Pictures of You

by Caroline Leavitt

  She put the camera down against her body, and he saw her hands were shaking. “It didn’t happen that way,” Isabelle said.

  “What didn’t?”

  Isabelle shook her head. “I’m so sorry, but that’s wrong, Sam—”

  “I thought we’d always be friends,” Sam said. “How was it so easy for you to vanish? Do you know what it was like for me? For my dad? Especially after all that had happened?”

  “I was always your friend. And it was far from easy.”

  “No. You weren’t a friend. You left.”

  Isabelle stared past Sam. Her fingers moved on her camera, as if she were reading it like Braille. “You really don’t know, do you?” she said quietly.

  “Know what?”

  “I called the store,” she said. “I called every hospital on the Cape until I found where you were admitted. I called Charlie.” She grabbed for Sam’s arm and he stepped away from her. “Sam, I was ready to get on a plane and go there, but Charlie saw my phone number scribbled on your hand and got to me first. He told me to stay away. He was so scared you would call me and get worse that he scrubbed my number off.”

  “What?” Sam looked at her, astonished. He remembered the numbers he had inked on his hand, how frantic he had been when he had found them gone.

  “Sam, I’m so sorry.”

  “Why can’t you take responsibility?” Sam said. He felt his voice tightening. “Why can’t you just admit that you did something wrong?”

  Isabelle shook her head violently. “You don’t understand! They couldn’t get the asthma under control and Charlie was terrified you might die!” She swiped at her eyes. “Every time I wrote you, every time Charlie even mentioned my name, you were ending up in the ER. Emotions can exacerbate asthma, you know that. Charlie begged me to just stay away. And when I did, he told me that your asthma disappeared. I knew asthma sometimes disappeared, but it seemed so sudden, so miraculous. How could I not think that my not being there was making you better? How could I tempt that?”

  Sam tried to swallow but he couldn’t. His head swam. He tried to imagine his father doing such a thing, knowing how Sam had waited for the phone, the mail, how he had run crying after the postman, sure there must be a letter for him. He thought of his father sleeping on a cot by his bed in the hospital and every time Sam woke up, his father was awake, too, and watching him, his eyes damp.

  “He thought you were going to die, Sam!”

  “I didn’t die.”

  “Did you know that I wanted the two of you to come to New York with me? Didn’t Charlie tell you?

  “My father wouldn’t lie to me.”

  “I suppose he was protecting you.”

  Sam felt his anger burning like a match flare. His mother used to bend the truth as easily. His father used to tell him that the worst thing a person could do was to be dishonest and now Isabelle was telling him how his father had lied.

  He was furious with his father, furious with her, and even angrier at himself for thinking that coming up here might be a good idea. “You could have stayed on the Cape. You had a life there, too.”

  “No, I didn’t. You were the only reason I stayed. Both of you. And then I was losing my job and my money was dwindling. All I had was you, and I was losing that. I was making things worse for everyone, and this school opportunity came up for me in New York.” She wet her lips. “I loved your father. I loved you. But I was making you sick. What else was I supposed to do, Sam?”

  Sam tried to remember. The late-night phone calls his father made to Isabelle. The way Sam would sometimes wake up and find Charlie pacing, or baking loaves of bread at four in the morning that no one ever ate. Once he found his father scrubbing the kitchen floor, tile by tile, even though the cleaning lady had been there just the day before. He remembered how sad his father was, and how he had thought it was because Isabelle had left them both.

  A headache pulsed behind Sam’s eyes. He sat down heavily on a bench.

  “Your father felt he had to choose between the two of us, and you know what? We both chose you and we did the right thing.” She grabbed his arm but he tugged it free. “Don’t you think I think about the accident and your mother dying every single day? I do. I wanted to make things right for both of you. I fell in love with both of you, but it wasn’t enough.”

  “No one said you were responsible for the accident.”

  “Really? That’s not what the newspapers said. Or a whole lot of people. And how do you know? How do you know for sure?”

