Naked

by Megan Hart

  “You’ll come, right? And dinner on Friday. You haven’t been over since the party.” He flipped through the large album of photos I’d chosen as my best, to show off to potential clients. “Oh, I like this one. Why don’t you do more of these, Livvy? They’re so good.”

  I glanced at the picture, a nude I’d taken at a photography workshop I’d gone to the year before. “Because I’m not an erotic photographer and I don’t have much use for nudes.”

  “She’s pretty.”

  I gave him a look. “Yes. She is. She’s a model.”

  He flipped a few more pages. “I like this one, too.”

  A landscape. Nothing special. I could add text to it and play with the dimensions to use in brochures or Web sites. I shrugged.

  “You don’t take compliments very well.”

  I laughed and began toying with the pictures I’d taken of him. “I want to make my living doing this, Patrick. I don’t have any grand ideas of becoming a famous artiste. The work’s good. Yes. I get it. I’m not setting up shop at the street fair to sell my prints, okay?”

  “You could have a gallery show. Your work is good, as good as some of the stuff I’ve seen hanging up downtown. You know I have a friend of a friend—”

  “Stop,” I told him firmly. “Patrick, I love you, but I’m not having a gallery show. And besides, I know people, too, you know. It’s not like I couldn’t get something going if I wanted to.”

  “So why don’t you?” He leaned against the large wooden chest of drawers I’d salvaged from the back alley.

  I thought about warning him he’d get his designer jeans dirty rubbing up against the old wood, but decided against it. As fussy as Patrick could be, he liked to pretend sometimes he wasn’t, especially when we were alone and sort of reverted to the way we’d been as a couple. When he’d had to be what he felt was “manly.”

  “Because I don’t want to.” I shrugged again.

  “You should do it anyway.”

  Now I turned to look at him full-on. “You know, you can leave anytime.”

  Patrick-my-boyfriend would never have flipped me the finger. Patrick-my-boyfriend had insisted on using tools and playing sports. He’d farted and burped a lot more back then. I couldn’t say I wasn’t happy he’d let go of that.

  “You don’t go that way, remember?” I said with a glance at his middle finger.

  He snorted and stood up. “You’ll come to dinner.”

  The past two Fridays I’d spent watching movies with Alex. “I might have plans.”

  “What on earth could you be doing on a Friday night that would be better than games and food and drinks at my house?” He paused. “Do you have a date?”

  “I love how you make that sound like science fiction.” I sighed, giving up trying to work on the pictures with him there. “As a matter of fact, my tenant and I are probably going to be watching the entire BBC production of Pride and Prejudice. The Colin Firth version.”

  Patrick gasped and recoiled. “What? You…with him? But…”

  He looked so shocked and hurt I shouldn’t have laughed, but I did. “He’s never seen it.”

  “Liv!”

  “Patrick!” I mocked.

  He shook his head, frowning, brows pulled low over his blue eyes. “I knew you renting to him was going to be bad.”

  “What’s bad about it?”

  Alex had been great. He took the big garbage cans out to the Dumpster in back, had cooked dinner for me twice the week before, and hung out watching old movies with me. He had a great sense of humor and didn’t play his music too loud. He also liked to do yoga, shirtless, and that was a bonus. I’d found myself unable to sleep for thinking of him, but I didn’t want Patrick to know that. I sounded a little too gushy, too perky, but my focus was on the computer screen and not my tone of voice. Patrick’s silence alerted me to my faux pas, and I turned to look at him.

  “Don’t be like that,” I told him.

  “Well, you haven’t called me, like, in a week,” he said. “I thought you were going to come over to watch Supernatural on the big screen. You know Teddy bought the Blu-rays.”

  “I’ve had to work, Patrick. I can’t just throw all that aside all the time.” I tried to sound gentle and it came out annoyed. Probably because I was annoyed.

  Patrick just glared. He was jealous. This realization punched an incredulous laugh out of me. He hadn’t been jealous of the past three guys I’d dated, but he was jealous of this?

  “Oh, Patrick.”

