by Mary Simses
I could feel the camera strap slipping through my fingers, see the Nikon silently dropping into darkness. My chest tightened as the sadness welled up inside me. “No, I didn’t.”
“That’s too bad.”
I nodded in silent agreement.
“So,” he said, “you’re leaving early tomorrow, then. I think you’d better take off at dawn if you want to avoid the Friday traffic. It’s a long drive even without any delays, but you can’t count on that so if you leave by, let’s see—”
“Hayden,” I interrupted, as I nervously spun the roll of toilet paper around in the holder. “I’m not coming back until Sunday.” I waited through an endless moment of silence.
“Wait…I don’t understand. What about the Men of Note dinner tomorrow night? You mean you’re going to miss that?”
I looked at the floor, guilt pulling me down like gravity. “Hayden, I’m really, really sorry. But finding this painting is like…it’s like a sign that I have to stay here and fill in these missing pieces of my grandmother’s life.” I pictured the painting of Gran and Chet. “And I know who can help me do that,” I said. “Chet Cummings. He can tell me things about Gran that I don’t know, Hayden. About her childhood, about growing up here in Beacon. About her painting. Even things my mother doesn’t know. I need…a couple of days.”
There was another moment of silence and then Hayden said, “I understand, Ellen.” His voice was quiet, resigned. “I know you need to do this. I just didn’t expect it to take this long. I really wanted you to be at that dinner with me.”
“I know,” I said. “And I’ll make it up to you somehow.” I squeezed the cell phone as if it were his hand.
I woke up early the next morning with a knot in my stomach. It was Friday and I wasn’t going home. I pictured Hayden combing through his closet for the right combination of suit and shirt and tie to wear to the dinner. He would want my blessing on whatever he picked, and I wouldn’t be there to give it. He would want me sitting next to him during the dinner and watching him when he received his award and giving his acceptance speech. And I wouldn’t be there to do it.
The little safe in the closet opened when I entered my birthday on the keypad. I took out my engagement ring, the diamond radiant under the room light. I tried to put the ring back on my finger, but it wouldn’t go on. I finally managed to get it over the knuckle with the help of some hand cream. It was still a tight fit, but at least I was wearing it again.
I sat down on the edge of the bed, turning my hand, watching the facets of the diamond catch the light. Replaying the conversation with Hayden in my mind, I began to feel worse and worse. Missing the dinner was bad enough, but recalling what he said when I told him about Gran’s painting made me feel almost sick. Did you have your camera with you?
I closed my eyes, not wanting to think about the Nikon, but finding that’s all I could think about. And then I realized I couldn’t go back to New York without a camera. I’d have to find a store up here—drive to Portland, if necessary—and replace it.
Dressing quickly, I headed to the dining room. It was crowded with travelers who had arrived during the night. I looked at the selection of breakfast items on the buffet, glancing at the little handwritten sign in front of each one. The egg casserole, filled with cheese and bits of sausage, looked delicious, and I thought I detected the aroma of jalapeño peppers in it as well. I hovered over a tray of pecan-stuffed baked apples glistening with a sugary glaze, and followed the scent of cinnamon to a large bowl of homemade granola. I checked out the platters of banana nut bread and blueberry muffins, a marbled coffee cake, cereals, bagels, and a large bowl of fresh fruit salad.
All of it looked tempting, but I was eager to get on the road, so I grabbed a bagel and a banana and went in search of Paula. I found her standing outside the kitchen door, talking to the cook, and I asked if she knew of a good camera shop.
She raised her eyebrows. “Don’t you have a camera? I thought I saw you with one the other day.”
I wondered if there was anything this woman didn’t notice. “Yes, well, that camera’s a little broken,” I said, quoting Paula to herself. This almost made me smile, but the memory of the lost Nikon was too close.
“Are you a photographer?” she asked, pulling her head back to study me more carefully.
“Not exactly,” I said. “I just do it as a hobby. Kind of a serious hobby, though.”
