Pictures of You Read online

  “Just a little asthma attack,” said the paramedic. “Happens to the best of us.”

  “Does it happen to you?” Sam asked, but the paramedic shrugged. “My cousin gets them,” he said. “Had them since he was your age and he’s in his fifties now.”

  Sam lay still and thought about the fog, and how it could fool you. He thought about what he could tell his dad when he saw him. He thought of his mother turning toward him when she could have stepped out of the way, and he thought of the angel looking at him and then at the place where his mother was, and he folded his hands tight.

  He felt a whip of fear. He couldn’t see his mother following in any car from where he sat. Was she really there? “Is my mom still behind us?” he cried, and the paramedic gave Sam his hand and let him hold it. Sam heard one of the men swallow.

  “Of course she is,” he said. “Of course. Don’t you upset yourself now. Your job is just to relax and to feel better.”

  SAM HADN’T FELT BETTER. Not back then, and not right now, either.

  His grandparents hadn’t helped. His father didn’t help. His father watched him. Every time someone mentioned his mother being dead, he shut his eyes and hummed. He pressed his hands against his ears, or he quickly left the room so he wouldn’t have to listen a second longer, he wouldn’t have to think about why his mom wasn’t with him. Don’t say it. Don’t say anything. Inside, he felt flooded with tears, but he wouldn’t let himself cry because he knew if he did, he would never stop.

  The people who came to the house looked at him like he had a secret. What happened, what happened, what happened? Sam didn’t have many friends, but his father had let him invite Don over to play chess, but Sam had the feeling that Don was letting him win every game because he felt sorry for him. “You don’t have to let me win,” Sam said.

  “Who’s doing that?” Don said, but shortly after, Don said he wanted to go home. Sam saw the relieved way Don ran to his mother when she came to get him.

  He thought of his mother watching him when she should have been watching the car coming toward him. It was his fault. All of it. “Where were you going? Why did she have a suitcase?” his dad kept asking.

  “I don’t know,” he always answered.

  “God helps those who help themselves,” his grandma had said to his father, and his dad had snorted, but Sam kept turning that phrase over and over in his mind. How could he help himself so God would help him and his mom? He shut his eyes. Think, he told himself. Think. He had seen an angel with his mom. Maybe he had to find out where she had taken his mom and if his mom was all right there, and then maybe there could be a miracle and none of this would have happened. But how was he supposed to do that?

  “Sam! Want to go to the library?” Charlie called.

  THE OAKROSE LIBRARY was cool and quiet and one of Sam’s favorite places. “Take out as many books as you like,” Charlie told him.

  Sam picked out three books on his favorite superheroes, Silver Surfer, Flame Boy, and Mr. Invisible, guys who could change quickly and do anything, who could save the world in seconds. He was about to go find his father when he bumped into a stack of books, banging his elbow. As soon as he saw them, his hands began to tremble. Angels with big wide wings flew across the cover. He was mesmerized by their calm faces. They looked as if they knew a great secret. It was as if this book was meant to be here, as if it was a message for him specifically. He traced the faces of the angels with his fingertips. “Knowledge is power,” his dad always told him. Sam scooped up the books. Maybe there were clues in here.

  His dad only casually glanced at the titles of the books Sam checked out, but as soon as they got home, Sam felt anxious about opening the angel books right away, as if he might be pressing his luck, so instead he leafed through the superhero books. All that afternoon, Sam read, but he didn’t feel as happy as he usually did when he read. Mr. Invisible could escape evil, but he still was haunted by the death of his wife who’d died in the chemical fire that had made him invisible. Sam threw that book on the floor and reached for another. Flame Man got rid of a man-eating robot that was terrorizing the city, but he ended up losing his daughter.

  He picked up one of the angel books and began flipping through the pages, skimming the story. His heart felt like it was pulsing through his skin. He read a whole book about a boy whose guardian angel helped him win a baseball game. It was a good story, but it didn’t really help any. He leafed anxiously through the next one. None of the angels had black curly hair like the one he’d seen. They were blond and pale and gold bands of light circled their heads. He turned the page, his hands shaking. Angel is the Hebrew word for messenger, he read. A messenger! He knew it! Angels sometimes appear to people when their loved ones are about to enter the Ever After.

