Pictures of You

by Caroline Leavitt

  The house was quiet, the shades drawn. She sneaked around to Sam’s window, which was halfway open. Standing on tiptoes, peering up from under his plastic blind, she could see him sleeping, the damp, soft sleep of boys. His mouth was slightly open and his eyes were rolling with dreams. She ached to kiss his forehead and take his hand, to hear his raspy little voice. Instead, as she wavered on her tiptoes, she tried to memorize him, imprinting him like a snapshot she’d never forget.

  She crept to the front of the house. She could knock on the door and demand to see him. She could rap on his window and wake him up. She could stand here and scream for them both to come outside and listen to her, just for one minute.

  Gingerly, she stepped over the new young plants, Charlie’s bright, hopeful splashes of color. He could open up to nature, but with her, he was closed, and how could she stay with someone like that? Plus, there was all this Cape Cod, all this place that was like a single finger pointing at her, reminding her of what had happened, of what she had done. She turned back to the window. Charlie was a heavy sleeper. Carefully, heart sprinting, Isabelle tapped on the window. Sam started and then just as he was pulling the plastic shade angrily down on her, she beckoned him to the window.

  He opened the window fully.

  “We don’t have time for you to pretend to be mad at me,” Isabelle said.

  “I’m not pretending. I am mad.”

  “I know.” She tried to touch his hair, but he stepped pointedly away from her.

  “Why don’t you just leave if you’re leaving?”

  “I came to say good-bye.” She handed the package through the window. “I wrote something for you. And inside is a camera lens. A good one. And a photograph I wanted you to have.”

  He blinked really hard. “I hate you. Go away.”

  “Listen to me, Sam,” she said. “I know you don’t hate me. Well, maybe today you do, but you won’t always. I will always love you. I will always want to know how you are. I will always try to call and write you and you can call and write me. I wrote down my address and as soon as I get my own phone, when I get settled, I’ll send that to you, too.”

  “I’ll never call you,” he said. “I’ll never write.”

  She heard something. The slam of a screen door, a neighbor next door. Any moment Charlie could come up, and if he found her here, there would be an argument. She reached out to touch his face, but he pushed her hand away. “You’re not an angel,” he snapped.

  “I never said I was. You write me,” she whispered. “You call if you need to. I love you, Sam. I love you.”

  She started walking and then she heard feet, and then she turned and Sam was climbing out of his window, and then he was running after her in his bare feet. She stopped and crouched down, and when he flung himself on her, she wrapped her arms around him. His shoulders shook with sobs.

  “Don’t go,” he pleaded. “I won’t tell my dad you were here. I won’t tell him anything you don’t want me to! I won’t try to find anything out ever again! I don’t care if you’re an angel, just please don’t go!”

  She brushed his hair back so she could look at his face. She quietly blotted his tears with her fingers. “Sam, what are you talking about?” She walked him back to his room, and boosted him back and watched while he tucked himself back under the covers. She pointed to the sky. “I just can’t stay, honey. But you know how far away the sun is out there? That’s how much I love you,” she told him.

  A couple of hours later, Isabelle loaded Michelle’s car with her suitcases and her boxes, and then together they wedged Nelson’s tank in the backseat. Isabelle climbed into the front. “You ready?” Michelle asked, and she nodded. “You’re doing the right thing. The only thing,” Michelle said. “This will be a whole new life.”

  “I’m ready,” Isabelle said. Michelle peeled around the corner and headed for the highway.

  For a moment, Isabelle heard a buzz, the same as the day of the accident, and she looked anxiously at the corners of the car. “I hear a bee,” she said.

  “No bees in here,” Michelle said. The humming sound had vanished.

  It was the first time she was a passenger in a car with someone who wasn’t Charlie and she didn’t feel like jumping out. She was traveling to a new life and somehow, all her old responses seemed wrong to her now. They didn’t fit. She held up her hands. They weren’t shaking. Her skin was cool and dry.

  “You okay?” Michelle said.

  Isabelle opened her window a bit, so the breeze blew in, ruffling her hair. She’d remember all that she was leaving behind, as indelible as if she had photographed it.

  She turned and smiled weakly at Michelle. “I’m going to be fine.”

