18
I wake up the next morning curled up in the center of my bed like a cat, the covers kicked down to the foot of the mattress and my arms draped over my face to block out the sunlight. My phone alarm keeps beeping in my ear like it thinks I haven’t heard it already, and I groan, fumbling to press the Mute button.
It’s been a long time since the last time I had anything to drink. Four years, five months, and sixteen days, to be precise. And it’s not like I got drunk last night or anything—I just had a glass. No big deal. But my mouth still tastes like something crawled in there and died.
I feel like a part of me died.
I’m such an idiot. I can’t believe I deluded myself into thinking a few sips was no big deal. Of course it’s a big deal—I literally went four whole years without breaking my streak. And it was so goddamn easy to let the whole glass castle shatter around me. And for what? Because I thought I could make myself normal for a night?
I’ve never been normal.
I push myself upright and lean against the wall, swiping open my phone to scroll through my latest notifications.
The top one is from Wyatt, a text I’d missed last night.
Wyatt: I’m back. Hope you made it home okay.
Guilt seeps in like water through rotten floorboards. One glass. One stupid glass into the mouth of one stupid Ely. The fucked-up part of my brain wants to say that it’s a good thing that I was able to just have the one glass and then cut myself off. It used to be that I couldn’t. If I had a single sip, I’d drink and drink and drink until I wished I were dead.
I scrub both hands over my face, squeezing my eyes shut tight.
No going back now. I made my choice last night, such as it was. And who knows? Maybe it really is okay. Maybe four years clean has knocked me out of whatever rut I was in before, fixed whatever was broken in me. I certainly have no desire to drink more. Or worse, to go out and find someone behind a dumpster somewhere to sell me smack.
Still, my hands are a little shaky as I open up the messaging app and text Wyatt back—like he’ll somehow sense what happened through the phone screen.
Me: Hey! Sorry I forgot to text back last night. Made it back. Hope you’re alive and didn’t eat all the leftovers in one sitting.
I shove my phone away from me before I can see if he replies. A part of me hopes he doesn’t. I don’t know if I can stomach his kindness on top of everything else.
Diego is a bundle of blankets on the couch when I emerge from the bedroom, either having fallen asleep there or having nested there, hungover, when he woke up. He doesn’t stir as I move around the kitchen making coffee and grabbing breakfast, but I leave him a mug—black, four sugars—on the coffee table before I go, just in case. At least Ophelia is gone; I don’t have to face her cautious concern and try to explain myself.
The train into Manhattan is running slower than usual today. We keep stopping in between stations, and the normally rocket-fast journey under the river is reduced to a drudging forward rumble. I find myself staring at the scars along my left forearm. They’re barely visible anymore, just off-white smudges against my skin. I remember when they were angry fissures stretching along the lengths of my veins like portals to hell.
That was so long ago now.
Wyatt has texted me back by the time I get off the train: Two sittings. I finished the brisket for breakfast.
A beat, and the phone shows he’s still typing. I climb the stairs out to street level still staring at my screen like the perfect stereotype of everyone my age.
Wyatt: Could probably go back for more.
I grin and have to make myself stick my phone in my back pocket so I’m not tempted to text back too quickly. I wonder if he’s at Parker, if he bothers to go in on Saturdays. Perhaps he’s on a train somewhere headed here now. He might ascend those stairs minutes after me or be just a couple blocks ahead, tapping out a text while he sips his morning coffee.
So what if I walk a little quicker these last four blocks to campus? Sue me; I’m human.
Although once I’m there, I am faced with the reality that it’d be incredibly awkward for me to just show up at his office demanding attention for no reason. So I have to actually do something with myself, and of course there’s no class on weekends.
I end up in one of the computer labs, uploading my photos from last night to Lightroom and sorting through them. Most of them are kind of shit, but that’s standard. Digital photography has some upsides over film, and one of them is that you can take a million pictures of a scene that is constantly in flux. You aren’t beholden to the number of film cartridges you have on hand—you don’t have to try to freeze time, to capture a moment perfectly in as few slides as possible.
