Pictures of Us

by Amy Garvey

  But as we ate hastily thrown-together roast-beef sandwiches at the kitchen table, I watched his face anyway, for any sign that he was remembering those long-ago days with Sophia. For the smallest proof that he was regretful, that he believed he had chosen wrong.

  And I waited for him to talk to me, to ask me what I thought about Drew’s illness or his chances. Instead, he paged through the morning paper, glancing up at me from time to time as he reached for another potato chip.

  But he didn’t ask why I was staring at him. He didn’t ask what was on my mind, or how I felt about the events of the weekend. And that wasn’t normal. Neither was the nearly guilty flash of confusion in his eyes when he folded the paper and retreated to his desk, leaving me alone with the dishes and a knot tightening in my throat.

  I WAS GRATEFUL FOR THE RETURN to the daily routine on Tuesday. No More Wallowing. That was my motto as I got Michael off to the train and dug lunch money out of the bottom of my purse for Emma. I had work to do, of both the domestic and paying variety, and I fully intended to make a sweep through the house that morning before settling in with the photographs I’d taken so far for the book.

  The sun had come out again, and the air was sweet and still damp from yesterday’s rain. Walter collapsed in a circle of sunlight by the front door as I thrust open the windows and picked up junk mail and odds and ends in an old pair of jeans and a Joffrey Ballet T-shirt from three seasons ago. The plan was to dust, vacuum and possibly damp-mop the wood floors before lunchtime. A clean house always made me more settled, and each task was something I could plunge into with the stereo on to drown out my thoughts. Today called for loud and kick-ass, so I popped Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town into the CD player.

  I was singing along to “Badlands,” dust rag in hand, when Walter sprang to his feet and sent out a joyful bark. The mailman, I assumed, although it was early—Walter’s bark was always joyful. If a serial killer showed up, bloody knife in hand, Walter would greet him with a wagging tail and a “pet me” expression in his soulful doggy eyes.

  “Anyone here?” The familiar voice came through the screen door, and I whirled to see Lucy standing on the other side of it. “Hello?”

  “Lucy!” I threw the dust rag on the coffee table and darted over to the stereo to turn down the music, waving her in at the same time. “What are you doing here?”

  She looked up from scratching behind Walter’s ears with a saucy grin. Her ginger hair was pulled into a French twist, and a pair of sleek black sunglasses were perched on top of her head. In her neatly pressed khakis and white blouse, she could have stepped out of a glossy magazine ad for the Perfect Professional Woman.

  “I was in the neighborhood,” she said, striding across the hall to hug me. “And I haven’t seen your face in way too long.”

  It was true—we relied on e-mail and infrequent phone calls to keep in touch now, with her in Baltimore working for the city planner. The last time we’d been in the same room was more than nine months ago.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re here,” I told her, hugging her back for an extra minute. If she saw the tears in my eyes, I would be in trouble, but the sheer relief of seeing a friendly face—and one who had heard nothing about our family’s strange news—was enough to make me dizzy. “Can you stay long?”

  “Unfortunately, not really.” She followed me into the kitchen, where I opened the fridge to search out bottles of iced tea. “I was here all weekend, but when I came around on Saturday, you weren’t here. I swung by your mom’s and she said you went to Cambridge.”

  She sat at the kitchen table, her bag and keys tossed casually on the surface. Even staring into the refrigerator I couldn’t miss the question in her tone.

  “We were back by Sunday evening,” I said, and turned to hand her a Snapple. “How’s your mom?”

  She arched one well-groomed eyebrow. “Don’t change the subject. What on earth were you doing in Cambridge? Did Michael have a college reunion or something?”

  Lucy hadn’t gotten to where she was by being a pushover. Hell, she hadn’t been a pushover in high school. And I wasn’t going to lie to her—she would have to know about Drew, too. So much for a good long girls’ chat about nothing but fluff. Still, telling her the truth didn’t mean I had to dive in headfirst.

