THE PHOTOGRAPH
All cameras capture the dead.
The shutter opens, consumes the light, creates the image: an illusion, the ghost of some former self, what was but can never again be. The same person is never photographed twice.
That’s where we start—with a photograph, the end of one life, the beginning of another.
The date printed on the back is July 4, 1964.
See the glossy surface of the front, the train bridge stretched across the Ohio River. Notice the brilliant bursts of fireworks against the fallen dusk, curtains of light threatening to drape the truss of the bridge. Now look down to the bottom-right corner: see the tiny figure of a woman suspended in air—captured in the liminal space between life and death—falling to the black waters below.
If you squint, you may even see what she holds in her arms, crushed against her chest with the shattering force of a mother’s love: a swaddled baby.
My name is Julia White. This is not my story.
PART ONE:
THE RABBIT NEST
1
A dead body is a haunting thing. Every time I close my eyes, the onslaught of memory: blue-white skin and twisted limbs, bulbous eyes, and purple lips—my mom’s corpse lying stiff in her Poughkeepsie apartment, an empty pill bottle atop the note on her nightstand. Most days I can forget. But today, on the three-year anniversary of her death, the swell of grief crushes my ribs, an inflating balloon that refuses to burst.
Right now, I need my mom more than ever. I’ve been on mental health leave from work for the past few weeks, but now I’m back at the Sundowner bar in Brooklyn. Inside, the blue-black darkness is a salve against the hard light of the city. An hour into my shift I have stirred myself into negronis and Manhattans, shaken my regrets into gimlets and margaritas. Then some guy sporting an ironic fedora orders a dirty martini—Ryan’s drink. I reach for the olive brine, but it’s too much. Pinprick sweat gathers at my temples. I rush to the closet-sized bathroom behind the bar before my knees give out. Kneeling on the filthy terracotta floor tiles, I retch out the remnants of a blackberry smoothie, seedy and blood-purple. I wipe the seat of the toilet with a paper towel, rinse my mouth, check my mascara. As soon as I get back to the bar, Myra pulls me aside, tucks my hair behind my ear.
“Jules, honey, you don’t have to be here,” she says. Her voice holds the authority of a bar manager and the concern of a roommate. She’s both, so it works.
“Of course I do.” I can barely afford to eat, let alone help Myra pay the rent. Sure, our little Crown Heights studio is Brooklyn cheap, but it’s still Brooklyn.
“Look at me, babe.” Myra tilts my chin, catches my eyes. “It’s okay if you’re not ready. Give yourself time.” The jaundice glow of the bar cuts across her skin, splitting her into shadow and light. The silhouetted hook of her nose, the curvature of her ear—my brain morphs her face into a mirage of Ryan. I try to edge past her, but she won’t budge.
“I can’t—” I start, but I don’t know what comes next.
Myra pulls me into her, kisses my forehead. “We’ll talk about it later. If you insist on staying, then get that guy another old-fashioned.” She nods toward an old man sitting alone in my favorite corner of the bar—the dead zone where you can drink in the shadows, hiding from the incessant hum of electric light.
I serve the old-fashioned but don’t say anything—nobody chooses to sit in the dead zone if they want to make small talk. By the time I come back to the other side of the counter, two emo-looking dudes are whisper-yelling about something.
“I swear to God, that has to be him,” one of them says. His lip piercing is infected—cherry red, encrusted. My stomach lurches.
“Twenty bucks says it isn’t,” says the guy next to him. I try to ignore them, but I have to grab a jar of Luxardo cherries from under the counter, so I come into their orbit.
“Hey, help us settle something,” says Mr. Infection. It isn’t a question, but a demand. “That guy over there,” he says, stealing a glance at the man in the corner sipping his old-fashioned. “Is that who I think it is?” I want to tell them both that I’m not in the mood to referee their little boy battle. But I need tips, so—
“It would help if you tell me who you think he is,” I say. He looks back one last time, then leans in close.
“Jonathan Aster,” he says, just above a whisper.