  EIGHTEEN

  IT HAD BEEN three weeks since his argument with Isabelle, and Charlie, standing at the bathroom sink, still felt terrible. He didn’t know what to do, but he hoped time would sort it out, that Isabelle would come to her senses and realize that this was a thorny time for all of them and she wouldn’t actually leave.

  Charlie couldn’t shave. He couldn’t bear to look in the mirror and see his own face. His hands shook, even when he pressed them under his armpits to steady them. He shaved slowly, carefully, and cut himself, anyway. He washed his face and the soap stung his eyes.

  He heard Sam crying in his room. When he walked in, to his surprise, Sam was sitting on the bed with a big camera lens and what looked like a letter on his lap. “Where did that come from?” Charlie asked, and Sam cried harder, kicking the lens off the bed, throwing the letter to the end of the bed where Charlie was. “I don’t want this stupid camera lens, so don’t try to make me take it!” Sam said. “I’m never taking photos again!

  Charlie stared at the lens, his mind in knots. He glanced down at the letter and as soon as he saw Isabelle’s handwriting, his whole body ached. “Sam,” he said, steadying his voice. “Was Isabelle here? When did you get this lens?”

  He saw the window, opened wide, and he sank onto Sam’s bed. “She shouldn’t have come to see you,” he said quietly, but he couldn’t help wondering, if she was brash enough to come see Sam, why hadn’t she come to see him as well? Why hadn’t she called or at least knocked on the front door? “I’ll call her,” he decided.

  “You can’t call her!” Sam wailed. “She’s gone! She moved to New York!”

  Something twisted in Charlie’s stomach. He reached for Isabelle’s letter, reading it in a rush. Each word was like a burr in his throat. He let the letter fall back onto the bed, astounded. She had left. She had really left them. Sam hiccoughed, rubbing fiercely at his eyes, and then staring at Charlie. Charlie knew he should have something comforting to say to Sam, something reasonable and solid, but he was afraid if he opened his mouth, he might start weeping. Instead, all he could do was touch Sam’s shoulder, and even then, Sam wrenched away. “Leave me alone!” Sam said. “Get out of my room!”

  He nodded. “It’s going to be okay,” he said, but he couldn’t keep the hollowness out of his voice. He walked out of the room and then he heard the sound of paper tearing over and over. Then Sam slammed his bedroom door shut.

  Charlie felt as if he were sleepwalking. He knew he could call her. He could find her. But it wouldn’t make any difference. She had decided to leave them.

  TWO DAYS LATER, Sam was outside, sitting on the front porch of his house. School was out, and though usually he went to a special camp for kids with asthma, this year he told his dad he wanted to stay home. “I’ll find things to do,” he insisted. His dad had asked him if he wanted to invite a friend for dinner, but ever since that day at Isabelle’s apartment, Teddy barely spoke to Sam anymore, which was all right with Sam, because he wasn’t sure he wanted to be friends with Teddy anymore, anyway. Next year, in fifth grade, maybe they wouldn’t even be in the same class. He’d never have to even look at Teddy. He wouldn’t have to remember.

  Sam didn’t want a lot of things anymore. Not the tenth birthday party in July that his father suggested, not a
trip somewhere special. He wouldn’t come in when Charlie told him it was time for lunch. When the mailman came, Sam ran to him, but all that arrived were bills and his father’s magazines. The only time Sam moved was when he heard the phone and then he tensed, expectant. He stood up and tried to listen. “Wrong number,” his father said, and Sam’s face grew dark and angry again. Why didn’t she write or call?

  Sam dug into his pocket and pulled out an old grocery list of Isabelle’s that he had saved. Blue scribbles on a page she had actually torn out of a book: “Goat cheese. Sun-dried tomatoes. Basil. Arugula. White beans.” He put it to his face but it didn’t smell like vanilla, like her. His father, walking by, stopped. “What are you doing?” his father asked quietly.

  “Trying to figure out what dinner was that day,” Sam said.

  Sam saw the odd way his father was cocking his head. Sam left her list on his dresser, and two days later, it was gone. Sam tore his room apart. “Did you see her list?” he cried.

  “I don’t know where you put your things,” Charlie told him.

  THE LONGER ISABELLE was gone, the more frantic Sam was and the worse his asthma got. He began wheezing more and more. He used his albuterol rescue inhaler so often that Charlie began to panic. It was as if Isabelle had taken all Sam’s air along with her.

