I was wondering what I’d say to Wilbur when he asked how his photos turned out.
After a few discouraging minutes, I heard her say, “Wow.”
I quick got over there to see what she saw.
Among dozens more losers, she had just hung up what I could only describe as the perfect Wilbur photo.
It’s hard to describe what makes a perfect photo of someone. The best I can say is that I think I photographed more than was actually there.
No, that’s not saying it right. Because my camera didn’t add anything to Wilbur.
It’s like I saw something more through the lens. Something I swear I couldn’t have seen with just my eyes. At least, I had never seen it before, and I was getting to know Wilbur pretty well. It was as though I had photographed right through his eyes into everything that had ever hurt him. It was all written there, like notes on a wall, and yet his overall look was not wounded. He was calm, steady. Almost proud. He was more than I’d ever seen Wilbur be. I guess he was himself.
And I had just caught the whole thing right there. And I had frozen it forever. Like proof.
“This is amazing,” Molly said, and I felt that same sense of spreading warmth that I felt the other time she praised me.
I felt the need to push it away again.
“But the rest of these are such crap.”
“We’re not done yet. Besides. You got one really great one.”
“But I took, like, seventy photos.”
“Right. That’s what photographers do. We take seventy photos to get one that’s really worth keeping.”
“We do?”
“We do if we’re lucky. If we’re good. If not, the numbers are even bigger.”
“You know, Molly,” I said. And then paused. “I’m going to miss you, too.” I didn’t say, Until a minute ago, I thought I’d only miss Frank. I didn’t need to. It was painfully clear.
She surprised me with a big side hug, her arm around my shoulder, pulling me in closer to all that plump warmth.
“You’re a sweet girl,” she said.
“I wasn’t always sweet.”
“I wasn’t exactly perfect, either.”
So I guess we still were both holding on to our own personal trespasses.
I said, “You know I was never judging Frank for what he is, right?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I know.” A long silence. It felt a little tense. But maybe it’s harder to know what to make of something in the mostly dark. No, I take it back. It’s easier. “I know you were confused. Because you had a crush on Frank.” I noticed she used the past tense. Like it was all done and gone now. “But you see … that’s the other reason I was mad.”
“Oh,” I said. That made so much sense I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it on my own. I didn’t exactly say I was sorry. What’s the point of being sorry for what you feel? “It’s not like I did it on purpose,” I said.
“Right. I know.”
Maybe this is not healthy, but I think I slightly enjoyed the feeling that she took me seriously enough to even barely think of me as a threat.
I noticed she hadn’t said she would miss me, too. But we can only ask for just so much.
We finished developing and hanging the photos, and there was not even one more really good one. But I wasn’t sure that mattered. I would take the one perfect one, and hand it to Wilbur. And I knew he would say, Wow. I knew he wouldn’t say, But what about the others?
On the day they were actually leaving, I sat out on the stoop in front of our apartment house and read a book. Rather than my usual position on the fire escape.
I wanted to be able to say goodbye one more time.
I’d gotten caught up in an exciting part of the book, and I didn’t even realize Molly was standing over me until I heard her voice.
“I guess this is it,” she said.
I put down my book and looked up at her. Shading my eyes from the sun with one hand. “Yeah. I guess.”
She was wearing her big sun hat, and she had a tote bag slung over her shoulder that looked like it must weigh about 142 pounds. She set down a soft-sided pet carrier she’d been holding. Either Gracie or George.
“I’ll miss you,” she said.
That pretty much turned all my thinking upside down.
“You will?”
“Yeah. I will. Don’t sound so amazed.”
“Why? What have I done that I deserve to be missed?”
“Well. You took an interest in photography. No, more than that. You took an interest in the world. Through your camera lens. And you’re good at it. And you were a good friend.”
“Better late than never,” I said.
Silence while I tried it all on. Waited to see if it would fit. Before that moment, I had accepted the status of only aspiring to what I admired. Now, if I was to believe Molly, I had to move myself up a rung.
Thing is, I always believed Molly.
I looked up to see Frank standing at the top of the stairs. Holding the other cat carrier in his left hand. His shattered right arm was supported in a sling. He didn’t bandage his head anymore, and his hair was partly grown back in. Nearly halfway to the buzz cut he’d had when I met him.
He started down the stairs.
I swallowed. Didn’t even try to speak.
Molly stepped into the street and raised one hand for a cab. There’s never a cab when you need one, right? Wrong. A cab pulled up in front of her, as if the driver had been twenty feet away and just waiting for a signal.
So I guess we didn’t have much time.
Frank stopped right in front of me. Set the carrier on the bricks by his feet.
