Pictures of Us Page 16

  He set me away from him, just far enough to meet my eyes. “That day you drove away from Cambridge, I’d lost the one person I’d ever loved completely. And the hell of it was, I never stopped loving you. Even when I was with Sophia, it was you I was thinking about. Don’t you know that? Doesn’t the way I came back to you mean anything?”

  I still couldn’t answer—I was crying too hard, huge, gulping sobs that shook me to the core. Because I finally understood something that had puzzled me since the weekend we got back together, and the truth of it made me even guiltier than ever.

  MICHAEL TOOK THE TRAIN down to New York the day after I called him and said I wanted to see him, wanted us to get back together. Jane’s boyfriend was in town from Wisconsin, so the apartment Jane and Carter and I shared that year was going to be cramped—far too small for five adults, four of whom would need privacy. Carter was willing to pack a bag and camp out on someone’s couch for the weekend, but Michael had other ideas. Within minutes, we were on the subway uptown and checking into a hotel on Tenth Avenue that was little more than a motor inn. After an hour inside the stale, none-too-clean room, I understood why.

  He’d never undressed himself, or me, so quickly, I thought later. He’d barely pulled the curtains before reaching for the bottom of my shirt and tugging it over my head, and we were both naked and on top of the comforter a moment later.

  The thing was, I’d been desperate to feel him next to me again, to run my hands over his skin and through his hair, to taste his tongue and the salty tang of sweat on his chest, to feel his heart beating against mine as he moved inside me. I’d been crushed to find out that Jane’s Marty was coming to town, because all I had been able to picture since talking to Michael on the phone was the two of us naked and in my bed, for hours, if not days.

  But Michael’s eagerness outstripped mine. If I hadn’t known him so well, inside and out, I might have been a little frightened. I was definitely startled at first, because Michael was typically the epitome of a slow, purposeful lover. Unless we were really pressed for time or both exhausted, he liked to linger, kissing and caressing and teasing, stretching out foreplay until we were both crazy to have him inside me.

  Not that day. He was hard and ready before I’d even processed the fact that he was kissing me so roughly my teeth had knocked together and my mouth felt bruised. And then he was thrusting inside me, so forcefully that I gasped.

  When I came, it was shattering, that sudden, tightly wound coil of arousal springing with a kind of violence. I was panting, sweating, breathless—and certain that this unexpected caveman routine was due to the long months we’d been apart. I wasn’t really surprised, once I thought about it, and we lay together afterward as we always did, this time on top of the bedclothes, our heart rates slowing and the hungry flame of sex fading to a warm, comfortable glow.

  When he joined me in the shower and took me up against the slippery white tile wall only an hour later, with the hot spray of water pounding on his back, I was startled all over again. But I was also startled by my own arousal. That hunger was a good thing, too, because for the remainder of that weekend, I think we left the room maybe twice, and ate only once more often.

  He couldn’t stop touching me, and he touched me in ways he never had. We did things we never had before, and most of it without speaking. I had expected to spend most of our time together talking—Michael was the wordsmith, the one who needed to explicate every emotion and situation with language, and after the months we’d been separated, I had been prepared to recount almost every moment for him. But while I couldn’t say he didn’t care what had changed my mind about our relationship, or how I had spent the time without him, clearly the more important thing to him that weekend was marking me as his.

  It felt that way, at least, and I was a little ashamed at what a turn-on it was. He was the same Michael, with his dark, watchful eyes, and his easy, loping grace, his hair a bit longer than when I’d seen him last, his frame thinner, but he was different in a fundamental way. He didn’t ask me before spreading my legs, didn’t try to seduce me, didn’t prepare me for his entry. He took what he wanted, pure and simple, and it didn’t matter—I was ready for him every time, wet and flushed and hungry. That he wanted me still, after I’d pushed him away, and that he wanted me with such intensity, was intoxicating.

  Only once did he make me cry. Not in physical pain—no matter how aggressive he was, I knew he wouldn’t hurt me, and he didn’t—but because of what he’d asked.

