Chapter 44 1996
“Okay,” she says. “Are we going to do this?”
As he leads her up the stairs, she is surprised to find herself nervous. Conscious of her posture. As though this were their first time together.
“Is this okay?” he asks. In the far corner of the bedroom, he has used about a million thumbtacks to peg up a cheap black cloth along the top of the wall, carried up the stool that sits by the kitchen phone.
“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, it’s perfect.”
He sighs and looks at her. Looks away from her.
“We need to make this fun.”
“Yeah.”
“Sexy.”
They are both becoming fluent in her body in ways they never expected to be.
Its curves and crevices, its leaks and pains and weaknesses.
Illness has become a new form of intimacy, a private language.
Unsqueamishly, they speak to doctors about pus and surgical wounds and catheters.
About how to bandage her. About how she will transform, scarred and bloated, requiring love in new ways.
But not now. Now is a farewell. A celebration.
“Do you want a drink?”
“Please.”
Her shirt is a thin chemise thing, the bra a trickier negotiation. She loops around her neck a thin gold necklace that she stole from the costume department. When he reenters with a thick glass of whiskey, he studies her.
“I’m not going to be good at this.”
“Of course, you are.”
“I have no artistic talent.”
“You don’t have to be that artistic to be a photographer. You just have to be… objective.”
“Well, I don’t even think I’m that.”
She laughs. When she had proposed taking the photos, she had thought of them as a present to herself.
A reminder of her immaculate youth—if she can even pretend to that.
Her jeans, high-waisted, cover up the pale scar from her C-section and the fresh one from her hysterectomy.
It occurs to her, though, that they are also a present for him.
A way to remember her as she was, whatever happens.
“Sit, please, ma’am.”
He flicks on the bedside lamp, and they take a few like that.
“There, sweep your hair to one side.”
“I don’t know if I can do that,” she says, and she laughs, nervous. “There is a lot of it.”
“Well, play with it then, or something.”
She vamps. She pouts. She spends a long time looking to one side, lost in thoughts about how it will feel to lose her breasts. Whether she will feel like a child again. Whether the children will notice.
“Okay, now a bit less serious, please. Try not to look like you’re going to die.”
He catches the stricken look. Pulls back. They watch each other for a long moment.
“Do you want to take off the jeans?”
Al has forgotten to shave today. His beard is starting to grow in salty, the sandy hairs on his head losing pigment. But his arms are as beautiful as ever. His eyes are soft. She takes off her jeans, stands in front of him, unmoving. Vulnerable. Powerful. He catches the gash across her abdomen.
He looks at her like he wants to kiss her. But he doesn’t. Instead, he places down the camera and holds out his hands.
“I know,” she says. “I know.”
Love, she has realized, is not a feeling but a deed.
It is the man waiting at home with her two children, who will change the sheets on the bed and count out her pills and remember her birthday, even after she’s died.
Who will watch her children grow up and bring home Christmas trees on the roof of the car and hold her hand until the final moments.
“Remember when you moved in with me?” he says.
“You didn’t know how to cook.”
“I still don’t know how to cook.”
“You’ve improved.”
“I’m improving. And we took that ballroom dancing class?”
“The teacher was awful. But you were better than I thought you’d be.”
“I did okay, didn’t I? We learned the footwork. I learned how to do the… the hold.”
“What’s your point, buddy?”
“Just that.” He stands back and picks up the camera again. Through the window, a cloud passes and the sun hits one side of her face hard, throws the other in shadow. “Just that I’m very lucky, Susie Q,” he mumbles to himself.
This is real life, she thinks. It’s loving the right person at the wrong time, it’s incompatibility and doubt. It’s the constant condition of misunderstanding, and the thousand ways people will prove you wrong.