Morning Glory(37)
The air feels suddenly cooler, and then I notice that the sun has dipped behind a cloud. A little boy on the hill has fallen and scraped his knee. His mother runs to him and pulls out a bandage from her purse. I think of Alex’s past. A war photographer. I wonder about the atrocities he must have seen.
“What was it like?” I ask him suddenly. “In Sudan?”
He doesn’t respond right away, and at first I worry that I’ve offended him. What if this is a taboo subject? He clasps his hands together, and I think about apologizing, asking a different question, but then he finally opens his mouth to speak. “It was raw,” he says. “My brain was imprinted with images I’ll never be able to get out of my head. Mothers being separated from their babies. Death. Destruction. Humans being slaughtered. I saw just how ugly the human spirit can get and also how beautiful it can be.” We watch as the little boy with the skinned knee embraces his mother. “There weren’t a lot of happy endings over there. And it still kills me that I couldn’t save those people. I couldn’t do anything but capture them on my camera. The only thing that kept me going was knowing that no matter what happened after I left, they wouldn’t be forgotten. I vowed to preserve the memory of their plight.”
I remember seeing the framed covers of Time and Newsweek on his wall. “You were so good at what you did,” I say.
He takes a deep breath. “No one can do that kind of work forever. But a piece of my heart”—he pats his chest—“will always be with those people.”
“Was it hard adjusting back to American life after being in a war zone?”
He nods vacantly but doesn’t elaborate. I wonder what he must have endured.
I feel a raindrop on my cheek. “What? Rain?”
“That’s Seattle for you,” he says, the smile returning to his face. “Rain always sneaks up on you.” He stands up and I follow. “Better get back before we’re drenched.”
Dark clouds are rolling in all around, and the rain’s intensity increases as we paddle back across the lake, which looks like wrinkled gray velvet. By the time we reach my dock, we’re soaked, but somehow, I don’t mind.
“Door-to-door service,” Alex quips, as he parks the kayak in front of my deck. I feel a little disappointed that our excursion is over. I think about inviting him in. But just as I open my mouth, I notice a figure standing on Alex’s deck. A woman. She’s huddled under an umbrella and she’s holding two blue balloons. Of course, his birthday. She looks familiar for some reason, and then I realize where I’ve seen her. The cookbook. His coauthor. His ex. Kellie.
He notices her presence just as I do, and an uncomfortable silence falls over us.
“I’d better—”
“Well—”
We both talk over each other, then smile. “Thank you,” I finally say. “For letting me share your birthday with you. I had a wonderful time.”
“Me, too,” he says before glancing back to his deck. She stares at us but doesn’t smile.
“Well,” I say, climbing out of the kayak, “I’d better let you go. You have a guest.”
“I, well,” Alex fumbles. “Yes. I’ll see you around.”
“I’ll see you around.”
Inside, I peel off my wet clothes and take a warm shower, then put on a sweater and leggings and reach for my phone.
“Joanie?”
“Hi, honey—everything OK?”
“Yes, yes, fine,” I say. “I, well . . .”
“What is it? You’re nervous about something.”
“I’ve been keeping something from you,” I say. “I met someone.”
“Ada, really?”
“Yes, and he’s wonderful. His name is Alex, and he lives in a houseboat across the dock.”
“Is he cute?”
“Um, yes!”
She squeals across the line, and I have to pull the phone away from my ear momentarily.
“What does he do?”
“He’s a photographer,” I say. “He was a war photographer for years, but now he specializes in food photos, for cookbooks.”
“He was a war photographer?”
“Yeah, in Sudan.”
“Oh,” she says.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m sure it’s no big deal.”
“You’re sure what’s no big deal?”
“Oh, I’m thinking of a specific situation, one probably not relevant to you, but, OK, I’ll share: A girl in our department dated a foreign correspondent for U.S. News & World Report. He was in Somalia. Anyway, he came home with a terrible case of post-traumatic stress disorder and almost killed her.”