I have no idea who Jonathan Aster is. Well, that’s not entirely true. His name floats in the ether of my consciousness the same way it does in most New Yorkers’. The idea of him—his fame, his mythos—these things I know. But I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup, and I certainly don’t know why he would be ordering drinks in our seedy little hipster bar. Jonathan Aster probably has SoHo penthouse money. I’m sure he could find a nice top-shelf bourbon in Manhattan without needing to cross the bridge.
“Okay, so I’m totally sorry about this,” I say, serving the old man another drink. I gesture to the guys at the counter. “But those two goth wannabes over there think you’re Jonathan Aster, and they’re not going to leave
me alone until I find out.” He eyes the two dudes on the other side of the bar, stirs his drink.
I wait for him to answer. He doesn’t.
“So, I mean—are you? Jonathan Aster?” The man studies my face, tilts his head. He leans forward out of the shadows, giving me the best look at him I’ve had all night. His iron gray hair curls at his ears, frames his angular face. His emerald eyes pop against his black suit, his silver tie. He looks to be pushing seventy, maybe even older—but he’s controlled, assured. He stands slowly, moves to the other side of the table, pulls out a chair.
“Care to sit with me?” he says. He moves back to the other side, slides into his seat, takes a drink. Saliva rushes against my tongue the way it does just before I puke. The scorch of vomit threatens my throat, but I’m able to choke it back down. Whether he’s Jonathan Aster is no matter—I know the type of man he is. I slide the chair back under the table, the legs hitting the metal pole underneath with a clank.
“And then what?” I say.
“Pardon?”
“I sit with you, and then what? You buy me a drink?”
“If you’d like.”
“So I just walk off my job and have a drink with you. And then—what’s next? You tell me about your job? Your money? Your power? Maybe I reach across the table, brush my fingers over your knuckles.” I cock my head, study his face. “And then we have another drink, and another, and another. Pretty soon you’re hoping I forget that you’re old enough to be my grandfather. Maybe I go home with you. Am I on the right track here?”
“You have quite an imagination,” he says.
“Maybe.” I lean across the table, get right in his face. “But look me in the eye and tell me you don’t think you’re three steps away from buying access to my body like it’s just another cocktail.” His eyes widen, an animal caught in a snare. He sips the dregs of his bourbon. The liquor shimmers on his upper lip.
I start to leave, but no—I won’t give him the satisfaction. I won’t be made to feel crazy. Not tonight.
“Here’s the thing,” I say, locking eyes with the old man. “I don’t care who you are. I’m paid to serve you drinks, not to stroke your fragile masculinity. You want to impress someone with your mystery and intrigue? Try those two fanboys at the bar.”
“Fair enough.” He holds a hand in front of him—a flag of surrender. I collect his empty rocks glass and turn to leave. “But could I ask you to do me one small favor?” I would ignore him, but then he adds one word, one that sends pinpricks down my spine: “Julia.”
I freeze. Slowly, I turn back to him.
“How do you know my name? Who are you?” He reaches into the leather messenger bag at his feet, pulls out a paperback book. When I see the cover, my face catches fire. I pull back the chair, take a seat.
“I am Jonathan Aster,” he says, placing a pen atop the book. “And if I’ve found the right woman, you’re Julia White.” He flashes a smile, crinkling the skin around his eyes. “Would you do me the honor? Please?”
He extends the pen to me, opens my book to the cover page.
I can’t say anything for an eternity—maybe two full minutes—so I sit, stunned, listening to one of the world’s most famous art photographer drone on about how much he loves my little book.
“It’s remarkable, really—the blending of genres. I’ve never seen anything like it.” He thumbs through the dog-eared pages, then flips back to the note before the prologue. He raises a finger with a dramatic flair, reads my words back to me: “What follows is both real and imagined, history and myth, fact and fiction. The truth of this story belongs to me—and hopefully to my mother. Beyond that, I make no promises.”
He looks at me with wonder in his eyes. “Simply marvelous,” he says. I’m lost in the moment when I feel a hand against my shoulder. I flinch.
