Pictures of You (25 page)

“You could take a class, you know,” her friend Michelle had told her. “Study French and take yourself to Paris. Take more lit classes.”

“With what money?”

“Take out a loan. Everyone does.”

Isabelle was silent, considering.

“And you should date,” Michelle said. “It isn’t too soon to let yourself be happy.” To jump-start things, Michelle had given Isabelle’s number to some guy named Jason, and when Isabelle protested, Michelle had narrowed her eyes at her. “Luke is history. It won’t kill you to have a nice time. At least talk to him. He teaches high school history. He’s nice.”

But Isabelle had real reservations about dating. After what she had done, how could she ever possibly have a normal life? When Jason called, they had a perfectly pleasant conversation, about films they liked, about books, and Isabelle was almost imagining she could go out—that she could pretend to be normal—when he gave a nervous laugh. “So,” he said. “I admit I’m fascinated. I saw your photograph in the papers. That must have been terrible about that accident.”

Instantly, Isabelle shut down. “I’d rather talk about anything else,” she said. But he persisted. “I’d love to hear how it changed you.” He laughed. “I love drama.”

Isabelle didn’t laugh, and after that, she wouldn’t go out with him. She told Michelle it was nothing personal, but she wasn’t ready.

Well, here she was, out in a bookstore, wasn’t she? She wasn’t stuck in the house crying the way she used to, was she? She had gone to a New Year’s Eve party. She went to the gym. And like Lora had advised, she had even made a list of the things she was going to do, goals written down so she could see them: Drive. Leave the Cape. Get a better job. Go back to school. Written down like that, they didn’t seem so impossible. Isabelle roamed the aisles, and when she rounded a corner, she saw Charlie in the café with Sam. She stopped, thrusting her hands deep into her pockets.

Sam was talking, and Charlie was looking at him, not the distracted way some adults did when kids talked, but as if nothing
were more interesting in the world. That made her like him. There was a stack of kids’ books on the table and a muffin in front of Sam. And then suddenly, Sam laughed, and then Charlie did, and she felt giddy. They were here at a bookstore, just as if it were an ordinary day, and they were laughing. Charlie reached over and stroked Sam’s hair, so gently that it made Isabelle swallow hard. Charlie looked up, not seeing her, and for the first time she noticed how blue his eyes were. His hair so glossy. She had driven all the way home with him, but she hadn’t noticed anything except that she had felt safe. Now, though, she felt flooded. She wanted to touch his face and she felt a strange, restless knocking in her head.

Isabelle stepped back. It was crazy what she was feeling. It was just grief and loneliness, that was all. He had been kind to her in the car and she was just responding to that. Or maybe it was seeing Charlie being tender with Sam. What did it matter what it was? She needed to leave before they saw her, before she felt anything more that she had no business feeling. Isabelle sighed and headed for the door, passing a bulletin board, when something stopped her.

Study Photography with Master Photographers in New York.

She pulled down a brochure. The cover showed a bunch of people with cameras, all of them crouched on a busy urban street, shooting photos. New York. Where she had always wanted to be. It was a special program you applied for, two years of intense study, and scholarships were available. All she needed was to get a portfolio together, write a statement of purpose, and apply. No one would care that she had dropped out of high school and only had her GED, that she had let money and location keep her from college. No one would know that she had killed a woman and ruined lives.

Still, she knew these programs. Most of them were rip-offs. You paid money and some hack showed you what to do and then you were no better off than where you had started. Well, maybe
she’d apply anyway. It could be something. It would get her to New York. A good thing replacing a bad. Was that forgiveness? Her mother would think so, and even Luke would call it karma. “Walk through every door that opens,” Lora had told her. “Try everything,” Jane had said. It was just paper, a promise that would probably never be kept. She glanced at it again. The deadline to apply was March. They would let you know by early summer if you got in for the fall. She tucked it in her purse and then started walking home.

“I’
M HOME!” SHE CALLED
, when she got inside.

