Still Life

by Christa Parrish

Katherine coughs, a fake, dry sound, but Evan refuses to look at her. He won’t tell Ada. He won’t sacrifice his mother. It’s her choice.

  The young woman and her son exchange email addresses now. She wants him to keep in touch. He scurries around to find some paper, a pen with ink. The first two ballpoints don’t write; he scribbles on the magnetic grocery list, leaving only deep gashes that can be felt, not seen. “Mom, are there any pens that work in this house?” he asks, and she snaps and points at her briefcase, a gift from Will when she earned her real estate license. Not a real briefcase with popping latches and legal pads. This one is glazed calfskin, mottled red with gold-tone zipper pulls and a shoulder strap. Gorgeous. When she unwrapped it, she couldn’t believe Will had chosen something so perfect or spent so much money. She later learned Robin picked it out.

  “Front pocket,” she says, and he finds a blue highlighter. “Not that.”

  “It works,” he says, and prints his email on the paper, slowly, each letter formed and legible and large. Then he tears off the top sheet and gives it to Ada. She folds it into the pocket of her skirt and writes her address for him.

  Katherine’s skin prickles with pseudo-sweat, a clammy sheen of anxiety but no actual perspiration. She can keep silent. Her confession gains this woman nothing. All she owns, every person she loves, those things she holds valuable, she can pile it at Ada Goetz’s feet, washed in Katherine’s tears of contrition, dried with her hair.

  Julian Goetz is dead.

  She has nothing to give Ada, but she needs something from her. She needs forgiveness. She needs it, and has no right to ask. In this moment, though, she realizes if she doesn’t seek it out now, she will never have peace. She will live with the guilt of knowing not only that her selfishness killed a man, but she’s harboring a lie, and it will peck away at her, until all the flesh has been torn from her bones, and she’ll be no good to anyone.

  “Mrs. Goetz,” she says. Beside her, Evan shakes his head, but she continues, “I met your husband. The day of the plane crash. I was supposed to be on his flight. It was overbooked.”

  “Julian told me. He was bumped, too, at first.”

  “I wasn’t bumped.”

  Ada blinks. Frowns.

  “I offered to give up my seat. To your husband.” Katherine draws quick, empty breaths, the way a fish struggles for air when outside water, entire chest cavity heaving, mouth opening and closing, but still suffocating. “He said . . . he said . . .”

  “He wanted to be home for my birthday.” And then Ada smiles. “Stubborn man. Nothing was going to keep him off that plane.”

  Katherine cries with her lungs, her throat, not her eyes. No tears. Each inhalation is a wheeze of torment, and she covers her face in shame. Evan drapes his spindly adolescent arm over her neck.

  “Mrs. Walker,” Ada says. “Mrs. Walker, it’s okay.”

  “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. Please.”

  And Ada, peeling Katherine’s hands from her face, says, “There’s nothing to forgive.” She hesitates, smiles uncertainly, and scrunches her shoulders. Then she wriggles into her oversized boots and her oversized coat, and disappears from the house.

  What about me?

  Suddenly, uneasiness replaces Katherine’s penitence. She couldn’t have imagined this response from Ada Goetz. She left room for only two options, forgiveness or hatred. Not indifference.

  “Mom?”

  “She didn’t forgive me.” And then an unreasonable anger creeps up from the emptiness of Katherine’s stomach. Without this absolution, how will she be able to start over, washed clean and able to escape the burden of her choices that day in the airport? “How could she not forgive me?”

  “She doesn’t even blame you, Mom.”

  “She needs to forgive me.” The sentence comes from her, a hiss, and then a pitiful bubbling sound. “I need her to forgive me.”

  Evan shakes his head. “Not her. Someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “Wait here. I’ll be right back. There’s something you need to read.”

