Pictures of Us Page 8

  But I couldn’t forget driving home the next morning, and the awful sense of freedom that had made me turn the radio up higher and sing along to Springsteen and The Cure at the top of my lungs, even as tears slid down my face.

  Loving someone is a huge responsibility. And that day, I had shrugged off the burden, grateful for the loss of its weight.

  Michael appeared in the doorway to the kitchen with Emma beside him, and without speaking any more than necessary, we hustled Emma into the car with Walter—we were dropping him off at my parents’ house for the weekend. My mother met me at the door, still wrapped in her cotton bathrobe, her gray bob uncombed, and I felt a sharp pinch of guilt when I noticed the lines around her eyes. For the first time, it hit me that she was getting older.

  It was worry, and I knew she worried out of love. But I couldn’t quite erase the memory of the shock on her face when Michael had made his announcement, and the way she’d whispered, “Were you unfaithful to Tess?”

  As if her heart was breaking. As if I wasn’t to blame. As if I were the innocent party.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said now, leading Walter into the house. His tail wagged furiously, and he slathered her hands with doggy affection when she leaned forward to pet his head.

  “You’ll be back on Monday night?” she asked accepting the bag of dog food and then unhooking Walter’s leash. She was so obviously not meeting my eyes she might as well have announced it.

  “If not sooner.” That I could keep my tone so light, so casual, as if I was anticipating nothing more serious than a carefree holiday weekend away with my family, was amazing. “Don’t forget to give Walter one of the good biscuits after he’s pooped. He’ll sulk otherwise.”

  I kissed her cheek as I turned toward the door, and she grabbed my forearm, confusion and concern and something like grief in her eyes. “You’re okay, honey? Really?”

  If she started to cry, I would cry. And if I went out to the car crying, then Michael would either cry or scream or possibly throw something. God knows what Emma would do. I was so sick of tears. I couldn’t believe that I had any left.

  “Mom, I’m fine.” I tugged my arm out of her grasp and hugged her, breathing in the familiar scent of her Chanel, pressing my cheek to her cool one. “We’re fine. Or we will be. I promise.”

  But the three of us sat in that car for hours on the way to Massachusetts without saying a word.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WE WALKED INTO CHARLIE’S kitchen at just after one, rushed and edgy. After battling traffic as we neared Boston, Michael had called Drew on his cell to let him know we were close to Cambridge. We hadn’t even checked into our hotel yet, a consequence Michael had predicted when we stopped for coffee and doughnuts on the way out of town that morning. All of us were rumpled and stiff from hours in the car, and the tension in the air around us was probably tangible from a mile away.

  “It’s not a big deal, Michael,” I said as we made our way down Brattle Street in the hazy sunshine. “We just drove six hours. I’m sure he can forgive us being thirty minutes late.”

  Michael didn’t reply, and he didn’t really need to. He wasn’t angry that we were late, of course. He was nervous and unsure of what the hell we were doing, and I didn’t blame him. I felt exactly the same way, with a side of guilty resentment.

  And a frightening itch to smack my daughter, who had perfected her pout and was practically oozing outraged dignity.

  I grabbed her arm as Michael opened the door to the restaurant, a Cambridge institution we’d eaten at plenty of times when I’d visited him. “I am expecting you to behave like a grown-up, Emma. I know you’re not one, and I know this is hugely upsetting and…well, weird, but don’t make it worse. Got it?”

  Harsh words, but just a minute away from meeting Michael’s son, there on the sidewalk, neon beer signs lit up in the window and college students walking past in pairs, laughing and arguing, I was too freaked out to care. Emma simply nodded, bright, hot spots of color in her cheeks, her eyes wide, and we followed her father inside.

  Drew was standing inside the door. He didn’t need an introduction or a name tag—I would have recognized him anywhere. He looked just the way Michael had at his age, and the shock of it literally knocked the air from my lungs for a second.

  I don’t know what I was expecting. DNA doesn’t lie, and Drew had half of Michael’s. It was all over him, in his lanky frame and the huge dark eyes fringed with impossibly long lashes, the dark hair falling over his forehead, the familiar curve of his bottom lip, softer than a boy’s had any right to be.

