Pictures of You

by Caroline Leavitt

  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.

  TWELVE

  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.

  THE 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, s
he 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.

  “Hey!” She tried to gently pull back and Nelson’s jaws tightened. His nails scraped against her shirt.

  “Are you all right? Why won’t he let go?” Charlie stood up and touched the tortoise.

  “It’s the red—he thinks it’s food,” she said helplessly. She tickled the tortoise’s leg, which he drew into his shell, but his jaw stayed clamped shut. She supported Nelson with her hands, keeping him away from her body, holding him like a soup bowl. She looked so uncomfortable, Charlie began to be worried.

  “Can he hurt you?”

  “He once bit a pencil in two.”

  Gingerly, he tried to help. He stretched out Nelson’s leg, but all that happened was the tortoise hissed through his nose and opened his eyes wider, glaring at Charlie.

  “Wait, I know what to do,” Isabelle said. She stood up. “You have to help me. Can you run water in the bathtub?”

  He stood there. “Charlie, please,” she said. “This isn’t good.”

  He followed her into the bathroom. “Can you fill the tub for me?” She waited while he turned on the water. “Make it warm,” she said, and when the tub was half full, she turned to Charlie. “Help me again,” she said. “Can you slide my shirt off?”

  “What?”

  “Just please help me,” she said, getting more agitated. “I’ll hold Nelson away from me so he won’t bite, if you can just get my shirt off.”

  She held the tortoise as far away as she could, tenting out her shirt. Charlie’s mouth went dry. He didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to be here, but he held the edges of Isabelle’s shirt and slowly lifted them up, over her shoulders, over her head, until she was bare except for a stretchy black bra.

  Charlie swallowed. He took in her pale, creamy skin, but she wasn’t looking at him. She carefully lowered the shirt and Nelson into the tub, finally shimmying her arms out of the sleeves, dunking his head under the water, and the tortoise’s mouth shot open and then he was swimming, his eyes open. Isabelle lunged as he gracefully paddled, grabbing the shirt out of the water, dripping it into the sink, then she turned to Charlie, and laughed. The water was draining out of the tub, so that Nelson was now walking in damp puddles, snapping at shadows on the porcelain.

  Isabelle stepped back, leaning against the sink, and her braid brushed along Charlie’s arms. She smelled like pine and lemon. “Charlie?” she said, and he felt caught in a dream. He swore he heard the whisper of the ocean. April was nowhere around. There was just him and Isabelle. She wasn’t moving and then he took two steps toward her and without thinking, kissed her mouth. She hesitated, and then kissed him back.

  • • •

  ISABELLE WOKE, SQUINTING at the light coming in through the blinds. She was tangled in the sheets, and beside her, Charlie slept, his beautiful face calm and still.

  She didn’t dare believe this had all really happened. That she and Charlie had lowered themselves to the bathroom floor and then somehow had made it from there to her bed. That he had taken off her clothes so gently it had felt as if he were unwrapping her. He had touched her stomach and kissed her thighs, all the while looking at her as if he were drinking her in, as if he couldn’t get enough of her. The whole time they were making love, she had kept placing her hand on his lips, not so that he would kiss her fingers—which he did—but so he wouldn’t speak, so she wouldn’t have to hear him say, “This is a mistake.”

  Charlie’s arm was still around her, the heat of his body making her warmer. She tried to ease herself up from bed to look at the clock, mindful not to disturb Charlie. One in the afternoon. Nelson was still in the bathtub and she was here in bed with Charlie and both facts seemed somehow equally strange and miraculous. But she needed to get up. She needed to pee and dress, feed Nelson and put him back in his tank, and get to Beautiful Baby. She tried to move, but then Charlie’s eyes fluttered open and he saw her and she couldn’t help it, she flinched. For a moment, she was afraid to move.

  “Hey,” he said, and then he gave her a smile. “I can’t believe this.”

  The tone seemed friendly, but a voice was hissing in her head, like a danger signal.

  He stroked back her hair, tucking a strand behind her ear.

  “Who would have thought,” Isabelle said lamely.

  They both got out of bed and started pulling on clothes. Isabelle had been unselfconsciously naked in bed, but now she felt shy and dressed as quickly as she could. Charlie stood there, watching her.

  “Are you really all right about this?” Isabelle asked quietly.

  He looked at her, surprised. “Aren’t you?”

  “I am, but … we don’t really know each other.”

  “We know the same things.”

  Isabelle nodded, turning slightly away so he wouldn’t see how relieved she was.

  Charlie’s cell phone rang, startling them both so that Isabelle felt her heart jump, and when he reached for the phone, she saw that his hands were trembling.

  “Work,” he said reluctantly. “I have to go.”

  “Oh,” Isabelle said. The day stretched out tight in front of her like a rubber band about to snap. “Can I see you again?” she blurted, and was instantly mortified. “I’m sorry,” she said, waving her hand, but he caught it in midair.

  “God, of course,” he said, “I want to see you again,” and Isabelle swallowed.

  When he got to the door, he stopped, as if he had forgotten something. He started to open his mouth as if he were about to speak, and she was desperate to kiss him, but then he opened the door and was gone.

  FOR A WHILE after Charlie left, she just stood at the door. Any moment he might come back to see her again, or to tell her, “I changed my mind. This is a bad idea.” She couldn’t believe th
is had happened, that she had slept with Charlie.

  It was crazy what she was feeling, these jolts of need like she was on fire. What have I done? she thought. What happens now?

  She went to the bathroom, flooding the sink with cold water, dunking her face in, and when she straightened, she saw Nelson in the mirror, high-stepping daintily along the bottom of the tub.

  CHARLIE COULDN’T CONCENTRATE on studding the wall or tiling the Robinsons’ kitchen. All he could think about was Isabelle. The deep green of her eyes. And her hair. He’d never seen hair so black. It smelled like mint tea. He thought of how silky her skin had been, how she had arched her back up to meet him, and then he felt a bolt of pain and swore. Shit. He’d whacked his thumb with the hammer, something he hadn’t done since the first year he took up construction. He rubbed at his thumb, massaging the ache, telling himself he had to concentrate.

  Shortly after April’s death, Rae Hanks, one of his neighbors, had told Charlie that April would be watching over him, that she’d send someone to take her place, to take care of him and Sam. “She won’t let you stay unhappy,” Rae had told him. Charlie had thought it was a bunch of hooey. The dead didn’t watch over the living. There were no ghosts. And in any case, he knew better than anyone that while April might have been loving, she was also jealous as hell. She watched him when they were at the beach to see if he was looking at anyone in a bikini. At parties, if he joked with women he knew, she would come and glue herself to his side. “Do you love me?” she kept asking him, over and over. “Do you love me?” And of course he did, Jesus, any person could see that. But April was April. She’d no more send him anyone else to love than she would have bayed at the moon.