by Lise Haines
“You aren’t allowed to move the pieces while I’m gone,” Lola told her sister. Mona had always been good, at Lola’s age, at memorizing the coordinates of Candy Land if she had to leave the board. Perhaps Lola had started to display the same tendency.
Once she had settled in the tub—the door open so they could listen to her humming to her sinkable action figures—I stuck my head around the doorframe to ask if anyone was ready for coffee. Liz and Mona sat on the big bed in the dining room, and Liz said, “In a while, thanks.”
I poured a cup for myself and went back to my spot. I was surprised to hear their conversation so clearly until I saw the open vent in the baseboard.
“It must have been hard not letting me know he was in town,” Liz said. She was good at empathy with a solid scold.
“He’s completely broke, isn’t he?” Mona asked.
“He has a meeting for a job downtown next week,” Liz said. “With a good firm. The CEO said he was impressed with Dad after they talked by Skype.”
“So where’s he living?”
“Mona …”
“Great. The family that SNAPs together stays together, right?”
Liz didn’t make a sound at first, but I could imagine her mouth as she counted to ten. “Forty million people are on food stamps, Mona.”
“Right now he doesn’t have a job. And where the hell is he going to sleep? Lola said he looks scary. Here’s your dad, Lola, this scary guy who abandoned you,” Mona whispered.
“What?” Lola called. She must have heard her name ping against the bathroom tiles. I hoped that was all she heard.
“We were just wondering how that tub is,” Mom said.
“I have a new hairdo,” Lola said.
“I’ll come see in a minute,” Liz said with the uplifted voice she reserved for such moments.
“Okay, but I’m ready to get out,” Lola said.
I heard the tub start to drain and Liz helping Lola rinse her hair just as the front door closed roughly.
I’ll admit there were times when pressures stacked up pretty hard before New Jersey. Liz wouldn’t understand why I was working late again; she needed me to talk to her—to open up more; she needed more time in the studio, wondering aloud how she was ever going to make it at this pace. I should have gone to New York, she’d say, when I had the chance. Around that time Mona unlatched and walked out the back door and went over to our neighbor’s dry fountain. After I lost my job it was worse. It seemed like every small thing began to wear on us. Lola was still not using the potty, though she was too old for diapers. Mona was staying out too late. The refrigerator needed more Freon.
My father had been moved to hospice care while all of this was going on, and I made trips over there to keep my mother company, though I had sworn never to see him again.
There was a night back in Atlantic City when too many thoughts had built up, and I was walking around carrying them like a sack of old clothes and bedding all in need of a good wash, and I went down this particular street near the boardwalk. There was a long string of streetlights, and when the power went out they didn’t all shut down at once but went out one by one. It occurred to me that I might be able to shut my thoughts off that way, one by one, until everything was quiet and peaceful.
As I sat at the kitchen table, stirring my coffee, that’s what I attempted to do. I listened to the elevated train go by, and there was no other place I needed to be, nothing else I needed to do except quiet my mind so I’d be ready for that first day of work.
Assuming all went well, soon enough I would be writing out rent checks, lining up a debit card, and looking for a decent car. I would be milling around Liz’s art openings even if I wasn’t always sure how to make conversation at those things … but for now, I reminded myself, all I needed to do was not overthink tomorrow’s lunch.
Mona had already stopped in from work. She had changed her top and shoes, put on makeup, and switched cameras without speaking to me. She didn’t answer when I asked her directly if she’d be back for dinner.
I got out my notes and was thinking about a good icebreaker for meeting my coworkers when the downstairs bell rang.
I reached out to hit the buzzer, thinking Mona must have forgotten something, but I stopped at the last second, remembering the flood of cautions Liz had given me at the start of the week. There were so many things she was worried over now. I had watched the way her neck tensed as she recalled additional items I needed to be aware of if I was going to be with Lola by myself. She had talked to me as if I were a newly hired babysitter. It was hard to see her that way.
I leaned on the intercom and heard a man’s voice. “I’m looking for Mona.”
“Who’s looking for Mona?” I sounded back.
“Photographer friend. She there?”
I realized this might be the guy. If I grilled him a little, without being too obvious about it, I might be able to put Liz at ease. If he turned out to be a lowlife, we could figure out how to protect Mona together.
I buzzed him up, opened our apartment door, and stood at the top of the stairs, catching glimpses of his head. He had a ponytail. As he climbed, I saw the shoulders of his leather jacket, the shearling collar. When he got to the top of the stairs I backed up and stationed myself in front of our door.
He looked me over in a deliberate manner and got his cigarettes out of his jacket, tapping one my way. When I waved it off he lit one for himself. All this time I hadn’t invited him in, and he seemed in no hurry. If he was seeing Mona this was worse than I imagined. Even when I considered that smoking might have aged him—there was gray in the hair bundled in the back—the guy had to be at least forty.
“I don’t think I caught your name,” I said.
“Nitro,” he said. “You can’t be the guy from the first floor.”
“I’m Mona’s father.”
“Interesting. Is she home?”
