Dark Rooms

by Lili Anolik

  Nica tugged on the cuff of Dad’s pant leg until he looked down at her again. “Where’d Mom go?”

  “Into the house to get you an ice pack.”

  But when Mom came out of the house a minute later, it wasn’t an ice pack she was carrying. It was a roll of film.

  Dad watched her as she switched the old film out of her camera, replaced it with the new. “What are you doing, Claire?” he said.

  “I’m just going to take a few shots.”

  “Pictures? Now? She could really be hurt.”

  Mom, busy working the rewind crank, didn’t say anything back.

  “At the very least she has a concussion.”

  “Oh, Jesus, Hank,” Mom said, yanking on the film, pulling it taut. “Don’t be such a drama queen. She doesn’t have a concussion. She just banged her head a little. It’s a bruise, nothing more.”

  “She needs to go to the emergency room.”

  “And I’ll take her to the emergency room. Afterward. All I need is ten minutes.”

  “I think we should take her now. Leaving her lying on the damp ground like this makes me”—he paused, blinked—“anxious.”

  Mom released the shutter, then cocked it, her movements jerky with impatience. “Anxious. What a finky shitty little word. Anxious. If you mean scared, say scared.”

  “All right. It scares me.”

  “What difference is ten minutes going to make? They never let you in to see a doctor right away. It usually takes hours.”

  “Claire,” he said softly, pleading.

  “What?” Her eyes were flat, hard, showing no mercy.

  “I’m fine, Dad,” Nica said. Her voice sounded different than it did a minute ago. Wearier. Older, too.

  Dad straightened, stepped back from her so that he was standing next to me. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Let Mom take the pictures.”

  “Five minutes, that’s it.”

  Dad reached for my hand again and we returned to the house. While he finished washing the dishes from lunch, I ate the tomato soup he heated up for me and did my homework at the kitchen table, watching Mom and Nica from the window. Mom wanted Nica to look the way she did when she first collapsed. At least I assume that’s what Mom wanted because she dropped to her knees to reposition the peach in Nica’s palm, to lower Nica’s eyelids with the tips of her fingers. Then she began to shoot. The sight of her crouched over Nica’s small crumpled form, the camera jutting out of her head like a horn, caused a tightening in my chest that I could ease only by opening my mouth and looking away. Which is exactly what I did until Mom started calling Dad’s name. Nica, it seemed, had slipped back into unconsciousness during the session, lasting not five minutes, as Mom had promised, but three times that—four times—and probably would have gone on even longer if the final drops of light hadn’t drained from the day.

  Nica came to quickly. After that, though, Mom was as eager as Dad to get her to the emergency room. It was what Dad thought: a concussion. Minor, the doctor said. But it didn’t seem too minor when Nica, in the months following, suffered from migraines so severe they made her throw up and was often unable to sleep through the night. Still, the headaches stopped eventually. So did the sleeplessness. And besides, cranial trauma was a small price to pay. Nica’s Dream was taken during that twilight shoot, and it turned out to be Mom’s first real photograph.

  For a long time, though—years, in fact—Mom did nothing with Nica’s Dream. Then last summer, on a whim, she sent it in to B&W Magazine. It won the Silver Award in the Single Image Contest and received a full page in the fall issue. Soon after that New York took notice. A woman with a gallery on West Twentieth, not quite an established gallery but more than up-and-coming, called and asked to see other samples of her work, then called again and offered her a solo exhibition; it was set to open in November.

  I’m not sure why Mom sat on the picture for so long. Was scared of how good it was maybe. Thought it was a fluke. Nica, though, she knew was no fluke. In her youngest daughter Mom had found what she’d been searching for since the day she picked up her mom’s Brownie Instamatic at age eleven: her muse and one true subject, the thing she was put on this earth to photograph.