As soon as she flicked on the lights, she heard rustling in Nelson’s tank. His head poked out from under the newspaper and then on short, sturdy legs, he moved to the edge of the glass tank, watching her. You couldn’t tell her that tortoises didn’t talk, because Nelson was making a clicking sound with his jaws that was so strange and insistent and wonderful—and, well,
loud
—that she knew he was trying to say something. “I’m glad I’m home, too,” she told him, stroking the smooth, silky top of his head. He moved his head closer against her palm. She got up and got a piece of cheese. God knows why he liked it. It wasn’t as if tortoises had dairy products in the wild. Stretching his neck, he snapped. “Oh, you’d bite the hand that feeds you, would you?” she laughed. “I guess you’re family then.”

Judy at Beautiful Baby had made fun of Isabelle for having a tortoise. “He doesn’t even know you’re alive,” Judy said. But Isabelle knew Judy was wrong. She had lived with Luke for nearly twenty years, but most times when she got home from work, their house had been empty, with a Post-it stuck on the cupboard. “See you later!” No x’s for kisses. Not even a smiley face. She had felt so lonely she had flooded the room with the TV or the radio. She took Nelson out of the tank and put him on the table. He lifted his head and stared at her and clicked his jaw. “Thank you for the lovely welcome,” she told him.

She got up and looked through some of her photographs. There was the one she had taken of Sam, his small shoulders hunched, his face filling the shot. She held the photo up to the light. She liked this one. Maybe it was good enough to get her into that photography school. She could stay in tonight and get her whole portfolio together, fill out the damned application, and see what might happen. She could take it all to the post office first thing in the morning.

Who knew? Maybe she was due for a miracle.

It was February and freezing, and Charlie was shopping for a Valentine’s Day card for Sam. He picked up a funny one with a monkey dressed in a heart-printed T-shirt, and then he saw one with a woman with long, black, curly hair and there he was, thinking about Isabelle again.

Charlie hated how much she came into his mind. He kept picturing her weeping at the diner. He kept replaying the drive home with her. When he and April had taken drives, the energy used to crackle in the air like sparks as they speed talked, breaking into each other’s conversation. But Isabelle listened to him so intently, it was palpable. When she spoke, her words were slow and thoughtful. The drive with Isabelle had been quiet and gentle, as if the world were somehow full of grace.

He shook it off, tried to forget that night. It was all ridiculous. But then he kept seeing her around town, bundled up against the chill on her bike, once leaving a supermarket the moment he was walking in. He saw her walking with a man on New Year’s Day, the two of them in glittery party hats, her skin rosy with cold, and he had stared hard, but she hadn’t turned around.

He bought the monkey card and headed for work. All that afternoon, he worked on a kitchen for a second-grade teacher, and though he should be concentrating on pointing the bricks, he kept
remembering the drive with Isabelle, Sam sleeping peacefully in the back, the way they had talked. He thought of the way she kept turning around in the car to look at Sam, how she had even stretched around to adjust his seat belt. April used to just jump in the car and urge, “Go, go, go.” She was always looking at the road ahead.

So Isabelle was maternal. So what? So she liked Sam. He’d feel this way about anyone who was kind to his son, and you could argue that she was being so kind out of guilt, couldn’t you? Charlie repointed another brick. He had to stop thinking about this. It was just because she grieved about the accident, too, because she adjusted his son’s seat belt. It had nothing to do with anything else.

He took a sip of his coffee and put it down. It tasted like antifreeze.

It was just loneliness, he told himself. Just human need. And maybe, he told himself, it was good that he felt something, because it meant he was getting better, that he was ready to move on. If it was just him, he probably wouldn’t care as much, but he had Sam to think about. “We’re new men,” he kept telling Sam, every time he brought home new clothes, new dishes, anything that felt as if they were pushing ahead.

That night, after Sam was asleep, Charlie walked quietly into his room and watched him. He was so beautiful, this child, so perfect. No one ever told him he’d feel this intensely about his child. No one ever told him that his wife would be gone.

Charlie went and stood out on the porch. What would it be like to have another woman in his life? Would he ever love anyone the way he had April? He used to draw her to him and tell her, “Look at that. Perfect fit.” He used to plan on how they’d travel when Sam was at college, how they’d sit on the porch at ninety, still holding hands. Had that all been a lie? A knot balled in his stomach. How could it have been perfect if she had left with his son and he didn’t have a clue why?

