Pictures of You (3 page)

C
HARLIE
N
ASH KNEELED
in his backyard, his hands covered with dirt, the fog all around him. His neck was filmed with sweat and the air had a strange, clammy feel, but he wanted to get these plants, the bright showy annuals, the dwarf pear trees with their roots diapered in purple burlap, in the earth to surprise April and Sam when they came home.

Plants want to grow, he always told Sam, all they need is just a little extra help sometimes. He crouched lower, touching the leaves of the strawberry plants. The soil should have been sandier for them, and there were some weeds poking up that he needed to tend to, but all in all, the strawberries would do fine. Well, he thought, plants do their best to stay alive wherever you put them. Just like people.

He got up now and stretched, glancing at his watch again. Nearly six. April would be done with her shift at the Blue Cupcake and just picking Sam up from After School. They’d be home soon.

He felt a prickle of unease. He and April had had an argument that morning and all day it had stayed with him, like a sour taste in his mouth.

Right after breakfast, he had been rushing to get to a job, running late. April was following him from room to room, so that he
actually stumbled into her, knocking his funny bone against the doorjamb. When he got to the bedroom and bent to grab his jeans, she snatched his arm, making him stop. Her breath came in little skips. “You fell asleep last night while I was talking to you,” she said. He looked at her, bewildered. She was usually so understanding when work exhausted him. She’d turn down the bed and plump the pillows, and then kiss him sweetly goodnight. “You didn’t hear what I said to you last night, did you?”

He zipped the fly of his jeans, and reached for a black T-shirt. She was pale and lovely in the light, but he had no time. “We’ll make it up,” he told her.

“When?” She stepped back from him, her face closing like a door. “I try to talk and you don’t listen.”

“Honey, it’s just a busy time right now. What’s with you today?”

April shook her head. “You have your own company. You could turn jobs away once in a while! You don’t need to work that hard, you just want to.” She tugged his arm. “Sometimes I feel like I’m not even married anymore.”

His nerves were fraying, his stomach burned, and his elbow throbbed. He had three jobs that were late and the clients were furious. He had to call several different suppliers because his usual brought him grade two wood even though he had specified grade one. Ed, his foreman, wanted to show him some problems with the central air that was being installed on yet another job. Charlie couldn’t have this argument right now. And he certainly didn’t want to have it in front of Sam.

“Charlie, I’m right here talking to you!” April cried, her voice taking on an edge.

Charlie went back into the kitchen, where Sam was staring down at his cereal. “Go get your school books, kiddo,” he told Sam, “You don’t want to be late.” He ushered Sam out of the room, and as soon as Sam was gone, he turned back to April. “You
know what,” he said, “I don’t know what’s with you today, but I can’t deal with you like this.”

She looked at him askance. “Fine. Then don’t. Just go if you’re going. Just drive and don’t come back.”

When she turned her back to him, he bumped his elbow again. He was so irritated that he couldn’t help it; he snapped. “If it wasn’t for Sam, maybe I would just keep driving,” he said. It didn’t make him feel any better, barking like that, but he couldn’t shake his annoyance enough to apologize, to make things right. He found and kissed Sam, and then stormed off to his car. Of course, he felt bad as soon as he got in the car. What did she think, that he liked being this tired? That he hadn’t wanted to talk to her last night, to make love to her? He had wanted to. God, he had. Last night, he slid her nightgown from her beautiful shoulders, kissing her breasts, her stomach, the soft swell of her thighs. He fought his exhaustion, but then just as he was stroking her back, she said, “Charlie, let’s talk,” and his desire switched off. He sat up, had done his best to listen, but Jesus, he was so tired. So tired. Why did they have to talk? Why couldn’t they just feel? Her voice lulled him, the rhythm of it, and he fell asleep.

He hadn’t slept through the night, though. He stirred at four in the morning and April wasn’t in bed. He got up, looking for her, and when he walked past Sam’s room, he saw the door was open and she was sleeping, pale and beautiful, nested in a chair that she had pulled close to Sam’s bed. The two of them looked so peaceful and perfect that he hadn’t wanted to wake her up.

It was an argument, he told himself. It meant nothing. All married couples argued, didn’t they? They fought and made up and then they grew closer.