  He tumbles up the stairs as only Evan does, bumping shins, reaching out for the steps above him with his arms, his motions ape-like. She hears him above, running the hallway to his room, banging and scraping, and then him stampeding back to her, a book in his hands, paper cover curled open. A Bible. Katherine presses her lips tight and, in a silent sucking motion, pulls the saliva from her mouth. Everything behind her teeth is so dry it collapses and she can’t tell her tongue from her cheek from her palette. She swallows the warm, frothy spit. She won’t say what she thinks, that this is a waste of time, a collection of myth and escapism and mistranslated histories. Prayer is one thing, or going to a church service, hearing some sermon encouraging happiness and fulfillment, and then eating a slice of crumb cake with friends she sees only on Sunday. But searching some ancient instruction manual for advice on modern living? No. It’s what people do when they cannot handle situations of their own making. The Zoloft of the masses. A chuckle puffs her cheeks but cannot escape her clamped jaw, so it dies without sound.

  Then Evan turns the thin pages; they crackle like tissue paper, like a gift being unwrapped. Her soul shifts. She’ll listen, if only for him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  There’s nothing left for her now, it seems, and she feels almost as trapped as when she lived in the community. It’s disillusionment, something she’s not experienced before because she’s never allowed herself to hope outside the boundaries of her father’s rules for her. She expected something to happen at the end of her quest. She believed she heard from God to go, find these strangers hanging on her wall, and she did so in obedience. Now? She’s home again, rattling around the brownstone amongst Julian’s things, and there is no next.

  Sunday. The Lord’s Day. She has no desire to visit Holy Zion after being away so long. People will want to know how she’s doing and where she’s been, and all the questions dizzy her to the point of not knowing her own name. She dresses in her clothes from yesterday, draped neatly on the back of the chair; she has so few clothes and wears each outfit three times, unless she’s spilled on it, or it’s noticeably soiled in some way. She makes breakfast. She eats. She cleans the dishes, dries them, and stacks them back in the cupboard. Only twenty minutes has ticked away. Time moves slowly in the in-between.

  She grabs the car key, ties on her boots, and backs the Jeep from the garage. She figures she’ll go to church, but she drives past it and, even though she controls the vehicle, she’s surprised not to have stopped. She continues to drive north on Route 37 because it goes through three states and she’ll tire of driving before running out of road.

  Instead of thinking, she notices things. Church doors, decorated for a wedding, and women in sleeveless dresses shivering on the steps of the old stone cathedral. Dozens of old Christmas trees at the end of driveways, waiting to be hauled away. Fire hydrants and broken telephone poles and banners advertising preschool enrollment. Then she sees the sign for the orchard, closed this time of year, but she knows where this particular turnoff leads—to the country, where Julian took her to drive.

  She flicks on her directional.

  She doesn’t fly like the day they were together. It’s January and ice clings to the pavement here and there. With miles between the farmhouses, it’s likely no one will find her if she spins out of control and crashes. But she goes fast, and she opens the windows despite the cold, all four of them, and gives winter permission to wash her clean with its frosted fingers.

  And she shouts a wordless cry of frustration and wonder and sadness, heavy with questions, pleading with the unknown. Her breath condenses and trails after the sound, out the window, both dispersing in the gray air. What next?

  What next?

  Silence.

  She slows the car, parks in the middle of the road, and steps from the Jeep. Brown pasture grass patched with snow rises away from the pavement. Nothing else. Ada breathes deeply and, without consideration, clim
bs onto the hood of the car, then to the roof, and shouts again.

  Her voice echoes back.

  It’s almost ten at night, and Hortense calls and tells her she’s coming to the house with someone, so get decent. Ada hadn’t been asleep but reading in bed in a nightgown, and she most certainly won’t see anyone in her bedclothes, even with Julian’s bathrobe—despite both Hortense and Mark being comfortable enough to run from bedroom to dryer clad in only underwear while she sat at their kitchen table. She’s also been flustered by random people clearly in their pajamas in public places—eateries, the public library, and the bank. To some things she will never grow accustomed.

  The doorbell rings multiple frantic times without space between. She lets Hortense inside, and the young man with her.

  “Nazih?”

  “Hello, Mrs. Goetz.”

  She sighs. “Do you think you’ll ever call me Ada?”

  “No, I do not believe so.”

  “You know each other,” Hortense says.

  “You’ve been here for dinner while Nazih has been here, too, Hortense,” Ada says, brow wrinkling. “You know we know each other. Is something wrong?”

  Hortense nods. “Go on. Tell her.”

