Two White Queens and the One-Eyed Jack

by Heidi von Palleske

  He placed a sheet of photographic paper beside a tray filled with his magical chemical solution. All photographic processing uses a series of chemical baths. Processing, especially the development stages, requires very close control of temperature, agitation, and time. Jack was ready. He made sure that when they arrived, it would be little time before the image first emerged from nothingness to the first faint ghostly outline.

  “Your guests are here!” his mother called out.

  “Just show them in. I’m just mixing chemicals and I cannot leave it right now!”

  He wasn’t mixing chemicals, all the prep work was done. He was simply waiting, on his wheelie stool, holding a piece of photographic paper in a pair of tongs.

  There are few times in a teenaged boy’s life when things go as planned. Few times when a rehearsed event actually works out. But this wasn’t just performance, it was science, and he had been meticulous. The right image waited to be transferred onto the paper. A picture of the two of them, just as they had started to laugh, that very second before the release of their mirth. A picture of contained joy, held in the heart for a few seconds before it was released into the world, and then diffused into the ephemeral. The moment, as with all performances, was gone and even forgotten by many. It had been offered as a gift, accepted and held for a moment, and then evaporated and lost. Only through his magic could the moment be reclaimed, made permanent and held beyond its short lifespan. This was his gift to them. This was his power.

  “Hi,” said the taller one as they stepped through the doorway. Clara or Blanca? He really would have to get them straight.

  “Hello, hello, come on in. I was just about to make a copy of a picture of you!”

  The girls smiled awkwardly and entered. Jack reached up and turned off the lights and suddenly the room was darker than either of them had ever imagined. Clara assumed that they must be glowing in the dark but, as she looked at her sister, she could barely make out where she stood.

  “I am transferring the image to this paper now,” Jack told them, “this is the most crucial part of all. If any light penetrates the film then all is lost.”

  “Why?” asked Blanca.

  “Photo films and papers are made from salts of silver that darken when exposed to most light.”

  Clara closed her eyes. No darker than when they were open. She knew that he had invited them to his darkroom, but she had no idea just how dark it would be. It was a darkness she had never known. More than dark. It was an absence of sight. She reached out her hands till she felt the cool, metallic edge of a sink or something. How sensitive her fingers suddenly felt now that she could not see at all. And the sounds! There was a fan on, she could tell by the constant, even whir of the rotating blades. And there was a drip in one of the sinks. She hadn’t noticed that before the lights went out. A sharp smell of chemicals. Not nice. And the sound of breath. Her sister’s. His. Hers. Each slightly different. Hers was steady, once she touched the sink. His was uneven but that came with the sounds of his body movement, as he went about his photography stuff. But her sister’s was jagged, uneven, and abrupt, as though she held her breath and then remembered that she had to breathe. Was she frightened in the dark? Claustrophobic? Excited? It was hard to tell without sight or light. It was the look of flushed cheeks or dilated pupils that could give such feelings away. Not breath alone.

  Suddenly the room was alive in a red glow. And Jack was smiling.

  “Perfect. Next step.”

  Clara noticed that Blanca seemed all rosy. Her face, her hair, everything was bathed in a pinkish glow. How beautiful she looked! Clara assumed, and hoped, that she looked as lovely as her artificially blushing sister. But then she also noticed that her sister was standing much closer to Jack than she was. So close that they almost touched. Did she know that she was so close or was the proximity just something that happened naturally when the room was darker than Hades?

  “I thought you couldn’t have light, so why did you turn on these red lights?” asked Clara.

  “Photo papers are sensitive to blue and green light, mostly, not red. You can’t see infrared or ultraviolet light even though some other animals can, like snakes and fish. It’s the same idea with photographic materials: they vary in their sensitivity to different colours. Mine can be used with a red light.”

