“Well, maybe you and Julian can come by tomorrow, and you can take a look.”
“Okay.”
“J-man. Hurry up with those burgers,” Mark calls. “We’re starving.”
“I thought you were drinking your dinner tonight,” Julian shouts back, lifting the lid of the grill and dropping the patties on the hot racks. The meat sizzles. He adds hot dogs and looks back at Ada. The conversation wraps around her as the women share gardening failures; she’s within it, even though she doesn’t speak.
Julian meets Hortense’s gaze. Their silent exchange is imperceptible to everyone else. Thank you. You’re welcome. And it won’t be spoken of again.
Later, after people have gone, he and Ada lie atop the gray cotton sheets, a box fan in one window, cooling the humid July night, which has settled in their bedroom. She looks as though she wears the moon, in his white t-shirt and her own white underpants. He wears white, too, boring boxer shorts and nothing else, sweat dampening the hair beneath his arms. He hates the feeling, raises his arms over his head so the breeze from the fan will dry him.
His knees are bent. Hers too. Twin mountains in the semi-darkness, facing opposite directions—his feet point to the bedroom door, hers toward the closet. On their backs, both staring at the ceiling, his ear against her jawbone, and vice versa. She turns her head first, tilts her mouth toward his, stretches her neck so she can kiss him.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It’s the only appearance he couldn’t postpone or cancel, an event at MOCA in Los Angeles, for which he was hired eighteen months in advance. He worries about leaving Ada, but she assures him she’ll be perfectly fine for the three nights he’s away.
“Are you sure? Hortense said she’d come stay with you. Or you can go there.”
“Julian. Just go.”
“I’ll be back for your birthday.”
“I know.”
“Promise me you’ll get in touch with Mark or Hortense if you need anything. Anything.”
“I promise.”
So he goes.
He calls each evening—evening for him, bedtime for her—but they don’t speak long because of the time difference. Instead Ada tucks the phone next to her pillow and falls asleep, and he listens to her breathing change, and he leaves his phone on as well, on his chest, and wakes in the mornings with it having shut off sometime in the night.
On the morning of her twenty-sixth birthday, he takes a cab to the airport, checks into his flight, bumps through security, and boards his plane without incident. During his layover in Cleveland, he eats two Egg McMuffin meals and a couple of extra hash browns. He arrives at his gate to find it overflowing with passengers, so he tucks himself at the end of a row of seats, leans his forehead against the window, and watches coverall-clad mechanics on the tarmac scurrying back and forth under the belly of the airplane. He digs his camera from the satchel at his feet and shoots.
“My son loves photography,” a voice says.
Julian looks down into the face of a woman, perhaps midforties, in a brazen white coat. He squints to make out her features, but they are swallowed by the echo of whiteness he sees around her, snow blindness, halos of glare. He averts his eyes. “How old is he?”
“Fifteen,” she says. “Are you a professional?”
“Yes,” he says. “Is your son with you?”
“No.” Something shades her response. He tries again to see her face beyond her coat, wishes he could stare through his viewfinder. Instead he crosses his arm over his chest, his chin wedged in the crook of his elbow, blocking the brightness. Her face is clearer, and there it is. Shame.
“It is a school day,” he says.
She nods. “Do you want to see some of his pictures? I mean, would you mind looking? I think he’s good, but I’m his mom.”
“Yes, sure. Of course.”
