Chapter 11
The man is everywhere—marring every background of my latest self-portraits.
He appears in the rushed one I took in the hardware store window bristling with tools, with the shovel and rope fitting inside the outline of my reflected figure.
He’s there in the shot I took at the edge of the town’s pond—a silhouette that turned out beautifully.
My own shadow stretches over the green, brackish water, but his shadow is there, too, on the opposite side of the pond, just barely visible in a barren field.
He’s there in the ones I took in an old, abandoned dress shop window, fitting myself between two bald and naked but eerily smiling mannequins.
He’s in every one, watching me, though I saw no sign of him today.
Now I want to burn the whole roll and be done with it.
But I don’t. I can’t do it. At least I’ve been smart this time, catching him on my contact sheets so I can crop before I print, saving time and precious materials.
It gives me a slight sense of control, and the printing process soothes me.
When I hang up the newly shadow-free prints, I’m deeply relieved.
I feel none of that odd sense of loss I felt the first time, but stare lovingly at what I’ve made—and remade—and congratulate myself for having put things right.
And for having made these images ready for Paul, I think with a pulse of pride. I get caught up in a vision of handing Paul the new photos, watching him shake his head in wonder as he flips through them. Especially when he sees the self-portraits. What will he make of them, I wonder.
The telephone rings, shrill in the quiet house. We don’t get many midday calls. My hope is that it’s Tom Junior checking in during a lunch break, as he sometimes does. I hurry to the kitchen, eager to hear his voice.
“Hello, Stanley residence,” I say, out of breath.
I repeat my greeting when there’s silence on the other end, but no one responds.
As I press the phone closer to my ear, I start to hear something: the sound of shallow breathing.
I follow the rhythm of it, staring at the small pineapples lining our dark green wallpaper.
The sound is soothing. Mesmerizing, even.
“Hello? Who is this?” I ask in a whisper.
No answer; only the breathing goes on. My eyes have nearly closed.
I’m leaning my head against the wall and drifting off when an image invades my mind: my ravaged inner thighs, just as they were right after the attack, raw and blistered and bleeding.
I’m back there again, in that other kitchen with Grandmother’s high-pitched scream.
The moment she found me. I gasp and open my eyes to the sight of row after row of cheerful yellow pineapples, and the words fly out of me:
“Leave me alone!” I slam the phone into its cradle and sit down hard on the nearest kitchen chair.
The pain has come searing back, but I know it will pass if I sit quietly and wait for ten or twenty minutes until the call recedes from my mind.
Then I can rise and take Rosie for a walk.
A walk will clear my head. I look around wildly for Rosie—and then I remember.
When Tom touches my shoulder gently, so gently, I’m curled on the floor beneath the kitchen phone.
Hours have passed—I see the muted light of dusk through the small curtained window and feel stiff and foolish and scared.
When he helps me up and holds me against him, I whisper, “Rosie,” through my tears. And nothing else.