Photographic (13 page)

There was a sharp rap on the door. 

“Een? Are you ready?” A curly-haired woman poked her head in. “What can I tell them? Expected time of arrival?”

Ian roused himself. “What time is it?” 

“8:05.” The woman darted glances back and forth between Ian and Jane. 

“How much longer, Miss Fenn?” His face was a study in serenity, except for a slight rise to one corner of his mouth. 

Jane studied that corner. “About ten minutes, I believe, but this is the first time I’ve made up Mr. Reilly, so it can only be an estimate at this point.”

“Thenk yew, Miss Fenn.” The woman closed the door, and they could hear her shout, “Ten to fifteen minutes until Wardrobe have him, Frank, over,” on her walkie-talkie as she clomped down the stairs. By Ian calling her Miss Fenn she had become Miss Fenn, instead of Jane, which she had been her whole life. Nobody called her Miss Fenn, not even the bank. 

Jane looked down at her pile of supplies. She licked her dry lips and glanced into the mirror. When their eyes met in the reflection, his eyes moved away. He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. 

She used her very best brushes, which as a whole set had taken about two months salary to buy and had to be ordered specially. With regular powder and her wonderful big powder brush, she blended it all in, to give Ian’s character the look of radiant good health, a man who was a bit of an outdoorsman. He had these things going for him already, under the makeup, but it was her job to play things up and heighten them for the camera.

Now the eyes. She took her finest sable eye brush and dampened it with one quick spray from her bottle of distilled water. She found a neutral brown that she could use around his eyes that would blend into near invisibility. 

A fine dabbing in the roots of his eyelashes was enough.

Now it was time to blend again. She got another, slightly larger, dry brush, and dusted it along the places where she had put the liner. Standing back, she observed the effect, comparing both eyes. She proceeded to finish the next eye and stood back to let him see the results. 

He leaned into the mirror. “Not bad.”

“It just makes your eyes more intense. They’ll stand out more. It won’t look like you’re wearing makeup. I could do mascara and they’d never know you were wearing that either. You have nice lashes though.”

“Am I done?”

Jane took her biggest powder brush, which was clean of powder, and swept it over his face. A dab of lip balm and he was done.

“I wish I could do your hair, too.” She brushed her fingers through it as she looked at him in the mirror. “It would be fun.”

“It’s already been done. Mo’s a friend. He’s hanging out with me anyway so he just does it in my trailer.”

She whipped her hands away. “Oh, dear Lord, I’ll be fired.”

He grinned, reached back and squeezed her forearms. “It’s not exactly a high concept look. I have to drag myself out of here or Claire will be after me.”

Jane wanted to say, “See you tomorrow!” but whether she had touched his hair or not, independent film or not, no doubt they were flying someone in from L.A. as they spoke. She waved from the doorstep as he turned back to look at her from the bottom of the stairs.

“Coming, luv?”

Her heart gave a great leap. “What?”

“Your job’s not over yet, not by a long shot. You’ve got to hang about all night while I do my shots and fix me up when I fall to pieces.” 

“Of course, of course! One moment and I’ll have my things.” She shoved all her brushes, bottles, tubes, creams, puffs, and miscellaneous into the carryall and snapped it shut. Across the trailer in one leap, she was through the door, rattling down the stairs, and by his side. 

“All right then.” He gave her hand a quick squeeze before they walked together toward Wardrobe.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

J
ANE
AND
I
AN
’
S
next-door neighbor, Hank, wore green coveralls in winter that zipped diagonally across his chest. He zipped down the top half inside the house when he visited for coffee in the cold months, but only on rare occasions would he be persuaded to take off the whole getup. It was hard to tell how dashing he was in winter, easier to tell in early spring, when he switched to Levi’s and a t-shirt, which showed the sinewy forearms and biceps of his tall, lean form, rock hard from years of farm work. His hair was a minky brown with silver bits glinting through. He was a widower and a bit of a catch in their neck of the woods, but he didn’t show much interest in marrying again. He was Jane’s best friend.

“I won’t be staying long,” he’d say. “I’ll have to be getting back to the fence…horses…pickup…” or any of the other myriad chores he had set himself that day besides the regular ones which confronted him every day. The endlessness of it never seemed to daunt him. He didn’t farm anymore but leased his land and kept a few stock and a kitchen garden. Despite the fact that he was supposed to be relieved of the most strenuous years of work now that he leased out his land, he was always at some task on the homestead. After his third cup, most often he would head back to his ancient blue Ford pickup for the ride down to the road to his property, or across the fields when he felt like a bit four-wheeling.

