Picture This (18 page)

Chapter 31

Tess

I
t was the height of July, her granddaughter wanted to come more and more often, and Tess saw no reason to say no. If she had scheduled a physical therapy patient, then of course the child couldn't come. Danielle was only seven after all. But on days when Tess was doing her other job managing the houses with summer renters, then Danielle could easily come along. And since the island was only four miles around and most of the rental houses were on the perimeter, facing out to the Atlantic or the bay side, they could ride their bicycles. Tess kept a bike for Danielle at her house. “I want summer to be so long,” said Danielle, slipping on her helmet. She snapped the strap under her chin and straightened up the bike from the side of the deck.

Tess grudgingly put on her helmet, aware that she could not ask the child to wear a bike helmet if she didn't wear one herself. Tess loved the feeling of salt air fluttering her hair as she rode her bike, and she regretted all the safety precautions of childhood that her granddaughter faced. Her ex-husband, Len, had chided her about riding without a helmet.

“You wouldn't forget to wear one if you'd ever treated someone with a brain injury in the ER,” he had said.

His logic, honed by years in surgery, was indisputable. What Tess had not told anyone—and some days she tried not to tell herself—was that since her surgery the sound of Len's voice had found its way into her again, filling up crevices she had not felt since she was a college student meeting him for the first time.

Tess now met her ex-husband in Portland once a week for dinner and darts. This was what remained of their early years when they were married and he was a young doctor who had put his family up as collateral against his gamble with alcohol. Len was single and sober now, defrocked of his medical license long ago and humanized at last. He had woken up sober with a second wife who found his sobriety tedious and unflattering next to her own love of the drink.

It was true that Len had broken the once-a-week rule while Tess recovered from surgery. He had even slept on her couch for the first week, and she had allowed him to check the tidy stitches riding low on her abdomen. She shooed him back to Portland when she felt better, upgrading to their once-a-week visit, letting him take the Casco Bay ferry out to Peaks Island until she could resume their normal schedule. She pushed any further thoughts of Len away; that fantasy would be best left unrealized.

Now she was watching their granddaughter with relentless vigilance, making sure all protective gear was in place, as if Len had given the child a monitoring system. On summer evenings, when no grandchild was present to remind her of the rule, she loved nothing more than mounting her bike and riding without a helmet.

“Summer
is
long. We can practice extending the moment while we ride,” said Tess. She pushed off with her right foot. They bumped along the dirt road, coasting down the slight hill.

“Is that a Buddhist thing? Daddy says you're a Buddhist and that's why you painted the Buddha man on your bathroom door. I look at him every time I pee,” said Danielle.

“Not quite. If Buddha was riding bikes with us today, he'd be so busy feeling the way the air touched his skin as it comes off the ocean that he wouldn't think about a moment being long or short, or if the summer was going away too quickly.”

They came to Island Boulevard and turned left. Tess rode on the outside, keeping the girl tucked between her and the grassy edge.

“Would Buddha wear a bike helmet? Daddy said I have to wear a bike helmet, and he said that I should remind you to wear yours. Buddha's head looks too big for a helmet,” said Danielle. They passed a tangled hedge of bittersweet.

“That's a good question. Let's see. If he were here right now, on his bike, with you and me . . .” Tess paused, giving herself time to think and be honest with Danielle. Then she decided that she had no possible idea. “I think he would wear a special large helmet, and he'd tie up his silky orange robes so they wouldn't get caught in the spokes. And he'd say this was the best place ever to ride his bike.”

They rode twice around the island, a first for Danielle, who was now so big that she didn't ask once to stop. When it was time for Tess to take the girl back to Portland, Danielle brought them to her favorite place to sit, on the top deck of the ferry.

“When will I be old enough to take the ferry by myself?” asked Danielle, pressing her thigh next to her grandmother's.

“Are you in a hurry? Let's take our time, little one, just like our bike ride,” said Tess, kissing the top of the girl's head. The child smelled like fresh air, the way sheets do when they've been hung outside.

“I'm not in a hurry, but it's good to be ready,” said Danielle with all the wisdom of a skinny Buddha.