  The Ever After. Sam’s mouth went dry and he felt tears pushing at his lids. But where was the Ever After? Sam flipped the pages and he saw a drawing of a weeping man looking up at an angel floating in the sky and just above the angel’s head was a smiling woman who seemed to be reaching out to the man. He searched for the caption. Angels can be a kind of telephone through which we can talk to those who have passed on. Angels can even manifest those loved ones to us.

  Sam felt as if the world were tilting. He could talk to his mom! He could hear her voice! But manifest. What did that mean? Sam jumped up from bed and ran to his student dictionary, thumbing through the pages so wildly, he tore one of the edges. Mad. Magpie. There, there it was. Manifest—to appear. His mother could appear to him, like a hologram, like a dream. He could see her again and tell her he was sorry and she would hear him and talk to him. He cupped both hands over his mouth.

  Sam grabbed up another angel book and opened it, sprawling across his bed. He had to learn more, he had to know everything he could about this. There was a sentence jumping out at him in bold black letters. “It is not man’s place to question angels or to demand anything from them,” the book warned. “All power comes from God and angels are simply God’s messengers. It is up to angels to show you signs and it is your job to decode the meaning. Above all, be humble and full of gratitude.”

  Sam shut the book, thoroughly confused. What was this, that even if he saw the angel again, he wasn’t allowed to ask her anything? And what signs was the book talking about?

  He heard his dad rustling in the other room. Had an angel come to his dad, too? He didn’t know what his dad would say if Sam told him he had seen an angel and his dad hadn’t. Would his dad even believe him? Would he tell him there was no such thing the way he had when Sam had absolutely known for a fact that there was a monster under his bed, even after his father had shone a flashlight there and showed him the clean, empty floor? Would his dad try to change his mind? And even worse, would his dad start asking more questions about the accident that Sam didn’t want to answer? “Be humble,” the book had said, so did that mean if he told his dad or anyone, it would be bragging? Sam closed his eyes and pressed the book to his forehead.

  Later that night, he went out on the back porch and looked through his telescope at the stars. He didn’t really think Heaven was in the sky, like some big playground. He didn’t think you could look up and see angels waving at you from the clouds. He didn’t know where people went when they died, only that it was somewhere, and he had never needed so desperately to know where it was until now.

  He stared up at the stars. No one knew what was on some of the stars. There was the Big Dipper. There was Orion. He squinted and readjusted the lens. There were people who found new stars all the time, and he wondered, What if angels live on those stars?

  Suddenly he felt terrible, like any moment he might cry. He knew that the light from stars was light that was dead already, that what you were seeing was the past, not your present, and certainly not your future. What if the angel never came back to him again? Sam knew a few prayers from Sunday school, but instead, he shut his eyes and took a deep, long breath. “Please,” he said out loud.

  A FEW DAYS LATER, his
father went out and came back with a box. He looked a thousand years old to Sam, and his eyes were red. Sam saw his father put the box high up in the closet and then he got on the phone. Sam heard his father say his grandparents’ names and then right away there was arguing. “It’s not wrong,” his dad said. “It’s the best I can do right now. I’ll have a service when and if I’m ever ready.” Sam heard his father talk about how Sam would be going back to school, how he would be going back to work. Sam turned up his music so he couldn’t hear. He reached for another book, this one set on another planet, and when Bud, the main character, shot off in his rocket into space, Sam glanced out the window as if he might actually see it.

  SEVEN

  THE DAYS FOLLOWING the accident, Isabelle stayed in the house, curled on the sofa, a blanket thrown over her. She didn’t eat or answer the phone. She didn’t change her clothes. She couldn’t bring herself to shower. Every time she shut her eyes she saw April Nash standing in front of the car, her dress furling in the wind, her mouth moving, as if she were trying to tell Isabelle something important.

