The Effects Of Light Part 17

Myla shuddered now, remembering her plan to get inside before Pru did. She'd plant herself beside an image and try to look the same as it. That night she'd counted her pictures and counted Pru's pictures and compared.

Myla continued talking to Samuel. "I thought I stopped taking pictures with Ruth for one reason, but I know now that it was really another. The reason I told myself was that Ruth didn't seem interested in taking pictures of me anymore. I mean, actually, that was probably true. I was in high school by this point, and Pru was still a kid, and she was probably in a much better mood most of the time. I told myself that I could see how much more Ruth loved Pru than me, simply by looking at the photographs she took of her, and how many more of them there were. And I hated the jealousy I felt for Pru. I knew she was only a little girl, and I wanted to protect her from my feelings of envy."

Samuel was sitting in another chair, across from her. The aroma of burned onions still hung in the air. Myla went on, "But what was really going on was both harder and easier: I grew up. I was a teenager. I wanted to go to the mall and hang out with boys and gossip and go to dances. I wanted to live. By the time I was sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, the last thing I wanted to do was make high art with my baby sister and a middle-aged woman, to live my life by someone else's moments, by someone else's vision of what my life was like, even if that someone was wonderful Ruth."

And so she told him about the last shoot she ever did with Ruth. She was fifteen. They'd gone to the stream, attracted by the eddy of light and cool and water. Pru had leaned down, looking at something in the water, and that had galvanized Ruth, compelling her to take out the camera and start shooting. Myla had felt the dread begin, had felt the pull to make Ruth want to see her. She didn't know whether she should cooperate or sulk. She'd chosen the former. There was always the possibility Ruth would want to shoot her.

And she did. They'd taken some good pictures that day; Myla could feel it from the tingle of the work. Ruth had said so. But then Ruth hadn't printed any of the photographs with only Myla in them. There'd been that one photograph that Ruth had printed of the two of them on the riverbed, but Myla had resented being relegated to photographs with Pru in them too. Ruth had printed pictures from that day of Pru alone, but none of Myla standing by herself.

Looking back on it now, Myla told Samuel, there'd been something she hadn't known, something she'd overheard David tell Helaine the night they'd broken up. Myla had believed Ruth didn't think she was pretty enough anymore, but that hadn't been it. Ruth had looked at the negatives, at Myla's new body, at the look on her face, and felt the photographs were too sultry to print. It had been her call to make. She'd risked Myla's hating her. And all Myla had known was that to feel invisible was to be rejected, and to be visible was to be accepted.

So Myla had made a decision, mainly to show Ruth what she was missing. No more photographs. She'd just say no. And she wanted the first "no" to be dramatic. She wanted to see Ruth's face dissolve, then rework, to stammer out an "Oh, that's fine." Because Myla knew it wasn't fine. Myla knew that Ruth needed her.

But then Ruth called a few days later and said something like "Let's take pictures this weekend," and it wasn't even a question, that's what prompted Myla to do it. She responded, "No, thanks." Just as easy as that.

Ruth said, "Okay. Are you feeling all right, kiddo?"

"Don't call me kiddo."

"Well, someone's grumpy."

"I'm not grumpy, I just don't want to do it, okay?"

"Great. What're your plans?"

"None of your business."

"Charming, Myla. Can you put your sister on?"

Myla held the phone against her heart and yelled Pru's name. Pru took it upstairs, and Myla wished she could sneak up there without Pru's hearing. But the outcome was obvious. The next morning Pru was sitting on the stairs with her backpack on by the time Myla ambled down into the world.

"We're going to a pond," said Pru.

Suddenly Myla wanted to be going too, and she considered running upstairs and grabbing a bag. She knew she had time, that they'd wait. But then the familiar three honks came from the road, and Pru stood up, walked to the door, and jerked it closed behind her. She didn't say goodbye.

