Return to the Beach House (33 page)

“Do you have any idea who they are?”

“Yeah—Joe and Maggie. They’re the people who used to own the house where you’re staying.”

“Why do you suppose no one believes you when you talk about seeing them?” Lindsey tried to sound casual, but could see by Rebecca’s reaction that she’d failed.

Rebecca hesitated. “Maybe because they died like five or six years ago?”

This Lindsey hadn’t anticipated. It left her slack-jawed. “I don’t believe in ghosts or apparitions—or anything I can’t actually touch,” she said. “There has to be some other explanation.”

“Let me know when you figure it out, because I don’t believe in ghosts either. Makes it kind of hard when you actually see them, though, doesn’t it?”

The images Lindsey had captured of Abbey handing her shell to someone and her obvious delight in what turned out to be her invisible companions wasn’t something she was ready to share with anyone but Matthew. “We do seem to be an odd threesome to share the same delusion—you, me, and Abbey.”

“Maybe it’s a girl thing.” Rebecca toed the sand into a mound. “It seems they only come around when someone needs them, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Abbey was headed for trouble that morning. She thinks she’s going to grow up to be Wonder Woman and isn’t afraid of anything, including things she should be, like the ocean.”

“What about you?”

Rebecca was slow to answer. “I had a hard time going with the idea that my mom chose cocaine over me. It’s a common story for kids like me and my stepsister Grace. Joe and Maggie helped me see my anger was really screwing up my life. I had no room for the people who loved me and wanted to take care of me. What about you?”

“I’m going to save that for another time.”

“Fair enough. You never know, I could be some tabloid spy.”

Lindsey laughed for the second time that morning. It felt . . . good, like something normal people did.

Rebecca rechecked the settings on her camera. “Why is it that I can never get my pictures to turn out the way I see them in my head?”

“You have to become so familiar with your camera that it becomes a part of you. When that happens, you take pictures intuitively. You even look at the world differently. Your curiosity is heightened by little things, like seeing a broken spiderweb and wondering what it would look like with the sun behind it, or whether to bring in the barn at the back of the property. You try to arrange happy accidents where something happens, like catching a hummingbird stealing the silken threads for its nest.”

“How would you do that?”

“Go somewhere with lots of hummingbirds during breeding season, find a good web, and wait.

“I went to an autograph party for a writer I know, and during the question-and-answer part of the program someone said something about writers being born, not made. My friend said that every writer he knew had served an apprenticeship of writing a million words. I feel that way about photography. If you want to be a good photographer, go on a couple of trips a year to fabulous places. If you want to be a great photographer, go out in your own backyard every day. Eventually, you will have taken enough pictures to know what works and why and you’ll be able to set up your shots as naturally and effortlessly as you blink.”

“I can’t even imagine what that must be like.”

“You stop seeing the world the way you do now and realize how powerful a single image, frozen in time, can be. There isn’t a video, no matter how dramatic, that can compare to a still shot that has captured human emotion at its peak. What makes a great photographer is the ability to anticipate those moments, to set yourself up so that you’re ready when the action takes place. You develop a sixth sense of sorts.

“This kind of shot is a given at sporting events, but the truly great images are rarely, if ever, taken by an amateur, unless it’s an accident. You have to know what’s going on to anticipate what’s going to happen.

“Sometimes the best pictures are off the field. Fans and parents of athletes are great human-interest subjects, especially at nonprofessional games.

“If you can capture someone sleeping through a political speech or yawning in a Batman movie or a soldier standing guard over a friend who died and waiting for a medevac helicopter, you can tell your story with one image.”

“I want to see the world the way you do.”

“First you have to train your mind to go there without conscious thought. Then you have to accept that you don’t see the world around you the way others do. There will be times you feel like you’re speaking a language from a country no one knows exists.” Lindsey laughed. “That’s when you start looking for another photographer to talk to just to prove to yourself that you’re not going crazy.”

“I had a teacher in high school who singled me out to tell me that my pictures suck. I know I have a long way to go, but there’s no way I’m going to let someone like that walk all over my dream.”

Lindsey had a theory about people who put themselves in the position of crushing budding talent rather than nurturing it. She laid it off to unrestrained jealousy on one side of the coin and frustration on the other. Someone or something had walked on that person’s dreams, and it was impossible to resist the urge to pass it on by doing the same to someone else.

Rather than haul out the soapbox, Lindsey changed the subject. “Another thing—don’t let yourself get caught up in having to have the latest camera or lens or whatever. There’s always going to be something coming out that’s bigger and better and more expensive. More than anything, it’s the photographer who makes a great picture, not the camera.”

She’d carried a camera that was little more than a point-and-shoot into every conflict she’d ever covered, using it as a backup because she could hide it in her “working” bra—one a full cup size larger than she normally wore and padded to hold not only the camera but batteries and memory cards when the temperature was below freezing. Without it, she would have come out of the Kunar Province in 2010 with nothing to show for two months’ work.

A tribal leader she and Asa had gone to for safe passage out of the mountains had taken them to a village where he demanded her cameras and equipment as payment. She’d tried to bargain with him, offering her insulated boots in exchange for his sandals and the memory cards in her pack. He could keep the cameras. All she wanted were the cards. Afraid to show how angry she was over the shakedown, she turned to Asa and saw the silent plea to let it go. She realized then that she wasn’t bargaining for her images but for their lives.

“What you have now is more than you need for the shooting you want to do. It will teach you how to get in close and not rely on a long lens for everything,” Lindsey told the girl. “Great photographs have been taken with a lot less.”

