FORTY-TWO
On Sunday night Audrey stood in her room with her hand-me-down camera balanced on the tripod that apparently only worked with fancy new cameras. Hopefully the duct tape–rubber band–ribbon tie method she’d rigged up would hold it in place, because she really needed this to work.
That thing about her mom being the last set of photos she’d needed was a lie. There was one more set she had to take.
Ever since her talk with Rose, and before, when Olivia had asked about it, Audrey had been thinking. She’d gone through all the many, many pictures on her computer, looked at the gallery tacked up on her wall, even searched around the various social media sites her friends were on, looking for any pictures that she appeared in.
Grand total: thirty-four.
Thirty-four! Out of the past five years of photographs, out of dozens of parties and dinners and school events, there were only thirty-four pictures of her.
And that had got her to thinking that it wasn’t fair. It’s not fair at all. Here I am, asking people to lay themselves bare in front of me for the sake of my “art,” or because I want a tangible reminder of a moment, or . . . because I can. Because it’s my instinct now, when I see something that hits me a certain way, to pick up my camera and freeze it for myself. But I won’t do the same?
Audrey attached the shutter cord and moved backward, so that she was standing against the far wall. Underneath her feet she felt the tremors from Adam’s music as he made dinner. Her mom was in the bathtub with a glass of wine and a cupcake that Audrey had slipped around the door a little while ago. Things were pretty much business as usual at the Spencer-Price household. Okay, except for the fact that their morning conversations now included phrases like “general anesthesia” and “routine procedure” and that in a few days she had an appointment at a clinic two towns away to end her pregnancy.
Other than that, yeah—completely normal.
Audrey shook her head to clear it. Her mind kept wandering off on these tangents, which would be all well and good if she didn’t know she was only doing it to avoid the weirdness that was taking her own photograph.
How hard can it be? she thought. People do it all the time. Selfie much?
“Get over yourself,” Audrey said out loud, focusing on the camera’s lens staring at her. “I can do this. I’m going to do this. Any . . . second . . . now.”
On now she squeezed the button clasped in her left hand, which set off a flash so bright her eyes stung and a click so familiar that she reflexively relaxed.
It still felt strange, though, a slightly alien experience to be the one fully in the frame as opposed to the one creating it. Audrey turned to the left, leaving her focus on the lens, and squeezed again. Click.
She ran back to the camera and pressed her eye to it, checking the framing. The thing with digital cameras was that you could see what you were doing wrong and fix it right away: tighten on some particular aspect, adjust the shutter speed, fix the focus. It was good because you were learning all along, constantly seeing and changing and moving, but using her old camera felt surprisingly freeing. You didn’t know whether what you were doing was total crap or complete genius, and you wouldn’t find out until the images came to life in the acetic acid.
Confident that she was at least getting her head and shoulders in the shot, Audrey went back to her spot and peeled off her shirt. She paused for a second, then removed her bra, too. Her body wasn’t in the shot, so it wasn’t like anyone was going to see, and the images would look so much better without bra straps cutting into her shoulders.
Click.
With each shot Audrey opened up a little. Tension easing from her neck, fog lifting from her head.
Click.
She turned in a slow circle, tilting her head this way and that, slipping her hands behind her neck and lifting her hair to expose the skin there. Raised her arms, pressed her fingers to her temples. Closed her eyes, turned; opened them, smiled.
Click. Click. Click.
When the click came without a flash, Audrey reloaded the film and started the whole process over again. This time, though, she stood closer to the camera, pushing herself despite how uncomfortable it made her.
They don’t say “suffer for your art” for nothing, she thought.
Click.
FORTY-THREE
The day of the appointment dawned crystal clear and cold, one of those mornings when the sun high in the sky couldn’t be trusted and deadly slick ice glittered underfoot.
They were supposed to leave at ten. At twenty after, Julian’s car pulled up and he jumped out, breathless. “Sorry,” he said. “Car died on Hampshire. I know, I know,” he said when Audrey raised her eyebrows. “I’m sorry, okay?”