  But there was more—the intelligence in his eyes shadowed with uncertainty, the intensity in the way he stood, hands jammed in the pockets of his jeans, shoulders stiff.

  For a moment, all I could register was that he looked so unsure, so pale with worry, that I was tempted to hug him.

  A few steps ahead of me, Michael had stopped dead. The restaurant was crowded and noisy, with the jukebox going and a knot of customers at the long bar arguing over the Red Sox game. It was the wrong place, I realized suddenly, the wrong time. The place smelled of onion rings and beer and too many people. We should have picked somewhere private, somewhere much quieter, but even as I stood panicked, Michael said, “Drew?” and reached out to shake his son’s hand.

  Behind me Emma made some kind of a noise—her bottom lip was caught between her teeth and her arms were folded over her chest. Holding something in, which was fine with me. I was having enough trouble keeping my own eyes from spilling tears. The moment had the surreal quality of the kind of TV movie everyone had seen a million times—a touching family reunion! Cut to artful tears and the group smiling over cheeseburgers!

  “Michael.” Drew shook his hand vigorously, the hard set of his jaw finally relaxing, and the two of them simply stared at each other.

  I swallowed hard as I moved aside to let a man who’d walked in get by. Women would have hugged, I thought absently. Men were so strange. Michael and Drew were father and son, after all. But what did that mean, really, when they’d never met before today?

  Michael broke the silence, turning to me and Emma. “Drew, this is Tess, my wife. And this is Emma, our daughter.”

  Drew’s hand was warm and firm, his fingers shaped disconcertingly like Michael’s. Before and after. Version 1.0 and version 2.0. I had to swallow back a gust of laughter that would have verged on hysteria.

  “I’m so happy to meet you,” Drew said, and I managed a smile and a nod. Emma wasn’t doing much better—she looked almost starstruck, her eyes huge and glassy. At least she wasn’t pouting.

  “Our booth should be ready,” Drew went on. “I know one of the waiters.”

  Michael’s smile was sudden, and full of relief. Drew was sweet and polite and smart—a nice kid. It was the one thing I hadn’t doubted.

  For a meal that could have been tense and awkward, lunch was surprisingly pleasant. Emma and I ordered the famous lobster rolls, and Michael had a cheeseburger dripping with grease, and fat, hot steak fries on the side. But Drew only picked at a salad and a cup of soup, which struck me as strange. It was nearly June for one thing, and he was a twenty-year-old boy. At that age, my brothers and Michael could have—and most likely would have—eaten a double cheeseburger, with a shake, fries and maybe even onion rings. And dessert.

  But the longer we lingered at the booth upstairs, comfortably ranged by gender across the table—Michael seated with Drew, Emma and me opposite them—the more unavoidable was my conclusion. Drew was far too pale for a kid his age, even one who didn’t spend a lot of time outdoors. And his complexion wasn’t simply pale; it had a faint blue translucence. The circles under his eyes were purple and every once in a while he seemed a little out of breath.

  He’s weak, the mother part of me whispered. Sick. Really, really sick. Not that I could ask, of course—Michael and Drew were helming the conversation, and Drew had insisted nearly as soon as we were seated with our menus that he had wanted to meet Michael out of cu
riosity.

  Maybe it was true, but it wasn’t curiosity alone. I knew it, in the same wordless place in my gut that clutched when Emma was lying to me, or when she was upset about something too big for her to handle by herself.

  Apparently, my maternal instinct worked whether the child in question was mine by blood or not.

  “So you’re studying architecture?” Michael said now, biting into his enormous cheeseburger and obviously oblivious that Drew had barely eaten a thing. “I can’t come up with a better place than MIT to do that.”

  “Yeah, MIT is pretty awesome.” Drew glanced up through those thick lashes, an apology in his eyes. “I considered Harvard for a while, though.”

