Elizabeth Hand - Generation Loss

For a few more minutes I sat and stared at the photo. Then I put away the loupe and slid the prints and contact sheet into my copy of Deceptio Visus . I needed coffee and something other than Jack Daniel’s as a nutrient.

Downstairs, the living room woodstove was dead cold. The one in the kitchen had nearly burned out. I wadded up some newspapers and tossed them inside, along with a few sticks of wood, and hoped for the best. Then I made coffee, trying to convince myself that my hands trembled from the cold and not because I had the shakes. The deerhounds heard me and came skittering into the room. They looked hungry, so I gave them some water and filled their bowls from one of the sacks of dog food in the mudroom. They ate voraciously and afterward shambled over to where I sat by the window with my coffee and a piece of dry toast.

“Poor old dogs,” I said. Their heads were almost on a level with my own. “Doesn’t anyone ever feed you?”

“That’s the way they’re supposed to look.”

In the doorway stood Aphrodite. The dogs turned and raced toward her. She put a hand to the wall to steady herself from the seething gray mass.

I stood awkwardly, pointing to my chair. “Do you want to sit?”

“In my own house? I’ll sit where I choose.”

She walked toward the sink. In the thin morning light she appeared ancient, her skin dull and her hair disheveled, eyes bloodshot behind wire-rimmed glasses. I felt a pang. She looked so frail. It seemed impossible this wizened doll could have shot the pictures in that upstairs room, let alone the grim, hallucinatory images in Mors . Her hands trembled as she pulled a coffee mug from a shelf.

“I made coffee,” I said.

“So I see.”

She reached into a cabinet and withdrew a bottle. A minute later she joined me at the table, steam threading from her mug, and the smell of brandy.

We sat in silence. I wondered if she’d rail at me again, or acknowledge that we’d met the day before. Did she even remember?

Finally I said, “Gryffin showed me your photos. The island sequence. They were—it blew me away, seeing them for real. I mean, I waited my whole life to see them, and then, last night…”

My voice died. “They’re just incredible,” I said at last.

“I was never happy with the transfer process.” Aphrodite sipped her coffee. “That whole book. I was never happy with it. The colors were muddy. Today, maybe they could do a decent job. But back then?”

She shook her head. One of the dogs whined and thrust its nose at her. She stroked its muzzle absently. “They ruined it.”

I stood to refill my coffee. “Do you want some more?” I asked.

She gazed out to where thin eddies of mist snaked across the water’s surface.

“Sea smoke.” She drank what was left in her mug and slid it toward me. “Thank you.”

I filled both mugs and handed hers back.

“The other pictures,” I said tentatively, settling in my chair again. “From Mors . I didn’t see them up there. Do you—are they here?”

“They’re gone.”

“Oh. Jeez. I—”

I stopped, afraid I’d said too much already. She seemed not to have notice I’d spoken.

“I saw them,” she said after a moment. “Your pictures.”

I looked up in surprise. “My pictures?”

“Yes. When your book came out. A long time ago. Twenty years, I suppose.”

“More like thirty.”

“Thirty.” She nodded slightly without looking at me. “Yes, that would be right. Some of them—you had a good eye. One or two, I remember. The rest, though—”

One thin hand waved dismissively. “Derivative. And late. You weren’t the only one who saw Mors . You know that.”

I stared at the table. Everything went white. There was a sharp taste in my mouth, that pressure against my forehead. It was a moment before I realized she hadn’t stopped talking.

“…his were just grotesque. Tabloid fodder. He stole from me like the rest of them did, and it was all shit. Just shit .”

I looked up. Aphrodite’s eyes shone with a hatred so pure it was like joy.

“You little thief.” She jabbed at me. “Cassandra Neary. You think I didn’t see? But you were the least of it. The least.”

One of the dogs barked as Gryffin walked into the kitchen.

“This the breakfast club?” he asked, yawning.

I shoved my chair back and stormed outside, the door slamming behind me.

I didn’t stop until I reached the gravel beach. I paced along the shore, kicking at rocks. The wind tore at my face, but I hardly noticed. I headed to a stand of small, twisted trees and boulders. Driftwood had fetched up against the rocks. I grabbed a branch and smashed it into a boulder, again and again until it splintered into dust and rot. Then I leaned against a barren tree, panting.

“If only we could harness this power for good.” Gryffin stepped gingerly up the path from the rocky beach. “I come in peace,” he added and raised his hands.

I drew a long breath. “Fuck off.”

“Here.” He held out something wrapped in a paper towel. “Ray made this for dessert last night. I brought a piece back for you.”

I hesitated, then took it: a slab of apple pie.

“He’s a good cook,” said Gryffin. “Those are his apples too. Fletcher Sweets, they’re called. They only grow here on the island.”

“Thanks.”

“A Yankee is someone who has pie for breakfast. That’s what Toby says.”

Gryffin watched me eat. “You were really whaling on that tree,” he observed. “What’d she say to you?”

“Nothing.”

“She’s a monster. But you knew that. It’s why you came here.”

“I came because I needed a fucking job and Phil Cohen lied to me that he’d set up this interview.” I finished the pie and started walking back along the beach. “And because I wanted to see those pictures. Most of which, I gather, she destroyed. So instead of this goddam trip earning me money, it’s costing me money.”

I picked up a rock and threw it into the waves. “Which I don’t have.”

“Well, she’s gone off, for a while, anyway. Her and the dogs.”

“What does she do all day?”

“Beats me. Usually she makes a circuit of the island.” He swept his arm out, drawing an imaginary circle. “Along the shore. She picks up stuff that washes up. She’ll be gone for a while, unless the weather gets really bad.”

We walked toward the slope that led back to the house. A raven hopped across the dead grass and let out a gravelly cry at our approach.

“I’m going to the Island Store,” said Gryffin. “Want to come?”

“No. Not this minute, anyway.” I sighed. “You think I’ll be able to get a ride back over today?”

“Today? Well, you missed anyone who’d be going early this morning. But someone’ll probably head back later in the afternoon.”

“What about your friend Toby? Will he take me?”

“Probably. If I see him, I’ll mention it.”

“That’d be good.”

He started up the hillside. I jammed my hands in my pockets and watched him go. The steely light burned my eyes, and my feet ached from the cold. But I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing Aphrodite again. When Gryffin was out of sight, I began climbing the hill myself.

Once I reached the pine trees, the path split. One trail bore off to the left and angled downhill again, toward the village; the other wound upward among more trees and jagged outcroppings of stone. I took the right-hand path, scuffing through a mat of pine needles and fine snow.

It was a steep climb. After a few minutes, I began to sweat. My fury diminished, bitten away by the cold. For the last few years I’d carried on conversations in my head. Well, not conversations, really: arguments. Now the voices fell silent. I found myself focusing on things I didn’t usually notice, like the vapor clouding my face with every breath, the way sounds seemed to carry from far away. Seagulls, a diesel engine, waves tugging at the shingle beach below.