Reverse Documentary

by Marisela Navarro

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  The ghost was easy to see but hard to describe. An anonymous color, like the shine of a coin found in sunlight. Dino used this color to brighten the eye of a deer on the poster for his documentary. He didn’t speak to the ghost or talk about her to anyone. He assumed the ghost was Jennifer because he’d lived in the house alone for several years without any issues and because no one else he loved had died. His space was indoors, away from her. He didn’t acknowledge her existence (when he walked to his car in the driveway, when he checked the mail) though he knew she was there.

  Inside the house, Dino spent his time studying an animated film. The film was about a tired chef who travels with her oven to another galaxy looking for companionship and purpose. The oven talks and bakes without gas or electricity. The film was mostly silent and animated in dark colors—browns, burgundy, and yellowed whites. There was a scene where an extraterrestrial places an object inside the oven while it sleeps. The morning—when the oven wakes and discovers he has charred the object—is Dino’s favorite scene. The expression of shame on the oven’s face is rendered perfectly. The window of the oven door collapses slightly. The black numbers on the knobs, his eyes, suddenly appear messy and amateurish, as though the animator had drawn them with a bleeding magic marker. He invariably thought of Jennifer when the oven’s moment came. The police had delivered the news of her death. She’d been in a car accident with another man. The news was confusing, as though it had happened many decades ago, to a stranger. Red sedan, the officers said, as though it was the most boring detail of the story, not the surprise twist.

  The ghost showed up six months after Jennifer’s death, seven months before the film festival. She spent her time outside in Dino’s front yard. Trees bordered the property. There, in front of the fire pit, she built mud sculptures—Earth and Jupiter, a sleeping bear covered in grass, a baby elephant, a book with raised words, a naked woman with patches of lichen. Beyond that was the road where the neighbor’s dog sometimes loitered. The dog came by during daylight when the ghost didn’t shine as strong.

  * * *

  Dino filmed part of his documentary in an abandoned building, five stories tall with an iron spiral staircase that led to the roof. The film did not feature an ashamed oven; it was about vandalism in the woods. He shone an LED light on Wade for the interview. Wade had a good face for film: calm blue eyes, a satiny forehead. A rugged beard and blond hair like trampled reed grass. He wore jeans and a T-shirt and drank from a water bottle.

  Videos

  Audio

  FADE UP Forest

  MUSIC UP Solo violin

  MEDIUM SHOT Trunk and vasculature of branches painted white with repeating pattern of black antennas. Trunk with letters “RBER” looped thickly in orange.

  CLOSE-UP Soil.

  VOICE OVER

  The graffiti on the trees is escalating. The excess is being deposited in the soil: fine, bright purple and yellow grains as if someone has coughed up rare sugar.

  MS Wade sitting in armchair on roof, touching beard. Black sky behind him.

  “There’s a girl I want you to meet,” Wade said. His thumb twitched in the shot. Dino kept the film rolling. “My cousin Alexis. She moved here a few weeks ago. I think you’d like the things she says.”

  “Her new hobby is pertinent to this film, though it’s not exactly a hobby,” Wade continued. “She’s been washing the paint off the tree trunks.”

  “What did she come here for?”

  “Why does anyone go anywhere? To have a place to go back to.” Wade took a long sip of water and stared directly into the camera. “Tell me how Jennifer left you.”

  This was a reverse documentary. Sometimes Dino answered the questions.

  “She didn’t leave me,” Dino said. “She cheated on me. The police told me. They said she was dead and explained the circumstances. I never met the man she was with in the car.”

  “Do you ever think about approaching him?”

  “I’ve thought about it. I’ve pictured myself sitting at a table across from him.”

  “What would you say to him?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I’d say anything. I’d just look at him and see.”

  “See what?”

  Dino stopped rolling and stepped to the side of the camera. “I’d like to ask Alexis how she washes the trees. I’d like to film her doing it.”

  “Good. She’s a nice girl,” Wade said.

  Wade was a historian. He was an expert in whatever Dino needed and accompanied Dino on set. He’d been working on an anthology of old photographs from several forest conservation societies and encouraged Dino to take on the task of filming the documentary when the vandalism began more than a year ago. Dino applied for a grant from a fund that supported social and environmental films. He’d produced independent documentaries in the past, mostly biographies on local celebrities (the mayor; the owner of a two-hundred-year-old house). After Jennifer’s death, he’d needed a distraction; something contemporary, uncomplicated.

  But then Wade started asking Dino personal questions on camera. At first Dino felt uncomfortable. He was used to prying questions, it was part of his job, but he’d never been on the receiving end of them. There was something fitting about Wade’s deflections, though—that point on how the artist can never be completely removed from the frame. Dino was unsure of how his life was affecting the film. He felt a pull to respond, as though speaking would help to clarify things. He could always cut the audio later.

