by John Helfers
And this was what came out,
His wisdom, his blessing, his curse,
His last wish
His poem.
He said
‘‘I love you.’’
FAMILY PHOTOS
by S. Andrew Swann
S. Andrew Swann is the pen name of Steven Swiniarski. He’s married and lives in the Greater Cleveland area where he has lived all of his adult life. He has a background in mechanical engineering and—besides writing—works as a computer systems analyst for one of the largest private child services agencies in the Cleveland area. He has published seventeen novels with DAW books over the past fourteen years, which include science fiction, fantasy, horror, and thrillers. His latest novel is The Dwarves of Whiskey Island, a fantasy set in Cleveland. He is currently working on a sequel to the Hostile Takeover trilogy, an epic space opera.
THE SENATOR ON the television asked, ‘‘Was it less exploitive when victims did not have these rights?’’ He gave a condescending look across the podium at his opponent. ‘‘Perhaps the governor from South Dakota preferred it back when killers and rapists could sell their so-called stories and profit from books, movies . . .’’
Mrs. Angela Norris had stopped when she heard the senator’s voice. The party continued around her, conversation, quiet laughter, the clinking of ice in people’sglasses, all fading from her awareness as she stared at the presidential debate.
‘‘. . . my opponent would take away this absolute right from the victims of crime. He would return to the days when anyone, including the perpetrator, could profit from a criminal act. And—is that my time?’’
By all rights, Mrs. Norris should have been one of the senator’s supporters. She had never voted for anyone outside her party, her family’s party, the late Mr. Norris’ party. But every time she looked at him, she couldn’t help but think of what was happening to her son.
No one has a right to do that, she thought.
The governor, a younger man, frowned as he responded. ‘‘My opponent is well-intentioned, but he is wrong. His legislation intends to assure victims of crime some compensation for commercial exploitation of that crime. It sounds reasonable, but the precedent is completely at odds with the letter and the spirit of the First Amendment. It extends the concept of intellectual property beyond creative works, but to the historical events from which they’re derived. In some interpretations it extends to any media representation of the accused—’’
Someone touched her arm and Mrs. Norris jerked, sending an ice cube flying out of her glass to land on the Oriental carpet at her feet.
‘‘Angela? Are you all right?’’
She turned to face Justice Conroy. His steely-blue eyes watched her with some concern, and she was deeply afraid that she had just made a fool of herself in front of an old family friend.
‘‘I’m sorry. The debate just—’’ She shook her head. ‘‘Never mind. Can you help my son?’’
Justice Conroy didn’t make eye contact with her. Instead, he swirled his drink and looked at the television himself. ‘‘I understand your concern, but legally it is up to your son or his lawyers to appeal any decision.’’
‘‘You saw the pictures, the court couldn’t have intended this.’’
He raised his glass to his lips and drained the small amount of amber liquid that remained. He shook his head. ‘‘There’s nothing I can do.’’
He turned to go, and Mrs. Norris grabbed his arm. ‘‘Please? He’s my only child.’’
Back to her, his shoulders slumped.
‘‘You were my father’s best friend. Can’t you help his grandson?’’
‘‘Angela, if you think there’s some sort of abuse happening, you need to talk to the AG’s office, or the police.’’
‘‘I’ve been trying, but no one listens to me.’’ She walked around him so that she faced him again. ‘‘If you called someone, they would listen to you.’’
‘‘I don’t have a magic wand.’’
‘‘But they would listen.’’
He nodded slowly, defeated by her logic. ‘‘I can call someone in the AG’s office on your behalf.’’
‘‘Thank you.’’
‘‘I’m doing it for your father,’’ he told her. ‘‘I don’t think they’ll agree with your assessment of the situation.’’
Mrs. Norris frowned at him. ‘‘But you saw the pictures?’’
‘‘Yes, I did.’’ He slipped by her. ‘‘Now if you’d excuse me.’’
She didn’t pay much attention to the discomfort on Justice Conroy’s face. All that mattered is that the faceless bureaucrats who had been ignoring her pleas for three years would be hearing from a state supreme court justice. They would have to do something then. Then, once they actually saw what was happening to her son, it would stop.
When Mrs. Norris returned home, she walked into her son’s bedroom. The lights had burned out long ago, so she stood in the doorway a long time staring into the darkness. She spent much of that time wondering why she stood in front of her son’s dark, empty room.
Nothing had been here since Mr. Norris had cleaned out her son’s things over thirty years ago. Her husband had left a bare room that they hadn’t bothered to use since. It was one of the things they never talked about. She had never told him that she would have liked to keep something, a piece of furniture, a T-shirt, a poster for one of those obnoxious rock bands.
She had just let him throw everything away.
Mrs. Norris slowly closed her son’s door, and walked down the hall. She paused briefly at the door to her husband’s bedroom, but that door she didn’t open. She hadn’t opened it in the three years since his death.