“Today? Really?” Audrey said quietly to him as her mom came outside, car keys in her hand.
“I said I’m sorry.” Julian pushed his hair back. His mouth looked like he was trying to smile but failing, one corner lifted slightly. “Are you ready?”
Audrey slid a hand behind her neck and rubbed the tense muscles there. “I’m ready for it to be over.”
“Morning, Julian,” her mom said, her motorcycle boots shushing down the slush-covered steps. “Okay, Audrey. Let’s go.”
The drive passed quietly, the highway disappearing under the car and then bare-limbed trees waving a haunting welcome as the road turned narrow and winding. Eventually they passed inside the border of a town, and right there, sitting between a couple of generic-looking stores, was the clinic.
Audrey wouldn’t have even known which building it was if not for the lone woman outside holding a sign that said, in crooked letters, SAVE YOUR SOUL SAVE YOUR BABY. “Is it wrong that I’m almost disappointed?” Julian said. “I was expecting a little more effort from the extremist side.”
“It’s a letdown,” Audrey agreed, but she knew that they were both joking to ease the tension of the whole thing.
“Ignore it,” Laura said, and her hand pressed into Audrey’s back gently. “Come on, we’re already late.”
They hurried past the protester and into the clinic, where Audrey felt the atmosphere change. She couldn’t put her finger on it—it was like half sterile hospital smell and half the feeling you get at the thought of a root canal, with an odd dash of spa serenity courtesy of the potpourri sitting on the waiting-room table. She walked up to the desk and gave her name to the woman sitting there. “Hi,” she said. “I have an appointment.”
Audrey sat on the table in a paper gown. The inside of her elbow was sore from the blood they’d taken and where the needle giving her sedation was placed, and her feet were cold even in the thick socks she had on.
The nurse—Hathaway, according to her name tag—pressed gently on Audrey’s shoulder. “Lie back for me, hon.”
The doctor and another guy—a doctor or a nurse, Audrey wasn’t sure—bustled around her as she did as she was told and then put her feet up in the stirrups at the end of the bed. Oh my God, she thought, they can see everything. This is so embarrassing.
Then she remembered what she was there for and bit her lip so as not to laugh at her own ridiculousness. “All right, Audrey,” the doctor said, and his voice was cheerful behind the surgical mask. “We’re going to go ahead and get started. Are you comfortable?”
Audrey nodded, and the cap covering her hair rustled against the bed. “Yes.”
“All right,” he said again. “Let’s get going.”
“You can hold my hand if you want,” Nurse Hathaway said. “And we can talk.”
“Oh, we’ll talk,” the doctor said, and from his voice Audrey imagined him to be the kind of guy who’d always have a dollar for the tip jar, who laughed at his own jokes so hard the people around him couldn’t help but laugh, too. “I’ll let you know what’s happening. And we can talk about anything you want—you like football?”
“My mom likes the Raiders,” Audrey said, staring at the fluorescent lights above.
“Good choice,” the doctor s
aid. “They might make the playoffs this year. Okay, you’re going to feel a little pressure.”
When Audrey reached for the nurse’s hand, it was already right there at her shoulder, and she squeezed this woman’s fingers tight as the speculum was inserted. The doctor was true to his word—he talked through everything he was doing, the tube going into her uterus, the suction going on, the instrument that he was using to clear out any remaining cells.
Cells, Audrey repeated in her head. Like I thought all along.
The doctor also talked about his dog, asked Nurse Hathaway about her new puppy, asked Audrey if she had any pets.
“A cat,” Audrey said, exhaling. “Marmalade.”
“That’s a good name,” Nurse Hathaway said. “I like that.”
Audrey hummed instead of replying. It didn’t hurt so much—the sedation was taking care of that—but it was uncomfortable for sure. It was made better by the way the nurse kept rubbing her thumb across Audrey’s knuckles. “You’re doing great,” the other doctor—or nurse—said, fiddling with a tray. “Almost over.”