“I don’t know that I’m all that interesting, but she’ll be home in a minute. Come in and wait.” He started to follow me inside, and I turned and said, “You probably want to put that out,” looking at his cigarette.
“That’s all right,” Nitro said.
I got him a saucer so he wouldn’t knock the ash on the floor and said, “We have a young daughter. Smoke’s a bad idea.”
He dawdled stubbing it out. I told him to have a seat at the kitchen table. I would open the doors and air the place out as soon as I had what I needed.
“How did you meet Mona?” I asked.
“She didn’t tell you?” He said this with a slight smile—at least I think that look was a smile.
“We’ve been a little busy lately. Can I get you a cup of coffee?”
“Black. I’m sure she’ll tell you when she’s ready,” he said and stretched his legs out so that if I needed to get up I’d have to step over them. “You said she’ll be right back?”
“Any minute. What type of photography do you do?” I asked, stretching to pull one of the cups off the hooks rather than go around him. There was just enough in the pot for one cup. I poured this out, though I’d been saving it for after dinner.
“Fashion. Fine art. You know.”
“Mona’s doing some work for you?”
“We’re enjoying each other’s company.”
“What would she enjoy about being with a forty-year old man?” I said, and maybe that question didn’t come out right, but his response was worse.
He laughed and said, “I’ll let her break that down for you.”
“You’re talking to her father,” I reminded him.
“You asked me an honest question.” He shrugged.
“That’s offensive,” I said.
“Maybe the harder it is to be honest with yourself, the more offensive it seems.”
“We’re done here. Don’t count on seeing my daughter again anytime soon.”
“Aren’t you just passing through?”
I was about to grab his arm and shove him out the door. But he was
going on his own accord.
“I’ll let her know you stopped by,” he said, “on your way to nowhere.”
Mona
Someone stole my wallet a few months earlier. I was in a coffee shop in the neighborhood, and I had slung my pack over the back of my chair. For some reason I thought leaning against it, feeling the strap along the muscles of my back, kept it safe. But the thief was soundless and weightless as he slid inside the zipper, reached to the bottom, fished it up, and disappeared through the main door. Within minutes he was down the street, charging things on my debit card.
With that same kind of speed my father was ready to tap us for room and board, rides around town, dry cleaning deliveries, meaningless conversation, anything that would make him feel safe and close, even if it was a false closeness, a phony safety. I would have said something after I dropped the groceries and the peanut butter jar shattered, but Mom was suddenly asking me to play Chutes and Ladders. I would have raged if not for the fact that Lola was standing there. I don’t know if she understood the way she anchored us while we worked to anchor her.
Almost before our parents were out the door Lola asked me who that man was, and I shrugged and lined up the bags, trying to breathe. I should have said, An old friend. I couldn’t think.
“He looked scary,” she said.
“Mom’s fine. I want to be the red player today. You don’t mind, do you?”
As I expected, she said, “Red’s my favorite color.”
“All right … I just said that to get the yellow.”
“Yellow is my other favorite,” she clarified with a modest smile.
“How about I hand you things from the grocery bags and you figure out where they go?” I said. “And then I’ll let you pick out the color you want the most.” I took a seat at the table and pulled a box of generic crackers from the first bag, careful to avoid the mess at the bottom.
“How about I give you the things in the bags.” She took a seat on the package of twenty-four rolls of toilet paper and handed me a jar of pickles.
“Okay, deal, as long as I can do the messy bag. Have I told you I love your assertiveness, Lola?”
“My what?”
“The way you do the things you do. Hand me anything.”
I just had to keep Lola busy until Mom came back and I could get out of there and have some time to think about statutes of limitations.
When I found Constantina in the entryway the next day I ran upstairs and got a camera. I asked her to stand in front of the mailboxes. I don’t know why I wanted to capture her ordinariness.
She measured me with those dilated eyes. “I asked him if he got my note, and he said, ‘What note?’”
“I lost it somehow, but I thought if I made a print of you, you could give it to him.” I explained that I worked at a photographer’s studio.
“You better be straight with me,” she said, eyeing my camera. She got out her phone, looked at the screen, scrolled, sent a message, waited for a reply, sent another message, adjusted her hair and removed flecks of mascara from below her eyes using a large mirror she had tucked in her purse. Then she moved a few inches so that she was next to Ajay’s mailbox and said she was ready.
As she sharpened and came to rest in the lens, it’s possible I saw something of myself there, the heartbroken one, but I quickly pushed this away so I could take a few head shots and full-length frames. I told her I would make a print of the best one that day.
Later, when Geary looked through the images, he said I could have made better use of the graffiti in the background, but at least we agreed that one of the shots made sense. He also remarked that I should do a series of people standing by their mailboxes. “They’ll be obsolete one day,” he said.
“Mailboxes or people?” I asked.
“Both. Look, I know we’ll all be glad when you get out of that neighborhood, but you would have lost some decent work if you hadn’t moved there.”
He had seen any number of prints come out of that world. Decent work was high praise. I leaned against his arm for a moment and thanked him for everything. Then I got to work cleaning up. I placed the best print of Constantina in an empty photo box that I slid into my pack.
