Golden Hour

by Chantel Guertin

  What if I never have a reason to go to New York again?

  There’s a lot of clanging happening on the other end of the line and then David clears his throat. “We’re in business. All right, what’s up?”

  “Tisch waitlisted me.”

  “Waitlisted? Oh shit. Sorry. Shoot. You sure?”

  “Yeah. I don’t think there’s any mistaking when they say ‘unfortunately’ in the email. And I didn’t apply to any other schools but I told Mom I did and she also thinks I got into Tisch and there are balloons everywhere and I’ve got to talk to the program director, Mr. Vishwanathan, about this and convince him to let me in. But I don’t know his number.”

  I half expect David to tell me that maybe getting waitlisted is a sign, that I have to put my college eggs in other college baskets, but instead he says, “I know Amir.” After a beat he adds, “Vishwanathan.”

  “You know him?”

  “Yeah. We went to Tisch together. He’s the one who bugs me to be a mentor every year. I’ll give him a call. But I’m going to wait until the sun rises. So you should probably go eat something. Or go shoot the sunrise. No better way to start your day than catching the golden hour.”

  Relief washes over me. “Thanks, David. You’re the best.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. Oh, and Greene?”

  “Yeah?”

  David yawns loudly. “Tell your mother.”

  *

  Hanlan’s Field is two long bus rides away from my house, reinforcing my dire need for a license. The storage shed where I’m supposed to pick up my supplies is off to the left of the entrance and the combination lock takes me three tries with a set of numbers Mr. Aquila gave me. The plastic doors of the shed squeak open to a musty interior. I pull out the gloves, garbage bag and garbage picking stick, then close up the shed and make my up way up the grassy hill. The same grassy hill where Dylan and I saw the Cherry Blasters. What a great moment that was. This moment? Not so great. I jab the metal poker into a beer cup and push the poker into the trash bag, but the beer cup won’t come off. I have to actually pull the cup off the poker. Every time. Poker. Beer cup. Trash bag. Pull. Poker. Beer cup. Trash bag. Pull. How hard is it to throw your empties in the trash? I resolve to always throw my garbage away, no matter what. I should be good at it. I’ve already thrown away my future as a photographer, why not everything else?

  Whoa.

  OK.

  Rein it in, Pip.

  I do the exercise Dr. Judy taught me to redirect my thinking when it goes off the rails. I close my eyes, then open them and focus on my surroundings instead. The sun is peeking through the branches of the trees, the sky reddish-pink, the shadows long, creating leading lines across the grass. I grab my camera from my bag and move around, working angles to get the best shot.

  Flipping through the frames on the screen, I decide David was right. There is no better way to start the day than with your camera and the golden hour. Even if it means having to pick up garbage.

  THURSDAY, APRIL 27

  Dace and I are walking to her car after school when I feel my phone vibrate in the back pocket of my jeans. I whip it out.

  David: Noon tomorrow. Vishwanathan’s office. You’ve got 15 minutes with him. Can you do it?

  My hands shake.

  Me: Yes.

  I turn to Dace and show her the texts.

  “Christ the Redeemer!”

  I give her a look.

  “Famous statue in Rio. Anyway! Not important! The meeting. Tomorrow. In Manhattan?”

  I stare at my phone then back at her and nod. “I guess? What am I going to say? How am I going to get there? What am I going to tell my mom? I can’t go PJ shopping. I’m sorry.”

  “Forget shopping. This is your life.” She clicks her fob and the car unlocks. “Get in. I’m driving you home, and then I’ll pack for you while you figure out what to say to this dude. Then when you’re ready I’ll pretend to be him and you can practice on me.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Get in.” She gets into the driver’s side, and I open the passenger door and slide in. I turn to face her as she starts up the car. “You were there for me night and day last year. Now it’s my turn.” Dace cranks the music and heads out of the parking lot onto Elm Street.

  A billion emotions run through me—anticipation, excitement, worry, fear. And one nagging voice that asks how I’m going to explain to Mom that I suddenly need to go to New York.

