Under the Influence Read Free Page B

swanlike neck of hers, the smooth, tawny skin. I felt at that moment the way a child might when a teacher praises her. The kind of child who doesn’t often meet with praise.
    â€œI’m biased, of course,” she added. “I’m a dog person.” She extended her hand. “Ava,” she said, looking straight into my eyes as few people did.
    I told her my name, and though I hardly ever admitted this to anybody anymore, I said that I was a photographer. Or had been. Portraits my specialty. What I really liked to do, I said, was tell stories with my photographs. I loved telling stories, period.
    â€œWhen I was young, I thought I’d be someone like Imogen Cunningham,” I told her. “But this is more my calling.” I gave a rueful laugh, inclining my head toward the empty canapé tray.
    â€œYou don’t want to put that negative energy out there,” Ava said. Her voice sounded kind, saying this. But firm. “You have no idea what you may be doing a year from now. How things can change.”
    I knew how things could change, all right. Not for the good, in my case. There had been a time when I lived in a house with a man I believed I loved, who loved me back, I thought, and a four-year-old boy for whom my daily, hourly presence was so apparently essential that he had once tried to make me promise that I wouldn’t ever die. (“Not for a long time,” I told him. “And by the time I do, you’ll have some really terrific person in your life who loves you just as much as me, andkids, maybe. A dog.” That was one thing he always wanted that Dwight never allowed.)
    Dwight got mad when Ollie showed up in our bedroom wanting to get into bed with us, but I never minded that. Now I slept alone and dreamed of my son’s hot breath on my neck, his small damp hand curled around me, and his father, on the other side, murmuring, “So I guess we aren’t having sex tonight, huh?”
    Dwight had a temper, and more and more, over the duration of our relationship, it was directed at me. But there had been a time when my husband, catching sight of me at a crowded party, or at a potluck at our son’s school, would have grinned the way Ava’s husband had when he’d spotted her across the room that night—smiled, then made his way across the floor to touch my back, or put his arm around me to whisper that it was time to go home, get to bed.
    Those days were done. Nobody noticed the woman holding the tray. Or hadn’t for a long time, until Ava.
    Now she was studying my face so hard I could feel my skin turning hot. I wanted to move away and serve some other guest, but when you’re talking with a person in a wheelchair that doesn’t seem fair. You can get away more easily than she can.
    â€œWhat’s your favorite picture you ever took?” she asked. Not necessarily the best, but the one I loved the most.
    â€œThat would be this series I made of my son sleeping, the year he was three,” I told her. “I stood over his bed after he went to sleep and made an image of him every night for a year. He looked different in every one.”
    â€œYou don’t do that anymore?” she said.
    I wasn’t usually like this—I was always a person to keep my problems to myself—but something about Ava, the sense that she actually wanted to hear what you had to say and cared when you told her, caused an odd reaction in me.
    I didn’t cry, but I must have had that look.
    â€œHe doesn’t live with me anymore,” I told her, shading my face. “I can’t talk about it right now.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” she murmured. “And here I am taking you away from your work, too.”
    She motioned for me to lean down, to bring my face level with hers. She reached out and dabbed my eyes with a cocktail napkin.
    â€œThere,” she said, sounding satisfied. “Beautiful once more.”
    I straightened,