Chapter lxi
lxi
THE KIDS WERE ALL SEEING THERAPISTS AT THE OFFICE Dax recommended, and even with our setback, they seemed a bit more even-keeled when they returned—the boys at least. I started seeing Julia’s therapist that week, and talking through my fears and hopes, my guilt, helped me feel more balanced, too. Though I still missed Dax desperately. All day long there were things I wanted to tell him, thoughts I wanted his opinion on. I started working on a pilot episode for the Rescue Rabbits show, which made me think about him even more. But I kept going.
While I was cooking dinner that week, I asked Alexa to play some mellow music for me. That song “Turn! Turn! Turn!” by the Byrds came on, the one based on that line from Ecclesiastes: To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven . It made me think about the seasonality of things. In the larger sense, for me there was a time for school, a time for romance, a time for mothering. In the smaller sense, month by month, week by week, or day by day, there’s a time for work, for play, for creation, for relaxation. The next few weeks really felt like a time to concentrate on healing.
Bashir was coming to New York. The gallery show was about two months away, and Joseph Landis had gotten even more into the idea of then and now, pulled more of your photos from the flash drives. There was a lot to be done, but it all seemed to be coming together. At least that was one thing in my life that didn’t feel like an utter disaster.
Bashir was going to take a photo of the Freedom Tower, of the building where you’d once snapped the haunting image of a little girl, of the bridge in Central Park you’d photographed while we were still living together, just as the flowers were starting to bloom. And of me. Joseph had pulled the photos of me that were in the original show: me laughing with a drink in my hand, me in the kitchen with waffles, me putting on high heels, me asleep on the couch. He asked Bashir to see if he could re-create photos like those, or at least like one of them, to include in the show. So we had a date set. I’d taken off from work and, after I walked the kids to school, I’d blown out my hair and put on a little more makeup than usual.
And then, about an hour later, I got a call from Sammy’s school nurse.
“Ms. Carter Maxwell?” she said. “Samuel’s in my office complaining of a sore throat. His temperature is 101.2. And we’ve had a number of cases of strep recently. I’d suggest you make an appointment with his pediatrician for after you pick him up.”
Of course, right?
I texted Bashir about the emergency key taped to the bottom of the flowerpot on our front stoop and told him to let himself in if he got there before I returned. And I went to pick up Sammy, making an appointment with Dr. Sweeney as I did.
The poor kid looked miserable when I got there, and when Dr. Sweeney’s receptionist saw him and pointed us toward the sick waiting room, she promised she’d have us in and out as quickly as possible.
It was strep, of course, and he was prescribed antibiotics, which we jumped in a cab to pick up at Duane Reade before heading home.
Bashir still wasn’t there, so I sat down with Sam on the couch.
“Can you be my pillow, Mom?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said.
“The long way,” he added.
So I lay down on the couch with my head on the armrest, and Sammy lay down, too, his head on my chest and his body resting alongside mine.
“I’m not going to die, right?” he mumbled as he was falling asleep. “Like Gabriel or like Dax’s son?”
“Eventually we’ll all die,” I said, stroking his head. “But no, right now you’re just sick with strep throat. The antibiotics will kick in soon, and you’ll feel better before you know it.”
I kept stroking his hair, and he fell asleep on me.
Which is how Bashir found us.
When he walked in the door, I held my finger to my lips, and he nodded. But then he took out his camera and started shooting.
The photo of me on the couch with Sammy was a perfect corollary to the one you took of me and my computer. You can’t see Sam’s face in the photo—he was turned toward the back of the couch—but you see me, my arms around him protectively, a look on my face that’s a mix of exhaustion, relief, and love.
When he saw it later, Sammy said he was okay with it being in the show. And since he was, Darren eventually was, too. It was, perhaps not surprisingly, one of the most written-about pieces in the collection.
After Bashir took the shot, I pulled a throw pillow from behind my neck and then maneuvered myself off the couch slowly and carefully, so as not to wake Sammy. I motioned Bashir into the kitchen.
“It’s so good to see you,” I said to him, trying hard not to think about the last time I saw him, because Italy made me think of Dax. And thinking of Dax made me cry.
“Your house is beautiful,” he said.
I thanked him and offered to make some coffee, which he accepted and then photographed me making it.
“I have to do my job,” he said, and I laughed.
“Thank you,” he said. “For this job. I can’t believe I’m going to be part of a gallery show in New York City. That it’s given me the chance to travel, to come to America.”
We sat at the counter with our cups of coffee.
“I’m so glad this all worked out,” I said. “It was your photographs that got you the job, I just suggested it.”
Bashir smiled and as I smiled back, he snapped another photograph. I remembered living with you, Gabe, how you would capture my smiles, my tears. How you turned my emotions into art.
“So how’s it been going?” I asked.
Bashir looked thoughtful and put his camera down. “I’m just concentrating on the work. Because if I think about the larger picture, it becomes overwhelming. What if my photographs aren’t good enough? What if I disappoint Joseph? You? What if I mess up this opportunity? So I go frame by frame, image by image, and I do my best.”
“You are so like Gabe,” I told him. “In your spirit, in your heart. There is nothing I wish more than that he were here to see you now. To see Samuel. To just …”
I got choked up then, felt my eyes filling with tears. It was all so much to keep inside. Ten years without you, Darren’s silent treatment, these weeks without Dax—the fear that all my chances at love were doomed.
Bashir snapped my photo.
That one was in the show, too.