One night they watch a sequence Maggie shot in the orchard just after dawn. Sunbeams splay through the branches almost horizontally, while the trunks are split by light and shadow, their bark silvery purple in the main but turning lichenous green toward the roots. There’s no movement, no human presence, and Dimitri makes a crack about artistic pretension that Maggie decides not to hear. Then Jeffrey calls out, “It’s John-John!” Maggie has viewed this clip several times before, admiring the hues and textures, but until now she has never noticed that perched up in a fork is the outline of a cat. Although she shot the footage a week ago, the Centaurs’ boys want to see right away if John-John’s still in the tree. A search party is dispatched, returning without success. At each subsequent screening Maggie’s obliged to replay the clip, every projection eliciting new tears from Judd and Jeffrey, until Rhea complains that they show more attention to the cat now than they did when it was around.
Another much-requested sequence begins with a shot of an inflatable wading pool. Pauline leans forward to dip her fingers in the water and shrieks at the sight of a daddy-long-legs floating on the surface. Judd and Jeffrey run past in their underwear to jump over a lawn sprinkler, Judd kicking up his feet as he goes, Jeffrey doing his best to follow suit. At the barbecue pit, Fletcher presides over the sizzle of hamburger patties while people sit nearby eating and slapping at mosquitoes. Two teenage girls in halter tops pass a Frisbee back and forth across the lawn, seemingly unaware of the young men watching from the picnic tables. The shot pans back to Fletcher.
“Thirty people,” he says, smiling into the lens. “Can you believe it? Two months and already we have thirty people. Just today we planted half an acre of trees. We’re doing something incredible here.” His voice is declamatory, his enunciation precise, as if he’s speaking to a bigger audience than just the person behind the camera. “With our sweat we’re making a living for ourselves. There’s a wholesomeness in it, a sense of well-being—” He pauses as though trying to remember a line. “There’s a decency here. We’re new to this place, but somehow it feels like it’s always been ours. It’s a young country; we’re going to help make it grow.”
A second later, Wale appears from nowhere, a flash of sinew and tattoos, grabs Fletcher by the waist, and carries him to the wading pool, Fletcher struggling and laughing at once. When Brid spots them coming, she pulls Pauline from the water. Wale plants his feet behind Fletcher’s and in one smooth motion twists and falls, dragging him down. Water flies in all directions; there’s a pop like a gunshot. The two men are a tangle of drenched limbs engulfed by sagging plastic.
At this moment during screenings, the residents of Harroway cheer. Afterward, when Fletcher makes unsubtle hints about Maggie excising the clip, she tells him she needs to keep a comprehensive record. Privately, she has her own concerns about why the clip should be so popular, but still, she’s pleased with the reaction it gets. Some proud, reckless part of her thinks everyone is more together while watching her footage than at any other time. The only person never in attendance is George Ray, whom she imagines stretched out on his bunk as the reels are playing, glad to have the barracks to himself. She can almost imagine joining him out there, sitting at the table and sharing the silence, but she takes too much pleasure from the screenings to abandon them.
The films are still more rudimentary than she would like. The camera always trembles. Shadows turn faces into blots of darkness, or lens flares splash them with light. In one sequence she has too many close-ups, while in another she has stood too far away. And there are many things she can’t properly capture: the porch step always on the verge of snapping underfoot; the air near the wrecking yard after a rain, heavy with the smell of motor oil; the screeching of raccoons at night as they fight and fornicate on the roof.
Maggie decides that what people are seeing at her movie nights is merely the rough draft for something else. After screenings she stays up late selecting the sequences that garnered the best reactions, and she starts to edit them together. The card table in the playroom grows littered with egg cartons holding rolled-up bits of film. Sometimes the cutting and splicing seem like the wilful destruction of what gained life on the screen, but in her mind there’s a greater film waiting to be realized, along with someone waiting to watch the thing. When she tries to apprehend who it is, she realizes it’s her father. Strange to find him still abiding there after so much distraction. Three months have passed since he wrote. By now anything could have happened to him. But surely Gran would call if something was wrong; Gran wouldn’t pass up a chance to make Maggie feel guilty.
