And itwon’thappen again. Not if I watch over him, keep him calm.
“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” she says, but I can hear the letdown in her voice. “When the ambulance came and took him, I was terrified for you!” It’s close to what Patty said at the party, but Samantha’s comment pierces me deeply today. I go rigid, remembering the two vigorous young men who packed Tom onto a stretcher and carried him out the front door. There were flashing red lights that drew the neighbors to their porches, hands clasped to their chests or over their mouths. They were scared for us, yes, but beyond that, they were greatly relieved tonot be us. To be spared the imminent threat of death.
“Thank you, Samantha, we’re fine now,” I say a little crisply. “I’ve got to get something in the oven before Tom gets home. I’m so glad you liked the pictures.”
“Oh—I’ve left something on your front porch. A token of thanks. And I’ll be your best customer when you open that studio!”
Long after we’ve hung up, I lean against the wall with the phone pressed to my ear, listening to the dial tone. I can’t stand everyone knowing our business. Digging for details. Gossiping behind our backs. I remember lying in my dark bedroom when I was sixteen, just after the attack, hearing a neighbor in our kitchen say to Grandmother,The poor girl, to be ruined that way!I lay there feeling ruin all over my body, when I had only felt pain and confusion before. Now shame was added in: I wasruined.
I couldn’t hear my grandmother’s response—it was low and rumbling, probably sharing key details: my torn dress, the gross smell of burnt flesh. She’d used my incident as coinage in town, gathering sympathy and praise for what she’d endured, how well she’d cared for me—despite the humiliation of it all and my ruined state.
I stop wallowing and kneel to gather up the scattered prints. There’sstill an ache, but when I pick up the first liquor store self-portrait—the best version, I think—sadness overrides my fear: I wanted so badly to share this one with Paul.
And then I realize: I can reprint the photo andcrop the man out.
It won’t mar the composition, and it won’t take long. It won’t eradicate the man, either—not in real life. But at least it will meanI canshow Paul my pictures. I can satisfy my stupid little desire—and the thought of desire makes me blush, makes me tremble. I toss the tainted pictures in the trash, making sure they’re face down.
—
Once the cropped printsare dry, I scan each one for the figure, but it’s gone—of course. I’m triumphant, but drained, too, as if I’ve excised something crucial from myself: the tip of an inner organ, or part of a limb. I can’t explain it any more than I can explain the man’s presence in my pictures, but I feel puzzled and oddly bereft.
Tom will be home soon. I tuck the pictures away and remember, suddenly, the gift Samantha said she’d left. It’s there on the front porch: a blue bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin with a silver bow around its neck. What a strange coincidence, given my liquor store self-portrait; I’m certain Bombay Sapphire was one of the bottles on the shelf. I think of Samantha being “the man,” hanging back as I take my pictures, dressed in all black. The thought of her—cheerful and feminine and always impeccably dressed—skulking around after me through a dingy small town makes me laugh, standing there on my doorstep. I peer into the aqua blue side of the bottle and see my own distorted, smiling face.
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, buthisshadow 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.
12.
Tom wanted me to stay home and rest today, but I promised him I’d be fine. It was just a passing moment of grief, I told him, though I knew what he’d seen: his wife in the fetal position on the kitchen floor. I told him I needed fresh air, that I’d stay local and rest when I came home. I wouldn’t rush to the darkroom. That pacified him—and it freed me, though I don’t know how free I am today, walking listlessly through our local park, snapping pictures here and there withoutlooking deeply, as Paul urges us to do. I see things but don’t feel them. It’s too painful to feel them. I keep revisiting the memory of my freshly burnt flesh, and the sound of the caller’s breath in my ear. Was it him? No, it wasn’thim—but it was someone. The someone who follows me.
I come to the reflecting pool by the playground in this sad, distracted state of mind. The photographer in me stirs, at last, at the sight of my shadow stretching over the dark blue water. If I could only raise my camera, it would make a better silhouette photo than yesterday’s. But I know what I’ll see when I develop the film: the man somewhere, across the water. I can’t see him even as I stare in that direction, but I’m certain he’s watching me.
Maybe I should try to find him.
I’m terrified by the idea but my legs move anyway, walking me around the reflecting pool and into the trees beyond it. A narrow pathleads deeper into the small woods; I walk along it for a while, looking left and right, jumping at the slightest sound. No one is here, and even the birds and squirrels have gone quiet. I feel as foolish as I did on the telephone yesterday, talking to no one, listening to almost nothing, but I call out anyway.
“Hello?”
No answer. But why would he answer?
