Pictures of You Page 9

  She waved her hand. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. People have all sorts of things going on in their lives and they stay together because they love each other, or they have kids to consider, or they just think it will be worse if they leave.” She touched Charlie’s sleeve. “You don’t have to worry about your parents,” she said. “We’re doing fine. Subject closed. It’s you we’re worrying about now. You and Sam.”

  All the next day, Charlie watched his parents. He knew his mother. If she said she wouldn’t talk about something, you could pack a case of dynamite beside her and even light it, and she’d still keep mum. His father was even worse, so calm and unflappable, his face unreadable. When he was growing up, Charlie was never sure if his father was angry with him or not unless he came right out and told him. Even now, he could count on his hands the few personal stories his father had ever shared. The anecdotes were brief, but they were also perfect surprises, like the after-dinner mints he sometimes carried in his pockets, little jolts of sweetness that lingered.

  Once, Charlie’s father had taken him along to court, and Charlie had been astonished at his father’s passion. His father whirled his arms in the air like eggbeaters. He practically grew ten inches as he begged the jury not to convict his client. “He’s an innocent man!” he shouted. Charlie had felt his skin tighten, bursting with love and pride and excitement, but as soon as the case was over, his father had returned to his plain old ordinary self, speaking to Charlie as calmly as he did to his potted plants.

  THAT EVENING, THEY all went to dinner at Derby’s, a small kid-friendly pasta place Sam liked. Charlie couldn’t concentrate. His parents were sitting so close together, their elbows touched. He watched his father kiss his mother on the cheek. His mother rested her hand on his shoulder when she reached past him for the salt. Sam tried to spin his fettuccine on a fork and, giving up, took small, delicate bites.

  They were on dessert, sharing vanilla and strawberry sorbet, when Charlie’s father excused himself. “Got to scout out the rest room,” he said. Charlie watched him striding across the room; he excused himself a lot these days. Prostate, his mother had told him. The man got up five times a night because he had to pee. But he was still handsome, Charlie thought. Still had all his hair and most of his muscle tone, and of course, those steely blue eyes that had so intimidated Charlie as a child.

  But now Charlie wanted to talk to his father, to be reassured that everything between his parents was all right.

  “You okay?” his mother asked. “You look like you’re on another planet.”

  “Earth to Daddy,” Sam said, nibbling a spoonful of vanilla sorbet.

  “Must be catching,” he said. He put down his napkin and went in the direction of the restroom. He found him in the hallway, leaning against the wall. He had his back to Charlie and was on his cell phone. Business. His father was still working. He loved his job, and if you even mentioned retirement, he practically got apoplexy. Well, Charlie thought, good for him, and then his father sighed. “Darling,” his father said, and Charlie froze because there, for a moment, he heard the same passion his father exuded in court.

  Charlie put his hand on his father’s shoulder and felt him stiffen. “Gotta go,” he said, and snapped the phone shut, and when he turned to Charlie, his face was composed. “Who was that?” Charlie asked.

  “Business. Clients. It never ends.” His father tucked the cell phone in his pocket. “You know how it is,” he said, but he didn’t look at Charlie.

  “You call your clients darling?” Charlie said.

  “You must have misheard me,” his father said evenly. “I said nothing of the kind. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I should get back to my grandson before he polishes off all the sorbet without me.”

  Charlie leaned against the wall. He saw his father back at the table, feeding his mother some sorbet from his spoon, the two of them laughing, their heads bent so close they were almost touching. Anyone watching them would never in a million years think anything was wrong with such a handsome couple. “You didn’t want to know,” his mother had told him. “You saw what you wanted to see.”

  They went home and Sam went to bed, and then Charlie’s parents, but Charlie stayed up. The house was quiet. The world outside was winding down. He picked up the newspaper, reading every page because what else was there to do? It was stupid, but he began to read the obituaries. He hadn’t put one in for April. They broke his heart, all those others suffering the way he was. The photographs showed a smiling beefy man, a beautiful young woman, and one little kid. Each piece told a story. A love story. Charlie felt his cheeks growing hot. He didn’t bother to brush away his tears, because, when you came down to it, he could have written any of those lines. And each one said the same thing: Come home. Come home.

