Patricia Gaffney

by Mad Dash

  We try again with the chessboard. I act goofy, say something to make the twins giggle. “Don’t grin!” Mrs. Thorpe orders. “Kevin! We discussed this!”

  I must not have heard right. “Did you say, ‘Don’t grin’?”

  She looks at me coldly. “They’ve just lost their front teeth, both of them. Of course they mustn’t grin. Toothlessness is not cute. Smile, yes, with lips closed, but I don’t want bare gums in these photographs.”

  That’s when I banish her. It’s never easy, but sometimes it’s necessary, and with Mrs. Thorpe it’s essential. Her son is a congressman—she told me that early on to impress me, intimidate me, who knows. It’s true, I want more clients like her—who wouldn’t? I’m a low-volume high-dollar photographer, and they can afford my premium fees—but I can’t let her stay. I use fake confidentiality, trying to disarm her. “They’re high-strung,” I say, guiding her casually into the lounge, holding onto her furry arm. “Such bright boys, so intelligent, and this is, really, let’s face it, an artificial environment. Forgive me, but when you’re here, their anchor, their compass, they can’t—naturally!—focus on anything else. I never do this, I hardly ever do this, because it’s necessary only in the most special circumstances, really extraordinary children and their families—but Mrs. Thorpe, I really must insist, and I know you understand—you must go.”

  She does! It’s amazing! She doesn’t just take a seat in the lounge, either—she leaves, exactly what I was hoping for but not expecting. “I’ll be back in one hour.” She points a finger at me, as if this is her idea. Up close, her face is puffy around the eyes; she looks more frazzled than formidable. She’s glad to get out of here, I realize; small children make her crazy—they probably always have—and her only defense is becoming a shrew. “See you later,” we say to each other with mutual relief.

  “Okay!” I shout, clapping my hands. I’ll turn cartwheels to change the mood in this place. “Let’s have some fun!” I don’t have long to get the twins out of the funk they’re in and up onto the Happy Plateau, and they’ll only last about thirty minutes, max, once they’re up there. Time’s a-wastin’.

  The only thing that’s piqued either one’s interest so far is the camera, my brand-new Canon. They want to play with it; I’ve had to shoo them away from it twice already. It gives me an idea.

  “You know what, I’m tired of taking pictures of you guys. I don’t suppose you’d like to take some for me for a change?”

  They look at me with suspicion. Eugene glances at Kevin, who’s the leader. “You mean like Polaroid or thomething?” Kevin asks.

  “Yeah, like Polaroid.” Good idea.

  “We’ve done that before.” Eugene squirms in the three-piece suit Grandma dressed him in. “Our dad leths uth blow on the picture.”

  “Tho it’ll come out fathter,” Kevin explains. They have identical snub noses and stick-out ears. Fabulous-looking kids. They have identical toothless gums, too, and by God, I’m going to photograph them.

  “Oh, wow. Well, hey, if you can do that, you can take pictures, too.”

  I don’t use Polaroid as much as I used to when formatting shots, not since digital, but I’ve still got unrefrigerated film somewhere and a very old Nikon with an NPC Proback. The twins hover around me when I crouch down and explain how it works. It’s lovely to see the nerves and wariness leak out of them as they become their own age again, turn back into children. They’re so small and slight, their bones like sticks through the tough little-boy skin. Their bowed heads smell like hair tonic. I can never have enough of children. I want to gather these two up in my arms like a bunch of flowers.

  They take turns shooting pictures of each other. I give them my watch and explain about the second hand, and just let them go. After a while I start messing with the lighting, taking shots of them taking shots, and that gives me another idea.

  “Hey, guys, let’s really do this right, whaddaya say? How about if…” I explain what I’d like, a formal picture of Kevin taking a formal picture of Eugene, and then vice versa.

  They don’t get it.

  “Okay, look. Tripod,” I tell Greta, pointing, and she brings me the one leaning in a corner. “And a nice formal background…like…this?” I roll up the wood paneling and roll down a dark blue cloth. “Or—no, I know! A scene! Check this out.” Up with the blue, down with an extremely nifty hand-painted mural I’ve never used. I paid much too much for it, but I couldn’t resist. It’s an outdoor scene, a split-rail fence in the foreground, funky old farmhouse in back, leafy green tree limbs at the top throwing great shadows. It’s corny, but I love it.