I could see, through his short hair, where the stitches had been. It was still discolored and a little out of shape. But it was better than looking him right in the eye.
“So,” he said.
“So.”
Silence. I wondered if the meter was running.
“I’m not sure what to say,” Frank said.
“Okay. Let me give you your cue. This is where you say something really monumental to me. Some quote I can write on my mirror. You know. To guide my life now that you’re gone.”
Truthfully, I’m not sure what I was going on about. Just filling dead air, I guess.
Frank raised one eyebrow. “Who says?”
“Well, if this were a movie, it would be time for your big line.”
“It’s not a movie, though.”
“I still think you should say something profound.”
“Gee, thanks. But no pressure, right?”
I laughed. Nobody moved. The cabdriver did not honk.
“Okay, how about this?” he said. An uncomfortable pause. At least, uncomfortable for me. “Always be the idiot who says ‘I love you’ and then starts to cry. Because that other idiot, she’s not even worth being. You’d only be wasting your time trying to be her.”
I squeezed my eyes closed, and when I opened them again, he was still there. I thought about hugging him, but I didn’t. I was scared. Scared of what? It’s a long list. Take your pick. Hurting his poor right arm. How his body would feel. How it would feel to me to get that close. How Molly would feel watching. I could go on.
“Well …,” he said. And started to move away.
I squeezed my eyes closed again. Knowing I’d had a chance to say goodbye properly and I let it go by. It would be years before I got a do-over.
When I opened my eyes again, Frank was right there. Standing in front of me. He’d come back.
He kissed me on the forehead and walked away.
While he was getting in the cab, I felt the kiss still there on my forehead. Literally. It was frozen there. I could still feel it. I wanted to bronze it, like people do with baby shoes. I wanted to mount it and hang it over my mantelpiece. If I’d had one.
But I knew it would be gone right around the same time Frank was.
He waved once, left-handed, from the back window as they drove away.
* * *
I sat out on the fire escape for most of the rest of the day.
I watched the cabs bunch up and slow down and then move again. Listened to the sirens. All those personal disasters happening somewhere, to someone. Smelled smoke drift up from the street, and watched the light change as the afternoon set in. I was noticing how this was home now. How much this felt like home.
After a while, I noticed Harry across the street, sweeping the sidewalk with a broom. I didn’t know if he did that as part of his rent, or if it was because he got extra clean when he was on his meds. Just like he got extra dirty when he was off them. He was still being kind of strangely careful, like some tiny little piece of dirt might get by him. I watched him work for a time, and I don’t think he ever knew I was up there watching.
Then I looked down again a minute later and saw that Harry had laid down his broom, and he was standing in the street, looking down. There wasn’t much traffic, and what there was just kind of spilled around him. I watched him for a minute, wondering what was so fascinating. What he thought he saw.
Then it hit me, like a baseball bat to my gut, that he was looking at the exact spot in the street where Frank got hit.
I climbed in through the window and got my camera and ran downstairs two steps at a time.
I thought Harry would be gone, but he wasn’t. He was still standing in the street, staring down at that spot.
I took a couple of photos, and then he looked up at me. Looked right into my camera lens, the way you would look into somebody’s eyes.
His eyes looked deep and sad, like he’d just seen into a world of hurt that most of us will never know. And I’m not sure it was even all about Frank’s accident. Every time I saw Harry, he looked like that. Like he’d seen hell and come back to tell everybody about it, but he just couldn’t bring himself to open his mouth yet.
I took a shot of that pain.
Then I lowered the camera.
“Is that okay?” I asked. “Is it okay to take pictures of you?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Why do you take pictures?”
I realized that I had never talked to Harry before. I felt like I knew him. I’d even gotten to care about him in a strange sort of way. I’d been furious at him. Wanted to drive him out of the neighborhood. And then I guess I’d forgiven him. Kind of quietly, when I wasn’t even looking. But I’d barely even stood at his level. I’d never looked right into his face. I’d mostly looked down at him from above.
Now we looked straight into each other’s eyes.
A cab came by and swerved around Harry, the driver blaring on his horn.
“Come here,” I said, and gently took Harry by his elbow. “You better get out of the street.”
“Why do you take pictures?” he asked again.
We stood there on the sidewalk together in the fading light.
“I’m a photographer,” I said. “It’s what I do.”
“But why?”
I thought that out, and breathed. “I’m trying to jumpstart the world.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m trying to remind the world to be what it knows it should be.”
“Oh,” he said. “Okay. Why do you take pictures of me?”
“Because … I want people to know you. I want them to know you’re real.”
“Ah.” We stood there for another minute. Harry’s head was down, hanging down a bit as if he felt cowed. “It was my fault,” he said. “What happened to Frank. He never would have had to leave if it wasn’t for me.”
