Friends and Strangers

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  “Sam,” Elisabeth said, drawing her attention from her thoughts. “Remember I wanted you to do that Madonna and Child painting of me and Gil? But with aspects of you in there as well. Something like that?”

  “Oh God, you’re serious about that?” Andrew said.

  “Yes!” Elisabeth said. “It will be amazing.”

  “That is such a weird thing to ask,” Andrew said. “You should just have her paint you and Gil.”

  “I could do that too,” Sam said.

  “No,” Elisabeth said.

  Isabella agreed with Andrew that it was an odd request, the idea that Sam might blend herself and Elisabeth into the image of one woman.

  “You two couldn’t look more different,” Isabella said when Sam told her.

  But Sam knew what Elisabeth meant. Not that she ought to combine her own eyes and Elisabeth’s chin, her hair and Elisabeth’s nose. But rather that the woman in the painting should contain the essence of them both. Sam liked that only she and Elisabeth understood.

  “We should take pictures this week, so you can get started,” Elisabeth said. “We’ll do it tomorrow when you’re here. Sound good? I know you’re busy, but don’t say no. I have my heart set on it.”

  “You’re bossy tonight,” Andrew said.

  Elisabeth stuck out her tongue.

  “We can use my good camera, the Canon,” she said. “Andrew, do you know where it is?”

  Sam needed new paints, which she couldn’t exactly afford. She wished she could say as much, but didn’t know how to do it without embarrassing Elisabeth and herself in the process. Elisabeth had twice referred to the painting as something she planned to commission, though she had never specified a dollar amount. Sam had a sensation similar to the one she’d get as a child upon ripping open a birthday card from her grandparents to find a folded blue check inside. Experience promised that that check was in the amount of fifteen dollars. Hope suggested that perhaps they’d gone big, outlandishly so, just this once.

  Her father’s work situation weighed on her more and more as the end of the school year approached. She’d never imagined her parents would give her much money after she graduated, but she knew now that they’d have nothing to give her. She was trying to save as much as humanly possible for herself and, if need be, for them.

  Later, after they’d eaten, they saw Gil fussing on the monitor. Elisabeth went upstairs to quiet him.

  Andrew whispered across the table, “Does she seem off to you?”

  Sam was used to being Elisabeth’s confidante in this marriage, not his. Any response she could give felt like a betrayal.

  “She’s all over the place,” he went on. “Almost—manic. I guess it’s the drugs. Was your friend that way when she took them?”

  “Isabella is always manic and all over the place, so it’s hard to say,” Sam replied.

  She stood and cleared the dishes.

  * * *

  —

  When Sam got to work the next morning, Elisabeth and Gil were in the living room. The shades were rolled up. Light streamed in. Elisabeth had pushed one of the armchairs to the center of the floor.

  “I’m so excited for this,” she said. “Come! Sit!”

  Sam put her purse down and waved at Gil, who beamed in response. He was in his bouncer, wearing only a diaper.

  She said, “Let me just hang up my jacket.”

  Elisabeth shook her head. “Sorry, I’ll start over. Good morning, Sam! Can I get you some coffee?”

  Sam smiled. “No, it’s okay, we can get right to it. I can see you’re eager.”

  “Thanks. Sorry. Andrew left at four for the airport and I couldn’t get back to sleep, and now I’m wired and exhausted and I’ve had way too much caffeine.”

  She looked Sam up and down.

  “Do you have anything on under that?” Elisabeth said.

  Sam wore a green Celtics hoodie of her brother’s. Underneath was the flimsiest tank top, something she’d had since high school, with spaghetti straps and two small holes in the front. It wasn’t a shirt she would ever wear in public.

  “An old tank top,” she said. “You definitely don’t want a picture of it.”

  “It’s not so I can get your shirt in the photo, it’s more so we can see the shape of your body. Your shoulders and clavicle and such. Does that make sense? You’re the artist. You know best.”

  “I see what you mean,” Sam said, though in every picture of the Madonna and Child she had ever seen, the Virgin Mary was covered in flowing robes, and usually a veil.

  Sam pulled off the sweatshirt, feeling exposed, wondering why she could never say what she was thinking, whether that would ever change.

  She noticed Elisabeth noticing the size of her breasts and had the urge to cross her arms up high and cover them with her hands, like she had done at the town pool the summer they first appeared.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to just paint you and Gil, like Andrew suggested?” Sam said.

  “My body is all wrong for a mother and child portrait,” Elisabeth said.

  Something in this made Sam feel sad for her. Elisabeth had spoken of her mother’s obsession with being thin. She swore it hadn’t had an effect on her. But wasn’t this the effect? Feeling that her body wasn’t what a mother’s ought to be, even though she was a mother?

  Elisabeth’s second book was a critique of the diet industry. Sam tore through it. Though there were hardly any personal details in it, there was so much rage and resignation to the way she told the story; a sign of the toll it had taken. Reading it, Sam felt grateful for her own mother, who had never mentioned weight when she and her siblings were kids, who gave them ice cream every night after dinner and taught them how to drink the soupy remains straight from the bowl.

