A GOOD LIKENESS Whitney McShan

The most notable aspects of the portrait are that it is of my wife, Jenn, and that neither of us knows who painted it.

‘You just found it at a second hand shop?’ I asked again, having already heard her answer several times that morning.

‘Yes, for the hundredth time. I was looking for a dresser to refurbish for the spare room, and I found it in the stacks of wall art.’

She was unsettled. Of course she was.

‘Well, I guess it isn’t that weird. It was probably painted by a fan.’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, rubbing her hands together as we each stood staring at it in the middle of our new living room. ‘It would be one thing if I was wearing a uniform in it, but that’s the dress I wore to Melanie’s wedding two years ago. And look, I’m even wearing my glasses in it. I always wore contacts for games or press photos.’

I shrugged. ‘You have a lot of fans. Maybe someone at the wedding took a photo of you and posted it online. Weird that you found it, but I wouldn’t worry,’ I paused. ‘What did you pay for it, anyway?’

‘Twenty bucks,’ she responded.

‘Do you want to hang it?’

 

We were in our new condo, half unpacked. Jenn emptied a box of her clothes onto the bed and sighed. ‘We should have just thrown everything away and bought new stuff once we were here,’ she said. ‘It would have been easier.’

‘I told you to just pack them on the hangers. That would have been easier.’

She rolled her eyes as she grabbed an armful of clothes, then disappeared into the closet.

I turned and looked out the patio door towards the treeline. It was the start of fall, and the leaves had begun changing colours in their annual metamorphosis. Jenn seemed to be doing that too. Cutting and dying her hair, altering her style of clothing, and now trying out new careers after retiring from soccer. She would say that she was trying to piece together who she was now that she was untethered by the sport that defined the better part of her adulthood.
 

Be yourself, I would tell her.

And who’s that?

My wife, I’d reply before kissing her nose.


 
‘Do you want me to pick up dinner?’ she asked, still inside the closet.

‘I was planning on doing the chicken you like. I had the groceries delivered for it this morning.’

She walked out of the closet, having changed from her sweatpants and t shirt into a pair of black slacks and a long sleeve, champagne coloured blouse. The afternoon light shining in from the patio door gave the top a metallic sheen. Her sleeves strained against her biceps as she combed through her hair.

‘What are you all dressed up for?’ I asked.

‘You don’t remember? I have another interview.’

Jenn had interviewed once when we first arrived in town for a spot as a sports commentator on the local morning news. It’s not the big time, she said. But, it will help pay the bills.

The bills were my hospital bills. Jenn earned good money in her soccer career, but after my diagnosis, we went through almost everything for treatment. She was distracted, and her career suffered. She lost brand deals. When it came time to renew her contract, she wasn’t signed again. She told me it wasn’t my fault. I’m older now. I can’t expect to compete against the new recruits. No one can play forever.

‘What time will you be back?’ I asked. ‘So that I can have dinner ready.’

‘I’m not sure. They asked me to prepare some mock segments that I’ll have to run through with them. Don’t wait for me if you get hungry. I can reheat it.’

She moved towards the dresser to a pink crystal dish. At the top of its lid sat two swans facing one another as if they were about to kiss or embrace, whatever it is that swans do romantically. She lifted the top and grabbed her jewellery from within. With her back to me she asked, ‘Are you feeling okay? I know the move has been more activity than you’ve done in a while.’

‘Oh,’ I said, tilting my head towards the door again, watching the branches sway in the wind. A storm was closing in, if I believed the weather alerts on my phone. ‘I’m okay. I don’t want you to worry.’
 


I hung the portrait while she was out. It really was a good likeness, but the eyes weren’t quite right. Jenn was all warmth, fresh cut grass and sun at your back. The Jenn in the portrait was something different—colder and unapproachable.

 

Jenn lies on our couch with her eyes closed and limbs outstretched in her sprawling way. She does the same in our bed at night, star fishing. I stand at the kitchen counter, drumming my nails against the top of the espresso machine that I insisted we buy and promptly never used.

