Chapter 3
“What does that even mean?” Tom asks, forking up a bite of steak.
He’s puzzled by Paul’s comment about my “uncanny eye.” I don’t know why I mentioned it; he doesn’t like hearing about photography class.
Why go to school for something you’re already good at?
he asked when I first brought up taking the yearlong class at the local community college.
Really, he didn’t like the change it would mean—the change in our Tuesday nights, or the possible change in me.
And now I’ve blurted out what Paul said last night, and Tom is resentful.
Confused, and possibly suspicious, too—of my male professor taking an interest. He chews and looks at me.
“It means I see things…differently, I guess.” The back of my neck burns.
I wish I’d kept it to myself. Pride will out, I suppose—like Grandmother used to say.
“Or maybe the professor didn’t know what to say, but he knew he had to say something,” I offer with a half-hearted laugh, careful to say the professor, not Paul.
It gives me too much of a thrill to say Paul, and Tom would see it in my face.
We go on cutting, chewing, and swallowing the steak, asparagus, and potatoes au gratin: our habitual Wednesday-night meal, one that hasn’t changed since before Tom Junior left home.
Nothing more is said about Paul, or photography class, or my “uncanny eye.” I’m relieved he’s let it go, but wistful, too.
Tom tells me about his day, about the ongoing politics of the Harrington Public Works Department.
Normally I get caught up in these reports: Travis left the meeting abruptly?
Sven and Jonathan said that only to you?
Are you sure? Tonight, though, I drift away, savoring Paul’s words and the look on his face when he saw my pictures: open-eyed, surprised, more alert than I’d ever seen him, even in the midst of one of his energized lectures.
If he’d been a dog, his ears would have perked up.
Like our little Rosie. Dead for three weeks now.
Buried in the backyard, under the magnificent cherry tree.
Tom wouldn’t let me help. He was sad, too, I knew, and wanted time to himself with Rosie in her box and the growing pile of dirt by his worn leather work shoes.
I watched from the back window, wiping my tears with a dish towel.
Sweet Rosie, my Rosie. Tom Junior had called in disbelief, as if he’d thought she would go on whining for scraps by the dining room table forever, Tom ceaselessly shooing her away while we all laughed.
I’d believed it, too.
I blink back tears and take a bite of potatoes. It sticks in my throat. I have to gulp water to keep from choking. Tom stares at me bug-eyed.
“You okay, Judy?”
I drag the cloth napkin across my mouth, nod, and smile. “I’m fine,” I say, and reach to put my hand over his. He squeezes my fingers. I don’t want Tom getting worked up. The doctor said he should be calm and steady, so I have to be calm and steady, too.
When I came home from wandering a nearby town with my camera last Sunday to find Tom slumped on the living room rug, I instantly thought of Rosie: how I’d found her stretched out, too still and silent to be sleeping.
Her little chest should have been rising and falling; I should have heard her adorable snore.
I knelt by Tom and shook him just the way I’d shaken Rosie.
Tom! Tom! I said, until I heard the slightest groan.
I waited until I heard one more, just the smallest sound and a puff of breath.
Then I ran to the kitchen phone and called the ambulance, dismayed by the operator’s nonchalance.
Where did your husband collapse, ma’am? Can you find his pulse?
Does he seem to be breathing? Is the house number clearly displayed?
If not, you may want to wait on your porch.
I had no intention of waiting outside. I stayed by Tom, smoothing his thinned hair back from his forehead, talking to him the way I used to talk to Tom Junior when he was young and drowsy with sickness.
It’s okay, honey, you’ll be fine. Just hang on.
You’ll feel better soon. It’s all right.
But the whole time I was vibrating with fear.
I tried to bargain with the god I’d never fully believed in, even after all the forced churchgoing of my youth: No more. Not now. Not ever, please. Please.
Even fixed in that pleading state, though, I stared at Tom’s slack face and wanted my camera.
It was just behind me, just out of reach; I’d dropped it as I came in the door.
In my head I left myself trembling on the carpet and saw him coldly, as if through the camera lens: the loose O of his mouth, the slight twitching of his eyelids over his large, straight nose.
I noticed the blue carpet fiber that sprung up like a solid sea around his pale still form, and saw how I would frame it all.
Except I wouldn’t, of course; that would have been ghoulish and wrong.
I’d taken pictures of Rosie after she’d died, kneeling on the same blue carpet and lowering the lens to be level with her little face that had always been grinning and mischievous in life but had frozen now, solidified.
I took a few shots to preserve this last memory of her, but once I developed the film, I stored the prints in the locked filing cabinet drawer that holds my private documents, the ones that even Tom hasn’t seen.
Rosie’s death photos would rest in a file beside the brittle, yellowed article from my old hometown paper that reads “Local Girl Attacked by Afternoon Intruder.” I didn’t like putting Rosie next to such ugliness, but I couldn’t face her death any more than I could face the past, so I left her there.
My other reminders from that long-ago time can’t be locked in a drawer.
Moving my free hand under the table now, I find the scarring along my inner thighs: the bumps and ridges and bubbled skin that have been mine for years.
Just after we made love for the first time, I told Tom the scarring was from a kitchen accident—a terrible spill.
Even though I’m not sure he believed me, he acted as though he did, and has never brought it up since.
It’s remarkable, really—that in all these years he’s never mentioned it.
Not once. The most he does is run his hand over the spot now and then, saying nothing—but making me shiver and recoil.
He squeezes my hand again, bringing me back to the here and now.
To the dining room table and to the life we’ve built in this small brick house on our quiet, tree-lined street.
The past retreats—Rosie’s death, Tom’s sudden collapse, my ancient incident—but I sense it all hovering.
Waiting for something: a window, an opening.