“Sorry, love,” says Myra. “Didn’t mean to scare you. Just checking to see if we need anything over here.” She smiles at Aster, but then looks to me, cocks her eyebrow in a way that asks, Is this creepy old man threatening you?
“We’re good,” I say, placing my hand on top of Myra’s. “Just give me a sec and I’ll be back at the bar.” The two goth fanboys are gawking, but I avoid their eyes. Myra waves me off.
“Take your time.” She regards the book on the table. “Who am I to keep you from your fans?” She nudges my shoulder, walks away. I look back to Aster, but I don’t know how to proceed.
“Listen, Mr. Aster—” I start.
“Jonathan. Please.”
“I’m sorry about earlier. I just—” I stop, gesture around the room as if it holds an explanation. A man walks through the front of the bar, and for a split second, I think it’s Ryan.
“You’re a woman who works in a dark room full of men,” he says. “No apologies needed.” Tears threaten my eyes. Grief pools inside me, an inkblot spreading through the chest.
“So, how about that drink?” asks Aster. “Is that allowed?”
“I don’t drink,” I say reflexively. I realize only after I say the words that I am telling a half-truth.
“A bartender who doesn’t drink? Seems like a story waiting to be told.” I grab a cocktail napkin from the table, dab my eyes.
“Why are you really here?” I ask. “I mean, I’m flattered you’ve read my book—really, I am. To be honest, I’m not even sure how you found it.”
“You can find anything if you know where to look.”
“Sure. But it’s not exactly topping any Google searches. My little indie publisher says I’ve sold an astounding 376 copies.” Instantly, I’m transported back to the night of the book launch last month, memories skipping across my mind’s reel like jump cuts in a movie: my slackened face in the dirty bathroom mirror. Ryan’s greedy hands across my chest, my hands pawing at his shirt. My bare back pressed against the cold concrete wall. Hot breath against my ear. The tug and pull of dry skin. I try not to blink. My throat constricts. “The fact that you’ve found a copy can’t be a coincidence,” I say, willing myself back to the present moment.
Aster pushes the book in front of me, extends the pen in my direction once again. It’s clear he isn’t going to talk until I comply. I take the pen, swoop my signature below my printed name on the title page. Aster studies the signature and smiles.
“I’m here because I need your help,” he says. “With a job.”
“A job?”
“Or an assignment, if you prefer.”
“I don’t prefer anything. I’m just trying to figure out—”
“I want you to write a book for me.” He says this without a sliver of irony, which is enough to make me laugh out loud, despite everything. Aster holds his glass in the air, gestures toward the bar for another drink. I must be making an incredulous face because he adds, “Is the idea really that absurd? That I would ask a writer to write a book?”
I’m forced to gather myself. “Look, Mr. Aster, you seem to be a sincere person.”
“I like to think so.”
“But you’ve got the wrong woman.”
“How is that?”
“You’re in New York City. Writers are like weeds around here. We grow from every crack in the asphalt.”
“And?”
“And I’m thrilled that you like my work, but that book in your hands wasn’t good enough to get a single offer from any of the big publishers, let alone the medium ones.”
“So, they were wrong,” he says, shrugging.
“Were they? Besides I’m not even a biographer, so—”
“To hell with the biographers,” he says, swishing his hand through the air like he’s swatting a fly. “They’ve already written everything there is to know about my life, and frankly, none of it is very interesting.” He reaches into his bag, emerges with a manila envelope. He carefully unwinds the threaded clasp at the top, pulls out an eight-by-ten photograph.
“I don’t need you to tell my story.” His voice pulls taut at the edges by some invisible thread of pain. “I need you to tell hers.” He pushes the picture into the light. As I study it, a breath catches in my throat. My eyes flick over the glossy surface. I see the woman, the baby. I can’t bear to look longer than a second or two.
“You took this picture?” I ask.
“That’s right. But I’ve never shown it. It’s not a part of my public work.”
“And you want me to—what, exactly?”