“You didn’t do it on purpose. Why were you standing there looking at that spot?”
“Saying goodbye.”
Then he turned and walked back across the street, and picked up his broom, and went back inside his building.
I stood there watching him go for just a minute. Then I looked both ways, and when there were no cars coming, I stepped into the street. I looked down at the spot.
It was just pavement. Just regular asphalt, like the asphalt all around it. Like the asphalt on any other street. No sign that anything important had happened here. It was all cleaned and normal, and everything that happened that day could just have been a bad dream. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t a dream.
I looked in the direction Frank’s cab had gone.
“Goodbye, Frank,” I said.
Then I went back inside.
About an hour later, I was sitting on the couch. Next thing I knew, Toto jumped up onto my lap. I reached out to touch him but he jumped away again, onto the couch. But I held my hand out, and he came up and rubbed underneath it with his head.
I scratched him behind the ears and he purred. Then I scooped him up and pulled him onto my lap again. His body went tight, but then he stuck his head under my arm, where it was dark. I stroked his back, and felt him start to loosen up. After a while, he started to purr again, and the way I was holding him up against me, I felt the purring right against my heart.
I was hugging my cat.
We sat that way for a long time. Maybe an hour. It meant more to me than if I’d gotten a friendly cat. If a friendly cat had done this with me, that wouldn’t have been such a big thing. But this was Toto.
“Poor Toto,” I said. “See? That’s not so hard. You just have to take a deep breath and let somebody love you.”
Then I decided to call my mother. Just in case she was lonely or feeling down, and needed to talk.
SIXTEEN
So, After About Two Months of Small Talk
From: mollynfrank
To: independence16
3:22 p.m.
Dear E,
Hope you’re having fun slogging through the big snow. Saw it on the news. That’s one thing I don’t miss. The seasonal difference here is more subtle. About 20 degrees cooler and fewer palmetto bugs. You don’t want to know more about palmetto bugs, believe me. We have spiders here the size of your palm. No kidding. And the cooler it gets, the more they’re found indoors. M found one in the tub this morning. Nearly had a seizure. I had to put him out more or less one-handed. We had one glass in the whole house big enough to catch him in.
But good news, too. I got a job. Well, just a part-timer from home. I’ve gotten so good at typing with my left that I got some casual work inputting data. They pay by the page, not the hour. So they have no investment in how many hands I use. This improves the outlook for getting back to the city. M and I crunched some numbers today, and if things keep going just like this, we might be able to pull it off in 14 or 15 months.
Won’t miss the palmetto bugs.
What about you? Hope you’re not feeling too alone.
-F
From: independence16
To: mollynfrank
6:16 p.m.
F,
Alone? What’s that?
Hard to feel alone when Wilbur is here about three nights out of five. He even has his own roll-away bed stashed in my living-room closet now. But it’s not a complaint. I like having him here. He’s good company. And it does sort of take the alone out of living alone.
Christmas break is almost over. School starts again in six days. Yeah, yeah, I know. Just yesterday I told you school starts again in seven days. Both true, however. If I can survive school, you can survive the palmetto bugs.
More later,
E
From: independence16
To: mollynfrank
11:11 p.m.
F,
Been wanting to say this but putting it off. Wrestled with it last time I wrote but lost. Tired of wrestling.
I didn’t tell you this at the time, but right after I found out you were leaving, my friends came over and told me all these horror stories about people they’d lost. To make me feel better, I guess. It did, in a way. But I didn’t want to feel better at their expense. Didn’t just want it to be “Somebody else has it worse.” But it sort of was. At the time.
I’ve been thinking a lot since then. Probably my first mistake.
I’ve been thinkin
g how every one of their stories was about giving all this love to somebody who didn’t even deserve it. Somebody who turned on them or let them down in some horrible way.
So then I started feeling lucky. Because I made such a good choice. Even if you’re in some other part of the country. Even if all we can ever be is friends. At least you’re somebody who deserves it.
I guess I did one smart thing. To balance off everything else.
Speaking of everything else, look at the length of this e-mail. Geez.
I suppose you know I’m wrestling with hitting delete. But I’m not going to.
I’m going to hit send. But first some instructions for you: DO NOT SAY ANYTHING.
DO NOT write back and say that’s so sweet and I’m a worthwhile person too or any similar shit that will make me so embarrassed my ears will turn red and let off steam. Just read this and then pretend you never did. It’s just information. Not an invitation to comment.
E
PS: Did I mention that you should NOT SAY ANYTHING?
From: mollynfrank
To: independence16
12:23 a.m.
Dear Elle,
My lips are sealed.
Love,
Frank
Jumpstart the World Page 15