  We knew each other well enough that some things didn’t need to be spelled out. He frowned and kicked at the floor. “I guess you’ll be spending Christmas with him, then?”

  “Instead of you?”

  He crossed his arms and looked dour.

  “I do have a family, Patrick. My dad’s invited me home with him and Marjorie. And my brothers have, too.”

  “And you’re going to go?”

  “I think so. I don’t see them that much.” My brothers had invited me for past holidays and I’d declined, not wanting to make a trip either to Wyoming or Illinois in the winter. I believed them both when they said they’d miss me, but I was also sure they weren’t heartbroken. We’d all grown up. They had families. Kids. Our family had never been as close as some and never as distant as others. What we had worked, at least for us.

  “What about your mom?”

  “My mother doesn’t celebrate Christmas, remember?” I gave him my full attention, and a scowl. It had certainly been a bit of an issue when we were dating. Not as much as the eventual revelation that he preferred sausage to tacos, but it had caused some tension.

  “I can’t believe you’re blowing me off for someone else.”

  “Get out.” I pointed at the door, but not before Patrick danced closer, just out of reach, to smack his lips at me. I didn’t want to smile or laugh, but I had to. “Out! I have work to do! Isn’t Teddy waiting for you?”

  “Teddy’s always waiting for me.”

  “And I’m sure he has dinner all ready for you when you get home, too. Don’t be late, hanging around here. Go on. Go.” I shooed him. Patrick grabbed at my hand but missed.

  I liked him this way, acting silly as he had when we’d been together long ago, before sex got in the way and he thought he had to be something he wasn’t. He was different now. We both were. But Patrick was really different with his new friends, his new partner. It might have been the “real” him, but this silliness was part of him, too. Time had passed, wounds had healed. In many ways Patrick and I were closer than we’d ever been as a couple. I knew in every part of me that mattered that if we’d gone ahead and done it, married, we’d have been miserable and divorced—or worse, miserable and not divorced—in less than a year. I was happy my Patrick had found his place in the world with someone who loved him the way he deserved and wanted to be loved, and I didn’t mope around wringing my hands, wishing for my prince to come. Or I tried not to.

  Then I was feeling sad and nostalgic again and hating it. Part of it was the time of year, when I felt caught between my different worlds, anyway, but part of it would always just be…Patrick.

  “Just don’t forget about me,” he said.

  “Oh, Patrick. As if I ever could.” I stood to give him a hug and a kiss he didn’t deserve, but I couldn’t deny. “Now. Get out. I’m busy.”

  “Call me,” he demanded.

  “I will! I will. Now go!”

  “Liv…”

  “Yes, my dear one?” The words were sweet, my tone a little bitter.

  “Nothing. Never mind.” Then he went out and closed the door behind him.

  I turned to my computer and lost myself in work. It was better than being lost in anything else.

  I wasn’t brought up stupid.

  On the contrary, both my parents were part of the sex, drugs and rock-and-roll generation. Fans of the Grateful Dead. I had two much older brothers who hadn’t thought a lot about shielding me from the movies they watched or music they l
istened to. I knew about sex.

  After my parents divorced, when I was five, my dad remarried almost immediately. His new wife, Marjorie, an enthusiastic member of Sacred Heart Catholic Church, had brought with her my two stepsisters, Cindy and Stacy, both a year or so older than me. My mom stayed steadfastly single, rarely even dating. My parents were cordial to one another as they shared me, neither ever making me choose, and if there was always a little bit of tension with my dad over my place in his new household, it was made up for by my mother’s complete indulgence in me. We were best friends, my mom and I.

  I had my first “real” boyfriend at fourteen, gave my first hand job a year later. Most of my friends had lost their virginity by the time we were sixteen, but I waited another year before I gave it up in my boyfriend’s basement at a graduation party for his older brother. I wasn’t scarred by screwing him, even though we broke up shortly after that. I knew enough to use a condom and was smart enough to go all the way with a guy who’d already proved himself adept at getting me off. It was as fine a first time as I could ask for.

