by Mira Jacob
“What?”
“You need to eat, don’t you?”
“Yes. Right.” Amina sipped at her water, as though it could satisfy her roiling gut. The hunger was making it hard to think.
“And then you can photograph the Bukowskys’ wedding, too,” Kamala said.
“What?”
“Julie’s daughter! I told you about it! The wedding this weekend?”
Amina looked at her mother blankly.
“Jenny Bukowsky is one of the nurses in the OR. Her wedding is Saturday and we have to go anyway. You can take some pictures. We’ll buy them for them as a present.” In one smooth move, Kamala flipped the thin pancake onto a plate, adding a fist-sized clump of potatoes in its center and folding it in half. She handed it to Amina. “Coconut or tomato chutney?”
“Yes, please.”
Kamala spooned a generous amount of both onto her plate before turning back to the stove. As she placed the ladle back in the batter, she said, “I canceled the dinner with Anyan. Eat.”
The pancake cracked under Amina’s fingers with a burst of steam that smelled of turmeric and chilies, filling her with relief so sharp that it erased everything but itself. She ate one dosa and then another, dimly aware of her mother spooning more chutney onto her plate and refilling her glass with water. Finally, in the middle of the third, she sat back to breathe, mouth tingling. She knew she should tell Kamala about Monica, the car, the conversation, and instead found herself saying, “Ask him if Wednesday works.”
Her mother took a quick glimpse over her shoulder. “What?”
“For dinner. Dr. George.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” Amina felt momentarily guilty at the pleasure that fanned out over her mother’s face. “This is really delicious, by the way.”
“I’ll make you one more.”
“No! Jesus. You’re going to get me fat if you keep feeding me like this.”
“No Jesus,” Kamala scolded lightly. She lifted the pan from the stove and placed it in the sink, turning the water on so it hissed as it cooled. One by one, she replaced the chutneys in the fridge door and turned around. She walked over to Amina, hugging her so briefly and furiously that she was five steps out of the kitchen before Amina thought to hug her back.
Half the village of Corrales and most of the OR staff of Presbyterian Hospital turned out for the Bukowsky wedding the following Saturday night. Just-shined cowboy boots escorted broom-skirted ankles first across the horse-patty-strewn parking field, then to the dance floor, a patch of dirt stamped level in the middle of some cottonwoods. Up on a nearby trailer bed, the Lazy Susannahs played bluegrass at top volume under a ring of Christmas lights, while dogs and small children hurtled through folding chairs and Johan Bukowsky clutched his shirt.
“I’m all right!” he proclaimed loudly at several intervals, drawing hoots of appreciation from the crowd. “It had to happen sometime, right? I just didn’t think so soon.”
This got a good laugh from everyone as his daughter’s seven-year engagement had been made much of during the ceremony, and Jenny herself ducked a shaking head into the groom’s neck. Amina stepped lightly onto the dance floor, snapping a photo and then receding as the hired photographer popped into her frame.
“Did you get it?” Kamala asked anxiously from behind her. “Do you need to get another?”
“Nope.” Amina turned the lens on her parents, who were looking particularly dashing and out of place in their best silks, like Bollywood actors who had wandered mistakenly onto the set of a western.
“Not us!” Kamala dabbed her upper lip with the tip of her sari. “You need to get the bride and groom standing and kissing! And then one of all those people that stand at the altar in fancy clothes and do nothing. And the cake! Don’t forget the cake!”
“The real photographer will do all that,” Amina reminded her. “I’m just here as a favor, remember?”
“It won’t be a good favor if you don’t get any nice pictures.”
“Isn’t this wonderful?” Thomas crowed. “Can you believe it?”
At least his inability to stay tear-free during a wedding was still firmly intact. Amina took a few quick shots of the Christmas lights reflecting in her father’s eyes, his hands rising as he danced at the side of the floor. It hadn’t been hard to convince him that a few weeks of her events had canceled, suddenly opening up her schedule. Harder was convincing Jane she needed to stay, and to get freelancers to cover the gaps for three weeks of work. Or, as Jane called them, “people who really want your job.” The laugh that she had inserted to take the sting out of the threat only made Amina more nervous.
