The Smoke Jumper

by Nicholas Evans

  Connor stood in front of the picture for a long time, staring at it and then staring through it, at the vision of himself that was on display here and in all the other pictures he had just walked past. Something seemed to be expanding inside his chest, squeezing his lungs, making it hard for him to breathe. He felt himself sway and his shoulders start to shake.

  ‘What were you looking for?’

  He turned and saw Beatrice staring at the picture too, as if she had addressed the question to the boy. Connor swallowed. He didn’t know if he could trust his own voice.

  ‘In this picture, you mean?’

  ‘In all of them.’

  It was a question so uncannily close to his own thoughts that his instinct was to brush it off, to give the standard line that they were just images, moments captured by some undefinable combination of chance and instinct that somehow ended up telling a story. But instead, as if it sprang from nowhere, he gave a different answer.

  ‘Hope.’

  It was a shock to hear himself say it. God, he was feeling weird. He couldn’t stop shaking. Beatrice was looking at him now, assessing what he had just said. He shrugged and went on, trying to make light of it. ‘Maybe not. Who knows? Hell, I don’t think I’m looking for anything.’

  ‘Oh yes. I think you are. But I don’t think it’s hope.’

  ‘No? Well, there you go.’

  Connor forced a little laugh but it sounded odd. Maybe he was getting sick or something. He hadn’t eaten all day. Maybe it was the champagne on an empty stomach. Anyhow, who the hell did she think she was, asking him a question like that? She’d known him all of ten minutes. But despite himself, goddamn it, he wanted to know what she thought.

  ‘So okay, what is it I’m looking for?’ he said sharply.

  She looked at him for a moment and saw his anger. She smiled politely.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.’

  ‘No, please. Since you know all these famous photographers and what makes them tick and all, you’d be doing me a favor. So feel free, go right ahead and tell me. What am I looking for?’

  She frowned. ‘Why are you so hostile?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, just tell me!’

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw heads turn toward them. Beatrice paused again and then said quietly and simply:

  ‘I think you’re looking for a mirror of your own sadness.’

  Connor stood staring at her and then nodded.

  ‘Well, thanks. Now I know. Beatrice, it’s been a pleasure.’

  He turned abruptly and walked in a daze toward the door.

  He felt tears coming. Jesus, what the hell was going on here?

  He heard Eloise calling after him but he didn’t turn, just rummaged for his coat among the others.

  ‘Connor? Where are you going? What happened?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Eloise. I’ve got to go. I’m sorry.’

  He found his coat and launched himself out into the street. He took a great gulp of the frozen, pungent air and tried to gather himself, closing his eyes and putting his hands over his face. His heart was thumping like a jackhammer and he was panting and he thought for a moment that he must be having a heart attack or something. But no, he was okay. He was okay.

  He put on his coat and bowed his head and started to walk.

  How far he walked or where, he never knew. But by the time he got back to his apartment, the towered skyline of the East Side was streaked with crimson. As he came in from the street the doorman said hi and then frowned and asked him if he was all right and Connor said he was fine, just a little tired. He took the elevator to the sixth floor, leaning thrice-mirrored in the corner, not daring to look at himself.

  The apartment was as cold as outside. The heating didn’t work and he hadn’t bothered to get it fixed. It was six years since he’d bought the place but the only thing he’d spent money on was converting what had once been the bedroom into a state-of-the-art darkroom. He slept instead in the long living room which, with all his camera gear stacked in cases around it, looked more like a left-luggage place than a home. It had bare floorboards, flaking gray walls and three tall windows with black Venetian blinds that were broken and dusty. The bed was at one end and at the other was a big table littered with papers and photographs and old magazines. There was a small, drab bathroom and a smaller, drabber kitchen. The refrigerator had more film in it than food. Apart from a TV, a phone and one sagging armchair, the only gestures to comfort were a couple of small rugs and a handful of carved figures that he’d brought back from his travels. He hated the place and it knew it and hated him back.

  He didn’t switch on the lights but went directly to the bed and lay down on his back still wrapped in his coat, his breath rising in a cold fog above him. He stared without blinking at the ceiling, watching the reflected lights of the traffic move across it, yellow and red and slowly fading as another grimy day came bleeding through the blinds.

  A mirror of his own sadness.

  He wondered if that was a line she always used with the photographers she met, at least, the ones who specialized in suffering. It was the kind of smart, personal remark that you couldn’t really argue with. People generally assumed he must be on some personal crusade on behalf of humanity, confronting the comfortable with images they would rather not see. Indeed, there had been times, early on, when Connor had felt himself to be doing exactly that, persuading himself that even in a world overdosed on news, with images of mayhem and misery forever gushing into every home, it was still just about possible that a particular picture might make a difference. And no matter how small that difference, whether it led just one person to write a check or cast a vote or even just talk about it to anyone at all, then what he did was worthwhile.

  But he didn’t believe that anymore. Of course there was an element of altruism in what he did. But it was only a veneer and beneath it his motives were entirely personal. And he now realized that the reason he had reacted so harshly to what Beatrice said was that she was right. She had seen something in him that he thought he kept concealed. It lodged within him like a quiet tenant whom he never saw and it had lived there so long that he’d almost forgotten it was there.