  My life changed my senior year of high school. My mom, who favored flowing gypsy skirts and long, unbound hair, had always been a reader, but her choices of material had changed over the past year from Clive Barker and Margaret Atwood to thick, leather-bound copies of the Tanakh and journals on Jewish commentary. I knew about Judaism, though we’d never practiced anything more religious than spinning the dreidel. But now…well, they say there’s nothing like the enthusiasm of a convert. My mother, born and raised Jewish, wasn’t technically a convert, but she was definitely enthusiastic.

  Suddenly, most of what we’d done together as a family disappeared, tossed out in the garbage along with an entire pantry of food she deemed unfit to eat. She put away half her dishes to keep them unused for a year, the time it would take to make them kosher again. The others she koshered by pouring boiling water over them, and maintaining a completely meat-free house.

  Suddenly we were Jewish and vegetarian. My mom had always been a devout carnivore. The Friday-night dinners I could’ve dealt with. The candle lighting, the baking of challah. But giving up cheeseburgers? No way.

  I moved out to live with my dad and Marjorie, who took me in, but not quite without making it seem as though I were a burden. It was her duty, I heard her whisper to a girlfriend once, when they were gathered for coffee. Her Christian duty. It bothered her more that I hadn’t been baptized than the fact I was black—which was good, because there was always the chance I might accept Jesus Christ as my savior, but I could never change the color of my skin.

  I loved my dad and didn’t mind having to share a bathroom with my stepsisters, or having a small, dank bedroom in the basement. I didn’t mind the prayers before meals, because at least they were giving me plenty of bacon, ohhh, bacon. Every morning, bacon and eggs. I didn’t even mind church so much, because the altar boys were cute.

  My mother didn’t like any of this, but caught up in her own journey, she let a lot of things slide. So long as I was with her for the holidays she wanted to celebrate, she didn’t mind what I was doing the rest of the time. If I was there to light the menorah, she was all right with me going home to my dad’s to stuff the stockings. I was smart enough not to tell her about the youth group Marjorie encouraged me to join, or how my dad had been hinting that it might be a good idea for me to get baptized.

  I escaped salvation by heading off to college. Where I met Patrick my sophomore year. He lived in my dorm, and the first time he smiled at me, I imprinted on him like a duckling. Tall, fair-haired, ruddy-cheeked…and Catholic. As in can-name-all-the-martyred-saints Catholic. I was smitten.

  I like to think of life as an infinite jigsaw puzzle with so many pieces that no matter how many you fit together, the picture’s never finished. Meeting Patrick was the culmination of a hundred thousand choices. He was the end of only one path, but it was the one I took. No matter how it ended, he was the choice I made, and while I’d always felt I would never waste time in regretting it, I was beginning to think I might.

  I thought I knew what love was with a handsome boyfriend who was a very good kisser. I thought I knew what it was for three years, all through college, even when all my friends were fucking like bunnies and the sheen of chastity was wearing off. Love is patient, love is kind, right? Love forgives all things?

  That’s what I believed then. I wasn’t so sure now.

  Our senior year, Patrick got down on one knee and asked me to marry him, with a princess-cut diamond ring in one hand and a bouquet of twelve red roses in the other. We set a date. We planned a wedding.

  And two weeks before we were due to walk down the aisle at my father’s church, I found out Patrick had been lying to me all along.

  I hadn’t been raised stupid, but I’d sure ended up feeling dumb.

  The week passed. I heard the sound of voices as I passed Alex’s apartment, and I saw his car come and go, but I didn’t see him. I ended up watching Pride and Prejudice alone and somehow blaming Patrick for that.

  The week before Christmas is busy for most people, even those who don’t celebrate the holiday, and I had a to-do list as long as anyone’s. I hadn’t put up a tree, but I had bought presents. I’d be spending the day with my dad and his family, though my brothers and their wives and children weren’t going to be there. I’d also picked up a slew of last-minute design jobs for after-Christmas sales promotions, and a few portrait sessions for friends looking for down-to-the-wire stocking gifts for friends and relatives.

  The little girl in my camera’s viewfinder didn’t have wings, but she was a little angel. Four years old, mop of curly black hair, stubborn little rosebud mouth and a pair of crossed arms. A tiny, badass version of Shirley Temple, including the dress with the bow at the waist.

