by Lisa Preston
“Something human,” Kevin said.
“And deep and universal but—”
“Fresh.”
“Yes,” she said. They were on exactly the same wavelength. Wanting something was not the same as finding it, not at all. A whiff of Paul’s abandoned maté drink on the coffee table made her move to the kitchen. Even Becky, who thought Gillian had done as well in marrying Paul as she’d done in creating her own family with Myron Dasios, decreed that maté smelled like compost.
Gillian saw where she dropped her keys on the kitchen counter earlier. She didn’t remember throwing them down when she’d come home.
Paul came in, picking up his bombilla. She smiled and returned to the loveseat.
“You get me?” Kevin asked. “I’m making no sense at all, huh?”
“I get you,” she assured him as they hung up.
Had she told Paul about Kevin? About the tantalizing prospect of working with a journalist of his caliber? Gillian felt herself stall, flush a bit.
Paul gave her a hand up, and they went to the kitchen where he had opened a bottle, and poured modest servings. “A youngish Chardonnay. What do you think?”
She tried it, okayed it, accepted the single glass, all she would have. They sliced vegetables for a stir-fry dinner.
“Ahh,” he said with satisfaction as he sipped between chopping carrots. “Did you call Becky?”
“I will. After dinner.”
“I put a cordless upstairs for Liz.” He smiled. “She goes by Liz, apparently.”
“Upstairs,” Gillian echoed, thinking of their second floor, the master bedroom and bath.
“In the studio apartment, Gillian. Upstairs, as in, over the garage.”
“I thought you never had a line hooked up for the studio.”
“It’s an extension on our house phone line. The old wireless. Just so she’s not without a phone, in case she needs one. When we’re gone during the day, she might as well have a phone, don’t you think? I didn’t know if it would get the signal up there, but we checked and it does. I feel better with her having a telephone, since she’s there with her little kid, don’t you? She only has one of those pay-as-you-go cell phones with ten bucks on it.”
He pulled plates and tableware from the dishwasher, filing them into cabinets and drawers while he talked. Always the guy who looked for something that needed to be done and did it. He got the dishwasher emptied before they ate.
Gillian’s veggie stirring slowed. “So she’s using our phone.”
“Indeed.”
“Then we could actually interrupt each other on calls.”
“I don’t think she plans on using it regularly, if at all. She didn’t ask for it. I just gave it to her. I didn’t want her up there without a reliable phone.”
Her back was to him as he spoke and she felt herself stiffen. What was her problem? If the cordless phone worked in the studio, it was a cheap way to give Liz emergency telephone access. Adults do not listen to others’ conversations. She was not losing privacy, not really. Why did their phone extension in the studio make her recoil?
Gillian opened her mouth, but hesitated and was forming her thoughts when he said, “And I gave her a few hundred dollars. She didn’t have anything. All right?”
“Why ask me?” Gillian shrugged. Since he’d already done it, why, why? He didn’t need her approval.
“Our limit,” Paul said. “I’ve promised and you agreed, too. Remember? We agreed we wouldn’t spend five hundred or more without telling each other. And really, we’re supposed to talk first, before spending, so I’m sorry about that. I apologize.”
You gave her the studio, the phone, money, Gillian thought, reddening at the uncharitable stiffness of her thoughts. God, what’s the matter with me? I wish I didn’t feel this way.
The strongest feeling she knew was that of want, wanting something different, wanting to be something different. Hunching her shoulders, she tried to identify her problem. The money? Laughable. Not spending over five hundred dollars without consulting the other had been Paul’s suggestion. She suspected he’d been trying for reverse psychology, after seeing her discomfiture at him plunking dollars down on extravagances. Sometimes his expensive purchases were for her. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t know not having money.
She felt him looking at her throughout their dinner and had to shake him off. “I’ve got to call Becky.”
Her sister answered the phone with, “Are you mad at me?”
