The boy explains that he's trying to draw his dog but can't get the proportions right. Rosanna nods with complete seriousness, as if this dog portrait is the most important artistic challenge in the room.
"Drawing is all about how you see things," she tells him, guiding his hand through a simpler approach. "Sometimes we get caught up in what we think something should look like instead of what's actually there."
The boy's face scrunches in concentration as he follows her instructions, and gradually, a recognizable canine form begins to emerge on his paper.
When he expresses doubt about a particularly difficult section, Rosanna smiles and says something that makes me freeze mid-stroke: "Just keep it sunny side up! Every drawing has problems. The fun part is figuring out how to solve them."
The pencil slips from my fingers and rolls off the edge of the table. The sound is louder than it should be against the quiet scratch of graphite around the room.
"Sunny side up." Three simple words that I haven't heard spoken aloud in years, though I've read them countless times in emails from my pen pal Anna.
It is her signature phrase, her perpetual outlook.
I study Rosanna with new awareness, mental connections forming rapidly.
The murmur of conversation around me dulls.
She’s an artist. Runs literacy programs. Lives in Firth City.
And she uses the same ridiculous breakfast metaphor.
I should have recognized it sooner.
Rosanna is Anna.
My pulse kicks hard enough that I feel it in my throat. I set my sketchpad down carefully, because my hands are no longer steady.
My wife of convenience is the same person I've been writing to for most of my life.
If that is true, then everything I thought I understood about this arrangement is already obsolete.
I am not acting the part of an adoring husband.
I am standing in a library, watching the only person who has ever really known me.
I want this to be real.
I need proof.
While Rosanna continues working with students, I pull out my phone and open my email. I compose a quick message to Anna, "Just thought of you while observing an art class. Hope all is well."
I hit send and watch Rosanna over the top of my phone, waiting.
My thumb presses too hard against the screen. I force myself to breathe normally.
Less than thirty seconds later, her phone vibrates in her pocket. She pulls it out, glances at the screen, and a small smile touches her lips before she tucks it away again.
"Just my pen pal," she explains to the curious children around her. "I'll answer him later. Have you ever had a pen pal?"
My hand tightens imperceptibly around my phone.
Our situation has just become exponentially more complex.
For decades, our correspondence has existed separately from everything else in my life. It was a space where my words weren't weighted by my name or position.
Now those worlds have collided in a way neither of us anticipated, and I alone am aware of it.
I should tell her.