“Find the story,” he says. “And then tell it.” As he says this, I’m hit with the sudden realization of what I hold in my hands: an original Jonathan Aster—and one of his earliest works. It’s likely worth high six figures, maybe more. “You write the story, Julia,” he says, as if reading my thoughts, “and that photograph is yours to keep.”
“Or sell?” I say, testing him. He winces, but then nods.
“If you must.”
“Why?” I say. “Why me?”
“Because it’s a story that must be told,” he says. “But it’s not my story to tell.”
21947
It wasn’t but ten minutes after Norman Fairchild opened the store there on the north end of Main Street when the phone rang.
“Fairchild Shoes,” he said.
“Norman,” started the woman on the phone. He couldn’t quite place her voice at first, but after a moment or two it settled into him. Mrs. Eubank—the neighbor woman. “I don’t mean to pry, you know I don’t. But that baby is at it again. Been screaming for over an hour. It’s coming straight through that front window.”
“Well, that’s what babies do, Janice.”
“I know what babies do, thank you very much. And I know that they don’t go on like this. It’s carrying all the way up Poplar Street.”
The welcome chime clanked against the door, and Norman looked up to see his young clerk, George Caldwell, swing into the store. The boy hurried behind the counter to punch in on his time sheet, smelling of hair oil and aftershave. Norman looked beyond him, through the glass of the storefront, watched as Dennis Ashby clicked on the lights at the jewelry store across the street. On a nice day like this in May, all of downtown Gray Station would be humming with business soon.
“Okay, Janice,” said Norman.
“You want me to go check?” said the woman. “Make sure everything’s okay?”
“No, don’t bother yourself.” Mrs. Eubank pushed a sigh through the receiver.
“Now listen, Norman. We all know about Edith, it’s no secret. If you need me to go check—”
“I said don’t bother yourself,” repeated Norman. He thumped the phone back on its base, maybe a little too hard.
Norman hurried the five blocks back home. George would be fine by himself—he was only eighteen, but he was a good, honest clerk. Talked about going into the ministry, maybe even a seminary education. Perhaps not the best salesman, but the numbers always came out right when he was left in charge, and that was the main thing. Besides, George had lost his old man in the war, and that would always count for something.
A cool spring breeze propped Norman up as he made his way south down Main Street past Dreyer Brothers Furniture and Riverview Bakery. Then he turned east onto Poplar, squinting against the bright sun. The baby’s howls echoed against the folk Victorian brick houses, hurrying him along past the Eubank place and toward his own yard. By the time he reached the front door, a ring of sweat had gathered around his starched collar.
He pushed through the door, crossed from the foyer into the living room, and closed the bay window. The baby was lying on a blanket in the middle of the floor in nothing but a cloth diaper. Norman scooped her up.
“Okay now,” he whispered, bouncing the child in just the right way, rubbing his hand in a counterclockwise circle against her back. A spoiled smell hung thick in the room. The bottom of the girl’s diaper was soaked through, wetting Norman’s palm. He held the baby against his chest, moved into the hallway, climbed the stairs. He paused in front of the closed bedroom door, but did not push it open, didn’t knock, didn’t even call her name. He went
to the nursery down the hall and changed the soiled diaper, powdering the child’s red bottom with careful hands. When the baby was clean, Norman got her dressed and lay her in the crib. He went back into the hallway, planting his feet outside the closed door. The baby began to fuss back in the nursery.
“Edith,” he said. “Kathryn needs to eat.” She didn’t answer, so he gripped the door handle, found it was locked. “Listen now. I’m going to need you to open this door. We can figure this out, but the baby’s got to eat.” He stood silently for a while, though he knew it wasn’t much use. He had half a mind to kick in the door, but then thought better of it.
He went down to the kitchen to check the refrigerator for a bottle, but no such luck. He pulled a can of evaporated milk and some Karo from the pantry—he knew to do that, at least—but he could never quite remember how much to mix. The baby was working herself into a fit upstairs. Norman wiped the sweat from his forehead, went to the console table out in the hallway where they kept the telephone, and called Edith’s sister.