She shook her head. “Well, you won’t find a camera store in Beacon. You’d have to go to Lewisboro. There used to be a place called Brewster’s. They might still be around.”
“How far is Lewisboro?”
“Oh, about forty-five minutes,” she said. “Of course, that’s in my car. You could do it in a half hour in yours.”
I felt suddenly embarrassed about my BMW, although I wasn’t sure why. In the parking lot I got the number and address for Brewster’s Camera World from my cell phone. The store was still in Lewisboro and when I called, the man who answered told me they sold Nikons. This was good. I clicked off the phone with a sigh of relief and began to feel happy as I drove to Chet Cummings’s house.
But by the time I turned onto his street, my mood had dampened again. I could see his driveway and the green Audi, which was still parked in the same place. There was no other car there, which meant he was out again. I drove toward the house slowly, wondering if I should knock on the door just in case. But then I saw the white Volvo in the driveway next door. No way was I getting tangled up with that neighbor again.
Frustrated, I drove past the house and, as I did, I noticed a piece of paper on the door. It was the first sign of life I’d seen, if you didn’t count the cat. At the end of the street, I made a quick U-turn. When I was still several houses away, I pulled over and parked. Then I ran toward the Cummings house, hiding behind trees and bushes and fences so the neighbor wouldn’t see me. When I got to Chet’s house, I raced up the front porch.
The note was written with a thick black felt-tip marker on a piece of white paper, and it was stuck to the door with masking tape.
Mike—
I’ll be back at 5.
CRC
CRC. Chester R. Cummings. That was Chet. So he wasn’t away after all. He was going to be back here at five o’clock, and if I dropped by a little bit earlier I could catch him. This was perfect. I was so excited I could have danced a two-step right on his porch. I retraced my route, hiding behind the bushes and trees and fences again, until I got back to my car and jumped into the front seat.
Having made my plan to come back later, I set the GPS for Lewisboro, an estimated forty-minute drive. I left Beacon and headed north on the highway, surrounded by pine trees. Ahead was a horizon of more pines and a huge, billowing sky. It would have made a great photo, and I thought about how I could capture it in a viewfinder. I would keep the highway and the horizon of trees close to the bottom of the frame and let the sky open up and fill the rest of the space.
Composition.
That was something my grandmother always talked about. She had given me my first really good camera, an old Nikon F. Solidly built and completely mechanical, it was a film camera, but was state-of-the-art for its time. Gran presented it to me the summer I turned thirteen, when I was staying with my grandparents for two weeks in their Steiner Street house in San Francisco.
“I think it’s time you graduated from that little Kodak you’ve been using,” Gran said as she walked into the room where I always stayed. I called it the garden room because it had a white wooden bed, pale green carpet, and wallpaper decorated with vines and flowers.
She handed me a box covered in lavender wrapping paper. I pulled out a heavy black-and-chrome camera with a black strap.
After a moment of stunned silence, I finally managed to say thank you.
“Well, it’s not new,” my grandmother said. “But the man I bought it from took very good care of it. The pros use these, you know.” She winked at me.
I did know. That camera was a huge st
ep up from my old Kodak, which required nothing more than looking through the viewfinder and pressing a shutter release.
The Nikon was in another league altogether, requiring that I gain a certain degree of knowledge about single-lens reflex cameras. I had to learn how to focus the camera myself and how to set the exposure using the shutter speeds and f-stops. The only thing automatic was a simple light meter.
I walked into my grandparents’ den with the instruction book, its pages dog-eared and wrinkled. Then I curled up on one of the sofas and studied the manual for two hours before my grandmother came looking for me.
“I thought you would have taken four rolls of film by now,” she said, standing in the doorway. “Put that book away and come with me.”
I followed her downstairs and out the door.
“But I’m still trying to figure out all this stuff about f-stops and shutter speeds,” I said as I crossed the street behind her.
She led me across the street to Alamo Square, and we walked to the top of the hill, where the setting sun drenched the city’s skyline in gold.
