Frank Slovak’s injured, weakened body in the aftermath of his farming accident symbolizes his broken marriage with his wife, Mrs. Slovak. At the beginning of “Flexion,” sheep farmer Frank is severely injured and partially paralyzed when his tractor overturns on him and crushes his spine. After a months-long hospital stay, Frank regains some limited movement, but his body is disabled and wasted away: “he’s as scared and frail as an old, old man,” Mrs. Slovak thinks. As the Slovaks have had an abusive, uncommunicative marriage for many years, Frank’s atrophied state is a physical manifestation of the couple’s emotionally atrophied relationship—and both of these problems weigh on the couple in an obvious yet unspoken manner.
But at the end of the story, as Frank silently cries next to her bed, Mrs. Slovak thinks back to the titular “flexion” exercises that a physical therapist performed on Frank in the hospital. This repeated flexing of joints was meant to encourage muscle memory and prevent the very atrophy that’s affecting Frank now that he’s stopped doing the exercises. As a kind of symbolic peace offering and gesture of solidarity, Mrs. Slovak performs one of these movements on Frank: she takes Frank’s hand and raises his arm with hers, flexing their elbows together. She then places Frank’s own hand over his heart and holds it there—and importantly, he doesn’t slap her hand away like he did earlier in the story. Having lacked any openness or affection for years, the couple shares a rare moment of intimacy that is one of both bodily and interpersonal “flexion,” ushering in the potential for a healthier, more communicative relationship if the Slovaks are willing to put in the kind of habitual effort that any therapeutic measure requires. As such, Frank’s frail body comes to represent not only the Slovaks’ troubled past but also the possibility of a fresh start toward a better marriage.
Frank’s Body Quotes in Flexion
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.
‘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.
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.
Frank’s Body Symbol Timeline in Flexion