It’s pretty easy to rule out the bad photos and get to the good stuff. But even then, I usually have way more options than I actually need. It becomes a matter of looking more closely at the scene, especially the exposure and focus. Some things, like crop and even lighting, to a degree, can be fixed in editing. Other things are unchangeable: Either the distribution of figures to negative space is good or it isn’t. Either the exposure is good or it’s hopeless, the light having burned away any data you might have recovered in post.
These particular photos turned out better than I expected. Last night felt like a fever dream at times, like I was existing in some liminal space between the past and the present. But onscreen, it’s easier to see those moments as what they are. I’m not afraid of colors and shapes in a photograph. I’m an artist. This is what I love more than anything in the world.
As I fiddle with my favorite photos, I find myself wondering what Michal is doing today. It’s still Shabbos but late enough that she might be home from shul by now. I find it hard to envision her life outside of what I’ve seen of it so far, both last night and at school. I try to picture her curled up in an armchair, reading a book while her wife and kids play on the floor. But even that simple scene is impossible to visualize. I keep catching myself imposing relics of my own experience onto hers, putting her into a wig instead of a tichel, hanging a portrait of the Rebbe on her wall.
Through my camera’s lens, she is luminous.
“Are these from last night?” a voice says from behind me.
Heat flushes the nape of my neck before I turn to meet Wyatt’s gaze. He’s leaning against the doorframe, cup of La Colombe in hand. His hair is sticking up in an awkward fashion, as if he forgot he put pomade in it this morning then ended up raking his fingers through it one too many times on his commute. And suddenly I can’t stop thinking about how he looked that night we fell into bed together, his cheeks flushed pink and his hair askew, his skin warm and supple beneath my hands as I touched him.
It’s been like a solid ten seconds since he asked the question. Shit.
“Yeah,” I say, and it comes out husky, like I haven’t taken a sip of water in ten years. I clear my throat and try again. “Just doing a first pass.”
Wyatt comes closer, setting his coffee down on the desk next to me and leaning in to peer at the images on my screen. He’s near enough that I can see the stubble on his jaw and throat. One of his hands grips the back of my seat. All I can hear, for one reeling moment, is the pounding of my own pulse in my ears.
“Do you mind?” he asks, gesturing toward the mouse. I shake my head.
He scrolls through some of the images I’ve selected, pausing on two or three to take a longer look. Of course, now that he’s watching, all I can see in my photographs are the mistakes.
“These are really good,” he says after a while—long enough that I’d begun to contemplate faking a doctor’s appointment or something just so I could leave. Which is stupid, because I’m the one who begged him to help me with this project in the first place. “I like how you’ve balanced the light. It makes the scene seem dreamlike almost, like this moment exists in a space between worlds.”
“Thanks. I—I guess I wanted to make it feel…private, maybe? The way you feel when you’re praying. There are other people in the scene, and you can feel their presence, but at the same time you’re alone. Just you and G-d.”
He nods. “You did that very well, then. It’s definitely coming across. You have such an eye for light—the way you capture it…everything in the photo feels ethereal somehow. It’s your focus on the people in the portrait that grounds the viewer in reality, but it makes that reality so much more beautiful. I think this could be a very powerful body of work, in the right hands,” he says. The softness of his voice wraps around me, sends a thrill down my spine. “In your hands, specifically.”
I stare down at those hands. I know what he’s trying to say. Or at least what he wants me to infer from this.
To do this properly, I’d have to actually go back there. Not to Crown Heights, not literally, but…it might as well be the same thing. I have to stop holding this project at arm’s length. I have to let myself feel it, let the memories well up like pools of silver nitrate solution. I have to stare directly into the past. I have to face it.
I have to face her.
Wyatt reaches over and grabs my shoulder, squeezes. He leaves his hand there a beat longer than he should—but not nearly long enough. I can still feel his phantom touch even after he pulls away. “What are you thinking about?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I start, even though I do. “I guess just…It’s a lot. It feels like undressing in front of someone you don’t know. The exposure, you know? If I do this project right, I’ll be making myself vulnerable.”
He hums out a wordless sound of agreement. “I know what you mean. All the best art is like bleeding in front of strangers. It’s terrifying. ‘Vulnerable’ is a good word for it. Someone could slip in while you’re raw and aching and twist the knife right where it hurts the most.”