  *

  Long after Dace and I have rehearsed what I’m going to say, packed, bought my return bus ticket and Dace has gone home, Mom arrives home from work. “Worked a double,” she says, as she kicks off her shoes and trudges into the kitchen. Dark circles sit under her eyes, and she looks about five years older than she did this morning. I follow her and open my mouth, prepared to blurt out the truth about the whole waitlisting thing, but instead something about a pre-orientation orientation comes out, which doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, but it’s so far-fetched and she’s so tired that Mom just nods, taking it in.

  “Oh OK,” she says slowly. “But tomorrow? I just don’t see how they expect students to come on such short notice.”

  “I think it’s probably my fault. I hadn’t checked my emails in a few days. But I really want to go. And I’d just be missing one day of school. I checked the bus schedule, and there’s a bus that leaves at 9 tonight. I already called Aunt Emmy and she said I could stay with her tomorrow night and I’d come home on Saturday.”

  “Wow. It sounds like you really want to do this. But the overnight bus? Is there anything in the morning?”

  “Nothing that will guarantee I make it to the meet—er, pre-orientation on time.”

  She rubs her forehead. “All right.”

  Mom turns on the kitchen faucet and fills a glass with water. She takes a sip then puts her glass down on the counter. “And does it cost anything, aside from the bus ticket?”

  I shake my head and fiddle with a stack of papers on the table, trying to figure out if Mom’s going to agree or not. She takes another sip of her water.

  “I guess you should do it. You’ll probably get a chance to meet some of your classmates and instructors right? That will be nice.” She puts her glass in the sink, then turns back to me. “Do you think you’ll have a chance to talk to anyone about possible scholarships? I know they didn’t offer you one with admission, but maybe there are others you can apply for now that you’ve been accepted? Of course I’ll make it work no matter what, but if there’s free money to be had . . .”

  My gut feels like it’s slowly descending down my legs to my toes. It’s only now dawning on me that ever since I told her I got in, she’s been worrying about how we’re going to pay for Tisch. Which is probably why she took the double shift today.

  There’s a second where it feels like it’s all too much. My mouth opens. The truth is there, right around my larynx. That’s where it stays, though.

  Maybe if I can just convince Vishwanathan to let me in, my lie won’t actually be a lie but the truth. I just have to hold it together.

  *

  “Try to get your own seat, don’t talk to anyone weird and take a cab from the bus station—and text me when you get there. OK?” Mom says as we stand outside the bus, my overnight bag in hand. For a second the look she gives me, it’s like she’s going to cry. She hugs me, and then I lug my bag up the four wide steps and onto the bus. I settle into a seat near the back and reach into my backpack to pull out my headphones. My fingers feel something smooth, and I pull out a small envelope with my name on the front, in Dace’s loopy handwriting. Under it she’s written You got this. I run my finger under the flap of the envelope to open it and then I pull out Dace’s Hamsa, the palm-shaped charm she wears around her neck. I could use the good luck and happiness. I squeeze it tight and mentally run through what I plan to say to Vishwanathan a few more times, u
ntil my words are running together, and my eyelids are too heavy. I push the Hamsa into my jeans pocket, lean against the window and close my eyes.

  FRIDAY, APRIL 28

  The bus pulls into the station and I’m up. I sling my bag over my shoulder and follow the single file of people off the bus and in through the grimy glass doors of the Port Authority terminal. Fluorescent lighting makes the terminal look like it could be any time of day. A vending machine with a lone bag of chips takes up valuable space as people rush in each direction, a human Chinese checkers board. I make my way in as straight a line as possible to the stairs; a mix of burnt coffee, oil and sweat fills the air. At the exit, I push the doors hard through the wind tunnel that’s created in the entrance to the station. Outside is another wave of smells: gasoline, but also the smell of spring—flowers and leaves—and it fills me with a vague sense of hope. I look down 8th Avenue to see where the line for cabs starts.

  “Need a lift, Greene?”

