by Hannah I. Darling
On my mantel there is a photograph of a woman I have met only once.
She is sitting in the middle of a tall grass field wearing a white sun hat and holding a child in her arms, their backs to the camera and the sun sinking behind the hills.
On the rare occasion I have company over, I lie and say she is my sister, then promptly change the subject.
Last night, I was sitting on the floor by the fire, grading paper after paper. The wind was soft as it crawled around the house and the weeks have been snowy. I’ve spent months racing around, keeping too busy.
I dropped the papers to the ground, exhausted and looked up at the photograph on my mantel. Then, absentmindedly, I pulled out a photo album from the top drawer of this ugly, pale green chest with big white flowers on it. My mother had hand painted it when I was a child, so somewhere along the line it ended up with me.
And the photo album was as old as the chest. Mostly of family vacations, birthdays, bigger events. But toward end there was a picture of my dad sitting on top of a car, writing on a notepad. He was smiling. And it hardly looked like him. He had been quiet most my life, a large distance between him and the world. Like he was only made up of mysterious pieces and no one got to turn them over, see the other side.
I sat there, flipping through the album. We had lived on the coast of Maine when I was about eight. I didn’t remember much of those years, but I could recall one morning when I woke up to a lot of screaming downstairs.
My two older sisters had snuck out to a party at a senior boy’s house, Billy something. They hadn’t come home until early that morning. Naturally, mom was doing the screaming. What was especially bad was Vivian had came home with only her long jacket on and nothing much underneath, except her wrist brace since she had hurt it at cheerleading. I went downstairs, wanting just to sneak into the kitchen, but mom grabbed me by the arm and told dad to take me down to the beach. I was eager, it was never just the two of us.
We walked since we lived so close and dad didn’t say much of anything on the way, just chewed on a toothpick, like he routinely did. We got to the water and he sat on the rocks while I ran to the shore. I remember how the beach could make your hair gritty and face all salty in just a couple minutes.
I sat next to him eventually, and dug my toes and fingers into the sand. He was writing in a little notebook he always carried around.
“What are you doing Dad?” I asked.
“Oh nothing, just jottin’ down some things.”
“Bout what?”
“...this and that, nothing much really.”
I told him I would tell him what I had written in my journal that week if he would tell me what he was jottin’ down. This made him laugh, which surprised me. In my mind it was a pretty good offer.
“Okay, Jack. Well, I’m writing about the laughing man. The laughing man who sits in the sky and swings down midday to give you a tap on the shoulder and tell you to slow it down. And you shouldn’t ignore him Jack, cause he’ll get old someday. Remember he laughs when you say, ‘It has to be now, I want it now.’ He can teach you patience, Jack, but he doesn’t want you to loose your child-ness either.”
I told him that was a pretty good story about the laughing man and that maybe he should visit mom ‘cause she wasn’t so patient and he laughed again. I told him what I had written wasn’t as good ‘cause it was just about how Vivian had played baseball with me, even though her wrist was hurt. He said that was definitely as good, maybe even better.
I let the album fall shut and looked back up to the mantel.
I had gotten the call one afternoon in the spring and since it was a slow season we arranged for a time the next day. I packed my equipment into the truck.
She had given me directions to her father’s ranch twenty miles away, and as I drove I noticed the last of the snow on the hills and knew the sunlight would be perfect. When I arrived, a dark haired woman was standing under a maple with a young girl, about three years old. She wore a long yellow dress and they were eating a bag of peanuts, the kind with a shell.
“You must be Violet, I’m Jack,” I said.
“Thanks for coming. This is my daughter, Cadence.” I noticed the unusual inflection of her voice and the toddler’s long eyelashes. She dusted the salt off her fingers as she spoke.
“If you want to set up, it may take me a while to round up my father. I want to try and get at least one shot of the whole family.”
As she went inside with the child, I chose a spot under the maple tree where the peanut shells sprinkled the grass. I remember the smell of sunscreen and soil. Beside the swing on the porch was a pile of books, ruined by weather. I heard Violet turn on the television for Cadence and I got a glimpse of Violet’s father, a tall old man with a mustache, wearing a blackened cowboy hat. And I heard Violet gently try to persuade him to change into a nice shirt for the portraits. I remember the lows and highs of her voice and how I wished to hear her sing or read to her daughter. Her father sat down heavily at the kitchen table.