I shift in my seat to look at him properly—how had I not noticed how close he is? If I’d leaned back just a little farther, his knuckles would have grazed my spine. I have to forcibly drag my attention up to his face.
“Is it worth it?” I say. My voice comes out scratchy. “After all the fear…I can’t stand the idea of doing all this for nothing.”
He nods slightly. “Yes. It’s worth it. It hurts, but it’s worth it. That’s why we do this, isn’t it? We want to say something important. But in art, you can’t just say what you want to say outright. You have to wrap it up in layers of meaning and symbolism and trust that your viewer will be able to unwrap them. Even when it’s scary. Even when it hurts.” A pause. “Especially then.”
He’s right. You can’t just say what you want to say outright. Not in art and not in life either. Not really. Because if you could, I’d open my mouth right now and tell him the truth about why I can’t face my past. I’d admit my sins and he’d recoil, and all that gentleness in his voice and hands would vanish into steam like water thrown on a hot pan.
Maybe that’s what I’ve been trying to do with my art all along. Beg for forgiveness over and over in as many languages as I can speak.
But I’ve spent so long trying not to think about my past that I can’t imagine letting it overtake me, pull me under like a tidal wave. Even now I feel like I’m drowning. Like if I opened my mouth, I’d find it full of seawater.
Art should scare you, someone told me once. Someone from an art residency back in LA whose name I can’t even remember. But their words have stitched themselves into my brain permanently.
Art should scare you.
I’m scared all right.
I haven’t told him what I did last night, and I don’t intend to. I’m used to keeping my mouth full of secrets. But something must show because a crease of concern forms between Wyatt’s brows.
“What is it?” he says. “You’re shaking.”
His hand catches my jaw, his thumb rubbing a soft, warm pattern just below my lower lip. And if I wasn’t shaking before, I sure as hell am now. That single point of contact smudges heat into my body, and a shudder unfurls down my spine.
He feels it too. He must. His eyes, initially wide with shock, have gone heavy. The dark fan of his lashes brushes against his cheeks as he draws in close, as I reach up to grasp his wrist, to keep him there.
“Careful,” he murmurs, but it’s not clear if he’s saying that to me, or to himself.
Either way, he doesn’t move. He stays right where he is with his hand on my cheek and his hips tilted in toward me. I don’t want to breathe in case it scares him off. But I couldn’t have, anyway. My chest is utterly empty, all the air squeezed out to make room for the all-consuming, the pounding need need need.
Wyatt’s thumb shifts toward my mouth, exploring the terrain of my lower lip like he still doesn’t believe he’s kissed it before.
That thumb presses in against my damp lower lip until my mouth parts, ready to let him slide his finger into my—
“Is that you, Wyatt?” a voice says from behind us, by the door.
I almost topple out of my seat, but Wyatt—thank god—is a little bit more in control of himself. He straightens so slowly, as if he wasn’t about to kiss me right then, a cool little cucumber in comparison to the way my brain has become a helpless skree of alarm bells.
“Hi, Ava,” Wyatt says, just as slowly.
Shit. I thought he had it under control. But nope. He’s only taking things slow because he’s desperately trying to figure out what to say.
“I’m surprised to see you in on a weekend,” she says.
“Haze wanted me out of the house,” Wyatt replies. “Some kind of secret cat thing.”
The moment of silence after that makes me want to curl up and hide beneath one of the desks. I still feel the phantom of Wyatt’s would-be kiss on my lips. Why couldn’t Zhu have walked in ten seconds later?
Only that would have been way worse, so. Maybe my hormonal fantasies can take a little break.
“I was about to head out,” I venture at last, because Ava and Wyatt are having some kind of silent conversation next to me, carried out in nothing but eyebrow raises and head tilts. “Um. I’ll see you in class next week, Dr. Zhu. And…um. Thank you, Wyatt. Professor Cole.”
“Wyatt,” he says.
“Wyatt.”
I can’t look Zhu in the eye as I slip past her out the door, but I can feel her watching me.
And I can tell that she knows.