And thus a strange, uneasy relationship commenced, a relationship which
might for lack of a better word have been termed friendship. Mel and
Daphne were not made to be friends, their lives and their ways of thinking
followed completely different paths, and neither one of them harbored any
illusions about the fact that if they hadn't shared the common bond of
having been mortally wounded by Niles, they would have had very little use
for one another. Many of their conversations were interspersed with
nervous spaces where neither could find the slightest thing to say. The
Niles-centered animosity of yore had vanished entirely, and even apart from
their shared trauma they found they liked one another well enough; but in a
vague, disinterested sort of way. She wasn't the ideal AIDS companion,
Daphne concluded wryly to herself one afternoon, but there wasn't much to
do about it.
The situation was made much worse by the fact that Daphne was still resolutely refusing to face up to any of this. She continued to shop as if she were sure to die tomorrow, and continued to wince away from any reference to her disease, which made the periodic visits with Mel especially painful, as Mel had clearly moved at least a little beyond that stage and recognized the importance of talking things through. Half the time their discussions were one step short of pure torture for Daphne, who spent the rest of her life working hard at forgetting the whole thing. But Mel didn't know any of that, didn't know Daphne was running away emotionally as fast as she could. She didn't know about Daphne's by-now compulsive shopping (although Daphne had a feeling she suspected; but then, everyone must by this point), didn't know that Daphne hadn't even seen a doctor yet. So she behaved, naturally enough, as if she and Daphne were indeed in the same boat. Sometimes Daphne idly wondered what Mel would do if she knew how badly Daphne was floundering. Then she would shove the thought away and go buy something else.
But life was getting harder all around. The Crane men were well aware that something was going on, and it took all the brilliant artificial don't-fuck- with-me-smiles Daphne could muster to keep them from prying their way into the truth. They knew Niles had left, of course - sometimes Daphne felt that Frasier was left floating adrift as much as she had been - and asked her questions now and again about that, trying to make sure she was okay when they could see full well that she wasn't. They were naturally dying to know why he had left and what was going on and what he had said and if he was ever coming back. Daphne's smile grew even more brilliant as she tried to find a way to tell them she didn't know without saying she didn't know.
And eventually she lied to them. Told them she and Niles had had a little parting of the ways, he'd gone off to sort things through, they'd agreed it would be best if there was no contact so she didn't have his address. He'd be back, she was sure, he was just sorting things through.
"Where the hell did he go, a monastery?" Martin grumbled, on a repetition of this fabricated tale. Before she could help it, Daphne answered "Quite possibly," and then excused herself to the bathroom before the tears could get started.
Hiding and more hiding and it was starting not to work. The questions and furtive glances she got from the Cranes alone were wearing her down. Seeing Mel was much, much worse. One time on the phone she began to concoct an excuse - she'd gotten to be very good at concocting stories of late - but then found, somehow, that she couldn't. Painful as it was, it was a relief that there was at least one person out there who knew the truth. If she backed away from that, she had the sense she would disintegrate from lack of substance.
Predictably, it was in one of these not-exactly-social visits with Mel that it all unraveled. That night Kyra joined them at dinner as well, which automatically made Daphne into a third wheel; she'd confirmed over time that her assumption as to the meaning of that flimsy "roommates" excuse had been correct. Mel had explained briefly a while back that she and Kyra had been roommates in college and had had a Relationship, capital R necessary, then. They'd stayed friends over the years, though Kyra's home was in San Diego - Daphne could already see that Kyra seemed to ground Mel considerably, and it was true that Mel's company was more pleasant with Kyra around - and it had been sheer luck, bad or good depending on your perspective, that Kyra had come for a scheduled visit just days after the blood test results had come back. "She's turned everything around for me," Mel had said, and that was all she would say. Certainly it was all Daphne wanted to hear. Talking about Mel's newly rediscovered lesbian love was less awkward than talking about having AIDS, but not by much.
Still, Kyra seemed a genuinely decent person, and dining with her and Mel, once you'd gotten over the shock, was no more awkward than dining with any standard heterosexual-and-in-love couple. Less awkward than with some, actually. And, since Kyra was there, the conversation had been a lot less awkward than usual regarding the subjects of AIDS and abandonment and death. Daphne was feeling a little revved up, as if she'd had two cups of coffee too many; her foot was jiggling ceaselessly against the leg of her chair all through dinner. But that was the state she was in all the time now, even when she was shopping; shopping had lost some of its narcotizing/tranquilizing effects, which scared the hell out of her when she let it. But most of the time she didn't let it, and through dinner she simply let her foot jiggle against the chair leg and tried to participate in the conversation. It was almost going well, till it all blew up.