Audrey hummed again, loud enough so the buzzing of her own voice was the only sound in her head.
The doctor wheeled his chair back, and Audrey lifted her head at the sound of the wheels squeaking on the tiled floor. She could see that he was smiling by the crinkles around his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “We’re all done.”
“It’s finished?” Audrey let her head drop back, and the crash of relief almost shocked her with its intensity. That was it. There was not going to be a baby. She was not going to be a mother; Julian wasn’t going to be a father. And she didn’t have to worry about it anymore.
Life could go on.
She smiled.
After Audrey was wheeled into the recovery area and she’d sat in there for an hour that seemed like five minutes, she got dressed in her own clothes and was led out to the waiting room. Nurse Hathaway handed Audrey a bunch of pamphlets and a card with the contact details of the doctor who’d performed her D & C (letters Audrey would be glad not to think about for a while). “Remember, take it easy for the rest of today,” she said. She had locs twisted into a side ponytail and the softest eyes Audrey had ever seen. “No heavy lifting, no exercise, no stress, okay?”
The doctor had said the same thing, as well as “No sex for at least two weeks, four being realistic—your body needs to heal. And of course, it doesn’t have to happen after four weeks—whenever you feel ready, if you want to.” Audrey had nodded without comment—she couldn’t even think about that right now, but she’d filed the information away for future reference anyway.
Audrey winced as her stomach cramped again. Shit, that hurt. “No exercise? No problem.”
Nurse Hathaway laughed, and Audrey could picture her as the kind of mom who’d gladly roll around in mud with her new puppy or climb up spindly trees to keep her kids happy. If she had kids, that was. “Well, that’s all right, then. Remember to make that appointment with your doctor—that’s important. And if you have any problems—you feel feverish, you’re bleeding a lot, or if your period doesn’t start up again within a couple months—call us.”
Fever, bleeding, no period. Audrey filed that info away, too, and nodded. “Okay.”
“Great! So.” Nurse Hathaway slapped the paper file closed and gave Audrey a gentle smile. “You’re all done. Do you have anybody with you?”
“My mom.” Audrey turned to where Laura was waiting, biting her nails as she stared at a book. Julian sat rigidly upright next to her, drumming on his knees, much to the fascination of the toddler waiting with her mother across from him. “And my boyfriend.”
“Good. You make sure they take care of you, all right?” Nurse Hathaway nodded, her locs bobbing, and Audrey felt a calm settling in. She was so, so glad they were both there with her. The other way would have been absolutely unbearable, and it made her ache to think that not everyone in her position had the same luck as she did.
The nurse patted the back of Audrey’s hand. “Tell them you need ice cream and bad movies—doctor’s orders.”
Audrey managed to smile as another cramp attacked her body. “I will.”
“Good girl,” Nurse Hathaway said. “Take good care of yourself, too. You’re going to be all right.”
“I know,” Audrey said, taking a step away from the nurse and toward her family. “Thanks. For everything.”
She slept most of the drive home, in the back with her head on Julian’s shoulder and a heat pack pressed to her abdomen. The cramping was killer, and her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton wool.
When they pulled up outside home it was beginning to get dark. Julian helped her up the front steps and into the hall until Audrey said, “I’m not going to break. You don’t have to be quite so chivalrous.” Which raised a smile from Julian, so that was good.
Adam hovered at the bottom of the second staircase, hopping from foot to foot. He began talking so quickly that it was hard for Audrey to keep up: Did she need him to get anything? Was she hungry? What about Thai for dinner? From her favorite place?
“Adam, babe.” Laura’s bracelets clinked as she pushed her hair back. “Let the girl breathe.”
But Audrey placed her hands on his shoulders and rose up on tiptoe to kiss his (for once clean-shaven) cheek. “Thanks,” she said, and Adam looked confused.
“For what?” he asked. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Oh,” Audrey said, “yeah. You did.” Then she looked at her mom. “Is it okay if I go upstairs? I’m kind of tired.”
