19. One Year Later
ONE YEAR LATER
“So talk me through this one more time,” Ren said. “Your new series…”
Sarah was lying on the bed in their new apartment as Ren unpacked items to put in the closet.
She had moved her things into their two-bedroom townhouse a couple of weeks ago, but Ren had arrived in Toronto only that morning, and his furniture would not arrive for another day.
In the meantime, he was hanging a small set of clothes in his closet, one black sweater or charcoal shirt after another.
“It’s just an idea right now,” she said.
Her show at the Kristman Gallery, ‘My Divorce,’ had been a modest hit in January, and a possible follow up concept had come to her a few days before Ren’s arrival.
“It’ll be called Witches. Or Crones, maybe.
And it will all be shot at night, and it will be women in their fifties and older, in beautiful natural locations, like trees or beaches or cliffs, and they will be totally nude, with the moon and the stars and their hair wild.
But not full New Agey nude. They will look like normal women.
Maybe they should keep on their usual accessories, like watches and wedding bands and stuff. Maybe sneakers, too.”
“Naked women except for sneakers, under the moonlight,” Ren repeated.
“Because sneakers are practical,” Sarah said. “And older women are practical people.”
He nodded. “I think you should shoot it.”
“But you like it?”
“Of course I like it, but you’re not making it for me.”
He finished hanging up another sweater, light grey this time, and walked over to lie down on the bed next to her.
They lay still for a moment, staring upwards, and Sarah thought about how strange it felt that they were now living together.
They would be doing all the domestic things together now: laundry, sharing a bathroom, arguing about television shows.
It was true that they had spent several weeks together in the last year, but those had always involved hotel rooms at the far ends of the world: the Galapagos Islands, Finland, Zambia, Death Valley.
This was different. This was going to be grocery shopping on Saturday mornings and bringing him to Kristie’s parties and discussing what photos to put on their empty walls.
This was setting up a combined kitchen and a shared office that would double as Jandro’s bedroom.
Jandro himself would be coming to stay with them soon for the entire month of July; he was heading off to a boarding school in New Hampshire that fall, and Ren planned to visit him there once a month or so.
Sarah had initially been worried that Jandro might resent her in her new role as Ren’s girlfriend, but so far, things had been unexpectedly easy.
The boy had come with them to help out on the Antelope Canyon workshop, and Sarah and Jandro had teamed up to make fun of Ren whenever he wasn’t in front of clients.
That was apparently all it took to win Jandro’s loyalty.
She hadn’t expected a perfect relationship with a teenager, but she found that her very lack of expectations was exactly why he seemed relaxed around her.
She just let him be grouchy, pessimistic, and slyly funny, and she never stood in the way when he wanted time alone with his dad.
In return, he rewarded her with a gratifying level of tolerance and even a hug at the end of the trip.
The relationship with Ren still amazed her sometimes, mostly because of how easy it all felt once they got started.
Ren had never been the kind of person who sought out conflict, and his broad pronouncements about art and culture still entertained her, even when she mostly disagreed.
What was strange was how relaxed they were around each other, in the end…
how much it felt like they could have just been doing this the whole time.
Except that they hadn’t, and maybe couldn’t have.
Maybe it had taken this long for them to be ready.
Now she rolled on her side to look at him in bed. His eyes were beautiful, but they were soft, now, too. “You’re here,” she said quietly.
He nodded, his expression full of love. “I’m here.”
“Why is this so easy?”
He looked away from her and laughed once. “Sarah,” he said at last, “the one thing you have never been for me is easy.”
She took him in her arms and kissed him, knowing that they had time now. She felt drunk on it, the endless, ordinary amount of time that stretched ahead of them.
It was like a path that went on forever, across hills and over mountains and up into the sky.