Chapter 39
Paul announces that he isn’t feeling well.
After lecturing half-heartedly for thirty minutes, he ends class an hour early.
Students around me glance at their wristwatches, shrug, start to close their notebooks and rise.
I can see signs of sickness in Paul’s pale, drawn face but I’m still deeply disappointed; I needed the full ninety minutes.
After a few students wish him well, they swarm up the stairs and through the doors, eager for their extra fifty-plus minutes of freedom.
I’ve turned to follow them, my heart sinking, when Paul calls me down.
“Judith, can I speak to you?” I freeze in place.
There would have been a comfort in my careful slinking out the door, avoiding the moment of confrontation since the gallery.
But I can’t just ignore him; I obediently turn and make my way against the flow of exiting students. When Charlie passes me, she smiles.
“See you later, Judith.”
I try to force a matching smile, but it falters. “Enjoy the extra free time,” I say awkwardly. Charlie’s lanky blond friend stares at me while chewing gum with her mouth half-open and with such energy that I hear my grandmother say, Don’t chew your cud like a cow. I wish I could say it aloud.
“You too!” Charlie says. “Hey, we have to exchange pictures sometime. After next class?” I give her a flustered nod and tell her I’d love to, but I wouldn’t love to.
I won’t do it. I’ll have to conveniently “forget” and make up an excuse.
Then I can review her work and praise it to the skies. I’d gladly do that.
“Pick your favorite ten and I’ll pick mine,” Charlie says, squeezing my hand quickly before she leaves me in the aisle. I watch her go a little wistfully, trailed by her two dubious friends.
Once they pass, there’s nothing but a few stragglers between Paul and me—and then they’re gone.
The class is suddenly empty and quiet. Very quiet.
I swallow hard and stand before Paul, his stinging words ringing in my ear.
His words, and then what followed: the flight down into the subway, the struggle with the long, pale man who crushed me against him.
Even so, I’m here with an envelope of pictures he hasn’t seen and I need him to see them. It’s as simple as that.
“Judith,” he says softly. He gives me a melancholy smile. I can see he’s struggling for the right words, but his mind is fogged with sickness, or he’s too ashamed, or both at once. His discomfort makes my own discomfort flare, so I give him an easy out.
“You should go right home and get to bed,” I say. Maternal wisdom. Paul smiles and shakes his head, extending an open hand toward me.
“These are from that day in the city, aren’t they?” he asks, his energy visibly lifting as he begins to look through. I say yes and wait, watching his eyes rove over the pictures. Despite the tension between us, there’s nothing like the tactile pleasure of having my pictures in Paul’s hands again.
He clears his throat. Never lifts his eyes.
“I’m very sorry about what happened, Judith.” I think for a strange, dislocated moment that he means what happened to me in the subway, then what happened to me in my neighborhood, with Rosie’s double—but he can’t mean either one.
“I really—I took out some personal frustrations on you.” He looks up with a rueful smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“I think I mentioned I’ve had a hard time showing my work, that it isn’t—” He sighs and scrapes a hand down his face.
“It isn’t going well. To say the least. Anyway, seeing your work, and your…
reluctance to publish it has felt like salt in the wound sometimes.
But I never should have snapped that way.
It was completely out of line. Forgive me? ” he asks, like a lover, or a child.
“Of course. It’s forgiven and forgotten,” I say quickly, though it isn’t forgotten.
The hurt lingers—like all my hurts. I have a reckless urge to tell him: I’m ready, I want you to send these out to magazines and see what happens.
It isn’t true, I’m not ready, I will never be ready—but wouldn’t it smooth things over beautifully?
It would seal our connection, too, keep us tethered beyond the class.
And it would give Paul a project. I’d be doing it for both of us, but the whisper of pain that starts in my side keeps my lips sealed shut.
“See?” he says when he’s looked through the packet twice.
“I was right to get you back to the city. These are just…vibrant and sublime, Judith.” He gives a prolonged sigh.
I wait to hear his usual entreaties, preparing myself to say the word yes this time: Please let me send these to magazines, Judith.
Please let me help you publish. But the entreaties don’t come; his silence hangs in the air between us.
When he hands the envelope back to me, I shrink into my cowardly self.
“Keep up the great work,” Paul says in an easy, jovial tone that doesn’t sound real. It shatters me to hear the wooden note in his voice.
Take my pictures, try to sell them, I nearly say. Go on, take them!
But the pain throbs, telling me, If you let Paul sell your pictures, the man will come. I’m crushed but I obey. Trembling, I tuck the envelope into my coat pocket and turn to go.
“I have to finish up a few things here, so I won’t walk out with you tonight,” Paul says.
I hear the strain in his voice despite his polite smile—he doesn’t want to walk me out tonight.
He’s tired of me, tired of my refusals—even the unspoken ones.
And he assumes I have my car. I could tell him I don’t and ask for a ride; if we left right now, he’d get me home before Tom leaves the house.
But Paul has things to “finish up,” and I can’t risk Tom missing me—he’d panic.
I’ll simply wait out front, under the lighted awning.
If Paul leaves before I do, I’ll say, Tom is on his way.
Because he is—he could even be out there already, sitting in the car with the engine idling.
I’m both stifled and cheered by the thought.
“Good night, Judith,” Paul says, barely looking up at me. “Get home safe.”
I force it out: “Good night.”