“No, God, why do you say that?” And then Gillian listened to what she already knew, that she hadn’t returned a number of calls and texts. She tried to tell Becky she was busy developing film, wondering how to research an antique photo she’d rescued, being romanced for a potential big-time photojournalism piece. She had the calendar to shoot, a corporate gig coming up, and two weddings, one of which would require a serious preshoot planning session. Becky changed to the topic of painting her son’s bedroom and maybe the hallway. Myron didn’t want pink in little Phillip’s room. She was hoping he’d like the butter color she’d picked out.
“Do you think that will be okay?” This was her sister, deferential, yet demanding.
Gillian clenched her eyes, her stomach. It shouldn’t be like this. Myron treated Becky as decently as Paul did Gillian. She counted to ten, then twenty, while Becky went on about paint-cleanup mess and worry about the fumes, and finally they disconnected. She rested her forehead on her hands.
Paul pushed aside his papers and asked, “Will you tell me what you’re thinking about?”
“The film in the Bantam.”
He snapped his fingers. “Ah, right, one of those cameras I got for you at the penny sale. Worthwhile?”
She gave a faint nod and stared at the black living room window that gave nothing back, poor reflection. “I would have to identify the photographer and the people in the photograph to whatever extent is possible.”
“So, something you might try to get published? Something you’d like to follow up beyond some guy named John? Tell me about it, will you? I’m interested.” His papers were in his lap, ignored.
“The negatives are black and white. The negative, I should say. There’s just one picture there.”
Paul’s smile was immediate. He leaned forward, nodding. “You love black and white.”
Maybe she loved it too much. She gave a wry grimace and said, “The shot is odd. People. Kids. It’s posed but there’s something … not right.”
He set the papers on the side table and watched her for more. Gillian wondered how long he would wait. How long would I make him wait? How long have I waited?
“Could I see the print?”
“I’ve only got a test print. I’ll have time to make a good one later this week, I think.”
He followed her into the darkroom, ducking around hanging strips of negatives, respectful of her space even as he demonstrated interest. He squinted against the stink of chemical baths in their rectangular tubs. The fresh solution she’d mixed last night made the smell especially sharp.
If she flipped the lights off, he was obliged to put his hands in his pockets and keep his feet immobile until she again blessed them with light. He knew how the darkroom, her domain, worked. They had rules. He was not to talk with his hands, swinging his arms around to emphasize what he was saying. He was not to bump into things in general, but he could talk all he wanted in the blackness. He’d grown to enjoy speaking like a disembodied voice in the indoor night. But now she kept the lights on and picked up the Bantam Anastigmat when he asked about the camera. She snapped the viewfinder up and squirted cleaner onto the glass plate.
“Do they still make film for it?” he asked, smiling, looking for eye contact, reaching for her.
“No.” She looked away, reaching to put the camera on the counter, but bumped his outstretched palm. The camera slipped to the floor, bounced, and broke apart, three pieces of black plastic clattering in all directions.
“Gillian, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Paul
dropped to his knees, picking up one piece then another, setting the two offerings on her work counter.
She winced, trying not to think how his tone echoed both the overapologetic emoting she so often heard from Becky, as well as the beseeching of his sudden stepsister, based on their two-second encounter this morning. “Stop. Stop apologizing.”
The curtness in her voice chilled the room, but she said nothing more. Paul paused then passed the last plastic half shell, eyeing it. “Oh, I don’t think it’s broken. And look, there’s something there, inscribed on the inside.”
Blinking over the pieces, she realized the camera was built to come apart in this way, but the sight of the body in parts still made her cringe. She took the last piece from him and leaned over to study this back section of the camera’s body. The inscription might have been scratched with a nail, carefully done, but sloppy too, the length of writing barely jammed into the small space that was usually covered by a plastic square that listed the patents and film suggestions.
They mouthed the name together: Alexandru Istok.
She clicked the camera pieces together, dropping her shoulders with relief as she decided they were undamaged, then pointed to the drying screen. “There’s the print.”