  And photograph Nica she did. Constantly. Compulsively. And Nica, selfish, imperious, didn’t-give-two-shits Nica, let her. Nica would pose for Mom anytime. No matter what she was doing—Super-Glueing captions to a posterboard for her Ice Mummies of the Inca World project in her bedroom, watching a slasher movie with me (me through the chinks in my fingers) in the family room, baking chocolate chip cookies from scratch with Dad in the kitchen—she’d drop it as soon as Mom reached for the camera. Even when she turned into a teenager and her social life became more absorbing, she wouldn’t think twice about telling Jamie he’d have to smoke that bag of Quebec Gold all by himself or sending Maddie off alone to some dive bar with a lax ID policy if Mom said she felt like working. Mom and Mom’s needs came first, always.

  This isn’t to say that it was all smooth sailing between the two of them, that they never fought. They did fight, loudly and often. But fighting for them didn’t necessarily mean conflict. It was just how they related. Was part of their ritual, something they’d do before almost every session. They fought, I think, for the same reasons other people meditated: because it relaxed them, helped them relieve tension so they could better focus.

  There were only two times I remember the relationship becoming truly contentious. The first was when Mom decided to start taking candid shots of Nica in addition to posed. I should rephrase: the first was when Mom decided to start taking candid shots of Nica in addition to posed, didn’t bother to tell Nica, never mind ask for her consent.

  I was there the moment Nica found out.

  I was fifteen, so she would’ve been fourteen, a freshman. Mom and Dad were out for the night. I was making a peanut butter sandwich in the kitchen during the commercial break before the final round of Jeopardy! A scream came up from the darkroom in the basement. Nica followed it seconds later, holding a print with the clothespin still attached, and not delicately by the edges, the way she was supposed to; holding it like it was a slice of pizza, folding it in half so it was creased down the middle.

  “Mom’s going to kill you for going in the darkroom without her permission,” I said, retying the plastic bread bag, returning it to the fridge.

  “Look,” Nica said, thrusting the print at me.

  Dancing away from her, laughing, “No way. I’m not getting my fingerprints on that thing.”

  She thrust it at me again.

  Surprised at her vehemence, I looked at her. She held my eye, hard and defiant, but there was something under the defiance, embarrassment maybe, or shame. Puzzled, I licked a smear of peanut butter off the web of my thumb, took the print from her. After smoothing it out, I glanced down, almost afraid of what I was going to see.

  It was of her. She was in bed, asleep, a Dora the Explorer sheet thrown carelessly over her hip. Her bare back was to the camera. The side of her face was showing, the swell of a cheekbone and the dip of an eye socket, the eye in it closed. The side of a breast, too.

  Irritated, relieved, I said, “So?”

  “So?” Nica repeated incredulous.

  “So you’re not wearing any clothes. So big deal.”

  She stared at me in disbelief.

  “Honestly, Nic, I don’t see what you’re so upset about.”

  Shaking her head, laughing softly, she took the print back. “I don’t know why I expected you would.”

  Stung, I said, “You can’t even see any nipple. And you’ve let Mom take plenty of nude shots before. You think I like knowing what your labia look like?” After a beat, “That was a joke. You’re supposed to laugh.”

  But she didn’t even smile. “Yeah,” she said, “Mom took this one without asking, though. Really took it, like stole it. I had no idea she was there.”

  “Of course you didn’t. You were asleep.”

  Nica, gaze di
stant, tapped her front tooth with the edge of the photo.

  “Look,” I said, after a long pause, “if it bothers you this much, you should tell her.”

  “Tell her what? A bunch of stuff she should know without being told? To stop thinking it’s okay to spy on me, not give me any privacy? To stop treating my life like it’s her material?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Would you back me if I did?”

  Smiling, I said, “I think you’ve got it mixed up. I need your help when it comes to dealing with Mom, not the other way around.”

  For a time Nica was quiet, head bowed. I could see the corner of her mouth, though, and it was twitching. And I waited for her to come up with something funny-snotty to say back. But when she finally lifted her head, her eyes were shiny and wet-looking, and I realized that she’d been fighting off tears. “Mom’s too much for me. I pose for her anytime she wants. All she has to do is ask. But that’s still not enough for her. She wants the moments I’m alone—think I’m alone—too. She wants everything.”

