Depth of Field

by Chantel Guertin

  He shrugs and walks in, leaving the door open. I stay in the hall.

  “You were just born lucky, I guess,” I say, although I do like having a roommate. Ramona and I became friends right away, but Ben, he doesn’t seem like he has that with anyone, really.

  I lean back against the hallway’s cinder-block wall, then I slide down to the floor and stretch my legs out across the hallway, placing my bag beside me. Inside the room he tosses his satchel and Dummies book on his bed and retrieves something that clinks out of the mini-fridge. Then he’s back out in the hallway. “Want one?” he asks, holding up a brown bottle.

  “Can’t you be kicked out for that?” The hallway’s empty and quiet, even though it’s not that late. Not even 10:00.

  “It’s root beer.”

  “Oh.”

  He cracks open the first one, hands it across the hall and I take it. A guy comes out of the room to my right.

  “Excuse me,” he says, stepping over me without making eye contact.

  “OK, so go on,” I say, once the guy’s disappeared through the door to the bathroom, a few feet away. “Your dad.” Ben slides down the wall opposite me till he’s sitting too. I take a swig of root beer.

  “I haven’t seen my dad since I was nine.”

  “But you said you moved out of your dad’s in Cheektowaga to live with your mom this year.”

  “A lie.” He frowns, then shrugs. “Big surprise. We only moved because my stepdad took a job in Spalding. Who wants to move their senior year of high school, you know?” He fiddles with the label on his root beer bottle. “And I’ve wanted to live with my dad for years, but my mom won’t let me. She wishes I’d just forget about my dad. And then her happy little world would be complete and she could stop having it hang over her head—that she failed at her first marriage.”

  I let this sink in, unsure what to say. I feel … bad for Ben. Like he’s not as much of the jerk I thought he was, only a couple of months ago.

  “OK, but what? You stole all the iPads because you thought you could trade them in for a bus ticket to New York? Or did you fly here?”

  He shakes his head. “No. And that’s not even why I took them. I always intended to return them. I just—I wanted to get caught.”

  “You wanted to get caught?” I say in disbelief. “What’s so bad about your mom anyway?” Even though I keep thinking about how great it would be if Dad still lived in New York, I can’t imagine not wanting to live with Mom just so I could live with Dad.

  “Nothing. Not really. She’s great. It’s just … I miss my dad.” There’s silence and then he looks down at the carpet beneath us. I follow his gaze, looking at the carpet, which, at one point was probably slightly less beaten down, slightly brighter orange. Now it’s dotted with stains.

  Ben stretches his legs out so they’re parallel to mine, the sole of his right shoe brushing mine, but I don’t pull my foot away.

  “That sucks.”

  “I thought I’d get kicked out of school, and my mom would beg my dad to get involved. Or he’d remember he had a son if I was a big enough delinquent. Cry for help and all that. Didn’t work out that way.”

  “That’s an understatement. I still can’t believe you didn’t get kicked out of school—or even suspended. Not even for a day,” I say, aware of just how close we are. How strangely intimate this hallway scene feels, despite the fact anyone could come out of their room at any time. That they’d literally have to step over us to get to the bathroom.

  “Yeah, well, you know, lucky me,” Ben says. “A ‘cry for help’ that backfired, I guess. Principal Forsythe decided I needed ‘encouragement and support,’ not to be ‘alienated and neglected.’ Which is why I still got to come here, too.”

  “If your goal was to get kicked out of school, why bother with photo club? You could’ve, like, sold drugs to preschoolers or something.”

  Two girls get off the elevator, laughing, then disappear in the opposite direction, into the first dorm room to the left of the elevator bank.

  “Come on, the Vantage Point prize—cash and a trip to New York—I figured it was a pretty good way to get here. A Plan B if getting kicked out of Spalding backfired. Or vice versa. I thought taking pictures would be a cinch. I didn’t realize it actually required skill. Or that you would be so good.”

  “Thanks … I guess? But did it ever occur to you that you nearly derailed my whole college plan?”