By the time Myla finished talking, she was nearly crying. She sat quietly for a long while. And then she said, "You know, that's one reason I got so mad about the photographs after Pru's death. Not because the pictures aren't great, but because they're the only way the world remembers my baby sister. And they're just pictures. Just moments. Pru was in those moments, but she was so much bigger than they are." Myla stood up. "Come with me," she said, and walked into the living room.

Samuel followed.

"You want to see my sweet little Pru? Emma showed me this the other day. She told me I can make a copy of it." Myla and Samuel sat down on the couch. She opened a leather alb.u.m and turned the pages until she reached the right one. She held the alb.u.m out to him. He looked. There stood a little girl, about five years old, playing a recorder in front of the very couch on which he was now sitting. On the couch was a row of stuffed animals with books propped open in front of them. A hand-painted sign said "SCHOOL." The little girl's hair was frazzled, her eyes wide open, her cheeks puffed out. She looked silly and fun-like any other five-year-old.

"Jane took this," Myla said. "I'm showing you this because I want you to know that Pru had more moments than the ones she's famous for." Myla took the book back. "And maybe she too would have grown to love the mall and hanging out with friends. Maybe she would have decided that taking pictures with Ruth didn't interest her anymore. Maybe she would have taken some pictures of her own. She just didn't get the chance to find any of that out."

I START WALKING HOME FROM school right at three so I can get home in time to still have light in my studio. It's not really a studio, it's Myla's room, but the light in there is nice in the afternoon, and David has set up one of his old easels for me. Every night since Myla left in September, I've worked in there until dark. I'm working on my fifth painting. The funny thing is, I don't have a hard time thinking about what to paint, I have a hard time narrowing down my ideas.

But an even better thing has happened in my studio than just the paintings. An even better present than the oil paints. I have to keep this present a secret. I know I should give it back, that it isn't really mine.

I was moving some of Myla's things into her closet when I noticed there was an old box way back in the corner that I'd never seen before. I pulled its flaps open, but the box was heavy and wouldn't move, so I had to take out Myla's shoes and pull and push the box to get it out into the room. It was dusty and full of books. Old books. Books that looked like all the other ones downstairs, all the other ones filling up the bookshelves.

I was about to call out David's name so he could come take the box away when I noticed a blue book at the top of the pile. I pulled it out and looked at it and read the t.i.tle. It was amazing. It was like the book was written for me. It was called The Craftsman's Handbook, but that isn't even its real name. It's called Il libro dell'arte, and it was written by a man who lived in the fifteenth century in Florence. It's a how-to book for medieval artists. For painters. It teaches all sorts of things, like how to make a drapery in fresco, how to paint wounds, how to make a mordant out of garlic, and how to distemper inside walls with green. I don't even know what half the words mean, but I knew immediately that I liked it.

And then I opened to the inside front cover and saw my mother's name written there. In dark blue handwriting. So this was her book. It was almost as if she'd left it for me, as if the book had been waiting for my studio to be set up. I knew why my mother had it. She was a poet, and she needed to play with words. And so she had this book, with all these words that feel amazing when you say them. And now I'm learning how to paint from it. And there was a piece of paper in there that she'd written on too, and her handwriting was so neat and so beautiful that I knew immediately I wouldn't tell anyone what I'd found, not even Emma, not even Myla when she calls.

I'm almost done reading the book. You'd think it would be hard to understand, but it isn't hard at all. It's about making paint come alive. It's about me. I've decided I'm going to make a blue velvet case for it, and I'll keep it hidden in my drawer. I don't want anyone to know about it. I want it to be a secret between my mother and me.

So I don't even notice the man. I'm thinking about getting home-I'm almost there-I'm thinking about finis.h.i.+ng the book tonight, when all of a sudden I look up and there's a man standing in front of me. He's just there on the corner where no one usually is in our neighborhood at this time of day. I walk past him and then I hear his voice. He's asking me a question and part of me wants to keep walking but I don't. I listen to the other part that wants to pay attention, to be polite. So I say, "Excuse me?"