  I was taken aback at the emotion in Nica’s voice. And all at once it hit me: she really was asking me to go up against Mom with her. The idea of fighting with Mom, Nica at my side or not, filled me with a panic so total I could barely stand to feel it. I knew I should speak, tell Nica she could count on me, even though I didn’t want to say any such thing, very badly didn’t want to. I’d make myself, though, because, well, because she was my sister and I loved her and she needed me and because what else could I decently do? But a beat passed. And then another. And then another after that until the silence became terrible, and still I didn’t break it. Finally, I cobbled a few words together in my head, opened my mouth to push them out, when her voice, small and whimpery, said, “All that’ll be left of me will be teeth, fingernails, and, like, one eyeball. The victim of Peeping Mom.”

  I laughed, less out of amusement than relief. She was telling me with the jutted-out lower lip that her emotions weren’t so dark or complicated they couldn’t be expressed with a pout, telling me with the jokey pun of a nickname that Mom was a cartoon villain instead of a real one, telling me, basically, that this whole thing was a fit of pique, not a cry for help, and that I wasn’t required to take any of it seriously. “Then we’d better fatten you up,” I said, wrapping half my sandwich in a paper towel, passing it to her. “You know how mean Mom gets when she’s hungry.”

  Nica placed the sandwich on the counter, said, “Thanks,” then leaned forward and stared off into space, chin cupped in palm.

  Looking at her face, at its shuttered-tight expression, I felt another surge of panic. Had I got it wrong? Blown it somehow? “You’ll be okay, right?” I said.

  She turned to me blankly. “Me? Yeah.”

  “Are you sure? Because I’m worried.”

  “You’re worried?” She pulled back, looked at me almost with disgust.

  Scrambling, “I know how difficult Mom can be. How she just takes over and—”

  Nica cut me off. Her voice clipped and hard, she said, “Mom’s a pain in the ass but she’s nothing I can’t handle. And, besides, since when have I ever said no to attention?” Her lips curled in a smile that never got anywhere near her eyes. “I’ll have a talk with her.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “Talking’s good.”

  “Yep.”

  “It’s just . . .” I trailed off.

  “It’s just what?”

  I looked at her standing there in front of me, eyes narrowed, arms folded across her chest, bristling with irritation and impatience. And I couldn’t for the life of me think of a way of completing the sentence that might bridge the divide between us, make her receptive to me again. I tried, though. Said, “It’s just, you talk tough but you’re not. Well, you are, but you shouldn’t have to be. Not around your own family, in your own house. And I was wrong to act like what Mom’s doing with her camera is nothing. I do understand the difference between someone taking a naked picture of you with your okay and someone taking a naked picture of you without.”

  For a second Nica didn’t move and I thought maybe I hadn’t spoken out loud, only in my head, and then I saw something shift within her. Her face grew soft, opened up. She raised her arms, put them around me. “It’s all right,” she said. “I freaked a little, but Mom and I will work it out.” Her face was buried in my neck as she spoke so that I felt her words at the same time I heard them.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Yeah. Everything’s going to be fine. I promise.”

  “Okay, good. And, Nica, I’m here if you need me.”

  “I know that. I know you are,” she said, but we were already separating.

  She picked up her half sandwich and walked into the family room. And, after grabbing the bent photo, shoving it to the bottom of the trash can, I followed her.

  Just as Nica predicted, she and Mom were able to work out the issue of the candids. She ended up agreeing to them, and in return Mom promised to show her any and all photos taken the moment they were developed, destroy whichever ones she found objectionable. The arrangement seemed to suit them both well enough. And never again was privacy violation a problem between them. In fact, as far as their artist-model relationship went, that was the last problem between them full stop.

  Until the end, that is. In the weeks before Nica’s death, she and Mom were fighting, and not in their usual style—open-mouthed, wet-eyed screaming fits that died down almost as soon as they flared up. These fights—this fight, rather, singular—was tight-lipped and dry-eyed, and went on and on. I steered clear, got nowhere near it, so I didn’t know for certain what it was about. I could make a pretty good guess, though: the exhibition in November. Nica must have been having regrets, was wishing she’d used her veto power more freely. I could understand why. It was one thing for pictures to be taken of you acting up, showing off—smoking, drinking, screwing around—showing off body parts, too, when no one but you and the photographer who also happened to be your mother were looking. Quite another when the audience was a gallery full of cool-eyed strangers, city people in all black.