It began very simply, with Kyra checking her watch and informing Mel that they should probably hurry up if they wanted to get to the pharmacy before it closed. Daphne flinched automatically, which seemed to escape Mel's notice but not Kyra's. Instead, Mel had turned to her and was speaking to her almost earnestly. She strained to focus.
"All right," she said, "I've been wanting to bring this up for awhile but it's not exactly an easy thing to say." Oh, boy, I'm getting dumped, Daphne thought mirthlessly. "I suppose the bit about the pharmacy is as good a lead-in as any." Daphne's foot began to jiggle a little more animatedly, causing her chair to vibrate unpleasantly. "It's just that I know how - well, how expensive all these medications can get - I know insurance will cover a lot of it, but down the line it won't, and even so, basic care is not enough with this disease. And I. . ."
Daphne kept watching Mel's lips moving but it seemed to have become completely disconnected with the sounds that were spilling out into the air. On some level she was aware that Mel was offering either to help subsidize or else to pay entirely for Daphne's treatments, and on that same level it registered that this was a fantastically generous offer and her estimation of Mel was going to have to shoot up by about five hundred points; but above that it didn't seem to mean anything. Mel was talking about her medications and she wasn't on any, so what did this all mean? "Down the line" - down what line? Was there something coming after today? What was going on?
She was blanking out and just aware of it, just aware that Mel had stopped talking and now it was her turn to say something. She tried. "No," came out - she saw Mel's eyebrows draw together and realized that it sounded like she'd refused her offer, which wasn't exactly what she meant. She tried again. "Please, no," came out that time, and then suddenly her foot's jiggling turned into one hard kick, and she was up and out of her overturned chair without consciously deciding to move. She dashed out of the restaurant without looking back, whirled into her car and screeched out of her parking spot and slammed the door several seconds later, just as Mel and Kyra and half the restaurant made it to the door to watch her departure. She hit sixty before she was out of the parking lot, eighty as soon as she got a stretch of open road ahead of her, and now she was crying, crying and driving eighty-plus miles an hour down a mostly-deserted strip of back roads, and it was because she was dying.
Dying. She saw it now and was utterly incapable of bearing it. She'd said the words to herself thousands of times, had thought they'd sunk in, but obviously they hadn't at all. Now the floodgates were open, her life one giant sore, and she was crying so hard she couldn't see as it all flashed through her, the diagnosis, Niles' leaving, her own running away. She choked and gasped and sobbed it out, driving even faster now, still trying to outrun it on some level, hurting worse than she'd ever thought she could hurt. She only stopped when she ran off the road.
Her tears had blinded her, and she hadn't seen the curve in the road. So she plowed straight into the guardrail, tearing it from its moorings, shearing into a patch of dense but thankfully lightweight foliage. She snapped back against the seat; then, as the car rebounded and settled unevenly against the twisted metal and the seeking branches, she laid her head against the wheel and wept.
She had no idea how long she sat there like that, a thin flexible twig poking into her cheek, her vision a wash of green and gray and red. She cried till she'd developed a hell of a sinus headache, but she couldn't seem to stop, and on some level she relished these tears: they seemed to represent the first true feelings she'd had since that morning Niles left. She cried and screamed obscenities at the sky, obscenities she knew he'd never hear, which was a shame, since it would have been quite educational for him. But he was gone, and she knew it, and she was nowhere near accepting it. At least she was feeling it enough to swear at him. At least her hatred had gone, in Frost's sense, from ice to fire.
No matter how awful the situation, it's impossible to keep crying forever. Once the tears had faded, she looked up hesitantly. The sky had gone from dusk-gray to full black while she'd sat there. Still surprised by the occasional residual hiccup, she maneuvered her car carefully back onto the road and drove back to Seattle at twenty-five miles an hour, much more slowly than she needed to, as she attempted to sort things out. She didn't get much sorted out in the twenty-minute drive home, but it somehow seemed a victory to be trying, to be thinking about it at all. Cried out now, she had a little more courage to face it all.