“I have to know this stuff before I can be any good,” I said. “This isn’t like my old camera.”
“Nonsense.” She flicked her hand. “I wouldn’t worry about that. It all comes with time.”
I let the camera hang from my neck on its long strap while she stood behind me, playfully pulling one of my braids. Then she slowly turned me around so I could see the city from all directions. Clusters of trees and park benches, apartment buildings hanging onto the steep slopes by their fingernails, the white Transamerica Pyramid, the San Francisco City Hall, and the row of bright Victorian houses called Painted Ladies, in which my grandparents’ house was nestled.
“But if I don’t get it right, the photos will come out too light or too dark or—”
“Aren’t we technical!” She laughed. A yellow taxi stopped nearby to pick up a group of tourists who spoke with French accents. My grandmother put her arm around me.
“The most important thing of all,” she said, her arm outstretched toward the skyline before us, “is composition—what your eye chooses to photograph. What stays in, what goes out.” She pointed to the camera. “When you look through that viewfinder, you need to know what makes sense. You need to ask yourself if there is a better way to look at the scene in front of you—maybe a more interesting way, or a way you hadn’t thought of. There are so many different ways to look at the same thing, Ellen.”
She crouched down to my level and gently touched my chin. “That’s something no one can teach. People either have it or they don’t.” She kissed the top of my head. “You don’t have to worry, though. I’ve seen your photos. You have it.”
I’d never really thought to question my grandmother’s knowledge of photography or composition. I never wondered what qualifications she had to speak with such authority. I guess I just thought grandmothers knew everything.
Later that evening, when my parents were getting ready to go out to dinner, I told my mother what Gran had said.
“And what could your grandmother possibly think she knows about composition?” My mother laughed and raised a can of Aqua Net hair spray.
I stared at the bathroom floor, with its tiny black-and-white checkerboard tiles, as my mother sprayed a fog of chemicals around her head. I felt hurt for Gran, but I didn’t know how to defend her. There was nothing concrete I could offer up as proof of her knowledge. And yet I knew that what my grandmother said was true.
Thirty-two minutes after leaving Beacon I pulled off the highway onto the Lewisboro exit and followed the signs to the shopping district. Brewster’s was on the first floor of an old two-story brick building, tucked between Silver Serpent Antiques and Ross Martin Clothiers.
I stepped inside a long, narrow, dimly lit shop. The air smelled dry, like attics and old newspapers, but the store was crammed with camera equipment—bodies, lenses, tripods, filters, flash units, and other items in old oak-and-glass cabinets. Behind the counter, a man with gray-rimmed glasses was talking to a teenage boy and his father about flash units.
He nodded to me. “Somebody will be right with you,” he said. Then he walked through a doorway behind the counter and I heard him say, “Pop; Pop. There’s a customer—can you come out?”
A moment later an old man emerged. His forehead had deep wrinkles, like grooves, and there were grooves around his mouth, like a set of parentheses. His hair, snowdrift white, covered his head like fine fuzz.
“What can I help you with, miss?” he asked.
I told him the model of my camera and asked if he had one in stock.
He scratched the side of his face and looked at the ceiling. Then he said, “Well, miss, they’ve just replaced that model with another one that’s a little bit different. But you’re in luck,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “We do have the new one in stock and I’ll get it out for you. See how you like it.”
He took a key and opened a case behind him. He moved a few boxes around, and then pulled out a camera and set it on the counter. “I take it you’re familiar with Nikons?”
I nodded. “Yes, I’ve been using them for years.”
He smiled. “Years, have you? Well, I’ll say.”
“I had an old Nikon F,” I said. “I still love the feel of those mechanical cameras.”
The man slapped the counter. “No kidding.” He looked at me with his mouth open. “Now, that was a camera,” he said. “A big deal for its time, although you wouldn’t think so with all of these digital things we sell now. Everything has to have a darned computer in it.” He shook his head.
“I know what you mean,” I said. “Those old cameras were a lot easier. But I guess you can’t stop change.”