  “It was a family thing.” I pulled out the chair opposite hers and sat down, then drew my knees up and wrapped my arms around them. “Do you want some lunch? What time is it, anyway?” I made a show of checking my watch, and she rolled her eyes.

  “You’re possibly the worst liar in the world, you know that?” She leaned across the table to narrow her eyes at me. “Michael doesn’t have family in Cambridge and neither do you.”

  A half laugh escaped. “He does now.”

  She dragged the whole story out of me then, punctuating everything I told her with a question or a curse or shocked amazement. I revealed it all, even my reasons for separating from Michael. By the time I was done, she had slumped back in her chair, listening as she focused on the slowly circling fan on the ceiling.

  “So Michael’s going up later this week to take some tests to determine if he’s a bone marrow match,” I finished. I carefully omitted the chance, another elephant living in the room with Michael and me, that Emma might need to do the same thing. “After that, well, it will depend on the results.”

  She sat up and leveled her gaze at me as I cracked open my bottle of iced tea. “And you’re okay with all of this?”

  “Okay with Michael helping to save Drew’s life if that’s possible? Of course I am.”

  “Not with that.” Lucy scraped her chair away from the table and stood up to pace the length of the kitchen. “With everything else! Jesus, Tess, what’s wrong with you? You find out Michael slept with another woman, and you’re completely calm about it? And what the hell is this Sophia’s problem? How selfish is that, to give birth to this kid and never tell the child’s father? And then when he needs something, it’s a different story.”

  Her outrage was so unexpected, so violent in the sunny, quiet kitchen, it was like a spark, lighting my own fury. What on earth did she have to be so angry about?

  I put my iced tea down on the old maple table with a resounding thunk. “Did you ever stop to think that I’m grateful for what you claim is Sophia’s selfishness? If she’d told Michael she was pregnant all those years ago, what would have happened then? What would my life be right now?”

  “That’s not the point.” Lucy was dug in already, I could tell, prepared to argue her point until I capitulated. She leaned against the counter and folded her arms over her chest. “The point is—”

  “The point is that this is my life, Lucy! Mine and Michael’s, and Emma’s, too. And no matter what you think about it, it’s shaken every one of us down to our bones. And it did before we knew Drew was ill.” I bit my bottom lip. Tears were threatening already, hot and urgent, and I choked out the words past the lump in my throat. “God, Lucy, I would have expected at least a little sympathy. Support would be even better, all right?”

  “Tess, you don’t get it!” She crossed the room to lean over me, and rested her head against mine as she wound an arm around my shoulders. “I do support you, honey. So much. I’m just…I’m just appalled that Michael did this. I’m having a hard time believing it.”

  I shrugged away from her and stood, wiping the tears away with the back of my hand like a child. “But I told you, it’s not his fault. I broke up with him, Lucy. I broke up with him because I wanted to sleep with someone else. Was Michael supposed to intuit that I would want to get back together?”

  Her sharp, sepia eyes still held fury—she wasn’t giving in, not yet. “I don’t know. But it doesn’t change that he did this and never told you about it. And that she kept it from him—that’s unforgivable, if you ask me. If this poor kid hadn’t gotten sick, Michael still wouldn’t know he had a son!”

  I shook my head and sank to the floor, wrapping my arms around my knees ag
ain. “You’re not making sense. You’re mad that he slept with another woman, but you’re also angry that he didn’t get to know his son until now? Pick a side, Lucy.”

  “I’m on your side!” She crouched on the floor beside me, heedless of her pristine khakis and the grit I hadn’t yet mopped. “God, of course I’m on your side! I don’t know what side you’re on, to be honest. I can’t figure out why you’re not furious and upset.”

  “You think I’m not upset? Are you kidding?” I laughed again, hating the bitter sound of it in the silence. “I spent the weekend meeting my husband’s former lover and their son. We all had dinner together, in her apartment, for God’s sake. Now my husband is trying to figure out how he can help save this boy’s life. And I’m not upset?”

  She sighed and sat down so we were shoulder to shoulder. Walter wandered in and flopped at our feet, panting up at us with hope in his eyes.