  IN THE FOLLOWING DAYS, the house was filled with casseroles from neighbors. The phone never stopped ringing. There were calls from his friends and one or two of Sam’s pals, quiet, bookish boys who were somehow on the outside, just like Sam. Sam’s teacher, Miss Rivers, called and the school sent over a big fruit basket wrapped in pink cellophane. Margaret from down the block stopped in to meet Charlie’s parents and offered to sit for Sam, though she knew nothing about asthma or kids. Dan, over on Pearl Street, told Charlie that he and the wife would love to have Charlie’s whole family come for dinner, any time they wanted. “Thank you,” Charlie said, but how could he tell people that all the casseroles and plants upset him more, that right now it was all he could do to take care of his son, let alone be sociable?

  Charlie grieved hard, and it began to worry him how detached Sam still seemed. Charlie cried in the shower, the water storming down on him. He wept in the middle of the supermarket when he saw the packets of soup April loved. Little things made him flare with anguished fury: a couple kissing on TV, or a newspaper stand being out of the mints April had loved. But Sam—Sam moved as if in a dream. Charlie’s parents didn’t seem to make note of it, but it unsettled Charlie so much that, one day, he went into the backyard where no one in the house could hear him and called Sam’s teacher to ask what to do. “He doesn’t cry,” Charlie said. “I told him his mother was dead, but he acts as if he doesn’t believe me. Could he still be in shock?”

  Miss Rivers was quiet for a moment. “Kids grieve in their own way and work on their own time,” she said. “You just let him be.”

  Charlie hung up and came into the house, into the kitchen, where his father was cooking and his mother was playing with Sam. His father was a gourmet cook, who liked to putter in the kitchen and be liberal with exotic spices. At first, Charlie was a little worried about the meals his father had insisted on cooking, but now, he could bless him for the kid-friendly menus he concocted: hash browns and hot dogs, hamburgers and plain old spaghetti, mashed sweet potatoes and the creamy mac and cheese he was now popping into the oven.

  He was grateful for his mother, too, for the way she took care of everything. “Museum, beach, movie, that’s where we’re going to go,” she said, ticking them off on her hands, smiling conspiratorially at Sam. Charlie liked all the noise and fuss over Sam, the exhortations for him to eat, to wash his face, to stop biting his nails like that, did he want to bite them right down to the knuckles?

  “How about we put those hands to use while we wait for lunch?” Charlie’s mother asked, and drew out a box of modeling clay in bright colors. Sam looked suddenly greedy. The two of them sat at the kitchen table, and Charlie watched his mother trying to make a dog with her long manicured nails. When a nail broke, she didn’t say anything but kept on working the clay. Charlie wanted to go over and hug her, but he couldn’t make his legs move.

  A few days later, his parents returned to Manhattan, urging Charlie and Sam to come, too. “I wish we could stay longer,” his father said. It was a relief that they’d stopped talking about a funeral or a memorial service. His mother hugged Charlie tightly. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she said. “Don’t you dare try t
o be brave.”

  Charlie wasn’t quite sure what she meant, but he kissed her and then he let Sam fill her arms. “It breaks my heart to leave this boy!” she said. She hugged Sam. “What can I buy for you? What do you want?”

  “He doesn’t need anything,” Charlie said.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. She leaned closer to Sam. “Sugar, your mom’s an angel now,” she said. She lifted one hand like a barrier against Charlie. “She’s in Heaven watching over you. She sees you and you can talk to her.”

  “Mom …,” Charlie said.

  Sam broke free of his grandmother’s grip and gave her a glassy smile.

  Charlie missed his parents as soon as they had left. The house felt strange and quiet in their absence. He would have to go back to work. Sam would go back to school. He’d have to somehow muddle through all of this. He picked up the newspaper, riffling through the first few pages and then, there, like a physical blow was April’s photograph. Why was this still in the news? Why did he have to be reminded this way? She was standing in the sun, wearing a flowery dress. “Runaway Mom,” read the headline. “Three Hours from Home.” Had she really been running away?