  “Okay, enough about snakes and fish, what’s the next step?” Blanca asked, her voice a whisper like she was in church or at the library. Blanca had never been thrown out of the library. Not even once! She is always in better control, thought Clara. She could tell a joke and not even crack a smile. But Giggle-Guts Clara would always laugh out loud before she even reached the punchline. So it was only inevitable that she was always in trouble for her laughing and fooling around. Why can’t you be good like your sister?

  “Well, the exposure of the image onto the sensitized paper is first. We use the enlarger for that. Then comes the processing of the latent image using a chemical process. Then, at just the right moment, we stop the development by neutralizing or removing the developing chemicals. Then we fix the image by dissolving some undeveloped silver halide and finally we wash the paper to remove the processing chemicals, which protects the finished print from fading.”

  “Wouldn’t it just be easier to send the film in to be developed?” asked Clara. “Seems like a lot of bother for the same results.”

  “Where’s the magic in that?” asked Jack.

  “Yeah, Clara, where’s the magic in that? So, Jack, you said you did the transfer, but I don’t see anything on the paper.” Blanca seemed far more interested in the process.

  “Oh, just you wait! The image is there, in the paper, but now comes the magic!”

  He held the paper with tongs over the tray and then, slowly, let it drop into the liquid. Clara and Blanca came closer and watched as he made sure every inch was completely submersed.

  A ghostly image, an outline, was seen first. Two bodies, perhaps, seemingly above where the camera was placed. The girls watched as more and more was filled in. Features going from vacant, to visible, to lively. Bodies, first almost transparent and ghostly, changing until they were full of life and presence. Even the background, the performance curtains, took their time, making an entrance fit for stars. Unfocused and unseemly at first, but slowly the details, the patterns, emerged before their wondrous eyes.

  “It really is magic!”

  “It’s science, Blanca. It’s a process,” reminded Clara.

  “It is a bit of both,” Jack added, allowing both girls to be right, although he preferred to be thought of as an alchemist more than as a scientist. As an artist more than a technician. And so he couldn’t help but like Blanca just a little more than Clara. And Clara knew it.

  “I’m feeling a little crowded in here. When it’s safe maybe I’ll just step out, get some fresh air and help your mom with tea. Blanca can witness the rest of the magic.”

  “Oh, don’t be like that!”

  “Like what? I’m not being like anything. Just trying to be polite, Blanca.”

  “Okay, you can go out in a few minutes, but the paper is still sensitive.”

  “Yeah,” said Blanca, “not only the paper!”

  Was it no more than a joke? Hard to know because Blanca never cracked a smile when she was joking.

  Gareth was covered in paint and dry chips of colour. It was everywhere. His clothes, his hair, and even his face bore the residual shades of his efforts. He had been aggressive with his work, throwing great gobs of paint onto the canvas, and then sanding the colours down to create a patina, a backdrop to the smoother figures he would place in the foreground. It was a huge piece, the largest he had ever done. A fuck-you to his teacher before he graduated. Who cared what the gatekeepers really thought? He would ruin her day, ruin the last days of her pathetic little life, by painting something that would haunt her into her retirement because it would remind her of her mediocrity. It would tell her, You could never do this, you silly little woman, and t
hat hurts you, doesn’t it? Why? Because those who can’t do, teach. That’s why. Those who cannot do, teach, bitch!

  Gareth was afraid that he wouldn’t get into OCA, the Ontario College of Art. He had his acceptance but it was contingent on his final mark. He’d had his interview, submitted his portfolio, and all of that went well. But when they looked at his third-term marks, there was concern. How could someone with his portfolio be getting an average mark? The school prided itself on accepting only the best, only the most promising up-and-coming artists. If Gareth wasn’t at the top of his class, his acceptance was in jeopardy. Suddenly his art was about future opportunities, not about expression, opinion, or escape.

  Gareth knew that art had been, amongst other things, an escape for him. He could draw other worlds, create beauty where there was none, justice where there was none, and understanding in the face of confusion. He had painted with love in his heart as a child. Had picked up his pencil, his brushes, his tools, with an expected ease and joy. But this painting was not something that sprang from joy or love. He was painting from a new place. He had a new muse. A muse who was demanding, prolific, and present. A muse named Hate.

