Page 35 of Kitten

“Here.” James chose a set from the middle of the row. “This looks decent, right?”

“That’s eighty-nine dollars.”

“How much do they usually cost?”

“I don’t know, not that much.”

“Is Lydia totally ripping us off? Do I need to make a few calls?” James delivered the questions with exaggerated righteousness. It was easy to forget how sensitive he was. I thought of our first night together, the way he confessed to me his anxiety that his mother would get ill again justbecause he wasn’t calling her enough. He never wanted, he said, to feel that useless again.

“It’s fine,” I said. “You can buy the paints. Thank you.”

“Okay, cool. Everything okay?”

What was wrong? Nothing, really. But, if I thought about it, maybe a few things. James leaving tonight. My mother’s silence. The embarrassment I felt around people here in Holme. Lou’s call, confirmation that I no longer had a place to live in the city. Could I go back to my mother’s? Even if we were still talking, it would be cruel. I could hear her voice in my head: don’t make me your last resort. But I wasn’t sure what would hurt her more, being chosen last or not being chosen at all.

I only had one option left, and he was at this very moment trying to buy me exorbitantly priced paints that I would not use. I could insist that I would not use them, but he would buy them for me anyway, hoping that I would. Whether it was because he loved me or because he could afford it didn’t make a difference. That, also, was the problem.

James looked at me, paints in hand. I had the feeling of something already determined. My life was not as easy to change as I’d once believed, four years ago on my first night in New York when, staring at the wall, my cheek pressed into an unfamiliar university-issued pillow, I had the realization that I’d been away from home for a whole day, longer than in my entire life. I was certain then that nothing would be the same. But time had passed, more and more of it, and I was still the same nonperson, somebody who understood neither how to treat people nor how to be alone.

“Everything’s okay,” I finally answered. “I’ve just been feeling sad about you leaving.”

James smiled. “Let me buy this for you. Take it as my apology for being hungover on our last day together.”

“Forgiven,” I said. “Thank you.”

I lingered in the back of the store while James paid. Snippets of his conversation with the cashier rose above the background music. I became suspicious that there was no good deal and Lydia was not a real person, and James just spent ninety dollars on ten tubes of paint, not to mention the paper and brushes. James turned and gestured at the door. I thought of the pile of paintings that my mother kept in the top drawer of the mahogany dresser in her room, wondering if they were still there before I remembered that we sold the dresser years ago.

—

At a diner by thesea, James ordered bacon, eggs, and a stack of berry pancakes for us to share. He seemed heartened by the purchase at Lydia’s. The bag sat snugly in the corner of our booth.

James cleared his throat. “I’m sorry I pushed so hard for you to join us last night. You didn’t want to see Isabelle. That’s fine.”

“It’s not that I didn’t want to see her. I just get anxious around people like her.”

“You don’t have any reason to be. I know she comes from, I don’t know, a different world, but she’s a very sensitive person. You have a lot more in common than you think.”

I wasn’t thinking about her world. Was that the most obvious difference between us, or simply the explanation for every other difference?

“I don’t care about being rich,” I said. “If being rich were a problem, I wouldn’t be dating you.”

James gave a little laugh. “I’m not as wealthy as she is.”

I stared at him. “Okay. And how was I supposed to know that?”

“I don’t know.” He looked out the window. “I thought it was obvious.”

Our food arrived. A blueberry rolled off my plate and onto my lap, leaving a purple stain on my white pants. James ate quickly and silently.

“What makes Isabelle so vulnerable, then?”

James was quick to reply through a mouthful of eggs. “She suffers. From a variety of things. She’s unhappy.”

I cut my pancakes into big triangles, then smaller ones. “We’re all unhappy.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” said James. “She had to go away last year. But she’s better now.”

“What do you mean?”