand on her shoulder and giving her a squeeze, and Martha nodded, finally moving beyond the doorway and walking inside the room to where her husband lay, his eyes closed.

"What happened to him?" she asked, her voice cracking in the middle of her sentence.

As the doctor - whose presence in the room was barely noticeable - explained, Martha stared at her husband.

And at that moment, the way Martha looked at Thomas was the reason love even existed. Love wasn't only being with someone at their best, but staying with them through their worst. It wasn't just simply tolerating someone's breaths next to yours, or forcing smiles through stumbling conversations - that wasn't love. That was compromise, and for the longest time, that was what Frank had thought his mother was doing.