  “Ith like the Wetht,” Eugene observes. “Like cowboyth?”

  “Old-fashioned,” I say, suddenly not sure. Maybe they like space better, or dinosaurs.

  Kevin, whose word is law, goes up close and touches the screen—which is forbidden, but I keep quiet; I’ll worry about oily little fingerprints later. He sweeps the scene with his whole hand, in fact, petting it, as if he’d like to get inside it. “Ith pretty,” he pronounces. And we’re off.

  Now that they know how Polaroid works, they want to shoot fast, and the trick is slowing them down. I pose them in profile, facing each other before the screen. I make Eugene sit bolt upright in a chair with his hands on his thighs, serious-faced—that’s another challenge—with Kevin bent over the tripod, staring into the Nikon’s viewfinder. We do that for a while, then switch, which involves Kevin rolling down his shirtsleeves, buttoning up his vest, and putting his tie and jacket back on, Eugene reversing the process. I’m seeing the whole thing in soft sepia, but who knows. It’s a joke setup, sort of Norman Rockwellian, but the boys’ wonderful faces, earnest on the surface, bubbling with merriment just underneath, rescue it from cuteness.

  “What do you think?” I ask Greta, who is doing a pretty good, low-key job so far, except during pauses she can never remember to turn off the molding lights or check the flash heads for heat; I have to remind her every time. “How does it look to you?”

  “It’s great! It’s so sweet, and so, I don’t know, simple, I mean it’s like just two things, but it works.”

  Precisely. It’s these great kids in an adorable pose, at the same time they’re being exactly who they are. So I have enough of that, but I want a backup, something completely different. And I can’t help it, I want to knock old lady Thorpe’s socks off. With what, though?

  Greta thinks of it first. So obvious. So perfect. “Why don’t you let them play with the puppy?”

  Fabulous idea, although not without a million built-in difficulties. Like getting Sock used to being mauled by two excited six-year-olds, and after that, getting all three to stay roughly on a new set and within range of cameras and lights. Refocus, refocus, refocus. “We’ll just let it go,” I say to console Greta, who’s looking harried by all the changes and adjustments that keep coming and coming. “We’ll get something, don’t worry about it. That’s the fun part—not knowing what’s going to happen. Relax, Greta, have fun.”

  The twins are having fun, that’s the main thing. Clicking cameras and flashing lights are old hat to them now, they don’t even notice. I told them to take off their ties but keep their jackets on, and I love how rumpled and wrinkled they look. Grandmother may or may not agree, but she’s got to like their red cheeks and their laughing, relaxed faces, gums and all. I step around with the camera in my hands, using the motor drive. I get even better shots using the tripod and remote, because then the puppy comes to me and I can get the boys alone, and sometimes they’re posed perfectly, sitting on their heels and grinning right into my lens. I’ve heard photographers say they don’t know if they’ve got anything good till the shoot’s over and they’re checking the proofs, but I always know. And today even the timing’s right: Everybody, including Sock, starts getting cranky at the very moment Mrs. Thorpe returns.

  Fun’s over. End of shoot.

  Greta is exhausted. Me, too, but I love it, even the letdown, all that energy spent, the tension
and uncertainty, the near disasters, the mini coups. I feel like a flat balloon. It’s like I’ve come down from a drug, but there’s no hangover because I brought the high with me—it’s in that little stack of memory cards on my desk.

  I send Greta out with money and directions, and she comes back from World’s Best Deli on Columbia with hot pastrami sandwiches and all the fixings, including truly the world’s best pickles. We eat in the cramped office while I download some of today’s cards and check out a few proofs. I just like to check, make sure nothing nightmarish has happened—not that it really can anymore with digital, but still, I like to check—but I don’t pore over proofs the day of a shoot, and I never show them to clients. They’re too tired, it would just get them all revved up again. Better to wait and build up all-new anticipation.