What was love? What was it really? Sometimes he felt as if he didn’t have a clue. He had fallen in love with April the second he had seen her and they had married within months, the two of them giddy with joy and surprise, hurtling toward their future. They had a child together, and a whole life, and maybe it was stupid to question
anything that good, because the truth was that he couldn’t imagine his life without her.

All day he had wanted to call her to apologize. He grabbed for the phone at ten, and then it rang, and it was the suppliers trying to argue with him about the grade of wood they’d given him. “I see what I see,” he told the supplier. “And it isn’t right.” He was going to call April again at noon, but then he got a call from Ed, who told him that another job—a kitchen renovation that was supposed to have taken only three days—was running late and Charlie had to go on site and take care of it. By the time things had calmed down, it was time for him to go home. Well, tonight he’d treat his family to someplace special for dinner. He’d woo April back and things would be fine.

Charlie studied the lawn. There, by the fence, he’d put in a little goldfish pond for Sam. Maybe give Sam his own garden. “What do you want to grow?” he had asked his son. Charlie had brought home books filled with pictures of plants, and for the past few evenings, all they had been doing was looking at and exclaiming over the pictures. Judging from the ones Sam had lingered over, Charlie was sure Sam was going to say roses or azaleas, but instead Sam wrinkled up his nose. “A dog,” he announced.

Charlie’s heart crumpled. April averted her eyes. He put one hand lightly on his son’s silky hair. “We’ll see,” he said quietly. It was a lie and he and April both knew it, though Sam, eyes gleaming, bounced about him like a ball.
We’ll see
. We’ll see what? It was the kind of thing his own father used to say when Charlie had begged for a dog himself, and Charlie had never gotten over thinking his father just might mean yes, even after time had gone on and on and the dog he had yearned for had never materialized. But while Charlie could have cared for a dog, could have slept with the dog, cuddled it, and kissed his fur, Sam had asthma. Put him in a room where a dog had even strolled through and Sam would have an attack. Feed him ice cream that was too cold, give him a day that was too muggy, something that made him laugh a little
too hard or cry a little too deeply, and suddenly, terrifyingly, Sam’s lungs clamped shut.

There were too many days at the emergency room, where Pete, Sam’s pulmunologist, would look up and spot Sam and tease him, “Hey, Buddy! Hey, Sam! You missed me? You like us so much you came to visit again? You look too healthy to be here, sport!” And the thing was, he did look healthy. He was a sturdy nine-year-old boy, with creamy skin and navy blue eyes and a sheath of thick chocolate hair. Looking at him, you wouldn’t know anything was wrong.

People died from asthma. Isn’t that why he and April took Sam for checkups and monitored his breathing with the peak-flow meter every morning? Charlie still marveled that here Sam was, alive in the world. “Where in the world did I get such a wonderful boy like you?” Charlie asked.

“Mars,” Sam said. “Jupiter. The planet Zyron.”

Some doctors said the salt air of the Cape was good for asthma. Another doctor told them to move to a drier climate. The doctors warned to keep Sam’s visits to New York, where his grandparents lived, short because of the pollution.

The doorbell rang, loud and insistent. Even from back here he could hear it. April had her key. He bet it was Jimmy, their paper-boy, a kid who had a crush on April and blushed and dropped the change every time he saw her. The doorbell rang again, more insistently. “Hold your horses,” Charlie said, and headed for the door. He tripped on one of Sam’s Legos and put it in his pocket and opened the door.

Two cops were standing in front of him glancing awkwardly at each other.

“Charles Nash?” one asked, and Charlie nodded. A thought flew into his head. Maybe he was about to get sued. It had never happened before, but he knew it could. There was a client who tumbled into a pool he had built and made some threats. Once a man insisted that the grass Charlie had planted had attracted a
gopher that bit his dog. But servers brought papers, not police, so why would they be here?

“There’s been an accident.”

The youngest cop was talking. Charlie couldn’t concentrate. He nodded, but he didn’t know what he was nodding at. He stood out in the heat-soaked day and the cop’s words were an undertow, tugging him under.

“That’s what we think happened,” the young cop said. “The accident was in Hartford.”

“Hartford? That’s three hours away …”

“The cops there have jurisdiction, but as a courtesy, they called here and we came to tell you.”

“Where were they? What are you talking about?”

