An odd, uncomfortable look came over Jaime’s face. What was it? Guilt? No. No . . . it was misery. Whatever did this English woman have to feel miserable about? Mattie thought the woman was going to share what troubled her, but then Danny coughed and the woman looked startled, as if she had forgotten he was there. And the moment passed.
Mattie went over to Danny and put a hand on his forehead. “Maybe you should put on a sweater.”
“Mom, I’m fine.”
“A sweater is something a boy wears when his mother is chilly,” Jaime said.
Mattie looked at Jaime strangely.
“It’s a saying. Something my mother used to say.”
Mattie turned back to Danny and pointed to the sweater lying on the bench by the door.
Danny sighed, deeply aggrieved, but got up and put it on. “Can’t I go out and help Dad?”
“No,” Mattie said. “Not in this storm. I’ll whip up hot chocolate and popcorn.”
Satisfied, Danny went into the other room to start working on the puzzle.
Mattie watched him for a moment, then asked Jaime, “You said you were going on a trip with your father for Christmas. Where’s your mother?”
Jaime winced, as if that was the last question she had anticipated. “She passed away.”
Mattie reached out and covered Jaime’s hand. “You must miss her very much.”
Jaime closed her eyes for a split second. “Oh, I do. I would give anything to have another day with her. Just one day.”
The strange note of weariness in her voice touched Mattie’s heart with pity. She gave Jaime’s hand a slight squeeze. Then she turned her attention to filling a pot with milk from the refrigerator before setting it on the burner. She poured vegetable oil in the bottom of a large kettle, added popcorn kernels, and swished them all around so they would be covered in oil before covering the kettle with a heavy lid. She stayed by the stove to shake the kettle as the kernels popped. She could feel Jaime’s eyes on her, watching, taking it all in. Was her kitchen so very different from an English person’s kitchen?
“So, Jaime, tell me about taking pictures.” She glanced back at her.
Jaime looked at Mattie curiously. “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know why you like to take pictures.” She heard the oil start to sizzle and gave the kettle a shake. She glanced over her shoulder at Jaime. “What was the first picture you ever took?”
A sweet look came over Jaime’s face. “My mother gave me an inexpensive throw-away camera when I was seven. I snapped shots of everything a seven-year-old thinks is fascinating: spiderwebs, a cat’s nose, a flower.” She smiled. “My mom had the pictures developed at one of those one-hour places. I wouldn’t leave the store so we waited by the counter until the pictures were done.” She shook her head. “Those pictures were terrible, just terrible, but I was hooked from that moment on.”
“Why?” Mattie asked. “Why were you hooked?” It was plain to see how much this meant to Jaime. Her entire face lit up as she talked about taking pictures.
“There is nothing more satisfying than capturing that one, perfect image,” Jaime said. “I enjoy the trial and error of it all, tinkering with various positions and lighting and composition until I get it right. I love the variety of the work. And I guess the photographs make me feel like I matter. As if I had something to say, and I can use photographs to say it.” She shook her head. “Probably sounds silly to an Amish farmwife.”
Mattie was quiet for a long moment. A few kernels of popcorn started to pop so she held on to the kettle’s edges with two potholders and gave it a hard shake. “What kinds of pictures do you most like to take?”
“Outdoor photographs—of nature, of wildlife. I enjoy the unpredictability of photographing the outdoors. So many things are out of your control—lighting or posing—but there are times when I capture something that just takes my breath away.”
“Sounds challenging.”
Jaime sighed. “It can be. Even indoors, in Sears Portrait Studio.” She clicked something on her camera and the lens folded up. “Photography is a very competitive field. It’s hard to stand out. I don’t want to be just another two-bit photographer. I don’t want to be ordinary, you know?”
Mattie pinched her lips together in a line, trying not to laugh.
“What?” Jaime asked, confused. “What did I say that was so funny?”
“Now that . . . that does sound silly to an Amish farmwife. Wanting to not be ordinary. We do everything we can to avoid standing out. You English . . . you do everything you can to draw attention to yourself.”