T
ess's first physical therapy client arrived at her door exactly five months after her surgery for the double whammy of appendicitis and a twisted bowel. Even though her synesthesia had failed to return as her body mended, she needed to get back to work, with or without it.

“Hello, Harold. Come on in. Sorry to keep you waiting these last few months.”

Harold was a few years older than Tess, seventy-five or so, and most of his body was pulled tight. Tendons and muscles were ready to twang at the first touch. That tightness, coupled with the decreasing muscle density of advancing years, made him the perfect candidate for disaster. He wore a hat from the feed store in South Portland. Layers of sweat left demarcations along the bulb of the hat, like the walls of the Grand Canyon.

“Good to see you, Tess. Glad you're still with us.” When Harold took his hat off, some of his thin gray hair stood up straight and the rest was pinched in tight from his hat band.

Tess led him past the entryway to the first door on the right, bringing them to the treatment room. Her office consisted of a massage table covered by creamy flannel sheets. Adorning one wall were charts of the body, with dots along a highway of meridians from the skull to the torso to the feet. A plastic replica of the spine dangled from a hook on the far wall.

“Before you tell me what's wrong, could you stand right here?” asked Tess.

Harold stood facing her, looking like a schoolboy.

“Thank you. Now would you turn around?” she asked.

Tess tried to keep this part of the assessment short; Harold was the kind of man who shunned attention, and being looked at so intently was nearly intolerable to him.

Tess sighed. “Dang it all. Any day now I keep thinking that it will be back. That all my multisensory facilities will return to me. I don't feel at all normal without them.”

“Should I come back some other day?” said Harold, still facing the back wall of the treatment room. “I wouldn't have called, but I was at the meeting about the blasted beavers last night, and it felt like a hot poker had run up my leg.”

“No, dear. I can see that it's your hamstrings that are yanking everything south of your hipbones out of whack. I can see it, but it's like watching an old black-and-white movie. The mechanics of the body don't change. The bones, nerves, and muscles will get into trouble no matter if I see them as colors or as pudding. Hop on up to the table, please.”

Harold backed up to the table and placed his chapped hands on the edge. He winced as he lifted his buttocks to the edge.

“I've waited until you got better, and I wasn't sure I could wait any longer,” he said.

“You old fool. Portland is rich with physical therapists. Some of them are very young and beautiful. Show me how much you can straighten your right leg.”

Harold gripped the table and tried to straighten his right leg. His overvigilant hamstrings didn't allow him to extend it from the table at any more than a forty-five-degree angle.

“Very good,” said Tess.

“Good for nothing.”

“Show me the other leg, please.”

He could raise his left leg even less.

“How long have you been hobbling around like this?” said Tess. Her alarm was mixed with tenderness for Harold. She wanted to be stern with him, but even without the advantage of synesthesia, she could see how much pain he was in.

“Oh, never mind,” she said. “Don't tell me. Swing your legs over and lie on your stomach. I'm going to apply some pressure to the muscles near the sciatic nerve, and it might feel like a red-hot bolt of fire at first, but then it will get calmer and calmer. I promise.”

Everything about working with the body felt new to Tess. The feedback loop was still there, the sensation flowing from a patient's body into her hands. But the feedback had been a full orchestra before, and now it was a solo flute player. Harold's flute player was out of tune. Tess placed a knuckle in his right gluteus maximus.

“Keep breathing,” she said. “Now I'm going to raise this leg just slightly and move it to the outside a few inches.” As soon as she felt the first flutter of resistance, she stopped. Tess released the pressure on Harold's butt and rested his leg in her hands for a minute. When she lowered his leg again, she placed a finger midway down the back of his thigh, a light touch, to alert all the energy circling around his glutes that Tess was back and she was the new traffic cop directing a river of clogged-up energy to come south. She tapped lightly at his ankle.

“I can't figure out what it is that you do. Nothing that you do feels big enough or hard enough to fix what's wrong with me,” he said into the hole of the face cradle, his words muffled by the flannel.