They had purchased their land from him seven years previously. After his wife Cor died, he later told Jane, he decided to part with a piece of it to have some regular neighbors a bit closer. The piece of property wasn’t big enough to farm proper so only a hobby farmer would be interested in such a place. It was a pretty acreage, however, with the avenue, a small lake, and some roll to it. The avenue of trees lining the drive had been planted by Cor’s grandparents. Cor and Hank’s house was a half mile down the road. The grandparent’s old place had been rented to farm hands and their families for many years, but after Cor’s sudden passing Hank wanted to sell it. He hadn’t pictured quite what he got, as Jane got him to admit, but he found the whole fuss over them quite diverting. There had only been helicopters a few times.

There would have been more except for Jonas Turlock’s contrary temper. Competing tabloids had tried to rent the same helicopter, the News Action 5 out of the city, privately owned by Jonas Turlock, but after being paid five hundred dollars to circle the old Schweiger place once, then a thousand by another magazine to do it again, Pilot Turlock didn’t appreciate the nuance of being offered ever-increasing, doubling sums by swarming, competing tabloids trying to shut each other out. Plus he figured the new family had to hanker for bit of peace and quiet; why else would any soul move to Kittrie from somewheres else, on purpose, by all accounts? He had all the pay he needed in his arrangement with Burt Witherspoon over at News Action 5. In the end he had refused all other offers and the photographers had contented themselves with hiring a white van and pretending to be cable installers. 

The old house had been razed, but for a wall or two, and rebuilt. It had the look of another time; it fit in with the older, well-off farmhouses of the early part of the twentieth century. Cor would have been pleased to see the old place done over, Hank told Jane. And she would have brought plenty more than just her company as a housewarming, he said, disparaging his own form of neighborliness. But Hank was every kind of helpful during the reconstruction. Jane had never met someone who actually carried a hammer in the loop on trousers meant for one. 

Jane had had the photographs for a week. She had said nothing about them to anyone.

It was a beautiful evening in the end of June when her Hank came to visit for the first time in a couple of months. He had been away from home, visiting his daughters on the east coast, one of whom had given birth to his first grandchild. 

Hank knocked his special KNOCK...knock-KNOCK-knock and opened the front door. Tam raced half the distance to the front door from the kitchen and slid the rest. He scooped Tam up in an easy motion and carried her horizontally, like a suitcase, under one arm. She tried to contain her laughter, so it came out like humming.

“Hmm hm hm hm.” Tam’s pursed lips couldn’t contain all sound. Jane observed the scene with a smile from her spot on the couch, where she sat knitting.

“Guess I’m going to have to try a little harder to get any change out of this one.” He flipped her upside down, holding her by her calves and shaking as if to empty her pockets. This produced full-scale shrieks from Tam. 

“Not a thing.” He swung her back around, setting her down on her feet. “You keep your kid awful light. Not even any lunch money on her.”

“I know it’ll get ripped off. We’re onto you.”

“I don’t keep lunch money in my pocket.” Tam was boasting now as she danced around Hank. “I have a pocketbook.”

“Oh. I see. Now I know where to look.”

“No!” Tam leapt into the hallway in a glaring indication of the pocketbook’s location.

“Whoever heard of a six-year-old with a pocketbook?”

“You got me. She tells me what she absolutely must have or be a social outcast. I try to meet her halfway.” 

Tam came dancing back in. “You’ll never find it now. Did you know that cats drink water backwards? They scoop it like this with their tongues.” She made a scooping motion with her hand and stuck her tongue out, curling it under at the same time. “I don’t see how they get enough to drink like that. Why don’t they just swallow it like this?” She made lapping motions with her tongue. “It’s easier.”

“I don’t suppose they think about it any more than you do. They just do the way they’re made to.”

“It’s more work to go backwards.” 

“You don’t see them looking parched, do you?”

Tam pinched her tongue and stared at him.

“Parched means thirsty.” Jane knew Tam liked to astonish people with new information.

“I know.” Tam, irritated, disappeared into the living room. 

“She hates not knowing something.”