What would her father say if he saw the film? No doubt the believer of the last few years would condemn it, accuse them all of worshipping false idols. But she can imagine the younger man, the one done in by a desk job and his mother’s sanctimony, being attracted by the promise of their life. She can even picture him joining them up here.
It was at Christmas that he gave her the Super 8 camera. She had gone back to Syracuse and told him how much she hated teaching, how she couldn’t get over her stage fright and the daily humiliations at the hands of eight-year-olds. Admitting such things seemed easier than talking about his plans to become a missionary. Before she knew it, though, he was telling her he had the answer to her problems. She should come with him to Laos and work at the mission.
His enthusiasm for the idea was so heartbreaking that she didn’t say no right away. She didn’t mention Fletcher, either, because they’d only been dating a few weeks and somehow she sensed her father wouldn’t be glad to hear she had a boyfriend.
Christmas morning she sat with him in the living room and unwrapped the box he handed her, discovering the camera within. She should have said thank you right away, but there was no gratitude in her, only confusion. She had never expressed the slightest interest in such a thing.
“How much did it cost?” she asked. Had he borrowed from Gran? He always hated doing that.
“It shoots in colour,” he said, ignoring her question. “And it has a zoom.”
“It’s too much,” she told him, but that wasn’t the response he wanted.
“You remember your Brownie Starflash? You loved taking pictures.”
“I was a little girl then.”
“You could bring it to Laos. You could film our work there, show people back home what it’s like.”
Suddenly she realized what was inside her along with the confusion. It was anger, a white-hot rage she’d never felt before. The camera wasn’t a gift, it was a bribe. Did he think she could be swayed so easily? Did he think she had nothing better to do than take pictures of him?
“Dad,” she said, “I’m not going to Laos.”
How strange it was to call him that. When she was a child, she’d had no need of any name for him, because whom else could she have been addressing?
The camera went back into its box, and when Maggie returned to Boston, she didn’t take it with her. Her father never said a word. He was still hoping she would change her mind, hoping she would bring it with her to film life in a foreign country. It’s what she has ended up doing, too, if not in the country of his choice. She tries not to feel too guilty about the pleasure and solitude that filming brings. The time alone may not be in the spirit of a commune, but the camera is one thing she doesn’t want to share.
The bathroom door’s ajar when she knocks on it, the camera in one hand and the tape recorder slung from a shoulder. She can see Rhea sitting on the toilet with the lid down, reading a magazine and watching over Judd and Jeffrey as they bathe in the claw-footed tub.
“All right if I film in here?” Maggie asks.
“Go ahead,” says Rhea. “There’s no shame in these parts.” She has a tinkling voice that gives each word its own particular tone but lays emphasis on none, like a pianist running through scales. Turning to the boys, she snaps, “Jeffrey! I saw that, young man.” Her dress is practically a sack, and with her pageboy haircut, her thin face, and her small body, she seems r
ather like a child herself, yet she’s lordly and indomitable in the humid air, commanding the boys to soap and rinse. After tucking away the magazine and adjusting her dress, she cranes her neck to glance in the mirror by the sink, while Maggie kneels and frees her hands to hold the camera by squeezing the microphone between her legs.
“Can I ask you a few questions?” she says to Rhea, focusing on her through the lens.
“Film us! Film us!” shouts Judd. Jeffrey joins him in the chant, but it’s quelled by a maternal glare.
“She’s always filming you,” Rhea tells them. “Right now she wants to talk with Mommy.” Brightening as she shifts back to Maggie, she folds her hands in her lap. “So what do you want to know?”
“Why don’t you tell me what it’s been like for you up here?”
