Shortness of Breath

Chapter Three

Hallie - October tenth

When I was thirteen, I bought a picture frame at a flea market. I don't remember why I bought it, but I must not have had a specific purpose in mind because I never put a photo in it. I think it had more to do with the enjoyment I derived from buying things I didn't need. Earning money, exchanging some small portion of it for a good I'd probably never use. I think I did that to remind myself that I could. I think the frivolity, though imprudent, told me that I exercised some control.

The picture frame came unused. It still had the styrofoam pieces on all the corners. In fact, it still had the stock photo of a happy family holding a place inside. I knew, of course, that the point was to replace that photo with one's own happy family, but I liked the family inside better.

I had a boyfriend at the time, around the time my mother was working nights. He was over at our apartment and he was in my room because my mom wasn't home to say no, and that was the first and last time anyone asked why I had a picture frame still holding the photo it came with sitting on my night stand. I'd never properly answered that for myself, and so when I answered that "they just look happy," it didn't come out as an acceptable answer. He'd laughed. "They're not a real family, Hal," he reminded me condescendingly. "They're four people who got paid to take a picture together."

It was such a stupid conversation, one I'm sure that he would never remember, but it followed me. I kept the picture frame for at least a week following, and every time I looked at it I thought back to what he said and what it meant. I pictured the separate lives of those four models. I wondered if the woman was divorced, if the man had a disease, if one of the kids was failing school or another was pregnant. I thought of them taking that photo and then shaking hands and disappearing from each others' cognizance, each leading a life so separate from the others. I wondered if they were difficult to work with. I wondered if they'd come to dislike each other in that photo shoot.

I hadn't thought about the stock photo family in years when I met Casey. Shortly after being placed on her service, I came to learn that her husband was Wilson Kenny, the junior U.S. senator from North Carolina, not that a New Yorker like me would be expected to know anything about him or even care to. I spent a lot of time with Casey fast, and the one thing she talked about more than anything was her kids. She'd brag about the poem E.J. wrote for English class or tell me about the hilarious thing that Cooper had said that morning at breakfast, and while I didn't know Casey's kids yet, I loved them. I was charmed by Casey being such a mom, but I always wondered silently what life was like within the Kenny household. The element that was most glaringly absent from a conversation with Casey was any mention of her husband, save the occasional begrudging complaint. I knew that politics and publicity could be hard on a family. I'd watched enough television to get that. But overall, the impression I got was that the Kenny family had a lot in common with the picture frame strangers - they looked so good in a photo, but once you bother to scratch the surface you see how disjointed they really are.

Casey being Casey, I could already hear the shower running when I woke up at six thirty. I stood up and, feeling steady on my feet for the first time since the previous morning, took a look around. Casey's guest bedroom was bigger than any apartment I'd ever lived in. Despite having known her for two years and some change, I'd never been in her home before, but given that it was where an attending surgeon lived with her corporate-lawyer-turned-U.S. senator husband, I don't know why I couldn't get over the size of it. This was the Better Homes and Gardens house of an obvious power couple. Their wealth was obvious. That they had their shit together, at least in work and real estate, was obvious. What wasn't obvious looking at the room was how much Wilson and Casey hated each other. That had only been made obvious through months of knowing her.