Spectacles

Jacob Batchelor

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Here is a picture of a body twisted and arched. The background is dark, the left leg at right angle and right leg straight, distended to rheumatoid toes. Skin creased and white, bloated thighs showing under a floral skirt to a white blouse, untucked around mounds of fat, arms bare and clonic to each side. The neck is crooked and withdrawn, tongue bulging from wrinkled skin drawn tight, eyes open wide, staring. **** Every morning at 8:30 Francis J. Stiles put on his thick-glassed spectacles and looked at his pictures. There in the sunroom of the faded suburban ranch house he knelt down to the thousand 4x6 glossed or dull photographs stacked in piles or arranged in lines, squinting into the memories they held, doing his best to make sense of them. This one, the ice storm of 92. A fireplace and two coffee mugs, a womans bare calves. And here, after she fought Miranda, 6th grade. Blonde curls on a young girl, tears and a scratched forehead. Another, dark, a park bench in 71, a figure prone, arms raised to the air. He could see quite well, for his age, when he wore the glasses. So when he bent down on old knees and held the faded photographs to his eyes, the vision of the picture was sharp and his periphery blurred. With a squint and some imagination, he could believe he was there, in the photograph, which was the way he liked it. After two or three hours of examining this one or that and placing it here or there, when his old knees complaints drowned out the festive horns or babbling brooks the images played to his ears, Francis stood and surveyed his work. Another day closer,

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another piece placed. A swell of aliveness rose in his chest and spread through his arms and cheekbones, a tingle of being prickled through loose skin. He smiled and then with a sigh removed his glasses, back to his breast pocket. He turned and left the room, closing the door behind him. As he felt his way by touch and memory through the dusty hall to his recliner, the blurred shapes of tables and chairs, bannisters and wall hangings took on definition, crystallized and brightened, and though the drapes had been drawn for four months now the sun shone brilliant through the windows. He ran his fingers across the dust-covered shelves of the living room, leaving a trail crisscrossing the many others, smiled and felt at ease. And as he settled into the frayed recliner, that thought gave way to another, and that one to the plangent hum of passed time, as radio tunes and fleeting dreams absorbed him for the moment. **** A doorbell rings, and an old man begins to wake. On the stoop stands Marcie Stiles, 53, who stares at the chipped red door and shifts her weight from right to left. Inside the darkened house Francis vertebrae cracked in tune with his elbows and hips as he rose up from the recliner to see what was the bother. It was either night or day; he had slept minutes or hours. He made his way to the door as the bell rang again and opened it to a blinding light. After a moment of squinting and shielding his eyes he made out a pale face and a blue body against a sea of brown and gray. That was enough for Francis. Hi, Dad, he heard, but just. White noise. The word time broke through, and in town. Marcie, she repeated.

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Marcie always remembered him as strong, from when she was a skinny little girl and he tall and lean with a military bearing, eyes always somewhere else. But the last four months had not been good to him, and she found him hard to pity. The unfocused blue gray of his eyes betrayed a blindness creeping in, and though he held himself straight with only a slight bend of the shoulders, there was a lack of balance there, like the he was not rooted to where he stood but rather verging on slumping over for a deep sleep. A phantom, already half dreaming. Marcie Marcie I dont know if I know any Marcies Dad Hello? Is anyone there? Help me, help me, I am just a senile old man. He waved his hands out in front of him. Marcie looked at him in confusion, then laughed despite herself. He smiled. Youre the one that said your name, like I wouldnt recognize my own daughter. He stepped forward and gave her a stiff hug, two slaps on her back. Come in, come in. The door shut out the brightness from behind her, and Marcie stood for a moment in the dark foyer. It was the first time she had been inside the house since her mother died. Shadowed shapes and musky smells surrounded her, and she was for a moment consumed by an oppressive sadness. This place was her childhood. She took a few steps into the living room and tried to recall what it once was, snapshots from her youth; there was the Christmas tree with bright colored lights; there her mother napping to the soaps; there her coloring books spread out, the dolls, the novels. She felt a wave of heat rise from her waist to her chest and face and was nauseous. She swayed.

