Thwonk (21 page)

I had gotten down on one knee for a Bigger Than Life Perspective when Trish recrossed her legs and said, “You’ve changed, A.J., do you know that?”

I raised my new Nikon that my father had given me for my eighteenth birthday, said I knew I had, and clicked.

“I mean,” she continued as I moved to get her right side, “ever since the dance you’ve connected with yourself.”

“Public humiliation does wonders for the soul,” I said, kneeling now for another shot.

Trish’s eyes grew moist and far away. She almost rose an inch taller in the chair. I clicked.

“It’s like this presence is with you,” she said. “I can’t explain it.”

I said, “Don’t cross your legs,” and shot her straight on, catching her head tilted just slightly in empathic listening. I grinned because I knew I had gotten a great one.

Dad had said the same thing to me.

It was right after he got off the ChocoChunks account and was put in charge of the new campaign at Gibbons natural yogurt, a product to be proud of that would make the world a better place and had annual sales meetings in Hawaii. “Something about you is put together now,” he mused. “I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

Mom zeroed in on it too, right after she declared the unthinkable—that she was bone-tired sick of working so hard and had decided to take Sundays
and
Mondays off (possible retail suicide) and hire a part-time baker. “Being eighteen certainly agrees with you,” she said. “But I think it’s more than that.”

It was.

Not that turning eighteen isn’t a huge change in an individual’s international scope, flooding the brain waves with cosmic wisdom. It was that I was alive to things as I’d never been before. My senses were heightened. I laughed more; I cried more. My camera sizzled in my hands. I took nothing at face value—there was always more to see—I watched life, studied it, from a new plane. I was hungry for truth.

I was experimenting feverishly with early morning light, getting up before dawn to set up at ponds, the beach, to catch the first streaks of dawn flashing across the sky. I appreciated the morning so much more now. It was the time of day when life seemed to shout the most promise and I wanted to capture as much of it as I
could. I found a family of ducks nesting one morning by the Crestport River and I squatted there in the high grass for hours, holding my Nikon, my thigh muscles spasming, waiting for the stupid mother duck to get it together and do something momentous. She pushed her babies into the water like a drill sergeant taming new recruits and I caught every moment.

I’d also developed a keen appreciation for things that flit. Insects, birds—I was fascinated by wings of any size—I burned off rolls of film getting some absolute knockout shots while trying to capture the miracle of flight.

It’s funny the things you remember.

I could see Jonathan so clearly at times—his dinky expressions, his bow and arrow, his epic irritation when he’d really had it with me—then at other times my memory would fade and I’d look at the cupid doll on the still-life pedestal and ask myself if any of it really happened. I’d pick up the doll and shake it and shout “I know you’re in there, Jonathan!” And I’d lug him around with me in my ace camera bag fully expecting him to burst through the stuffing anytime, leading a tall, gangly male who would love me forever so I wouldn’t have to be hurled into the dating oblivion of the summer before college, also known as the Black Hole.

Stieglitz missed Jonathan too, and once dragged the doll off for two entire days without my permission. I
went ballistic searching for the cupid, finally finding him underneath the basement steps on Stieglitz’s stash of half-eaten bones and mangy slippers, lying there like a small dead thing. I scooped the doll up.

“Bad dog!” I screeched at Stieglitz, who whined pathetically, convicted of his sin. Stieglitz climbed into my lap and pawed the doll gently.

“Oh, Stieglitz, I miss him too!”

We sat there for the longest time, fully expecting another Visitation because we needed it so badly. But we got nothing for our efforts. Not one measly flit.

Dad was working out his funny spots for Gibbons natural yogurt, having great fun creating yogurt containers that could hit baseballs out of the park and sing opera—“real naturals,” as the slogan went. Dad played arias through the house as he bonded to his yogurt vision, free from the shackles of children’s breakfast cereal.

Mom was working hard to Rest, but change comes hard to middle-aged people. The first Sunday morning she took off, Mom got up early and made Dad and me German apple pancakes instead of sleeping in. Around ten she entered Blind Panic, convinced that all her customers would flee to other markets when they caught wind of the part-time baker. Mom threw on her sunglasses and drove slowly past all the nearby gourmet markets, straining to see if any of her customers had gone AWOL. After a month of this, when she realized
her business wasn’t headed for the toilet, Mom learned to sleep until six on Sunday morning. Her goal was to snooze until nine and not make breakfast. Sonia suggested we hide her car keys on Saturday nights just in case.

