Where You End

by Anna Pellicioli

  “Because you saw me or because you’re in trouble?”

  “Both.”

  “What kind of trouble?” I ask.

  “My kind of trouble,” she says.

  “Got it,” I say.

  “I had to leave the house,” she says.

  “Oh,” I say.

  “My mom got sick, and it was too much.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  She nods. “She moved us all in with her brother and my aunt, but I couldn’t take it anymore. Not right now. I had to go for a few days.”

  “You left?”

  “Yeah, sort of. I just had to go.”

  “How long have you been gone?” I ask.

  Paloma looks at me, but she doesn’t answer. A few, long, cold seconds go by.

  “So what do you want me to do?” I ask.

  “I’m not sure how this is gonna work,” she says, thinking, as she bites her fingernails one by one and spits them in her palm. I try not to stare and wait.

  “I have a little brother,” she says, louder than I expected.

  “Okay?” I nudge.

  “He’s little. He’s only four. My aunt and uncle have to work, and I don’t know who’s taking care of him.” She stuffs her fingernails into the pocket of her jeans.

  “Isn’t your mom there?” I ask.

  “I told you,” she says, “my mom is sick. She can’t take care of anybody.”

  “Okay. Well, is he in school, or is four too little? I don’t—”

  “Yes, he’s in school,” Paloma interrupts, “but I usually take him there, and tomorrow’s Monday, and I don’t think I’m going back.”

  “Ever?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  “Well, I’m sure your uncle will figure it out, and won’t you—”

  “Just be quiet for a second,” she snaps, cupping her ears and squeezing her eyes shut. “I can’t think. Let me think.”

  I shut my lips and think about what to do. Although she’s already blackmailed me and snapped at me, I feel the urge to comfort her. Something about this girl and her trouble, whatever it may be, is pulling me in. I try not to look at her as she thinks.

  “You said you haven’t told anybody about the sculpture, right?” she asks.

  “I don’t think I said that,” I whisper.

  She smirks. “Yes you did.”

  I shake my head.

  “You did. And anyway, you wouldn’t be here if you had told someone. You’d be getting a job, or doing time, or begging somebody for forgiveness, because that thing was on the ground the last time I saw it, and they don’t retire Picassos for nothing.”

  The tone has definitely shifted.

  “What do you want?” I ask. “Why did you ask me to come here?”

  “I want someone to check on him while I’m out.”

  “Your brother?”

  “Yes, my brother. I need to make sure he’s coming back home every day, after school.”

  “Is he in danger or something?”

  “I don’t think so. Not as long as he’s home.”

  “Where else would he be?” I ask.

  “Don’t worry about that. I just need to see him. I just need to make sure.”

  “Why don’t you call or something?”

  “I can’t call. They’ll tell me to come back, and I can’t go back there right now.”

  “But they know where you are? Right?”

  Silence.

  “They don’t?”

  More silence.

  “Shit. Did you run away?”

  “Sort of. It doesn’t matter. Look, let’s focus, please. You ran away, and I saw you run away, and now I need you to check that my brother is coming home and leave me out of it. At least until I figure out what to do.”

  “How am I supposed to do that without telling them that I saw you? Won’t they know when they see me? Won’t they ask?”

  “Nobody’s going to see you. You cannot let anybody see you. And you’re not talking to anybody.”

  “How am I supposed to check on your brother without talking to anybody?” I ask. “That’s impossible.”

  “I’m sure you can figure it out. I knew it when I saw you at the museum. That’s why I picked you and came after you.”

  She’s acting like she’s chosen me, like this is some sort of privilege. I look at her book on my lap. I want to give it back, but I’m afraid of what she might say.

  “I have to leave,” I say, reaching for my bag on the floor.

  Paloma picks up her phone and dials a number. The phone rings in my bag. I let it ring twice before I dig for it. Paloma nods, like she wants me to pick it up. I send her to voicemail. She puts the phone down.

  “I knew it was you last night,” she says, smiling a little.

  Shit.

  “You don’t have to make stuff up,” she says. “I just need your help.”

  “I wasn’t lying,” I say. “My name isn’t Maggie.”

  “Of course not,” she says. “I didn’t think a Maggie could push a Picasso.”

  And this is the moment when I start to like her. Neither of us knows what to do, so we sit quietly for a while until a loud, deep sound startles the room. This is what happens next.

  As the music makes its way through the vaults, down the aisle, under the pews into our side-by-side guts, I catch Paloma biting her lip. Nobody else is moving. Paloma pulls the kneeler down and starts to pray, with her head in her hands. Her neck is bent, and that date is shining under her black hair. I think about what Paloma’s mom said about the organ. I don’t know if it’s God, but I do feel closer to something.

  When the music is finished, she surfaces, and I can tell she’s been crying. I don’t know what to do. Her book is still on my lap.

  “Are you going to go back home?” I ask.

  She says she doesn’t know, that she’ll go when this is over. I don’t want to ask what she means by that, and I have a feeling I will find out sooner or later anyway. I don’t want to push it.

