Chapter 10
The next day was James’s last in Holme. We walked into town in silence.
James was hungover, that much was clear.
He wore a hoodie printed with a cartoon tiger, his high school mascot, and sweatpants.
He always wore either a hoodie or sweatpants, never both at once, and the combination of the two made him look strangely defenseless.
I was vaguely alarmed by how little I was attracted to him.
Was it a big deal to decline getting to know your boyfriend’s friends?
I wouldn’t mind if he refused to meet Lou.
But Lou and I didn’t have the kind of relationship James had with Isabelle.
Beyond my mother, James was the only person in my life I really cared about.
Funnily, I wished he could meet himself.
He would be pleased that somebody treated me as well as he did.
James led me to a store called Lydia’s, the name painted in looping cursive on a hanging sign. On the side wall, a colorful mural by local schoolchildren read HOLME SWEET HOLME.
“I’ve been meaning to take you here before I leave,” said James. “It’s an arts and crafts store. My mom knows the owner of the place, so we get good deals on the stuff. I thought you’d like it.”
I ran my fingers down a row of plush yarns, thinking about the silken nooks of Silver’s ears.
“Do you see anything you like? Paints, canvases, brushes?”
“You know I don’t paint anymore.”
“Maybe you’re just in a rut. If I were as good as you…” He trailed off.
“You’d have done something with it?”
“No. I was going to say, if I were as good as you, I’d be doing it all day long. That’s it.”
I made my voice light. “You can’t just paint all day long, James. My mother tried that. It didn’t work.”
“But I’ve seen her stuff. She could genuinely make money from it if she wanted to. There’s a huge audience for replicas.”
Worse than hearing about all the money I could make from my art was hearing it about my mother. “Fine, okay. I’ll take some watercolors.”
“Here.” James chose a set from the middle of the row. “This looks decent, right?”
“That’s eighty-nine dollars.”
“How much do they usually cost?”
“I don’t know, not that much.”
“Is Lydia totally ripping us off? Do I need to make a few calls?” James delivered the questions with exaggerated righteousness.
It was easy to forget how sensitive he was.
I thought of our first night together, the way he confessed to me his anxiety that his mother would get ill again just because he wasn’t calling her enough.
He never wanted, he said, to feel that useless again.
“It’s fine,” I said. “You can buy the paints. Thank you.”
“Okay, cool. Everything okay?”
What was wrong? Nothing, really. But, if I thought about it, maybe a few things.
James leaving tonight. My mother’s silence.
The embarrassment I felt around people here in Holme.
Lou’s call, confirmation that I no longer had a place to live in the city.
Could I go back to my mother’s? Even if we were still talking, it would be cruel.
I could hear her voice in my head: don’t make me your last resort.
But I wasn’t sure what would hurt her more, being chosen last or not being chosen at all.
I only had one option left, and he was at this very moment trying to buy me exorbitantly priced paints that I would not use.
I could insist that I would not use them, but he would buy them for me anyway, hoping that I would.
Whether it was because he loved me or because he could afford it didn’t make a difference. That, also, was the problem.
James looked at me, paints in hand. I had the feeling of something already determined.
My life was not as easy to change as I’d once believed, four years ago on my first night in New York when, staring at the wall, my cheek pressed into an unfamiliar university-issued pillow, I had the realization that I’d been away from home for a whole day, longer than in my entire life.
I was certain then that nothing would be the same.
But time had passed, more and more of it, and I was still the same nonperson, somebody who understood neither how to treat people nor how to be alone.
“Everything’s okay,” I finally answered. “I’ve just been feeling sad about you leaving.”
James smiled. “Let me buy this for you. Take it as my apology for being hungover on our last day together.”
“Forgiven,” I said. “Thank you.”
I lingered in the back of the store while James paid.
Snippets of his conversation with the cashier rose above the background music.
I became suspicious that there was no good deal and Lydia was not a real person, and James just spent ninety dollars on ten tubes of paint, not to mention the paper and brushes.
James turned and gestured at the door. I thought of the pile of paintings that my mother kept in the top drawer of the mahogany dresser in her room, wondering if they were still there before I remembered that we sold the dresser years ago.
