“Blond?” Cate guesses.
“No. She looks Latino—or very tan ... Here. I’ll copy and paste.”
I send three photos to Cate—one of Ryan and Anna arm in arm on a pier, wearing red Patagonia fleeces, the dog standing alert at their feet. Another of Anna, grinning triumphantly on an ice-capped mountain. The third, a close-up of her with dramatic red lips, her hair in a smooth, low chignon.
A nanosecond later, Cate opens my e-mail and exclaims, “Shit. She’s young. Rob the cradle, Ryan”
“I guess she does look young,” I say, realizing that I never seem to notice age, at least not when someone is younger than I am. It’s as if I’m mentally frozen at about thirty-one.
“Does it bother you?” she asks. “Are you jealous? Do you feel anything?”
I smile at her frenetic questioning and tell her she needs to consider switching to decaf.
“I have,” she says.
“Maybe you should get a fish?” I suggest teasingly. “Supposed to calm you down.”
She laughs and asks again if I’m at all jealous.
“No. I’m not jealous,” I answer truthfully, as I continue to click through eighty-seven photos of Ryan, Anna, and their dog, most in idyllic, outdoor settings. In fact, I tell her, it’s almost as if I’m looking at photos of strangers, rather than the man I almost married. “He looks really happy. I’m glad for him,” I say.
“Are you going to write him?” she asks.
“Should I?”
“Technically he should first since he added you . . . But go ahead and be the bigger person.”
“What should I write?”
“Something generic.”
“Like?”
“Like . . . um . . . ‘Good to see you’re doing well, still teaching, enjoying the outdoors. Take care, Tess.’”
I type the sentences verbatim and hit post before I can agonize over the wording. Instantly, my own posed photo appears on his wall. In comparison to his artsy shots, the stiff picture of me with the kids next to our Christmas tree looks utterly staged, lacking any of the sparkle or spontaneity captured in so many of Ryan’s photos.
“Okay. Done,” I say, thinking I really need to change my profile picture. Unfortunately, I don’t have any majestic, mountaintop options. “It’s posted.”
“You posted it? On his wall?” Cate asks, horrified.
“You told me to!” I say, panicked and wondering what I just missed.
“No! No! I did not!” she says. “You should’ve just sent an e-mail. Privately. Not on his wall! He might not want his wife to see it! She might despise you. She might be totally bitter.”
“I doubt that. She looks perfectly happy.”
“You don’t know what her issues are.”
“Well, should I delete it?” I ask.
“Yes! Immediately. . . Oh, shit. I gotta go into hair and makeup . . . but keep me posted . . . No pun intended.”
I laugh and hang up, now transfixed by the last shot—a black-and-white photo of Anna, wrapped in a big blanket by the fire, staring adoringly at the camera. I tell myself once again that I’m not jealous, but can’t deny the tiniest, unidentified pang in my chest that returns several times over the course of the day, prompting me to sign back on to Facebook and check Ryan’s page, again and again. By five o’clock, he has yet to respond to my post but has changed his update to: Ryan thanks his wife for her foresight.
Wondering what Anna’s foresight involved, I return to the photo of her by the fire, finally pinpointing my earlier pang. It isn’t jealousy, at least not any associated with Ryan or his marriage, but rather wistfulness over Nick, my own marriage, memories of how we met, how things used to be. If there is any jealousy at all, it is envy over the look of utter contentment on Anna’s face. The fact that Ryan likely inspired her smile, then snapped the photo, then converted it to an evocative black-and-white image, then posted it on Facebook—all things that would never happen in my house. Not these days.
Later that night, after Ryan has finally e-mailed me back (Good to see you, too. Beautiful kids. Are you still teaching?), I tell Nick about the exchange, hoping for a satisfying, territorial reaction. Or perhaps a little nostalgia over our relationship lore; after all, it was Ryan who brought us together.
Instead, he shakes his head and says, “Figures that guy has a Facebook page.” Then he picks up the remote control and flips on CNN. Anderson Cooper is doing a retrospective on the tsunami, horrifying images of destruction flashing on the screen.
“What’s wrong with Facebook?” I ask defensively—more for my sake than Ryan’s.
“Well, for starters, it’s a complete waste of time,” he says, turning the volume up slightly for a British tourist’s account of the tragedy.
I bristle at his implication that I have time to waste—whereas he is the busy surgeon with better things to do.