The paper still stank of the chemical bath and felt cool, but was dry. Paul bent his head and frowned at the fresh old photograph of young people, keeping his hands to himself. Gillian could almost see the questions forming in his mind. Who were they? Where were they? Who took the photo? Why? Her questions ranged to the more direct, personal, and cutting. Were they cold? Is that why their clothes were all done up, every single button, or was that a holdover from a more traditional time, when people wore hats, when men wore suit coats even walking in a field among cows? The young men at the left and right ends of the group both had caps snugged down. Were they freezing? Please, let them just be subscribing to an old-fashioned habit of formal dress. Let the children not be cold and shivering.
Paul stopped studying the row of boys, straightened his face, and said gently, “In their faces, they remind me of …”
She waited. He bent forward and peered at the photo again. When he stood up, his face drew tight and he pursed his lips. She watched him and knew he didn’t feel it, the pull, the thin coiling tug that reached from that ancient image into the deepest part of her soul. Didn’t he see hope and disappointment in those children’s faces? She shook her head and knew her tone would be clipped if she said anything, anything at all. She stayed silent.
Paul glanced again at the photograph. Each stripe, light to dark, afforded different aspects of the shot to come forward. A wry, wistful sadness came over his face. “Their eyes. It’s that same guarded expression as …” He rubbed his chin, ending with his lips sealed, his knuckles across his mouth.
“What?”
He looked at her with care then returned his gaze to the photograph, tapping a finger under the boys in the woods. “They’re afraid.”
CHAPTER 6
When Greer Donner awoke, he felt a sleepy-headed peace for several seconds before remembering.
I’ll come in the night and kill everyone. I will shoot your whole family if you tell.
He froze in bed, awake in a nightmare. He remembered listening again for his parents to go to bed, then taking a surveillance position at his window and fighting the drowsiness. Again, at some point sleep beat him down from his post.
The rowdy weekend full of family should have been fun, but his head was thick and spinning. There had been too much talk going on to keep up. Emma said they stayed over for him. Donners were stayers. Ben and Ryan and Wes had a weird, hard-to-follow conversation going about Greer getting dumped—that Clipper experienced a religious conversion that wouldn’t stand the test of a week’s time.
Wes was city, everything about him, but he was a good guy, like an uncle in the way Maddie was like an aunt, even though they said Maddie was really his sister-in-law and Wes was really a brother-in-law. Ben’s friend, Ryan, was like an uncle too and his job was like a doctor. He’d had questions.
“Are you sure you didn’t hurt your head when you fell off Clipper?” While Ryan quizzed him, Momma hovered.
“It hurt a little.” Greer remembered the man shoving him into the tree, the feel of the bark as his head and back whacked the trunk.
Papa gave a knowing nod and said it wouldn’t be the last time Greer came off a horse, it happened.
Momma fussed over him too much. “Maybe we should take you to the doctor.”
She’d argued for it throughout the weekend and into the school week. Greer kept shaking his head, just like he’d done that first night, when it had earned laughs from the Donner men, all of whom avoided doctoring of all kinds.
Greer pulled the blankets over his head. He had no weapon now. That first horrible night, as he tried to watch until daybreak, he kept one hand in the pocket of his papa’s oilskin jacket, palming the heavy revolver to be ready for the bad man. Papa’s pistol had a friction-fit leather trigger guard, tooled perfectly around the cylinder, and Greer debated removing it. When he awoke, tucked in with the jacket spread over his chest, the big right-hand pocket was empty. The jacket smelled like hay and sap and sweat, but the comfort of these scents vanished when he realized the gun was gone. He guessed his papa had taken the gun back.
“Hey, sleeping beauty,” Papa called from Greer’s bedroom door.
Greer sat up, stunned. He’d fallen asleep again. The sizzling sound and the scent of morning bacon came to him, along with a good voice, his momma’s murmurs out there at the table.
Greer kicked the covers off to pretend things were as good as they should have been, that there wasn’t this looming possibility of a big mean man coming to kill his whole entire family.