He says, "Can you tell me where I can find- Hey, wait a minute, aren't you one of the Wolfe girls? From Ruth Handel's pictures?"

I don't know what to say. I realize I don't know him. He's too old to be a student. Not dressed right to be a professor. He's just a man. But I nod. I forget that it's strange he knows my last name.

He says, "Poor child."

"What did you say?"

He smiles and says, "Don't worry."

"I'm not worried. I'm going home." But already it's too late. I turn to walk away, and then there's something over my mouth that makes my legs wobble and my hands loosen from the straps of my backpack.

Right before I go to sleep, I hear his mouth against my ear saying, "Sorry sorry sorry." I feel like I want to tell him something, but I can't remember what it is. That must be when he carries me to the car.

IT WAS MIDNIGHT, AND MYLA couldn't sleep. She couldn't even lie down. Light from the streetlamp whitened the far wall and fell in a stripe across Samuel's still body. He'd drifted off easily, peacefully, and now lay serenely on his back, his face the image of rest. Myla stood with her back to the window and gazed down at him.

She'd counted on reading David's book, on being lulled by the rhythms of his voice, carried by the sweep of his logic. Everything about him felt familiar and safe. And now here she stood, David's unfinished ma.n.u.script a series of stacks strewn across the dresser top. She had no desire to pick it up. She knew she didn't want the reading to be over; that was part of the reluctance. The thrill of hearing her father's voice, fresh with authority, would be over too soon.

But that was only part of it. Another part was strange, almost uncanny. As she'd begun to feel more and more like her old self, relaxing into this comforting life, into her known body, David's words and arguments had come to seem more and more familiar, predictable. Not because they'd lost their originality. No, not that at all. It was stranger than that. It was as if she already knew what her father was going to say even before he said it. Like hearing a familiar music, a music that had been humming in her bones silently for years and was audible once again.

She knew, for instance, what David would conclude about art, its role, its moral power. He would say that art isn't just something made by artists; it has a life of its own, independent of the people who make it and the people who see it. Kind of like a cultural agent that exists to contribute to the evolution of society. Artists don't just represent what's already there; they make what's coming look so familiar that when it arrives, it looks natural. Art is like some sort of oracle.

And tampering with that oracular force, by silencing it or condemning it or banning it, will never work. It's no more possible than trying to stop a hurricane or volcano. Art is a force of nature, of human nature. Art is what we make and what makes us. Art is what makes us human.

As Myla gazed across Samuel's features, she felt a tremendous tenderness. He'd asked her the right question: why were the pictures so important to her father? Samuel had realized that the answer didn't lie inside David's pages; it lay inside Myla herself. And here, in the darkened room spilling with light, she knew that she'd always known the reason, but until now had been too young, too sad, too small to let herself know.

Love. Love was the reason. Once, when she was little, she'd come upon her father sitting on the floor of the study, with what looked like all the proofs Ruth had ever printed of her and Pru spread around him. She couldn't even enter the room, what with all the pictures on the floor. What had surprised her at the time wasn't that her tidy father had made such a big mess, but rather what he'd said when he'd seen her standing in the doorway. He'd smiled a broad, silly grin and said, "I was just thinking of your mom."

That was it. "I was just thinking of your mom." Sarah. Sarah was the answer. The photographs had been a way to seize moments as they raced by in the flood of time, and by seizing them and stopping them, a way to expand them into broad planes of light and dark and shadow in which Sarah's two little naked babies could be seen growing into beautiful strong girls and young women. And in that place of stillness, of time out of time, Sarah could enter too. They could all come together once again, in the act of art, defying the relentless pa.s.sage of time.

Myla looked at Samuel's strong jaw, lax in sleep, his delicate long lashes dark against his cheeks. She felt such tenderness, witnessing this offering of vulnerability. She left her cold stance by the window and, slipping her body between the covers, curled next to him. In the morning, after a good sleep, she knew what she'd do. It was time now. She would take him there.