  “I guess I’m surprised that you’re not more upset with Michael and with this woman. They lied to you, to each other, to this kid…” She trailed off for a moment, absently stroking Walter’s head when he wriggled up to meet her hand. “I would be furious at him if I were you. I am furious at him, and he’s not even my husband. It’s just that what you two have, what you’ve always had, is really special. I can’t believe that there were secrets between you. That this Sophia person kept this secret for so long and decided to spring it now. It’s just…it’s weird.”

  Weird. There was an understatement.

  And she still didn’t get it. She didn’t understand that I was broken by Michael’s affair with Sophia, but was certain I had no right to be. That I was scared Michael had never trusted my love for him, that he didn’t know even now I’d made a huge mistake letting him go.

  Lucy couldn’t possibly understand that I felt selfish and small because I had blithely assumed all these years that Michael had never betrayed me. That he would figure out I had taken his love for granted when I’d held my own back. And I couldn’t explain it, couldn’t say the words. Not now. Not yet. Not to her. Not to another person who held onto the idea that Michael and I were some mythic golden couple.

  As if true love was easy or convenient. As if it would never raise a question or a doubt. What would it be worth if there was no struggle for it?

  We limped through lunch after that, pretending to catch up on gossip and all the small, ordinary things that made up so much of our lives—Lucy’s crazy boss, Emma’s infatuation with this Jesse boy, my tentative plans to repaint my office, Lucy’s latest blind date. But the words all sounded hollow, and Lucy had barely eaten her last bite of the tuna salad I’d thrown together when she kissed me goodbye and left.

  I stood at the screen door and waved as she ran down the front walk to her little silver Camry, relieved that she had decided to leave so soon. But if I was glad to watch her go, why did I feel more alone than ever?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  BACK-TO-BACK PORTRAIT appointments kept me busy on Wednesday, which was a good thing. Wrangling a suspicious toddler into photo-worthy smiles wasn’t easy, and it certainly didn’t leave me any time to brood. The second appointment was a family shot—a couple and their four-year-old triplets—and it wasn’t any easier, despite the parents’ presence. By the time I pulled in to the driveway at home and parked the car, I was exhausted.

  Being exhausted was beginning to seem like a permanent state of being. I’d left the house half-cleaned the day before, and the vacuum was still standing in the living room, a pointed reminder of all the tasks I’d been too tired or too dispirited to finish. Unfortunately, I couldn’t simply walk away when it came to dealing with my daughter.

  Emma teetered between genuine concern about Drew and giddy, completely selfish impatience about the prom Friday night. My mother had agreed to make a dress for her, but I hadn’t yet agreed to let Emma stay out past midnight, despite her best efforts at lobbying for 1:00 a.m.

  “We’ll be in town, Mom,” she said Wednesday afternoon when she arrived home from school. She’d tossed her backpack on the floor in the front hall and now sat on the sofa, where I had planted myself when I got home. “And we’ll all be together, a big group. And I’ll be home right at one, on the dot. Cross my heart—”

  I glared up at her from the mail I had begun to sort, and she caught herself before she added “hope to die.” I might have lost my sense of humor for the moment, but at least I had good reason.

  “Mom, come on.” With her hair loose around her face and her eyes wide and pleading, she might have been six again, asking for another Barbie or another book at bedtime. “Everyone else is staying out till one. And I missed the party last weekend—”

  I held up a hand to cut her off and threw the unread mail on the coffee table. “Emma, you have to understand something. Whether or not we went to Cambridge, you were never going to a party down the shore.” I waited until her gaze flicked up to mine, hot with resentment now, and lowered the final boom. “Never.”

  “God, Mom!” She stood up, practically quivering with outrage. “You just don’t get it! This is my life, and you’re ruining it!”

  If I hadn’t been so overwhelmed and stressed already, I might have been tempted to laugh. As it was, I felt like recording the words in her baby book—“The first time Emma accused me of ruining her life.” Just like a toddler’s first word, this was only the beginning, and I knew it.

