12. Monday #3
“It paid the bills, but it has definitely run its course,” she added. For the first time, she had managed to say those words without instantly connecting them to her own life, her own disasters. Grisha gave a quick nod of amusement, then handed the phone to Cole.
Meanwhile, Fred pulled out his phone to find his daughter’s photo: Sarah remembered it as soon as she saw it.
The baby had been made to look like she was clinging to a log floating down a river as part of a log drive in the Canadian wilderness.
Sarah had arranged a real log drive at a historical re-enactment site for the purpose, sending thirty logs down a river to procure that part of the photo, then had taken the closer image of baby Haley leaning over a slightly damp log in her studio.
The end result of her photo editing was worth it: the baby looked at once terrified and like a total daredevil, riding a log down the Canadian river rapids.
It was a gimmicky shot, Sarah could acknowledge, but a well-composed and funny one.
“Hilarious!” Rita said when Fred passed around the image. “So Rene saw these and asked you to help him?”
“Oh, no. We’ve been friends since university,” Sarah said.
“The last woman he had as an assistant,” Grisha said, “she was beautiful. Like a model. Stunning.”
Of course she was, Sarah thought.
“So you and Rene, you two are together, right?” Selassie asked.
Sarah shook her head. “No. We’re just very old friends.”
“He is so gorgeous,” Rita said. “He looks like he should be a movie star.”
“He’s very talented, too,” Sarah offered.
“Well, so are you,” Selassie cried. “Now I want a photo of me on a log floating down a river.”
“Maybe in my twenties,” Rita said. “Now I’d look like one of the logs.” The joke bothered Sarah a little, the casual dismissal Rita had made of her own body. It was too close to what Sarah had often felt about herself.
“You know what?” Sarah said. “If you two wear swimsuits under your clothes tonight, then after we get some Milky Way shots, I’ll take a portrait of you two. We’ll do some kind of mermaid-themed shot on the beach at night.”
Selassie applauded. “Oh, we’re doing it,” she agreed. “That is definitely a plan.”
The conversation paused when the food arrived, and Sarah thought again about her casual joke about doing a ‘Divorce’ series.
Even though she had been kidding, as soon as she had spoken the words, she had gotten a vivid image in her head: a cherry-red pickup truck from the 1950s, alone in the middle of a wheat field in fall, ablaze with flames that shot up ten feet tall as it burned alone, no water nearby, no source for the fire, ready to burn down the whole world.
She could shoot it in autumn, she thought. She would just need the truck. Or…she could do that if she were still doing photography. Which she wasn’t.
Then another idea followed the first one in her head, like a dam inside her had broken.
What if she created a My Divorced Life series that followed up on her Single Life series?
What if she restaged the same photos, over a decade later…
with her in similar poses, only the details would be different: different books on the bed, different pajamas, her face looking weary instead of hopeful, pessimistic instead of gleeful, her make-up smeared instead of perfectly applied, but still somehow… funny?
As soon as she had that thought, she could visualize the show at the Kristman Gallery: the old and new images lined up side by side, her then and her now.
Single and divorced. It would sell, she suspected.
Or at least it would gain attention, create conversations, be the kind of thing that might get covered by the press.
It could launch her career again.
Why hadn’t she thought of it before? It was a clever idea but also an obvious one. So why hadn’t she thought to do it?
She hadn’t thought of it because she’d spent the last few years feeling hollowed out. By infertility. By Danny’s infidelity. By giving up on her baby series and then her career. By the finality of divorce.
There had been no Sarah left to come up with ideas.
She glanced at Ren, who was leaning over to joke with Kyle under Elka’s admiring gaze.
He didn’t belong to her; she knew that. But he had sensed that she needed rescuing.
It was frustrating—annoying—that it was working, but it was.
Being around him was slowly making her feel like herself again.
She wondered if this whole week was an elaborate plot to help her make her way back to photography.
Or maybe it was just convenient for him to have an assistant who was already in Newfoundland.
Either way, she knew—as soon as she thought about the ‘My Divorce’ series—that she was going to do it. It came to her as clearly as her best ideas always had: all at once, and with a sense of certainty. Her heart thrummed with a desire to get back to work.
When they stopped by their room after dinner to pick up their gear, Ren paused in the doorway.