  Mrs. Beacon, that small-minded imbecile, had invited in his new muse. She was the source of his latest inspiration. How did she unmask this darkness hidden within him? This unknown hatred? By diminishing his miniatures.

  Gareth had become obsessed with painting miniatures.

  Such tiny precise work, every bit as detailed as a full-sized painting, but so difficult to do it without it becoming as dismissible as it was small. But that is exactly what Mrs. Beacon did when she saw them. Dismissed them. Each student had a wall for the culminating exhibition. White and bare. Some makeshift walls were added to the room, on wheels, so that everyone had their own space. Students hauled in their many canvases, 11 x 17 inches, 20 x 28 inches, 24 x 32 inches, 27 x 40 inches. All the usual sizes and dimensions. Nothing too big to transport. And certainly nothing too small to smuggle in.

  “Where’s your work?” Mrs. Beacon had asked Gareth.

  He patted his knapsack confidently, knowing that the small pieces were, each and every one, a treasure. He had even made tiny frames to go around them, covering them carefully in gold leaf so that, when viewed, every painting seemed like the inside of a jewellery box. Each miniature was an eye. Some fringed in lashes. Some so close up that it became almost an abstract. They begged the viewer to come close, and then, unexpectedly, they peered right back at the viewer. It was a commentary on whether art sees the viewer or the viewer sees the art.

  “That’s it? These little things? Hardly proper canvases, now, are they?” Mrs. Beacon had scoffed.

  Gareth put up his show. He watched as people stepped closer, curious about the miniature paintings. Parents and students, and even other teachers, approached him and talked about his installation but it didn’t matter; his mark was barely above passing. Well, if those miniatures weren’t to her taste because they were small, then she would have to deal with this work, almost the size of a movie screen with the same strange ratio of width to height. It would take a truck to get it there. A truck, and at least two people to carry it in.

  Gareth didn’t hear the knocking. The sander was going and he had earphones on.

  “Gareth!”

  Gareth continued to sand. So all Jack could do was to walk around him and stand in front of him until he looked up and jumped with a start.

  “Oh my God, you scared me!” Gareth held his heart before removing his protective glasses.

  “Aren’t they for your stereo?” Jack gestured at the earphones cupping his friend’s ears.

  “Yup, but they are as good at keeping noise out as letting noise in.”

  “You mean music, don’t you? They let music in.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Well, come out of the garage, I have someone for you to meet.”

  Gareth unplugged the sander, shook the paint dust from his clothes, and walked into the early June sunlight, blinding him after hours in the garage. So blinding that, at first, he didn’t understand what he was looking at. Two figures. Unworldly, but that could be just the adjustment to the change in light.

  Slowly he understood that there were two fairy images, large as life and twice as beautiful. Had he done it? Actually painted another world and, by some trick of light, walked into his own imagination? And Jack, who was he in this dream? A guide, perhaps? His own personal Virgil?

  “This is Clara and this is Blanca. I got it right, didn’t I?”

  The girls laughed and nodded. A stereo gesture of harmonized sameness. God, it was them! The imagined muses, the image from his childhood. The elusive twins who skirted all around him, but never made themselves known to him since that first sighting in the eye doctor’s office. They were exactly the same, but older, taller, without the thick glasses and braids. Their eyes no longer darted about like crazy marbles, separate from their thinking brains, independent. They were almost settled, with the slightest vibration, which only seemed to give them hyperreal life. As though their eyes, their violet eyes, had breath.

  Clara raised her hand and waved in that awkward back-and-forth way of a child. A wave that is hesitant and says, Do not make a fool of me by not waving back. And Gareth mimicked the gesture, knowing full well that she, too, remembered that first meeting.