“They can tell you more, but we know that the accident happened just off Interstate 84. It’s the east side of Hartford. They’re both at the hospital there.”

“They? Both of them?” Charlie couldn’t breathe. “No, no. My son’s at After School. He stays there until five or six and then my wife picks him up from work.”

The older cop stared at Charlie, narrowing his eyes as if he were trying to figure something out about him, something hidden or suspicious, almost as if Charlie were suspect. “The car’s pretty totaled,” the cop said. “Anything in it burned.”

“What?” Charlie looked at the cop, who was studying his shoes.

The cops glanced at each other. “You know where they were headed?” one asked.

Charlie felt a cold clutch about his ribs. “They were headed home.”

The cop shook his head. “According to the Connecticut cops, it doesn’t appear to have been the driver’s fault,” he said.

Charlie tried to stop whatever was banging against his skull. “Which driver?”

“No alcohol. Fog, but no speeding. Crystal-clean record.”

“My wife’s a great driver,” he said. “She’s never had a traffic ticket.”

The cop leaned forward as if he were going to tell Charlie a secret. “Your wife’s car was in the middle of the road with no lights. No flares or signals. It was facing the wrong way. Your wife was in the center of the road and the boy ran into the woods. There was a 911 call, an asthma attack.”

“My son has asthma. Is he all right? What does my wife say happened?”

The younger cop hesitated. “We don’t know,” he said, finally.

Charlie grabbed the handles of the railing.

“You okay?” the cop said, leaning forward, and Charlie’s air pipe squeezed shut even more. He thumped himself on the chest, and for a moment he wondered if he were having one of Sam’s asthma attacks. “Fine,” he said, and then he grabbed for his car keys and one of the cops took his hand. “Can you have someone drive you? You don’t look in any condition to drive three hours.”

“It’s three hours,” Charlie repeated. Just hearing the number hurt.

“We have time,” the cop said abruptly. “We’ll wait with you until you can get someone to drive you.”

He called a few friends, but no one was home. Then he called his foreman, Ed, who came right over, got Charlie in the car, and then drove as fast as he could. Neither one of them spoke and there was only the roar of the highway.

The car didn’t seem to be going fast enough for Charlie. The motor knocked, and he clamped his hands together and then un-clamped them. The streets were crowded with people, but they all were moving in slow motion. A young woman stretched sluggishly up on tiptoes to reach for a magazine at a newsstand. An old man splashed a bottle of water onto the street, laughing, “Ya ya ya.”

Everything’s all right, Charlie told himself. People got things wrong all the time. Ask three witnesses about a crime and you’d get three different answers.

Finally, they reached Hartford Hospital. Solid and red brick. An ambulance whined past him and Charlie felt suddenly nauseous. He dug his fingers into his palms, hunching over, sweating. It was a mistake. That was what it was, a mistake. He’d get to the hospital, see his wife and son. They would all go home and this would all be an amazing story they’d laugh about later.

T
HE HOSPITAL WAS BRIGHT
and noisy. Ed walked with him, close by. In the elevator, the woman next to him clutched a bunch of oddly yellow daisies, sighed repeatedly, then backed away from Charlie, as close to the wall of the elevator as she could get. Charlie looked closer at the flowers. Dyed, he thought in wonder. The flowers were dyed. He leaned across the woman and punched the floor button and she sighed again. The dyed petals fluttered with her breath.

When the doors opened, he nearly stumbled. “I’ll wait for you here,” Ed said, nodding toward a waiting room. He sat in one of the orange chairs and put his head in his hands.

Charlie tried to snag a nurse, a doctor, to ask, Where are they? Where are they? But every time he approached a nurse, she glided past him like quicksilver, shoes as whispery as cat paws. Every time he cried, “Doctor,” the doctor glanced at him and then was pulled away. Charlie headed for the main desk; a flurry of people were around it. A nurse looked up at him. “April Nash. Sam Nash,” he said breathlessly.

The nurse blinked at him. “Oh, Mr. Nash—”

“Where can I find my son? Where’s my wife?”

She touched his arm, making his heart skitter. It was never a good sign when they touched you. He had seen far too many television hospital dramas to imagine what was going to come next: the lowered voice, the steady gaze, the bad news. He jerked his arm away. “Let me get the doctor for you,” she said.