He tried to imagine himself on that porch at ninety, holding the
hand of a woman he didn’t know yet, but all he saw was empty space.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, Charlie went into Sam’s room to clean. Sam was supposed to make his bed, but here it was, sheets awry, an Etch-A-Sketch flung on the floor. Charlie smoothed the comforter over the bed and saw something poking up under the pillow and pulled it out.

A photo. Sam and Isabelle together on the beach, which must have been done with a timer. A flicker of unease swam through him. When had this been taken and why hadn’t he known about it? Hadn’t he and Isabelle agreed that she’d call when Sam was with her?

A halo of light was hitting Isabelle’s hair, and she had this faint smile on her face, as if she knew something special and was just about to tell you. Her hair. Look at her hair. April used to cut her hair every week with the nail scissors to keep it short and spiky, and though he had thought April was beautiful, he couldn’t stop looking at the thicket of Isabelle’s curls. How black they were. How shiny. The person who crashed into his wife could have been a fifty-year-old woman coming home from a mah jong game. It could have been a businessman speeding to a marketing meeting, not paying attention, or a teenager joyriding. But instead—and for some reason this hurt and angered him more—she was this enigmatic, beautiful woman.

Charlie let the photo fall from his hand. What did it matter what she looked like? Sam was a kid and Charlie needed to know where he was. Sam couldn’t be expected to be responsible all the time, but Isabelle was an adult. Why hadn’t she respected his wishes and told him when Sam came to see her? Why couldn’t she understand that not knowing where his wife was going was horrible enough, but not knowing where his son might be was infinitely worse? The more he thought about it, the sicker he felt. He’d go see her. He’d
tell her she’d done enough. She’d given Sam photography and that was wonderful, but now they needed her out of their lives because he just couldn’t worry about this anymore.

He got in the car and drove to Isabelle’s.

When Isabelle buzzed him in, he took the stairs two at a time, one flight up, and when he got to the top of the stairs, he was panting.

She was standing in her doorway, in jeans and a white shirt with red buttons, her hair in a big, loose braid down her back, tendrils curling from it, and as soon as she saw him, she stepped back, alarmed. He averted his face so he wouldn’t look at her eyes, as luminous and deep as pools.

“I need to talk to you,” he said, struggling to catch his breath, wishing he hadn’t run up all those stairs. She invited him in, but he was too keyed up to sit down. Words were bubbling up before he could stop them. He swallowed hard. “This has to stop, this relationship between you and Sam,” he said quickly. “I thought you were going to let me know when you saw him.”

Isabelle shook her head. “He just comes over. I tell him not to, but he keeps showing up. Sometimes he’s only here for five minutes, so calling would make no sense. What am I supposed to do? Send him away?”

“That’s an idea,” Charlie said. “I saw a photo. You two at the beach.”

Isabelle sat down on the couch and Charlie was about to sit, too, when she grabbed his sleeve. “Careful,” she said, pointing to the floor.

A tortoise was walking around. He stopped and ate a piece of lint on the braided rug, which disconcerted Charlie. “That’s Nelson. I let him out of his tank to walk around. I hope you don’t mind,” Isabelle said.

He sat down carefully on the couch. “It’s your house.” Charlie frowned. “Why you? Why is my son so drawn to you?” Even as
he said it, he couldn’t stop looking at the base of her throat, at the dark curly loops of her hair. He wanted to touch them, to thread his fingers through them.

“We talked about this.” Isabelle said. “Do you think this is easy for me?”

“He still photographs roads and cars!”

“And maybe he’ll eventually stop! Maybe that’s his way of letting it all go!” Isabelle’s voice rose. “All I’m doing is giving him little minutes of kindness. How can you not give your okay to that?”

“Because you’re the wrong person to give it! Because you’re the cause of his misery!” As soon as he said it, he felt a stab of regret. He didn’t want to be yelling at her. What was he thinking, coming here? Why was he thinking about her? It was all mixed up, all wrong.

Her face flushed and she looked abruptly away from him, and then she turned and bent down to pick up the tortoise. “I think you’d better go,” she said, her voice strained, and then the tortoise lunged and bit one of the red buttons on her shirt, making her gasp.