Everyone has a book idea to pitch to a published author, a song to play for the uncle in Nashville, a portfolio for the photographer. He’s seen everything from scrapbooks to iPhone galleries, scrolling through, searching for the smallest, most hidden compliment he can offer with truth. But he always says yes, because no one said yes to him. His mother died when he was nine. His father thought taking pictures was for homosexuals and liberals, especially when his sensitive son had no interest in pummeling others on a football field. So Officer George Goetz, third-generation German-American, lover of whiskey, fighter of local crime with the local sheriff’s department, purveyor of sorrow and gambling debt, made certain his pansy son had plenty of pummeling at home. His sister, older by eight years, was already out of the house, at first in college, then traveling, then marriage. Even if she wanted to protect him—which he believes she did—Sophie kept running so her grief wouldn’t catch her. When she finally popped her head back into his life, he was sixteen and mostly out of the house as well, crashing on friends’ sofas on weekends—proper spend-the-nights—and climbing into their bedroom windows after parents were asleep on weekdays. By the time he’d been accepted into the college photography program, his size-thirty-waist jeans wouldn’t stay on his hips without a belt and since he couldn’t afford a meal plan, he’d join whatever student activities boasted food. One Thursday night he showed up at an Intervarsity Christian Fellowship meeting and found much more than pizza. Finally someone said yes to him.
Jesus.
The woman glows now, lugging her oversized fuchsia purse onto her lap, pawing through it. “Oh, here it is.” She hands him a dollar store photo album, floppy floral cover, ten thin sheath pages.
He looks. The boy is learning, yes; only taking pictures maybe three years at most. But he’s past the trying-too-hard stage, the odd-angle stage, the blurry-weird-lighting-is-cool stage. This kid understands composition, probably naturally. But more so, he peers over the edge of the photograph to discover all that is behind it.
He’s good.
And Julian recognizes so much of his own teenage fumblings in these ten plastic-laminated images, printed at home and cut unevenly to size with wobbly scissors, and given as some sort of homemade gift, tied with leftover Christmas ribbon.
“What’s your son’s name?”
“Evan.”
“You tell Evan he needs to listen to his mother. He has talent.” He finds a business card in the front flap of his camera bag. “Have him get in touch with me. I’m serious.”
She glances at the card. “Thank you, Mr. Goetz. He’ll be so pleased. After he gets over the fact I showed his pictures to some stranger at the airport. He made me promise these were for my eyes only.” She tucks the photo book back into her purse, with more care than she yanked it out. Sticks his card in her coat pocket. “He’s my heart. Both of them.”
In the din of the waiting area, a blurry voice rattles in the public address system. Several names. He picks out his own. “Excuse me,” he tells the woman, and twists through the crowd to the airline counter, where he learns the flight has been overbooked, and due to issues with his reservation, there is no seat for him.
“No, it can’t be. I’ve had these tickets for months.”
“Sir, I realize how inconvenient this must be for you.”
“I don’t think you do.”
“The next available flight is the nine fifteen to Albany, New York. We’re also giving you a three-hundred-dollar travel voucher and coupons for a free meal and drink at the—”
Julian holds up his hand. “Just do whatever.”
He calls Ada. “My flight’s overbooked. Why in the world airlines do that, I don’t know.”
“What does that mean?” she asks.
“I’ve been bumped to the nine-fifteen flight.”
“Oh. It’s alright.”
He’d made reservations tonight for her birthday. He wants the day to be special. She’s twenty-six and never has had any recognition of her value. The cult didn’t celebrate birthdays. No one in that place was significant, except the prophet. Julian angers thinking of Abram Mitchell, his scrawny face and limbs, though f
or as sticky as Julian’s memory is, he cannot bring Mitchell into focus. He pictures him as one of those lanky aliens, the stretched humanoid frame and soulless, unblinking serpent eyes.
“No, it’s not.” He sighs. “Look, just let me—I’ll call you back.”
Does he pray? His jaw clenches. It has always been his personal philosophy to avoid prayer for matters of inconvenience—parking places close to the grocery store in rainstorms, slow traffic while late to appointments, sold-out events, ill-timed sinus infections. He’s seen so many worse things through his lens. Children have died of starvation in his arms. Men with war wounds bled at his feet, blackening the dust. Women wailing in the streets as lost loved ones were carried past. No, this doesn’t deserve a prayer.
But perhaps the persistent window treatment? He approaches the airline desk again. “Please, it’s my wife’s birthday. It’s very important I get home this afternoon. Could you ask one more time if anyone would be willing to trade seats with me?”