“But . . . that’s not what I mean. That’s not what I’m like.”
“No?” Mattie asked. She looked over at the wall pegs, filled with black coats and black hats and her own black bonnet. Jaime’s red coat hung on the end peg. “You wear a bright red coat, for one. If that’s not someone who wants to stand out in a crowd, I don’t know what you’d call it.”
Jaime frowned. “I guess what I meant is that I want to do something with my photography that makes a difference. I want to feel like this is what I was meant for, the reason I’m on this earth.” She looked up at Mattie. “Haven’t you ever felt that way about anything?”
Mattie was quiet as she took the kettle of popcorn off the burner and dumped the steaming popcorn into a large bowl. She drizzled melted butter on top and shook salt over it before setting it on the table. Danny came into the kitchen and sat on a chair to stir the popcorn with a large wooden spoon. Mattie stroked his hair. Motherhood was firmly ensconced in Mattie, anchored deeply in her body. “Yes,” she told Jaime. “Oh, yes. I have felt that way.”
Jaime followed the beam of flashlight that Danny held in front of her as they went up to the second story of the farmhouse. She had a new appreciation for central heating! The kitchen was warm and cozy and well-lit, but the rest of the house was pitch black, cold as a refrigerator. Danny opened up a door and shined the beam of the flashlight around it. Like the rest of the house, the furnishings were spare: a full-sized bed, a bureau, and a night table.
Danny went to the night table and picked up the lantern. “Mom won’t let me use matches, but you can light this yourself.”
Jaime went over to him. “Show me what to do.”
He pulled off the glass hurricane and turned the wick up on the base of the kerosene lantern. “Here’s where you light it.”
Jaime tried to light a match, but her fingers were clumsy with cold. After watching her try three tries, Danny took the matchbox from her and lit a match, held it to the wick, then put the hurricane back on the lantern base.
“Mom said to show you where the bathroom was.” He picked up the flashlight and went back out to the hall.
She followed behind him. “Do you use a lantern in your room?”
“No. Just a flashlight. She worries I’ll read too late and a lantern would catch fire.”
“Most moms tend to worry a lot.”
Danny nodded solemnly before opening another door. He beamed the light around a small bathroom with a big porcelain tub, a sink, and a toilet.
Indoor plumbing! Jaime didn’t really know what to expect inside an Amish farmhouse, but she wasn’t sure she should expect indoor plumbing. Hallelujah!
“There are towels on the hooks. Mom said she put a nightgown for you on your bed and a new toothbrush in the bathroom.” He turned and walked down the hallway back to her bedroom. At the door, he scrunched up his small face, peering at her intently through his glasses. “Maybe my mom doesn’t need to know that I lit the match.”
“We’ll keep that our secret. After all, you were just helping me, Danny. Thank you.”
He gave her a shy smile. “Thanks for bringing my whistle back. My dad made it for me after we found a snowy owl’s nest. They migrate here for the winter. They can find their prey by listening for it, even under the snow.”
“No kidding? I would love to photograph a snowy owl.”
“Sometime, I’l
l take you to see a bald eagles’ nest. It’s made of sticks, with clumps of grass inside to line it like velvet. It’s as big as—” He looked toward the door to see if anyone was coming.“It’s as big as a 1983 Toyota Corolla. The eagles moved in and built the nest last spring and no one knows they’re here. I’m not telling anyone.”
“Why not?”
An uncomfortable look passed over Danny’s face. “If the game warden knows, he’ll post no trespassing signs up on our property but those are like an advertisement for folks. They’ll come with their binoculars and telescopes and cameras and set up camp.” He pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Eagles are the most amazing birds you ever could believe. They have a wingspan,” he stretched his arms as wide as he could, “as big as this. Eight or nine feet.” He sat on the bed. “But if you come with me you’ll have to wear glasses. Did you know that predators go after the eyes of their prey? Even spitting cobras. They have perfect shots that spit poison right at an animal’s eyes—”
“Danny!” Mattie’s voice floated up the stairs.