  I turn and there’s David. Hands in the pockets of his brown leather jacket, driving cap pulled down to his eyebrows, three-day stubble on his chin. He winks.

  “David!” I drop my bag and hug him. “You didn’t have to come up here,” I say, but I’m so glad he did.

  “Well you gave me your bus information . . .” His voice is teasing. “And I didn’t have anything better to do this morning at 6 a.m.,” he says. He picks up my bag. “Geez. How long are you staying?” he says, hefting its weight.

  “I need outfit options. I want to make a good impression,” I say.

  “All right, all right, come on.”

  We climb into a yellow cab and it cuts across 42nd and then turns south onto 11th Avenue. The cab zips past bikers and leafy trees, dog walkers and brownstones. It’s early, but this city is so full of life. Just a few days ago, I’d been thinking of this moment, when I returned to New York, but I thought it would be at the end of August, when I was moving into the dorms, ready to start the first of my four years at Tisch. Never did I anticipate I’d be here now, on a desperate last-ditch attempt just to get in.

  “Perfect light for shooting,” David says as the cab merges onto the West Side Highway. He’s right. The sun is just starting to crest over the horizon, casting a golden glow on the skyscrapers. Life looks more promising during the golden hour. Pure, unblemished. I grab my camera from my bag and roll down my window, then point my camera across the water toward Hoboken and snap a few shots, trying to immerse myself in the tiny rectangle of view. I make a mental note to save the shot for next week’s Insta. I’ll do gold as my color theme now that I have this shot and the sunrise shot from Hanlan’s.

  We pull up in front of Emmy’s house, and David pays the driver as I slide out. David’s studio faces Christopher Street, kitty-corner to the apartment where my Aunt Emmy lives, which also happens to be where my parents lived in New York. Well, my real dad and mom. I mean, the dad who raised me. Not David. Oh, it’s complicated.

  “I’ll wait here while you make sure she’s up,” David says.

  The apartment building’s front steps are pitted, the black paint on them chipping off, and the door’s red paint is too. I run my fingers over the name plates—from top to bottom—and then push the button by E. Greene. Dad’s name. Typed with a typewriter on a slip of paper that’s got to be more than 18 years old at this point.

  I always imagine myself in a sort of Back to the Future scenario, me in the same world as my mom and dad when they lived in New York. When Dad was sharing a studio with David, that summer when they met my mom. I’d be the friend who made sure my mom and dad hooked up, instead of Mom and David getting together first and Mom getting pregnant with me.

  Whenever I share this time-traveling fantasy aloud though, Dace reminds me I wouldn’t be me if David and Mom hadn’t gotten together. If David wasn’t my biological father. He stayed in the background, letting Evan be my dad, until my dad died. Until the whole complicated truth came out. It would be easy for me to stay mad at David for the rest of my life, but he has become kind of like an uncle to me since Dad died. He wasn’t a part of my life for so many years, but these days, when it matters, he’s there for me.

  A moment later there’s a buzz and the door clicks. I push it open, then turn to wave bye to David. He gives me a salute and then turns to head down Christopher, and I walk down the long narrow hallway, past the rows of metal mailboxes on the left, and then past the bright blue door of the elevator that’s been out of service for years. I take the stairs two at a time to the second floor. I’m about to rap on the door to apartment 2D when Emmy pulls it open. I turn my ready-to-knock fist into a wave and she pulls me in for a bear hug.

  *

  The Tisch building is fronted by glass windows with displays showcasing students’ work. Every time I see the displays (or whenever I dream about being here), I envision one of my photographs in there, blown up. The handful of students in the foyer look me over without comment. Up on the fourth floor, the first thing you see is a wall of Polaroids of all the instructors, with arrows in Sharpies pointing the way to their offices. Vishwanathan’s photo is at the end. I make my way down the hallway and knock on 405.

  The door opens silently.

  “Ms. Greene?” Mr. Vishwanathan is standing in front of me. He’s tall and lanky, with a wiry salt-and-pepper beard and clear-framed glasses.