Amina pushed through the ring of people watching the dance to the backyard.
Tubs of beer glistened like buoys across the evening. A smattering of chatty groups had settled in for the night, and she tried to take a few candid shots of each before they grew aware of her. A dark-haired girl, one good year away from being self-conscious, was trying to make a black Labrador dance with her, paws to shoulders, and Amina backed up to get the right angle, not realizing until after the picture was taken that her ass was pressed into someone’s very still hands.
“Jesus!” She whirled around to find a tall old man in a huge suit looking vaguely stricken. “I’m so—”
“S-sorry about that,” the man stammered, looking down. “I wasn’t trying—”
“No, no, it was me. I wasn’t looking.” She felt herself blushing and held up her camera like it had pushed her. “Pictures!”
“Right. Yeah, okay.”
He was not old at all, she realized, on closer inspection of the man’s face. It was the baldness that had thrown her. His face was actually youngish, all thick eyebrows and rocky lines. The man smiled apologetically, and Amina automatically looked into her viewfinder, liking something about the shape of his skull and the curve of the cottonwood trunk behind him.
“Oh no, don’t do that,” he said, stepping out of the frame but not before she caught something. A flash of deep-set eyes. The girlish mouth. The cover of her high school copy of Heart of Darkness veered sharply into her mind, and she lowered the camera.
“Jamie Anderson.”
His smile was the same, a wince. “Hey, Amina.”
“I didn’t recognize you.”
“I know.”
“You’re bald.” Her shoulders jumped Tourretically. “I’m sorry! That’s not—I just, uh, you know, you used to have”—Amina held her hands out from her head a foot in either direction—“hair.”
“I shave it in the summer.” Jamie rubbed his ear, which was burning pinkly. “Less hassle.”
His head glowed like a porcelain dish, and she fought the absurd urge to lick it. Time had rendered him taller, a little thicker, fuller in the face and shoulders. But that mouth. It had not changed even a little—heavy-lipped, petulant, hanging open slightly as if ready for argument. Amina stared at it, dimly aware that it was asking her something. “What?”
He pointed to the camera. “You’re the photographer?”
“Yes. I mean, not the photographer, like the wedding photographer, but a photographer. In the world. For a living.” Was she speaking English? She looked down and patted her camera like it was a lap dog.
“Ah.” Jamie took a sip of beer. “So what do you photograph? In the world. For a living.”
Amina colored, cleared her throat. “I can’t believe you still live here.”
“I just moved back six months ago. Position at UNM.”
“You’re a professor?”
“Anthropology.”
“Seriously? I mean, that’s great.”
Jamie looked at her curiously, half grinning. “So you’re back, too?”
“Visiting. Just for a little while. A few weeks. Something is wrong with my dad.” Why on earth had she said that? Amina’s face grew warm as Jamie looked at her with a little more concern than she felt comfortable receiving from near strangers. She looked away. Across the courtyard, a thi
n woman sat alone in a folding chair, a full paper plate of enchiladas on her lap. Amina lifted her camera and took a quick picture. “Is it serious?” Jamie asked.
“I don’t know.” Amina shifted uncomfortably.
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry—”
“You’re not. I mean, you are, but it’s fine.” Amina fiddled with the flash on the top of her camera. “Anyhow, I should get back to it. I promised my mom I’d get pictures for her.”
“Oh. Right, sure.” Jamie backed up to let her pass, and she moved swiftly toward the bar.
“Good to see you,” he called after her, and she waved behind her, too unnerved to turn around.
Ridiculous. She had been ridiculous. Talking nonsense and still undone by the lower half of his face. The wine the bartender handed her a few moments later was a little too sweet, but she sipped it steadily, not daring until it was mostly gone to turn around and look at the party. Jamie had walked clear across the lawn, where he was bending down to give the bride a kiss on the cheek.