  It was late on Saturday night. We’d made love what seemed like dozens of times that day already, and twice since we’d come back from the restaurant where we’d eaten dinner. Our clothes were strewn around the room, and the dresser and night table were littered with soda cans and the crumpled wrappers from a couple of Hershey bars we’d picked up at the deli on the corner. The air was thick with the smell of our lovemaking, layered over the dusty drapes and the musty aroma of the hunter green carpet, and the sheets were a tangled, damp mess.

  He’d stretched me out on the mattress, naked and still boneless from our last go-round. The only reality was his hands, his mouth, his wet, warm tongue, and I was trembling by the time he slid inside me, moving in lazy, agonizing thrusts. My fingers dug into his waist as I urged him deeper, faster, but instead, he pulled nearly all the way out of me, kissing my eyes shut, and whispered, “Say my name, Tess. Say my name.”

  When I replied, his name emerged on the heels of a sob, a ragged sound that only the two of us would recognize as the word Michael. I couldn’t make sense of my reaction at the time, but it didn’t matter. He heard me, and as he slid inside me again, he licked the tears off my cheeks.

  Later I understood what had struck me so forcefully, and as Michael slept beside me on the sagging motel mattress, his eyes darting back and forth in a dream beneath his closed lids, I wept a few more frightened, helpless tears. He wanted to be the only man I ever saw—in my life, in my imagination, maybe in my own dreams—and he wasn’t going to ask if he wasn’t. I had nearly let him go, this man who loved me so wholly, so intensely, and the solid, tangible fact of him beside me in that bed was such a relief I couldn’t help crying again.

  It never occurred to me that the vehemence of Michael’s lovemaking that weekend had anything to do with guilt. As far as I knew, the guilty party was, and always would be, me.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  IT WAS HARD TO COOK A DECENT meal with two teenagers making eyes at each other in the same room. It was even harder to concentrate when my husband was right there, too, slouched against the counter in jeans and a loose blue oxford I had always loved on him. Every time I looked at him—every time he looked at me with that lusty glimmer of awareness in his eyes—I was taken right back to last night.

  After I’d cried myself out, Michael hadn’t even bothered to get me into bed. Right there on the rug, which smelled faintly of dog and needed to be vacuumed, he’d lain me down and made love to me with his hands, his mouth, exploring me as if it was the first time, until I was nearly boneless with sensation.

  But when he was about to come inside me, I managed to wriggle upright and push him onto his back. I wanted—no, needed—to make love to him that night. To communicate in every possible way that I was choosing to love him, that I had made my choice long ago and never once regretted it. And as I straddled him there on the floor, panting down at him as he stared at me, eyes glittering with pleasure, the release washed us clean.

  Not that I should think about that now, I reminded myself as I gently smacked Michael’s hand away from my waist. Jesse and Emma were holding hands across the kitchen table, their blond heads nearly the same color. Jesse’s hair was spiked in the relentlessly casual way boys seemed to have learned in the past few years, and a tiny silver hoop I hadn’t noticed on prom night glistened in one earlobe.

  He had a man’s hands already, I noticed as he took a tortilla chip from the bowl Emma had set out with salsa. They were big, strong hands, and already a bit
rough, as if he’d used them for much more than text messaging and Xbox games. They were capable. Of far too many grownup things.

  I didn’t know what to make of that, or if I was overreacting. I was so tired it was difficult to remember what I had to do next to get dinner on the table.

  Michael and I had stayed up much too late once we’d finally collected ourselves and climbed into bed. It had felt so good to talk, the words poured out of us in streams; each wave flowing into the next. I told him about the gallery show Alicia had invited me to participate in; he told me what Drew had looked like in the hospital bed in Boston and how scared he had been to explain that first phone call all those weeks ago. I described the dresses Nell and I had chosen for her wedding, and he told me, when I asked, that Sophia believed her diaphragm had failed—how she’d gotten pregnant had been a niggling question in the back of my mind for weeks—

  “Mom, can I help?” Emma asked, breaking my reverie. The question sounded guileless, but I could tell Jesse was impressed. At least she was showing off with an offer of assistance, instead of the bored teenage eye rolling I had expected.