“Up and at ’em.” Papa pointed to the jeans and shirt and socks and underwear laid out on Greer’s dresser.
Reaching for his clothes after Papa left his room, Greer wondered if he’d noticed his momma putting out his school clothes the night before. He could imagine her doing it, see it well in his mind, but he didn’t know if he’d actually witnessed it. And hadn’t something very like that thought come to him earlier? Yes, Sunday with the horses. Momma and Papa were going for a ride. He’d imagined his papa lifting the western saddle high over Clipper’s back, but he’d been in the feed room getting carrots, and when he came out, Clipper was saddled and Momma was already mounting.
So, in his mind, he’d seen Papa lift the saddle, but he hadn’t seen it in real life that time.
Really, really, he didn’t want to be psychic. He didn’t even want to think about having some horrible, special ability to see what would happen before it happened. Dumber-than-posts girls at school talked about seeing things and all about their dreams. No one should want to see things that hadn’t happened yet. Bad things could happen.
What if the things he imagined were really going to happen?
Greer pictured his family as bodies in a big ugly bloody pile, arms and legs in a tangle, heavier than sacks of grain. He still couldn’t lift a bag of oats clean above his head, couldn’t lift a heavy saddle all the way up to a horse’s back. How would he ever move his brothers’ and sisters’ corpses?
“Come on, honey,” Momma called down the hallway. “You’re moving like the dead these days. You used to get yourself up. We need to get you to bed earlier, I think. Eat some breakfast and get your school things. The bus will be at the corner in ten minutes.”
He’d been whip-tired going to school the last couple of days. Now he stared at his breakfast plate and realized he didn’t remember coming to the table. Did it go both ways? Did things happen that he didn’t remember? Worse, would things he pictured in his mind actually happen?
No. Please, no. Please.
Making it through the school days was tough going. At first, Greer resisted laying his head on his desk, but as the week wore on, he no longer cared what his teacher, Ms. Hedley, said. He closed his eyes at every opportunity. School
was safe that way. He rested, knowing that he’d try to keep awake all night, the sole watchman for the Donner house.
He wanted to stay inside for recess, but Ms. Hedley made him go out.
On the playground, he walked like a zombie past his friends to the trees at the edge of the school yard. He threw his back into the largest fir, hard. Then again. His eyes closed, his hands twisted the shirt front at the top snap, and he shoved himself into the tree again, whacking his head against the trunk. He pictured that horrible man’s face right in front of his eyes, grabbing and shoving, yelling that he’d kill Greer’s entire family.
When the last bell rang and Ms. Hedley asked him to stay a minute, then asked if things were okay at home, Greer was stumped.
“Sure. Why?”
“You’ve been very quiet.” She gave him a sealed envelope. “Greer, your mom or dad has to sign this note tonight. You bring it back to me tomorrow.”
Soon, Greer had to sit at his desk after school while Momma told Ms. Hedley how she put him to bed early because he was hard to get up in the mornings nowadays. They talked about how he was distracted and not paying attention.
“We’re going to keep him busy in the day, stick to an ironclad schedule for the afternoons and evenings—especially on school nights,” Momma said to Ms. Hedley.
“I’m glad you’re keeping a close eye on your little guy,” his teacher said.
Greer frowned. Nobody with man-sized trouble ought to be called that.
There would be unanswerable questions if he asked for a gun, or even if he said they should lock the doors—the Donners weren’t door lockers—every night. So should he get a gun himself without telling? Should he wait for them to fall asleep and sneak in there and get a pistol, load it, and wait at his window?
Probably so. That seemed like the smart thing to do, to be ready in case the man came tonight. He could get a gun from the closet shelf. Papa kept them unloaded and it would take time to get the right ammo, match it to each pistol and rifle. A shotgun! Yes, Papa’s scattergun would be best. The fat shells were unmistakable and they made the biggest hole in a chunk of plywood.