  Video

  Audio

  MS Tree warden standing in front of tree.

  VOICE OVER

  SUBTITLE: Autumn 2015

  Tree warden Hoyt Sherman has ordered the removal of a diseased oak, known by locals as the Roper.

  FX: Worker’s chainsaw

  CU Branches painted as plaited rope.

  HOYT SHERMAN

  Trees have tiny openings called lenticels, kind of like human nostrils. When they’re clogged with paint, they can’t breathe.

  MS Workers felling tree. Branches tumbling down.

  WADE

  Why did you avoid Jennifer’s mother at the funeral?

  FX: Chainsaw fades out.

  DINO

  Camera shakes. CU Dino’s feet in sneakers, standing in red soil.

  I didn’t know what to say to her. I didn’t want to deal with seeing my girlfriend’s mother survive. I didn’t want to be a visitor at her house or be her ally. I didn’t want her to remember to call me.

  Dino took Alexis on a walk through the woods. She wore brown shorts and hiking boots with socks pulled up mid-calf. A yellow braid curled inside the hood of her sweatshirt. Her forehead was like Wade’s, abruptly sloped and satiny. Dino offered her gum, but she said she didn’t like
peppermint.

  “So what flavor toothpaste do you use?” he said.

  “Strawberry,” she said.

  They didn’t say much else for a while. In a bucket she mixed a soil plaster, then she covered the painted trees with it. She scrubbed the old trees with a wire brush, soap, and water. He asked her how she knew which tree needed what and she said it wasn’t scientific; when her hand got tired, she switched to a different method. He filmed her washing the bright peach face of a baby wearing sunglasses off the bark. It took her twenty minutes.

  “How long have you been fighting vandalism?” he said.

  “Four days. Wade has been talking about the film. I haven’t been able to find a job yet, so I decided to make myself useful.”

  They took a break against an unpainted tree. Dino pulled out sandwiches and two bottles of beer from his backpack. Alexis was a messy eater (mustard everywhere) but he liked it.

  She didn’t care about impressions, didn’t wipe the mustard from her mouth or hands while eating her sandwich. She held her beer with slippery fingers, and with yellow lips told Dino this bizarre story: When she was seventeen, a man with pale blue skin walked into the movie theater where she worked. It was just before Halloween, but the man was alone and dressed in regular clothes. The blue resembled real skin, not makeup, and he had a decent haircut. He handed Alexis a ten-dollar bill with words scribbled in black ink along the margins. She couldn’t read the language, although there was one English word, “catalysis,” mixed into one of the sentences. She stole the bill and studied it, tried to decipher the language. Over the years she sent photos of it to professional linguists, but everyone told her the words were gibberish. She didn’t believe them. Sometimes, she read the words like a chant or a spell and waited for bad things to happen.

  “Do you believe in coincidences?” she said.

  “I believe they’re random, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “Do you mean to ask if I believe in fate?” He pulled her hand away from her sandwich and wiped it with a napkin.

  “What I mean is, do you think absolutely anything can happen?”

  “Yes,” he said. “There’s something happening right now.”

  “What’s that?” She leaned close to him and smiled, her eyes wide blue boats.

  “I live with a ghost.”

  “Your place is haunted?”

  “No, it’s not haunted. The ghost just hangs out in the yard. Like a landscaper. I think it’s my ex-girlfriend.”

  She straightened herself and seemed to be processing the information. She took a sip of her beer, then pointed her finger at him. “How do you know the ghost is female?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does she get jealous?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t talk to her. She’s a sculptor. My ex was an artist, not a sculptor, but she painted realistic scenes of animals and people in nature.”

  Alexis set down her beer. “Take me to your house,” she said.

  Video

  Audio

  LONG SHOT Two criminals climbing a tree with backpacks.

  MUSIC UP: Accelerated xylophone duet

  WADE

  Did you ever suspect her secrets?

  LS Criminals painting tree at night. Unable to see tree in darkness.

  DINO

  We were vacationing in Fajardo Bay. The mutts run in packs there, most of them with a crippled limb or missing half an ear. I told her not to touch them; they’re dirty. She said, “They’re island dogs,” as if that made it okay. She stroked their fur and told them she’d come roam with them in another life, trade her ponytail in for a dog stump.

  WADE

  And this made you suspicious?