Dawn’s earliest rays shine in through the window. Dappled pink and gold light haloed her face as the warmth of the sunrise slowly eats away at the morning dew. Her dark hair blankets across the throw pillow and she looks both remote and beautiful in a way that makes my chest ache.

‘Hey,’ I said with a raised voice, wanting to wake her without getting closer.

She groans as she stretches arms and legs, stiff from a night spent on the couch.

‘When did you get home last night?’ I ask.

‘Around eleven or so,’ she says, rubbing her face. Her voice is rough with sleep. ‘After the interview and mock segments the network offered me the position. They took me out for dinner and drinks to celebrate.’

‘You didn’t text,’ I said.

‘Yeah, sorry. I should have. I just got carried away.’

 

Jenn brings in our mail which is mostly promotional fliers addressed to Current Occupant. I sort through the stack over the trash can, fanning envelopes from my palm directly into the garbage bag. At the bottom of the pile is a thick square envelope full of the photographs I ordered two weeks ago.

I sit on the couch to look through the photos. They are all from our vacation to Cancun, the one we had taken right before my diagnosis. Before it all went wrong.

Jenn is laughing on the beach. We are sitting close in a booth at the resort bar, her hand on my leg. I have my suitcase on the bed, unpacking it, palm trees and an ocean view in the balcony door behind me. Jenn is sitting on a lounge chair, her eyes closed, and chin pointed upwards like a flower seeking out the sun. Looking at them, I can almost smell the ocean.

There’s one picture that’s unfamiliar.

The background is so dark that I can’t make out where it was taken. Jenn stands at its centre, her skin looks pale and blueish, all the warmth scrubbed out from the flash. She isn’t smiling. She’s looking directly at the camera. She looks exactly like herself but somehow not at all like herself. I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up the longer I stare. It’s something about the lighting, I think, that makes her look so strange. Alien, even.

I bring the picture into the kitchen where Jenn is slicing a melon.

‘I finally ordered the pictures from Cancun,’ I say, placing it in front of her. ‘Do you remember this one?’

She stops slicing for a moment and leans forward to look at it.

‘God,’ she says. ‘I look creepy in that.’

I laugh, not meaning it. ‘It’s not your best, I’ll admit. I don’t remember taking it.’

She returns to the melon. ‘I don’t recognise it, but we were probably both drunk. We drank a lot that trip.’
 


Jenn’s first day at the network arrives quickly. I am a bundle of exposed nerves, but she is calm as ever. My games were televised, silly, she tells me. Not to mention all the interviews. I’ve been on TV plenty of times.

I do my best to stay busy around the house until I know it’s time for her segment. I feel like a ghost haunting the empty spaces of her life.

The camera pans to her, seated behind a sleek desk, one hand resting atop the other. One of the hosts, Carmen, or some other C name, introduces her, giving a few details about her career and welcoming her to the show.

‘Thank you all so much for the warm welcome. I can’t tell you all how excited I am to join the family and call this wonderful city home,’ she says, giving her radiant smile. The network did her hair and makeup, and she looks more polished than I’m used to seeing. I can’t help feeling that the Jenn smiling at me from our TV isn’t the right one, that in all the exfoliation they scrubbed away some vital part of her and with their camera friendly foundation plastered on someone new.

Jenn has always been charming. It’s a feature of her persona and is often gushed over in articles and interviews. She has a way of speaking with strangers and acquaintances as if they were old friends who she is overjoyed to have run into at the supermarket. The real Jenn, the personal one reserved for friends and family is charming too, but it’s a warmer and less performative thing. The absence of both, the familiarity without warmth, is something like looking at the spot where your home used to sit and finding instead a great, gaping chasm.

‘We are so happy to have you,’ Carmen or whoever says.

 

Jenn calls to tell me that she won’t be able to take me to my doctor’s appointment. I’m so sorry, she says. I got caught up at the station and now I’m stuck on the freeway.

I tell her that it’s okay. I can order a rideshare.

I sit on a paper sheet that sticks to my exposed thighs and crunches underneath me anytime I move to dislodge it. The doctor walks in and introduces himself. He is a new doctor because this is a new place, but he has familiarised himself with my medical history. Still, we spend a long time reviewing it.

