Friends and Strangers - J. Courtney Sullivan Page 0,141

when you’re here. Sound good? I know you’re busy, but don’t say no. I have my heart set on it.”

“You’re bossy tonight,” Andrew said.

Elisabeth stuck out her tongue.

“We can use my good camera, the Canon,” she said. “Andrew, do you know where it is?”

Sam needed new paints, which she couldn’t exactly afford. She wished she could say as much, but didn’t know how to do it without embarrassing Elisabeth and herself in the process. Elisabeth had twice referred to the painting as something she planned to commission, though she had never specified a dollar amount. Sam had a sensation similar to the one she’d get as a child upon ripping open a birthday card from her grandparents to find a folded blue check inside. Experience promised that that check was in the amount of fifteen dollars. Hope suggested that perhaps they’d gone big, outlandishly so, just this once.

Her father’s work situation weighed on her more and more as the end of the school year approached. She’d never imagined her parents would give her much money after she graduated, but she knew now that they’d have nothing to give her. She was trying to save as much as humanly possible for herself and, if need be, for them.

Later, after they’d eaten, they saw Gil fussing on the monitor. Elisabeth went upstairs to quiet him.

Andrew whispered across the table, “Does she seem off to you?”

Sam was used to being Elisabeth’s confidante in this marriage, not his. Any response she could give felt like a betrayal.

“She’s all over the place,” he went on. “Almost—manic. I guess it’s the drugs. Was your friend that way when she took them?”

“Isabella is always manic and all over the place, so it’s hard to say,” Sam replied.

She stood and cleared the dishes.

* * *

—

When Sam got to work the next morning, Elisabeth and Gil were in the living room. The shades were rolled up. Light streamed in. Elisabeth had pushed one of the armchairs to the center of the floor.

“I’m so excited for this,” she said. “Come! Sit!”

Sam put her purse down and waved at Gil, who beamed in response. He was in his bouncer, wearing only a diaper.

She said, “Let me just hang up my jacket.”

Elisabeth shook her head. “Sorry, I’ll start over. Good morning, Sam! Can I get you some coffee?”

Sam smiled. “No, it’s okay, we can get right to it. I can see you’re eager.”

“Thanks. Sorry. Andrew left at four for the airport and I couldn’t get back to sleep, and now I’m wired and exhausted and I’ve had way too much caffeine.”

She looked Sam up and down.

“Do you have anything on under that?” Elisabeth said.

Sam wore a green Celtics hoodie of her brother’s. Underneath was the flimsiest tank top, something she’d had since high school, with spaghetti straps and two small holes in the front. It wasn’t a shirt she would ever wear in public.

“An old tank top,” she said. “You definitely don’t want a picture of it.”

“It’s not so I can get your shirt in the photo, it’s more so we can see the shape of your body. Your shoulders and clavicle and such. Does that make sense? You’re the artist. You know best.”

“I see what you mean,” Sam said, though in every picture of the Madonna and Child she had ever seen, the Virgin Mary was covered in flowing robes, and usually a veil.

Sam pulled off the sweatshirt, feeling exposed, wondering why she could never say what she was thinking, whether that would ever change.

She noticed Elisabeth noticing the size of her breasts and had the urge to cross her arms up high and cover them with her hands, like she had done at the town pool the summer they first appeared.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to just paint you and Gil, like Andrew suggested?” Sam said.

“My body is all wrong for a mother and child portrait,” Elisabeth said.

Something in this made Sam feel sad for her. Elisabeth had spoken of her mother’s obsession with being thin. She swore it hadn’t had an effect on her. But wasn’t this the effect? Feeling that her body wasn’t what a mother’s ought to be, even though she was a mother?

Elisabeth’s second book was a critique of the diet industry. Sam tore through it. Though there were hardly any personal details in it, there was so much rage and resignation to the way she told the story; a sign of the toll it had taken. Reading it, Sam felt grateful