“So I did. I do. And I light a candle at mass every Sunday for Julian Goetz.”
She doesn’t want to go back to the brownstone, yet, but the time is close. She won’t be able to find the boy in the photo from the Middle East. That leaves only one more photo, the homeless church service beneath the bridge in Albany, the city adjacent to Trent. Ada is afraid. Dark skin. Filthy skin. Track-marked and oozing and diseased skin. Her still-developing sense of independence doesn’t include bravery.
The bridge crosses the Hudson, a different river from the one that caught Julian’s body when it fell back to earth. Engineers and medical doctors reassured the families, given the type of explosion, the altitude, the way the airplane broke apart, their loved ones most certainly were already dead before the water consumed them. Do the words bring comfort? To some, perhaps, but not to her.
She carries the framed photograph beneath her arm, the camera strapped around her neck but zipped under her coat so no one can grab and steal it. She sees three fires flickering in barrels, people in a large circle around them, some standing, some cross-legged on the damp, graveled ground, some on cushions or folding chairs or piles of rags. A well-worn path cuts through the snow, carved by feet and shopping carts and dragged trash bags full of earthly possessions. She feels as though her rib cage will swing open and her heart burst out, it pummels her chest wall so forcefully. Her armpits tingle. Each breath fights its way up her trachea, clawing, kicking, tumbling from her lips with ragged determination.
She walks toward the river.
Some people look at her and murmur, but most focus on the preacher, a pale man wearing two knit caps and a peacoat, scarves laced around his legs. He stands on a pile of wooden pallets and talks to those gathered.
“What does it mean, then, to take up our cross and follow him? You may say, ‘We carry enough crosses,’ but are they ones he calls you to carry, or ones you bear up all on your own? You may say, ‘We are hungry and thirsty,’ but is that hunger and thirst for righteousness? You may say, ‘We are poor,’ but is it a poverty of spirit?
“You may be thinking, who cares about righteousness and the spirit and crosses. All you know is your stomach is empty and your toes are black from frostbite, and you think no one cares. Christ cares. You want him to prove it? He did prove it. He died for you. Even if every person who walks by you today spits on you, tramples you, judges you for your homelessness or addiction or unemployment or your smell, they are not Jesus. They do not speak for Jesus. He says you are loved. He says you are worth his life.”
The man holds up a loaf of bread. “And so, when we eat this, we do it to remember that we have value to him, that he sees us even if not one other single person does. We can be like him, even if others are not, because we remember his sacrifice.”
He gives the bread to the person on his right, who rips a piece from the loaf and passes it to the next person, and the next. Ada stands behind the circle, but when the bread comes close to her, a woman slaps the man holding it and points to her. He turns and waves it at her. Take and eat.
She’s never taken Communion before. In her community, only men were allowed, and the reasons were twofold, according to the prophet. Because in the biblical accounts of the Last Supper, only men are mentioned as being present; any other talk of love feasts or the breaking of the bread, her father said, are only meals and not Communion. And because the men are the intermediaries between God and their wives, their daughters; therefore the sacrament carries no meaning for women. Holy Zion freely offers bread and wine to any and all in the congregation, but they only serve Communion once a year, at the Passover, as is their understanding of when it should be celebrated.
Take and eat.
She approaches, the loaf in his grubby hand, the meaty part of the bread speckled with grit. She twists off a small bit of crust and backs away. The man shuffles to the next person and hands the loaf off, and it continues around the circle until all have some. The man on the pallets tears the remainder in half. “This is my body, broken for you.”
A woman limps around to each person, sticking a paper Dixie cup in his or her hands. Another woman fills the cup with grape juice, the bottle shaking so badly as she pours, it sloshes over the rim and onto the fingers of more than one of those beneath the bridge, including Ada. When all the juice had been poured—juice! She’s never heard of such heresy—the pale man says, “This is my blood, which is shed for the forgiveness of sins. Drink it, all of you.”
So they do.
As does she.