  Michael sputtered iced tea, and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Just because I went to Harvard…I mean, if that’s why you thought about it…”

  Drew glanced up at Emma, who had frozen, a French fry snagged from her father’s plate halfway to her lips. “Um, well, I kind of meant I thought about it because it’s such a good school, but I didn’t actually know you went there until…” He trailed off, miserable, and focused on the uneaten chowder in his bowl.

  I was waiting for Michael to reassure him, when Emma blurted out, “Where did your mom go? Didn’t she go to Harvard?”

  The pink elephant that had hovered silently over the table, so far not remarked upon, landed with a nearly audible crash.

  This time it was me Drew glanced at, and I saw the same wordless apology in his eyes. How much had Sophia told him about her relationship with Michael? About Michael’s relationship with me?

  “My mom went to Boston University.” Drew shrugged. “She and—” He stopped short and colored.

  I’ll give him this—he caught himself in time, or close enough. I could guess what he had been going to say. Sophia and Michael had met because they lived in the same apartment building. Michael had already explained it all to me, more than I wanted to know, but this afternoon didn’t need to be weirder for Emma than it already was. I had no interest in her getting the lowdown on Daddy’s romance with her half brother’s mom.

  God, it was almost like something out of The Jerry Springer Show.

  Drew was covering his mistake, rushing on to say, “Mom was all for me going wherever was best. And MIT is an excellent school for any kind of technology or science. What do you think you’ll major in, Emma?”

  Michael met my eyes with a little smile at that, and sat back in the red leather booth. The kid was definitely bright. There was no better way to distract a teenage girl than to ask her to talk about herself.

  Emma played coy for a minute or two, giving one-word answers to Drew’s questions, but she seemed grateful for the attention. Half brother or not, it wasn’t every day a cute college boy talked to her, especially one who didn’t treat her like an irritating child. By the time I’d finished my iced tea and the rest of Michael’s fries, he’d managed to charm her into giving him details about the school play and her part in it.

  The waitress arrived with the check, and Michael pulled out his wallet as Emma and I tidied up our side of the table. Drew opened his mouth, but Michael cut him off before he got a word out.

  “It’s on me. My pleasure,” he said, and Drew smiled.

  “Thanks…Michael.”

  Would it ever not be awkward? Would Drew call Michael “Dad” at some point? Did Michael want him to? Was this low-key lunch it, the answer to Drew’s curiosity and Michael’s sense of obligation? As quickly as it had disappeared, the tension was back, a tight fist in my muscles and shoulders.

  And it would only get worse, I realized. Because Drew took Michael aside out in the sultry afternoon sunshine and asked if he and Michael could talk alone for a while. I had no problem with that, especially if it meant Drew would tell Michael the whole truth about why he’d contacted him. There was no polite way to veto Drew’s plan for Emma and me while the guys wandered through Cambridge.

  “I already asked Mom,” Drew said, shrugging those painfully bony shoulders at me, with eyes too much like Michael’s, full of hope and uncertainty. “She said you and Emma were welcome to hang out there for the afternoon, and then she’d love it if you could all stay for dinner.”

  The fist clenched harder, tightening viciously at the base of my skull. Meet Sophia, with Emma as some kind of bizarre chaperone? I couldn’t think of an idea I hated more. But I nodded, and flashed my best imitation of a smile as I lied. “That sounds great.”

  SOPHIA WAS CARRYING GROCERY bags up the front steps of an old three-story frame house when Emma and I arrived at Walden Street, slightly winded. The walk in the soft late-spring sun was a much longer one than I’d expected—so much longer that I hadn’t had to drag it out the way I’d planned.

  I had been anticipating a moment to compose myself, to meet Drew’s mother for the first time, smile in place after waiting on the other side of a closed door. But there she was, chin-length dark hair swinging around her face, arms full of brown bags.

  “You found it.” Sophia’s expression didn’t give anything away—if she was uncomfortable meeting the wife and daughter of the man who had fathered her son, it didn’t show. Her eyes were a clear brown. “And here I am not even in the house yet. Come on in.”

  “I can carry one of those,” Emma offered, running up the broad gray steps to the little porch. I fought back a frown. Emma usually never helped with chores until I ticked off the many things she wouldn’t be able to do without her allowance.

