The View from Prince Street (15 page)

“Debra. Are you all right?”

“No. No, I'm not.”

I stepped aside so she could enter, feeling no sense of judgment, but rather empathy. Secrets were indeed a powerful force that swept through the strongest of lives.

She took a seat in my office and set her purse on the table. “I can see the
I told you so
in your expression.”

Unexpected hints of pity flickered like bird wings in my chest. “Would you like coffee?”

“Can you put some whiskey in it?”

“Not if you're driving.” Normally I didn't invite clients into the kitchen, but I beckoned her down the hallway. Glad to follow, she wanted someone right now to tell her exactly what she should do so she did not have to think.

“I drove.”

“Then plain coffee it is.”

She sat quietly as I made the pot and set out cups, milk, and sugar. “You were right,” she said after she took the first sip of coffee.

“How was I right?”

“Samuel showed me his piece of paper. He was almost proud to show me his deepest, darkest secret.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Do you know what it was?”

“It's not relevant.”

“Oh, but it is. His secret was that he once drag-raced one hundred and ten miles an hour on the interstate. He was speeding.” She shook her head. “My God, if speeding counts as a sin, then I'm burning in hell, twice.”

She tapped the side of her coffee mug with her fingertip. There were times I should weigh in on a conversation, and other times it was best to let the silence coax out the words. This time I let the silence do the heavy lifting.

“His next question, of course, was to ask me for my secret. He must have thought it was along the lines of jaywalking or trespassing.” Her eyes filled with tears. “It was much, much worse than any of that.” A tear fell and she wiped it away. “I don't think I can even tell you.”

I thought about my own secret and how very carefully I guarded it. “I don't expect you to. The exercise was meant to pull you two together. It was about ensuring that you two were totally honest with each other.”

A bitter laugh rumbled in her chest. “I grew up believing that honesty was not necessarily the best policy. The good do die young and no good deed goes unpunished.”

It had been a long time since I'd met someone as guarded as me. I realized I was staring at a version of myself. Like Debra, I had so many locks guarding my secret, but no keys.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I tried to make light of it. I told him the past didn't matter. At first he agreed, but as the hours and days passed he became more and more curious. He kept asking. Kept pushing. And the harder he pulled and prodded, the more closed and resentful I became.”

“Perhaps if you told him the truth he would understand?”

“If I promise to call a cab, will you pour me a stiff drink?”

“That won't help. It only masks and delays.”

“I'm fine with that right now. I want this stabbing pain in my chest to stop.”

“Be careful what you wish for.” Then, before she could respond, I said, “It's better to acknowledge and work through the pain. Don't push it away.”

“You're always so calm and cool. How do you do it?”

An hour ago, raw sadness had cut and scraped against my insides. “I don't matter here. You do.”

She sipped her coffee. “Well, my story doesn't have a happy ending. I couldn't tell Samuel the truth and he became incensed. He said if we couldn't be honest, we shouldn't get married. We're over.”

“Your life is not over.”

“The life I thought I had with Samuel is over.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps he'll cool off and understand that he must allow you to tell your story in your own time.”

“And when I do, he'll hate me. He'll despise me.”

“You don't know that.”

“The hell I don't.” A sigh shuddered through her. “I really do love him. I know you said what we had was mostly hormonal, but I love Samuel.”

“But you aren't being honest with him, Debra.”

She looked up at me with eyes filled with pain, sorrow, and failure as she wiped her nose on a tissue.

“I'm not judging you, Debra.”

“It sure feels like it.”

“I promise, I'm not.”

“I love him so much that I can't bear to see the hate in his eyes when he looks at me.”

“You're so sure he hates you?”

I thought about Zeb and how devoted he was to Eric. What would Zeb think of me if I told him I had a son and gave him away? Would
he still look at me with kindness? Somehow, I doubted he would ever accept me. And that thought troubled me far more than it should.

“Yes, I'm sure.”