The crowd breaks apart, some dropping their cups on the ground and moving to their makeshift cardboard homes and beds situated more deeply under the bridge. Some surge closer to the burn cans, looking toward the road leading to the water, seemingly waiting. Others collect the cups, tossing them into the fire or stacking them into their belongings. People eye her with all manner of expressions she’s unable to read because of their appearance—beards and matted hair and cloths over their faces—and her fear. She wants to turn and leave, but her body won’t obey and she’s relieved by it.
Not far to go now.
The pale man approaches. “Can I help you find someone?”
She shakes her head.
“Then what can I do for you? Not that you’re not welcome here. You’re just looking a teeny bit out of place.” He holds his finger and thumb a centimeter apart when he says teeny, peering through the thin space at her, his other eye closed.
“I’m Ada Goetz.”
His smile vanishes. “Julian,” he says, more breath than word.
She nods. “You knew him.”
“Going on ten years,” the man says. “I’m Camden Cooper. Are you cold?”
“Very.”
She thinks he’ll lead her to an inside area, but instead he beckons her closer to one of the fires. “Gladys, a chair please,” he calls out.
Someone shouts, “Sure, Preach,” and moments later the largest woman Ada has ever seen—tall, wide, thick—approaches, two beach chairs swinging on her wrist. She wears a short, tight dress despite the cold, and strappy gold shoes, dirt staining the toes of her creamy hosiery, a color much too light for her skin. If it weren’t for the clothes, Ada would think her a man.
Gladys opens the chairs and wanders off. Camden offers the least broken one to Ada, and she sits, crossing her legs for warmth. He offers, “I can find you a blanket,” but she shakes her head, not wanting unknown filth and germs on her. He laughs a little and says, “A clean one.”
“Oh, I didn’t—”
“Ada, it’s fine. No one’s pretending it’s the Ritz down here.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry. For your loss. Yeah, he’s somewhere out there worshipping before the throne of the Almighty, but, man, it’s Julian, and . . .” His voice clouds, and he sniffs, grunts the mourning from his throat. “. . . and it’s Julian. So I guess I’m sorry for my own self too.”
Camden feels through the pockets of his coat, removes a crushed box of cigarettes, shakes a butt into his hands. He holds it in his lips, lights it. After a short drag, it extinguishes. He flicks the remaining filter into the barrel. He jerks his head at the frame she still holds. “What are you clinging to so tightly there?”
She turns the photograph over in her lap.
“I’ve seen that one,” Camden says. “People come down here with all kinds of frames, you know? Pictures of their loved ones in them, runaways and addicts and crazy uncles, asking if anyone has seen them, thinking they might have fallen off the face of the earth and landed here.”
“And you?”
“I’m here by choice. Sounds crazy, I know, but that’s how it is.”
“You live here all the time?”
He nods, points over his shoulder. “That pile of junk is all mine.”
Ada can’t respond to his words. She doesn’t know how. To her, the souls beneath this bridge are here for their sins: addiction, prostitution, or illnesses related
to those things. Mental instability, which her father would declare either brought on by the worldliness in which they drench themselves, or by demons that will release them only through repentance. Jesus ate with sinners and tax collectors, Julian reminded her. Again, two Gods—her father’s and her husband’s. She’s drawn toward the one Julian taught her and Pastor Ray preaches, and most members of Holy Zion seemingly embrace, but she’s still afraid if she gets too close, she’ll learn he’s the fire-breathing beast of the Revelation and she’ll be burned to ash.
She brushes those thoughts away and asks, “How did you meet?”
Camden shakes his head. “I use the term meet loosely. Julian was down here taking pictures and I tried to steal his camera. Yeah, while it was around his neck. I was so strung out I didn’t know why I couldn’t just grab it and run. And Julian, he just laughed. At least I think he did. Maybe that’s the haze of cocaine talking. But what he did do is buy me breakfast from that cart right across the street there. We sat and talked until I passed out. I woke up a day later with twenty bucks and Julian’s card in my pocket. I immediately went and spent all the money on booze and drank myself into a stupor.