Tess began to work on his left side, repeating the sequence. Harold's muscles gave in to her touch. At least she was getting back to something that reminded her of who she was. Inch by inch, she was returning.

Chapter 32

Melissa

M
elissa had been replaced by the new girl, the oh-so-helpless foster kid, the I'm-so-damaged-touch-me-gently girl. Melissa had never been deposed before, not in all her sixteen years, and even if she had fallen from grace in some weird caste system at school, it was inconsequential high school stuff. High school was one long drama filled with friends and wannabe friends, betrayals and alliances. In the big picture, Melissa knew it was a time-limited engagement. She had precisely one more year of high school. Over the summer she had already felt herself growing older, catching subtleties and double entendres that had eluded her in her younger years.

With Rocky, it had been different. Rocky was an adult, and she had treated Melissa like she was important, not fragile or eating-disordered; she treated Melissa like she mattered. They shared Cooper the dog, or almost shared him. The black Lab knew stuff about Melissa that nobody else knew, not Rocky, not her mother, not anyone. More and more it had been the three of them, a team with their own inside jokes.

All of a sudden, this girl appeared looking for her biological father and told Rocky in her breathy little-girl voice, “It was Robert, and now I'm too late.”

Well, part of that was true. If her father really was Rocky's husband, he was dead. That was why Rocky came here in the first place. Her husband died right on their bathroom floor. Rocky told her the whole story back in January. Melissa had advanced to the rank of confidante, and no adult had ever nominated her for that position before. She ingested the intoxicating elixir of her exclusive status until Rocky told Tess, and then Isaiah, and then the entire island knew she was a widow and a psychologist and all the other stuff she had hidden for months.

Why did the girl have to show up, following Rocky around like some half-feral cat? Was Melissa the only person who smelled something rotten? Rocky let her move right into the little rental cottage. Suddenly Melissa was the stranger, the one on the outside.

If Rocky was really a psychologist—and Melissa still had a hard time picturing the archery/animal control lady as a psychologist—then Melissa figured she would be quick to pick up on a big fat liar like Natalie. A kid can't fake it with another kid, not ever. Kids fake it all the time with adults. Melissa had been shocked by how easily she misled her track coach and parents and every other adult during junior year with her dive into the world of anorexia. Except for Rocky—that was one thing Rocky had not missed. And yet here was Natalie, working Rocky like the grit of sand between her toes, rubbing, changing everything. It was like Rocky had gone stupid.

She had seen Natalie walking Cooper twice. That was Melissa's job. Melissa had been on a pier one day and saw how Natalie walked Cooper along Centennial Beach. Natalie was in la-la land, and she wasn't in tune with him, not like Melissa was. Natalie was on her cell phone the whole time. Cooper brought the girl a perfectly chewed stick, dropped it right at her feet, and she never even looked up.

Melissa felt like she had ants in her brain, churning little ant trails with their pincher mouths; this wasn't such a bad turn of events once the ants in her brain began to help her see Natalie in a way that no one else could. Melissa knew that Natalie wanted her out of the way, but Melissa would not go down easy. Natalie was not going to replace her as Cooper's buddy. She wasn't sure what would happen to Rocky; she might be a lost cause, but not the dog. That skanky chick was not moving in on her dog. Well, Rocky's dog.

Mr. Clarke, her photography teacher, said that the best portraits are of people before or after their game face. Mostly after. They can give you their best side, their biggest smile, but only for so long; eventually everyone gets weary and some little true part looks out to see if it's safe. Those are the best photos, when a little bit of the real self looks out. That's what she was going to do with Natalie. She'd let her be the wounded girl for a while. But sooner or later, some little part of Natalie would part the curtains and think it was safe to peek out. When that happened, Melissa wanted to be ready. In the meantime, she had to think of a way to keep Cooper.

There were other things that burned Melissa these days: the way Natalie rode in Rocky's truck, sitting in the passenger seat as if she'd been born on the island; the way anger crested in her throat and tried to choke her; the way her skin flushed unbidden as she sat on the couch watching a movie with her mother that showed lovers clutching in high definition.