  “What?” Ada asks.

  The young Yemeni man walks past her, places his palm over the burning boy in the hallway’s first photograph. “This is me.”

  Ada watches Nazih remove his hand. From the angle the moonlight filters through the windows into the brownstone, from her position in the hall, she can see the oily print; it shimmers with an iridescent luster, and she thinks she won’t ever wipe it away. This is one of the college students who attends Holy Zion, who has eaten in her home, who left messages after Julian’s death asking if he could help in any way—calls she didn’t return. But she would never have known the image and Nazih are the same. Too many years between them, too much smoke obscuring the boy’s face, too many times Ada avoided this photograph because it haunted her so deeply.

  “I do not know the entirety of the story because Mr. Goetz did not speak of it. But I will tell you what I can. Somehow, Mr. Goetz knew I wanted to come to the United States as a student. I only can surmise he must have had someone watching for my name. I did not realize he knew it. I did not know who he was until I saw this photograph.

  “I received an offer to attend Trent Polytechnic and was informed I would have all my tuition paid by a scholarship. When I arrived, Mr. Goetz contacted me; he hosted several students for dinner each week, and I was welcome to attend. I admit I came only for the food and because I wanted to learn how to be more American. The first night I arrived before all the others and Mr. Goetz showed me this image. It did not hang on the wall then. I did not believe he still thought of me. I imagined Western journalists cared nothing for the people in those faraway places; they came only because we give them much to cover for their news.

  “He provided the scholarship for me but would not let me thank him. He said I owed him nothing, it was for Christ. I thought, who is this Christ to ask a man to give so much to a stranger? And who is he that a man would obey? That is why I began to attend the Holy Zion church, to learn about this God-man I had been taught was the reason for so much suffering and hate. Now I, too, follow him.”

  So she takes his picture, right there, pulling the frame from the wall for him to hold, and the camera has become less shocking in her hands, the honeymoon over but still newlyweds, still learning, awkward but no longer embarrassed. She doesn’t fumble with the power switch or try to remember which symbol on the dial means point-and-shoot mode. She doesn’t startle at the sound of the shutter or the burst of flash. She looks and shoots, and Nazih’s image appears in the viewing window.

  “Not bad,” Hortense says.

  Ada swings the camera around and captures a photo of a surprised Hortense. They inspect it and laugh, her face half-blurred and half missing. “Sorry,” Ada says.

  Hortense plucks the camera from her hands. “You do it like this,” she says, and she holds it out, balancing it on the flat of her wrist, the lens facing both of them. “Press the button. With your outside arm.”

  She does, and they’re together in a single image, both looking straight ahead, and smiling.

  And so life continues.

  Hortense contacts Greg Eisen and tells him about Ada’s journey with—through—the photographs in the hallway. He proposes the idea to several magazines and all show interest. So he gathers Ada and photographer Roberto Alvarez, and they retrace her original steps. Greg hears the stories of Julian for the first time and she hears them again, and Roberto takes new pictures. “We can’t use yours, Ada. They’re not crisp enough for print,” Greg tells her.

  “They’re bad, Greg. Just say it.”

  He laughs. “They’re awful.”

  “We can’t all be Julian Goetz,” she says, repeating something she’s heard from Hortense time and again.

  “True that.”

  “Some of us can be pretty darn close,” Roberto says.

  Greg laughs again. “Keep telling yourself that, Alvarez.”

  She’s not offended, and her original concept—each subject holding, interacting, with his or her portrait—remains. In fact, the only difference is skill; the poses remain remarkably the same. Ada does get to meet Greyer DiGiulio as well, and before Roberto works his magical flash, she takes her own picture of him, healthy, shirtless in the grass, the emaciated boy of the image far off but never forgotten, held above his head. And yes, her reflection appears in the glass.

  They fly to and from Wyoming on a Union North flight, which Ada correctly assumes was booked for dramatic effect. And while Greg draws parallels and plays up his fears in the magazine story, Ada hardly thinks of Julian, except to wish he’d been there to share this first with her. Perhaps her mind knows her heart can’t handle such thoughts—this is the elevation where Flight 207 exploded, these are the last sounds Julian heard, this is the napkin he wrote on, the peanuts he ate—and protects her from them. Perhaps God knows. Either way, they’re all home safely and Greg’s narrative article, The Five: A Faith Legacy of Julian Goetz, captivates readers and brings a frenzy of requests for interviews and appearances by Ada. She declines them all, and lets Hortense deal with the rest of it.