“Some time later, and I can’t tell you how long, I was arrested for destruction of property. Took a baseball bat to a line of cars. Again, I can’t tell you why. I still had Julian’s number and I thought, What the heck? So I called him and asked him to come bail me out. He showed up to my arraignment instead. Somehow he managed to convince the judge to remand me to rehab. I was one ticked cokehead, let me tell you. I screamed all sorts of profanity at him, spit on him while the guards were dragging me out. And you know what he said? ‘God loves you too much for this.’
“Now I’ve had many people get all religious on me, and I pretended to listen because it usually came with a free meal or a blanket or something. But, and I can’t describe it any better than this, Julian’s words sounded different. On that day, at that moment, the Holy Spirit decided to use his words to open my eyes. I worked that rehab, and it was hard. I came out clean, and it’s been ten years and it’s still hard, every single day. Especially here, because I can get it so easily—though by now the regulars know not to offer. Every now and then when things get bad, I admit to hitting the booze and getting wasted. I’m not proud of it, but that’s reality.”
“If it’s about money—”
“Ada, sweet Ada,” Camden says, and she sees compassion and fire in his eyes, the echo of the flame in the garbage can, the image of Christ. “Julian told me about you. He loved you from the moment he saw you. He wanted to bring you here, to meet me, all of us, but was waiting. He said you weren’t ready yet. But here you are.”
A white van appears, creeping down the access road to the river. The ragtag collection of men and women move toward it in unison, as if the ground suddenly tipped in its direction and they are rolling like glass marbles. The back and side doors open, and well-dressed volunteers hand out foil-wrapped sandwiches, cups of coffee, clothing and toiletries and other items.
“The mission,” Camden says. “They come every day with food, and then on Sundays with these extras. They’re doing the Lord’s work, I don’t begrudge them that. They have a shelter they run, too, and I believe most of them honestly care. But they don’t understand, Ada, not like I do. They haven’t been homeless. They haven’t been afraid to go to sleep because it’s so cold they think they’ll freeze to death if they do. They don’t use the Hudson for their toilet and wash water. They have their own struggles, to be sure, but not these struggles. And if they did in the past, they’re far enough removed from it that my small flock here under this bridge, they don’t care. They think, I have a bed now, and clothes and food and a shower and a job. I’m not like you anymore.
“So that’s why I stay, Ada. Because when I say God loves them no matter what, they know I have the same no matter what as they do. Street cred, that’s all. And I’m here until the good Lord tells me it’s time to move on.”
The understanding again refuses to come to her. Camden Cooper, a minister to the homeless and a former drug addict still given to bouts of debauchery? This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Her father quoted Galatians at them daily. And second Corinthians. For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness? How can such paradox survive in one half-starved man?
I take the photos, Julian told her once. I don’t try to figure it all out. God’s done that all for me.
“Can I take your picture?” Ada asks.
“Okay now,” he laughs, “Julian didn’t tell me you were a photographer too.”
“I’m not. It’s, well, it’s this thing.”
He stands near the fire barrel, holding the frame, and she shoots the photo. Gladys marches over—Ada is certain she has stubble on her upper lip, her chin—and she poses next to Camden. Then another person, and another, until half the bridge people are assembled and Ada has to move backward to fit everyone in the frame because she doesn’t know how to zoom out.
“I’d like a copy of that,” Camden says. “Maybe fifty copies. People here will want one too.”
That Ada understands without him explaining. Photography is a civilized pursuit, something of holidays and grandbabies and special memories. The camera gives humanity.
She shakes his hand, and the hands of several others, enduring foul-smelling hugs as Camden introduces her as Julian’s wife. Then they grow bored, and achy from standing, and they want to inspect the goodies given to them by the mission volunteers, and she’s left alone with Camden again. She says good-bye, and he removes a dirty string from his neck, places it over her head. A plastic cross dangles from the bottom.
“I baptized him here, you know. Julian. In this river. He hadn’t been, before then.” And Camden wanders back toward the water’s edge, kicking the damp stones.