  “God, this is good,” Greta says over a mouthful of salty french fries. “I was famished.”

  “Me, too. Nothing since breakfast.” I’m half surprised she’s not a vegan or something. At the very least she looks like a picky eater with her freckled, sugar-white, cheekbony face and her long white arms. She’s a bit clumsy, I found out today; she makes wide, scary gestures with those long arms, sometimes when she’s standing near tripods and light stands. I thought of a Labrador retriever beside a low coffee table, its thick tail sweeping the drinks over.

  “Show me your book,” I invite—there was no time this morning to look at it—and she spreads out her portfolio on my desk.

  “I was an art major in college. I guess you can sort of tell.”

  “How do you mean?” I wipe my greasy fingers before turning the photos over carefully. They look like photo-school pictures: not bad, not great. Competent. Luckily a beginner can be a mediocre photographer and a terrific assistant. Attitude is everything.

  She sneaks the puppy a bite of her sandwich. “My stuff is very young and self-conscious, it’s not really me yet.”

  “No, it’s good. Lots of promise.”

  “I probably should’ve stayed in school, but it didn’t seem like I was learning anything new after the first year or so.”

  “Well, I’ve got nothing against photography schools in general. You can certainly get a good grounding in the basics, if nothing else. And, of course, some schools are a lot better than others.” Greta’s is one that some are a lot better than, so I don’t pursue that. “But to really learn the business, I don’t think there’s anything like assisting.”

  “Absolutely. I learned so much just today, watching how you kept changing things to make it work. And really fast on your feet, and always right inside their heads, the kids’ heads, like practically being them. And then the pictures, God, they’re so great, the lady won’t even be able to pick.”

  “Well, let’s hope she likes one or two,” I say, thinking, Now, that’s the kind of attitude I like. “With children, though, you’re always improvising. Today was pretty much par for the course. If you go into a shoot with a fixed idea about how things are going to go, you’re just asking for it. Kids will always find a way to surprise you.”

  “I bet.”

  “Are you interested in children’s portraiture in particular?” Her portfolio only has one or two kid pics.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe. Before now, all I’ve done is product photography, to tell you the truth. Like fruits and vegetables, and one time just close-ups of nails.”

  “Nails?”

  “For a hardware store catalog.”

  “My God.”

  “But this—I love kids, and this was so much fun. And having your own studio, that must really be amazing—but then again, I also like playing with computers, you know, designing things, graphic art. But then—sometimes I feel like what I really want to do is study to be a photojournalist so I can travel, you know, see more of the world before I settle down. I see myself as”—she snickers, self-conscious—“like, Christiane Amanpour.” Next comes a giddy, full-throated laugh. “But then again—I have no money!”

  “I think you should definitely see the world before you settle down,” I say, laughing, too. “Before you get old and gray like me. This is the best time of your life, so don’t waste it! Whatever you do, don’t let all that energy go for nothing, that’s my advice.” Which I am never shy about giving—ask Andrew—but I look at this girl’s odd face, the eccentric clothes, her strange but marvelous hair, and even though there is absolutely no resemblance, I see myself twentysome years ago. In her spirit and her impracticality. Her talent and her cluelessness. Her big, vague ambitions, with no plans to achieve them.

  Why can’t you just give people money when you can see they need it? I could give Greta…a thousand dollars, say, and she could take a photojournalism course at Maryland or American U. while she saves up for the next course. Or she could just go—she could go to Africa or Asia or anywhere and start taking pictures. That’s how to see the world, just go, and she’s the kind of person who’d have the guts to do it.

  She starts throwing napkins and wrappers in the garbage. “Sorry about the modeling lights,” she says. “What a dolt.”

  “Forget it. Once I plugged the flash meter cord into the wall socket instead of the power supply.”

  She gasps. “What happened?”

  “Blew out everything. Luckily it wasn’t my studio. Or unluckily—I got fired.” Unfairly, I always thought. I was young and dumb, the photographer should’ve been paying more attention.

  “Did you go to photo school?”