  “You need to learn to listen better to your body,” the doctor in the ER had told Sam. “When you get a slight wheeze, don’t wait. When you feel out of breath, take action. Take your rescue medicine right away, and if it doesn’t work, go and tell your dad.” Sam hadn’t wanted to talk about it further; he just nodded and acted like he understood. He knew what his body was telling him. It was the only thing he ever heard. Punished. You were bad and now you are being punished.

  One day, when Sam was walking home from the park, he passed the Grey Goose Market. It was one of the few places that still had a phone booth inside. Sam turned back and went into the market. He felt as though he were sleepwalking. It was like one of the math problems his teacher gave that seemed completely unsolvable until you thought harder and then there it was, the perfect solution to your problem floating past you like a feather. He knew exactly what to do now. He walked to the pay phone, dug out change from his pants, the Velcro making a shushing sound, and he called information for New York. “Do you have a phone number for Isabelle Stein?” he said, and his own voice surprised him. He told her the address Isabelle had given him.

  “Please hold,” said a voice, and then there came the number. Sam quickly dug out a pen and wrote it clumsily across his hand, careful not to smear it.

  He dialed, his heart thudding sickly in his chest. “Hello?” a voice said. The voice sounded really far away, but he knew it was her. He felt as if everything were zipping ahead of him. “Hello,” he said, and he felt his lungs tightening. He heard the wheeze in his voice. Everything he had been thinking and feeling jammed up inside him.

  “Sam?” Isabelle said. “Sam, is that really you?” She sounded glad, but she sounded, too, like she might be crying and that made Sam want to cry, too.

  “Why did you leave us?” Sam cried. “Please come back!” His shoulders tightened and he felt his lungs folding in. “I don’t care that you aren’t an angel! I don’t care!”

  “Where are you? Is Charlie with you?”

  “Don’t you love us? Don’t you love me?” He was struggling to catch his breath. His lungs were growing smaller in his chest, balling up into a fist, even as the air was turning into chunks he couldn’t breathe in. “Listen to your body,” the doctor had told him. “Take your rescue medicine.” He didn’t care who saw him, who was around. He had to breathe. He grabbed open his Velcroed pocket and pulled out his inhaler. He sucked on it, one puff and then two, but his lungs didn’t clear. Instead, his heart banged harder in his chest. His head swam from the medication. He gripped the phone so tightly his knuckles turned white, and when he turned around he saw that a woman in a flowery dress was staring at him. “Are you all right?” she said, and she sounded angry, as if it were his fault. Sam gasped into the phone and then the phone clattered out of his hand. His legs buckled and he slid to the ground, even as he was stretching himself up, trying to force open his lungs. The woman shouted, “Manager! Manager!” and then more people crowded around him and he wanted to say “Stop, stop,” because they were using up his air. He saw the dangling receiver, he imagined Isabelle, in New York City, hearing what was going on, calling out to him, but he didn’t have the air left to call back to her. Then, the woman in the flowery dress picked up the receiver and hung it up, and Sam cried out for her to stop, stop, but no sound came out except for the gasp of his breath.

  “We need an ambulance!” someone said, and then the woman nearest Sam touched his shoulder. “Don’t cry,” she said. “Someone’s coming for you.”

  HE WAS IN the hospital two days this time. He lay in the bed while doctors buzzed around him. They had him breathe through a special green nebulizer every few hours. They gave him prednisone and took an X-ray. They put him in one of those stupid blue Johnnys that opened in the back like a dress, and when he was dozing, he woke up to find, panicked, that Isabelle’s phone number was no longer there on his hand. If he stared, he could make out the tag end of one or two numbers. “Where did it go?” he cried, “Why did you wash off the number?” He tried to remember the numbers—567, was that it? Or was it 657?

  The nurse touched his shoulder, soothing. “I didn’t wash anything off. Just on your arm where we put in your IV.” She whisked out as a new doctor came in.

  “What do you think caused this?” the doctor asked Sam.

  “The supermarket was really cold and sometimes cold bothers my lungs,” Sam said finally, but he knew it was a lie. He lied to his father, too, when Charlie rushed into the room to see him, when he asked what Sam was doing in the supermarket. “I was thirsty. I went to buy a juice box,” Sam said. His father didn’t ask about the phone call, and Sam sure wasn’t going to tell.

