“I don’t know,” Isabelle would reply. Or sometimes, because it would make the customers happier, she’d lie and say, “Ah, I just know.”
But she didn’t know. She didn’t know anything. She didn’t even know what was happening in her own life. Within the past year she had found a white filmy scarf in the laundry basket, a silver bracelet in the kitchen, and once, a tampon in the wastebasket when she wasn’t having her period. All of them Luke insisted belonged to friends of his from the bar who’d dropped by. “Don’t you think if I was hiding someone, I’d make sure to hide her things, too?” he asked. He acted like she was nuts.
She came to his bar some nights and saw him surrounded by beautiful women, laughing, letting their arms drape about his shoulder, but as soon as he saw Isabelle, he shook them off like raindrops and kissed her. But still something felt off, like he wasn’t really there with her.
Three nights ago, a call woke her from a deep sleep, and when she grabbed for the receiver, reaching across Luke, she swore she heard a woman quietly crying. “Hello?” she whispered and the line went dead. And when she looked beside her, she saw to her shock that Luke’s eyes were open and wet. “Baby, what is it?” she asked, alarmed. She pulled herself up, staring at him.
“Just a dream,” he said. “Go back to sleep.” And he had rolled toward her, one arm on her hip, and in minutes he was asleep, but she lay awake, staring at the ceiling.
Then this very morning, when Luke was at the bar, a woman called her, blurting her name. “Isabelle.” And then the woman told Isabelle she was Luke’s girlfriend, how she had been his girlfriend for five years. “I know all about you, Isabelle,” the woman on the phone said. “Don’t you think it’s time you knew about me?”
Isabelle braced one hand along the kitchen counter.
“I’m pregnant and I thought you should know,” the woman said.
Isabelle’s legs buckled. “Someone’s at the door,” she managed to whisper and then she hung up the phone, ignoring it when it rang again.
Pregnant! She and Luke had wanted kids desperately. She had tried to get pregnant for a decade before all the tests and herbs and treatments ground her down. Luke brushed away talk of adoption. “Is it the worst thing in the world if you and I don’t have kids?” he said. Isabelle thought it was, but she didn’t know what to do about it. She made Luke help her turn the spare room that was supposed to be a nursery into a darkroom, and the only children who lived there were those whose faces she photographed.
At first, when she found out about Luke’s pregnant girlfriend, she thought it was the end of the world. And then she told herself it was only the end of one particular world. She surely deserved better than what she had. She would shed this life like a cocoon.
Now her back aches and she stretches against the seat. Last month, she had gone for a massage, and the masseuse, a young woman with a yellow ponytail, had tapped along her body. “You carry stress here,” she said, thunking Isabelle’s shoulder blades. “Here’s anger.” The sides of her hands wedged against Isabelle’s neck. “Here’s sorrow,” she said, touching Isabelle’s spine, and Isabelle gripped the edge of the massage table, wincing.
Here’s sorrow.
Smile and you’ll feel like smiling, her mother used to tell her. God rewards happiness. At You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby, people always commented on her smile, bright, glowing, drawing kids to her like iron to a magnet. But she can’t smile now no matter how hard she tries.
Isabelle glances at her watch. It’s midafternoon and she’s getting hungry. Her cell phone rings, but she doesn’t pick it up, half afraid it’s Luke’s girlfriend again. I don’t even know her name, Isabelle thinks. By now Luke is home and has found her letter. Maybe he’s upset, maybe he’s grabbing his jacket and his keys and he’s gone off looking for her, desperate to find her. Maybe he’s furious, smashing dishes on the kitchen floor the way he did when she first told him she wasn’t happy living there, that she felt the Cape was suffocating her. In all the years they’ve been together, he’s never hurt her, never raised a hand or even his voice, but he’s smashed five sets of dishes, broken several glasses and a figurine he had bought her as a joke, a Scottish terrier with a tiny gold chain.
Maybe he isn’t mad. Maybe he’s just relieved. But really, who is she kidding? Of course he isn’t home. Of course he hasn’t read her pathetic letter. Dear Luke, I want a divorce. Find a lawyer instead of me. Isabelle. Of course he’s with this new woman.