  Her father must have seen the story, and that knowledge brings her satisfaction. Too much, probably.

  And so life continues.

  She receives her invitation to Terrance Brimworthy’s wedding, still a couple months off, and asks Hortense to go with her as her date. She agrees, but hints Ada should bring Nazih instead. “You have noticed how much attention he’s been paying you?”

  Ada hasn’t. She can’t imagine being with someone else and doesn’t want to try, not yet. But she thinks of Joy Robinson and her two Vinnys, and expects she won’t be single forever. Julian wouldn’t want that for her, anyway. And if it happens to be Nazih, she imagines he’d be pleased with that, too, because it is one more thing pointing toward heaven, a strange and wonderful tale of a photographer who took a picture of a boy halfway around the world, who learned the boy’s name and tracked him and found a way to fulfill his dream of coming to the United States, only to have this boy, now a young man a year younger than Ada, be the kinsman redeemer for his widow. Who but Julian’s God can knit together such happenings?

  She has come to love this God she once feared, the one she but saw through a glass dimly, twisted and deformed by her father’s words and actions into something wholly unrecognizable. The people of Holy Zion have been patient with her, and gracious, forgiving Ada for her initial suspicion of their dark skin and raised hands and boisterous amens punching though the sermon. She attends two Bible studies, one with the ladies, and one with the young adults—yes, with Nazih, who has switched to addressing her as Ada. From the women she learns steadfastness and hospitality and patience. From the youth she learns passion and questioning and vulnerability. From both she learns community.

  And Hortense. Something shift
s with them. Ada is no longer Julian’s ward to her. And while they’re not quite friends, they quietly move in that direction. Ada has days she misses Hortense being around, not because of loneliness—she’s never had trouble being alone—but because being around Hortense brings her pleasure. And when Hortense shows up unannounced, more and more she’s asking her to get a bite or do a little shoe shopping rather than checking in like a babysitter. Less and less she associates Mark and Hortense with Julian. They still tell stories about him, crazy antics they swear are true even though Ada has difficulty believing it, but they don’t possess him in the same way.

  They belong to her now too.

  And so life continues, but it moves so slowly, even clumsy Ada has no trouble keeping up. She doesn’t know what comes next. She takes her GED exam and passes. Nazih brings catalogues from the college and she pages through them but has no desire to learn about psychology or biology or education. She can’t imagine having some job where she sits at a desk all day typing and answering phone calls, or lectures children, or microwaves hamburgers. For today, she washes the sheets and the last of Julian’s dirty laundry, and packs his clothes for donation. She keeps two shirts that smell like him, folds them into a food storage bag, the kind with the plastic zipper, and every few days she opens it only enough for her to press her nose inside, and she inhales him, closing it quickly so his scent has less chance to dissipate, so she’ll have him as long as possible.

  She boxes most of his photo equipment for Evan Walker. They’ve kept in touch over email, him sharing some of his photos and asking her advice about a girl he likes. Grace, her name is. She tells him she’s the last person to give relationship tips, but is excited to meet her when they come this weekend to pick up everything. She’ll let him look through Julian’s studio and library and take whatever else he can use.

  She keeps Julian’s spare camera. She still takes pictures. It begins as a journaling exercise, one photograph a day showing how she feels. At first it’s mud puddles, cinderblock walls scarred with graffiti, headstones in the cemetery on Fifth Avenue, a spider squashed on the stoop outside her building—one she accidentally stepped on earlier in the day. All brown things and gray things and dead things. Hortense set up a blog for her to post her photos, and after several months, as she scrolls through them, she sees color between the clouds. A yellow dandelion. Children on swings, heads back, bare feet out, mouths open. Strawberry ice cream. Tomatoes in the farmers’ market. Hortense’s purple sandals. The browns are still there, but they’re becoming less as she heals.