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I know, its not the way your mother kept it Its not that, Dad. Ill be fine in a minute. She took a deep breath and looked around once more. Really though, I should hire a cleaning service, its disgusting in here. Dont waste your money, I dont mind it. Well lets at least turn on some lights, or open some windows. How do you see a thing? When youve lived somewhere 42 years, you dont need to.

This is picture of a one-story ranch house two miles west of downtown. Low and brown, small bushes to either side of a cement stoop, a narrow cement walkway to the driveway. A moving van parked, cardboard boxes on dried grass. A woman, there, white blouse, poised with smiling teeth and blonde hair cut short.

**** Marcie put a kettle on the stove to make tea. She reached for a large jar of bags, and a cockroach scurried from behind it. She drew back her hand and tensed as it disappeared behind a wicker basket of old bananas rotted black and onions with their long, white tendrils. Dust and crumbs and God knows what was everywhere, and she had to take a step back from the counter to breathe. This is what it will be like. This was dying slow. She turned to look at her father, sitting like a child at the kitchen table. Look, Im sorry I havent been by since Mom. And from before, I know I should have gotten up here more, before everything.

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Her father made something of an mm sound and nodded, mind elsewhere. I have an appointment with Dr. Borsct later today, she said louder, that is partially why I came. Ah. Good man, Borsct. No Dr. Esper, though, you remember Dr. Esper, dont you? Delivered you with his own hands. Of course I do, Dad. But Dr. Borsct, he called me last week, after your incident. He wants to speak with me. I would have came sooner, but with work and everything. Mmm. You were such a fat little baby, he smiled. 32 hours in labor, your mother was. He stayed with us the whole time. Incredible. A picture of a sweat and blood, a tiny pink thing, white gloves and hairy arms. He could hear the new screams, taste the tears. He said you almost killed yourself with too much insulin. Francis just sat and smiled, tapped his clasped hands as if to an old rhythm. She felt impatient and wondered if this was what he did all day, if old age was just sort of humming, repeated snippets of half-remembered tunes. Did you mean to do it? The kettle began its whistle. Dad. He shifted his gaze and his rhythm paused. Dont be stupid. If I wanted to end my life, would I have called an ambulance when I realized my mistake? A silence. Tap pause pause tap tap tap pause pause pause, and his eyes were somewhere else again.

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Well Ill give you your shot today, but I am only here for a few days. After that were going to need to figure something out. You understand what I mean, right? You cant stay here forever. She poured two cups of the boiling water and reached again for the tea bags, watching for the cockroach and other creatures lurking in the decay. You understand, Dad? Mmm. Alright sweetie. Tap tap tap, pause, tap tap. Marcie brought the cups to the table and sat down. Her fathers eyes were closed, and she sighed. Dr. Borsct had said on the phone no signs of cognitive impairment, but just look at the man. Maybe he likes just living in a dream, and perhaps he wouldnt mind assisted living, she thought. What could be worse than this place, now? She looked at him; his hands had stopped moving. It was possible he was asleep. She stood and looked around the kitchen and then into the living room. It was still dark there, so she went in and turned on the lights. Everything was how it was, but older, more stale. She opened a window and felt the summer heat and a breeze that came with it. The house has not been cleaned since the wake, and she knew she would have to deal with the dust and the cockroaches, the rotten fruit and smells of death, dust, dead skin. She approached the couch where her mother had her stroke before crashing to the floor. She had soiled herself there, during the stroke, her last moments. She had avoided it during the wake and now wondered had it even been cleaned? Could the cushion have simply been flipped and forgotten? It must have been cleaned, of course. Such things got taken care of. **** One area free of the accumulated dust and detritus was the mantle above the fireplace. It was oak, or cherry, or Marcie didnt know what. But the surface was clean,

