“No,” he murmurs, and, almost amused, arches a silver brow. “I could tell you about John Doe.”
“John Doe?” Everyman? An anonymous client? A corpse?
“John Doe.”
Okay. I bite. “What about John Doe?”
But he is suddenly frowning, staring past me at the peg-board where Mom’s garden gloves hang from hooks. There are three pairs. Each is a different color, though what with dirt and time, the colors have begun to blend. “She forgot them.”
“I think she figured she wouldn’t have time to garden. You know she went back to school.” Dad’s paying her tuition was a contentious part of their divorce. He didn’t see why he needed to pay for her to learn a skill if he was giving her alimony so that she didn’t have to work. She wanted both. She got both. He wasn’t pleased.
Memory of that shows on his face. “Such a ridiculous thing. And then she jumped off the boat. She’s hiding somewhere to punish me.”
I give him a minute to rethink. When he simply scowls at the peg-board in silence, I say a gentle, “Mom isn’t hiding, Dad. She died. You know she was living in Chicago when she left here. There was a car crash.”
Frightened eyes meet mine. “Margo?”
“Eleanor.”
“Chicago?”
I nod
“Not Albany?” he asks.
“No.”
“Not John Doe?”
“No. Mom. She was identified at the scene. Her identity was never in question.”
“Ah,” he says, opening his mouth in an exaggerated fashion to let the word out. Then, seeming to have had enough, he turns and strides off.
How had we ever played hide-and-seek in this potting shed? Alone here now, I take in the whole of it. It’s smaller than I remember—but isn’t that always the case? Life through a child’s eye has to be supersized to hold the huge wealth of possibility she sees. I would squeeze under the wheelbarrow or flatten myself behind the ladder when it was draped by one of Mom’s shirts. I would make myself long and narrow behind the coils of hose on the lowest shelf, praying those coils weren’t snakes.
Hah. Snakes. Not part of my memory, but something I can hear now coming from my daughter’s mouth.
Without conscious intent, I raise my camera and start shooting. Odd, but I’ve never photographed the potting shed before. The exterior, yes. But not here inside. I work quickly, snapping the whole of it, then individual parts, and all the while I feel a pressing need to preserve something that might soon be gone. It was a ridiculous thought. This shed will likely outlive us all. And still, I hurry to memorialize and keep it forever.
Like my father’s thoughts.
There’s no sign of him, not at the ocean edge, in the yard, or through the kitchen window. And for a minute I feel guilty, thinking that I should have followed him the instant he left. But I can’t crowd him in. If I do that, he’ll never talk. And that is what I want. It doesn’t matter whether I record what he says or write it down. I won’t be publishing a book on the life and times of Thomas Aldiss. All I want is more information than I’ve gotten so far.
There is a difference though, between crowding him and making sure he’s all right. Needing to do the latter, I enter the kitchen through the beach door. Lina isn’t here, although I see a loaf of bread, a head of lettuce, and a bowl of what looks like chicken salad on the counter, if the denuded rotisserie chicken is any indication. Chicken salad was always Dad’s favorite.
I’m heading for the hall, when I hear voices. One is Dad’s, meaning he’s safe with Lina. That’s all I need by way of permission to play.
The late-morning sun is high above, and while clouds drift, its heat is strong enough that I welcome the breeze on my skin. Heading for the beach stairs, I start down, then sit, brace my elbows on my knees, and lift the camera to my eye. The surf is up, making for more dramatic shots. I take several at a fast shutter speed to freeze the high tumble of the waves, and think to go for blur with a slower speed, but there is simply too much light. A tripod at twilight would work for that. For now, I continue down the steps.
As the surf recedes, my eye catches tiny jigglings in the sand. Stepping out of my flip-flops at the foot of the stairs, I cross the beach and squat as another wave breaks. Left behind in the ebbing is a squadron of sand crabs scrabbling to dig in. When we were kids, we used to catch them in flat-topped nets and give them to Dad as bait. Wanting to capture something of that memory, I photograph through several more breaking waves, bunches more crabs, farther out ruffles of surf, still farther ocean. I could photograph here forever. Sinking onto my bottom, elbows on knees again, I take a panoramic sweep of the ocean. That’s when, scanning far left, I see Jack.
Chapter 12
Sitting all the way down the beach near the Sabathian stairs, Jack is bare-footed, bare-legged, bare-chested. He is staring at the horizon, which, compared to the clear overhead, is a ripple of murk. The dog’s head rises between his bent knees, muzzle aimed seaward as well, and their profiles are in such perfect alignment that I can’t resist. Zooming in, I take a handful of shots, then move closer to the bluff to capture them outlined against the sea.
I’ve barely lowered the camera when Jack turns his head. I don’t know if he’s seen me taking pictures, but now that I’ve been spotted, disappearing is pointless.
His eyes hold mine. They’re too far away for me to know what shade of gray they are. But the set of his brow suggests deep grooves between his eyes. And I remember the words we spoke in the square.
