The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [103]
“Hey,” Duke said, turning to show him a glossy 8 by 10. “This you, Paul?”
Paul sat very still, his arms folded around his knees, his breath a wild rush in his lungs. He didn’t move, he couldn’t. Duke let the photo slip to the floor and joined the others, who had gone a little wilder now, scattering photos and negatives all over the shiny painted floors.
He sat very, very still. For a long time he was too scared to move but then he had moved, he was inside the darkroom, hunched in a warm corner, against the filing cabinet his father kept locked, listening to what was going on outside: swirls of noise, laughter, and then a bottle crashing. Finally, it grew quieter. The door opened and Duke said, Hey, man, you in here, you okay? And when Paul didn’t answer there was a hurried conversation outside and then they left, clattering down the stairs. Paul stood slowly and walked through the darkness, stepping into the gallery space filled with piles of ruined photos. He stood in the window, watching Duke coast silently down the driveway on his bike, his right leg swinging over the bar before he disappeared into the street.
Paul was so tired. Drained. He turned and surveyed the room: photos everywhere, lifting in the breeze from the window, the negatives strewn like streamers from the counters and the lights. A bottle had been broken. Green glass was scattered over the floor, and the counters were splashed with beer. There were words on the walls, crude drawings and graffiti. He leaned against the door, then slid down until he was sitting on the floor in the mess. He would have to stand up again soon, he would have to clean this up, sort the photographs, put them right.
He lifted his hand, looked at the photo beneath it, then picked it up. It was no place he knew: a ramshackle house fastened to the side of a hill. In front of it stood four people: a woman in a dress to her calves, wearing an apron, her hands clasped in front of her. Wind blew a stray strand of hair across her face. A man, gaunt, bent like a comma, stood next to her, holding a hat to his chest. The woman was turned slightly toward the man, and they both had suppressed smiles on their faces, as if one of them had just made a joke and in another instant they would burst out in laughter. The mother’s hand rested on a girl’s blond head, and between them was a boy, not far from his own age, staring seriously straight into the camera. The image looked strangely familiar. He closed his eyes, feeling drained from the pot, near tears with exhaustion.
He woke to dawn blazing in through the eastern windows and his father silhouetted, speaking from the center of the light.
“Paul,” he said. “What the hell?”
Paul sat up, struggling to realize where he was and what had happened. Ruined photographs and film scattered the floor, covered with muddy footprints. Negatives unfurled like streamers. Broken glass littered the room and had left deep scratches in the floor. Fear rushed through Paul; he felt like throwing up. He shaded his eyes from the blinding morning light with his hand.
“Good God, Paul!” his father was saying. “What happened here?” He moved out of the light at last, he was bending down, squatting. He lifted the photo of the unknown family from the chaos on the floor and studied it for a moment. Then he sat back against the wall, the photo still in his hands, and surveyed the room.
“What happened here?” he asked again, more quietly.
“Some friends came over. I guess things got kind of out of control.”
“I guess,” his father said. He pressed one hand to his forehead. “Was Duke here?”
Paul hesitated, then nodded. He was fighting back tears, and every time he looked at the ruined papers something tightened like a fist in his chest.
“Did you do this, Paul?” his father asked, his voice oddly gentle.
Paul shook his head. “No. But I didn’t stop them.”
His father nodded.
“It will take weeks to clean it up,” he said at last. “You’ll do it. You’ll help me reconstruct the files. It will be a lot of work. A lot of time. You’ll have to give up rehearsals.