The Futures(99)

I’d finally opened the envelope of photos that afternoon. I felt myself on the verge of something. My mother would have opened the photos after Jasmine had them developed; it was the only way for her to have known they were mine. I imagined her pulling the first one from the stack, her hand twitching instinctively toward the trash bin. No one would have been the wiser. But instead she had sent them to me. I felt grateful to her in that moment, when I took out the photos for the first time. At least she was letting me decide this for myself.

My digital camera had broken while we were in Rome, two summers earlier. The battery fritzed, refusing to hold a charge. I bought a disposable camera in the train station on our way to La Spezia. We were spending the last week of the trip in the Cinque Terre. The first photo I’d taken, the photo at the top of the stack, was of Evan in Riomaggiore. He was standing on a stone boat ramp that led to the sea, his back to the water, the afternoon light casting his long shadow before him. The boats around him were painted like wooden candy, bright blues and greens and pinks. Evan had resisted when I told him to go stand for the picture. “Come on, Jules, let me take one of you,” he said with a laugh. “You’re the good-looking one in this relationship.” But I shook my head. “This picture is for me,” I said. “I want this for when we get back.”

The magic had faded so quickly. I must have misplaced the camera when I was back at home, unpacking from the summer and repacking for senior year. That by itself wasn’t so remarkable, but I felt a surge of sadness when I sat back onto Abby’s bed and looked at the pictures for the first time. Why hadn’t I missed these? Why had I never thought of that August afternoon on the edge of the Mediterranean, and let that lingering memory spark the recollection of the camera I’d misplaced? I’d never even bothered to miss it. I’d never bothered to appreciate what we had.

Evan looked so peaceful in that picture. His smile was wide and unself-conscious. He had a backpack slung over one shoulder, a cone of gelato in his other hand. The vividness of that afternoon: raising the camera to look through the plastic viewfinder and pausing for a moment. Evan was backlit by the lowering sun, his sandy hair sprayed with golden light. “What is it?” he called over the noise of the motorboats puttering out to sea. A family walked between us, parents trying to corral their children, and I paused for a moment, letting the frame clear. He smiled at me—the smile of someone who knew exactly how lucky he was, in this postcard village more than four thousand miles from home. Finally I pressed the button, and the shutter snapped with a satisfying pop, and I returned the camera to my purse.

The music kept playing, filling the apartment with its mellow swells. I took out the photos again and spread them across the carpet in the living room. I was surprised to find that I remembered almost every single one of them: dinner on the terrace of our B and B in Monterosso; our sunburned faces after a hike one blistering afternoon; on the steps of the Duomo on our last night in Florence. It was Evan’s first time abroad. He was a boy from the middle of nowhere who had decided he wanted more. Who wasn’t satisfied with the path laid before him. I saw, for the first time, the bravery it had taken for him to do all of this.

I had obsessed over it all through the spring, that awful night, the idea of taking back what I had done. But maybe it was time to let that go. Maybe I was seeking an answer to a question that didn’t matter, because it had already happened, because the undoing was impossible. Sara was right. It was a messy, difficult, shitty process—growing up, figuring out what you wanted. Some were lucky enough to figure it out on their own. I could see Elizabeth doing it already. Others were lucky enough to find a partner in the process, someone to expand their narrow views of the world. Abby and Jake, as unlikely as it seemed, were doing just that. But maybe there would always be people like me. Those for whom figuring it out came with a steep cost. I could feel it happening, slowly, in the smallest of steps. The future getting brighter. Where I was that day was in fact better than where I had been a year earlier. But the painful part was admitting what had happened to get me there. The implosion of two lives so that I might one day rebuild mine.

I saw it before I felt it, the darkened spots on the carpet, the drops of water on the glossy surface of the photos. I was crying, but this was different. It wasn’t like the helpless spasms of guilt that had followed the breakup or the crushing anger I’d felt after learning the truth about the Fletchers. I wasn’t crying for Evan or for what I had done to him. I was crying for the person I had been before. That night, the music on the speakers, the night air through the window, the prickle of the carpet against the back of my legs: what washed over me was the realization that I was finally letting go of that girl. The girl who clung desperately to a hope that it would all work out, that everything would make sense if she just waited a little longer, if she just tried a little harder. I let myself cry for a long time. Until, gradually, the spotlight faded to black. The curtain lowered slowly, a silent pooling of fabric against the floor. The hush that followed. The stillness that felt as long as a eulogy.

And then the house lights coming up. The room blinking back to life. And me, alone, surrounded by a sea of empty seats. I stood up and opened the door.

*

The next morning, I had an e-mail from Sara. We had promised to stay in touch after our lunch.

Julia—so great to see you on Wednesday. A friend of mine is looking to hire an intern for her gallery. It’s part-time, doesn’t pay much, but she needs someone to start ASAP. I told her she should hire you. Can you call her today at the number below? I think you will hit it off. Yours, S.