Frank’s Wife / Mrs. Slovak Character Analysis

Sees too, as she pulls his shirt up to shade his eyes, that every emotion he’s withheld from her for the last eighteen years, every flinch and grimace and jerk of the eyebrows and lips, is boiling and writhing across his face now. It’s as if the locked strongbox inside has burst open and everything in there is rippling free and exorcised to the surface, desperately making its escape.

The year she’d lost the baby, he’d driven her home from the hospital—the big hospital, half an hour away, so that not even the local nurses would know—and told her, looking straight ahead through the windscreen, ‘We’re putting this behind us.’

No jars of jam then, no lavender soap, not a word spoken or confided, until she’d felt she might go mad with the denial of it. They put it behind them, alright. They harnessed themselves to it, and dragged it like a black deadweight at their backs. They became its beasts of burden. And not a neighbour in sight, then, to drop by with a crumb of pity or a listening ear. Frank had decided that nobody was to know.

‘I’m not going to be a burden on anyone, is that clear?’ he mutters to her when the physios finally leave them alone for the afternoon. And knocks her hand away, as she goes to wipe some gravy off his chin.

That’s Frank all over. Can’t hold a fork, but can still find a way to smack her out of the way.

Because now any fool can see how it’s going to be. Frank unable to sit at the desk, standing over her telling her how to do the books, ordering her round and snapping at her. In the ute beside her as she drives, sighing with contempt every time she crunches the gears, unable even to get out and open the gates for her, Frank hovering over her entire working day, badgering her and criticising her and depending on her for everything. And her, running the gauntlet outside church and in town, having to dutifully tell everyone how lucky they’d been.

Limited mobility is actually going to suit Frank, she thinks; he’s been minimising all his movements for years, barely turning his head to her when she speaks, sitting there stonily in the kitchen, immoveable as a mountain. Unbending.

‘Bob Wilkes did it,’ she calls, but he doesn’t turn or respond. She imagines him giving up and toppling, curled there on the ground. She’s never seen him curled up, not even when she sat there with him in the dirt, waiting for the ambulance. He’d stayed in control then too, sprawled there licking his lips every now and again, his eyes losing focus with something like bewilderment as he stared up into the blue, something almost innocent.

God, the flesh is hanging off him. His knuckles are white and waxy as they cling to the handles; he’s as scared and frail as an old, old man. Scared to turn his head or take one hand off the rail. One misstep away from a nursing home. His hair needs a cut and she decides she’ll do it later at the kitchen table.

‘That’s better,’ he says as she adjusts the hot tap.

And she can hear that he’s about to say thank you, then stops and swallows. Even without the thanks, though, she thinks it’s probably the longest conversation they’ve had for months.

She thinks about the physiotherapist at the hospital, lifting Frank’s legs and folding them against his body, turning him on his side and gently bending his arms from shoulder to hip. Flexion, she’d called it. Exercises to flex the muscles and keep the memory of limber movement alive in the body, to stop those ligaments and tendons tightening and atrophying away.

‘Just like this, Mr Slovak,’ she’d said, that calm and cheerful young woman. ‘You can do these yourself, just keep at it,’ and she’d taken Frank’s hand and made his arm describe a slow circle, then flexed the elbow to make it touch his chest. Down and back again, over and over; a gesture like a woodenly acted entreaty.

She’s never seen this, and it’s mortifying. They’d warned her about acute pain; she wonders about getting up and giving him some tablets, but she’s so shocked all she can do is turn her head back to look up at the ceiling and spare him the shame of her scrutiny. They lie rigidly side by side.

‘When you stood up to run home and call the ambulance,’ he says, ‘I thought, well, now I've got ten minutes. Now would be the good time to die, while you weren’t there. That's what I could give you.’

Lying there, she has a sense of how it is, suddenly: willing your limbs to move but being unable to lift them. The terrible treasonous distance between them that must be traversed, the numbed heaviness of her arm.

She lies there feeling the pulse in her husband’s pitifully thin wrist under her little finger. She understands better than anyone, she thinks, the painful stretch of sinew, the crack of dislocation. Remembers herself running back over the paddocks, flying barefoot over stones and earth, looking down distractedly in the ambulance later to notice the dried blood on her feet. How fast she’d run, and how much faster she’d run back. Now, in the dark bed, she raises her arm with Frank’s and gently flexes both their elbows together. She places his hand wordlessly, determinedly, over his heart, and holds it there.