  “I do have one idea,” I say, and she looks at me, red eyes and all, her hope a slap in my face.

  “Is it a house?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “Where your brother is staying. Is it a house or an apartment?”

  “It’s a townhouse,” she says.

  “Okay. I can’t promise anything about your brother or your mom or about anything else, but I can take a picture, if you want. I can take a picture of your house and bring it back to you.”

  Paloma smiles. It doesn’t seem fair I don’t know her real name, but I guess she didn’t ask for mine either. She digs a pen out of her bag, pulls my sleeves up again, and writes an address on my arm. I roll my eyes. She takes my hand and holds it.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  “I can’t guarantee I’ll see him, you know?”

  “Just bring me something, and I’ll keep your secret. You can save your real name for the next time we meet.”

  seven

  My house smells like bark when I walk in. Like the woods. Like oak. Mom and Dad will be home as soon as they can, my phone reminds me, can I please leave the front door open. I need to think.

  I head to the darkroom downstairs, the one I inherited from my mother.

  Her rules:

  Only two people at once.

  Clean up.

  No snacks.

  My rule: Silence.

  Adam has some trouble with that one, but he’s learned to settle once we walk through the black curtain.

  “You dropped me, Miriam,” Adam said once on the way home from school, when I was deep into Elliot bliss. “You dropped yourself,” he said.

  At the time, I thought he was jealous, and I told him so.

  H
e looked me straight in the eye and asked me when the last time I took a picture was.

  I let him believe I had stopped, that pictures were an intimacy I only shared with my best friend. But I hadn’t. I have hundreds of prints from that time, of hands and grins and profiles. Elliot reading. Elliot walking across the street to meet me. Elliot not exactly drunk at a party we left early. Elliot in the arboretum. Elliot sleeping. Elliot in an inside-out sweater. Elliot nervous on a fancy date. Elliot’s bass against Elliot’s chest. I have more than twenty pictures just of Elliot’s unmade bed.

  I took all of those pictures with Lauren, my film camera.

  Most people have traded in the darkroom for computers and the latest ink-jets. I have no problem with the digital process. Thank God for Photoshop. I know how to give contrast to the glaring noon light, bring out the blue in a flag or the rust on a bike rack. I could take out your nose hair, make your eyes seem less tired, brush your teeth. I can spend hours playing with layers and colors and shapes on the computer until I see what I thought I saw when I pushed the button. I’m not a purist. Picasso turned faces into houses into cellos into women with asymmetrical eyebrows. Who am I to diss that?

  But I never really got over dunking a piece of shiny paper in a bath and watching my memory come alive, grain by grain.

  Mom showed me how to print. We started here, in the film room.

  I step into the booth and shut every light out of my world. I have no idea what this corner of my house actually looks like. I have never seen the paint, the holes in the wall where my father yanked out the dryer before I was even born, whatever bugs might be swinging on the leftover lint. This place is pure darkness, and it always has been as far as I’m concerned. It’s been years since my mother first pushed me in here to fumble with her camera, and my fingers now know the routine like a ballerina at the barre. Take the film out of the camera, hook it onto the tank, reel. I still have to take a deep breath after I come inside so my hands won’t blow the film.

  The first time I took Elliot in here, I guided his hands through the whole process, not a word said, barely a breath taken. When we came out, his eyes were fixed on my face.

  You really are a different person.

  Different than what?

  Different than me.

  What do you mean?

  Separate, he said, separate.

  I didn’t know if I should be proud or scared.

  Now this plastic tube is my only proof. I unravel the film and try to fit the square holes into the reel, counting the spikes silently with my fingers. I missed a few. I unravel and start again, careful not to ruin it.

  Through the layers of carpet, I hear someone in the entrance hall. The door closes. The shoes come off and hit the floor. I can’t see my watch, but it must be almost dinner time.

  I drop the film into a bed of dust and darkness, and get down on my knees to look for it. Crunch. My toes find the film, and when I pick it up, it coils around my index finger like a scared cellophane snake. I feel for the scissors and knock them off the counter, where they dangle back and forth on a string. I grab them and start counting the spikes again.

  Winogrand didn’t touch his negatives for years. He liked to let them age, to forget about them until he was ready to make a print. In time, he could trust his gut to tell him which pictures to develop. The ones he could remember were the only ones worth looking at, period. And so I hope it goes with me. If only I could slip into an archival quality folder and wait until enough has happened before I look back. In other words, other shit needs to happen before I know what to do. More has to pass before I know which parts matter.

  I grab a few prints to examine upstairs. Mom is reading the newspaper in the kitchen, but she looks up as soon as I walk by.

  “How was your day?” she says.

  “Pretty good, thanks,” I say, not stopping.

  “Did you get some work done?” she asks.

  “Work?” I ask.

  “Yeah. Downstairs. You haven’t been there in a while,” she says.

  “Yes I have,” I say.

  “Okay. Well, Adam came in. He’s in your room … ”

  “What? How long has he been there?” I shout from halfway up the stairs.