With this new baby.
Angrily, she swipes at her eyes. She sees a baby, small and glossy as a pearl, with Luke’s eyes and not hers, and then she shuts her eyes, just for a second, and when she opens them, suddenly, she doesn’t recognize where she is. The road is unfamiliar.
Isabelle turns on the radio. Even though it’s a rock station, Tammy Wynette wails out at her. Oh, good. A heart as battered as hers and all she has to do is sing along as loud as she wants. If Tammy can survive, then so can she. She thinks of the money in her pocket, of her cameras settled in the back, maybe of her mother, welcoming her back, the prodigal daughter. “I never liked him,” her mother will say about Luke, and Isabelle will hope to hear, too, “but I have always loved you.” Her mother has lived outside of Boston her whole life, endured her husband dying of a heart attack when he was only thirty, coming out of a Superette carrying groceries, continued on through Isabelle running off with the man who fixed their car, a man she said she knew was trouble from day one.
The fog is heavier now, the visibility terrible. Damn. She knows she’s lost now. It was a mistake to take a side route, but she can always turn around and get back on the highway. Maybe she can stop at a diner, treat herself to a late breakfast, eat everything that’s bad for her, everything she loves: eggs, bacon, sausage.
The darkness gets to her. It doesn’t feel natural at this time of the day, and even though she knows it’s just fog, it feels spooky. Squinting, she tries to see more than a few feet ahead of her, but the fog’s enveloping her, making her increasingly uneasy. She flicks the parking lights on and off to try slice through the darkness and then the fog moves again and she sees, almost like pieces of a torn photo, patches of what’s there. Something red. A glint of chrome.
A car stopped in the center of the road, turned the wrong way, its lights completely dark. A fillip of red dress. She jolts. She knows the stopped car is not moving, but it still seems to be speeding up toward her, anyway, growing larger and larger even as she tries to pull away from it. The road’s too narrow, ringed with tall, thick trees. Her eyes dart on the road, but there’s nowhere to go. There’s no space to turn around, not enough length to stop in time, no matter how she’s pumping her brakes. Oh, Jesus.
Isabelle veers, trying not to hit the trees. The car slows, lurching her forward. Time turns elastic, stretching out, slowing. Then, shocked, she sees a woman with short, spiky, blonde hair, a red dress frilling around her knees, coming into sharp focus, rising up like one of Isabelle’s negatives in the milky developing fluid, and the woman is just standing there, in front of her car, not moving, staring as if she knew this would happen and she was somehow waiting for it. And Isabelle swerves again, harder this time, the tires screeching, her heart clamped.
“Get out of the road!” Isabelle screams. Frantic, she grips the wheel. “What are you doing!” she shrieks, but the woman seems pinned in place. In the distance she can hear a voice, like a splash of pennies, and then she sees a child—a child!—a boy with dark flying hair and when he sees her, for a moment, he freezes, too. His eyes lock onto hers and for one terrifying moment, Isabelle feels hypnotized, for one second Isabelle can’t move, either. And then, she smashes on the horn and he startles and bolts across the road, disappearing into the woods, and her car’s going too fast and she can’t stop it. She can’t control it. Her heart tumbles against her ribs. Her breath goes ragged. She’s losing control, and despite herself, she’s praying: God. Jesus. Then she hears the hornet again, which flies past her out into
the night and then the woman finally moves, pressing herself back closer to the sedan, and it’s too late, and the two cars slam together like a kiss.
TWO
CHARLIE NASH KNEELED in his backyard, his hands covered with dirt, the fog all around him. His neck was filmed with sweat and the air had a strange, clammy feel, but he wanted to get these plants, the bright showy annuals, the dwarf pear trees with their roots diapered in purple burlap, in the earth to surprise April and Sam when they came home.
Plants want to grow, he always told Sam, all they need is just a little extra help sometimes. He crouched lower, touching the leaves of the strawberry plants. The soil should have been sandier for them, and there were some weeds poking up that he needed to tend to, but all in all, the strawberries would do fine. Well, he thought, plants do their best to stay alive wherever you put them. Just like people.