He jumped off the bed at the sound of his mother’s voice and gave Jaime a wave as he slipped out the door. Mattie did keep a close watch on her son, Jaime noticed. Almost as if she didn’t want him out of her sight for more than a moment or two. Jaime closed the door as Danny’s light footsteps jumped down the stairs. That boy was intriguing. He was small for his age but talked like a docent at a natural history museum. She found herself unexpectedly drawn to him. He reminded her of . . . a little of herself as a child. Serious, studious, more comfortable with adults than with other children. But unlike Danny, she was always trying, trying, trying to fit in, like a square peg in a round hole. She always felt she was missing something essential, something everyone else in the world seemed to have.
A father.
She thought of all of the lies she had told when she was Danny’s age to excuse the inexcusable absence of her father: He’s a spy for the CIA. He’s a scientist who studies melting glaciers. He works six months at Antarctica, six months at the Arctic Pole. And her favorite: he’s in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Her ruses worked for a few years, but soon, the kids grew wise to her. And far less tolerant of someone who didn’t fit their mold. Her mother dragged her to a counselor once, concerned that Jaime had no friends. The counselor asked Jaime why she didn’t just tell kids the truth.
The truth was simpler, but far less intriguing—and it was too painful. Her father didn’t want to be a father. Or maybe he just didn’t want to be her father.
She wondered if other children picked on Danny the way she had been picked on. She was always happier out in nature, among wildlife, where no one made fun of her, especially about her hair: Woody Woodpecker. Medusa. Cardinal head. Her mother told her to pay no mind to others, that one day she would love her hair. Well, she was now at the advanced age of twenty-five and she still hated it.
C.J. loved her hair. He said it was the first thing he noticed about her—that day when she was assigned to photograph the Search and Rescue training. He had made her feel beautiful for the first time ever in her life. He would tangle his hands in her wild mop of hair and implore her to promise that she would never cut it. She would laugh and tell him he was crazy, but she would never promise that she wouldn’t cut it. Someday, she knew she would find the right haircut for her mess of hair.
And that’s just what happened. Her father appeared one day, not long after her mother had died, treated her to a haircut at a very expensive salon, and voilà! Her hair looked the way she had always wanted it to. Short, straight, asymmetrical. It looked amazing! At least, for the rest of that day. She had never been able to style it the way the hair salon had. And the new short style made it surprisingly high maintenance, requiring frequent haircuts. Trying to make curly hair straight required expensive bottles of mysterious potions and sprays. Plus a vicious-looking hair iron.
The look on C.J.’s face when she came home from the hair salon that first time still irked her. He looked betrayed. As hurt as if she had brought home a lover. But she had never promised not to cut it. After all, it was her hair!
And it wasn’t long after that she noticed how often he brought up the name of Eve. That Eve. That home-wrecker.
A month or so later, he started staying late to work on a project with her. A project. What kind of project would a junior high math teacher and a school receptionist have in common? The thought would not recede: C.J. was having an affair.
Once, she almost asked him how he felt about Eve, but the words clogged in her throat like a dammed-up river. It was just as well. What if C.J. said he cared for Eve, what would happen then? It was better not knowing, she decided. It was better to hope somehow she was wrong than to know she was right.
It’s sad, Jaime pondered, how the feeling of falling in love doesn’t last forever. She thought back to how wonderful things had been with C.J. when they were first dating, over three years ago now. He had courted her with a slow, persistent patience, showing up at Sears Portrait Studio, solid and steady, week after week, offering a fistful of flowers or some other corny gift, the pleasure on his face so real that she could not bear to turn him away.