  “Thanks,” Sophia said. “It’s Emma, right? We’re on the second floor.”

  Emma nodded as she accepted a stuffed grocery bag and opened the screen door, and I started up the steps as I said, “And I’m Tess. Hi.”

  “Hi, Tess.” Sophia stuck out her free hand—she had a surprisingly strong grasp, and her gaze never wavered as she smiled at me. The flicker of uncertainty I’d heard on the phone last week was gone. Home-field advantage, I decided. Not that it was a contest, and certainly not a battle. I had to keep that in mind. Hell, I needed to get a grip. “Come on in.”

  The smell hit me as I followed her up the stairs to the second floor—oil paint and what I thought was turpentine. And there was Drew the moment I walked through the door into a narrow hallway—a three-year-old Drew, curled into an overstuffed sofa, fast asleep.

  “Did you paint this?” Emma asked, saving me the trouble. She had put down the grocery bag somewhere, and was standing in front of the painting, one careful finger tracing a brushstroke on the bottom edge of the red sofa.

  “Guilty,” Sophia said lightly, and continued down the hall, before disappearing into a room to the right. The hall was lined with paintings, I realized, all in the same rich, saturated colors, all obviously painted by the same hand.

  It might have been the hall at my own house had the paintings been replaced with photographs.

  Sophia stuck her head through the doorway a moment later. “Come on in the kitchen. I have iced tea.”

  Emma didn’t even spare a backward glance for me—she examined each painting as she headed for the kitchen, stripping off her iPod headphones as she went. If I’d imagined her awkward and resentful in Sophia’s presence I’d been wrong, and now I didn’t know if I was more anxious that she was playing up to Sophia simply to push my buttons, or if her fascination with the woman was as genuine as it seemed.

  “I get paid to teach Italian,” Sophia explained as Emma and I sat down at a cozy oak table in the corner of the kitchen. The sun up here on the second floor was fantastic, especially on this side of the house. The kitchen was flooded with warm gold light, making the bright yellow walls buttery. “But I’m a painter at heart. Just a…realistic one, I guess. Even before I had Drew, I didn’t have much interest in doing the starving-artist thing.”

  The soul of an artist was all over the apartment, I discovered later, when Sophia had set Emma up on the small back porch with a small easel and some paint to fool around with. It was in the colors on the walls, the way the apartment’s edg
es had been blunted with fabric or pillows, the patterned rugs that masked the humble origins of the wood floors, the trompe l’oeil skyline painted on one wall of Drew’s childhood bedroom.

  What was also evident was a sense of contentment, and a kind of assuredness. This was a home, and a happy one, not a way station before traveling to another life, a bigger house. Those qualities alone answered a myriad of questions, but I couldn’t help asking myself if Sophia had ever regretted leaving Michael in the dark about their son, or wondered if they could have made a life together.

  Because I could so clearly see everything about this woman that had attracted my husband. Especially all those years ago, with me throwing what amounted to a teenage tantrum of sorts. Sophia was a few years older than Michael, and aside from being damnably sensual, she had probably been just as confident then as she was now. Majoring in Italian to ensure an income even when painting was her passion. Living on her own, already beyond roommates and keg parties and ridiculous fits of identity crisis.

  We’d ended up in the living room, tucked into either end of the same comfy sofa in the painting, and as I sipped my iced tea, I realized the first awkward silence had fallen between us. Not my fault, I told myself with all the maturity of a kindergartner, fixing my stare on a self-portrait of a younger Sophia. That was the last thing I wanted to notice, of course, but it was too late—I couldn’t bring myself to meet her eyes.

  Sophia broke the silence as she set her glass on the coffee table and tucked her bare feet onto the sofa. “I know you might have questions.”

  Another understatement. I had questions, all right, but I wasn’t sure I was ready for answers to any of them. Except one.

  I swallowed and faced her. “Can you tell me why Drew decided to contact Michael now? I mean, would it be…?”

  “Betraying him?” Her smile was lopsided, and more than a little halfhearted. “Maybe. But I’m sure he’s telling Michael now, and I know Michael will tell you.”