  “To be honest, I really wasn’t thinking about you.”

  We’re both silent. The only sound is the whirr of the heating system through the vents that line the hallway. I watch him as he stares at his knees.

  Finally, he looks up. We lock eyes. “It was really shitty. I’m sorry.”

  I don’t say anything for a moment, but I don’t break eye contact. Then I nod, look down, and when I look back at him, he’s taken off his hat and is fiddling with it. He looks pretty miserable, but I fight not to let my guard down with him.

  “I just don’t get it,” I say, my tone a little less harsh. “Why not just come to New York and see your dad?”

  “My mom would never let me. I’ve asked so many times before. She always said no. So I knew it had to be something school related, somehow—something that just happened to be in New York. Something she couldn’t deny me. Even now she made me promise I wouldn’t try to contact him.”

  “Really?” I can’t imagine Mom not allowing me to see Dad, even if they had divorced. “So when are you seeing him?”

  He lets out a sort of half-laugh. “That’s the thing. I’m not. I haven’t even been able to talk to him. And now I’m realizing I can’t fake my way through the program.” He tosses his hat on the ground beside him. “But if I fail out they’ll let the school know and they’ll tell my mom. I won’t be able to stay here”—he motions to his room—“so then it’s back to Spalding.”

  “Are you kidding me? We’ve been here four days already and you haven’t seen him?”

  “I know. I … I’ve tried calling but his assistant answers his phone, I guess. And I don’t know if she’s not giving him the messages or what, but he never calls me back.”

  “So keep calling.”

  “I know I should. It’s just—what if … what if she gave him my message that I’m in New York and that’s why he’s not calling me back? What if he doesn’t want to see me?”

  “Of course he wants to see you.” I try to sound certain, but I’m not. I pull my knees to my chest, hug them tight. “What ifs …”

  “I know. What ifs are a waste of time.”

  “That’s what I was going to say.”

  “That’s what Dr. Judy always says.”

  “Dr. Judy?” I ask, feeling embarrassed. He knows I see a psychologist? I sit up straight, crossing my legs underneath me. All I can think is that he’s been reading my diary. Except I don’t actually keep a diary. Dace? Did Dace tell him?

  “My mom made me start to see a therapist after the whole ‘incident.’”

  My mouth drops open. I snap it shut. “Wait. What? You see Dr. Judy? Really?”

  “Yeah.” He looks confused.

  “I’ve been seeing her ever since my dad …” I trail off.

  Neither of us says anything for a moment.

  “So, bonding over shrinks,” he says.

  “Psychologists,” we both say at the same time, then laugh. Ben holds his bottle out to cheers. I clink the glass against his.

  “OK and what about her office—the empty bookshelves?” says Ben.

  “I know! Like, why even have bookshelves if you’re not going to put books on them?”

  “She’s probably a fraud.”

  “Takes one to know one,” I say. I mean for it to come out as a joke, but it ends up sounding harsh. I cough. “Have you talked to Dr. Judy about finding your dad?”

  He shakes his head. “You ever feel like when you’re supposed to talk to Dr. Judy, it’s actually the last possible moment you ever want to talk to her?”

  “
Isn’t that the point?”

  “Well, what would Dr. Judy say, in this case?”

  “What would Dr. Judy say? Sounds like a great hotline. For when Dr. Judy’s too busy.”

  “Playing solitaire.”

  “Checking her email.”

  “Blogging.”

  I take a sip of the root beer and it tastes so good. I never drink root beer. Why not? I love root beer. Or, is it this conversation? No, obviously it’s the root beer.

  “But seriously,” I say, “she’d say that you’re trying to play it all out in your head instead of letting things play out as they will. That the only action you can control is the one you take. So you should do that, don’t you think?”

  “You think she’d actually say that?”

  “No. Not really. I think she’d say, ‘What do you think I should tell you?’”

  “Dead on.”

  “You’re in New York. Your dad is famous. He’s filming one of the biggest movies of the year. You have to find him. I’ll help you,” I say before I realize what I’m even committing to.