Rhea sighs. “The boys have pink eye. Yesterday Dimitri burnt his elbow.” She pauses and laughs. “There I go again! My sister always says to me, ‘Rhea, you’ve got to stop defining yourself by other people’s crises.’ ”
“Where does your sister live?” Maggie asks.
“New York. Fashion writer, no kids. Rest of my family’s in Lexington.”
“You miss them?”
“Nah, it hasn’t been long enough. You miss yours? I heard about your father—” She makes a face as if she has given the wrong answer on a game show.
“I’m all right,” says Maggie. “Go on, tell me how you’ve found it here.”
Rhea thinks a bit before she answers. “Well, I guess things are mostly the same. There are little twists like the accent, and the store clerks are so rude. I don’t expect them to be just like Americans, but they could at least be nice. Right, Judd?” She speaks in the direction of the bath. “You should be nice to people?” Maggie pivots to capture the top of Judd’s head nodding.
“I can’t imagine living here permanently,” says Rhea. “I want the boys to grow up with their grandparents and aunts and uncles around.” She peers past the camera. “You’re not really going to spend your life here, are you, Maggie? For God’s sake, whenever I leave my toothbrush by the sink, somebody else uses it.” She wrinkles her nose. “Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but there are plenty of spongers, too. Not naming any names.” Suddenly she stares straight into the camera. “You know who you are!” she booms, then laughs. “It’s a nice old house, at least. You think it was really part of the Underground Railroad? I don’t believe it, but you never know.”
“That’s great,” says Maggie, drawing away from the viewfinder.
“What, is that all?” Rhea sounds disappointed.
“I’m out of film,” Maggie explains.
“Oh—good,” says Rhea without much enthusiasm. “Now we can really talk.” In a friendlier tone, she asks, “How are you doing?”
“Why, what have you heard?”
“Oh, nothing. We just never seem to chat, do we? It’s Brid’s fault. You can’t get a word in edgewise.” A second later there’s a geyser of water from the tub and a high-pitched cry of pain. “Judd, don’t kick,” she orders, then waits for peace to return before she speaks again.
“Fletcher has got quite the set-up here,” she continues. “It isn’t much of a commune, but it’s cute how straight he wants things to be. Some folks think he’s only slumming it here after Cybil Barrett dumped him, but that’s just silly, right?”
“It better be,” says Maggie, laughing uneasily. She wonders who has been saying such things. To change the subject, she asks, “You really can’t imagine staying up here?”
“Not if Dimitri gets his job back.” Rhea looks at Maggie intently. “You knew he was fired, right?”
Maggie shakes her head. Fletcher only told her that Dimitri was in between things.
“Well, it wasn’t a surprise,” says Rhea. In a lower voice, she adds, “Did you know he got into speed?”
Maggie says she didn’t.
“He had me trying it, even,” says Rhea. “He had me trying a lot of things.” She glances back at the boys, whose attention seems focused on some unseen aquatic phenomenon. “I figured out pretty fast I wasn’t into that stuff, but Dimitri had some people in his life who were bad influences.”
“The dragon lady!” exclaims Judd, looking up at her. For a moment Rhea appears horrified. Then she gives a sigh.
“The dragon lady,” she agrees. Leaning toward Maggie, she says, “One night he came home so strung out he couldn’t remember the kids’ names. I told him that was it, no more drugs, no girls, or else. So he went cold turkey, tried Zen, spent three weeks in a field near Hartford building a geodesic dome. Fine, I thought, whatever works. But in June I spotted the tracks on his arms, and a few days later so did his boss.”
It’s Maggie’s turn to glance at Judd and Jeffrey.
“Oh, I don’t care if they hear it,” says Rhea. “They need to know their father isn’t the Almighty.”
“Are things better up here, at least?” Maggie asks, and Rhea’s overtaken by a look of gloom.
“I wanted them to be. We’ll see. He goes out a lot.” Seeing Maggie’s puzzlement, she adds, “Not in the car, just walking. He says he’s looking for the cat.”