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free from the signs of living and dying, preserved. Atop it were five picture frames she did not recognize. Her father had always taken snap shots, as long as she could remember, with those cheap disposable cameras, but those were never the pictures hung on the wall, the ones of creased clothing and smiling faces, the curated American life her mother held so dear. She picked up the first. Which did you pick up? her father said from the kitchen. She held the frame in her hands and it was real but she could not make sense of it. The first one. She could not see, but he smiled. Bring it here. A faded picture, very old, black and white. A porcelain bowl, a hulking gray brown mass against the white. She walked into the kitchen. Francis pulled his glasses from his breast pocket and put them on. He took the picture from her and examined it close. He smiled in a kind of sad or nervous way. I never told you about the last day I saw my father, did I? **** In 1949, commercial photography was experiencing a boom in the post-war creativity, economic stability, and joie-de-vivre that comes with collectively putting 400,000 dead up on that mantle, that memorial wallthe magazine pages and inspirational postersand getting on with it. Commercially viable color film technology was introduced just in time to capture and freeze the horrors of that war, using dyecoupled technologies that employed three dye layers chemically interacting to produce an apparent color image of a sharpness unrivaled in its time.

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The Polaroid Land camera, introduced in 1948, which quickly gained a significant market hold despite a selling price of around 800USD, accounting for inflation. This was a clever invention by Edwin Land, scientist and CEO of the Polaroid company. Legend has it the concept sprung from a summer vacation with his daughter who, upon her father taking a picture, asked simply Father why cant I see it now? Making a daughters dreams come true, he employed a series of rollers, squeezers and a reagent to push dyes from negative to positive in an instant, creating a ready made, honest to God photograph in under a minute for anyone able to afford it. She could hold the previous moment in her hand, immortalized, solid, cemented in time. The problem with the Polaroid cameras, thought H. M. Stiles, Henry to his friends, was that they were too damn expensive, too bulky. He was a man home from war and as such understood implicitly it wasnt how pretty of a picture you took or how quickly you got to hold it in your hand, but that you could capture any moment at any time. The ability was important, not the quality, not the speed. Many men worked hard to forget those days of living moment to moment, hand to mouth, bullet to body. But Henry knew that this was the great gift of warthe realization that life was nothing but an accumulation of moments. He would sit with young Francis on his lap, spouting whisky fumes and his vision of a world where every moment, profound or inane, could be captured by any man or woman or child. Then they could see what really happens, he would say, what actually matters. You could hold it, never lose it, make it exist forever. H. M. Stiles was a tinkerer in the American tradition and, as such, when he saw a problem he went about fixing it. In the years after the war, he worked behind the photo-

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processing counter at the drugstore on Delaney St. in town. It wasnt a well-paying job, but he liked ithe liked the hour after the manager went home before the photo-center closed, when the pictures for the day were processed and needed packaging for pick up the next day. There in the small back office he could flip through the lives of others, watch year after year as they grew and celebrated, laughed and mourned through birthdays and Christmases and funerals and parties. He saw a different kind of darkness here, under the flickering light. He held in his hands blurred bodies in blurred situations, images taken of those unawares, the subtle moments of background noise, unsatisfied glances, angered glares. He saw the beauty and the corrupt soul of his town. A smiling, perfect family, a post-card home. Naked humans, dead and dying things. When he returned to his own perfect home, his own perfect wife, his own perfect child, he wanted to get drunk. Once made aware of the true secret lives of people, the conspicuous discrepancy between pretension and reality, you saw it everywhere, even in your own house. His wife was thinking about fucking Cary Grant when she smiled, his son waiting for the next available moment to release himself into some dishtowel or rag shed have to clean up and pretend not to notice. Sex. Hunger. Staying alive. This is what propelled us through the absurd. At the dinner table he held forth on his favorite topicshis politics, his philosophies, his projects. Just think, Francis. If a movie camera followed you around every moment of each day, and, and you had no idea. Capture everything, the unalloyed bullshit. Not how you remember the thing but how it was. And after eating he would descend into his basement workshop and sit among bottles of whisky and silver nitrate, always careful never to mix the two, stripping old