  “I don’t know. Maybe ten minutes. Do you guys want something to eat?”

  “No, thanks. It’s fine. I ate already,” I say.

  Adam is sitting against a wall in my ocean and playing with my camera, the one I take out every night, the one I plan to use for Paloma’s picture. He’s handled Bogart a million times, but right now I’m nervous he’ll break it. I want to grab it from him. His thumb is turning the wheel, and I can’t tell if he’s looking through the night pictures or messing with the settings.

  “Hey Meems! It’s about time,” he says, looking up and smiling.

  “Hey. What are you doing here?”

  I try to calm down. I remind myself that he doesn’t know.

  “Your parents let me in. I wanted to see if you’d print some old stuff, but then I found these. I like them. You should bring them to class.”

  “What are you doing with my camera?” I ask.

  “One might ask you the same thing. What have you been up to?”

  “Meaning?”

  “These pictures. I’ve never seen them before. The shed is my favorite. Whose house is that?”

  “I don’t know, Adam, but don’t you think you should call or something before you come in and look through my stuff?”

  “Sorry. Of course. I get it now. You haven’t looked at these yet. I shouldn’t have touched them. I forgot they might be virgins. But you know you can’t leave Bogart lying around. It’s too tempting.”

  I have this rule with digital cameras. I have to wait until the card is full to look at any of the pictures. I do it to keep the stakes high. It makes me look before I snap.

  “Can you put that down now?” I plead.

  “Sure,” he says.

  Adam lets go of the camera and taps his fingers on the carpet. His long fingers could wrap around my neck. It’s been so long since we’ve talked in this room, about our lives, that I’ve forgotten how to answer his questions. My belly feels warm, and my head gears up to convert the warmth into rage.

  “So, you want to do something?” he asks.

  Since the break-up, Adam has been trying to get us back into our old habits, and it’s driving me a little nuts. We used to go out into the city with our cameras and shoot whatever we found. We’d look through my mom’s old photo books and argue about the importance of composition and the virtues of natural light. When I started to spend all my weekends with Elliot, Adam stopped coming over. I don’t know what he did that whole year. I don’t know what anybody did. After the split, he showed up with a camera, and I told him I wasn’t taking any new pictures, so we went to the darkroom. He said we could just print, and I knew at least we wouldn’t have to talk in there. We stopped after a week, because I said I wanted to lay off the pictures for a while. Now he knows I wasn’t entirely honest.

  “I’m tired, Adam.”

  “Come on, Meem, you know you want to. I know you were working downstairs. We can bring out the old film and see how bad we sucked. I won’t say a word, I promise.”

  I don’t know what to say. The worst part about being sad or lost or whatever the fuck I am is that everybody you love makes you a little angry. The more they try to show you the way out, the less you trust them, like they are trying to sneak into your heart, like they’ve all got a scalpel in their back pocket.

  “I don’t. Want. To. And you can’t just come in here on random afternoons, unannounced.”

  “Did you just say unannounced ?”

  “Whatever, Adam. As I said, I’m tired. I just want to get out of these clothes and sleep.”

  “It doesn’t look like you sleep … ”

 
I pull my sweater over my head, and he looks down. It’s been a while since someone cared if I took off my clothes.

  “It’s only my sweater,” I say. “I’m not going to change in front of you.”

  Adam rubs his face and looks at me.

  “I never know what you’re going to do,” he says, more serious than usual.

  I sit on the bed and take off my socks. He starts to get up, which makes him look like a giant. He walks toward me, and I have to work hard not to look away, to stay still, for once. He takes my wrist in his hand and rubs his finger over Paloma’s address.

  “What’s that?” he says.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “Everything is nothing for you lately, Meem.” Still holding on to my wrist.

  “Come on,” I say, “that’s a little dramatic.”

  “All right. Fair enough, then. No more questions. I propose we pick a bus line and take it to the last stop, see what the city can offer.”

  “Maybe another day.”

  “But the leaves are bright, the air is crisp, this room is depressing, and you’ve obviously been out already. I have some excellent weird music a girl recently gifted. I’ll turn that on, and we will roam the streets as silent companions. My word.”

  “What girl?” I say.

  “Not important,” he answers, his hand still on his chest from the promise.

  “The one with the huge … you know … ” I say, cupping my hands.

  “Not going anywhere near that,” he says.

  “Too bad for you,” I say.

  “Not going anywhere near the question, not the things,” he clarifies.

  “Oh … ”

  “Can we go now? Have I been sufficiently humiliated?” he asks.

  “No,” I answer. “I’m sorry. I’m not going.”

  “You’re too smart for this, Meem,” he insists. “You’re the smartest girl I know.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Adam.”

  “Yes, yes you do. You’re just being mysterious or something. Look at you, taking beautiful pictures of houses in the middle of the night, showing up late to the bus and telling me you got sick. Is this about that shit-face? Because he’s fine right now. I guarantee you he’s enjoying his day.”