  AMBIENT SOUND

  DINO

  FADE TO BLACK

  She hadn’t touched me in weeks. I’d never seen her like this with an animal. There’s nothing special about petting a dog, but it seemed like I didn’t know her. Maybe not that, but there was something off about how gentle and happy she was. I wasn’t happy. Maybe I was finally noticing the gap.

  FADE UP LS Sunrise. Tree appears in colors.

  Dino visited the cemetery on a weekday. He unfolded a lawn chair on the grass in front of Jennifer’s gravestone and stripped down to his swimming trunks. A single brown strand of hair clung to the embossed J, floating like a post-party streamer. He raised his beer in a toast. The toast was silent and appeared to be in honor of Jennifer but it wasn’t. It was a starting gun for his afternoon. He reclined and pointed his face up at the sun and that was it for a long while.

  The sun shone forcefully. A sharp line formed along the edge of his trunks. Five green beer bottles were clumped in a pile at his feet. He rolled his bare foot over an empty one. He imagined Jennifer inside it. She was swaying into the rolls, her hips in perfect balance. He rolled until the bottle clinked against her stone. Here lies Jennifer. Who believed everyone has the capability to do a perfect split. Who stole things so deftly, you never knew the item was once yours.

  He was about to open a sixth bottle when he noticed a woman standing a few feet to his right, observing him. He looked at her and tilted his head down slowly, then left it there as if stuck. She began to stuff dead bouquets into a trash bag. She had gray hair pulled into a loose bun that wobbled on her head as she worked. The grass shook around his ankles and he thought he caught Jennifer’s scent in the breeze—a mixture of chicken soup and fresh-cut stems. He closed his eyes and inhaled. When he opened them, the woman stood in front of him.

  “You’re the guy from the woods,” the woman said. “I’ve seen you. You painted the Blaze Tree.”

  “That wasn’t me.”

  She stared at him. “I hiked there yesterday. You were wearing goggles and that hat.” She pointed to the gray baseball cap with the red stitched S on Dino’s head.

  “You shouldn’t hike alone.” He took off his sunglasses.

  The woman turned toward the gravestone. “Was this your wife?” she said.

  “No. A girl I loved, but not my wife.”

  “My father’s over there.” She pointed to the hillside stones, the ones slanting at awkward angles like vestigial teeth. She turned back to Jennifer’s stone. “She was young. Do you always drink at your lover’s grave?”

  “I have a new lover,” he said. He scanned the cemetery horizon as though Alexis might appear. He wanted to find her, go to her, or have her come to him, but he couldn’t leave.

  The woman studied his pink chest for a moment as if trying to mind-change its color. “Doesn’t look like it. You need some sunscreen? I have some back in my car.”

  Dino refused her offer.

  “Your tree doesn’t look like the others. It’s less professional, but I like it.”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “Okay,” the woman said. She started for the hill.

  * * *

  Dino was no longer able to watch his animated film at home. The TV turned itself off and on whenever he tried to watch anything. At times, the living room resembled a lightning storm, the air turning humid as the channels flipped through themselves.

  When he washed the dishes, his chest expanded and he felt like a kite was being flown inside him. Something moved about with a violent whipping, then it went smooth. After it stopped, he stayed at the sink for a long while, hoping it would happen again.

  Video

  Audio

  LS Woods bordering the property of Dino’s house at dusk.

  FX: Light wind. A dog barks.

  DINO

  People think I’m one of the ones vandalizing.

  WADE

  Are you?

  DINO

  I want to be.

  ZOOM OUT Silhouettes of the ghost’s mud sculptures visible.

  VOICE OVER

  Mud sculptures can be mixed with rocks and plants to create living pieces of art. To promote moss growth on the sculpture, moss can be blended with yogurt and water to make a “moss milkshake” and spread on the surface. The living
sculpture transforms with the seasons. Spring can be the most breathtaking, the time for fresh blooms, restoration.

  Dino leaned into Alexis, naked against the Flag Tree. Her hair was snarled in the strips of bark like moss. Her glasses bumped his nose. She had specks of dirt on her cheeks, large pores and a pointy chin. He loved her big teeth. He pulled down her bottom lip to view them.

  The tree was freshly painted. A young girl had done it, maybe fifteen, less than five feet tall, dressed in spring camouflage. They had watched her scale the branches and sweep bands of colors across them. She painted a yellow ring around the roots, blue arrows pointing in conflicting directions. They didn’t try to speak to her. When she finished, she waved to the camera and ran off.

  And then Alexis had led him to the tree. She took off her clothes and Dino’s.

  “Leave the camera on,” she said. She pulled him close against her.

  “I don’t think documentaries have sex scenes,” Dino said.

  “This isn’t a sex scene. These are things that happen in the woods. The life of the woods. Isn’t that what you’re filming?”