“You look embarrassed,” said her mother, Elaine, turning to look at Melissa. “They're in love, sweetheart. It's okay.”

What did not hurt her these days? Her camera, placing one eye against the viewfinder the way Mr. Clarke taught her to do, taking a breath, and, on the complete exhale, taking the shot. The camera steadied her, gave her a clear focus, a way to capture time, faces, a fleeting wing from a great blue heron. The images allowed her brain to slow down, to rest on one image.

The movie ended with the young lovers hand in hand, finally clothed, having overcome predictable obstacles. Melissa unfolded her legs and made ready to get up.

“I know that I've asked a few times, but I'd love to see the photos that you're working on,” said her mother. In fact, this was Elaine's third request, and Melissa was prepared to feel the old impulse to hide from her mother, to make another excuse, but the feeling was oddly absent.

“Okay. Let me get my laptop,” said Melissa. They sat together on the couch, with the computer on the coffee table, as Melissa narrated a slide show.

“You've seen this one. This is the one called ‘The Dogs of Portland.' Are you sure you want to see it again?” asked Melissa.

Her mother smelled good, like a gingersnap. When Melissa was little, her mother had always smelled delicious. Even when Melissa had been in junior high, her mother's lingering scent in her sweaters or hats had been enough to make Melissa wiggle with pleasure. It was only last year and the year before that she had failed to notice her mother's scent of spice and sweetness.

“Are you kidding me? I can't hang your art on the refrigerator anymore, so I'm grateful for any viewing,” said her mother as they reviewed Melissa's first show. Then Melissa opened up the new file.

“These are the new dogs of Portland, at least all the ones that I could find over the last two weeks. And Peaks Island too. See, here it starts with Cooper again. I'll show you later why I did it that way, starting with him.”

The images of dogs blurred one into the other—big dogs, tiny spots of dogs, overindulged dogs being carried as if they had lost the ability to walk. As Melissa showed the photos to her mother, the acidic drip of Natalie's presence on the island momentarily faded. The slide show ended with Cooper sitting on the ferry, looking out over the Atlantic.

“See, Cooper will be the connecter from the last study of dogs to this one. He's a link.” Melissa wasn't sure that her mother would understand this artistic term, so she let it sink in. “I'm thinking of adding some people to my work. You know, photographing people,” Melissa added.

Her mother ran her fingers through her hair and tucked a piece behind one ear. “You have an artist's eye,” she said. “I can't wait to see your next photos.”

Melissa was so close to telling her mother all about Natalie and how something wasn't right, but she didn't want to sound like a whiny girl, she didn't want to spoil this moment on the couch with the two of them.

“I better go study now,” said Melissa, closing her laptop.

Her private photos could only be downloaded with a special password. The photos of Natalie needed to stay hidden until she decided what to do with them. If anyone, especially her mother or Rocky, were to ask her why she didn't like Natalie, Melissa wouldn't have been able to explain it. There was the shoplifting, of course, but that wasn't enough, that wasn't even the worst of it. She could not have formed the words to describe the feeling that shimmered in the air when Natalie was around, looking so openmouthed, soft, and helpless.

Melissa took photos whenever she could and let the camera find the instant when the unseen revealed people in surprising ways. She'd seen it often in photography club with Mr. Clarke.

“Look here,” he'd say. “When the camera caught this image, the person was just beginning to look away. Or here—do you see the muscles around the mouth, smiling but not really smiling? If you're going to take photos of people, let them pose first and get that out of the way. I've said it before and I'll keep telling you until it becomes second nature. They will give you the same story they give everyone about themselves with their standard pose. Your job is to get beyond that. One way is to emphasize one side of the face and let the other be in shadow. No one is completely symmetrical. One side of our face is always a bit more serious, more paranoid or afraid or angry. Let that part of the person speak to the camera.”