—
At a diner by the sea, James ordered bacon, eggs, and a stack of berry pancakes for us to share. He seemed heartened by the purchase at Lydia’s. The bag sat snugly in the corner of our booth.
James cleared his throat. “I’m sorry I pushed so hard for you to join us last night. You didn’t want to see Isabelle. That’s fine.”
“It’s not that I didn’t want to see her. I just get anxious around people like her.”
“You don’t have any reason to be. I know she comes from, I don’t know, a different world, but she’s a very sensitive person. You have a lot more in common than you think.”
I wasn’t thinking about her world. Was that the most obvious difference between us, or simply the explanation for every other difference?
“I don’t care about being rich,” I said. “If being rich were a problem, I wouldn’t be dating you.”
James gave a little laugh. “I’m not as wealthy as she is.”
I stared at him. “Okay. And how was I supposed to know that?”
“I don’t know.” He looked out the window. “I thought it was obvious.”
Our food arrived. A blueberry rolled off my plate and onto my lap, leaving a purple stain on my white pants. James ate quickly and silently.
“What makes Isabelle so vulnerable, then?”
James was quick to reply through a mouthful of eggs. “She suffers. From a variety of things. She’s unhappy.”
I cut my pancakes into big triangles, then smaller ones. “We’re all unhappy.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” said James. “She had to go away last year. But she’s better now.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know. She had to go to a treatment center.”
“What for?”
“Anxiety, depression. She did in-patient for two weeks.”
“And they fixed her?” I tried to keep my voice uninterested.
“She’s better now, yeah.” James sipped his coffee. “But she had to move out of the city, and she’s been living with her parents since. Which is tough. If you stay in that environment, you get stuck.”
The conviction in his voice made it clear he’d thought about this before.
It was the same tone he used when we discussed the student suicides on our first night in Holme, like he’d thought long and hard about it once, then arrived at everything a person needed to know about happiness.
I felt myself nodding without reason. “So what does she do, then?”
“I’m trying to get her to apply for this MFA program she’s had her eye on since college. There’s actually a whole bunch of programs she’d excel at. She’s really smart. Being back in school, learning for learning’s sake, would be good for her. The structure, right? And the accountability.”
“I meant, what does she do day-to-day?” A seed lodged itself in a back molar, evading the run of my tongue.
James had to think. “I don’t know. I guess, not much.
That’s the problem. She has all these ideas, but she never follows through.
And her parents don’t help, they just enable her.
Ever since she was a kid, they’ve ignored her, thrown money at her, paid for these treatments and retreats.
What she really needs is for somebody to see her, help her find her path. ”
I thought of Isabelle’s pale and winsome face, a doll in a doctor’s room.
There was an elegance to this image of her suffering that made me feel sorry for her, but just a little envious, too.
I looked at my reflection in the window and was disappointed to see the same person I’d always been looking back.
I’d grown up with barely a witness, and none of my experiences could harden into material, become important enough for breakfast conversation.
The things that made me cry—being dumb at dinner parties, not enjoying school—were small, unworthy things, childlike petulances that demanded kisses on Band-Aids, not professionally locked doors.
“I’m not like that,” I said. “You’ve miscalculated my personality.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that you’re the exact same. Just that you might be able to become friends.”
I finished the pancakes, even though I was already full.
Then I felt nauseated and excused myself to the bathroom, where I angled my cheek under the tap and let the water run until the sensation no longer registered.
By the time I was out, James had paid the bill.
I didn’t recognize him in his sweats, standing by the door with his back to the room.
He grabbed my shoulder as I walked past. I yanked him off.
“What are you doing?” he said. “It’s me.”
I apologized. “I guess I wasn’t expecting to be touched.”
It was easier to lie than to admit that, for a moment, I believed he was a stranger. James put his hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt. I wanted then for him to touch me, but it didn’t feel right to ask.
—
For our last meal, James made seafood pasta with fresh mussels bought from the fishmonger. The recipe involved a lot of chopping up of things. Garlic, parsley, tomatoes. He grew annoyed with himself at the end because he’d forgotten the chilies.