  “You were driving below the speed limit on the right side of the road!”

  “I was driving in the fog! I couldn’t see!”

  “Jesus, it wasn’t your fault!” Sam shouted.

  “And it wasn’t yours, either!” she cried. “Not your mother leaving, not the accident, not what happened with your father and me! You just think it is!”

  Sam didn’t realize the keening noise he heard was coming from him, until Isabelle sat down beside him and put her arms around him and then he cried and cried and cried.

  IN THE END, Sam stayed only one more day at her house. He watched how Frank brought Isabelle coffee with her breakfast, how every time she came into the room, Frank’s whole body seemed to light up. He watched, too, how Grace would curl into Isabelle’s lap. That evening, they ate at Frank’s restaurant, a busy, boisterous place filled with plants. She had a life, a family, and it made him feel for his father.

  “What will you tell Charlie?” Isabelle asked.

  “That I saw you. That you have this great, happy life.”

  She nodded. “Tell him I asked about him, too.”

  Before he left, Frank insisted on giving Sam something for the road. A care package of bread and vegetable spread he had made himself, some grapes that would be easy to eat in the car, and a thermos of herb tea. “See, now you have to come back to return the thermos,” Frank said. “See how cagey I can be?”

  It was strange being the one to leave her, the one to get in the car and drive away, and for one moment, Sam couldn’t do it. He sat with his hands on the steering wheel and glanced at Isabelle in the rearview mirror. She was waiting for him to go, waiting to get back to her family, to her life, shifting weight from one foot to the other. That morning, she had put his address and phone number into her computer. “We’re not going to have just this day,” she told him. “You’re stuck with me in your life. I want to meet Lisa. I want to see you at work. I want to know all about you.”

  He studied Isabelle, framing her as if she were going to be a photograph, frozen in time. She leaned against Frank and rested her head on his shoulder, and for a moment, he wanted to weep.

  He rolled down the window so he could see them without the pane of glass.

  Frank and Grace went back in the house, leaving Isabelle standing in the middle of the road. Time seemed all mixed up and he wasn’t sure where he was or what year it was. Only that there was Isabelle in the road watching him leave, one hand uplifted, not moving, growing smaller and smaller in his mirror as he drove away from her. Staying there in that house, where, if he wanted to, he could always find her.

  AROUND DUSK, HE was at the Tick Tock Diner, and the other familiar points. It was still a good hour before he would be home, but he stopped, pulling into the parking lot. He got coffee, and then took it back to the car, but before he got back in, he leaned against the front door and he called Lisa.

  Her voice was soft with sleep. “How did it go?” she said.

  “I want …” he said. He felt a frisson of fear, real and familiar. Would his whole life be perfect or just this moment? And wouldn’t that be enough?

  “You want what?”

  “I want to. With you. I want to.” He swallowed.

  He looked outside and he saw there was a moon out now, full and white in the dark sky. He held the phone close to his face, and then, he waited for her to answer. He held his breath.

  Acknowledgments

  EVERY WRITER DESERVES a dream agent like
Gail Hochman, whose enthusiasm, warmth, and advice make me grateful every day. Huge thanks, too, to Bill Contardi and Maya Ziv and everyone at the agency. Thanks to every amazing person at Algonquin and to my editor Andra Miller, who made working together exhilarating, illuminating, and fun.

  For help getting facts straight: Peter J. Salzano and Sue O’Doherty on how kids deal with grief, Lissa Rankin for medical information, Eric and Andrew Johnston on funeral homes, Linda Matlow on photography, and Lynn Reed Baragona on the legal ramifications of a car crash.