  “Really?” he asks, looking pleasantly surprised. “I’d really owe you.” And something surges inside me.

  “You traded me for David Westerly, didn’t you?”

  He’s looking at me intently. “I asked him not to tell you.”

  “That was a nice thing you did, Ben Baxter. But why? And how did you know I wanted him?”

  “I guess I could just tell when they read out his name in class.” He looks at me.

  I look down at my shoes, considering my next words. “Well thanks. So let me owe you one for that.”

  CHAPTER 9

  The rep theater is tucked away behind a strip of costume shops. “Good find, right?” David says. It’s late Friday afternoon and the sun is shining but the alley is cast in shadow. I snap a few photos of the graffitied walls and the marquee sign. There’s a Star Trek film playing in a little over an hour. For now, the theater still looks pretty dark. Instead of pulling open the doors, though, David snaps his fingers. “I’ll show you the way your dad and I used to sneak in.” He leads me back down the alley and into one of the costume shops, which reeks like sweat socks. David raises his eyebrows at me. I laugh. We walk through the racks of costumes—French maids and cowboys, Superman and orange inmate jumpsuits.

  “Can I help you find anything?” an old guy calls from behind an old wooden desk.

  I peer over, but David grabs my hands and pulls me behind him.

  “No we’re great, thanks!” says David, and then we’re ducking behind a rack of clothes and he’s opening a metal door and we’re through it and into the theater.

  The reek of sweat socks lingers, but now it’s mixed with buttery popcorn.

  “How did you know how to do that?”

  “It’s never locked,” David says. We’re in the lobby, to the left of the ticket booth by the entrance. “We were broke. Desperation is the mother of invention.”

  There’s a guy sweeping the red carpet at the entrance, which seems like a pretty ineffectual act, though he’s intent on his job; he barely reacts when he notices that we’ve appeared inside the lobby, not through the main doors. “Movie doesn’t start for another hour. And there’s no previews,” the guy calls out, still focused on his broom.

  “OK if we just sit in the theater for a few minutes? My … niece”—he points at me—“she’s doing a school project on buildings from the ’20s. We’ll leave before the film starts.”

  He glances up, shrugs OK, and we head over to the concession stand. There’s a girl loading kernels into the popcorn machine, a six-inch layer of old popcorn lining the bottom. We order snacks—popcorn for David, Twizzlers for me, which makes me think of Dylan and for a split second I desperately want to text him, but instead I tell David I’ll also have a Coke, and he orders the same. The girl behind the counter fires the dark liquid from a soda fountain gun into waxed paper cups, then sets them on the counter and pushes them closer to us.

  “Your dad and I would sneak in that way most times,” David says as we put lids on our cups. “Well, actually, your father would want to pay—he could be so straight-laced, but sometimes I’d convince him to be a bit wild, and we’d come through that way, which is when we’d actually get popcorn with the couple of bucks we’d saved, so technically the theater was still getting the same amount of money out of us, and then we’d go up here.” He motions for me to follow him up the stairs to the theater’s balcony. Cradling the popcorn in his right arm, he pulls the door open with his left. “After you, Greene.”

  I walk into the dark theater and head straight to the front row of the balcony. I’ve never sat in a theater with a balcony, and it feels very regal and retro. Whenever Dylan and I have gone to the movies we usually sit on the side, so if the movie’s slow we can, well, have a mini makeout session without getting heckled by the people behind us. I think back to the sci-fi movie we saw last week. Totally not makeout-inspiring material, but that didn’t stop us. Actually, I’m not sure there is a movie we wouldn’t miss part of for the chance to make out. Isn’t that what Netflix is for?

  We settle into our seats and I realize how tired I am. It’s been a long, full day. The photography grads needed the eighth floor for the entire day so they could set up for their party tonight, so that meant an impromptu off-campus mentor day for us campers. Totally made up for the eight-plus hours of intensive instruction we got in class yesterday, with only a break for lunch. So by 10 this morning I was heading over to David’s to coerce him into spending the day showing me more of Dad’s favorite haunts. For a moment I thought he was going to say he was too busy, but half an hour, two cups of black coffee and a hot shower later, he came around.