He got up now and stretched, glancing at his watch again. Nearly six. April would be done with her shift at the Blue Cupcake and just picking Sam up from After School. They’d be home soon.
He felt a prickle of unease. He and April had had an argument that morning and all day it had stayed with him, like a sour taste in his mouth.
Right after breakfast, he had been rushing to get to a job, running late. April was following him from room to room, so that he actually stumbled into her, knocking his funny bone against the doorjamb. When he got to the bedroom and bent to grab his jeans, she snatched his arm, making him stop. Her breath came in little skips. “You fell asleep last night while I was talking to you,” she said. He looked at her, bewildered. She was usually so understanding when work exhausted him. She’d turn down the bed and plump the pillows, and then kiss him sweetly goodnight. “You didn’t hear what I said to you last night, did you?”
He zipped the fly of his jeans, and reached for a black T-shirt. She was pale and lovely in the light, but he had no time. “We’ll make it up,” he told her.
“When?” She stepped back from him, her face closing like a door. “I try to talk and you don’t listen.”
“Honey, it’s just a busy time right now. What’s with you today?”
April shook her head. “You have your own company. You could turn jobs away once in a while! You don’t need to work that hard, you just want to.” She tugged his arm. “Sometimes I feel like I’m not even married anymore.”
His nerves were fraying, his stomach burned, and his elbow throbbed. He had three jobs that were late and the clients were furious. He had to call several different suppliers because his usual brought him grade two wood even though he had specified grade one. Ed, his foreman, wanted to show him some problems with the central air that was being installed on yet another job. Charlie couldn’t have this argument right now. And he certainly didn’t want to have it in front of Sam.
“Charlie, I’m right here talking to you!” April cried, her voice taking on an edge.
Charlie went back into the kitchen, where Sam was staring down at his cereal. “Go get your school books, kiddo,” he told Sam, “You don’t want to be late.” He ushered Sam out of the room, and as soon as Sam was gone, he turned back to April. “You know what,” he said, “I don’t know what’s with you today, but I can’t deal with you like this.”
She looked at him askance. “Fine. Then don’t. Just go if you’re going. Just drive and don’t come back.”
When she turned her back to him, he bumped his elbow again. He was so irritated that he couldn’t help it; he snapped. “If it wasn’t for Sam, maybe I would just keep driving,” he said. It didn’t make him feel any better, barking like that, but he couldn’t shake his annoyance enough to apologize, to make things right. He found and kissed Sam, and then stormed off to his car. Of course, he felt bad as soon as he got in the car. What did she think, that he liked being this tired? That he hadn’t wanted to talk to her last night, to make love to her? He had wanted to. God, he had. Last night, he slid her nightgown from her beautiful shoulders, kissing her breasts, her stomach, the soft swell of her thighs. He fought his exhaustion, but then just as he was stroking her back, she said, “Charlie, let’s talk,” and his desire switched off. He sat up, had done his best to listen, but Jesus, he was so tired. So tired. Why did they have to talk? Why couldn’t they just feel? Her voice lulled him, the rhythm of it, and he fell asleep.
He hadn’t slept through the night, though. He stirred at four in the morning and April wasn’t in bed. He got up, looking for her, and when he walked past Sam’s room, he saw the door was open and she was sleeping, pale and beautiful, nested in a chair that she had pulled close to Sam’s bed. The two of them looked so peaceful and perfect that he hadn’t wanted to wake her up.
It was an argument, he told himself. It meant nothing. All married couples argued, didn’t they? They fought and made up and then they grew closer.
What was love? What was it really? Sometimes he felt as if he didn’t have a clue. He had fallen in love with April the second he had seen her and they had married within months, the two of them giddy with joy and surprise, hurtling toward their future. They had a child together, and a whole life, and maybe it was stupid to question anything that good, because the truth was that he couldn’t imagine his life without her.