Tears pooled in her eyes and spilled freely. The marble counter stood between us for an awkward moment. I'm not sure what prompted me to walk around the counter, but I did, and wrapped my arms around her. Immediately, she wept, clinging to me like I was her last friend.

An hour ago, emotion had overwhelmed me and I could barely function. And now, as sobs racked through Debra's body, I could only stand stiffly, on guard against my emotions. The mythical Pandora had opened her box and allowed sin and sorrow into the world. There was no sign of hope.

I'd been lucky so far. But was it the calm before the storm? I'd regained control. What would happen when Michael returned my e-mail?

Dearest Mother,

My new child is due near New Year. Faith and Mr. McDonald pray for a boy, but I do not. A girl would be nice and then I would have a son and a daughter. Mother, think of it. Two healthy children? Dare I hope for such a miracle? Faith continues to dote on Patrick and he is content to be in her company. I don't enjoy these moments, but there is little I can do about it.

—P

Lisa Smyth

F
RIDAY
, A
UGUST
19, 11:00
A.M.

M
ore than three months had passed since I settled my bellows camera on its tripod and took a picture. That was the very day I received word of Amelia's Alzheimer's diagnosis from Mr. Colin West and began the long drive back to Alexandria.

At first, it was easy to justify my absence from the camera. I was too busy with Amelia. There was the basement cleanup to coordinate. There was always a handy excuse to find.

But this morning, none of those excuses had merit. I did my best to revive any reason that would justify me not working, but my efforts fell flat. I watched Charlie as he mauled another chew stick. “What do you think, boy? Too overcast outside?”

Use the basement.

“The basement has dark walls and no light.”

Get a lamp.

“I don't like the basement's energy. It's too heavy and dark.”

Jesus, stop stalling!

All the excuses were lame, and I knew it.

Of course, I could have used my digital camera, which captured the sunflowers so beautifully. But though the end product was lovely, I craved the hands-on challenge of the glass negatives. The bellows camera satisfied a need in me that nothing—including booze—did.

After spending a disjointed and confused morning with Amelia, I decided to use the bellows camera to capture the Prince Street house. She had majestically stood here over two hundred sixty years and deserved to be acknowledged, but especially remembered.

Perhaps I could create a collection of prints and decorate Amelia's hospital room with them. Maybe the pictures would help jog her memory by letting her know that her home was never far away.

Charlie watched me from his dog bed in the corner of the kitchen as I screwed up my courage and went to Amelia's basement where I stored all my supplies.

The bellows camera stood in the center of the room on its tripod, covered with canvas. Gently, I closed the three legs of the tripod and carried the sixty-pound camera up the stairs. I left it in the entryway as I made several more trips to collect all the chemicals and blank cut squares of glass, which would soon join together to create the camera's negative.

When all my supplies were in the foyer, I opened the front door. Charlie rose from his bed, his chew stick casually dangling, and followed me to the front porch, where he sat down. The clouds were gone and the sun shone brightly, creating all kinds of spectacular contrasts on the tree-lined street. The bricks and wrought iron of all the houses along this street, known to all as Captain's Row, were beautifully textured and vivid.

The dog, content to bask in the warm sun, settled as I moved to the street and studied the house. It took me a half hour to decide if I wanted to angle the camera directly toward the old home or turn it slightly toward the river. Without the river, there'd be no house. The river it was. The view from Prince Street from this angle was lovely as the sunlight bathed the houses.

Deciding the best vantage point lay in the middle of the street, I glanced up the ribbon of cobblestones, wondering how much time I had before a car drove past or a neighbor or tourist wandered down the brick sidewalk. I couldn't simply set up the camera and then process the negatives without fear of my camera ending up as roadkill.

Initially, all I could do was sit on the front stoop with Charlie, absently rubbing his head, as I waited for the parking spots in front of the house to open. As several cars pulled away, I set out orange cones to reserve the spots while I ran around the block, got my SUV, and parked in the center of the street, inches out of camera view. Charlie watched with mild interest as I turned on my emergency flashers and then opened the back of my SUV and laid out the bottles and trays that would hold my processing chemicals.