‘I’m going to send you for some more labs,’ he tells me. ‘It could be nothing, but I don’t like the look of the last panel.’

I text Jenn that the appointment went well and order a rideshare home.
 


It happens often now that I will pause while cleaning the condo or cooking lunch or working on my computer, with some sense prickling at the back of my neck, and turn to find Jenn’s face on the television. The program she’s in is running a batch of commercials that feature her and her new segment.

In the commercials, her hair is pulled back into a high ponytail. It’s too tight I think, because it looks like it’s tugging at her skin, stretching out the line of her mouth.

The first time it aired she was at home, and I asked her if it had hurt. She shrugged. What a weird thing to think.

 

Jenn takes me to dinner for our three year anniversary. She’s sorry she’s been so busy lately and wasn’t able to help enough with the unpacking. She wishes I wouldn’t have done it all myself. She could have hired someone. We both know that I shouldn’t overexert myself.

The lighting in the restaurant is dim, and I have to strain my eyes to read the menu. Jenn looks straight at me, her face half lit from the candle burning at the centre of our table. It reminds me of when kids hold flashlights under their chins as they tell scary stories.

I wonder how she perceives the silence—is she comfortable, or does she feel as uneasy as I do?

‘What are you going to have?’ I ask her.

‘The salmon, I think.’

‘You hate salmon.’

‘Do I?’ she asks. ‘Tastes do change, you know.’

After we eat Jenn orders us both cappuccinos. Mine scalds the roof of my mouth.
 


When we return home, Jenn spends several minutes staring at the portrait of herself. She hasn’t turned the lights back on, and the room is dim, only sporadically lit from the headlights of passing cars outside.

‘I can move it if you’d rather have it somewhere else.’

‘No, it’s fine,’ she says without so much as glancing away. ‘I didn’t like it at first. It kind of scared me if I’m honest, finding it the way I did. But now,’ she pauses. ‘Do you think it looks like me?’

I close the space between us and brush my hand along her forearm before putting both hands in my pockets. ‘Well, it’s not photo realistic, but I think overall, yeah.’

The silence stretches between us until it chokes more words from my throat. ‘I don’t like your eyes in it. There’s something off about them.’

She hums in agreement. ‘Eyes are always the hardest.’
 


There is a weak attempt at morning, an overcast grey sky and the smell of wet dirt.

Jenn was out late again, choosing to curl in on herself on the couch so she wouldn’t wake me in the early morning hours. I had spent most of the night tossing in our bed, unable to ignore the chill emanating from her empty space.

Her phone is buzzing at a frequency that is both irregular and incessant.

I convince myself that I am doing the considerate thing. It was nice of her not to wake me, so I can mute her phone to return the favour. When I pick up the phone its screen flashes with a new notification.

Carmen: Had a great time with you last night. Can’t wait to do it again.
 
Another message comes through. This time it’s a picture. Carmen and Jenn sit next to one another in a booth. The lighting has a hazy, greasy quality found primarily in hole in the walls, and Jenn’s arm rests across Carmen’s shoulders. Carmen’s is smiling, her teeth are so white they’re almost blinding against the dark background. Her skin has a shine to it, a glistening quality that you see on people too beautiful to sweat.

Jenn looks unfamiliar. Her posture is relaxed, leaning into Carmen, but she isn’t smiling. She is staring straight ahead into the lens of the camera as if to say,

I see you.

Her eyes are the wrong colour.

 

When Jenn wakes up, I am in the kitchen, buttering toast with shaking hands. She grumbles an unintelligible greeting, a groaning of familiar words that I can’t focus on well enough to process. She makes her way to the bathroom. I hear the creaking of pipes as the shower turns on.

The front door opens. A Jenn walks in and kisses my cheek before placing a stack of envelopes on the table in front of me.

‘Grabbed the mail,’ she says.

I can see the portrait hanging on the wall behind her. The background is the same, but Jenn isn’t there anymore.

It’s empty.