Picture-Perfect Lies

                At the sight of the picture hanging on the wall of  an apartment, the smile falls from a man’s face. He’s not an old man, perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties, but his face is marked by the sort of expression characteristic of a much older man. Premature lines crease his forehead and line his eyes, crinkling as he sighs and closes his eyes.
        It’s not a bad picture, not at all. Rather, it is exactly the contrary, depicting the man and a woman sitting on a park bench. It’s autumn in the photo,  the rays of waning sunlight breaking through the mottled red and yellow of the trees, producing a kaleidoscope effect. A little ways away, in the background of the scene, a carven minuteman stands in eternal salute, holding the reins of a regal looking horse. It was standing, neck erect, with the right front foreleg curled in the classic pose. In the distance, the edge of a calm lake is just barely visable, the wind blowing tiny waves in the surface.
        It is not that fairly innocuous scene that distresses the man, but it is the memory of all the never-before-seen, never-even-shot behind-the-scenes footage. /That’s what’s wrong with a movie ending/, he thought. /You only see the scenes you’re allowed to see; the story ends with a happily-ever-after, and everyone ends up the way they wanted to./
        He hears the familiar sound of retching in the tiny bathroom across the apartment. He sighs, and goes to lift her head out of the toilet once again.
        It is a frequent occurrence, and as much as he is used to it by now, he still can’t leave behind the memory of years past, before she was gone, locked away from the world in her own little realm of self-induced insanity.
        Even that photo, taken on her birthday two years ago (had it only been two years? had it really been that long?) was a complete and utter lie. Only he knows that the only reason her eyes are clear is because he had locked the bottles away in preparation for the photographs he knew would be taken. Only he knows that the only reason she was smiling is because he had promised her she could have the bottle hidden behind the bench, just out of sight of the camera. Only he knows that, as beautiful as she appears on the runway and the movie screen, she is a world away offscreen, locked away by the pills.
        He remembers, as he always does, how amazed he was at first, how excited he was to be dating a high fashion model, a movie actress. His mouth twists at the memory. How naieve he was. Now he’s jaded, lonely. He only wants to leave her and return to his former obscurity, but what would she do? Where would she go?
        What would she do without someone to look after her? Without someone to force her to eat when she got even thinner than usual and her period stopped and her hair started to fall out? Where would she be without someone to hide the car keys when she was too far gone to drive? How fast would this little angel fall without someone to lock her in the house and close the curtains when the paparazzi flashbulbs became blindingly bright? How hard would she hit the ground when she had no one to disconnect the Internet and unplug the phones when the rumors and the gossip became too cruel?
        He knows that if he leaves her, soon she’d be nothing but a tiny fallen angel, a tiny spot of red-brown blood on the pavement. Her druggie wings would be broken and bleeding, the black feathers all askew. Her bloodshot eyes would finally close in death as they had never closed in sleep. Maybe she wouldn’t really die, but she would lose everything she had, lose the pills and the bottles that were her pitiful life-support system.
        He loves her too much to subject her to that.
        He rubs her back and whisper-sings a lullaby as the bulimia takes over yet again.