  Every time the door opened, he sat up, expectant, but it was never Isabelle. It was always a nurse wanting blood or an orderly with some sort of mystery food he was supposed to eat because they said it would make him stronger.

  He knew she’d come. He just knew it. He had done what he had to. He had set things in motion. He felt dizzy with relief, hot and sweaty under the hospital blankets.

  The next day, Sam asked the nurse why there was no phone in his room. “What do you need a phone for?” the nurse said. When he saw his father, he threw his arms around him. “Did anyone call for me?” he asked his father, watching him carefully. “Everyone,” his father said. “Your friends, your grandparents.”

  “Anyone else?” Sam said.

  His father looked away from Sam for a moment. But when he looked up again, he had a fake kind of grin on his face that made Sam suspicious. “What, friends and family aren’t enough?”

  “Did you wash my hands?” Sam asked, and his father smoothed the cover.

  “No, kiddo, I didn’t,” his father said.

  Sam stared at the door again. Why wasn’t she coming? What had he done that she wasn’t here?

  AS SUMMER PRESSED on, Sam began to realize that Isabelle wasn’t going to call. She wasn’t going to show up and surprise them. The phone rang and rang, but it was never her and after a while, Sam stopped picking it up.

  One day, though, when Charlie was in the shower, Sam impulsively called information for Isabelle’s number. Where were you? Where have you been? Why haven’t you called me? He felt angry and desperate all at once. But when he said her name, the woman at information told him there was no such number. “Check again. Please check again,” Sam said. “I know she’s living there.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m showing nothing,” said the woman.

  Stunned, Sam leaned against the wall. He heard the dial tone, the steady blip blip blip. Isabelle had disappeared, and it seemed clear that she didn’t want to be found.

  “Look outside the frame,” Isabe
lle had told him, when she was teaching him to take pictures, but now there was just empty space.

  For the rest of July and into August, Sam was on high doses of prednisone. It made him restless and hungry and so full of energy, he couldn’t sleep at night. It made his face and body puffy so he couldn’t button his jeans, and even worse, it made him lose some of his hair. He stared at the patchy spot at the side of his head, trying to cover it with the hair he had left. “It’s almost over,” his father promised. “You just have to get weaned off it.” But almost seemed like forever to Sam.

  Most of the time, he didn’t know what to do with himself. His father worked less so he could be with Sam, and during the day, Sam was allowed to stay home by himself, or go over to a friend’s, but it all felt lonely and sad, as though he were slogging through mud.

  One day, Sam was staring out at the front window when he noticed a cat sunning itself on the sidewalk, and he couldn’t help it; like instinct, he drew his hands up and framed a shot. He made a clicking sound with his tongue, like the snap of a camera, and suddenly, he knew what he wanted to do that day.

  He went to the hall closet and rummaged behind the winter coats, separating them until he saw the shelf. There it was. The Canon, glinting out at him, and behind it was the zoom lens Isabelle had given him. He pulled them both out. There was a fresh roll of film in the camera, and he took off the old lens and fit the new one on easily. It was just a camera. Just glass and metal and mirrors and shutters. All the magic of it was gone. If he wanted, he could take the camera and take pictures again. He could become a famous photographer and then Isabelle might see his photos and wish she had been kinder to him. Looking at his photos, she would see all that she was missing.

  Sam held up the camera and went out onto the front porch. He must have taken pictures of this road a thousand times, but now, with the new lens, everything looked different, bigger somehow and more important. He pointed the camera at the cat, which was still lazily lolling on the sidewalk. As soon as he took the picture, he felt something spark inside of him. All that afternoon, Sam took shots of the neighborhood. He snapped the park where Isabelle loved to walk, the gourmet grocery where she’d sometimes bought them yogurt-covered raisins to share, and the beach where he had taught her how to skip stones. He used up almost the entire roll of film. When his father came home, Sam was sitting on the front porch, waiting with the camera. “You’re taking pictures again!” his dad said, brightening. Just to prove how happy his dad was without Isabelle, Sam lifted up the camera to his eye and took his father’s picture. “Got you,” Sam said, and for the first time in weeks, his father smiled.