When she entered her own small bedroom, she sat at her vanity table and pulled a small yellowing photograph from one of the drawers.
In the old drugstore Kodak print, her son showed a gap-toothed grin to the camera, holding a present from a Christmas forty-eight years gone. The glossy surface of the print had cracked in a line across Billy’s six-year-old face. Mrs. Norris had kept it, because it was the only picture she had where her son was smiling.
Her hands shook, and she closed her eyes.
Justice Conroy was true to his word. He called someone in the Attorney General’s office. Where her years of protests, documents, letters, and phone calls hadn’t even resulted in the acknowledgment she existed, his inquiry got a response within days.
They called her and promised to send an investigator to accompany her to the next exhibit. A week later, he arrived at her house.
‘‘Mrs. Norris?’’ The man said when she opened the door. ‘‘I am Agent Wilson from the State Bureau of Investigation. I understand that you have a complaint about your son’s disposition?’’
She looked at the agent, looking for some sign of emotion, of the enormity of what was happening. His tone infuriated her. It was the same bored monotone you got when you called the electric company. ‘‘Your call is very important to us.’’
My son is not important to you at all.
She forced herself to say, ‘‘Thank you for investigating.’’
I’ve only been trying to get you damn people to investigate this for three years—almost since the trial.
He nodded, and in the same distant telemarketer voice told her, ‘‘It’s our jo
b to investigate charges that the system is being abused. Unfortunately, we have limited resources.’’
‘‘Sir, it is my son who’s being abused.’’
‘‘That’s what I’m here to determine.’’
‘‘You need to take him away from my granddaughter,’’ she snapped. ‘‘The court never should have considered granting her custody.’’
The agent frowned. ‘‘Mrs. Norris, I am not here to review a court decision. I am here to determine if your son is being mistreated.’’
Mrs. Norris grunted. There certainly would be no question of that. For all the high-minded talk about allowing ‘‘victims’’ the ‘‘right’’ to their stories, Mrs. Norris knew that meant news, movies, books.
Stories—not the kind of obscenity her granddaughter created.
Mrs. Norris rode in the passenger seat next to Agent Wilson. She sat ramrod straight, every muscle tensed at the thought of meeting her granddaughter.
‘‘Mrs. Norris,’’ he said before he pulled away from the house. ‘‘I should tell you that I was against the idea of you accompanying me.’’
‘‘This is my son.’’
‘‘I understand your feelings. I’ve read the file, and your statements to the court. I’ve also read the restraining order against you, and several complaints—’’
‘‘Those were all dismissed,’’ Mrs. Norris snapped. ‘‘She’s been manipulating the system. Preventing me from even talking to my own son. Can you imagine?’’
‘‘Yes. Like I said, I read the file.’’ He turned to look at her. ‘‘It was a very thick file.’’
For a few moments it almost seemed that he was staring at her as if she was the one who had done something wrong. Mrs. Norris steeled herself. He was just another bureaucratic functionary, annoyed that someone like her had the temerity to assert herself. ‘‘We should go, Agent Wilson.’’
Agent Wilson drove his car off the freeway, taking the off-ramp to one of the uglier parts of downtown. It was a place that Mrs. Norris would never have gone alone, full of dark buildings and dark people.
He pulled to a stop in front of the gallery. The building squatted in a nest of industrial detritus; warehouse shells and weed-shot lots of broken asphalt. The brick sides of the building were painted a glossy black that cast slimy reflections of the yellow streetlights. Her stomach tightened when she saw it.
The front was a massive glass wall, spilling the stark, surgical white light out into the street. Inside, people in expensive clothes were sipping red wine and eating shrimp impaled with toothpicks.
Mrs. Norris saw some pictures hanging, and she had to close her eyes and take a few deep breaths.
I can do this, I HAVE to do this.
Before she was ready, the passenger door opened and she almost fell in the gutter. She threw her hand out and grabbed the door, and looked up into Agent Wilson’s face.
‘‘Are you all right, Mrs. Norris?’’
No! ‘‘I’m fine.’’ She pulled herself up, out of the car, and tried to assume some posture of dignity and self-control. I will not cry, I will not scream. . . .
A sign in the glass window told them that the exhibition was named ‘‘Daddy’s Girl’’ and was running through the end of the month. The artist was ‘‘Sarah.’’
Just ‘‘Sarah.’’ No family name.
‘‘I told you there’s no need for you to be here.’’ Agent Wilson said in his quiet telemarketer voice. ‘‘It might be better if you waited in the car.’’
No need? Of course I need to be here.
Mrs. Norris stood a little straighter and smoothed out her coat. ‘‘Come on, and I will show you exactly what is happening to my son.’’
She marched into the gallery, leading Agent Wilson.