“Sir, I’ve announced it three times already.”
“I know. I know. Just once more. Please.”
The attendant makes his plea over the loudspeaker. He waits. The woman in the white coat approaches. “I’ll switch flights,” she says.
“Thank you, thank you,” Julian says. He offers his hand. “Honestly. I cannot thank you enough.”
“It’s my pleasure,” the woman says. She offers her hand. “Katherine Walker.”
“Mr. Goetz,” the attendant interrupts. “You need to board now.”
“Yes, wonderful. Thank you.”
The woman says, “Tell your wife happy birthday.”
“She’s my heart,” he tells her. Katherine.
She nods. Understands.
“I’ll be waiting to hear from Evan,” he calls as he backs toward the gate. Hands the waiting attendant his boarding pass. His neck flushes with happiness and he cannot stop grinning.
He’s the last one into the plane; the attendant locks the door as he steps on. One seat, the middle, between two businessmen three-quarters of the way to the back. Julian jams his carry-on in the overhead compartment and waits while the outside man stands and steps into the aisle. He twists into the row, falling heavily between the armrests. The other man stares out the window. Julian stuffs his camera bag under the seat in front of him, buckles his belt.
Before powering off his phone, he texts Ada: I’LL BE HOME IN TIME. BE READY TO PARTY.
PART THREE
EVAN
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Hey, Evan. Hey. Wait up.”
Evan stops in the stream of teenagers; they bump around him, textbooks and elbows and sneakers, as if the hallways of high school are a rock tumbler, and he thinks, I’ll have no edges left by graduation. Evan Smooth. That’s me. Then Grace hooks her arm through his and pulls him from the bodies and against the lockers, which are painted that peculiar blue only found in schools and stadiums, too vibrant to be royal, too bruised to be aqua. She snaps a sheet of paper open with a flick of her wrist. “They’ve released some of the names of the Flight 207 victims.”
“So?”
“That photographer you like is on there.”
“Let me see that,” Evan says, snatching the list from his friend. He drops his binder and copy of Brave New World onto his feet and holds the paper with both hands, as if it will keep him from falling. The names are in alphabetical order; his eyes dive into them, catching the eighth one. Goetz, Julian. “Maybe it’s someone with the same name.”
Grace shakes her head, silky hair dancing, and he gets a rare glimpse of her ears. She wears her hair parted in the center, straight over her cheeks, only the center third of her face visible. “It’s him.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw the story. It’s online, all over.”
He bangs his head softly against the locker behind him. He’s been avoiding the crash news altogether; it only reminds him of how close his mother came to getting on the flight. “I don’t look at that stuff.”
“I get it,” Grace says. She leans back onto the adjacent locker.
Their arms touch.
He’s known Grace since they were in diapers, their mothers best friends and partners in the real estate business. Maybe he’d have a crush on her if she wasn’t four inches taller than him. His father insists Evan has one good growth spurt left, but his cardiologist told him not to get his hopes up; he may be five-and-a-half feet tall forever. It isn’t only the height difference. She knows so many of his most personal secrets. How he wet the bed until he was nine. How he still can’t watch Toy Story because it reminds him of the time he was in the hospital after his fifth heart surgery and the little girl in the room next to him died while his mother kept turning up the volume of that stupid movie to distract him from the frantic code team rushing past his door. Or how he isn’t circumcised. “Oh, we never had it done when he was a baby because of everything else,” his mother told Miss Robin while he and Grace played Nintendo in the next room. They were eleven years old. “Now he says he doesn’t want to. Will tried to convince him, but I guess he’s been through enough so I suppose he can do something about it on his own when he’s an adult, when some girl gets a look at him and comments.” The women titter. Evan’s face burned and he ran the two blocks home and didn’t look at Grace until school began a month and a half later. Grace told his mother he felt sick and didn’t want to puke in a strange bathroom. Katherine showed up at the house a half hour later, tucked him into bed, and brought him chicken broth and saltines to settle his belly.
