Lynn Strong - Hold Still

“I hated her for it,” Laura says. “For showing me how small her world was, how small my life was about to be.” She looks down into her glass again. “I was getting everything she wanted. .”

“Except,” Maya says.

“It was how desperate she was,” Laura says. “How small and simple what she wanted seemed to me then.”

Maya takes her first bite of steak, having sliced it slowly, lets the juice spread into her asparagus and under her potatoes; it sits awhile on her tongue, the salt and grease coating her mouth.

“I wanted something bigger,” Laura says. “I wanted. .” She cuts herself another piece of steak, considers it a moment before she chews and swallows. “Paris. Life. Free Women .” Laura laughs. “I thought what I had then was something people got no matter what.

“I got it wrong, maybe,” Laura says.

Maya sips her wine, sets down her glass, and picks up her fork again.

“I didn’t see. .” says Laura. She holds her glass a long time, considering its fullness; she dips it forward, holds it straight again, then tips it toward her lips.

“I left because I wanted to,” says Laura.

Maya reaches for her napkin, wipes her mouth, her eyes searching for her friend again.

“But you should never listen to me; I know nothing about marriages,” Laura says.

“I’m so sorry,” Jeffrey says, rushing through the door and breathless. He’s promised to take Jack to dinner, but had an emergency with a patient and rushed out. Annie’s at the restaurant, El and Jack still in their bathing suits. The day’s storm has stopped and they’re watching a movie. Outside, the whole world is very still.

Jack smells like salt and his skin sticks to Ellie’s legs as he lies against her. She wears a T-shirt and no shorts. Jeffrey runs toward Jack and scoops him up, his arms brushing against Ellie’s calf. “I’m so sorry,” he says again.

His hair hangs heavy, mussed and limp in his face. He doesn’t seem to have the energy to push it behind his ears. “One of my patients. .” But he stops. He has stubble, Ellie notices. It’s speckled through with streaks of gray.

She wants to ask him what happened. She waits to listen just in case.

“It was horrible,” he says, shaking his head.

Jack takes hold of a tuft of his dad’s hair. “I’m staaaaarving, Daddy,” he says. They’ve had two bowls of popcorn, but Jack’s been looking forward to this dinner with his dad. Jeffrey grins at him, burying his nose into his son’s chest.

“Nor comes?” asks Jack, looking back at her. She’s standing, holding her shirt down to cover the bottom of her bathing suit.

“Well, yes,” says Jeffrey. “I think Nor should come.”

He raises his eyebrows at her. He looks just like Jack.

She nods toward one and then the other of them. “Sure,” she says. “Sounds great. I just. .”

Jeffrey smiles down at her bare legs, then looks back at Jack.

“We’ll wait,” he says.

They walk twenty minutes to Jack’s favorite Italian restaurant in the small stretch of busy peopled street a quarter mile from their house. “No one walks here,” Jeffrey says, holding tight to his son’s hand. “I like having a New Yorker around to remind us of all the ways we don’t live right.” The restaurant’s nearly empty. Ellie can just make out the sound of the river lapping up against the seawall; she smells brackish water and the crab traps laid out to dry on the docks across the street from where they sit. They order spaghetti, meatballs on the side, all three of them.

“Is everything okay now?” Ellie asks Jeffrey.

“I hope so.” He shakes his head. “Who knows?”

Ellie stays quiet, waiting. Their food comes; Jack slurps his noodles, leaving splotches of red on his white shirt. Ellie picks up her napkin and wipes the red sauce from Jack’s mouth and nose, dips the napkin in her glass of water and dabs the spot out of his shirt. She cuts up the two massive meatballs on a separate plate, and drops the smaller pieces into his bowl.

“Thanks, Nor,” he says, his mouth full. She feels Jeffrey watching her, but keeps her eyes on Jack, then on the food she’s cutting for him. She takes a bite of her meatball and looks back at Jack before she speaks again.

“It must be hard,” she says.

“It can be.”

She feels competent and capable, taking care of Jack; she’s never felt this before now. She sips her water, holds her hand up over her mouth as she chews.

Jeffrey pulls his napkin up off of his lap, places his palms on either side, and rips the napkin evenly in half.

“Tell me about painting,” he says. She’s started again. The days when Jack’s with his parents, she sets up an easel in the yard or out at the beach.

He leans in close to her and Ellie eats small bites of pasta.

“I. .” She wants to tell him; she doesn’t know what she would say.

He’s smiling. He sits back, his food only half eaten.

“It’s not something I’m very good at explaining,” she says.

The cuff of his shirt has a red spot just below his palm and she almost reaches over with her napkin. She stops herself, shakes her head, and shrugs.

“I went to this woman when I was little,” Ellie says. She looks out toward the docks. “I thought she was the coolest person. She’d smoke cigarettes out on her balcony and walk around in old paint-stained jeans and clogs. She had this incredible wiry gray hair.” Ellie reaches her hand up to her own hair. “One time, she asked me to draw her, you know? I’d only ever done still lifes, fruit and stuff. But then she said she was going to pose for me.”

Both Jack and Jeff are listening, but Ellie looks at neither of them. She cuts her noodles into tiny unforkable pieces, then looks outside again.

“I got really into drawing her. The whole time I thought I was making this perfect thing, you know?” Ellie stares down at her plate. “She always told me I was good.” She picks up another piece of bread and rolls it with her thumb. “I guess she probably told everyone that. But I was really deep in it, you know? All the lines and shades of her. She was all these incredibly thoughtful, layered lines. And now I had the chance to remake her, you know?” Jack angles his hand on her knee so he can lean closer in to his spaghetti. Ellie holds the back of his shorts so he doesn’t slip off of the booth. “But then my mom came to get me, and I saw that I’d been. .” She shakes her head. She doesn’t know how she got here, why she’s telling this to him. “I’d made her really ugly, you know? By accident?”

Jeffrey grabs a piece of bread and smiles at her. “She was very old?”

“Not really,” Ellie says. “But her skin was wrinkled.” She smiles at the floor, thinking of her mom scolding her when she caught her smoking in the park. “The cigarettes. I mean, I guess I got it right, you know; it was her. But I hadn’t realized till I saw her that way. It felt like my fault.”

Jeffrey takes a large gulp from his wine glass and nods toward Ellie; his chin and mouth are steady, firm.

“Anyway,” says Ellie. She holds tight to Jack.

“Anyway,” Jeffrey says.

“I never went back after that,” she says.

She looks around the restaurant, which has emptied since they started talking. There are two waitresses leaning on the bar. Jeffrey, Jack, and Ellie are the only table left.

Ellie nods toward them. “I think they’re waiting for us.”

Jeffrey turns toward the girls and waves with two fingers. The girl who has waited on them — young, tall, with slick brown skin — walks over to them.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” says Jeffrey. He reaches up and holds her forearm. His other hand holds back his hair. “We’re almost done. I promise.” He shows almost his whole front row of teeth.