Free Night Blindness by Susan Strecker

picked up a Doors CD he had given me and winged it against the wall like a Frisbee. The plastic case cracked in two. “You need another girlfriend,” I told him. “That’s what you need.”
    I remembered the quick, sharp pain when he’d grabbed my wrist. “We didn’t do anything wrong.” His voice was low, vicious. “Will overreacted.”
    â€œYou’re hurting me.” I tugged my arm free. I could feel tears coming, hot and ready. I turned back to straighten the rest of the CDs so they all faced the same way. It was suddenly very important to me that they were lined up right.
    â€œJenny.” I didn’t answer. “Jenny, talk to me.” But I couldn’t. “Jenny, goddamn it, I love you.” I kept stacking the discs in perfect order until he left.
    A plane passing overhead startled me out of the memory. Ryder was watching me. “I just want to know.” He’d nicked himself shaving, and in the moonlight, he looked so fresh-faced. He’d always had a little scruff before. “What do you think about when you lie awake at night under that big Santa Fe sky?”
    The question surprised me and my answer slipped out without my wanting it to. “I never stop thinking about what we did.”
    He quit blinking. Quit moving altogether. “It was an accident.” He said it as if I were a child, like he was telling me not to go in the road, not to touch a hot stove.
    â€œAccident or not”—I studied the tassels on his loafers—“it was our fault.”
    We stayed that way for a long time, Ryder looking at the city he’d never left and me lying on the stone wall, watching his back. I thought maybe we’d stay there until the sun came up, but after a while he said, “Let’s go.”
    We didn’t talk the whole way home.

 
    7
    When I made my way up the attic stairs to paint the next morning, my head felt stuffed with cotton, and my limbs were sandbags. My father had renovated it when we were kids and made a play space for Will and me. But since I’d been up there last, the front of the room had filled with Christmas decorations. I had to step around garlands and wreaths to reach the back, where there was a bathroom and sink.
    Nic thought holidays were pedestrian. Instead of celebrating with a tree and presents, we went up to Angel Fire for Christmas, where Hadley and a bunch of friends shared a house. Nic hosted a Greek dinner that lasted till the New Year. People skied and ate and screwed, lounging around the house, playing ukuleles, talking about art, drinking mushroom tea and smoking herb. As I threaded my way past homemade clay angels and the ancient pinecone ornaments I’d made in elementary school, I pictured my parents—my dad in a wool hat, Jamie in her cashmere gloves—venturing to the Christmas tree farm in Chester to cut down their evergreen, just the two of them. It made my heart feel like lead.
    The sun had risen bright and swollen and was shining through the attic windows, throwing short shadows across the wood floor. The slanted eaves and hidden corners made me think of Will. We used to play up here for hours. Across from the tiny bathroom, the wooden easel was where I remembered it, an old-fashioned kind with a double-masted H frame and a child’s crayon marks across it. I touched its smooth ash wood and bent down to slide open the little drawer. A few stiff watercolor brushes were still in there. It wasn’t the steel Italian easel Nic had bought me for my birthday, but it would do.
    I put my art bag on the floor and pulled out my new sabeline brush kit and some charcoal. Nic had wrapped up five of my self-portraits, the ones he said were best, and packed them in my bag before I left, telling me it was time to finish something. Every time I worked on one of these pieces, it felt like my hands were rebelling. I knew what they really wanted to do was play piano. I wanted