“Kiddo!”
Amina turned to find Monica coming at her, arms pinwheeling, hair spooling out of a French braid. She spilled a little white wine down Amina’s back as they hugged.
“Shit! I got you?”
“A little.”
“Forgive me, hon. It’s been quite a week.” Her intonation begged for elaboration, but Amina let it pass. “How are you doing?”
“Fine,” Amina said. The band kicked it into high gear, banjos ringing, and out on the dance floor a circle formed, thick with clapping hands.
Monica leaned in close, dropping her voice. “Any news?”
“Not yet, but I’ve got a plan. I’m talking to Anyan George about it.”
“Dr. George?” She looked worried.
“I know, but listen, we need help. And better him than anyone else.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Smart. Man, I’m glad you’re home.” Monica threw an arm over her shoulder, covering her in the smell of flowery deodorant and white wine.
She whooped suddenly in delight. “Oh my God! Will you look at him! How long has it been since you’ve seen him look like that?”
Lunging from haunch to haunch, Thomas had moved into the center of the circle, arms crossed in front of him like a Russian folk dancer. Three kicks drew three glorious cries from the crowd, and he rose up with the last, his palms opened to the air, chin tilting toward the sky, curls bouncing. Amina found him through her viewfinder. A smile broke across her father’s face, charming it.
“He’ll be okay, you’ll see,” Monica said, taking a swig of wine, and Amina let the shutter fall over and over and over, willing her to be right.
CHAPTER 2
How had she forgotten how the flat light of a desert afternoon could suck the dimension out of anything? The first of the Bukowsky wedding photos were complete tossers. Garbage. The newlyweds looked like line drawings, gashes for mouths and empty sockets for eyes. Amina flipped through them quickly, leaving the worst in a pile on Akhil’s desk. At least by the time the evening light rolled in she had found her rhythm. She lingered over the shot of Jamie Anderson, glad to be able to stare at him without having to make conversation. His features, once soft and strange, had hardened into deep crags and furrows. He had turned just as she was taking the picture, his eyes cast down, his mouth beginning to purse in a way that made her feel a little sex-starved and desperate. True, the actual conversation with Jamie hadn’t gone so well, but conversations with men almost never did, for her.
The phone was ringing.
“Ami, get that!” Her mother called from below.
She reached for it on the desk, but the cradle was empty.
Amina stood and looked around the room. The phone rang again.
“Ami!”
“Hold on!” She turned to the bed, lifting up one pillow and Thomas’s blazer before her arms understood what her brain could not, throwing open the closet door. Inside, the phone trilled at her maniacally, as though delighted to be found. Amina picked it up, brushing a film of dirt from the mouthpiece.
“Hello?”
“I think I’m choking.” Dimple did not sound like she was choking. She sounded like she was lighting a cigarette. Pioneer Square’s morning hustled around her, the drunks and the bike messengers and the ferries floating through the phone line. “I don’t think I can get this show up.”
“Of course you can.”
“No I can’t,” she said, sounding irritated. “And I don’t need a fucking cheerleader right now, Amina, I need a realist.”
Amina walked back to the desk, phone in hand. “What happened?”
“I still haven’t found someone to pair with Charles White. I swear, I’ve looked everywhere. Nothing fucking works.”
Amina flipped through a few more wedding shots. Red chili enchiladas did not photograph well. Guests hunched over white paper plates, looking like they were devouring piles of bloody flesh. “Isn’t it getting late?”
“That’s not helpful.”
“You asked for a realist.”
“Yeah, not an asshole.”
“Jesus, Dimple.”
“I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. Or, well, it is, but not really.”
“What did I do?”
“I want to show your work.”
Amina swallowed. “Oh.”
Dimple snorted. “Oh, she says.”
“What do you want me to say? I don’t have anything.”