  We started out sort of non-eventfully in Central Park, to check out a rock by a willow tree that Dad loved. David told me my dad went there at least once a week, and I told David how Mom and Dad were married surrounded by the willow trees of Hannover Park, and then we sat under those willows, on the rock, taking it all in—hidden, but with a view of the park. I snapped pics of the horse-drawn carriages, a guy working a cart of quintessential New York souvenirs—Statue of Liberty snow globes, I heart New York T-shirts, postcards and magnets—a group of runners, a squirrel running up a tree. It felt warm for December, or maybe New York is just warmer than Spalding, but I slipped my gloves off and into my coat pocket—it was freeing to be able to shoot with my bare hands.

  Now, I look down at my hands, holding my camera, and I remember why we’re here. I get up, walk over to the aisle and snap some photos of the theater, shooting down into the mezzanine from the balcony. Then I sit back down beside David.

  David’s quiet, watching me. He’s been chatty all day, but I wonder if he’s been holding back. Keeping it light on purpose, just to keep this whole day, this whole life-with-Dad-in-a-day re-enactment, from becoming too heavy. But I want more out of him.

  I put my feet up on the railing. “So, yours and Dad’s friendship … it was, pretty easy? Just good times?” I hold my breath.

  “Sure, we had a lot of fun.” He pops a handful of popcorn into his mouth. “It was college,” he says after he’s swallowed. I feel disheartened, but then he adds, “You know, I was going to drop out in third year.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “I’d scored this internship in London, and I thought it was the coolest. I was going to take off, go there and travel around Europe, pick up girls—everyone was doing it. Sleeping in hostels, sleeping their way around Europe. Drinking their faces off. And I was cocky, tired of school, of assignments, of teachers. It all felt so … pedestrian. Like, was this really art? I wanted to create art. The internship was working alongside Gustav Lebrun. He was doing all this crazy experimental photography.

  “I told your dad. We were sitting right here.” He tosses another handful of popcorn in his mouth, crunches down on it. “Actually we were sitting over there,” he points down below, to the main level, off to the left. “The movie was 8½.
Fellini. Subtitles. We were talking through it. Anyway, I tell him this, and he isn’t supportive.” He pauses, taking a sip of his drink. “He tells me, ‘Stick it out. Finish what you started. Follow through.’”

  “And so you stayed in New York because of what my dad said?”

  Instead of answering, David grabs my camera and hits the Play button. “Shoot this one again, Greene—try focusing in on the railing and blur out the background. Play with your depth of field a little.”

  So much for a revealing conversation. There’ve been glimpses of something more to Dad and his relationship—certainly after we left Central Park, when I convinced David to show me where Dad and Mom met. It slipped out, actually, a comment David made about Mom nagging them about whiling away all their time at The Root—a pool hall they’d go to instead of to classes. He been reluctant to take me there, though he wouldn’t say why. And when we got there, I’d had to basically play the dead dad card before he’d tell the story of how my parents had met.

  Finally, he’d caved. “It was the fall we started second year. We’d just gotten back into the city, after a summer at home—him in Knoxville, me in Philly. The Root had opened a few weeks earlier and everyone was talking about it. We were waiting in line—we had no clue what we were in for. And then they lifted the metal plates up and they let three people at a time go down. It was in the basement, so there were these steep stairs from the sidewalk down into it. Anyway, they’d let in three people. Exactly three. If you were only two, they sent the next person in line down with you. They were crazy about that rule. There was a rumor it started as a joke, but then they just kept at it, kinda being pricks about it, or whatever. So we get up to the front and we’re about to go in, and the guys behind us won’t split up, and out of nowhere this girl comes up—this vision. She’s tall and willowy with flawless skin and auburn hair …”

  “Mom?” I interrupted in mild disbelief.

  He cleared his throat. “Yeah, your mom. She came up beside us and planted a kiss on your father’s cheek and then …” He hesitated.