Picture Perfect (8 page)

Aurora took one look at the breakfast tray Cassie had set down and started to cry. “Did he tell you where he went? He's out there, in this, this
blizzard
—” She jerked her arm toward the window to prove her point. Then she rested her forehead against her hand, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “I don't know why this happens. I just don't know why.”

Cassie took one look at her mother's eyes, red-rimmed and raw, and she planted her hands on her hips. “Get up.”

Aurora turned toward her daughter and blinked. “Pardon me?”

“I said get up.” She was only ten, but she had grown old long ago. Cassie pulled her mother off the bed and started handing her clothes: a turtleneck, a sweater, bulky socks. After a moment of disbelief, Aurora began to follow her, silently accepting what she offered.

When Cassie opened the front door, Aurora took a step back. The chill of winter followed her inside. “Go,” Cassie commanded. She jumped into the snow, grinning for a moment as the drifts hollowed up to her thighs. She turned to her mother. “I mean it.”

It took fifteen minutes to get Aurora more than five feet away from the front porch. She was shivering and her lips were nearly violet, unaccustomed as she was to being outside in a storm. The wind ripped Cassie's hat off and sent it dancing over the snow. She saw her mother bend down, like a child, and touch the drifts.

Cassie scooped a mittenful of snow and rounded it into a neat ball. “Mom,” she yelled, a minute's warning, and then she threw it as hard as she could.

It hit Aurora in the shoulder. She stood perfectly still, blinking, unsure what she'd done to deserve that.

Cassie leaned down and made a pile of snowballs. She tossed one after another at her mother, leaving her mark on Aurora's shoulder and breast and thigh.

Cassie had never seen anything like it. It was as if her mother had no idea what was expected of her. As if she had no idea what to do. Cassie clenched her hands at her sides. “Fight back!” she yelled, her words freezing in the cold. “Goddammit! Fight back!”

She leaned down again, more slowly this time, waiting for her mother to copy her movements. Aurora was sluggish with alcohol, and she stumbled as she straightened, but in her palm she held a snowball. Cassie watched as her mother wound her arm back and sent the snow flying.

It hit her square in the face. Cassie sputtered and wiped the ice from her eyelashes. Her mother was already building a small arsenal. In the blinding white, Aurora's eyes didn't look nearly as red; in the frigid cold, her body was starting to move with a little more rhythm.

Cassie strained her ears to catch a sound over the howl of the wind. It was clear and fine, her mother's laugh, and it got louder and lighter as it broke free from where it had been locked. Smiling, Cassie whirled in the snow, arms outstretched, and offered herself up to the soft, sweet blows.

 

W
HENEVER
W
ILL WOKE UP WITH THE BLANKETS KNOTTED AT HIS
hips and his chest soaked with sweat, he knew he'd been having the thunder dream. But he did not dwell on the details; in fact, over the years, even though the number of dreams increased, he found it easier and easier to dismiss them. He'd get up and shower, sloughing off with the sweat the memories that bound him to the Sioux.

Having been scheduled for the evening shift on Thursday, Will slept in and dreamed of the thunder until the phone jolted him awake. “This is Frances Bean at the library,” a voice said. “We have the materials you requested.”

“I didn't request any materials,” Will started to mumble, stretching to place the receiver back in its cradle.

“…anthropology.”

The word was all he heard, faint and fading, and he pulled the phone back to his ear.

The library was small and dark and quiet as a tomb on a Thursday morning. After identifying himself at the front desk, Will was handed a sheaf of papers secured with a rubber band. “Thanks,” Will said to the librarian, moving to a spot where he could read Cassie's articles.

Two were from technical journals. The third was from
National Geographic
, and it was composed of dozens of photographs of the illustrious Dr. Cassandra Barrett at the Tanzania site that had yielded the hand. Will quickly read the anthropological significance of the hand and its stone tool, but found nothing Cassie hadn't mentioned. He skimmed ahead to the paragraphs that mentioned Cassie herself.

“Dr. Barrett, young enough to look more like one of the UCLA students she often brings on excavations than the head scientist, admits she's more comfortable on a muddy site than on the lecture circuit.” Will mouthed the words silently, staring at a photograph on the facing page of Cassie bent over the ground, dusting off half of a long, yellow bone. Will skipped to the final line of the copy: “In a field dominated by men, Dr. Barrett seems to emerge as a leader,
hands
down.”

