Free Picturing Will by Ann Beattie

right,” she said. “I guess I’m whispering about things Will and I have lived through because I like to think he doesn’t know about them.”
    She still whispered at night, but now she whispered because of shared intimacies, or because the two of them were planning strategies or conferring about Will’s upbringing. Upbringing—what an antiquated way to think about someone’s childhood: as if the two of them were slowly and competently stretching Will like taffy, when in reality it was all either of them could do to keep up with his energy, his questions, and his desires.
    He was thinking about Will in Will’s calmer moments—usually when he was tired, at bedtime. He gave his mother a hard time about going to sleep, but when Mel was there he never minded going to bed. Halloween night, Will had wanted both of them to tell him stories, though. He had wanted to cling, even though they had said nothing about the accident, made no mention of danger. Like all smart children, he had sensed their disquiet. He had let it be known that he thought Where the Wild Things Are was a story for babies. Mel sat at the foot of the bed, chin resting in his cupped hand, while Jody read Will a poem by Auden.
    Who was Icarus? Will had wanted to know.
    A mythological creature (her soft voice). A boy who tried to fly, but his wings came too close to the sun (matter-of-fact; no preaching to the child), so the wax that had been used to attach the wings to his body melted, and he fell to earth (Mel, hoping to make this less ominous, had whistled on the intake and made a little downward spiral with his index finger).
    When they left his bedroom that night, Jody had whispered to him, “It’s so easy to answer questions when all you have to do is recite information.”
    Will had looked at his mother so calmly. If the explanation of Icarus’s plight and Mel’s finger whirling through the air hadn’t pleased him, her voice certainly had. Mel knew what it was like to have that voice settle calmly in his own heart: It was the antidote to the sharp sounds of the city, the smooth assurance that she had infiltrated his body to echo even when she was not present.
    What he wished, walking along the street in New York, was that it would become clear to her that she should marry him. But since that did not seem likely, he had decided on a strategy—something that would be done at his expense, but perhaps not at so great an expense. Something that might even be like a game that could be well played. As he watched the sidewalk to make sure he did not step on any cracks, he continued to consider carefully Haverford’s offer. It was well known in the business that the mercurial Haverford usually got his way. He had already offered Mel a significantly larger amount of money than he was making at his friend’s gallery, but Mel thought that money alone should not be the deciding factor. Haverford also knew Mel was thinking that. If another price could be struck, however—if, to be specific, Haverford might take an interest in giving Jody a show—that might be the incentive Mel needed to join up with him.
    In addition to the enlargements Jody asked Mel to get from the photo lab, he had had four shots blown up to sixteen by twenty and had paid for a rush job. He now carried those photographs in a portfolio he had bought earlier that day at Charrette. People passing him would have thought him an artist, if they paused to look. A thought suddenly went through his head: that the Queen of England always carried a change purse, even though there was nothing in it.
    If he could get Jody a show, her self-confidence would soar. And if the Halloween photographs wouldn’t do it, nothing would.
    Stepping carefully, he turned the portfolio vertically to hold it like a shield against his chest as he went through the revolving door.
    Haverford was there, on a barstool. Tiny bubbles floated up in Haverford’s champagne flute. Haverford smiled, and Mel smiled back. That