WE'RE DRIVING IN A CAR AND I ask him where we're going and he won't tell me. He doesn't like me or he likes me too much, I don't know which. He has my hands tied. He calls me Poor Sweet Lamb and says he won't hurt me the way my father does. He listens to the radio, turning it up to hear it over the coa.r.s.e and grumbling road. He keeps his window down so the evening comes blasting in. Pretty soon the air smells clean, and I make out the shadows of pine trees above us. We're in the country.

My head hurts, making me sleepy, but I also know the smart thing is to look around, to memorize where we're going, to leave marks anywhere I can. Fear doesn't enter me. I think of Myla, think of her strong face, think of what she'd do.

Then we get out of the car. We get out of the car and it's dusk. He pushes me forward, and I walk, but I ignore him too. It's darker here in the forest. It's like there's a clear blue wash over everything, like looking at the evening through dark gla.s.ses. But I can still see the trees. Their trunks are tall and I can see the leaves above, green like verdigris and terre verte and malachite. We start to walk and the pine needles crunch beneath our feet. The needles are yellow, and I say the words for "yellow" to myself, the words from my mother's book: ochre and giallorino and orpiment and realgar and saffron and arzica.

And I let myself think about the sheet of paper my mother wrote on. The sheet of paper in Il libro dell'arte. The one that fell out when I opened the book, the one that feathered down to the floor.

I picked it up and read it and I knew it was written for me. Now, more than anything, I want to tell Myla what it said. At first I thought it was a list of paint colors. But as I read down, I realized it was a message about who I was, and who I was supposed to be.

I see the words before me as I walk. A list. I do not listen to what the man is telling me. I will not hear him as he tells me I'm a good person. I hear only this: "Carmina.

"Jonquil.

"Lilac.

"Lila.

"Violet.

"Azure.

"Azura."

They're names. Names for me. Because under that list, my mother wrote: "Myla Rose and Azura May," and I knew then, and know now, that my name is really Azura. Even if they didn't name me that. Azura was my mother's secret name for me, the beautiful name she chose.

I want to ask David why they called me Prudence. I want to make Myla call me Azura. I will be Azura when I'm an artist. That will be my name.

Then we stop walking. The man is crying. He wants to touch me but he won't, I know he won't, because he can't even look in my eyes. It's cold in the forest and I'm frightened. But I do not close my eyes. He asks for my forgiveness. There's metal in my mouth and it tastes cold and empty. The tall trees point up from us into the evening, spreading their branches over us like hands. The smell of pine comes strong up from the ground. He prays. And then he kills me.

proof the person in this photograph is a woman. You don't recognize her. She's standing, her body facing forward, leaning hard on one leg; she looks to her left, and she's almost in profile. It's clear she isn't standing comfortably. She's not used to being in pictures.

This woman's hair is dark and long and very straight. There's no wind, and her hair falls like a mane down her back. Her hands hang long at her sides, and two of the fingers on her right hand grip the bottom of her T-s.h.i.+rt.

The photograph is slightly out of focus. But it doesn't matter. The woman is smiling, and that's what you notice. Although you can tell she's unused to this, unaccustomed to being seen, you can also tell that the photographer has said something wonderful to make this woman happy. She's on the verge of laughing. For a brief moment, though her legs don't know exactly how to stand, though her arms only know to hang limply at her sides, though she's held her breath, waiting, for the click of the camera, the woman is comfortable.

chapter nineteen.

they drove out of the city into farmland, heading west, straight for the coast. Myla was like a lit fuse, moving fast. She was going to go and get it over with once and for all. Samuel didn't ask where they were going. She told him what she could.

"I was at college when Pru was abducted. I was finis.h.i.+ng up the fall of my freshman year. I had a boyfriend, someone I thought I might love. It was the first time. It was bigger than anything I'd ever felt." The afternoon had been soaked in light. They'd come back to the boy's room after eating lunch in the dining hall. It was the first time they'd done this, the first time his roommate was out of town. When the boy clicked the door closed, locking it behind them, she'd felt the first shudder of embarra.s.sment. She'd walked briskly to the window, looked out over the quad, contemplated yelling h.e.l.lo to two of the girls from her French cla.s.s who were pa.s.sing underneath. That would have ended things. Maybe it would keep her from wanting this. Then she heard him ease himself onto the bed.