Rebecca took the cloth Lindsey had given her and wiped the moisture off of her camera. “I want this so much, I get ahead of myself.”

Lindsey had driven her mother and father crazy with her hunger to leave the farm and see the world—at fifteen. There was no way she was going to reel in the string that let Rebecca’s kite soar. Especially not today. Today it seemed fitting, a tribute in a way, to nurture Rebecca’s dreams for all the dreams that had died with her friends.

Lindsey pointed toward the fishermen. “Tell me what you see. And then tell me how you’re going to tell their story. Pretend you’re working for a PR firm that wants something subtle, but evocative, to sell their rubber boots. And then pretend you’re doing a story for
National Geographic
on global warming.”

“Cool.”

Chapter 8

An hour later, with both of them soaked to the skin, Lindsey scrolled through the images on Rebecca’s camera, sat back on her heels, and proclaimed, “Well, now we know. You definitely don’t suck. You have an artist’s instinct for zeroing in on where the focus should be, and you’re creative at finding new ways to tell an old story.”

Rebecca grinned. “Thanks—I think.”

“You said something about teachers. Where have you gone to school?”

“I took a class last summer at the community college before my regular classes started at UC Santa Cruz. It was really retro. The guy who taught it seemed to think the only way to become a
real
photographer was to start with film. We spent the first half learning how to operate old film cameras and take black-and-white pictures. The second half we learned how to process the film. Did you know the chemicals they used to use were toxic? I’m surprised all those early photographers lived as long as they did.

“I thought the class was a waste of time, but my mom and dad wouldn’t let me drop it. They have this thing about making their kids see things through once we start them.”

Rebecca’s cell phone played a short piano riff. She looked as if she was going to ignore it, then gave in. “It’s probably my mom. I’m supposed to work at the nursery this afternoon.” She glanced at the screen. “Yeah, she’s looking for me.” She sent a return text, not bothering to look at the phone.

“That’s pretty impressive,” Lindsey said, thinking of the number of times that particular skill would have been useful on the road.

Rebecca shrugged. “It was something I taught myself in high school. I was the only one of my friends who never had her phone confiscated.” She backed away from the cameras, which were still on the tripods, and brushed the sand off her sweatpants.

“I know it’s really pushy,” Rebecca said, “but is there any way we could do this again? I can arrange my schedule at the nursery to fit yours.” When Lindsey didn’t immediately answer, Rebecca added, “If you’ve got something going this week, I don’t mind waiting until you’re free. School doesn’t start again for a couple of weeks, and even then I have holes in my schedule I could work around.”

“I don’t know,” Lindsey said.

“It’s okay. I understand.”

“It’s not what you think. I don’t know if I’ll still be here.”

Rebecca frowned. “I thought you were staying all of January.”

“Something’s come up.” Why not just say what it was? “Matthew and I lost a good friend in Syria, and we’re going back east to her funeral.”

Rebecca was hit with a spark of understanding. “Oh, wow—I’m sorry. I saw the story on the news. It’s really sad what happened to them. Are you going to be taking her place after the funeral?”

“No one can take her place. She was a special woman who got caught up in an ugly war and died trying to tell the world what was happening.”

“I’m sorry,” Rebecca said. “Grace is always telling me I’m skinny because food can’t get past the foot in my mouth.” Her cell phone went off again.

“Don’t worry about it.” Lindsey had planned to stay on the beach a little longer, but realized Rebecca wasn’t going to leave until she did. She picked up Matthew’s tripod and slung it over her shoulder, not bothering to detach the camera or collapse the legs. He was as fanatical about sand getting trapped in the locking rings as he was about his coffee and preferred doing the cleanup work himself. Heading for the stairs, she said, “If I’m still around tomorrow, how about same time same place?”

“Are you serious?” Rebecca said. “I’d go anywhere—anytime—for another morning like this.” She spontaneously hugged Lindsey, nearly dislodging the tripod. “Oh my God,” Rebecca moaned, “I promise you that I’m not usually such a klutz.”

Out of nowhere, an image of Sittina appeared in Lindsey’s mind, crowding out where she was and who she was with. For a breath-stealing moment, she tried to reconcile a world where two young women could lead such different lives. Neither could have truly understood the life of the other—they had everything and yet nothing in common. It would have been impossible for Sittina to imagine a kitchen with food for the taking, a place where fruits and vegetables were tossed in the garbage because they were less than perfect and where leftovers were scraped into a disposal. Rebecca would have been horrified at the thought of chasing vultures from a lion kill to rescue scraps of putrefied meat.

“What kind of nursery?” Lindsey asked. The area between Santa Cruz and Monterey was known as the salad bowl of the world, with growing conditions perfect for crops as wide-ranging as artichokes and strawberries.

“Orchids.”

“A perfect place for a lesson on macro mode—if I’m still here.”

They were at the top of the stairs when Rebecca turned to Lindsey. “This is going to sound totally selfish, but even my mom and dad take vacations and they’re the hardest-working people I know.” After another quick hug, this one more careful, Rebecca gave a little wave, held her camera and tripod with both hands, and took off at a run.

Lindsey lost sight of her in the fog, but could hear her open the door to her house and call out that she was home. For the second time that day she thought about her parents and how casually she took for granted that they too would always be there to welcome her home.

Wasn’t it a birthright for all children? Wasn’t home the one place that you could, that you should, be able to count on? If so, where did that leave Sittina and all the other children of the world lost in refugee camps who had no one to welcome them when they rolled out their ragged pieces of cardboard to sleep on each night?