  Mom seemed to me like the conciliatory party, which would make sense. I’m sure she felt bad that Nica felt bad. I’m equally sure, though, that she wouldn’t allow feeling bad to interfere with her ambitions, and that she had absolutely no intention of letting Nica renege on their deal.

  I’m so absorbed in Nica’s Dream I don’t hear Dad come in the kitchen. Don’t realize I’m not alone, in fact, until the oven door opens and a blast of fiery air hits me. I glance over. There he is, moving toward me, a casserole dish between two oven-mitted hands, eyes blinking from the steam. I take a step to meet him, give him a kiss, noticing as I lean in how frail he looks, his bones seeming to grow thinner, his skin more translucent, by the day. Like he’s getting ready to disappear. Or turn into something dead. Closing my eyes, I bring my lips to his cheek. As soon as his head’s safely bent, I wipe the soft, too-loose sensation of his flesh from my mouth.

  He places the dish on the table and we sit down across from each other, Nica stretched out above our heads. It feels a little like she’s eating with us and I wonder if that’s why he brought the photograph, which in his quiet way he’d disapproved of so strongly when she was alive, up from Mom’s darkroom—as an attempt to include her, keep her part of the family.

  The meal goes pretty much the way every meal we have together goes. It starts out fine. We both act cheerful, chat pleasantly and animatedly about a variety of upbeat topics. Throughout the day, I actually collect funny stories, harmless bits of gossip to bring to the table, and I suspect he does the same. No matter how thorough our preparation, how good our intentions, though, at a certain point the conversation runs out. And in the absence of dialogue, we both become anxious, need to have some kind of talk going, so then it’s please-pass-the-this and thank-you-for-passing-the-that. Once we’ve done that routine to death, another lull hits and it gets so quiet I don’t want to swallow because I’m
afraid of how loud it will sound, and I have to wait for a glass to clang against a dish or a spoon to scrape a bowl—something, some noise. Finally I manage to choke the bite down, and when I do I realize it’s the last one I’ll be able to take. After that it’s just maneuvering forkfuls of food around my plate until it’s okay to push my chair back, walk over to the sink.

  As I turn on the tap, watch the stream of water go from opaque to clear, I wonder how it is that Dad and I have lost each other when it’s only Nica and Mom who are gone.

  Chapter 9

  I end the day exactly the way I began it: parked in the same spot, on the same street, drinking from the same can of (now flat) Diet Coke, eating from the same sleeve of (now stale) Saltines. The house I’m watching is quiet, all the rooms dark except for one at the front, lit by the murky glow of a television set.

  I reach into my bag for my copy of Clarissa, the book I’d grabbed from my room that morning, the one I’d be reading if I hadn’t deferred admission to Williams, had taken ENGL 379, The Novel of Manners, which I’d registered for back in July. As soon as I haul the one-thousand-five-hundred-page tome onto my lap, though, I realize I might as well have left it on the table next to the bed I never sleep in. It isn’t pitch-black in the car, but it’s pretty close. And I can’t turn on the overhead light without making myself conspicuous. Guess I’ll just play Candy Crush Saga on my cell until the juice runs out or I pass out like every other night this week. And then I remember: I have a flashlight stored in the car for emergencies. I pop open the glove compartment.

  A flashlight doesn’t tumble out. Something else does, though. Chandler’s student literary magazine of which I was one time editor in chief, The Rag and Bone Shop Quarterly, known on campus as The Rag. (And if you were a staffer, you were on The Rag, tee hee.) It’s the December/January issue, one of the four I was responsible for putting out. Stamped on the upper right-hand corner in smudged black ink I have to squint through the dimness to read are the words:

  PROPERTY OF CHANDLER HEALTH AND COUNSELING CENTER