There was a short, unsettling silence, the kind that precedes fights between family like a growing electric field precedes lightning.
Dimple cleared her throat. “Okay, listen, I found the pictures in your closet.”
“You what?”
“I found—”
“You went into my closet?”
“Yes, I did. Listen, I was at your house for the plants and then I needed a jacket, so I—”
“Bullshit.”
Dimple was quiet for a second. “Okay, fine, I was looking through your stuff. I don’t actually know why. I know that sounds weird. But I found them and I fucking love them. And listen, I know this isn’t a great time to ask, and I hope you know I wouldn’t unless I felt really, you know, desperate. Well, no, desperate and compelled. Because your work is compelling.” She took a breath, changing her tenor to one Amina had heard her use with others too many times to feel flattered by. The honeyed tone, the easy pump of ego. “You know, the thing is, I can’t stop thinking of how great it would be, actually. It’s a good pairing, a really spot-on counterpoint to Charles’s selection. I think we could actually go small with this—make it concentrated. Eight or ten—”
“No.”
“Wait, stop, just listen for a second, okay? You know we’re exploring the idea of domestic accidents, and it’s, like, perfect. So if we go with the fainting grandmother, the peeing ring bearer, and those two bridesmaids fighting over the bouquet—”
“Are you listening? No.”
“—lead with the picture of Bobby McCloud jumping—”
“No!”
“The puking bridesmaid. We’ve got to show that, obviously.”
“Dimple, it’s not happening! Period. And if Jane ever finds out anything about those pictures, I’ll be fired instantly. There’s a reason they were hidden.”
“Wait, these are hidden from Jane?”
“Yes! But also the clients. They don’t know about them, either. And this isn’t the way they’re going to find out.”
“I’m not sure why Jane’s opinion really matters,” Dimple said.
This was not a good path to go down. “Look, you asked. I am saying no. Clear?”
Exhale. Silence.
“Dimple, do you hear me?”
“Yeah, yeah, I hear you. I know what you’re saying. And I know we’ve had this discussion before, but somehow, Amina, I’m just never quite convinced that you don’t want me to keep bothering you about it. I mean, right? You do, a little, don’t you?” Dimple took another sh
arp drag. “I mean, you don’t, like, lose ambition because you switch tracks for a little while.”
“Switch tracks? I’m a wedding photographer!”
“So what? What if showing your stuff was, like, what you needed to get past it? You know, like on fucking Oprah. Scared-of-her-shadow housewife remembers her inner fire, starts a multimillion-dollar business, takes care of orphans on the side. Full circle!”
“I’ve gotta go.”
“Wait! No! Okay, look, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to do that. I just hate having to beg you for something you should be thrilled to give me. I mean, this is business. It’s an opportunity. You took these pictures, the best fucking pictures I’ve ever seen you take, by the way, and what? You think if you show them, you’re somehow worse off?”
“When did this become about me? Your job gets hard and I’m the jerk?”
There was a brief pause on the line, punctuated by the anxious bleat of a ferry.
“Okay, fine, that’s fair,” Dimple said. “Yes, I’m stuck. I don’t have a good match, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have a pristine set of prints that I love all ready to mount! But you do. And you’re here, so we could bang this out fast. And I really do think you’re a great fit for the show. Please.”
She sounded like a junkie. Like a photography junkie. The saddest, most pretentious thing in the world.
“I’m not there,” Amina said.
“You’re coming back this week.”
“No. I need to stay here for a little bit.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Something is really wrong with my dad.”
“What?”
It should not have felt so good, or easy, to tell Dimple everything, given the preceding conversation, and yet it did. It felt like taking off a tight helmet.
“Oh God.” Dimple’s shoes clacked as she paced. “Does the family know? I mean, obviously my mother doesn’t, or everyone would, but the others?”
“I don’t think so. It depends on how far it got around the hospital. But don’t say anything about it yet, okay? I need to figure some stuff out.”