  The phone rang, jolting Isabelle awake. Sweaty, she pulled her damp shirt away from her skin. She listened to the answering machine. “Baby?” Luke was calling again, but she didn’t get up.

  He sounded so upset. She had seen him cry only once, after their first failed pregnancy. They hadn’t told a soul that she was pregnant, not until the first trimester was over, and then, they told everyone. Isabelle had mailed Nora a little note: “You’re going to be a grandmother!” believing that this, finally, was the thing that would make her mother forgive her. When it didn’t, she thought, well, surely when the baby was born. Imagine that. Driving up to Nora’s with a baby in a car seat in the back. Nora might be able to resist Isabelle, but who could resist a grandchild? “Babies are gifts from God,” Nora always said, and if babies were the gifts, surely their moms were the wrapping.

  Luke had come home with tiny little shirts and socks so small they could fit dolls. He bought a little leather jacket that said BORN TO WEAR DIAPERS on the back. Every night, they lay in bed, holding hands, whispering names to each other, like mantras, each one so beautiful it could break your heart just saying it. Cecile. Adriana. Wyatt. Cody.

  Every night, Isabelle put her hands on her belly. “Mommy’s here,” she whispered, and then she laughed out loud.

  She was four months pregnant when it happened. She had gone to her appointment alone that day, in a new bright blue cotton maternity dress, even though she hardly had a belly at all. She couldn’t wait for the doctor to examine her, a no-nonsense stick-in-the-mud who nevertheless had the reputation of being the best doctor on the Cape. She was spread across his examining table, naked under a paper gown, and she felt ripe and happy. He spread the imaging gel on her stomach and ran the ultrasound probe across her skin. It was Isabelle’s favorite part of her visits now, seeing her baby on the screen, having the doctor point out the rapid little heartbeat. Even the doctor would usually manage a smile, but this time, he had gone silent, frowning so darkly, Isabelle propped herself up on her elbows. “What is it?” she had cried. He had stood straighter, and then he had carefully wiped off the wand and set it down, without once looking at Isabelle. He glanced at the nurse, who seemed to Isabelle to visibly flinch.

  “What is it?” Isabelle whispered. The doctor wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  “There’s no heartbeat,” he said quietly.

  Isabelle couldn’t stop crying. The doctor kept spinning platitudes at her. He told her this was nature’s kindest way of making sure an unviable baby wasn’t born. He told her that she could always try again, that in fact, it would be easier next time, because time and time again, he had seen how after losing a baby, a woman would get pregnant right away, and the next baby would often be perfectly healthy. And then, for the first time since she had been coming to him, he touched her shoulder, a gesture so simple that she cried even harder. “We have to remove the fetus,” he told her quietly. “A more elaborate D and C. I’d like to schedule you for outpatient surgery tomorrow,” and then she looked up and saw the sadness in his face, and that was when she really felt frightened.

  She walked out into the waiting room, and the blonde she had laughed with caught Isabelle’s face and then her own face went pale. Then Isabelle was downstairs in the hospital lobby, sobbing on the phone to Luke to come and get her. No one even looked twice at her. It was a hospital, Oakrose General, full of misery.

  When Luke came, his face was terrible, and as soon as they got home, he hugged himself around her. He hid his face against her shoulder, but she could hear and feel his deep sobs. His body shook, like millions of tiny earthquakes. He took her to bed and lay holding her. “I promise. Nothing but good things from now on,” he said.

  For you, too, she thought, but she was too empty to say a single word.

  Good-bye. Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.

  THEY HAD TO WAIT six weeks before they could try again, a date she marked on her calendar, determined, but they never became parents. She did yoga to soothe her nerves. She ate vegetarian and cut out chocolate and salty snacks and took her vitamins. She woke Luke up at four in the morning to have sex because her expensive ovulation kit told her it was optimal timing. Every time her period came, she wouldn’t allow herself to feel bad. She saw her child, floating above her, like an angel spirit. “Come on down,” she encouraged.

  After six months, she stopped buying ovulation kits because it was too stressful. After a year, she quit taking the vitamins; she stopped going to the fertility specialist because the yearning in his waiting room was too palpable and their bank account was just about depleted. Finally, when the doctor told her that she couldn’t have children at all, she cried for weeks and then told Luke she wanted to adopt.