“Patronizing bastard,” he murmured. He scanned the page, looking for another picture of Cassie. Seeing none, he flipped back to the beginning of the article. On page 36 of the magazine was a photo of the hand itself; and spread beneath it for comparison was Cassie's hand. Another picture of her took up the rest of the page. She was caught in shadow, with the sun behind her the way all those
National Geographic
photographers liked, and her chin was tilted up just the slightest bit. Will touched his thumb to her throat. The photo was too dark to show her eyes. He would have given anything to see her eyes.

He wondered how a woman perfectly at home in the African grasslands could also be happy being hounded by paparazzi at premieres. He wondered how you could go from writing a piece for a scholarly journal to scanning the
Enquirer
for stories that defamed your husband's character. He wondered how the hell Alex Rivers had met Cassandra Barrett; what they did on Sunday mornings; what they talked about at night, wrapped around each other, when no one else was there to listen.

Will left the articles on the table, everything but that one page with the picture of Cassie in silhouette. He folded the picture when the librarian's head was bowed to her computer screen, and then tucked it into the pocket of his jeans. He thought about walking home with it there, knowing it would get soft and faded at the edges until he could barely see Cassie's face at all.

C
ASSIE
opened the front door of the apartment, and there stood the most beautiful woman in the world. At first, she could do nothing but stare at the woman's long, shining hair; her spring-green eyes. She wore a silk shirt the color of the inside of a casaba melon, a cashmere beret, a tremendous scarf wrapped twice around to serve as a skirt. “Can you believe this, Cass?” she said in a thin, reedy voice that didn't match anything else about her. She pushed past Cassie, holding her right arm with her left, as if it were something she'd rather be rid of.

The woman's arm was encased from wrist to elbow in a black plaster cast. “Tell me,” the woman whined. “What am I supposed to do about Clorox?”

“Clorox?” Cassie murmured, stumbling up the stairs behind her and watching this stranger pour a glass of orange juice from her own refrigerator.

The woman smirked. “What's the matter? Alex have you up half the night talking about himself again?”

Cassie's hands clenched defensively at her sides. She did not know who this woman was, but Alex had been incredibly considerate. Yesterday while Cassie slept on the beach, he'd had John, his driver, bring over every photo album and slide carousel that could be found at the house. When she'd awakened, Alex had sat beside her in the dark, quiet library in the apartment. He had connected names with unfamiliar faces, sketched a past for Cassie in simple lines. He had added long descriptions of the minutes that had mattered, and Cassie had leaned against the easy comfort of Alex's shoulder, closed her eyes, and watched her life explode with shape and color.

The woman drained her glass of orange juice, sat down on a tall maple stool, and wrapped her legs around it. Cassie narrowed her eyes, trying to recall a picture Alex had showed her yesterday from an album she'd put together in college. “Didn't you used to be blond?” she said.

The woman wrinkled her nose. “Like a zillion years ago. Jesus,” she said. “
What
has gotten into you?”

Alex crept up so quietly behind Cassie that the only indication she had of his approach was the darkening of the woman's eyes. He was wearing only a towel knotted around his waist. “Ophelia,” he said coolly, tossing an arm around Cassie. “Nothing quite like seeing you first thing in the morning.”

“Yeah,” Ophelia snorted. “The pleasure is mine.”

Fascinated, Cassie watched them, glancing at Ophelia again. No wonder she hadn't felt threatened. The most beautiful woman Cassie had ever seen had shown up on her doorstep, but she paid as much attention to Alex as she did to her orange juice, and Alex only wanted to leave.

Alex pointed to her black cast. “Tendinitis? Overexertion? Some other occupational hazard?”

“Fuck you,” Ophelia said lightly. “I slipped on a sidewalk.”

Alex shrugged. “Could have been worse.”

“Worse? I'm supposed to be shooting a commercial next week, a
national
commercial for Clorox, my right arm pouring bleach into a damn measuring cup—”

“You're an actress too?”

Cassie's quiet question stopped Ophelia's tirade. She flicked her eyes toward Alex. “What the hell did you do to her?”

Alex smiled at Cassie, reassuring her. “You ever read the papers, Opie, or is that past your level of education?”

“Reading gives you crow's feet. I watch the news on TV.”

Alex leaned against the marble island in the center of the kitchen, his arms crossed over his chest. “Cassie got into some kind of accident last Sunday and hit her head. She was found by a cop in a graveyard, and she didn't remember her name. She's still just getting her memory back, in bits and pieces.”

Ophelia's eyes widened until Cassie could see a ring of white around the green. Then she turned to Alex. “How convenient for you,” she said. “No doubt you've painted yourself as a saint.”