  “No! No, no, no!” She stamped her foot. She pouted. She glared.

  “Pippa. Sweetie. Smile for the picture, please?”

  Pippa looked at her daddy Steven and stamped her foot again. “I don’t like this dress! I don’t like this headband!”

  She tore the bow from her hair and threw it on the ground, and to make sure we all knew just how much she hated it, stepped on it with her patent leather shoes.

  “I blame you,” Pippa’s other daddy, Devon, told me.

  I raised a brow. “Gee, thanks.”

  Devon laughed as Steven grabbed up the bow and tried to salvage the look. “She’s stubborn, that’s all. A lot like you.”

  “Pippa, princess, please—”

  “Oh, and her daddy spoiling her has nothing to do with any of that?” I murmured, my attention focused on the scene playing out in front of me. Point and shoot. Click. I captured the battle between father and child with a press of one finger.

  “Don’t take pictures of this!” Steven demanded.

  Pippa, laughing, dodged his grasp and ran around the studio. Her shoes pounded the old wooden boards, the beat of freedom. She ran fast, that little girl. Just as I always had.

  Devon laughed and sat back, shaking his head. I snapped picture after picture. Pippa running. Steven grabbing her up, dangling her upside down, her pretty dress flipping up to show the rumba panties beneath, and her springy curls sweeping the floor. Daddy and daughter snuggling close. Then, two daddies with their little girl, the love among them a visible, tangible thing I didn’t control or edit, but merely captured.

  “Pippa, do it for Daddy,” Steven said. “I want a pretty picture of you to give Nanny and Poppa.”

  That rosebud mouth pursed again and the small, fine brows furrowed, but at last Pippa gave a sigh better suited to a little old lady. “Oh, okay. Fine.”

  He settled her on the upturned wooden crate and arranged her hair and dress, then stepped back. I framed the shot and took it. Perfect. But even as I tilted the camera to show the digital image to Devon, I knew this wasn’t the one I’d tweak and polish to give them for their wall.

  Small arms hugged my knees and I looked into an upturned face. �
�Lemme see, Livia! Lemme see the pitcher.”

  I knelt beside the little girl and showed her the photo on the screen. She frowned. “I don’t like it.”

  “Shh,” I whispered conspiratorially. “Don’t tell your daddy that or he’ll make you sit for another one.”

  Even at four, Pippa was smart enough to figure out when a smile was a better weapon. She giggled. I joined her. When she hugged me, her small, soft cheek pressed to mine, I smelled baby shampoo and fabric softener.

  “Why don’t you go play with the dollhouse,” I told her. “Let me show your daddies the pictures.”

  “I wanna see the pitchers, too!”

  “You will,” I promised, knowing there was no way to keep her from it, but not willing, as her fathers were, to indulge her every whim. “But first I have to put them on my computer. Go play.”

  “She listens to you,” Steven said with an exhausted sigh as Pippa skipped off to the corner where I’d placed my old dollhouse. “Thank God.”

  I shrugged and slipped the memory card from the back of my camera. I took it to the long, battered table I used instead of a desk, and pushed it into the card reader plugged into the back of my Macbook. My photo program opened, showcasing the series of pictures I’d taken. Steven and Devon pulled up chairs on either side.

  “Look at that one,” Steven said about the one showing the three of them. “Gorgeous, Liv. Just amazing.”

  The heat of pride flushed my cheeks. “Thanks.”

  “No, seriously. Look at that.” Devon pointed to one of Pippa, backlit in front of one of the studio’s long, high windows, her dress belled out around her knees as she spun. “How do you do it?”

  “Practice. Talent.” I clicked on the shot to enlarge it, and toyed with some settings to bring out the contrast of light and dark. “Mostly practice.”

  “Anyone can take a snapshot. But what you do is art. Really art.” Devon sounded awed. He turned from the monitor to look at me. “She draws, you know. Pippa does. The pediatrician says kids her age are just barely making stick figures, but she’s already drawing full bodies.”