  For friendship, reading, advice, and support: Leora Skolkin-Smith, Katharine Weber, Kate Maloy, Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Liza Nelson, Robb Forman Dew, Rochelle Jewell Shapiro, Jeff Lyons, Jane Bernstein, Jeff Tamarkin, Victoria Zackheim, Beth Ann Bauman, Lisa Cron, Lindy Judge, Jane Praeger, Jessica Brilliant Keener, M. J. Rose, Marlene Quinn, Cara Mayrick, Jo Fisher, Linda Corcoran, James Lambros, John Truby, Leslie Lehr, Masha Hamilton, Clea Simon, Carole Parker, Barney Lichenstein, Jo-Ann Mapson, Helen Leavitt, Ruth Rogers, and Susan Ito. Thanks, too, to the Bellevue Literary Review, who published the short story that jump-started this novel, and to UCLA Writers’ Program online, where I teach.

  Most of all, I owe everything to the two guys who sing me songs, surprise me with cupcakes, and fill my world with love: Jeff and Max.

  Pictures of You

  The Writer as Reviewer: A Note from the Author

  Questions for Discussion

  The Writer as Reviewer

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  “DON’T DO IT, it’ll kill your writing,” a writer friend warned me when, seven years ago, I first mentioned I was going to be a book critic for the Boston Globe. I can’t say I was that surprised by her response; a lot of writers I know won’t review books at all. They don’t want to risk reading a book they may not like, having to give another writer the kind of review we’ve all gotten at one time or another—you know, the one that makes you feel that maybe it’s not too late to give it up and go to dental school. A writer writing reviews is incestuous, I’m told. Shouldn’t we really just be concentrating on our own writing rather than taking apart someone else’s for all the world to see?

  Ah, I beg to differ.

  I want to review because I’m passionate about books and writers. And for me, reviewing opens up writing in ways one wouldn’t expect. Having to read critically, instead of for the pure, dizzy enjoyment of being lost in a read, forces me to look at a book differently: I notice what’s working and why, and what is leaving me adrift. This, in turn, impacts how I write. Writing is always challenging—but I’ve slowed down, gotten more meticulous, because of everything I’m learning from reading other writers critically. I take note of a great first line, a reveal I never expected—and I begin to tuck those techniques into my own author’s toolbox. Reading as a reviewer is like seeing the scaffolding of a building, the bones beneath the skin. Reviewing actually makes me more conscious of not just how and why books work but how and why I want my own to work.

  While I knew I could learn a lot from reviewing great books, I was happy to see I could learn even more from the ones that faltered. Recognizing a flaw in someone else’s work can prevent me from making that gaffe in my own. Having to read flowery, fussy language makes me stop every time I think about adding what seems like a perfectly good adjective. Closing a book unsatisfied because the ending ties everything up in a neat bow makes me work harder at my own grand finales, making sure they’re more open ended, that they provide more of a never-ending story that makes you wonder about the character’s next step even after you’ve shut the book. I’ve learned that if I don’t love a book by the first twenty pages, chances are I’m not going to love it for the next three hundred. This means I spend months on my own first chapter, honing it, getting it exactly right. What I most love are the books that aren’t afraid to break a few rules. A meditative chapter might not advance the story, but you know the book would be less without it. A character who leaps into a book midstream, tells his story, and then vanishes can somehow tie the book together. These things give me the courage to wander, to take risks in my own novels.

  It’s awful to have to give a bad review, but even bad reviews can be helpful. I realize no one sets out deliberately to write a bad book (and I know that most of my writer friends and I are always terrified that we somehow have), but sometimes a bad review gives helpful feedback. For example, a line in a New York Times review for my first novel, Meeting Rozzy Halfway, mentioned that my “back-story was sparkling while the front story faded.” This taught me how to pay more attention to making things more immediate. I try to give the same sort of critical help, because I feel that all writers are in the trenches together and we should do what we can to help one another. Plus, false praise is disrespectful to another writer, like telling a friend he looks terrific even though there is that bit of salad greenery lodged in his teeth that he could easily get rid of if someone would gently point it out.

  I love reviewing. When I’m desperate to figure out my story, I always study what worked for other writers I’ve reviewed—and what didn’t. But when I’m deep in the writing zone, engaged in my character’s struggles, I don’t consciously think about anything but the world I’m lost in creating. It’s then that I hope that all those techniques and tools will emerge, organic as seedlings and just waiting to sprout on my pages.