  “Sure, honey.” I pointed to the water boiling on the stove. “You can get the pasta going.”

  Michael took her place at the table, lounging back in his chair comfortably as Emma bustled around the stove. “So, Jesse, Emma tells me you’re in a band.”

  “Yes, sir.” The boy immediately flushed with pleasure, or possibly embarrassment, I thought, that Emma had told her father about his musical aspirations. “I play the guitar, and I sing a little.”

  “Really?” Michael’s eyebrows lifted. “I know a little about the guitar.”

  I hid a smile by ducking into the fridge for the Parmesan. My husband, the imaginary heir to Stevie Ray Vaughan. He played about as well as he danced ballet, but I had never had the heart to tell him that. I simply stashed his old acoustic in the attic whenever I could.

  Emma and I left them to discuss garage rock versus the new alternative bands while we finished preparing the meal. The herb bread emerged from the oven golden brown, and I’d outdone myself with the sauce this time around—the kitchen smelled heavenly. Emma finished putting together a green salad, and then it was time to eat—she had cleaned up the dining room and set the table earlier, although I’d drawn the line at using the good china.

  Was this the way my mother had felt when I started bringing Michael home? Apprehensive, nostalgic, a bit sad? Nothing said childhood was ending the way a teenager with a boyfriend did, after all. But as we sat down and dug in, I had to admit that Jesse was well-mannered and bright enough. The fact that he was smitten with Emma was almost painfully obvious.

  We talked about the school play, set to premiere in just a few days, and about Jesse’s plans for the summer, which I was pleased to hear included a part-time job at the supermarket. The conversation circled around the table lazily, and I let myself sit back and relax as Michael cleared the plates to make room for the buttery pound cake I’d made for dessert.

  He was just walking back into the dining room when Emma piped up, “How’s Drew doing, Dad? Any news?” Her tone was guileless, but she’d let her hair fall forward to curtain her eyes.

  I choked back a spurt of fury. Not the time, Emma. Poor Jesse wouldn’t look at any of us—his gaze was firmly fixed on the window over the backyard, and his cheeks had pinked up. The name didn’t seem to be a surprise to him, but talking about Drew probably wasn’t what he’d had in mind. What was Emma thinking?

  Michael was still trying to formulate an answer to Emma’s original question when she spoke up again. “Any word on blood marrow donors?” She was making room for the dessert plates as if we were simply continuing the earlier conversation, and doing a good job of appearing perfectly innocent. Frozen in my chair, the silence ringing around us, I wanted to strangle her.

  “I haven’t spoken to him today,” Michael told her as he sat down. His expression was careful, and I reached for his hand across the table. “I don’t think there’s any news. As far as I know they haven’t discharged him from the hospital yet.”

  Emma nodded, and I started to slice the pound cake. I couldn’t guess where she was going with this, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. We’d had a pleasant dinner. Don’t ruin it, I pleaded silently as I handed plates across to her and Jesse.

  Michael opened his mouth to say something—to change the subject, I was sure—but Emma beat him to it.

  “I was thinking about the whole transplant thing,” she said, and I swallowed hard. With dusk gathering outside and the gentle fragrance of the first roses blooming in the air, the dining room was a peaceful oasis from all the stress and confusion of the past few weeks. And Emma seemed determined to ignore it, and to ignore the boy beside her, who was more uncomfortable every moment.

  “There are only a few other options,” Michael said slowly, his fork poised over his plate. “Since I’m not a match and neither is his mom.”

  “But I might be.”

  My heart plummeted into my stomach, and I managed one wild glance at Michael before Emma continued. That she had proposed this on her own made me both terrified and incredibly proud. She was growing up, no denying it.

  “I’ve been researching donor matching on the Internet,” she said calmly, reaching for the warm chocolate sauce to pour over her pound cake. “Parents only match one percent of the time, but siblings have a twenty-five percent chance of matching. I want to be tested. I want to see if I’m a match, so I can help him.”