Alex ignored Ophelia's comment, leaned over, and kissed Cassie's forehead. “Her name's Ophelia Fox, and it's not her real one—but then there isn't too much of her that's real anymore. She's a hand model; she was your best friend in college and your roommate when we first met, and as far as I can tell, she's the only character flaw I've ever found in you.” He tightened the towel around his waist and headed toward the stairs. “And Ophelia,” he said, grinning, “if you're real nice to me, I'll autograph your cast.”

Cassie wondered how an anthropology major would have ever met anyone like Ophelia Fox, but before she could even put the question into words, Ophelia came toward her. She ran her long, tapered fingers over the fading cut at Cassie's temple. “Thank God,” she said. “I don't think you'll scar.”

Cassie burst out laughing. That had been the least of her worries. She stepped back from Ophelia, scrutinizing her face, this time for recognition. “You're beautiful,” she said honestly.

Ophelia waved her hand in the air, dismissing the compliment. “My eyes are too close together and my nose twists a half-centimeter to the right.” She held out her good hand, pale, nearly hairless, capped by five sculptured nails with white moon tips. “Now
these
are beautiful. Each time, they use a little bit more of me. The last ad got up to my shoulder, so I figure it's only a matter of time.”

Even Alex, who Cassie figured was as big a star as they came, wasn't as wrapped up in himself as Ophelia. But she looked so serious, holding her hand out and flexing it just so, that Cassie could only smile. “Can I get you something else?” she said, pointing to the empty juice glass.

Ophelia walked toward a cabinet and stuck her hand inside, rummaging and coming up with an English muffin. “I'll get it. I know my way around.”

“Good,” Cassie said. “Maybe you can give me a tour.”

Ophelia turned away from the toaster, anxiety drawing her features tight. “God, Cass, how long is it going to take? It must be awful.”

Cassie shrugged. “I've got Alex here.”

“Fat lot of help
he'll
be,” Ophelia muttered.

Cassie faced the counter and began to cut a strawberry into eight tiny slices. She cut methodically, listening for the click of the blade against the marble with each slice. “Why do you hate each other?” she asked.

Cassie couldn't be sure if Ophelia didn't want to answer the question, or if she hadn't heard it. “Butter?” Ophelia said. She closed her eyes as if divining its location, and then opened a compartment of the refrigerator. “Ah,” she said. She tried to hold the muffin with her bad arm while she spread the butter with the other hand, but the muffin kept slipping out of her grasp.

“Here,” Cassie said. “Let me do it.”

She handed half to Ophelia, who was staring at her forearm as if it were a foreign object. “I can't put any pressure on it yet. It's driving me up the wall. And it itches like hell.”

“How did you get hurt?”

She shrugged. “It was the end of a perfectly horrible day. I was at this photo shoot for
Parents
magazine, and I'd spent the afternoon holding a series of naked three-month-olds in the air—” She reached her arms in front of her as a demonstration. “Anyway, they were zeroing in on the baby's ass and my hands under its armpits. So this one kid—a boy—starts peeing on me. And I'm wearing that washed silk shirt I got at Versace last month—remember? I showed it to you—and I just
know
the stain isn't going to come out.” She paused, taking a bite of her muffin. “And then they tell me before I leave that they'll let me know if—
if
—they decide to use the picture for the next issue. So I step outside and it's raining cats and dogs and I have no umbrella, and next thing I know, I'm lying on the ground in the middle of a mudslide, and my arm is caught underneath me and I'm dying from the pain.” She grinned. “I did, however, make a date with the doctor in the emergency room.” She turned to Cassie. “Did you know that they don't just make white casts anymore? You have a choice of anything—pink, green, even fuchsia. I thought I'd go with black, you know, because it matches most of my night outfits.”

Cassie leaned against the counter, exhausted from Ophelia's explanation. “Enough about me,” Ophelia said. She smiled, and Cassie could see what she meant—her nose was a little bit off center. “How are your bones holding up?”

“Bones?”

“God, Cass, all you've been talking about is your field class this semester. I figured it was lodged so deep in your mind that a coma couldn't make you forget. You're going to…let me think…Kenya, I believe, in May, with the seniors.”

“I haven't been to UCLA yet. Alex has to get back to
Macbeth
, so we decided I'd take a leave of absence and go with him.”