“I’m sorry about this, Clara,” he started, “but I can’t seem to figure out how to make up this bottle.” He pulled on the cord, just something to do with his hands.
“So it’s happened again,” said Clara.
“She’ll be alright. It’s just that the baby needs—”
“I’m coming over.”
“No, there’s no need—” he started, but she had already hung up.
It took Clara half an hour to come in from the little farmhouse she and Raymond kept out there in the country off Highway 41. Norman bounced the crying baby and watched through the bay window as she pulled the Chevrolet pickup into the front drive. Clara pushed herself through the front door, suitcase trailing behind.
“Where is she?” said Clara. Norman looked up, angled his eyes toward the locked bedroom beyond the ceiling. Clara nodded, touched the baby’s red cheek, and then went straight to the kitchen. She fixed up a quart of formula, poured ten ounces of the mixture into a glass bottle. Norman watched her as she worked—controlled, precise. At thirty-eight, she was ten years older than both he and Edith. He hoped it was somewhere in those ten years that a person learned how to manage this life.
When Clara finished with the bottle, she handed it to him, then smoothed the white collar on her green-checkered dress and made her way up the stairs. After Norman fed and burped the baby, the two of them fell asleep right there in the rocker beside the bay window in the living room.
For the next three days, Norman came and went from the shoe store on Main Street, walking the five blocks each way. He braced himself each time the phone rang, but it was never Mrs. Eubank. Clara was there at the house to look after the baby, to tend to Edith in the locked room upstairs. At the store, George stayed on the register or took measurements for customers, so Norman was left to the solitude of the repair shop in the back—the work he loved, quiet and restorative, not just for the shoes mounted on the cobbler anvil.
On the fourth day, the sky closed in on him while he was walking home. The rain came in sheets, so by the time he reached the front door to the house on Poplar, he was soaked through to his undershirt. The thunderheads roared around him, darkening the stoop of the house. He never even noticed that Clara’s Chevy was gone from the driveway.
He tried to shake the water from his feet on the porch, but no matter—he still dripped
puddles in the foyer, dampened the carpet as he walked from the living room to the kitchen. And then all at once, there she was—balancing the baby on her hip, flipping burgers on the cast-iron skillet, humming along to Bing Crosby’s “Beautiful Dreamer” on the radio.
“Edith,” he said. She swung around, her ivory A-line dress swishing across her knees. She looked at him and then at the baby—really studied the child as if she was just then seeing her for the first time.
“My goodness,” she said. “Isn’t she just perfect?”
3
The dark always helps.
With the city lights pinched from the room by blackout curtains, I lie in my loft bed in the studio, unable to see the texturized ceiling twelve inches from my nose. This has been my salve for the past month—floating into the nothingness of black space, a waking dream, listening to the steady drone of the box fan as it chops away the outside world.
“Okay, but what does that even mean?” says Myra, tucked into her bed four feet below me. In my pool of grief, this oil-slick of joy: listening to Myra’s voice in the small hours of morning. We trade the darkness of the bar for the blackness of this apartment, our bodies swallowed by the night, nothing left but voices in the void.
“I don’t know exactly,” I say, “but that was his answer.” Aster’s words have played in loop inside me for the last six hours: It’s a story that must be told, but it’s not my story to tell.
“And that’s it?” says Myra. “Dude didn’t give you anything else to go on?”
“Not really, no.”
“Like, he didn’t tell you where he took the picture? Not even the name of the woman?”
“He just said that the photo is all I need. That the story will tell itself.” As I say this, I’m haunted by the image once again, a beautiful horror: the woman jumping to certain death in the turbid water below, the burst of fireworks celebrating her final act.
But the baby—oh, God, the baby.
At four thirty, I wake up with a crush of panic on my chest. I climb down from the bed and grab my phone, throw on an old Vassar hooded sweatshirt—the one with the frayed pull strings and worn elastic that Myra and I always fight over in the winter. Out on our little balcony, sitting in the punchy October wind, I start with a Google search based on the only information I have: ...
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