  Elisabeth lifted Gil out of the bouncer.

  For the next half hour, she photographed them in different poses: Standing by the window, Gil’s head on Sam’s shoulder. In the chair, with him sitting on her left knee, her right knee, in the middle. With him lying across her lap.

  Elisabeth stepped in from time to time, to tip Sam’s chin up slightly, or to wrap Gil’s golden curls around her finger, one by one, so that they fell in perfect formation.

  When Gil started to rub his eyes, Sam was grateful.

  “It’s his naptime,” she said.

  “I guess we probably got enough,” Elisabeth said.

  Sam put her sweatshirt back on and went to heat a bottle.

  Elisabeth puttered around the house for an hour, before leaving to try to get some work done in her office.

  She came home right at five.

  “Thanks again for indulging me with the picture thing,” she said. “I’m so excited to have one of your paintings in our house.”

  Sam smiled. “Thanks.”

  “Have a great night,” Elisabeth said.

  “I’m coming back over at nine, right? For the shot?”

  “You don’t have to. I can do it myself. I was overreacting last night.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Elisabeth nodded. “Totally.”

  Sam texted her at 8:45, asking if she was sure she was sure.

  She was sitting in the dorm living room with a bunch of girls, watching a bad reality show about a family with six daughters who live at sea, on a yacht. Onscreen, teenage sisters in matching red bikinis and heels were bickering on the poop deck.

  Elisabeth replied immediately. You’re so sweet to reach out. Honestly? Sam, I can’t do it.

  Coming over, Sam wrote back.

  On the floor sat a large tin of cookies someone’s mother had baked. Sam grabbed four of them.

  “My friend needs me,” she said to no one in particular. “I’ve got to go.”

  * * *

  —

  On Elisabeth’s kit
chen table, there were two glass vials of liquid, a needle, a syringe, and a bottle of Cabernet, half drained.

  She had been crying. Mascara pooled under her eyes. She wore glasses, which Sam had never seen before. She wondered if Elisabeth used contacts most of the time. It seemed like the sort of thing she should know by now.

  “What are you thinking?” Elisabeth said.

  Sam weighed whether to say: I’m thinking that you usually look as put together as Grace Kelly, but tonight you more closely resemble Courtney Love.

  “I brought cookies,” she said, adding them to the strange array of items.

  “I shouldn’t have bothered you,” Elisabeth said.

  “Why? I could never give myself a shot. I totally get why you can’t do it.”

  “No, Sam. I meant I can’t do this. Any of it.”

  Elisabeth sat down at the table and put her head in her hands.

  “I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

  Sam sat beside her. She wasn’t sure what to say. She pushed the stack of cookies toward Elisabeth.

  “These are really good,” she said.

  Elisabeth picked one up, took a bite.

  “That is good,” she said.

  She rolled her head back, stared at the ceiling.

  “Fuck,” she said. “What am I doing? I’ll just do the shot. Let’s do it.”

  “Okay,” Sam said. She filled the syringe. “Butt, thigh, or stomach?”

  With Isabella, they had rotated the injection site each night.

  Elisabeth seemed to be considering the question. Then she shook her head. “No. No. I was right the first time. I can’t.”

  Sam wanted to suggest that she call Andrew, or her best friend. She felt out of her depth.

  “I don’t want to be like my parents, with all that hostility,” Elisabeth said. “I want peace in my marriage. I need Andrew and me on the same page. So I said I’d try for another baby. I guess if I’m honest, I was trying to make up for something I did wrong.”

  Sam wondered what it was. She held her breath, waiting to see if Elisabeth would say more. She thought of something George had said about a situation with Elisabeth’s sister.

  “But that’s psychotic,” Elisabeth said. “Nomi’s right. I can’t have a baby so he won’t be mad at me. Andrew thinks I’m just scared. But every night I pray that this won’t work.”

  “Oh, Elisabeth, that’s a lot.”

  Sam’s mom always said That’s a lot when a friend confided in her over the telephone and she wasn’t sure what to say.

  “I can’t do this, hoping against it. I have to make it clear to him that a second kid isn’t in the cards. Right? And if he still can’t get over the other thing, then, well, I don’t know.”

  Sam swallowed. “Can I have some wine?” she said.

  “Of course. Pour me another glass too?”

  Sam did this, emptying the bottle.

  She took a long sip. “So,” she said. “I think you’re right. Like you said, having a second child is a huge decision. If you already know you don’t want it to work, like you said, then it seems like a bad position to put yourself in. Not to mention the baby.”

  Every word she said was deliberate, meant to emphasize that she wasn’t making recommendations, only responding to what Elisabeth herself had said. Sam knew how these things could go. She didn’t want to get blamed in the end.

  Elisabeth nodded. “Thank you.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  They finished their wine. Sam was eager to get home. She had a strange urge to call her mother and tell her what happened, find out if she thought Sam had handled it well. But when Elisabeth suggested they open another bottle, Sam said that sounded great.

  An hour later, Elisabeth was wasted. She’d been drinking before Sam got there, Sam remembered, too late. And she weighed practically nothing.

  “What did you have for dinner?” Sam said.