She didn't know how long it would last, so she decided to make it impossible for herself to retreat once again. She wasn't going to die tomorrow. It was unclear whether this was a blessing or a curse. Either way she had to make the best of it.
She picked up the phone and dialed Frasier's number. Cutting through his hello, she said simply, "Can I come over? There are some things we should discuss."
The situation was made much worse by the fact that Daphne was still resolutely refusing to face up to any of this. She continued to shop as if she were sure to die tomorrow, and continued to wince away from any reference to her disease, which made the periodic visits with Mel especially painful, as Mel had clearly moved at least a little beyond that stage and recognized the importance of talking things through. Half the time their discussions were one step short of pure torture for Daphne, who spent the rest of her life working hard at forgetting the whole thing. But Mel didn't know any of that, didn't know Daphne was running away emotionally as fast as she could. She didn't know about Daphne's by-now compulsive shopping (although Daphne had a feeling she suspected; but then, everyone must by this point), didn't know that Daphne hadn't even seen a doctor yet. So she behaved, naturally enough, as if she and Daphne were indeed in the same boat. Sometimes Daphne idly wondered what Mel would do if she knew how badly Daphne was floundering. Then she would shove the thought away and go buy something else.
But life was getting harder all around. The Crane men were well aware that something was going on, and it took all the brilliant artificial don't-fuck- with-me-smiles Daphne could muster to keep them from prying their way into the truth. They knew Niles had left, of course - sometimes Daphne felt that Frasier was left floating adrift as much as she had been - and asked her questions now and again about that, trying to make sure she was okay when they could see full well that she wasn't. They were naturally dying to know why he had left and what was going on and what he had said and if he was ever coming back. Daphne's smile grew even more brilliant as she tried to find a way to tell them she didn't know without saying she didn't know.
And eventually she lied to them. Told them she and Niles had had a little parting of the ways, he'd gone off to sort things through, they'd agreed it would be best if there was no contact so she didn't have his address. He'd be back, she was sure, he was just sorting things through.
"Where the hell did he go, a monastery?" Martin grumbled, on a repetition of this fabricated tale. Before she could help it, Daphne answered "Quite possibly," and then excused herself to the bathroom before the tears could get started.
Hiding and more hiding and it was starting not to work. The questions and furtive glances she got from the Cranes alone were wearing her down. Seeing Mel was much, much worse. One time on the phone she began to concoct an excuse - she'd gotten to be very good at concocting stories of late - but then found, somehow, that she couldn't. Painful as it was, it was a relief that there was at least one person out there who knew the truth. If she backed away from that, she had the sense she would disintegrate from lack of substance.
Predictably, it was in one of these not-exactly-social visits with Mel that it all unraveled. That night Kyra joined them at dinner as well, which automatically made Daphne into a third wheel; she'd confirmed over time that her assumption as to the meaning of that flimsy "roommates" excuse had been correct. Mel had explained briefly a while back that she and Kyra had been roommates in college and had had a Relationship, capital R necessary, then. They'd stayed friends over the years, though Kyra's home was in San Diego - Daphne could already see that Kyra seemed to ground Mel considerably, and it was true that Mel's company was more pleasant with Kyra around - and it had been sheer luck, bad or good depending on your perspective, that Kyra had come for a scheduled visit just days after the blood test results had come back. "She's turned everything around for me," Mel had said, and that was all she would say. Certainly it was all Daphne wanted to hear. Talking about Mel's newly rediscovered lesbian love was less awkward than talking about having AIDS, but not by much.
Still, Kyra seemed a genuinely decent person, and dining with her and Mel, once you'd gotten over the shock, was no more awkward than dining with any standard heterosexual-and-in-love couple. Less awkward than with some, actually. And, since Kyra was there, the conversation had been a lot less awkward than usual regarding the subjects of AIDS and abandonment and death. Daphne was feeling a little revved up, as if she'd had two cups of coffee too many; her foot was jiggling ceaselessly against the leg of her chair all through dinner. But that was the state she was in all the time now, even when she was shopping; shopping had lost some of its narcotizing/tranquilizing effects, which scared the hell out of her when she let it. But most of the time she didn't let it, and through dinner she simply let her foot jiggle against the chair leg and tried to participate in the conversation. It was almost going well, till it all blew up.