  Questions for Discussion

  1. Why do you think Leavitt describes the events surrounding the pivotal accident in the book three times, from the points of view of Isabelle, Sam, and then Bill? What do you think this is saying about how we see events in our lives and whether or not we can ever really know the whole truth? Do you personally think anyone can ever really know the truth?

  2. What’s different about the ways in which April and Isabelle are running away? What do you think would have happened with April if she had not made the choice to leave? And why do you think she was really outside the car?

  3. Some of the characters in Pictures of You engage in magical or wishful thinking. Sam believes he has seen an angel. Isabelle is told she has a special gift to foresee the future lives of the children she photographs. How do you think this magical thinking helps and hinders the characters, and have you ever used such thinking in your own life to get through a painful situation?

  4. Sam’s asthma impacts his life, April’s, and Charlie’s. At one point, on page 64, April tells Charlie that she heard that “breathing is our contract to remain here on this planet,” that people with respiratory problems are “troubled souls.” If this is so, why do you think that Sam’s asthma vanishes? What made Sam want to stay on earth and survive?

  5. At one point, on page 69, Charlie asks, “Was any parent perfect?” Discuss the ways April and Charlie were both good and also highly imperfect parents. Was there anything they could or should have done differently, given Sam’s illness? Do you think parenting ever turns out the way we expect it to?

  6. Sam remembers how he and his mother used to go on short trips and pretend to be other people with other lives. Why do you think people need to create different realities for themselves? How can it be both helpful and harmful?

  7. As Isabelle teaches Sam about photography, she explains that photographs sometimes show things that aren’t there. She tells him that he has to learn to look deeper, to see what might be hidden, and in a way, she’s really talking about people, as well as photographs. How much do you think we can ever really know about the people we love?

  8. Leavitt’s book explores many different kinds of love: the love of a mother for her child, the love of husband and wife, and some unexpected kinds, too, such as Isabelle’s devotion to Nelson, her tortoise. Why do you think Isabelle’s love for her tortoise is so important to her?

  9. How did you react to Bill’s story about what really happened the day of the accident? How did you feel about his ultimate decision? Why do you think he tried to find April after all that time?

  10. Why do you think Leavitt chose to fl
ash forward thirty years and show Sam as an adult? How would the novel have been different if it ended with Sam as a child? Was Sam’s life what you expected it might be, or were you surprised by his choices?

  11. Leavitt has said that the novel is about the stories we tell ourselves about the ones we love. How do these stories keep each character from truly seeing the ones they love?

  12. On page 304, Isabelle’s driving teacher tells her that “people who are frightened, who don’t know where they’re going … are my best students.” Why, in the context of the book, do you think this is true?

  13. The novel asks, can we forgive the unforgivable? Do you think Charlie ever really forgives April? Do you?

  14. At the end of the novel, on page 323, Sam wonders if his whole life might be perfect, “or just this moment? And wouldn’t that be enough?” What do you think he means? And what do you think the answer to that question might say about Sam’s worldview?

  15. Leavitt has said that she wanted to create a never-ending story that would make readers wonder about the characters long after they turned the last page. What do you think happens to Sam? Do you think Charlie and Isabelle ever meet again?

  Caroline Leavitt is the award-winning author of eight novels. Leavitt’s essays and stories have been included in New York Magazine, Psychology Today, More, Parenting, Redbook, Salon, and several anthologies. A book critic for the Boston Globe and People, she is a senior writing instructor at UCLA online. Her Web site is www.carolineleavitt.com.

  Other Algonquin Readers Round Table Novels

  A Reliable Wife, a novel by Robert Goolrick

  Rural Wisconsin, 1907. In the bitter cold, Ralph Truitt stands alone on a train platform anxiously awaiting the arrival of the woman who answered his newspaper ad for “a reliable wife.” The woman who arrives is not the one he expects in this New York Times #1 Bestseller about love and madness, longing and murder.