“Hey, we’re doing some carpooling tonight because there’s not a lot of parking at the beach location.
Elka asked me to give her a ride and Kyle offered to take you.
I thought Selassie and Rita could follow you and Kyle in their car.
They don’t seem very confident navigating the area, based on their questions earlier, so I think they should follow someone else. ”
“And you’d be alone with Elka?” She couldn’t help but watch his expression carefully.
“Kyle thinks it will be good for me to deal with Elka one way or the other.”
Sarah raised her eyebrows.
Ren caught her eye and huffed out a laugh. “It’s fine. Kyle likes to put me in tricky situations to see how I’ll react. He’s a friend but he likes giving me a hard time. Are you okay driving over with him?”
“Of course,” Sarah said. “We can ask other people to come in our car, too.”
In the end, though, Sarah ended up driving to the location alone with Kyle in his giant SUV, while the married couple Binita and Tanjul drove behind them with Fred, and Rita and Selassie followed in their rental.
The remaining men—Grisha, Cole, and Jack—had agreed to share a vehicle, proudly announcing that they were part of the ‘dawn crew’ who planned to shoot all night long.
“That’s part of the challenge for me with these workshops,” Kyle explained as he headed onto the curving two-lane road. “I shoot all night. And sometimes all day, too. It’s about mental focus. A couple of years ago I went cold turkey with alcohol, so I learned to set a goal and make it happen.”
“Sure,” Sarah said politely.
What was it with men like Kyle and the compulsive need to announce their accomplishments?
She had known clients like him in her photographer days: handsome, wealthy men who had everything going for them, but still felt the need to tell everyone that they had gone vegan, were training for a marathon, had just gotten their pilot’s license.
It was like life was a game and they wanted to make sure everyone knew that they were constantly leveling up.
“So you’ve known Ren for a long time?” Kyle asked, his eyes going between her face and the road.
She nodded. “We met when we were eighteen.”
“Eighteen?” Kyle looked shocked; she wondered if Kyle had assumed that the ‘very old friends’ descriptor Ren had given her was a euphemism for something else. “So has he changed much since then?”
Sarah considered the question. “Yes and no. The same as all of us, I guess. He was always clever and artistic. And kind. But he’s grown up, of course.”
“So he was immature?” It was an odd question, like Kyle was trying to find ways to score points.
“No more than any of us in undergrad,” Sarah said carefully.
“Well,” Kyle began pointedly, and his eyes went right to Sarah again, as if gauging her reaction, “Elka was very insistent on getting time alone with him.”
“Sure. As long as Ren doesn’t mind.”
“Right. Exactly. Elka just needs to be told no. If he wants to say no. Ren can be a little…” Kyle gave a wolfish smile. “He’s not always clear on what he wants when it comes to women.”
This hit Sarah hard, and she wondered if it was directed specifically at her.
But if Kyle was playing some kind of a game, testing her feelings, she wasn’t interested in participating.
“Well, it can be tough when it’s a client.
I used to do family photography and a couple of husbands flirted with me, and there was definitely a dance involved in getting them to stop. ”
Kyle glanced at her. “So you said you’re a photographer, but I couldn’t find your website.”
She flushed a little at the idea that he had tried to find her online. Was it an ego thing? Was he trying to assess whether she was worthy of being there? “I took it down when I was dealing with my divorce. I’m going to put it back up again.”
He nodded. “Fair enough. I got divorced a couple of years ago. No kids, fortunately.”
“None for me either.”
“It’s so much easier without kids involved, isn’t it?” Kyle gave her a half-smile as he steered the SUV around another curve in the road.
It was an insensitive question, which she knew Kyle would never realize.
But on the other hand, maybe he had a point.
She had never thought of it that way: that having no kids with Danny had simplified the divorce.
It had always seemed to be the reverse. If she’d been able to get pregnant, would there have been so much tension between them?
Danny might have cheated regardless, but she doubted it.
They would have been too busy with diapers and children’s theater and carpools.
He wouldn’t have spent so much time thinking about what he couldn’t have.
“So if you’re not dating Ren,” Kyle went on, “maybe you’d be willing to have dinner with me some night this week?”
Sarah’s eyes flew to Kyle. She had not sensed him building up to that. “Oh. Maybe at some point,” she replied lightly.
“Maybe?” He smiled. “Maybe is my least favorite word.”