“That’s for sure,” he said. “Now, if you want to really know the fine points of this camera, you’ll need to wait for my son, Mark, to finish with his customers over there.” He wiggled a finger toward Mark.
“Oh, that’s all right,” I said. “I think I can figure it out.”
He handed me the camera. “Okay, then, miss, give it a whirl.”
I turned the camera on and put the viewfinder to my eye. “Feels a little heavier,” I told him as I zoomed in on a sign behind the counter. WE PROUDLY ACCEPT VISA AND MASTERCARD. I took a picture.
Then I pointed to the front window and snapped a shot of a woman passing by outside. She had a pink fishing hat on her head.
“So you had a Nikon F,” the man said, scratching his cheek again.
I looked at the photos I’d taken in the LCD panel. The woman’s hat was bright and crisp. “Yes, my grandmother gave it to me one summer.”
“That’s a pretty nice gift,” the man said.
I nodded. “Well, she was a nice grandmother.” I took a picture of a cabinet full of camera bags. “In fact,” I said as I looked at the display panel again to see the result, “she used to live in Maine. That’s why I’m here.”
The man began rearranging boxes of flash units on a shelf behind him. “She did, eh? Where’d she live? Here in Lewisboro?”
I turned on the camera’s menu and started to scroll through the choices. SETUP; SHOOTING; PLAYBACK. “She grew up in Beacon,” I said.
The man turned and stared at me. “In Beacon? I grew up in Beacon. What’s your grandmother’s name?”
“Her maiden name was Ruth Goddard.”
His eyes burst open. “Ruthie? Ruthie Goddard? Your grandmother?” He slapped the counter again. “No kidding!” He tilted his head back and grinned. “Why, I went to school with Ruthie.”
“You knew her?” I said. “You knew my grandmother?” I felt my pulse quicken, felt a tingle go up my arms.
“Sure did. Knew her from the time we were little kids. Second grade, I think. Where’s she living now?”
I looked down. “Actually,” I said, “she passed away a little over a week ago.” When I raised my head, the man was gazing at me with soft, kindly eyes.
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that, Miss
…Miss…what is your name?”
“Ellen Branford,” I said, offering my hand.
“Wade Shelby,” the man said, giving my hand a vigorous shake. “Ruthie was a sweet girl. Good artist, too. Talented.”
I put the camera on the counter. “Yes. I just discovered she was a painter.”
“Oh, sure,” he said. “By golly, she was a painter. Got her into college. She was studying art.”
Got her into college? Studying art? No, he was wrong about that. Gran went to Stanford and graduated with a degree in literature, not art. Now he was confusing her with someone else.
“Oh, sure,” he said. “She went off to become an artist. A real trained one.” He raised one eyebrow. “And we never got her back.”
“What do you mean?”
Wade leaned in a little closer. “Well, now, she was going around with this fellow, Chet,” he whispered. “Family had been in Beacon a long time. Nice kid. Pretty serious, the two of them. Everybody said they were going to get married. But then Ruthie went off to college and the next thing we heard she’d met another fellow. Some doctor or medical student.” He shrugged and laid his hands on the counter. “And that was that. That city slicker took our Ruthie.”
“The doctor?”
Wade nodded.
I thought about my grandmother dating Chet, going off to college, breaking up with Chet, and marrying…it was a little odd hearing my grandfather described as that city slicker.
“I can’t believe you knew my grandmother,” I said. “I’ve learned so much about her since I came to Maine.” I took out my credit card and placed it on the counter.
“Would you like to take that camera?”
I nodded, and Wade put it in the box. Then he ran my credit card through the machine.
“What happened to Chet?” I asked.
“Chet? You know, I don’t recall,” he said, presenting me with the sales slip and a pen. “He was a nice kid, though.” He put the box in a shopping bag. “Wish I knew more, being it was your grandmother and all.” He came around the counter and handed me the bag. Then he looked at me, one eye half-closed. “You know who might know?”