"I was happy." Myla looked at Samuel now, saw that instead of looking at the speeding-past world, he was looking at her. "Truly happy. I'd found a simplicity that I thought would last forever."

She'd turned to face the boy, slowly, aware that the sun was streaming itself around her. She'd felt her limbs bathed in gold, her hair like a wildfire of red and yellow, her white cotton s.h.i.+rt folding itself around her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She'd seen herself through the boy's eyes. She was irresistible.

The boy had sat down and put on a tape, Chet Baker. That had done it. It had turned something in her, and at that moment a voice inside her had told her she'd never go back to the place she'd been before. It had pushed her over the threshold. She'd fiddled with the b.u.t.tons of her s.h.i.+rt.

"I can't describe it, but I felt . . . in control. In control of me and what I wanted and, h.e.l.l, who I was. I wanted this and I was going to have it."

She'd closed her eyes. It wasn't dark inside her own head; it was golden. She'd felt the cotton slip down her arms and onto the floor, felt her nipples sear with the boy's looking. The sun warmed her back. Her fingers found the b.u.t.tons of her skirt and deftly released them. Then she slipped her fingers into the waistband, slid her hands under the elastic of her underwear, and pushed both skirt and underwear down until they let loose around her ankles. The boy had said nothing, could only watch.

"I'd been nude a million times but never naked. This was the first time. The first time I was naked, the first time I let someone love me. And it was the same day my father called and told me my sister was missing. I came back to my room after having s.e.x for the very first time, and when I walked in the door, my roommate said, 'I've been looking for you. Your dad called. I think something's wrong.' And then the world shattered.

"I flew home, even though Jane and Steve and David a.s.sured me Pru would be back any day. I think a part of me knew she was already gone. I felt cut inside, unbound.

"Anyway. I'm sure you know this part. It was three days of waiting. We didn't sleep. Jane made us elaborate meals and we didn't eat them. We were holed up in our house. I saw my father pray for the first time."

She remembered David's back, out in the early-morning sun, on the porch, hunched. His voice saying, "Dear G.o.d, protect her." The surge of rage in her when she heard those words. Everyone was giving up. People were showing weakness. One couldn't show weakness. That would let Pru die.

"And then someone found her." Myla ignored the grit in her voice. "My sister's body, in a pine forest near the coast. She hadn't been raped, but it doesn't make much difference, does it? The two hikers who made the 'discovery'-as the media so charmingly termed it-found the man who'd killed her lying by her side. He'd had the decency to blow his own brains out.

"I tried to be a dutiful daughter. My life was over, but Jane sat me down and told me I had to go on. David and I had only silence between us. I didn't have any words for him, and he kept his to himself. I stayed home for Christmas vacation, mainly in my bedroom, and then everyone insisted I go back to college. Something normal, something regular, they said."

She remembered her father at the airport, the last time they'd seen each other. His shy touch on her shoulder, her insistence that he hug her instead. Jane wrapping her in a scratchy brown scarf she'd knit, urging Myla to come home soon. Myla had dumped the scarf as she'd transferred planes in Chicago.

"So I go back to school, and everyone knows what happened. Everyone stares at me. The campus police has to ban the media, who wait outside the school gates every time I step beyond them. I'm invited to join dozens of counseling groups: for abused children, for people dealing with grief, for those not dealing with grief.

"And then. Two months go by. And I get a second call. From Jane. My father has died of a heart attack, and they want me to come home. No one even apologizes anymore. People don't want to look at me. I'm a reminder of what's sad in the world, and college is for people who are happy."

She remembered her roommate's words: "I think maybe you're depressed." As simple an a.s.sessment as that.