  “Not me. Self-taught in the beginning, although I’ve picked up some degrees since then. But that was a long time ago. If I were coming up now, I’d do what you’re doing. And the desire to learn is half the battle, more than half. No, you were great today, Greta, very intuitive. You’re the one who thought of using Sock. That was totally inspired.”

  She beams. Then—it’s as though my praise is too much for her—she picks Sock up and hides her face in the dog’s furry neck. “Thanks,” she says, muffled. “Thank you very much.”

  I offer to drive her home.

  “Oh, no, I’ll just get the subway.”

  “No, it’s late, I’ll drop you off.”

  “Oh, no, really, I couldn’t. Thanks, but it’s too much.”

  “Don’t you live in Arlington? That’s not out of my way. Much.”

  “It’s not?”

  Then I realize: She thinks I live practically around the corner. So then I have to explain that I’m staying down in Virginia these days, a fact I wouldn’t have bothered mentioning otherwise. Her squinty eyes open wide, but she doesn’t ask me any questions.

  I hate winter. I hate five-thirty in the evenings, everybody’s lights on, glare in your eyes, the day’s over and all you’ve done is work. Why don’t they keep daylight saving time year-round? Winter is when we need it.

  In the car I ask Greta about her family, her life. She’s from the Philadelphia suburbs; her father and stepmother are schoolteachers. Her boyfriend’s name is Joel.

  “Actually,” she confides with a short laugh, “we’re fighting.” Her bare legs look bluish in the flicker of streetlamps; I keep turning the heater up. “He thinks we should move in together.”

  “You don’t want to?”

  “Well, I sort of do. We’ve been going together for five months.”

  “That’s not so long.”

  “I know, that’s what I tell him. I want to slow things down a little, but he says if, you know, we’re serious, we should be living together.” She heaves a deep, soulful sigh. “He’s older than I am.”

  “How old?”

  “Thirty-one. He’s divorced. Has a little boy. Joint custody. What he’d really like to do,” she says, looking out the side window, “is get married.”

  I bet. “What does he do?”

  “He’s a systems analyst.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Another heavy sigh. “So anyway. I don’t know what to do.”

  Andrew would be proud of me. I know exactly what she should do, but I say nothing, n
ot even the two words that would throw Greta’s dilemma into spectacular, blinding relief: Christiane Amanpour.

  She lives on the first floor of a low, sterile apartment building in the kind of featureless, aging, redbrick complex Arlington’s full of. I stop in front of the curb. She points her place out to me. “The one with the lights on. That’s good, that means Cindy’s home. My roommate. Good, I didn’t much feel like being by myself tonight. Frankly,” she adds, half laughing, trying to make that sound less pitiful.

  I think again of me at twenty-three, twenty-four. Out of college but not on any of the career tracks I thought I might be on by then. Hanging out with iffy guys, drinking too much in bars, taking too many dead-end jobs to pay the rent on my overpriced efficiency apartment. Confused. Thrilled with my independence, just delighting in being on my own, the whole world open and available if I could ever choose, ever commit—and then I fell in love with Andrew.

  And that was the end, if you look at it like that, if you take that perspective. The end of all my choices. After that, everything, like it or not, fell into place. Dash’s life, settled.

  “Greta.”

  She smiles at me, hand on the door. “Dash. Thank you so—”

  “I could use some help. I’m not in the office as often as I should be these days because of, you know, circumstances, so I’m thinking I could use a good, reliable assistant. It would be part-time, and mostly what you’d do is answer the phone and sound intelligent, but you’d also help me out on shoots like today, when it can get complicated. I think you did really well today—”

  “Oh wow.”

  “—especially considering the limited amount of experience you’ve had in portraiture—”

  “Oh, this would be so great.”

  “Now, you wouldn’t get rich, and we should probably try this out on a trial basis before either one of us commits—”

  “Oh, golly, the answer’s yes. Trial basis, that’s fine, whatever you think. I’m up for it, I’m ready.” Her whole face beams in the yellow light of the streetlamp. “Even if it’s not that much, a steady income right now would be perfect for me. Oh, I’m excited!”