J. Wachowski - In Plain View

“I’m hungry, Aunt Maddy.”

“Oh, right.” I pulled myself away from the flare problem and cracked my neck. “What time is it?”

“Almost eight. You missed Scooby-Doo and SpongeBob.”

“How many commercials?” I asked.

“Forty-two. Thirty-six promos.”

If the kid was going to watch television, she’d better know what she was watching. Whenever she watched regular TV, I made her count. “That’s a lot of commercial time.”

“Old Navy is having a sale.”

“Ah.”

Jenny slid in next to me as I hunched over proof sheets searching for flares. She looked up at the drying prints. “What is that?”

I jerked upright and had one of those whoops! Is this a fuck-up? moments. The smallest possible answer was, “These are the pictures I took today.”

“Is that guy dead?”

“Yeah.”

She stepped close enough to the photo I thought her nose would touch the paper. “Did he kill himself?”

“Yeah, he did.” The guy had a rope as thick as my wrist hanging from around his neck; what else could I say?

“Why?” she whispered.

I guess I’d been holding my breath because the first sound I made was a whoosh of air. “I don’t know. I guess he was sad.” I knew that wasn’t right, wasn’t enough, so I tried adding, “Very, very sad.”

She turned her nose toward me and stared long enough I counted three blinks.

“Hey Jen, I need to run these downtown to a guy.” I tried diversionary tactics. “Wanna get a hot dog for dinner?”

“Chili dog?”

“Sure.” I gave her my best happy chuck on the arm, feeling like I’d dodged a bullet. “Be right up-you go grab my bag.”

With a snap, I grabbed the picture Jenny had nearly pressed her nose against. It showed the flare as well, but not in the same spot. I set two prints beside each other and realized the flare wasn’t crap on my lens. It was something in the photo, something catching light in the open second-story window of the barn.

Making pictures is a fairly complex operation. A million tiny details, a million choices that contribute to the final product. Most of the choices are things I don’t even think about any more, things happening so fast I don’t remember half of what I see. I crouch to shift the horizon. I frame so the picture will fit into a TV screen’s rectangle. I put the light behind me.

With the sun slanting in above the van’s roof, the lens recorded something my eye had missed-the flare of light on glass in a tiny, double comma. Because I’d spent plenty of time over the last five years taking pictures of soldiers on the job, it happened to be just the sort of flare I’d recognize.

Binoculars.

Somebody had been watching from the barn.

11:17:09 p.m.

By the time her aunt was asleep, it was really dark everywhere. But Jenny didn’t mind.

Lots of other kids were afraid of the dark.

Jenny knew for a fact that Lindsay still slept with a light on, because she’d slept over once last year when they were still friends. That was a long time ago.

Jenny didn’t need a night light anymore. Night wasn’t bad. In fact, she liked it.

She stood in her doorway and listened. Her heart was pounding so hard it hurt to swallow.

Before the summer, before everything was different, she’d loved her house: the chair she always sat in to watch TV, the wall where her mom hung her pictures from school, even the bathroom, where the heater vent was right beside the toilet and in the winter it blew warm air on her cold feet when she woke up. Whenever Jenny walked in the door of her house, she always felt right.

Everything was different now. Her chair was lumpy. Aunt Maddy had put her stuff in Jenny’s bathroom, like her toothbrush and this thing called a tongue scraper that was double weird and totally gross. Jenny never had time to warm her feet anymore. She had to hurry up, so her aunt could have her turn. The house didn’t even smell the same, because her aunt hated the smell of Pine-Sol and bought new cleaner that smelled like oranges and made Jenny sneeze.

Jenny looked up and down. The hall returned nothing but a long, black silence. The pounding in her chest began to pass. Here in the dark, she felt safe. Invisible, she could breathe. She could finally do the thing she most wanted to do, the thing she craved through the whole long, bright day.

She tip-toed up the hall, sticking close to the wall where the floor didn’t creak. Outside the guest bedroom where her aunt slept, she stopped again to listen.

Quiet.

Jenny held her breath as she passed the door. Her aunt’s bare foot hung off the bed, her face turned away toward the wall. Your aunt had big shoes to fill, her mother always said and it was true. Aunt Maddy had big feet. That’s why she’s bigger than life. Jenny wasn’t really sure what that meant, until Aunt Maddy came to stay. Her feet weren’t the only big part. She was so tall she bumped the light over the couch almost every day. And she had a big voice, too. She yelled in the car at the other drivers, she yelled when she talked on the phone, sometimes she even yelled at the TV. Loud.

The last door in the hall was Mama’s. It was closed, as usual.

Jenny slipped in and shut the door behind her.

At last.

With a pillow and lap blanket off the bed, she crossed the last threshold into Mama’s big square closet. There was a place deep in the back where she’d cleared away all the shoes, and Mama’s long skirts and dresses nearly dragged the floor. Snuggling back against the wall Jenny let the clothes brush against her face, her mother’s scent, her mother’s softness surrounding her. She closed her eyes, breathing in, in, in.

Mommy, Mommy, Mom-me.

Sometimes everything didn’t feel as bad when you were awake in the dark.

For a while, Jenny worried that Aunt Maddy would take it all away, all her mama’s things in the bedroom. She never did. She just put her suitcases in the guest room and that was that. It was kind of weird, actually. Her aunt had like, no stuff. Except the weights and the camera junk in the basement.

Jenny sunk deeper into the pillow and pulled the blanket around her shoulders. It wasn’t usually so cold in the closet. Tonight, it felt cold.

She couldn’t stop thinking about that picture her aunt had taken. The one with the dead guy.

It was scary. One of those guys looked sort of like somebody she used to know, maybe. It was hard to remember his face though. That was scary, too. Jenny didn’t like the idea of forgetting faces.

She needed to get another look. Maybe she could find another picture. A long time ago there was one in her mom’s bedroom, but now it was gone. Where could it have gone? Jenny didn’t take it and Aunt Maddy never even opened the door to this room.

Jenny pushed her way out of the closet and thought for a minute. Maybe there was another picture somewhere. Her mom always had special ones tucked in her underwear drawer.

Slowly, quietly, Jenny searched.

When she found what she needed, she put everything else back exactly the way it was. For another time…like maybe tomorrow.

The trip up the hall was quick, but heading downstairs, Jenny had to be careful. The stairs were noisy and Aunt Maddy woke up at the least sound. She was a light sleeper. Jenny’s mom used to say that people who slept well had no imagination or a very clean conscience, which seemed to explain pretty good about Aunt Maddy.

Some nights, Jenny was glad her aunt woke up easy. Not tonight though. She didn’t want to talk about this. Aunt Maddy didn’t like her very much as it was.

All the grown-ups Jenny knew had gotten weird since the accident. Teachers stared at her. The neighbors pretended like they didn’t see her. None of her mom’s friends called anymore. Maybe they’d all forgotten her mom, and her. Even the special friend.