  Through the haze of shock, I suddenly understood. She’d asked to have Jesse to dinner for just this reason. With him as witness, Michael and I were forced to be polite, to listen to her argument—at least for now. There would be no embarrassing scene in front of this boy, and she knew it.

  Our daughter was pretty damn smart. She’d figured out on her own something Michael and Sophia had only recently discussed with Drew’s doctors, and she’d picked the moment to propose her plan with the cool accuracy of a trial attorney.

  “You said it yourself,” she told Michael, her eyes as bright and clear as a spring day. “He’s dying. Anything we can do to help him, we have to do. You were tested, Daddy. I should be, too.”

  What a change—the child who had freaked out at the idea of a half brother had come around completely. But the sad part was that I couldn’t decide if she would have accepted Drew so easily if he hadn’t been ill. Maybe everything did happen for a reason, whether we made choices or not. Maybe the choices we made told more about us than I’d ever realized.

  “Emma, siblings may have a one in four chance of matching,” I said, amazed that my voice didn’t shake, “but you know that as a half sibling your chances will probably be cut in half, don’t you?”

  “Twelve and a half percent is still a lot more than one percent,” Jesse said quietly, surprising us all. Obviously he and Emma had spent some time discussing this.

  Emma was quick to jump back in. “There was a case in Illinois a few years ago where the half siblings matched but the father didn’t,” she argued. “It’s not impossible. And it’s worth trying. What if I am a match? Would you really want me to just sit back and let him die?”

  “Of course not,” I said, then blinked. Had I said that? Did I mean it? I was relieved to realize that I did, and as Michael stared across the table at me, I saw tears glistening in his eyes.

  “You do know what the matching process requires, don’t you?” he asked Emma when he’d collected himself. “What donating can mean if you match?”

  She nodded, and if I thought she looked a bit paler than she had a moment earlier, I didn’t blame her. The initial testing process wasn’t difficult, but donating marrow could mean extracting it from her pelvic bones. The idea made me shudder, and I had to fight the gut instinct of keeping my child far from any unnecessary pain.

  “I can do it, Dad,” she said. Jesse was holding her hand. He was a little pale himself, but I couldn’t miss the admiration that seemed to glow f
rom inside him. I also didn’t miss the fact that he had reached for her, instead of the other way around.

  “You know what?” Michael stood up without warning and ran his hands through his hair, a tentative smile on his lips. “Why don’t you two finish your dessert and then load the dishwasher while your mom and I take Walter for a walk.”

  “Um, okay.” Emma sounded confused, but I didn’t stop to reassure her. Michael had already called the dog and headed into the kitchen to find his leash.

  “We’ll be back in twenty minutes,” I said as my husband led me out the door and down the front steps.

  Out on the walk, Michael put his arm around me, and I twisted sideways to glance at him in the twilight. “What is this all about?”

  “I needed air,” he said, pulling me closer as we turned onto the sidewalk. It was just another weeknight on the block—lights had just begun to burn in the windows, fireflies flickered above the lawns and the tang of citronella on backyard decks was sharp in the air. The quiet felt wrong, given the bomb Emma had dropped. “I don’t know about you, but I never thought I could be so damn proud of Emma and so terrified of her at the same time. And I wasn’t about to lose it in front of the teenage Romeo in there.”

  “Terrified of her?” Walter tugged on the leash to edge closer to a clump of dandelions, his tail wagging furiously.

  “I’m scared for her, too,” Michael admitted as we paused to let Walter do his business along the curb. “Pain isn’t fun, and there are always risks to the donor. But yeah, I’m more terrified of her. She’s only fifteen, babe, and right now I’m a little amazed at how strong-willed she’s become. Not to mention how grown-up. I guess I’m glad she’s on our side. She planned that ambush pretty well, don’t you think?”

  “Pretty well?” I laid my head against his shoulder. “I’ll be surprised if the military doesn’t draft her into its strategy department.”