  He stared down at the newspaper again. There beside his wife’s picture was a photograph of a woman he remembered seeing about town. All that curly black hair. “Did photographer’s road rage cause accident?”

  SIX

  SAM WAS HAPPY his grandparents had visited, but he was glad they were gone, too. He didn’t believe his grandma when she said his mother was an angel. He knew that wasn’t true, but she still kept saying it, over and over again. He didn’t love it that they kept asking him about that day, either, and when they did, he made his mind a blank sheet of paper. He felt his voice growing smaller. “What happened?” they asked. “Do you remember?”

  He told them it had been foggy, too hard to see. He didn’t tell them that it was his fault. Sooner or later, everyone would know that and then he would be in trouble.

  “He doesn’t remember,” Sam’s dad said. But the truth was Sam did remember. All of it, so clear and sharp he could feel it happening all over again.

  THAT DAY, THE DAY of the accident, he had come into the kitchen dressed in his favorite blue-and-red striped jersey. Usually, his mother was up, singing along to the radio and making them breakfast. “Sleepyheads arise!” she’d call. But today, his mother was sitting in the dark at the kitchen table, in her flowery blue nightgown, and she wasn’t saying anything at all.

  “What are you doing in the dark?” his father said. He snapped on the light and then they both saw the smudges under her eyes, the wobbly line of her mouth. His father bent to rub his mother’s shoulders, but she moved away. His hand floated in the air.

  She rose slowly, and gave a half smile to Sam. “I’m just tired,” she said, bending down to kiss him. She cooked them breakfast, but she seemed as if she were in another world, sleepwalking from the stove to the table. She opened the refrigerator and stared inside, and then shut the door without taking anything. She burnt the edges of the French toast; she spilled the orange juice in a pool on the table and stared at it, biting down on her lip. “You look like you’re going to cry,” Sam said, worried, and she ruffled his hair. “Don’t be silly,” she said.

  Nothing tasted right that morning, and the whole time they were eating, his mom didn’t take a bite herself. She just leaned against the counter and watched them. His father glanced at his watch. “How could it be this late?” he said, jumping up.

  His mother trailed his dad when he put his plate in the sink. She followed him when he put the juice back in the refrigerator and when he left the room to go get dressed. Sam could hear them arguing, their voices dark and angry, though he couldn’t make out the words.

  Sam’s appetite was gone, and he pushed away his plate. His father came back into the kitchen, dressed, rubbing his elbow, his mother at his heels. “Go get your schoolbooks, kiddo,” he told Sam. Sam fled to his bedroom, pulling his math book from under the bed, his science book from his desk. He hummed so he wouldn’t hear the angry voices, and then his father was suddenly in his room, kissing him good-bye and leaving so quickly, Sam didn’t have a chance to ask him if everything was okay.

  By the time he came back into the kitchen, his mother was sitting at the table again, her head in her hands.

  The teakettle whistled and his mother started, as if the whistle were directed at her. “Why are you taking so long with breakfast?” she asked, pointing her finger at his plate of French toast. “Eat. The doctor says you need protein.” He didn’t want to tell her he couldn’t eat—that the toast tasted like rubber tires and the juice had too sharp a tang. She tapped fingers on the counter, then ran them through her hair. “It’s cold in here,” she said quietly, but she didn’t turn down the air conditioner, which was always set on high because it helped him breathe better. Instead, she shivered. She went and got a sweater and put it on over her nightgown. “Please, please finish,” she said, and he heard something new in her voice that scared him.

  He got his lunch and his books and went to the front door. “I’m allowed to go by myself now, remember?” Sam said, but she threw on a long coat over her nightgown, sliding her feet into a stray pair of loafers by the door. “Let me walk you, today,” she said. Oak-rose Elementary was just three blocks away. The whole walk, she stayed silent, and Sam thought it was better for him to be quiet, too. When they got to the school, it was already crowded with parents and kids. The door was open and a teacher was greeting all the kids, smiling at them as they came inside. Sam was about to go in, when his mom tapped his shoulder. “Wait just a minute, buster,” she said, and he turned and she kneeled in front of him and looked deep into his face, almost as if she were searching for something. Her breath smelled dark like coffee. He patted his pocket and felt the lump of his inhaler. “I have my inhaler,” he told her, because she always asked. “And I know where the house key is.”