Melissa had begun to look at everyone in a different way, but the person she wanted to really see was Natalie. In the jewelry store, she'd glimpsed a Natalie that no one on Peaks had seen, the real Natalie. And there was that guy in the van. Why didn't Natalie just tell Rocky she had a boyfriend? Melissa wanted to find out more, and she could begin by waiting in the bookstore after cross-country practice, hoping to see Natalie meet the guy again. All Melissa had to do was stand in the bookstore and shoot.

“B
elieve what you see.” Mr. Clarke had said this a hundred times, maybe more. He drilled it into them like the multiplication tables. He told them to see like the camera instead of the human brain, which has perceptual problems, like not noticing the power lines in the background of a shot, or a garbage can, or the rear fender of a car.

“With digital cameras, you can clean out a distracting background, which is good in a pinch, but train your eye to be the viewfinder and the lens. You'll be surprised at what you'll see. Then you're ready to move to digital cameras after you've trained your eyes and your brain.”

One day while she was camped out in the bookstore, hoping to see Natalie meet up with the guy in the car, she saw a man in camouflage gear walk by with a dog. The man had all the trappings of someone who was homeless. He had a backpack covered in a black plastic bag to keep it dry, and he wore tough, military-looking boots in the summer, a time when there was no need for boots at all. She let him come into focus just as Mr. Clarke had taught her. Gradually, he didn't look scary at all, not like homeless men had looked to her before. His dog was short-haired, tight, and serious, not at all like the dogs in her first study. How did he feed his dog? Where did the dog stay when the man went into a store? Melissa got an idea for a fine-tuned version of “The Dogs of Portland”; she could photograph homeless people and their dogs. She couldn't wait to tell Mr. Clarke, which she did as soon as she saw him the next day at photography lab.

“Interesting riff on your first study,” he commented. “Are your parents okay with you photographing homeless people? They are not like a species to be observed. Many of them are ordinary people who have slipped through the cracks, and your job would be to tell their story,” he said.

Melissa had instinctively not asked her parents. “Sure, my parents are fine with the idea. My father is a lawyer, and he volunteers one day a month at one of the homeless centers,” she said, hoping that she'd never run into her father, who would in fact be furious with her for hanging around a district of Portland known for crack, alcohol, and homeless people. “I get what you're saying about the story,” she added, even if she really didn't get how she would tell their story.

She wanted desperately to dive into the grittiness of her new study, to abandon the dogs who frequented the expensive shops and restaurants of Portland's tourist center—the pugs, the short-haired terriers, the Chihuahuas, the retrievers. She had clicked away at the dogs in their owners' arms; some were even pushed in strollers. It was not until she drew closer to the Chester Hill district, where runaway kids and people without permanent housing congregated, that Melissa met the dogs with a different kind of character. Her parents wouldn't find out because no one from Peaks ever went to the Chester Hill district.

After Rocky readily agreed to let Cooper go with her to Portland, Melissa and Cooper took the ferry on Saturday. Dogs couldn't ride the ferry without a ticket, especially a big dog like Cooper, who weighed in at more than ninety pounds. He took up as much space as two six-year-old kids. Dog tickets were the same price as tickets for kids, and Melissa was glad the ticket price wasn't based on weight.

In the summer heat, Cooper was one large solar collector. The sun amplified BTUs through his black fur, slowing him down to a large, panting canine. The ferry ride offered him relief, however temporary. As soon as they stepped onto the ferry, Melissa could immediately feel the temperature drop by ten degrees. The ferry was nothing more than a large metal object bobbing around in the icy Atlantic. Midway through the crossing, the ferry entered the deepest part of the channel and the temperature dropped another ten degrees. Cooper spread his body on the cool metal of the ferry and closed his eyes as the one cool breeze of the day lifted the tips of his ears away from his face.

As they approached Portland, the heat pulsing off the land reached out to meet them.

“We are back on the continent, big guy,” said Melissa. This would be his first day as Melissa's backup as she shot photos in the predominantly homeless section of Portland.

Melissa and the dog walked up the hill from Commercial Street and over to Chester Hill. Cooper had to have a leash in the city, and it took about six blocks before they got the system right. Melissa was not used to responding to every stop and start from the dog. And clearly, Cooper did not appreciate the micromanagement of the leash.