The first picture, the one to greet patrons as they walked through the doors, was titled ‘‘Self-Abuse.’’ The black-and-white photo showed a middle-aged man in women’s underwear, fishnet stockings, and high heels. He sat at an old-fashioned school desk, and he was carving a tight cross-hatched pattern in his naked forearm with a rusty razor blade.
She forced herself to turn away without shutting her eyes or breaking down. There were worse things. . . .
Like the image ‘‘Anticipation.’’ The same man, naked, bound and gagged, spot-lit on a worktable; skin smeared with grease or blood, indistinguishable in the black-and-white image. A woman stands, back to the camera, holding a power drill whose large bit is only a blur to the camera.
Or ‘‘Impact I’’ where the man is bound to a chair being struck by someone who’s little more than a blurred shadow. The camera catches the moment as the man’s head snaps back, sweat flying, bloody drool sailing from his mangled mouth.
Or ‘‘Puppet IV’’ where chromed chains suspend the man from hooks embedded in the skin.
Around her, the gallery patrons nattered on, oblivious to the horror on the walls around them. Someone who could have been one of Justice Conroy’s peers was sayingsomething about how popular culture had always been informed by the criminal, deviant act, and how glad he was that a real artist had reclaimed that power. An effeminate man in sunglasses and a pinstripe jacket complained that so many ‘‘victims’’ spoiled an opportunity by turning their stories into tabloid junk, not enough of them thought to produce something of value. Some awful woman wondered aloud about how much of the pictures was her, how much was him.
She turned from picture to picture, from patron to patron, feeling her stomach tighten.
She finally turned to face Agent Wilson so she could focus on something other than her son’s image. ‘‘You see? You see this? He’s being beaten, sodomized, humiliated—’’
‘‘No!’’ a female voice came from across the gallery and Mrs. Norris froze. She could feel the bile rising, as she turned toward the voice.
‘‘No, damn it! You can’t be here. You. Heartless. Conniving. Bitch!’’ A wineglass shattered on the gallery floor as Mrs. Norris’ granddaughter pushed her way through the crowd. Everyone backed away and stared at Mrs. Norris and Agent Wilson.
‘‘Sarah,’’ Mrs. Norris said, trying to be calm.
‘‘Don’t say it. Do not say my fucking name.’’ Sarah whipped around and faced Agent Wilson. ‘‘Are you with this bitch? Because I have a restraining order against this woman. She can’t be within two hundred yards of me or my father.’’
Sarah trembled. The black dress she wore looked as if it might burst into flame from suppressed rage. Agent Wilson stepped forward, pulling out his ID badge. ‘‘My name is Agent Wilson, from the State Bureau of Investigation.’’
Sarah didn’t even deign to look at the man’s badge. She stared into his face. ‘‘What pretense did she drag you here with?’’
‘‘She didn’t drag me here. I’m investigating allegationsof cruelty for the State Attorney General’s office.’’
Sarah glared at Mrs. Norris. ‘‘You!’’
‘‘He’s my son,’’ she waved at the gallery. ‘‘What you’re doing to him—’’
‘‘What I’m doing? What I’m doing!’’
Agent Wilson stepped between them. ‘‘Please calm down, both of you.â�
�™â€™ He looked at Sarah. ‘‘The courts gave you the right to produce work incorporating the defendant’s image, but these portraits show activity that cross the line into abuse.’’
My God, thought Mrs. Norris, does he ever use another tone of voice?
‘‘Sir, these are pictures,’’ Sarah said. ‘‘They aren’t real, they’re staged, they’re art.’’
Mrs. Norris couldn’t help herself. ‘‘That is bullshit!’’
‘‘Sir,’’ Sarah said to Agent Wilson, ‘‘You need to remove her, or I am going to call the judge.’’
Agent Wilson nodded. ‘‘I’ll still have to talk to Mr. Norris.’’
A massive weight lifted from Mrs. Norris’ shoulders. Finally, her son would be freed from this humiliation.
Like a wild animal, her granddaughter seemed to sense what she was feeling. She stared at Mrs. Norris even as she told Agent Wilson, ‘‘You want to talk to him? He’s right over there.’’ Sarah pointed across the gallery, and the crowd parted as if she was waving a gun.
Mrs. Norris sucked in a breath as she saw her son, sitting on a chair in the corner. Since the trial, she had only seen him in Sarah’s sickening portraits. Here he was nothing more than a middle-aged man with gray hair and a wrinkled suit. He seemed shallower, smaller than the man she had known before his daughter’s wicked accusations, smaller even than the man stripped bare in her granddaughter’s photographs.
He was the only person who wasn’t looking toward the confrontation at the center of the gallery. There was no outward sign of his sentence, a life of little more than slavery at the hands of his accuser.
Agent Wilson looked at them both, and then walked over to the chair in the corner.
Please take him from this. . . .
‘‘What gives you the right?’’ her granddaughter hissed. ‘‘What gives you the absolute arrogance?’’