“We decided?” Ophelia shook her head. “You mean
he
decided. You
never
go on location with Alex. Not during the school year, anyway. You must have knocked out more than your memory, because the Cassie I know couldn't stand to miss two lectures in a row without having apoplexy.” Ophelia smiled. “Maybe I should take you to the university today. Lock you in your dusty old office for an hour or two with your research, and then let Alex drag you kicking and screaming to Scotland.”

Cassie felt her hand tighten around the knife she was holding. She had no more reason to believe Alex than she had to believe Ophelia, but she did. Cassie swallowed and placed the knife on the kitchen counter beside the cut strawberry. She ran her finger over a red puddle of juice and seeds; the heart of the fruit, the blood. “Why do you and Alex hate each other?” she asked again.

Ophelia sighed. “Because Alex and I are too similar to get along. We're at different levels, but we're in the same business. We're both obsessed with work. And we both want you to ourselves.”

Cassie laughed, but the sound seemed to shatter the air around her. “That's ludicrous,” she said. “You're my friend. He's my husband. There's plenty of room in my life for both of you.”

Ophelia leaned back against the center island, lifting her face to the skylight overhead. “Tell that to Alex,” she said. “From day one, he's been trying to swallow you whole.”

 

A
S IF HE HAD BEEN EAVESDROPPING
, A
LEX CAME BACK FROM AN ERRAND
later that morning with a box full of bones. He pretended to stagger under its weight, walking toward Cassie. She sat at the kitchen table, leafing through photo albums, her eyes riveted to a faded picture of a blond boy. He was lean and sinewy, just at the edge of growing up, and his arm was looped over Cassie's neck. She was thirteen, but there was none of that awkward teenage break between boys and girls distancing them. In fact, from the way the picture had been taken, it was difficult to tell where one of them stopped and the other began.

Cassie did not look up, did not notice the wooden box with its scientific packing labels. “Alex,” she said, “where does Connor live now? Why don't I keep in touch with him?”

“I don't know. He's the only thing you've ever refused to talk about.”

Cassie touched her finger to a fine line of flyaway hair coming off Connor's cheek. “It must have been a fight. One of those stupid kids' fights that you feel rotten about for years, but are still too embarrassed about to make right.”

Alex pried open the box. “I doubt that. You're a fanatic for picking up the pieces.” He tossed several small bone chips into the air, heavy and yellowed, and Cassie caught them like a practiced juggler. “And here,” he said, “are some pieces for you to pick up.”

Alex spilled the contents of the box onto the dining room table, obliterating the facing pages of the open photo album. “Don't say I never bring you anything,” he said, grinning.

Cassie brushed away the soft cotton wool and newspaper used for transport, running her fingertips over the fifty or so fragments of bone. Each was labeled with India ink, left-sloping European handwriting marking the grave, the site, the date of discovery. “Oh, Alex,” she murmured. “Where did you get this?”

“Cambridge, England,” he said. “By way of Cornwall, according to the laboratory I bought it from.”

“You
bought
me a skull?”

Alex ran a hand through his hair. “You don't know what I had to go through to get them to let me take it home. I had to tell this Dr. Bother—”

“Dr.
Botner
?”

“Whoever—I had to make a huge ‘contribution,' tell him who you were, and convince him that I was certain you'd wind up sending it back as a museum exhibit, instead of keeping it as a conversation piece in some actor's home.” He absently picked up a piece of cotton wool and strung it apart like taffy. “And to keep it a
secret
, I had to negotiate this over the telephone in the six minutes you weren't at my side.”

Cassie stared at him. “You did this yesterday?”

Alex shrugged. “I bought it when I was in Scotland. But I rushed the shipment yesterday. I didn't know how long it would take you to feel like yourself again, and I wanted it to seem like home.”

Cassie smiled, and as always, he wondered why photographers always rushed to capture his image rather than hers. If his features reflected anything, it was the light given off by Cassie. “Of course,” she pointed out, “any other woman would have been satisfied with roses.”

Alex watched Cassie's hands automatically begin to sort the pieces of the skull in size order. “I wouldn't trade you for the world,” he said.

Cassie had been unwrapping the mandible. She paused, staring down at her hands. Then she stood and leaned forward to kiss Alex. “I must be the luckiest person in California,” she said.

Alex let himself fall into her, grasping at her words and the electric feel of her skin against his. He did not know what to say to her; he never knew what to say; he was used to speaking what others had written. He wished he'd learned long ago how to put into words the feeling that if she was gone, if she ever left, he would cease to exist. But he couldn't tell her, so he did what he always did: he slipped into character, the first one that came, willing to do anything other than face the limits of himself.