  She imagined a little Chinese baby with satiny black hair and almond eyes, but Luke looked at her as if she were crazy. “I don’t want a child if it isn’t mine,” he said.

  “Of course it will be yours!” she said, horrified, but he shook his head. “I don’t even want to discuss it,” he told her. “I’m sorry. I love kids and I want them as much as you do, but I want my own. That doesn’t make me a bad person, Isabelle, so stop looking at me like that.”

  Maybe that was when things started to really go wrong for them, when a rift grew that couldn’t be repaired. Every time they made love, she couldn’t help but feel a dark cloud descending over them. When he reached for her, she always felt as if a part of her were pulling back; she couldn’t separate making love from making children, neither of which seemed to be really happening.

  Luke grew quieter and quieter. He began coming home later, calling her from the bar, where he was now having musicians come in and play late sets, music so loud, Isabelle never wanted to go. “Be home soon,” he told her, and when he was, he smelled of smoke and beer. And sometimes perfume.

  It began to seem like the worst kind of cruelty that her job was to photograph kids. She fell in love with their faces and got upset when parents didn’t fuss over them enough, or hug them, or seem to realize what a blessing it was to have children. A woman came in with five kids and sighed to Isabelle, “I feel like the little old woman who lived in a shoe,” she said. “I don’t know what to do with them.”

  “I’ll take them,” Isabelle said, and the woman laughed, but she didn’t realize that Isabelle was only half kidding.

  Isabelle wished every child were her own. She developed the pictures and studied the images and there, in the background, she could almost see the ghosts of her own children. She came home too tense to notice how Luke was drifting away from her, how he seldom told her about his day or kissed her mouth anymore, until he, like her babies, was gone.

  He’s only around now because he doesn’t like losing, Isabelle thought. She had seen how angry he got when his team lost, how sour he was when the bar wasn’t mentioned in Boston magazine as one of the best bets, how he had called up the editor and extended an invitation for a free dinner a
nd wine flight, how he had persisted until the editor came and wrote the bar up in the magazine. “I’m coming over there,” he had told her on the phone, but she was too numb to even know how she felt about it.

  Her phone continued to ring, but she let the machine pick up. “Isabelle, I know you’re there,” voices said. Isabelle, Isabelle. The voices chanted her name like an incantation. Jane called, and then Lindy, and when Michelle called, Isabelle heard Andi babbling in the background. There was an almost constant rapping at her door, and sometimes notes slid through her mail slot. Call me. Let me know you are okay. Friends wanted to make sure she was all right. They told her how lucky she was to be alive, how fortunate they were to still have her. What an awful thing, they said. How horrible. I don’t know what I would do if I were you. It wasn’t your fault, they said. Don’t even think it. It wasn’t your fault. And as soon as she heard that, well, of course, she thought it was her fault because really, who else’s fault would it be? Who else was there to blame?

  “Whose fault was it, then?” she asked out loud. The house ticked around her. Her mouth felt dry. It felt like the first time she’d spoken in days.

  Luke called twice a day. She could hear the clatter and clink of glasses behind him, the constant sound that began early because there was always someone at the bar who wanted a drink, even at six in the morning on a bright sunny day. She never picked up any of Luke’s calls, but she couldn’t help listening to his voice. He asked if she wanted to talk. If he could come over. “I can take care of everything for you,” he said. She burrowed deeper into her blanket. “I’m still your husband,” he said. Hang up, she told herself. Hang up now.

  When the phone rang again, she automatically screened the caller. “Isabelle, this is Harry Jaspers from On the Cape magazine.” His voice was soft and jolly, as if he had just been listening to the funniest joke. “People are interested in your story,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe how many people! And you wouldn’t believe the misconceptions they have about you. I believe that you should have a voice. Call me on my cell. Let’s do it before things get out of hand.” Isabelle shut her eyes. The click of his hang-up seemed to reverberate inside her. What things were getting out of hand? She shivered.