"So I go home. I go to the funeral. Two nights later, I get into an excellently huge argument with Steve and Jane and leave their house for good. I go to a local bar and get wasted. I decide I'm going to leave Portland and never come back. But before I do that, I drive out here."

Myla swept her arm against the outside, which had turned from a country highway, thick on either side with wheat fields and old farmhouses, to a forest road winding its way through the dark and light of leaf shadows. She remembered this drive from the only other time she'd taken it, in the darkness, driving fast, drunk. It hadn't been dark enough for her, the moon nearly full and punching too much light into the open air. She'd listened to music, loud, angry music, and had swerved in and out around cars. She'd decided this was a night when she deserved to be out of control. She'd wanted to see where it had happened.

"We're going to where she died, aren't we?" asked Samuel.

"Yes."

Pru had been killed up an old logging road, and Myla knew the way reflexively. As they turned, she saw the road was barricaded with a couple of old logs, but she wasn't going to let that stop her.

She remembered that first night, when the turnoff was fresh from two months of police activity, easy to spot even under the cover of forest. Then there'd been no need to get out to move anything. She'd driven full throttle into the forest.

Now she stepped from the car and was. .h.i.t with the smell of pine, strong, sharp, with a tang in it that made the back of her throat rise. Samuel was already helping her move the logs before she needed to ask.

The car moved from the blacktop to the slickness of the pine needles with relative ease. The tires crunched against the layers and layers of woven ground, basketed over time.

In the darkness of that night years before, she'd revved up the turns, oblivious to speed. She'd stopped when forced to stop and, spilling herself into the night, had been hit with the strong smell. She hadn't expected that, the way a potent smell could solidify a moment. She'd vomited then, sick with the world. Then she'd stood and walked.

Myla turned to Samuel as if this were a perfectly normal moment. "It's just a mile or two up here." He nodded, silent.

The road climbed steadily, and the trees above them ached with green, some branches brus.h.i.+ng against the top of the car. Then the road turned, and she knew they'd reached the end. The pine smell insinuated itself through the car vents, and she believed that at last she was prepared for its full-on power. There was only one way to find out.

The slam of the car door in the old-growth forest was tinny. She was overwhelmed by the smell that had met her in her nightmares, the smell of these trees, but she wasn't dreaming now. She looked up and watched the trunks, huge, old, proud, swaying slowly, moaning with wind. She'd had no time to notice them the last time she'd been here. Now she knew those trees were the source of the smell she hated. Looking up, she realized they'd towered over Pru at the moment she'd died, and Myla suddenly felt grateful to them for their grace. Grateful in a way her teenage self hadn't understood. It comforted her that things of beauty had filled Pru's last sight. She memorized this new idea-that she liked these trees-to keep herself from vomiting.

Myla walked alone up the hill to her left, climbing over fallen trunks and moss and small caterpillars holing the wood. She stepped over ants on their productive expeditions and the warm nests of baby voles. She stepped over new ferns unfurling their wands of green, over worms drilling through the damp and fertile earth, over mushrooms pus.h.i.+ng their way into sunlight. She stepped over and over until she stopped. Samuel stopped behind her.

Years before, this had been as far as she could go. She'd walked to this spot, and something in her had broken. The next thing she'd known, she was driving away, leaving everything she'd once known behind her. She couldn't remember what had happened to her when she'd seen the spot where Pru had died, and now she was seeing it again. She was back. She wanted to diminish its power to nothing.

Myla looked at the spot on the ground. Here was the place she'd dreamed about, dreaded all this time. She wanted to understand it, wanted to dissect it until it yielded nothing. As she examined the ground, examined the last spot where Pru had claimed breath, Myla watched and waited. For something to make this place crushable. For something to make this very spot something she could destroy.

The problem was basic: there was nothing special about this place. Just a patch of forest floor. People walking in these woods would have no idea this was where her beloved sister, her light, her breath, her bud of a companion, had fallen. There was nothing to set it apart. There was nothing to destroy. There was no answer.