If someone attempted to drive down Prince Street, they'd be forced to stop and wait until I moved my car. Not ideal. Maybe a little inconsiderate. But the images I'd create would make up for it.

I hurried over to Charlie and tugged his collar. “Come on, boy, I'm putting you in my car for a few minutes.” The dog looked up at me. “Ride in the car?”

His tail wagged and he followed, happy to jump into the car's front passenger seat. I turned on the engine, cranked the AC. “Be right back, Charlie.”

The first step of the development process required that I pour collodion, an alcohol-acid mixture, on a piece of black glass. It took skill to coat the glass up to each of its edges without spilling the excess. Satisfied the glass was fully covered, I tipped the edge and poured the excess back into the bottle.

Next, I dunked the plate into a black tank that was filled with silver nitrate for five minutes, which made the silver sensitive to light. Once it was dry, I loaded the glass negative into a metal case that fit into the camera.

With a negative clicked into place, I picked up the camera along
with a cone and moved to the middle of the street. After setting the cone behind my car, I adjusted each of the tripod's legs until the camera was steady.

I lifted the black flap that covered the ten-by-ten-inch viewfinder and looked past the camera to the grand old house.

A Smyth had built the house in the eighteenth century, but the property subsequently fell out of the family's hands. When Amelia was a young woman, her father, Sam Smyth, who made a fortune in the railroad business, repurchased the house. When my grandfather died, he left it to my father, not Amelia. When the house passed to me from my father's estate, I deeded it to Amelia. It never occurred to me at the time that my grandfather had slighted his only daughter. He left the house to the son he considered a real Smyth. However, Amelia had never spoken a word of anger or disappointment to me. She graciously accepted the house, swearing that at her passing it would revert to me.

I moved to the side of the camera and focused the edge of the lens. I'd found my camera at the estate sale of a photographer who lived his last forty years in Roanoke, Virginia. I was traveling with my mom to one of her class reunions when we stopped to grab lunch. The camera was perched in the window of the antique store across the street from the restaurant. Immediately, I was drawn to it and made an offer on it before I asked my mom. When the store owner sealed the deal, I did some serious begging with Mom, trading the next two birthday, Christmas, and graduation gifts for my latest fascination. She'd been sick then, guarding her secret closely, and agreed without much hesitation.

I found out from the store owner that the camera's lens dated back to 1849, predating wet-plate photography by two years. The lens, originally used for daguerreotypes, captured the images of young men attending Virginia Military Institute, and later the ravages of the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era. To date, this lens had captured over one hundred sixty-five years' worth of history. If only it could talk.

Glancing to my left and right for traffic, I ducked under the black
cape and reached for the slide lever, which opened the viewfinder. When I was sure I had the right view of Prince Street in my sight, I reached around and pulled the cap off the lens.

I slid out from under the cape and checked my watch. Five minutes in this sunlight would do nicely.

Two minutes passed when a black BMW pulled onto Prince Street and stopped a dozen feet behind the SUV. Its dark exterior's polish caught the light, glinting like a black diamond. The driver's sunglasses obscured his face as he shut off his car and got out. Bracing for an earful, I noted that the driver was tall and lean and wore a dark tailored suit, cut to fit his wide shoulders and trim body. A white shirt set off a red tie. He removed his shades, revealing an angled face framed by short black hair brushed back. He moved with a clipped, annoyed gait. Mr. Colin West, aka Mr. Stiff and Proper.

“You're in the middle of the street,” he said.

“Shouldn't you be asking why?”

Mr. West was in his late thirties, but some would say he was an old soul. He was not exactly handsome, but the sharp angles on his face and the gray feathering through his hair would have translated nicely into a photograph. Lots of contrast and shadows.

“Here comes trouble,” Jennifer whispered close to my ear.