“Of course,” her mom said, and she gave Julian this look that Audrey guessed she wasn’t supposed to see. It was a treat-my-baby-with-delicate-hands look, an I’ll-kill-you-if-you-screw-up-this-moment look. Which made Audrey happy: her mom was nothing if not fierce.
She took the stairs to her room slowly, almost weeping at the sight of her beautiful, familiar bed with the pillows scattered all over and fleece blankets to warm her feet on the bottom.
Then, curled up with Julian underneath the covers, she wept with something else. Sadness? Happiness? Mourning? Relief?
It was a mixture of all that, really, and she liked that Julian didn’t try to soothe or quiet her, only rubbed the tense point between her shoulder blades while she breathed in his smell and cried harder.
“We made the right choice,” he said later, when Audrey was all cried out and the sky outside was truly dark. “We did.”
“I know,” Audrey said, pressing her face into his chest.
And she’d know it when she woke up tomorrow, and in two weeks, and in a couple of years. Look at her birth mother—in the first letter she’d written to Audrey, everything had seemed tinged blue, pained in its sincerity, but in the second one the words had been filled with hope and happiness. Amanda Darby had a good life, now: a job and kids, a husband, a dog. If Amanda Darby could be happy, then so could Audrey. And more than that, she should be happy. Amanda had given Audrey the opportunity to do that, to have a mom who loved her so much even when Audrey didn’t deserve it, who would make the world move to give Audrey everything she ever needed.
And maybe Audrey would grow up to be an artist, or maybe not. She could be a teacher or a mother or a person who tried to make the world a little brighter. She could do all those things because of what her mom did for her, what Amanda did for her, what she did for herself. Her life could go in ten thousand different directions, and all of them were right.
So tomorrow, and in two weeks, and in a couple of years, she’d be happy. That was a promise to herself that she’d do everything to keep.
FORTY-FOUR
When Audrey developed her rolls and rolls of film, she was pleased with the results. Her self-portraits made her the most nervous, but even they were okay. They were in focus, at least, and the angles had allowed her face to become the main point of each picture.
Since then she’d spent the entire week in art class shut away in the darkroom, messing around and experimenting with va
rious ways of cropping and exposing and overlaying different images, the way she’d done a few months ago with her digital images. It was fun to have her hands in her pictures for once.
But the best part about the photographs, though—and also the hardest part—was the girl Audrey had captured in them.
Because it was her, and also not her. It looked like the girl she saw in the mirror every morning, with the slight gap between her front teeth and the brown skin that veered from deep autumn-leaves-brown to pale-sandy-gold depending on the time of the year and how much sun she’d gotten.
But this girl looked older than Audrey felt. The eyes had an intensity to them, even when they were looking past the camera or hidden away behind eyelids. Her back had more freckles mapping across it than Audrey’s did—it must have, because surely Audrey would have noticed how every square inch of flesh, from her shoulders to the dip between her shoulder blades to the back of her neck, was speckled and dotted with flowering little marks. The cheekbones were more defined, the apples of those cheeks sweeter and plumper.
Mostly, though, it was the aura this girl projected: something strong and delicate at the same time, like glass, like ice. When Audrey looked in the mirror, she saw a young girl with bright eyes and a happy face. In these pictures she was knowing, older, wiser.
On the Tuesday before winter break the art studio hummed with energy and chatter. Everyone had put their best, or favorite, or most accomplished pieces on display, the way they did every year. The doughnut boxes on Ms. Fitz’s desk were picked clean, and Ms. Fitz herself sat behind the desk, using her own camera to take pictures of everybody. Art made of art, Audrey thought.
Audrey had picked out her favorites of all her portraits and framed them before tacking them to a large piece of plywood, propping it up against the wall at the back of the room. They went in order: her mom, then Rose, and Adam before Julian. She’d picked one of her self-portraits to go last. And then, on either end, she had framed (copies) of the letters from Amanda Darby. The first one to the left of Laura’s picture and the most recent one to the right of her own face. There it was: a timeline of her entire life so far.
You Don’t Know Me but I Know You Page 23