“Don’t we all.” Hank watched Jane knitting. “How are you doing?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Are you ever going to finish that?”

“Oh, someday. It has to be long enough or it’s no good making it.” 

“It’s a pretty color. Like the ocean.”

She glanced up at him. “That was what I thought. I should have known you were back when Buttermilk took off out the door this afternoon.”

“Let’s go for a walk.”

“If we walk I can’t knit.”

“That’s true. But we can walk and talk.”

She set down her work. “All right.” She raised her voice. “Tam, do you want to go for a walk?”

“Okay!” Tam skidded into the room, face shining. “Maybe we’ll see Buttermilk.”

Outside, the air smelled sweet and blooming. Hank and Jane ambled in the direction of Hank’s house so Tam would have a better chance of finding Buttermilk. They walked between the greening, formerly cultivated fields, through the knee-high grasses, their legs making a
thrush-thrush
with each stride. Tam ran ahead, looping back to check on them before she ranged out again to take lead position. 

“Have you been writing?” Hank was an amateur composer.

“There’s not a whole lot of time to do that when a baby’s in the house. She was sleeping a lot so I didn’t play much. Too bad because Lane has a nice instrument. She hardly plays anymore but she keeps one in the house. Have you?” 

Hank was one of the few people who knew she wrote songs sometimes. 

“Now and then. Did you have a good time?”

“Sure. I got to bounce the baby. Lane is incorrigible. A party planned, three weeks after delivering.” He chuckled.

“Did you play for the party?”

Hank glanced at her. “No.”

“They didn’t ask you?”

“It didn’t come up.”

“Fools. Or wasn’t it that kind of party?”

“I don’t know. It was Lane’s evening. We were on Lane time. Not everyone likes my playing same as you.”

“Why ever not?” 

Hank shook his head.

Tam appeared out of nowhere with the tabby in her arms. “Got him. Now we need something for him to drink.”

“That’s why you’re so interested in Buttermilk.” 

“I love Buttermilk. I’m seeing how he drinks as a scientrific experiment.”

“In that case, we’d better find some milk." He rubbed behind Buttermilk’s ears, half-flattened at the undignified mode of transport. “Let’s take him back to the house.”

“Okay.” Buttermilk’s hind legs kicked as Tam gathered him closer to her chest. “We have work to do.” They led the way, a sort of cat-girl centaur.

“Ian on the job?” 

“Yep.”

“Long one?”

“Yeah. Big epic on location.”

Hank made a squeaky noise with lip against his teeth. It was the only kind of disapproval he would register. She got the message clear enough.

Jane didn’t tell Hank about Marta. She hadn’t told Ian and she didn’t tell Hank. Marta was her secret. She wouldn’t think of it as her mistake. But it was definitely her secret. Hers, Tam’s, and Evelyn’s. The circle of power. 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

T
HE
END
OF
summer on the farm, the long golden hours sliding into the deep greens and cooler blues of early fall, passed by without incident. Afternoons with Hank and Tam, picnics and swimming in the lake, had left Jane warmed by their company, the sliver of anxiety well-buried in her heart. It was September and filming was over. 

What had seemed so far away was coming; was now. Jane hadn’t mentioned Marta, the interview, the pictures, any of it to Ian. 

What was it lies did, exactly? Eat away like a slow acid at the edges of trust, tunneling through the heart like rust, until the core was breached and there was no more trust; only doubt. She didn’t know what the truth was anymore or if she’d recognize it if she heard it. Marta’s words during the interview, the questions about his fidelity, played like a tape loop in her head. At night as she tried to sleep the photographs flashed before her eyes like a slide show. 

Sometimes one frame froze and came to life so she could see and hear what happened after the moment the photo had been taken. Ian’s laughter echoed in her head—but what she heard was a reproduction, just the echo—and she felt a latent strain of jealousy wake in her that ran so dark and deep she twisted with the pain of it. Why did it matter now? She had let him go on his trips so blithely before. It hadn’t been hard. There had been the loneliness of not having him beside her, yes, but she hadn’t considered the people with him, enjoying his company in her place. She had never seen his absences as being at her expense. It had all been part of who he was and she accepted it without question or thought. She had even enjoyed the time alone sometimes. To think more deeply about things, turn inward, be closer with Tam. Make up songs and sing them as lullabies.