Me Again by Keith Cronin Page B

the church.”
    Great, I thought. In addition to being big and great looking, the guy was a saint. Probably had a Nobel Prize gathering dust on his mantle.
    “So why do you think he would do that?” Rebecca asked, breaking my self-pitying train of thought.
    “Do what?”
    “Lie about his height. Why would I care if he was taller?”
    For once I pieced out her meaning from context, and was able to speculate. “For some guys, being big is really important, I guess.”
    “I guess,” she agreed. “It sounds like you’re getting better at talking.”
    “Sometimes,” I said. Then I added, “Thanks.”
    Rebecca joined me in staring at the photos. “I look different in those pictures, don’t I?”
    This was dangerous ground, and I knew it. “Maybe a little,” I allowed. “I guess your hair was lighter then.”
    “Big Bob wants me to bleach my hair. He says it’s mousy looking right now.”
    “I like your hair,” I said.
    She looked at me dubiously. “But it’s two colors. It’s blonde on the ends, and brown where it’s growing out. I mean, I definitely need to do something about it. But I kind of think I have bigger problems to work on, you know?”
    I stuck to my story. “I like your hair,” I repeated.
    Ignoring me, she pointed at another one of the photos. “It’s more than the hair. Look at how much makeup I have on in this one – this was at a wedding reception down in Florida. And look at the neckline on that dress.”
    Feeling awkward, I looked away.
    Rebecca picked up the church banquet photo, examining it closely for a long moment. Then she set it back down and said, “And my smile looks fake.”
    “Your smile looks like his,” I blurted, instantly regretting my candor.
    She stared at the photo, and said, “It does, doesn’t it? I kind of think Bob brought me these pictures to remind me who I am – who I’m supposed to be.”
    “What?” A brilliant retort on my part, I’ll grant you. But I was confused by the turn this conversation was taking.
    “He could have just brought me pictures of himself,” Rebecca said. “I mean, it makes sense for a woman to want pictures of her husband when she’s away from him. But every picture he brought has me in it, too. And they all show me looking all... perfect like that. Not like I look now.”
    “You think you look better in those pictures?” I asked. Okay, I’ve already acknowledged that this was dangerous ground, but what did I have to lose? She was married, after all; she wasn’t somebody who was available to me, despite any furtive hopes I might have harbored. But she was somebody whose well-being I cared about.
    “Don’t you?” she asked. “Look at me there. Low-cut dress, tons of makeup, perfect hair. And look at me now – in sweats and a ponytail.”
    I worked hard on a sentence that I felt was important to get right. “In the pictures,” I said, “you just look different. Not better. Different.”
    A trace of a smile emerged, but she caught herself.
    “Anyway,” she said, turning to open the armoire, “tell me what you think of these. I bought them both right before my stroke, so Bob’s never seen me in either of them.”
    She supported herself with one hand on her walker, and held a dress up in front of her on a hanger, a price tag dangling from its shoulder. The dress was definitely very eye-catching: it was the deep red of cafeteria ketchup, and seemed... well, rather short.
    Reading my thoughts, Rebecca frowned. “I think my legs are probably too pale for something so short.” She turned to put the dress back in the armoire and said, “How about this other one?”
    She pulled out another dress, holding it up for me to see. This was a slightly longer, more billowy affair, made of a black fabric with a light floral pattern. The black emphasized the darkness of her eyes.
    “I like that one,” I said. “It’s not as flashy, but more... pretty.” Sort of like the Rebecca I was getting to know versus the one in the