  He wondered if he would still have ended up this way if he hadn’t made that choice seven years ago when Amy was born.

  But at the time it hadn’t seemed like a choice. It was simply how it had to be, for all of their sakes. He remembered how his father used to say there was always a simple way of telling whether something you were thinking of doing was right or wrong.

  ‘You just take a pair of scales and weigh the happiness,’ he said. ‘If it looks like it’s going to cause more happiness than unhappiness, then odds on it’s right.’

  Connor used to worry about this, long after his father had died. And he and Ed had once gotten into an argument about it. Ed had studied philosophy at college and said, a little pompously, that what Connor’s father was talking about had a name, in fact it was a whole school or movement or something, called Utilitarianism. The basic idea was that things were right when they caused the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people. Connor said what, if he’d been older at the time, he would have liked to say to his father, which was how could you measure happiness? Everybody, after all, had his own idea of what it was and how it felt. And what if you wanted to do something that would make one person deliriously happy and a hundred others just a tiny little bit unhappy? Would that be right or wrong? Ed went waffling on, trying to tie him up in knots and Connor ended up losing his temper and saying the whole theory was bullshit anyway and he didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

  But this was exactly what he had done with Ed and Julia. He had gotten out the scales and weighed everyone’s happiness. How happy would each of them be, including Amy and himself, if he came regularly to see them and how happy if he didn’t but instead just kept in touch with Amy by letter, to let her know he cared and thought about her. And the scales had tilted sharply, con
clusively, in favor of his staying away.

  Having made his decision, he should have allowed himself to move on. He had always believed, after all, that happiness was simply a matter of choice. You could either wallow in regret, even drown in it, or you could choose not to. But he had underestimated the power of habit. Because once you’d started wallowing, pretty soon that’s all you were fit for. You grew fins and webbed feet so you could wallow even better. Hell, maybe you even got to enjoy it a little. And then when you thought that was enough and it was time to haul yourself out and go walking on dry land again, you found you couldn’t. You had evolved into some wretched swamp-dwelling creature that had forgotten how to do it. The daunting truth, that Beatrice had glimpsed at the gallery, was that Connor now knew no other way to be.

  In the first two or three years there had been many times when he almost changed his mind about staying away. But by the time Ed’s letter arrived, apologizing for how he had been at the christening, it was already too late. He had in him his mother’s stubborn streak. He had made his decision and he would stick to it.

  The letters that arrived two or three times a year from Amy were still the closest that he ever came to happiness. He had her picture on his bedside table, next to the one of him and Julia, that Julia had slipped into his bag seven years ago. He had made smaller copies of them and laminated them so that he could take them with him wherever he traveled. In the one of him and Julia, their faces were almost touching. Anyone who didn’t know the truth would assume they were a couple. And Connor would lie there and stare at it and think of how, in another, more forgiving world, they might have been.

  23

  It had seemed like a good idea at the time and unfortunately it was his, so he had no one else to blame. A few weeks ago in a rare moment when the show seemed to be coming together well, Ed had suggested to Julia that they should invite both their mothers to stay when it was on. It had been some while since they’d been to visit, he said, and Christmas was coming up and it was Amy’s theatrical debut and anyway the two women had always gotten along so well. Actually, Ed now confessed to himself, it was pure hubris. He wanted them to see his show.

  They had flown in three days ago and, in fairness, both had done a lot to help. They had cooked and cleaned and looked after Amy, even helped Julia make some last-minute costume alterations and ferry people and props to and from the school. But, boy, the wearying cost of it all.

  Julia’s mom had hardly paused to take breath. He’d always found her constant chatter funny, even endearing, but now it was driving him crazy. Of course, with justice that he should have foreseen, Julia and Amy were at school all day, so the burden was mostly his. Maria had a habit of interrupting him at his workstation just when he was in the middle of something vital and complicated. Worst of all, for some unfathomable reason, she’d started calling him Eddie, a name which had always set his teeth on edge and which, when he was a kid, would earn whoever was rash enough to use it a bloody nose.

  ‘Eddie, would you like a cup of coffee?’

  ‘No thanks, Maria. I’m fine, thanks.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes, thanks, Maria. I had one just a short while ago.’

  ‘How’s the work going?’

  Grit teeth, count to three, take deep breath. ‘It’s going just fine, thanks.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to it, then.’

  ‘Thanks, Maria.’

  Dear Lord. Even Amy knew when to leave him alone.

  His own mother barely got a word in edgeways. Her side of the conversation consisted mostly of I know. Really? Is that so? You didn’t? Ed could tell she was finding it hard too. It would have been easier in summer, when they could have sat outside or gone for walks, but the moment they’d arrived, so had the snow and they were confined to the house.

  Today it all seemed worse because of first night nerves. The show was on for two nights only and it opened this evening. With one performance under his belt, Ed hoped, everything would calm down and he would again have a life and learn to love his mother-in-law. Right this moment she was sitting on the living room couch telling his mother about someone she knew who in turn knew someone who’d once spent a night with Frank Sinatra. Ed had heard the story before and knew it was long and, like Frank that night, promised more than it delivered. He tried to block his ears but still it wormed its way in.