  Elaine was happy to have both boys home. A few short months and the house would be quiet and lonely; Tristan back at York University studying film and Gareth at the Ontario College of Art, hopefully. Surely he would pull off a respectable enough mark in his art class. After all, Mrs. Beacon did say to her at the last parent-teacher meeting that Gareth was one of the most gifted artists she had ever taught. Those earlier marks were no more than a threat! Surely his final mark would reflect his talent. His acceptance depended on it.

  She shone the cutlery on her shirt, removing any spots left over from the dishwasher. What a thrill that was when they bought it! Just fill it, turn it on, and voilà! No more fights about whose turn it was to wash or dry. Of course, there wouldn’t be any fights at all soon. Just peace and quiet. Serenity. Silence. God, she would go out of her mind.

  Timing. What a silly notion that was. If there really was such a thing as good timing then Mark would have gone straight to school before the boys were born, and not spent his time labouring in a factory. He would have been a professional early enough that, perhaps, she could have been the one who was home more, watching them grow in infinitesimal increments. She could have been the one going over the homework and greeting them at the door after their day was done. Something that she did do, once every three weeks, as her rotating schedule allowed. Only then, there was normalcy. Every day.

  She was home, full-time now, straightening pictures, dusting the furniture, and rearranging things. A macramé wall hanging came down and was replaced by one of Gareth’s larger paintings, one he had done of the woman and the lake. The throw cushions on the sofa were all re-covered in a muted flowered chintz, petals in a blush pink on a dusty-grey background. All the chipped mugs had been tossed, replaced by some English bone china mugs. She even had the broadloom cleaned in the family room, but some stains remained, though faded. Memories of a twelve-year-old’s missed birthday party here and an unattended young artist’s spilled paints there … Elaine rearranged the furniture to cover them. To ease her conscience.

  The boys were growing up and away, and now, finally, she had agreed to be a stay-at-home mom. Where was the sense in that? The years when she should have been home have passed her by. Those were the years she was too busy bringing home the bacon. She had overcompensated with gifts and homemade goodies. Everyone thought she was a marvellous mom. It was easy; it was part-time. She knew that the only reason that she could create the illusion of being a perfect mother was that she had an escape. Work allowed her to be more present when she was present. Work allowed her to be more interested, more doting, more understanding. She wondered how Jack’s mother, that
German woman down the street, managed to do it, day in and day out, without pulling out her hair. What stamina she must have. What tenacity! Well, she was German.

  “Mom?” Gareth poked his head in, through the tear in the screen door. (Something else she could fix!) He was covered in dried paint, but, as that was now the norm, there was no point in mentioning a shower to him.

  “Hey, it smells great in here! Is there lots? Because I invited some friends for dinner. Well, Jack, but he’s here half the time, anyhow. And a couple of girls.”

  “Girls? You mean your girlfriend and a friend of hers?”

  “Ah, no. Some other girls. You’ll see.”

  “There’s always lots. You know that. I’ll just set a few more places.”

  She was creating a perfect Sunday meal. Potatoes, roasted in the oven, alongside a roast, peas on the stove, and an iceberg salad on the side. But the treat, her favourite thing, would be the Yorkshire puddings. Something that would surely smoke up the house with the melted hot fat in the oven, but oh-so worth it! She would open the windows and doors before she put in the cupcake pans, each round cup with a tablespoon of lard in it, under the grill. And then, if that wasn’t enough, she had defrosted a Sara Lee cheesecake for dessert. One of the new ones with cherries and sauce on top!

  But it wasn’t enough for her. Mark had gone back to school; she had nurtured and facilitated that years ago. So now, what about her? At forty-five years old, what was she to do? There were only so many cherry-topped cheesecakes she could defrost.

  If only I could have made more of my patients trust me. If only they could have opened up to me. The ones whose words failed them.

  Elaine knew that Mark was looking forward to quieter days where it would just be the two of them again. Him coming home to her and there never being an empty house or lonely bed ever again. But surely he would tire of that. Surely they managed to keep their love and passion alive because she wasn’t always readily accessible. Yes, she would have to tell him that she might have other plans. But not tonight. Tonight would be a perfect family dinner.