“Don't you think you should move?”

So many smartass comments sprang to mind. So many. But I let them go, accepting that a pissing match with Jennifer or Mr. West required more energy than I was willing to spare. “I need about three minutes.” Smiling, I fumbled with my watch, willing time to go faster. Waiting and patience had never been my forte. I hoped three minutes would not signal the end of the world for him. “Why are you here, Mr. West?”

He cocked his head, studying me and trying to decide if I had lost my mind. “I came to discuss selling the house.” He looked toward the car. “Charlie's not in the picture?”

The dog's ears perked and he rose, wagging his tail as he barked.
Mr. West walked to the car and tapped on the window with a smile. The dog barked again.

Mr. West had a genuine affection for the dog. “He's looking good. You still feeding him table scraps?”

“Charlie has a taste for the finer things in life.”

“That's not good for him.”

The dog barked at Colin, and the pure adoration in the pup's gaze annoyed me just a little. I'd been the one taking care of him for almost three months now and as soon as Mr. West arrived, I was invisible.

“Traitor,” I mumbled. Glancing at my watch, I didn't budge, but inside, a cold knot formed as I wrestled with the sale of the house.

He straightened as the dog settled back on the car seat. “I thought you'd have it on the market by now.”

Photographers were generally introverts and liked remaining unnoticed. They were the observers. The visual scribes. “I know I should be calling agents and getting the process rolling. I've been distracted with Amelia.”

“If you need an agent, I have a suggestion.”

“Really?”

He took in my Birkenstocks, knee-length jean shorts stained with photo chemicals, pink tie-dye T-shirt, and ruler-straight blond hair twisted into a ponytail. For whatever reason, I was thankful I'd at least showered and shaved my legs this morning. The sight of me, I suspected, confirmed his expectations of an itinerant starving artist squatting in the house.

“Our firm has used this particular agent several times. She's highly recommended.”

“That's great. I have no idea where to start. If you text me her information, I'll call her.”

“He's hot in a
Men in Black
kind of way. Not your type, but then again, your type isn't much to write home about.”
Jennifer was officially annoying as hell. I smiled, wondering how to elbow aside a voice inside your own head.

He shifted his attention to the camera. “So this is the camera that Amelia talked about so much. She's very proud of your work.”

Amelia was always encouraging, but I assumed that came with the family-must-be-supportive package. Interesting that she talked to others about me. “I know this looks a bit quirky and cumbersome, but it creates a striking image when I'm on my game.”

He moved closer, bringing with him the faint scent of an expensive aftershave. “Amelia said you've had a good bit of artistic success.”

A cloud crossed in front of the sun, dimming the light a fraction. The dimming light meant I'd need more exposure time. A minute, maybe two. More time with Mr. West. “I've won some awards, but I've yet to cash those wins into a living wage. I'm your classic starving artist.” I'd used the last bit of prize money to buy my SUV, which had more than once doubled as a home and a studio.

“She says you travel around a lot.”

“I'm about capturing the images, and as much as I'd like them to come to me, they have not cooperated.”

“How long is the total exposure for a photograph?”

I looked up at the clouds, sensing they carried more rain. “Depends on the light. Take today, for example. I first thought I'd need about three minutes, but I'm thinking now it will take every bit of six or seven minutes.” I pointed toward the sky.

“How do you know when it's enough?”

“I don't, exactly. It's as much art as science with these old cameras. Over time, you develop a feel.”

He scanned the street, checking to see if we had blocked traffic. No one was waiting on us. He worried about the details. “Amelia showed me a couple of your earlier works. Nice.”

“The prints in the house. I took those in Utah. I call that my Ansel Adams phase.” I slid my hands into my pockets.

Until now, Colin West and I had only traded e-mails. His responses
were curt with no wasted words.
Amelia is ill. Suggest you return to Alexandria. Matters to discuss.
My responses were as brief.
On my way.

“I saw Amelia yesterday,” he said. “She was sleeping.”