  There were only three and a half hours to go until curtain time and he still had about a hundred things to do. He’d even skipped his date with The Brides of Dracula this morning. It was no big deal. He’d missed a dialysis session a couple of times before with no serious consequences, so he knew he’d be fine. These medics always played it safe, he reasoned. Having his blood cleaned twice a week was probably more than enough. All he prayed was that Julia didn’t find out, as she had the last time he played truant. She’d given him hell for days. One of The Brides at St. Pat’s had phoned this morning when he didn’t show up and she’d given him hell too. Ed told her he felt fine (which wasn’t altogether true) and that he’d come in tomorrow instead. Once the show was done, he promised, he would go back to being a good boy.

  Kay Neumark was coming to pick him up at four and he still hadn’t finished half of what he’d hoped to get done. Over on the couch Frank Sinatra was still on his first martini. Ed was just putting on his headphones to block the sound of Maria’s voice when the phone rang. It was Julia, calling from the school with bad news. The chief logger, clearly taking theatrical tradition too literally, had fallen over in the snow and broken his leg. Kay wanted to come and pick Ed up earlier so that they could all work out what to do. She was on her way right now.

  ‘How was the dialysis this morning?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘What were the readings like?’

  ‘Julia, I’m right in the middle of something. Don’t fuss. I’m fine, okay?’

  For once, Maria had been all ears. When he hung up she asked what had happened and while he gathered his things together, Ed explained. He told them that he would arrange a taxi to pick them up at six o’clock and bring them to the school.

  ‘I hope that gives you long enough to finish your Frank Sinatra story.’

  Maria gave an embarrassed chuckle.

  ‘I do go on, don’t I?’ she said.

  As he was putting on his boots, he heard Kay’s car scrunching to a halt outside. He collected some candy bars from the kitchen and put them in his bag. Then he put on his coat and found his cane and kissed the mothers goodbye. His mother hooked her arm in his and walked with him to the door.

  ‘Good luck, darling,’ she whispered.

  ‘Thanks, but I think you’re the one who needs it,’ he whispered back.

  ‘She’s got a heart of gold.’

  ‘And a tongue of titanium.’

  ‘Shhh. Remember now. Go easy on that left hand.’

  ‘It’s kind of a left-hand show.’

  ‘Say good luck to Amy!’ Maria called from the living room.

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And to Julia!’

  ‘You bet. Bye now.’

  From the wings Julia watched Amy standing center stage in the dazzle of the lights, singing her socks off. The socks, like the red and black plaid shirt and all the rest of the chief logger’s costume, were several sizes too large for her, but what she lacked in stature she more than made up for in sheer pizzazz. It was the loggers’ big number, ‘Oh please! Oh please! They’re only trees!’ and she was giving it everything she’d got.

  Julia was astonished that the girl had agreed to do it. It had been Ed’s idea and made perfect sense because Amy had lived and breathed the show for the best part of four months and knew everybody’s lines by heart. But after how adamant she’d been about being an angel and the agonies of getting her costume right, Julia thought the proposal didn’t stand a chance.

  With Mrs Leitner’s permission they’d hauled her out of class and brought her into the auditorium where the stage was and Kay explai
ned about the chief logger’s leg. Amy stood very still and listened solemnly and Julia could tell the child knew what was coming.

  ‘So, what we wondered, Amy, seeing as you’re the only other person who knows the part, would you consider not being an angel and being the chief logger instead?’

  Amy shrugged. ‘Sure.’

  ‘That’s my girl!’ Ed said.

  ‘Can I still wear my angel costume?’

  ‘No, sugar,’ Kay said. ‘I don’t think that would work.’

  ‘Does anybody else get to wear it?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Okay then.’

  She had half an hour’s rehearsal, going through some of the moves she wasn’t so familiar with and now here she was, belting out the chief logger’s lines as if she’d rehearsed them for weeks. Julia had never been more proud of her and from the grin on Ed’s face at the piano she could see he felt the same, as did the two grandmothers in the front row.

  The auditorium was packed. Probably two hundred people, Julia estimated, with more standing at the back. Kay, who was sitting beside Ed to cue him, had announced at the start that the part of the chief logger would tonight be played by ‘Miss Amy Tully’ who had ‘agreed to stand in at only a moment’s notice.’ Naturally, the whole audience was rooting for her. When she finished her song, the cheers and applause must have sent the snow sliding off the roof. There were so many calls that Ed made her do an encore.

  ‘That’s done it,’ Julia said to one of the other teachers who was helping her backstage. ‘The poor kid’ll be stage struck for ever.’

  An hour later the show was over. And apart from a few minor mishaps - and a major one when a twelve-foot flat fell on top of the chipmunks - it was adjudged by one and all a roaring success. Amy got a standing ovation and stood there in the spotlights, squinting and grinning and a little dazed. Kay Neumark dragged Ed up onto the stage and he got a standing ovation too.