“Violet, turn on some coffee, will you?” he said.
“Dad, the photographer is waiting outside.”
The man walked outside to where I was standing.
“Why don’t you come on in here, just for a moment,” he said.
I was confused, but followed him. He pointed to a chair at the table and I sat down.
“Dad, what are you doing?”
She turned to me and apologized.
“Just sit down Violet and give ma a damn minute.”
The man took a loud breath, but spoke just above a whisper.
“I know why you want to take these pictures…‘cause I’m gettin’ old.”
His laugh turned into a bad fit of coughing.
“...It’s been rough between me and you these last few years, but there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you...Do you remember that old yellow house your mother and I lived in when you were little? Do you remember that night one summer when you came into my study because it was so damn hot and you couldn’t sleep? I carried you around outside and you demanded that I point out the constellations since the stars were so bright… And I hummed that Neil Young song into your ear as you got sleepy. You asked me how a river could get blinded, and I told you Blind River was just a place in Canada and it could see just fine.”
He paused and struggled to clear his throat- perhaps of the dust that collects on a thing never told. It was uncomfortable, like I shouldn’t have been there. He glanced at Cadence who was slouched in front of the TV, toying with a thread from the sofa. And he went on.
“You had on some sort of candy bracelet and you had only eaten off the purple ones. Somehow, I remember that. It looked too tight, so I stretched it off your wrist and put it in my pocket. We walked back and forth along the driveway for an hour. There was that cricket noise and right there under the big black sky, I couldn’t believe that I was standing in this world with you. Of all the things, how could it be that I got you...
I looked up at the house and saw your mom, sitting in the window, watching us and crying a sort of beautiful cry. What I wanted to tell you Violet, is this hour has been my dearest hour.”
The farm was quiet and the detergent commercial on the T.V. sounded fuzzy. Violet reached for a tissue. I said nothing, still unsure why the man invited me in. He stood up, abruptly.
“Ready for my close up, sir,” the man said.
I followed him outside.
After a few test shots, I had Violet’s father lean against the maple. He didn’t smile, but his eyes had a readiness. And for some reason, I feared this readiness. The peanut shells crunched as he adjusted his stance and the girls came out then. Violet joined her dad with Cadence on her hip and her dark hair flowed over her daughter’s shoulders. She kissed the small girl on the head and briefly squeezed her father’s hand. He nodded and looked out toward the sky.
In Violet’s face, I saw the fragility of a daughter and the instinct of a mother. I thought she wasn’t torn between the two roles, nor confused by them. Just aware of them, maybe for the first time ever. She gave me a look, maybe of contentment.
Cadence began to whine and I went to assist Violet with the bottles and toys in her car. In the fuss of the moment, her father limped to the barn and sat down against it, facing the valley and creek below. He removed his cowboy hat and rested it on his face.
The neighbors strolled over a few minutes later, chatting and bearing cookies. Hellos were exchanged and once the situation was realized, perplexed and hysterical phone calls were made. I remember the maples at the ranch whirring in the wind.
I watched Violet take a deep breath and close her eyes for a few seconds. She lifted Cadence and shakily walked over to the tall grass field where they sat down. The ambulance’s siren echoed off the hills and somehow Violet kept Cadence calm, facing away and pointing to something in the distance.
I slipped into the background then, and a heaviness took me. I had been witness to courageous and timely reconciliation that day, as complete and pure as it comes. And this is how I imagined his death…
He took in a breath and felt the dirt driveway under his bare feet that long ago summer night and Violet’s sticky hands around his neck. He listened to his own humming and felt his daughter’s heart beating against his own. And then, he saw Violet’s mother in the window as he breathed out his last breath.
I stood back for some time and looked out at Violet and her daughter, watching the things that contour a family. Eventually, I took what would be my last shot and packed my equipment into the truck.
Weeks later when I developed Violet’s film, I quit photography and gave all my time to teaching. I looked up the address of the ranch in the phonebook and mailed the photographs to Violet. All, but one.