  But I wasn’t backing down. Emma was all over the place, upset and worried about Drew one minute, resentful and angry at Michael and me the next, then swooning over Jesse and/or crowing about the play, which was in final rehearsals. At least half of the mood swings could be chalked up to teenage hormones running amok, but the other half were a direct result of the news about Drew. I wasn’t sure she could be trusted to brush her teeth right now, much less stay out far too late with an older boy.

  “I know it’s your life, Em.” I stood up, too, but she saw me coming and wrenched herself out of reach before I could put my arm around her. “But part of life is learning that there are limits to what you can do. And it’s up to me and Daddy to help set those limits. You can stay out till midnight, but no later. And if you’re not happy with that, you can stay home.”

  She was trying hard not to cry, and my heart squeezed in sympathy before she lobbed her parting shot. “Oh, don’t worry, Cinderella’s going to the ball.”

  A long time ago I had been exactly where she was, a tangled mess of confusion and yearning and fledgling independence. Every teenage girl has been. But there was no way to explain that to her. At that age, you can’t hear it, and there’s no way to accept it. At fifteen your pain is bigger than anything in the world and much more important.

  “Nana is coming by tomorrow with your dress,” I offered as she snatched up her backpack and ran up the stairs. I didn’t know if she’d heard me as she clattered up the steps to her room, but I wasn’t going after her. Not now. There was only so much angst I could take in one afternoon, and Michael and I were making enough of our own.

  He’d retreated into his head since we’d returned from Massachusetts. Every day he went a little deeper, a little further away from me. I knew all too well how many things had to be fighting for space in his mind—memories, fears, hope, confusion—but so far he wasn’t willing to share them, or to let me shoulder the burden for a little while. We were again behaving like strangers, silently passing each other on the way to the bathroom or as we loaded the dishwasher, barely touching in bed at night.

  I was so lonely I could have screamed. The space Michael had always taken up was hollow for now, a chilly blankness where there had always been the warmth of his touch, his scent, spicy and male, the familiar sound of his voice, the sheer comfort of knowing he was there, present, with me. And the worst of it was that he was leaving tomorrow to fly back to Cambridge for the tests that would determine if he was a bone marrow match. He’d be gone until Saturday evening, too.

  I sighed and glanced back down at the mail. Bills mostly, and
I didn’t have the heart to even look at them at the moment. I left the tumbled pile where it lay and ignored the day’s accumulated mess to climb the stairs myself. Michael wouldn’t be home for hours, and I had the film from the day’s shoots to sort through and label until I had a chance to develop it. There were a million other tasks I’d neglected—curling up on the bed to cry wasn’t an option. Emma was probably doing it for me, anyway.

  But when I stopped at her door, expecting to hear muffled sobs, if not her stereo blasting, I was surprised to be met with silence. No, wait, not silence—she was talking to someone on the phone.

  Jesse. She said his name, and followed it with a little laugh. It was a wistful sound, and I heard the evidence of recent tears in her husky voice, but the point was that this boy had coaxed her out of her mood. This boy I knew next to nothing about. A boy I assumed she had called before Grace or Nicole, her stalwarts.

  One step at a time, I reminded myself, and tiptoed away from the door into my office, as guilty as a thief. She was going to the dance with Jesse on Friday, after all. Logic demanded that they speak to each other once in a while.

  But “one step at a time” meant so many things. It was a reminder to myself to deal with the biggest issues first. To wait for Michael to be tested before I freaked out about what donating bone marrow would mean.

  And right now it looked as though Jesse was taking steps to becoming Emma’s boyfriend. A few flirtations in the cafeteria, a phone call or two, an invitation to a dance. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

  The steps Emma was preparing to take were what really worried me.

  WHEN MICHAEL LEFT FOR Boston his freshman year, I was positive that my heart had been cut out. Those first few days without him were torture—I was right back to where I had been when the summer started. I daydreamed about being in bed with the blinds closed, staring at the ceiling, grieving, crying, sleeping to escape.