She’d never met anyone like C.J. He was funny, charming, self-deprecating. As they zipped around streets in Stoney Ridge—a town she had grown up in and he was new to—he pointed out things she never would have noticed on her own. Well, that wasn’t entirely true—she did notice things. But they were things. The unusual architecture of an old, neglected house. C.J. would look at the same house and ask her what she thought the couple was like who first built the house. Were they young or old? Did they build it large to accommodate a growing family? “Can’t you just hear the quiet echoes of their voices, Jaime? Children, now grown, playing in the backyard? A mother and father on the front porch, sipping lemonade on a hot summer night?” And the funny thing was—she started to see what he saw. How an object related to a person. C.J. was all about relationships. At that point, Jaime’s photography jumped a level in subtlety and sophistication; even she could see the difference.
She was driving to a freelance assignment on a winter morning, just after a snowfall, and came across three Amish quilts hanging on a clothesline. Nothing else was around, just those vibrant, brilliantly colored quilts against a white backdrop. She pulled over, put a roll of fresh film into her camera, and used up the entire roll. She took them back to develop in the makeshift darkroom in her apartment—a seldom-used bathroom. She adjusted the lighting so the vibrant patterns of quilts would pop against the crystalline detail of the snow.
Later, C.J. studied the picture. That was when he said to her, “The composition of this photograph is pure genius, Jaime. You should send this in.”
“To what?”
He handed her an entry form for a national photography contest sponsored by National Geographic. “To this.”
“That’s crazy!” It was something she had never considered, although she wasn’t sure why not. Failure, she supposed. She couldn’t bear the thought of failing at something she cared so much about. But he convinced her to send it in.
She wondered if C.J. ever regretted it, knowing that contest would become the point in their relationship when the ground shifted. As real as if they had been tectonic plates that lined up against each other until an earthquake split them into a yawning crevasse. That’s what winning the contest felt like—an earthquake.
Because that was the moment her father first began to notice her. That was the point when he started to call her, to invite her to New York, to provide guidance to help build her career, to surprise her with thoughtful gifts. To act like a father.
Jaime picked up Mattie’s nightgown but decided she was so cold she didn’t want to get out of her clothes. She piled quilts on top of the bed and shivered as she climbed between the chilly sheets. The sheets were white and crisp, the pillows so soft it was like sinking her head into whipped cream. Even still, she lay in bed, stiff and cold. How did the A
mish live like this year-round? Didn’t they know what they were missing? Electric blankets. Central heating. She would never get to sleep. It would be another night where she tossed and turned, waking exhausted and cranky.
She heard C.J. and Sol and Zach come inside, stomp the snow off their feet, and laugh over something. They seemed to hit it off. Not that it surprised her—everyone liked C.J.
As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she noticed the pattern of the quilt on the bed. It was an enormous white star with rays spread out across a field of midnight blue. In the murky light, the star looked jagged and broken as if it had fallen from the sky and shattered. She turned over on her side and punched up the pillow under her head. The wind whistled like a pipe, blowing shrill. The walls moaned in deep bass, resonating in her bones.
Sol’s voice, laughing as he and Danny worked on a puzzle together, floated up the stairs. Mr. September. As she listened to him laugh and tease his son, she adjusted her assessment of him once again. There was more to him than she had thought there was at dinner, when she assumed he was a fellow all tied up in his own righteousness. There was more to all of them than she had first thought. These Amish weren’t at all what she expected. A little odd, but oddly appealing.
Take Mattie. She seemed to genuinely want to know why Jaime was so interested in photography. Of all things for an Amish woman to ask about! She never would have thought she and Mattie would have such an instant rapport as they did tonight, after the men left to go to the barn. As they talked in that little kitchen—a homey, comforting place, accompanied with the soft gurgling of the oil in the lamp as background music—Jaime felt the freedom to open up about her life in a way she didn’t with anyone else. It wasn’t long before the two women were talking to each other about all kinds of things. It felt good to talk to another woman. Mattie listened, really listened to her, and didn’t try to fix everything. She just empathized. At one point, Jaime couldn’t believe she was here, talking so intimately with a stranger. It was odd but thrilling too, like confiding in a person you met on a train or a bus.
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