She’s not through the door of the brownstone twenty minutes before Hortense arrives, barging in with her own key, not ringing the doorbell. Ada had to use the spare key hidden in the backyard, the one in the film canister with the rock glued to the lid that Julian buried in pea stone beneath the drippy gutters; her own house key was with the Jeep key, on the ring she last saw dangling from her father’s hand.
Ada expects questions, braces for them, but Hortense drops her purse on the floor and folds Ada against her, not unlike the day Julian died. When Hortense pulls away, she presses her wrists into the fleshy part of Ada’s upper arms and jostles her, the way Ada’s mother did to her when she wanted her attention, shaking her hard enough so her head was forced upward to look into her mother’s face. The way Ada did to her younger siblings when she was cross with them, or frightened by something dangerous they had done.
“I thought you went back,” Hortense says, and then embraces Ada again—for her own sake, not for Ada’s.
“No.” She doesn’t have the energy to tell Hortense how she tried and failed. Not now.
“Then where have you been?”
So Ada tells her, as she rehangs the frames, three of the images now a story within a story, less about the subjects photographed and more about the photographer. She straightens the picture of the emaciated boy. “I talked to Greyer DiGiulio’s mother. He’s in remission. But I couldn’t drive all the way to Wyoming to take his picture.”
“Why would you want to?” Hortense asks.
“Because . . .” Ada hesitates. She never intended to show her photographs to anyone, but finds herself opening the bag on the sofa, turning on the camera, and giving it to Hortense, who inspects each one, while she watches. This is the first time she’s looked at them too.
“That’s you,” Hortense says, tapping the screen. She enlarges the image of Joy, standing behind Nona’s chair, and points again. Ada sees it, her body—spectral, malformed—mirrored in the glass protecting Julian’s original work. Anyone else would have known to step out of the way, to angle her body and the camera so her reflection
wouldn’t be seen.
“You’re there again.” Hortense says. “And in this one too.”
Julian once told her some cultures believe cameras steal the souls of those photographed, trapping it within the bounds of the two-dimension paper image. But in portraits she took, Ada sees her soul. A piece of herself, captured forever with the fragments Julian left for her to find there, in his work. Her father told everyone in the community that the heathens had no excuse to disbelieve since the Lord Almighty etched himself upon all things at the time he formed it. But she knows now each act of creation imprints the creator on the created. It’s here, before her eyes, in these photographs.
“I think you should go to Wyoming,” Hortense says, switching off the camera. “There’s something here. We could . . . you could do something with it.”
“The pictures aren’t any good.”
“Yeah, they suck. But who cares about that? It’s what you’re trying to say.”
“There’s no message in these.”
“There always is. Why did you think to take them to begin with?”
“I don’t know. It was a spur of the moment idea.”
Hortense shakes her head. “Nope.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway. Even if I did travel to see Greyer, there’s still this other one.” She touches the first in the collection, the Middle Eastern flag burning with the boy’s hair aflame.
“But, Ada—”
“Hortense, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to seem impolite, and especially after everything you’ve done for me, but I’ve spent the morning under a bridge. I’m freezing. My feet are soaked. I’ve lived on vending machine snacks and fast food. I’ve driven I don’t know how many miles. I just want to shower and sleep, if that’s okay.”
“Sure, it’s okay,” Hortense says, and her painted lips curl up at the ends, a crescent moon, red, like ones Ada has seen in the sky on the hottest summer nights. Then the woman squints at her, inspects her, and shakes her head. Another chuckle. “Yeah, more than okay.”
Hortense scoops up her purse and, before leaving, spins back one more time, arm in the air; if she’d had fingers, she’d be pointing one of them. “Oh, one more thing.” She gives Ada an orange Post-it; it’s stuck to her stub. “This kid came by looking for you while you were gone. Evan . . . Walker, or something. His address and phone number are in there. You can ask Ray White about him, but he was really desperate to talk to you.”
Still Life Page 22