Sees too, as she pulls his shirt up to shade his eyes, that every emotion he’s withheld from her for the last eighteen years, every flinch and grimace and jerk of the eyebrows and lips, is boiling and writhing across his face now. It’s as if the locked strongbox inside has burst open and everything in there is rippling free and exorcised to the surface, desperately making its escape.

The year she’d lost the baby, he’d driven her home from the hospital—the big hospital, half an hour away, so that not even the local nurses would know—and told her, looking straight ahead through the windscreen, ‘We’re putting this behind us.’

No jars of jam then, no lavender soap, not a word spoken or confided, until she’d felt she might go mad with the denial of it. They put it behind them, alright. They harnessed themselves to it, and dragged it like a black deadweight at their backs. They became its beasts of burden. And not a neighbour in sight, then, to drop by with a crumb of pity or a listening ear. Frank had decided that nobody was to know.

‘I’m not going to be a burden on anyone, is that clear?’ he mutters to her when the physios finally leave them alone for the afternoon. And knocks her hand away, as she goes to wipe some gravy off his chin.

That’s Frank all over. Can’t hold a fork, but can still find a way to smack her out of the way.

Because now any fool can see how it’s going to be. Frank unable to sit at the desk, standing over her telling her how to do the books, ordering her round and snapping at her. In the ute beside her as she drives, sighing with contempt every time she crunches the gears, unable even to get out and open the gates for her, Frank hovering over her entire working day, badgering her and criticising her and depending on her for everything. And her, running the gauntlet outside church and in town, having to dutifully tell everyone how lucky they’d been.

Limited mobility is actually going to suit Frank, she thinks; he’s been minimising all his movements for years, barely turning his head to her when she speaks, sitting there stonily in the kitchen, immoveable as a mountain. Unbending.

‘Bob Wilkes did it,’ she calls, but he doesn’t turn or respond. She imagines him giving up and toppling, curled there on the ground. She’s never seen him curled up, not even when she sat there with him in the dirt, waiting for the ambulance. He’d stayed in control then too, sprawled there licking his lips every now and again, his eyes losing focus with something like bewilderment as he stared up into the blue, something almost innocent.

God, the flesh is hanging off him. His knuckles are white and waxy as they cling to the handles; he’s as scared and frail as an old, old man. Scared to turn his head or take one hand off the rail. One misstep away from a nursing home. His hair needs a cut and she decides she’ll do it later at the kitchen table.

‘That’s better,’ he says as she adjusts the hot tap.

And she can hear that he’s about to say thank you, then stops and swallows. Even without the thanks, though, she thinks it’s probably the longest conversation they’ve had for months.

She thinks about the physiotherapist at the hospital, lifting Frank’s legs and folding them against his body, turning him on his side and gently bending his arms from shoulder to hip. Flexion, she’d called it. Exercises to flex the muscles and keep the memory of limber movement alive in the body, to stop those ligaments and tendons tightening and atrophying away.

‘Just like this, Mr Slovak,’ she’d said, that calm and cheerful young woman. ‘You can do these yourself, just keep at it,’ and she’d taken Frank’s hand and made his arm describe a slow circle, then flexed the elbow to make it touch his chest. Down and back again, over and over; a gesture like a woodenly acted entreaty.

She’s never seen this, and it’s mortifying. They’d warned her about acute pain; she wonders about getting up and giving him some tablets, but she’s so shocked all she can do is turn her head back to look up at the ceiling and spare him the shame of her scrutiny. They lie rigidly side by side.

‘When you stood up to run home and call the ambulance,’ he says, ‘I thought, well, now I've got ten minutes. Now would be the good time to die, while you weren’t there. That's what I could give you.’

Lying there, she has a sense of how it is, suddenly: willing your limbs to move but being unable to lift them. The terrible treasonous distance between them that must be traversed, the numbed heaviness of her arm.

She lies there feeling the pulse in her husband’s pitifully thin wrist under her little finger. She understands better than anyone, she thinks, the painful stretch of sinew, the crack of dislocation. Remembers herself running back over the paddocks, flying barefoot over stones and earth, looking down distractedly in the ambulance later to notice the dried blood on her feet. How fast she’d run, and how much faster she’d run back. Now, in the dark bed, she raises her arm with Frank’s and gently flexes both their elbows together. She places his hand wordlessly, determinedly, over his heart, and holds it there.