All day he had wanted to call her to apologize. He grabbed for the phone at ten, and then it rang, and it was the suppliers trying to argue with him about the grade of wood they’d given him. “I see what I see,” he told the supplier. “And it isn’t right.” He was going to call April again at noon, but then he got a call from Ed, who told him that another job—a kitchen renovation that was supposed to have taken only three days—was running late and Charlie had to go on site and take care of it. By the time things had calmed down, it was time for him to go home. Well, tonight he’d treat his family to someplace special for dinner. He’d woo April back and things would be fine.
Charlie studied the lawn. There, by the fence, he’d put in a little goldfish pond for Sam. Maybe give Sam his own garden. “What do you want to grow?” he had asked his son. Charlie had brought home books filled with pictures of plants, and for the past few evenings, all they had been doing was looking at and exclaiming over the pictures. Judging from the ones Sam had lingered over, Charlie was sure Sam was going to say roses or azaleas, but instead Sam wrinkled up his nose. “A dog,” he announced.
Charlie’s heart crumpled. April averted her eyes. He put one hand lightly on his son’s silky hair. “We’ll see,” he said quietly. It was a lie and he and April both knew it, though Sam, eyes gleaming, bounced about him like a ball. We’ll see. We’ll see what? It was the kind of thing his own father used to say when Charlie had begged for a dog himself, and Charlie had never gotten over thinking his father just might mean yes, even after time had gone on and on and the dog he had yearned for had never materialized. But while Charlie could have cared for a dog, could have slept with the dog, cuddled it, and kissed his fur, Sam had asthma. Put him in a room where a dog had even strolled through and Sam would have an attack. Feed him ice cream that was too cold, give him a day that was too muggy, something that made him laugh a little too hard or cry a little too deeply, and suddenly, terrifyingly, Sam’s lungs clamped shut.
There were too many days at the emergency room, where Pete, Sam’s pulmunologist, would look up and spot Sam and tease him, “Hey, Buddy! Hey, Sam! You missed me? You like us so much you came to visit again? You look too healthy to be here, sport!” And the thing was, he did look healthy. He was a sturdy nine-year-old boy, with creamy skin and navy blue eyes and a sheath of thick chocolate hair. Looking at him, you wouldn’t know anything was wrong.
People died from asthma. Isn’t that why he and April took Sam for checkups and monitored his breathing with the peak-flow meter every morning? Charlie still marveled that here Sam was, alive in the world. “Where in the world did I get such a wonderful boy like you?” Charlie asked.
“Mars,” Sam said. “Jupiter. The planet Zyron.”
Some doctors said the salt air
of the Cape was good for asthma. Another doctor told them to move to a drier climate. The doctors warned to keep Sam’s visits to New York, where his grandparents lived, short because of the pollution.
The doorbell rang, loud and insistent. Even from back here he could hear it. April had her key. He bet it was Jimmy, their paper-boy, a kid who had a crush on April and blushed and dropped the change every time he saw her. The doorbell rang again, more insistently. “Hold your horses,” Charlie said, and headed for the door. He tripped on one of Sam’s Legos and put it in his pocket and opened the door.
Two cops were standing in front of him glancing awkwardly at each other.
“Charles Nash?” one asked, and Charlie nodded. A thought flew into his head. Maybe he was about to get sued. It had never happened before, but he knew it could. There was a client who tumbled into a pool he had built and made some threats. Once a man insisted that the grass Charlie had planted had attracted a gopher that bit his dog. But servers brought papers, not police, so why would they be here?
“There’s been an accident.”
The youngest cop was talking. Charlie couldn’t concentrate. He nodded, but he didn’t know what he was nodding at. He stood out in the heat-soaked day and the cop’s words were an undertow, tugging him under.
“That’s what we think happened,” the young cop said. “The accident was in Hartford.”
“Hartford? That’s three hours away …”
“The cops there have jurisdiction, but as a courtesy, they called here and we came to tell you.”
“Where were they? What are you talking about?”
“They can tell you more, but we know that the accident happened just off Interstate 84. It’s the east side of Hartford. They’re both at the hospital there.”
“They? Both of them?” Charlie couldn’t breathe. “No, no. My son’s at After School. He stays there until five or six and then my wife picks him up from work.”
Pictures of You Page 2