Before She Knew Him(2)

“What do you do?” Hen asked, immediately annoyed at herself for instantly relying on that particular question.

The four talked for another twenty minutes or so. Matthew was a history teacher at a private high school three towns over, and Mira was a sales rep for an educational software company, which meant, she said several times, that she spent more time traveling than she did at home. “You’ll have to keep an eye on Matthew,” she said. “Tell me what he gets up to when I’m away.” The nervous laugh again. Hen should have hated her, but somehow she didn’t. Maybe the move really had mellowed her, but it was more likely the effect of her current meds. Another burst of wind, colder now, came down the street, rustling the still-green trees, and Hen pulled her cardigan around her body and shivered.

“Cold?” Matthew asked.

“Always,” Hen said, then added, “I think I might head on back . . .”

Lloyd smiled at her. “I’ll come with you,” he said, then turned to Matthew and Mira. “Believe it or not, we’re still unpacking. Nice meeting you both.”

“Nice meeting you, Lloyd,” Matthew said. “And you, too, Hen. Is it short—”

“Henrietta, yes, but no one, except for my birth certificate, has ever called me that. It’s always been Hen.”

“Let’s get together sometime. Maybe cook out, if it’s not too late.” This was from Mira, and they all agreed, in vague responses that made Hen decide that it was never going to happen.

So Hen was surprised when, a week later, Mira ran out from her front door as Hen was walking home from her studio.

“Hen, hi,” Mira said.

As usual, after spending an afternoon working, Hen felt spacey, in a good way. “Hi, Miri,” she responded, realizing right away that she’d gotten the name wrong. Her neighbor didn’t correct her.

“I was going to drop by this evening but I saw you coming down the street. Can you come over for dinner this weekend?”

“Um,” Hen said, delaying.

“Friday or Saturday, it doesn’t matter,” Mira said. “Sunday even works for us.”

Hen knew she wasn’t going to get out of this, especially now that three possible nights had been offered up. She and Lloyd had no specific plans that weekend, so she picked Saturday night and asked what they could bring.

“Just yourselves. Yay. Is there anything you can’t eat?”

“No, we eat everything,” Hen said, neglecting to tell her about Lloyd’s phobia of any meat that came attached to a bone.

They settled on seven o’clock on Saturday, and Hen informed Lloyd when he came home that night.

“Okay,” he said. “New friends. You up for it?”

Hen laughed. “Not really, but it will be nice to have a meal cooked for us. We’ll be dull and they’ll never invite us back.”

She and Lloyd arrived exactly at seven, armed with a bottle of red and a bottle of white. Hen wore her green-checked dress with tights on underneath. Lloyd, who’d showered at least, was wearing jeans and a Bon Iver T-shirt that he sometimes wore when he went running. They were taken to the living room—the layout was identical to theirs—where they all sat around a low coffee table, arrayed with enough appetizers to feed a small party. Hen and Lloyd sat on a beige leather couch, while Matthew and Mira sat in matching chairs. The room was very white and sterile, incredibly clean. There were interesting prints hanging on the walls, but Hen thought she recognized them from Crate and Barrel.

They made small talk for about fifteen minutes. Hen was aware that they hadn’t been offered a drink—was this a nondrinking house?—but didn’t particularly mind, except she was thinking of Lloyd. But just as Mira was asking if Hen was going to be part of the upcoming Open Studios, Matthew stood and said, “Can I get anyone a drink?”

“What are the choices?” Lloyd asked, a little too eagerly.

“Wine, beer.”

“I’ll have a beer,” Lloyd said, while Hen and Mira each asked for a glass of white wine.

Matthew left the room, and Mira asked again about Open Studios.

“I don’t know,” Hen said. “I just got my space set up, like yesterday. It seems strange to suddenly have people parade through.”

“You should do it,” Lloyd said.

“Yeah, you should,” Mira said.

“Have you been to Open Studios before?” Hen asked Mira.

“Yeah. Every year we’ve been here. I go, anyway. Sometimes Matthew does. It’s fun, you should definitely do it. You might even sell something. That’s where I bought these prints.”

Mira indicated the framed prints on the wall, and Hen felt bad for thinking they’d come from a furniture store. Matthew returned with the drinks, Hen noticing that he’d brought a can of ginger ale for himself.

“Tell us about your art,” Mira said.

It was not Hen’s favorite thing, explaining her profession, but she did her best, and Lloyd, always her champion, jumped in and took over. Since college, Hen had been a printmaker, first in woodblocks and later using copper or zinc plates. For years, she created works of pure imagination: grotesque, surreal tableaus, usually with a caption. These illustrations were made to look like they came from books, often terrifying children’s books that didn’t exist except in her mind. She’d been fairly successful all through her twenties, selected for several group shows and even profiled in a New England arts magazine, but she’d always had to supplement her income by working in art supply stores and sometimes as a framer for a prominent Boston painter in the South End. All that changed when she’d been approached by a children’s book author to create actual illustrations for the first chapter book in a proposed fantasy series. She’d taken the job, the book had done well, and that had led her to an agent, and now she was a full-time children’s illustrator who only occasionally created an original piece of art. She didn’t mind. Secretly, she felt happy these days to be told what her compositions should be. Her current cocktail of meds, which included a mood stabilizer, an antidepressant, and something that apparently boosted the antidepressant’s effects, had kept Hen’s bipolar disorder from rearing its ugly head going on two years, but she did feel that it had also removed all of her creative impulses. She could still do the pieces—still loved the work, really—but rarely had an idea these days for something original. Not that she told any of this to Mira and Matthew. Mira was mostly interested in the fantasy books, since she’d heard of them, and was promising to buy the first in the series. Matthew asked her several questions about her artistic process, leaning in and listening intently to her answers.