She was hanging out on the sidewalk late that afternoon. It was bitter cold, and I felt the sting on my face and hands, so I knew she had to be frozen to the bone. Patches of melted snow had frozen over the walk. The super hadn’t been around yet to throw out salt. Her boots had heels like needles.
I put the box in her hands and opened it for her. She picked the print up and stared at it for a long time. I watched her eyes move in the exact way I had intended. Cropping was everything on this one. “Did you give him a copy?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t do that without your permission.” I said, “You’re the first to see it.”
“I didn’t know it would be black-and-white. My eyes are like really dramatic.”
I had done some tricks when I printed it to make sure she wouldn’t look like a raccoon.
“Ajay thinks I’m too emotional,” she said and gripped my arm. I guess she was worried about slipping. “Me and Ajay, we’re meant to, you know …” Her voice began to quaver. She let go of me and felt around her head now, as if she had lost several of her hairclips.
“… to be together?” I said.
“Everyone can see it. My aunt told me I could come back here—you know, to Chicago—and live with her. She’s practically around the corner. People you’re tight with, that’s everything. You live with both your parents?” she asked.
I thought if I answered, things might move faster. I was eager to catch the light. “My mom and my little sister,” I said.
“And your little sister. I have lots of little nieces and nephews. They’re so cute. How old is she?”
“Just turned five.”
“Super smart, I bet. And beautiful. Like you.”
I couldn’t tell if she was jealous of Lola or me, but either way, why?
“Listen, I should go.”
She looked at the print again. “Do me one more thing,” she said.
“I really—”
“This will only take a second. I promise.”
She handed the print back, fished around in her bag, pulled out a lipstick, and added a deep red color to her mouth. Then she took the print back, pouted slightly, and placed a kiss next to her face, right over my family’s mailbox.
That print took a good hour of my time to make.
“Give this to Ajay. He’ll understand.”
“I don’t know, I—”
“You won’t lose it, will you?”
“Wouldn’t you rather just give it to him yourself? I hardly know him.”
“I think he’s watching me. Take it.”
“Ajay is watching you?” Their blinds were drawn, and I couldn’t see any lights on inside.
“His pissy old grandfather,” she said, looking at the apartment. “He’s looking.”
“I don’t see Ajay much, but when I do …”
“I’ll never forget this,” she said.
Some of the moms in the neighborhood had gotten to know me a little and understood I would make free prints of their children. They also knew I had a little sister who got heavily photographed. So they would let me circle their kids on stoops and benches and sidewalks, change lenses, and wait until I got shots I hoped Geary would want to talk about. He kept on me about paying more attention to fill light and tone when photographing people.
I was taking shots of three boys pushing each other up and down the street in a grocery cart when I decided to stop back at the apartment. Just as I got to the third floor Lily opened her door and came halfway through the doorjamb and stopped. She had a Duaflex IV around her neck. I had the Hasselblad around mine.
“Hello,” I said.
Lily narrowed her eyes and studied my camera as if I were a camera stand or part of a display. Finally she looked at my face with an almost angry expression, as if she knew what I had don
e.
“I’m Mona,” I said.
She looked at my camera again for a moment and then she pulled the door behind her so it snapped shut. Drawing her collar in, she went downstairs. I heard both doors open and shut. I went down to the landing, and from the window I saw her trudge off, trying to get that last light. She began to take pictures of the kids I had just shot, almost as if to show me up. I tiptoed back to her door.
My heart was sick with pounding as I took the handle and felt it turn.
The apartment was dark. I set my backpack down right inside the front door and, using my phone light, got her negatives out. I turned the light on in the walk-in closet. Where before I had been aware of boxes, now I knew I was looking at a remarkable archive. I fixed the negatives into the right sleeves, sealed those boxes again, and was about to leave when a label caught my eye.
The date was just a couple of months ago. The subject: Rogers Park, Mothers and Children. I knew what I was doing probably as much as she did. You can’t steal people’s lives like that and not know. There weren’t any prints, but I took a sheet of negatives from the box and resealed it. I turned out the light and went back into the main room. I wanted to look at those cameras again but heard someone on the stairs. My hands were shaking badly when I slipped the negatives into the box in my pack. I left, again without changing her lock, so that I could return what I had taken.
Richard was in the kitchen when I got in. The whole place smelled like cigarette smoke. I went straight into my bedroom and shut the door.
From my window I saw Lola in the yard. With her small plastic shovel she scooped bits of snow into a pile our mother must have helped her start in one corner. Just then Mom came up from the basement into the yard with an armload of metal pieces, including long and short pipes. I wasn’t sure if this was Mr. Kapur’s stuff or gleanings from her trashouts.
She dumped this load, and I heard the metal ring and clang against the ground. Taking Lola by the shoulders, Mom leaned down and kissed her cheek, and Lola hugged her. Then Mom put the tiny shovel against one wall of the yard. Together they dragged some kind of disk into the spot that Lola had started to clear. It wasn’t as big as a manhole cover, but I could see Lola’s breath working in hard clouds. Once this piece was in place my sister brushed her hands together, proud of her work.