American Music - Jane Mendelsohn [33]
She turned the key in the lock and opened the door.
The mantel and the water glass left on the mantel were still there but there was a difference in the room and she glanced around before stepping inside. There was the door to the little bedroom slightly more ajar than she would have left it. There was a different position of the bags stacked under the long table, an almost undetectable shift in the shape the bags made in relation to one another and she stood for a moment wondering if this was just the alcohol or if the light had changed so much that objects seemed to have moved and then she scanned the top of one of her desks and she saw that it was empty. This was when she rushed into the apartment and touched the top of the desk to see if she was imagining this emptiness and then spread her arms out over the desk and then laid her head down on the desk and made a low moaning sound into the tabletop as if it were a body she was crying into.
She spent the rest of the day and night looking all over the apartment for her film and slides but they were gone. These were the photographs that were going to be in the exhibition. These were photographs for her first show of color work. These were photographs she had taken over the last five years, mainly of children, children she had found and watched on the streets. She loved the children in the photographs and she loved the photographs. In the photographs she had captured the weird shapes and beautiful shadows and the anger and calm and sweet openness of the children. She had taken pictures of life. It was the only life she cared about anymore. Now it was gone. Now, she was gone.
The photographer sat for a long time looking out the big window into the quiet, darkening garden. Her apartment faced a distant brick wall. She watched the shadows on the wall and thought about the shadows in her life and in her pictures. She wondered how this had happened and why. She cried and in the morning after thinking for a long time about who might have done this, she made a decision. Then she called the police.
2005
Do you think she ever gets the pictures back?
I think so. I think she will. She seems to have some idea about who took them.
Honor could hear in her own voice that she wanted to believe what she was saying. Her words sounded transparent, like footsteps on a bridge.
What makes you say that? said Milo. I don’t think she has any idea. I don’t know if she’ll get them back. Unless maybe the police get a description of the woman from that old lady downstairs.
I hope so. It’s so sad if she never gets them back.
She was hearing the footsteps in her voice walk away.
Milo craned his neck around and then pushed himself up onto his elbow. Why are you crying?
I’m not sure.
He took a corner of the sheet that had been draped over him and wiped her tears.
Thanks, she said.
Then the sheet slipped away and he was wiping her tears with his hands. Then she was sitting beside him, and he was holding her while she cried.
I’m sorry, she said, lifting her head from his shoulder. I don’t know why this is making me so sad.
Don’t be sorry, he said. It’s okay.
She looked at him and her eyes were wet and shining and the lids were reddened and her long lashes fanned around them like feathers around an egg. She had the unusually present look of a figure in a painting, someone to whom a great message is about to be revealed. She looked like she was about to receive something.
I think I need to know who stole those pictures, she said. I can’t explain why, but I feel like it matters to me in some way that is impossible to explain.
Now the footsteps were gone entirely. Not even an echo. She was saying what she meant.
All right. We’ll find out. He was stroking her hair.
Milo, I’m sorry,