As if she’s just remembered something, she stands and strides over to the tub, picks up a wet washcloth, and begins to wipe at Jeffrey’s neck.
“It’s cold!” he shouts, enraged and ducking. “I don’t like it!” Rhea dips the cloth into the bath, wrings it out, and reapplies it.
“It’s no fun for me either,” she mutters, scrubbing hard. In a brighter tone, she says to Maggie, “I hope you won’t mind me saying something.”
“No, of course not,” Maggie replies, still trying to wrap her brain around what Rhea has already told her.
“The problem with Fletcher,” says Rhea, “is he’s too hard-headed.”
Suddenly Maggie realizes she does mind. She wants to say as much, but Rhea doesn’t give her the chance.
“Fletcher never listens at meetings, he only talks. All that stuff about the bourgeois machinery and the repressive state apparatus—the rest of us hashed that out years ago. We were going to teach-ins when Fletcher was on his parents’ yacht every weekend. Now we’ve moved on. Hold still, I’m almost finished,” she instructs Judd. To Maggie, she says, “I know he’s trying to show his father he can run a business up here, but he’s too uptight. You know what I mean?” Maggie nods absently and Rhea smiles. “Of course you do. You’re a good listener. Fletcher could take a page from your book.”
Maggie’s still kneeling on the floor. She remains silent long enough that Rhea glances over at her.
“Rhea, I want to be your friend,” says Maggie. “If you have something to say about Fletcher, though—”
“What? I can’t hear you.” Rhea sets to work smoothing down a cockscomb of hair on Jeffrey’s head.
“I said, if you want to complain about Fletcher, you should talk with him yourself.”
As soon as Maggie speaks the words, she gathers the camera and audio recorder, then stands to go, already regretting what she’s said. But as she turns to apologize, she discovers that Rhea’s attention is fixed on the tub. Judd and Jeffrey are flexing non-existent muscles for their mother, and exuberantly she praises their physiques. When Maggie says softly that she’ll see them later, Rhea waves without even turning around.
That night, Fletcher’s mouth refuses to move in time with his voice. “Punch me,” he says a second before his lips purse. Sitting at the card table in the playroom, Maggie rewinds the film on the editing machine and cues the audiotape again. Synchronizing the sound with the images is the most difficult part. There’s equipment that can do it more efficiently, but already she feels guilty enough about the expense of all the cartridges. “Punch me,” says Fletcher, half a second too late. She rewinds once more. “Punch me,” he says. He has his shirt off and the lighting’s good enough for her to see his abdominal muscles tighten perceptibly as Pauline wallops him in the gut. It’s a solid swing, producing a short, insuppressible grunt, but one
that comes too soon, just before the little fist makes contact.
“Three-thirty,” says a voice not on the soundtrack. “You should be in bed.”
Turning from the editor, Maggie sees Wale standing by the door. Against the backdrop of the lit hall, he looks naked. Then her eyes discern the white of his underwear, and she glances away. By day she’s seen him in swimsuits, but still, he must know he’s embarrassing her.
“I’ll go to bed soon,” she says. “I just want to finish this.” He doesn’t leave as she hopes, though. “Punch me,” says Fletcher on the audiotape and viewer, finally at the same time.
“You ever think your man tries too hard?” says Wale. He has come up behind her, and he bends over her shoulder to look more closely at the viewer. “You know, to compensate for all his father’s dough.” Hot air rolls along Maggie’s neck, carrying the scent of skin and sweat.
“Fletcher’s spending that dough on you and me and this place,” she says.
Wale only laughs. “Right on, defend the guy. I know you’ve got your ideas about him.” He pauses, giving her room to retaliate, but she holds back, so he adds, “Hell, you’re only up here because he is.”
She can’t help herself. “That’s bullshit.”
“You’ve got quite a mouth,” he murmurs into her ear.
She wrenches her chair around to face him, but having completed this manoeuvre, she finds her eyes level with his underwear, so she stands and folds her arms across her nightgown.
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