  “I don’t remember,” Elisabeth said. “Did I have dinner?”

  Sam made a pot of spaghetti and forced her to eat a huge bowlful, covered with parmesan and melted butter.

  Elisabeth was singing lightly under her breath by the time she was done.

  “Let’s get you to bed,” Sam said.

  She led Elisabeth upstairs, tucked her in. It was nothing she hadn’t done a million times for Isabella, but it scared her to see Elisabeth like this.

  “Sleep well,” Sam said, trying to sound calm. “Good night.”

  Elisabeth looked up at her. “You’re the best friend I have here, Sam. I don’t know what I’ll do without you when you’re gone.”

  “I know,” Sam said. “I’ll miss you too.”

  Moments later, Elisabeth was asleep. She was still wearing her glasses. It seemed too intimate to remove them. But if she left them on Elisabeth’s face, Sam thought, Elisabeth might roll over on them and break the frames.

  Sam gently pulled them off, holding her breath.

  She placed the glasses on top of Elisabeth’s dresser, where she would easily find them in the morning.

  It was possible Sam lingered there longer than was necessary, that she let her eyes scan the jewelry box, the photo of Andrew and Gil in a silver frame, the small pile of lacy things not yet put away. But she didn’t dig. Didn’t open a drawer or even an envelope. The check was sitting right there—made out to Gil, in the amount of three hundred thousand dollars. In the upper-left-hand corner was Elisabeth’s father’s name. Sam wasn’t sure why it filled her with anger, why it made her think of her parents, of Maria and Gaby. Of Elisabeth never considering the cost of paint.

  Once she was out of that room, Sam felt strangely free. She wanted to be in her dorm room, with the door open, telling Isabella the whole story.

  She made her way down the hall, past Gil’s nursery.

  Gil.

  He slept through the night now, most nights. But what if he woke up? Would Elisabeth even hear him crying, as drunk as she was?

  Sam slipped into the room and lay down on the floor. She felt like crying herself. She rested her head on a giant stuffed rabbit with a satin bow around its neck and willed herself to sleep.

  When she woke, the sun was rising. The baby was still asleep.

  Sam crept downstairs, and out of the house.

  Later, she texted Elisabeth to ask how she was feeling.

  Fine! Elisabeth wrote back. Thanks for checking. xx

  * * *

  —

  They saw each other again on Thursday. When Sam arrived for work, Elisabeth was her usual composed self. She said there was chicken and squash in the fridge for Gil’s lunch, and a new music class at the public library at eleven, if they wanted to check it out. She gave the baby a squeeze and a kiss, and was gone.

  The next morning was much the same.

  By the end of the day, Sam’s curiosity had taken over.

  “I’m guessing you stuck with what you said on Monday? You didn’t do any shots this week?”

  Elisabeth shook her head. “No.”

  “How did Andrew take it?”

  “I haven’t told him yet,” she said, looking down at the floor. “He’s had kind of a hard week out there, so I decided to wait and tell him in person.”

  He would be home tonight. They were supposed to go to Manhattan tomorrow for the procedure. Sam wondered if Elisabeth had canceled; she wondered what Andrew would say.

  “He’ll understand,” Elisabeth said. “Don’t you think?”

  “Sure,” Sam said. “It’s your body.”

  “That’s right.”

  Elisabeth handed her a white envelope in addition to the usual stack of bills.

  “What’s this?” Sam said.

  “You’ll see.”

  Sam imagined a
gift card to one of the restaurants downtown, or a letter thanking her for the other night. She waited until she was alone in her room to open it.

  Inside the envelope were copies of the photographs Elisabeth had taken on Monday. Sam and Gil, skin to skin. Their posture far more intimate than any photo Sam had ever seen of her mother with her own children.

  In most of them, Sam had a double chin, or flabby nun arms. But one shot was beautiful—sunlight beaming in through the window, Gil on her shoulder, Sam staring down at him, in love. She flipped the picture over. Elisabeth had written something on the back.

  Inspiration for the painting! You look radiant here.

  18

  Elisabeth

  EVERY MORNING THAT MONTH, Elisabeth had to be at the diagnostics center by six so they could draw her blood and perform an ultrasound and send the results to the clinic in the city.

  She went in the yoga pants she’d worn to bed the night before, didn’t bother to wash her face.

  It was pitch black and bitter cold when she started the car each day. The roads were empty. Red lights seemed beside the point. The sleepy-eyed woman at the desk was always drinking a cup of tea, moving slow, when she arrived, as if Elisabeth had walked in on her in her own kitchen.

  Afterward, she drove straight home and got back into bed like it had never happened, leaving Andrew to take care of things, which he was all too willing to do. He had forgiven her, it seemed. He never said as much, but she knew his feelings had changed because he had started making her coffee again, because he held her at night, instead of keeping to his side of the bed.

  “I feel better than I have in ages,” he told her.

  Meanwhile, with each shot, each 5:00 a.m. alarm, Elisabeth felt increasingly unhinged.

  She tried to distract herself with work. She was writing again, finally. It made her feel like there was at least one part of her life she wasn’t messing up.