Grace never mentioned the conversation to Evan.
“You think she saw him?” Grace wants to know.
“I don’t think I could ask.” He’s done what he can to help her forget. Putting on the funny if the situation calls for funny, keeping all his interactions with his mom buoyant, trying not to act fifteen more than necessary, doing chores without being asked multiple times in increasing volume and sharpness. If it’s working, he’d hate to see what she’d be like if he back talked and failed chemistry and left his dirty socks all over the house. “She’s not herself.”
“She’s depressed. She looked death in the eye and now she’s reevaluating her suburban soccer mom existence. It’s to be expected.”
“Did you get that from Oprah magazine or something?”
Grace shrugs. “I need something to read on the toilet.”
“Too much information,” Evan says, wiping his hand through the air.
The bell rings. Students scatter, ducking into doorways, sprinting down the hall. Grace pokes him in the ribs and says, “Bus?”
“Yeah,” he tells her, and she disappears too.
Only his binder is on the floor next to him; Huxley has been kicked away by some oversized jock foot. He finds it in a puddle beneath the water fountain, wipes it on his jeans, and heads to gym.
The other boys run the cross-country trail. Evan walks the track. He’s medically excused from anything high intensity. He can usually manage baseball, as long as he doesn’t hit more than a single, which never happens unless there’s a throwing error to first, and even then he simply stands on the bag while the ball is found in long grass against the chain-link fence surrounding the field. He also participates in the archery unit, ballroom dancing, and Ping-Pong. Otherwise, he walks the track, or the perimeter of the gymnasium on the days it’s too cold for outside, dodging misplaced jump shots or avoiding the occasional wayward hockey puck.
His teeth are fuzzy from lunch and because he forgot to brush them before school; he runs his tongue around his mouth, last night’s plaque scaly at the gum line. He polishes them with the cuff of his sweatshirt and returns his hands to his pockets, shuffles along, thinking of Julian Goetz and washed with a strange, in-between feeling. Not grief; he’d have to know a person for that depth of melancholy. But more than hearing about a random celebrity to which he had no connection, other than recognizing the name. It’s a bee sting—sharp, sudden pain that fades
to a mild throbbing for several hours, a bit of swelling brought down by ice, a bitty red welt for a day or two, and then it’s forgotten until everyone is around the dinner table sharing stories of past insect bites.
Three years ago, his parents bought him and his brother digital cameras for Christmas, and subscriptions to several photography magazines. Bryce took a few pictures of the family around the tree, holding up their new sweaters and matching coffee mugs. Evan fell in love with the images he saw through the viewfinder. Everything seemed sturdier, sharper, more real. He borrowed every book on photography in his town’s meager library. He tried techniques he read about in the magazines, joining photography club and entering whatever contests for which he was eligible—from county fairs to national calls for entries. And, in the pages of American Photo, he met Julian Goetz.
It was an interview and a dozen photos, each one lighting places in Evan he didn’t know existed—thin, underdeveloped corners of mercy. Evan dares to close his eyes as he walks, trusting his feet on the rubberized surface, so he can see those images again, calling them each to memory until he wobbles with his self-imposed blindness, stops, blinks, and continues his slow circling around the track.
How will he stop himself from asking his mother about Goetz? For the past eighteen months, he’s kept an eye on the photographer’s itinerary, hoping for a lecture at one of the not-too-far state universities or a gallery show in New York City. But Goetz’s appearance calendar had been mostly silent, nothing close enough for him to attend and then, nothing at all for the last six months due to his new marriage.
He doubts she noticed Goetz. She’s not a people watcher, an observer of detail. He can almost guarantee she sat herself in one of those uncomfortable plastic airport chairs and only paid attention to whatever real estate magazines she brought with her, or fiddled with her cell phone. She’s like Bryce, self-sequestered from those around her unless it’s business or family. Strangers waiting for a plane? No chance of interaction whatsoever.
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