Chapter 17
“I went to the city today,” I tell Tom as he chews his salad.
I’ve been moving my fork through my bowl, stabbing a lettuce leaf here and there, but I haven’t been able to bring any food to my mouth.
Blurting out my confession—one sliver of the story, the only sliver I plan to give him—frees me enough to take my first real bite.
I chew and swallow it in a mouth gone dry.
“What for?” he asks. I see a flash of something in his eyes, hear the tremor in his voice.
“You didn’t take the subway, did you?” We’ve seen evening news programs about escalating violence on the subway: robberies at gunpoint, stabbings on the platforms or in the flickering, failing light of a train car.
I shake my head, imagining what might happen if I said, I didn’t take the subway but a man assaulted me on the street in broad daylight.
His eyes might roll back in his head; he might slide from his chair to the floor.
I know what it would look like: Tom on the ground, limp and barely breathing.
I close my eyes to try to wipe the image from my mind.
When I open them again, Tom is there, giving me that look he gave Tom Junior whenever he misbehaved at dinner—when he spit food from his mouth as a toddler or sat sullen at the table in his teenage years.
Once he left home, Tom told me he could finally fully digest, but I found the endless calm oppressive.
I hated our too-easy small talk and the sounds of our eating.
Even Rosie’s presence couldn’t distract me from the desperate scrambling I felt or the voice in my head asking, What now?
What and who are you, Judith Stanley? I was no longer a mother and I felt suddenly old, my new life an ill-fitting skin.
It was then—three years ago now—that I started wandering the neighborhood, the town, the neighboring towns, like something of a ghost. I drifted through places that were mostly familiar to me, feeling oddly disconnected from myself.
I had no purpose—only to drift. But I began noticing things: the wine-colored birthmark staining the side of a beautiful storekeeper’s face, or the dark interior of an abandoned house seen through the gaping front door.
I saw the wounded, scarred underside of the world I knew well, and I wanted my camera.
I’d used it mostly for family pictures since Tom Junior’s birth, but now I started carrying it everywhere—much to my husband’s confusion.
I moved through emptiness and filled it with image after image; then I made my darkroom and taught myself how to process film.
Before long, I was living in the middle of a rich new phase of life.
And then: Tom’s episode. Rosie’s death.
And now: the shadow, the caller, the man in the crosswalk. Sullying everything. Forcing me to hide more from Tom.
“I wanted to get better pictures. More pictures. There are simply more people there, Tom,” I say, sounding defensive and slightly condescending. “I’m tired of my usual circuit. I’m running out of subjects. Paul says—”
“I don’t care what Paul says,” Tom says with sudden heat, banging his glass down so hard that milk sloshes and spills onto the table.
There’ll be a ring now. I wait a moment, staring into Tom’s red face, knowing it mirrors my own.
I’ve forgotten to say Professor Sorenson. But I press on, too worked up to stop.
“I used to go to the city all the time, remember? And I can take care of myself,” I add, though I can hear the echo of the man’s words in my ear even before I finish talking: selfish fucking bitch.
And here I am, making the insult ring true: telling my husband a half-truth so I can continue to do what I want.
Tom exhales loudly and something shakes loose in me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just—needed to go.”
“I don’t like the idea of you roaming around the city like that, taking pictures,” Tom says, softer now.
“I know some people get angry. Did you run into any trouble?” I take a breath and tell Tom about the grandmother who scolded me for taking pictures of her girl.
I turn it into a funny story, telling him how she reared up to challenge me and then I took her picture, too, knowing she couldn’t chase after me.
Tom laughs, his whole body shaking as it always does.
I love his laugh. The sound of it wipes away the tension between us and clears my mind of the dark moments from the day.
We spend a contented evening together, reading side by side on the couch, then curled together in bed, with Tom’s arm firmly around me.