  “Let me look at you,” she said, and then she studied his face.

  “Mom,” he said. The other kids were rushing past him. “You’re staring at me.”

  “Yes, I am.” She smoothed back his hair. “I’m sorry I’m not myself this morning,” she said quietly, “Sam, it’s not you. Or your dad. It’s me. It’s just me.” And then she hugged him so tightly, his ribs ached. “Mom—” he said, and she hugged harder and then finally let him go.

  “Good-bye, Sam,” she said, and then she stood up and began walking back home. He waited for her to twist around, to give him a final wave, and when she didn’t, he headed to the teacher and walked into the school.

  He didn’t know why he decided to go home early from school that day. It was just before lunchtime, and he was on his way to the bathroom. It was the first week of school—fourth grade! You had to be responsible and not dillydally. You had to come right back to class. He wasn’t really a dillydallier, but that day, he took his time, taking the long way, exploring the bulletin board of Masks of the World, reading some of the essays about “What I would do if I were Robin Hood today.” Most of the kids said things like they would get a better costume instead of those stupid tights or they’d steal candy instead of money and they’d keep all the candy for themselves. He stopped reading and idly walked to the long glass doors to the outside, and he didn’t know why, but that day, he experimentally pushed the main door open, without even stopping at his locker first to get his things. You weren’t supposed to go outside by yourself, not ever, and he didn’t know why but he always thought if you did, a bell might go off, or Miss Patty, the principal, might run out and then you’d have to listen to one of her lectures about good behavior. He stepped out into the morning heat and then he was suddenly running, heading home, exhilarated.

  He was very careful. He knew how to cross streets. He knew if anyone talked to him, he should keep on walking, and if anyone touched him, he should kick and yell “fire” because more people would respond than if you just yelled “help.” No one was goin
g to kidnap him or hurt him, not if he could help it. He bet if he begged them, his parents might even let him skip After School from now on. There was only one thing that could hurt him and that was his asthma.

  Right, then left, and then left again and there was Mayfield, his street, and that was when he started to feel anxious, worrying that he had done something wrong. He wasn’t sure, but would his mother still be working at the Blue Cupcake or would she be home? What would his mother say? She’d have to call the school, or maybe she’d make him go back and apologize the way she had when he had taken some bubblegum at the market, not really thinking. “All thinking is thinking,” his mother told him. “That’s no excuse.” And his dad had said, “Give the kid a break, for God sakes.” They had argued furiously, the way they always did these days, and then he had started to wheeze. “Great, just great,” said his father.

  “You think this is my fault?” she said, her voice breaking.

  He knew the extra key was tucked in a fake rock, hidden in the hydrangeas, because his mother was always losing her keys, but when he got to his house, to his surprise, he saw his mother’s car in front, the blue of it shiny, as if it had just been washed, and the front door wide open, like a mouth talking to him. She was home. For a moment, he stood perfectly still, halfway between the front door and the car door. Down the street, he heard a motorcycle backfiring. He headed for the car, and when he got closer he saw there was a big suitcase in the back, which alarmed him. As far as he knew, no one was going anywhere. He jumped into the backseat and tried to open the suitcase, but it was locked. He glanced toward the house, waiting. Where was she going?

  The car was getting warmer, the air felt heavy with rain, which usually meant he was going to wheeze. Experimentally, he took a breath. It felt all right, but you could never tell. He was at the mercy of the weather. A winter chill could send him to the hospital. The summer heat wasn’t good for him. His doctor gave him something called a peak-flow meter, blue plastic, with a red and green marking on the numbers. He’d breathe into the mouthpiece as hard as he could, and his breath would push a little arrow up toward the row of numbers, and if the numbers went to the green, he was fine, but if they moved to the red, then he’d have to see the doctor and no one was happy about that.