It began very simply, with Kyra checking her watch and informing Mel that they should probably hurry up if they wanted to get to the pharmacy before it closed. Daphne flinched automatically, which seemed to escape Mel's notice but not Kyra's. Instead, Mel had turned to her and was speaking to her almost earnestly. She strained to focus.
"All right," she said, "I've been wanting to bring this up for awhile but it's not exactly an easy thing to say." Oh, boy, I'm getting dumped, Daphne thought mirthlessly. "I suppose the bit about the pharmacy is as good a lead-in as any." Daphne's foot began to jiggle a little more animatedly, causing her chair to vibrate unpleasantly. "It's just that I know how - well, how expensive all these medications can get - I know insurance will cover a lot of it, but down the line it won't, and even so, basic care is not enough with this disease. And I. . ."
Daphne kept watching Mel's lips moving but it seemed to have become completely disconnected with the sounds that were spilling out into the air. On some level she was aware that Mel was offering either to help subsidize or else to pay entirely for Daphne's treatments, and on that same level it registered that this was a fantastically generous offer and her estimation of Mel was going to have to shoot up by about five hundred points; but above that it didn't seem to mean anything. Mel was talking about her medications and she wasn't on any, so what did this all mean? "Down the line" - down what line? Was there something coming after today? What was going on?
She was blanking out and just aware of it, just aware that Mel had stopped talking and now it was her turn to say something. She tried. "No," came out - she saw Mel's eyebrows draw together and realized that it sounded like she'd refused her offer, which wasn't exactly what she meant. She tried again. "Please, no," came out that time, and then suddenly her foot's jiggling turned into one hard kick, and she was up and out of her overturned chair without consciously deciding to move. She dashed out of the restaurant without looking back, whirled into her car and screeched out of her parking spot and slammed the door several seconds later, just as Mel and Kyra and half the restaurant made it to the door to watch her departure. She hit sixty before she was out of the parking lot, eighty as soon as she got a stretch of open road ahead of her, and now she was crying, crying and driving eighty-plus miles an hour down a mostly-deserted strip of back roads, and it was because she was dying.
Dying. She saw it now and was utterly incapable of bearing it. She'd said the words to herself thousands of times, had thought they'd sunk in, but obviously they hadn't at all. Now the floodgates were open, her life one giant sore, and she was crying so hard she couldn't see as it all flashed through her, the diagnosis, Niles' leaving, her own running away. She choked and gasped and sobbed it out, driving even faster now, still trying to outrun it on some level, hurting worse than she'd ever thought she could hurt. She only stopped when she ran off the road.
Her tears had blinded her, and she hadn't seen the curve in the road. So she plowed straight into the guardrail, tearing it from its moorings, shearing into a patch of dense but thankfully lightweight foliage. She snapped back against the seat; then, as the car rebounded and settled unevenly against the twisted metal and the seeking branches, she laid her head against the wheel and wept.
She had no idea how long she sat there like that, a thin flexible twig poking into her cheek, her vision a wash of green and gray and red. She cried till she'd developed a hell of a sinus headache, but she couldn't seem to stop, and on some level she relished these tears: they seemed to represent the first true feelings she'd had since that morning Niles left. She cried and screamed obscenities at the sky, obscenities she knew he'd never hear, which was a shame, since it would have been quite educational for him. But he was gone, and she knew it, and she was nowhere near accepting it. At least she was feeling it enough to swear at him. At least her hatred had gone, in Frost's sense, from ice to fire.
No matter how awful the situation, it's impossible to keep crying forever. Once the tears had faded, she looked up hesitantly. The sky had gone from dusk-gray to full black while she'd sat there. Still surprised by the occasional residual hiccup, she maneuvered her car carefully back onto the road and drove back to Seattle at twenty-five miles an hour, much more slowly than she needed to, as she attempted to sort things out. She didn't get much sorted out in the twenty-minute drive home, but it somehow seemed a victory to be trying, to be thinking about it at all. Cried out now, she had a little more courage to face it all.
She didn't know how long it would last, so she decided to make it impossible for herself to retreat once again. She wasn't going to die tomorrow. It was unclear whether this was a blessing or a curse. Either way she had to make the best of it.
She picked up the phone and dialed Frasier's number. Cutting through his hello, she said simply, "Can I come over? There are some things we should discuss."