Peter and Julia had broken up twice since the dance. The last time she threw a lime Sno-Kone in his face after he whistled at a St. Ignatius cheerleader in epic lust. I got a stop-action shot of the throw in midhurl. It was anybody’s bet if they’d make the prom.

My King of Hearts Dance shots hung in the Student Center, shouting a warning to all who drew near to look beneath the surface of life’s experiences to the truth below. I was hot at work on what could become the definitive statement on senior year—“Overcoming Inertia,” a photographic study of tired students getting up from their desks. Carl Yolanta posed for me, although there was nothing inert about him. I liked the way he looked when his shoulders slumped and he pushed his glasses down on his nose. I liked the way he looked in general—he had kind brown eyes, soft brown hair, and an excellent neck. He’s a consummate backpacker—really into the earth. When he told me he was a morning person, I laughed and said I was becoming one too. We took an early morning walk in the woods last Saturday, hiked down to the narrow part of the Crestport River, stood in the high grass, and fed breadcrumbs to
the squirrels. Then Carl said the nicest thing to me: “I’ve wanted to get to know you for a long time, A.J., because I always liked your photographs. You can tell a lot about a person by the pictures they take.”

I smiled supremely all the way to and from Trish’s, having just presented her with two searing eight-by-ten portraits of herself, guaranteed to make her parents cough up extra spending money when she left for college. She and Tucker were becoming quite the item, and Trish was in psychological heaven probing the deep recesses of Tucker’s wounded inner child. I didn’t feel any sense of urgency to tell her what Carl had said. I just drove home, massively content. Trish and I would always be there for one another no matter what. That was the unspoken pledge between us.

Pilling Pond had melted. When it froze again, I’d be at college. I got accepted at NYU
and
Rhode Island Institute of Design, two superb arts colleges, in the same week. Isn’t that just like the educational system, to throw in a multiple-choice test when they think you’re not looking?

But I was ready.

Amid the tumult and the pain I’d discovered a secret: People can misunderstand your vision, they can try to change it, but if you’ve got the fire, they can’t douse the flame.

Truth is a funny thing—once you get used to it, it usually sets you up for more. I was sitting at Pilling
Pond right by the
TULIPS RESTING/DO NOT DISTURB
sign, my Nikon in my lap. The overhead clouds had just parted for the warming sun when I felt a dripping in my heart, and the familiar warm ooze washed over me, laying claim to what was inside. I was propelled up by the sheer power of it and raced down the street as Stieglitz careened ecstatically at my side. I tore past the Crestport Savings and Loan, tore past a little kid who was making a historic mudball, adding brown muck to it, thrilling as the weapon grew bigger in his hands. Not every photographer would kneel down on a dirty street in March to get a shot, but when you’re going for the essence of a thing, you’ve got to shoot it right, no matter what. I shot the kid From Below to heighten the moment and got up quickly when he turned to me, brought his arm back, grinning…

“
Don’t
,” I ordered, “
even think about it, kid!
”

He threw the mudball at a pigeon. I brushed myself off. Photography is a dangerous passion,
not
for the fainthearted.

I started running again and the ooze kept dripping as Jonathan fluttered in the deep places of my heart. I was flying by the seat of my designer jeans; Stieglitz was at my heels. I passed a really cute guy in a metallic-blue jacket and gave him only a fleeting glance because there’s a lot more to life than genetic perfection. A blue mist broke through the gray sky, unleashing streams of pure sunshine, and I knew that Jonathan was watching
me. He was there like a little sunbeam brightening everything I did.

I flopped on the steps of Petrocelli’s Poultry and lifted my face to the warm, filtered light.

Maturity sure has its moments.

Click here
for more titles by this author

Books by

JOAN BAUER

Backwater

Best Foot Forward

Hope Was Here

Rules of the Road

Squashed

Stand Tall

Sticks

Thwonk