  He holds the door open for me and ushers me into a large, industrial office: slate floor, concrete walls covered in large black-and-white photographs, some framed prints, some canvas prints. Streetscapes of New York, San Francisco and other places I don’t recognize. Are they all his work?

  Vishwanathan clears his throat and I realize I’ve been standing in the middle of the office, taking it in. He’s already seated behind a large mahogany desk, leaning forward. Looking at me expectantly. He points to the chair on the other side of the desk, which I’m relieved to take given how shaky my legs suddenly are.

  “Thank you so much for meeting with me,” I blurt then sit down.

  He leans back in his chair and folds his hands together. “David asked me to meet with you.” He pauses and I take it as my cue to dive in.

  “Um, yes. I was hoping to talk to you about coming here. I was waitlisted.”

  He nods. “Right. We don’t typically meet with applicants, but David and I go way back.”

  I can’t tell from his tone whether or not that means he and David are friends. “I had a chance to look at your file,” he says, swiveling his computer monitor so that I can see that he is, in fact, looking at my file. “You came to Tisch camp your junior year.”

  “Yes,” I say, relieved for this starting-off point. Surely they don’t turn away students they already saw fit for their camp. “It was fantastic. I loved every minute of it. I’ve wanted to go to Tisch my entire life.”

  “You and everyone else who applies,” he says lightly, clicking around on his screen.

  I close my eyes for a moment, remembering the pitch I practiced. “I’ve definitely broadened my range because of the Tisch camp. When I first starting taking photography seriously, when I was, like, 15, my goal was to shoot fashion. My best friend was a model, and we had this whole plan that we’d move to New York together—her to model, me to be the photographer. We kind of thought she could just choose her photographer.” I laugh nervously. “But after my dad died, I don’t know, I guess I started to think about things—life—in a different way. I started exploring other types of photography. More realistic portraiture. The unexpected, the unposed, the unpolished. Shooting fashion was perfection captured, but shooting life became, to me, capturing perfection.”

  Mr. Vishwanathan nods. We’re both quiet for a moment. I open my mouth to talk, just to fill the silence, but then he leans forward in his leather chair. “Why don’t you tell me about yourself.”

  “Oh, um, OK.” Tell him about myself? I kind of feel like I just did. “Well . . .” I
grip my knees and think back to what I wrote in my application essay. I want to be consistent in my answer. Maybe this is a test to see if I actually wrote my own essay? “I’m a senior—obviously. I’ve always wanted to be a photographer. My dad was a photographer so I was exposed to life behind the lens from a very young age. I got my first camera when I was five,” I say, smiling, hoping he’ll smile back. He doesn’t. I clear my throat. “I have three cameras, and I’m thinking about getting a new 50 mm lens. I take pictures of everything. All day, every day. It’s the way I see the world.”

  Vishwanathan holds up his hand. “Please stop.”

  “Um, sorry?” I look behind me, hoping someone’s just come into his office. Not that he doesn’t like what I’m saying. But there’s no one behind me. I turn back to him.

  “I asked you to tell me about yourself. So far you’ve described everyone who applies to the program. What I want to know is what sets you apart? What are your interests outside photography?”

  “Oh, well, um. I’m on the school paper staff—”

  “Photo editor?

  “Yes,” I say proudly, wondering if he remembers reading that on my application. “Oh and I was yearbook editor last year. And founder of our school’s photo club.”

  “All photography.”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “Ms. Greene, do you realize how many thousands of applicants we get for this program?”

  I take a wild guess. “Five thousand?”

  “You’re not far off. Do you know what proportion were photo editor on their school newspaper or website?”

  This time I don’t guess. This time I just shake my head.

  “More than 75 percent. What else do you do that’s not photography? Any other clubs?”

  What else? What does he want me to say? That I’m in the Muggles Club? (We actually do have one but I’ve never been able to get into Harry Potter. Sue me.) “Oh! Ski club. I did that junior year.”