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Kodak Brownie cameras and recreating his own, slimmer models. Depending how much he had drunk, he would sometimes call to Francis, come down, son, and maybe bring your father some ice, and let him sit quietly at his side while he worked. Francis loved the little metal pieces, the small lenses and frames strewn about the table. It was here his father articulated his most precious views. Life, Francis, is finding out what kind of man you are. Nothing else. Beyond the bullshit. True life. Francis nods solemnly, the young sage. Yes, father. Henry laughed, and swigged his Wild Turkey. **** Francis coughed with a wheeze and phlegmy choke that lasted several moments. Marcie began to rise from her chair but he finished and waved her off. After my father patented the Photo-Pac, he thought everyone in America would be using it by years end. Francis cleared his throat once more and took a sip of his tea. It really was a great invention. For just over a dollar you get a cardboard box camera, and 8 exposures later just drop it in any mailbox. Days later your prints and negatives arrive back. Rinse and repeat. The first disposable camera, you could take it anywhere. Marcie sat still, tea untouched, listening to this new history. It was the most she had heard him speak in decades. Ha. Of course, I see the news, now with your cameras on your phones and shared over the computers. But then it was something. Never caught on, for whatever reason, not for another twenty years. He had quit his job, sunk everything they had into the project.

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And his drinking got worse. Some nights he didnt come home, most nights we didnt want him to. One day he just left. Marcie held up the picture. But what about this? How does this make sense? Francis laughed. I was looking through his things once wed realized he was gone when my mother called me up. She just said Your father has left us for good. Left us with nothing but debt and a pile of shit. I already knew, but hearing her say it left an impression. And then, for some reason, I guess I just had to go, I went to use the bathroom. And there in the toilet was, just like she said, though of course it wasnt what she meant. It was massive, as a small child I couldnt believe it. It was otherworldly, allpowerful, which was how I thought of my father at that age. I could never produce something that big. Without thinking, really, I went down to the basement. He left hundreds and hundreds of unused cameras down there, along with his makeshift darkroom and chemicals enough to last years. Naturally, being 12, and with all he had told me, I was drawn to them. I picked up one of the cameras and took a picture. Of it, I mean. That was the first one. When I try to remember his face, this is all that comes up. He held the picture up to her, and Marcie wanted to laugh, then cry. She thought of Kevin and May, the divorce, New York, work. Her phone vibrated in her slacks, but she ignored it. Her father and those cameras, taking pictures of every little thing, her least often. You never quit with those damn cameras, I always wondered what could have been so important about a car or a couple walking or whatever the hell you always pointed them at.

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Theyve been boring lately, Ill admit, not having much occasion to leave the house. But you understand, dont you? How its important to record things, to have a picture of them, to hold them, to understand them. I have over a thousand now, its an impressive record. He pulled a disposable camera from his cardigan pocket and waggled it in front of her. He stopped and stared at his daughter, then took a picture of her. He looked sad and tired then, there as he wound the mechanism and stared ahead. One left.

There, a picture of a car driving away. The grass is green, and black tar of driveway shines hot, a faint shimmer of summer heat rising. A young oak to the left, half out of frame, dark branches spindled above the street. The red hatchback mid-turn, sun bright on windshield, the half of her face turned, not looking back, hand on the steering wheel. A blue mailbox, yellow tulips, a deep brown fresh mulch around the bushes. All faded, right corner bent.

**** When Marcie returned from the Dr. Borchts office the next day, she checked on her father, asleep in his chair. He looked like a dumb child, she thought, or coma patient, head back and mouth open to yellow teeth, breathing slow and irregular, a deep, guttural gurgle from somewhere inside him. It disgusted her. The doctor had told her if his heart didnt fail, his lungs would fill with liquid until he suffocated in his sleep, drowning him from the inside. It would be a peaceful death. Dad.

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The old mans gurgle continued, asynchronous, pained. Dad, she said again, louder, and touched his shoulder. He did not respond, so she continued into the kitchen and set down the plastic grocery bags. The place was less disgusting than it had been; she had spent the morning cleaning, wiping away the crumbs and apple cores and empty Boost bottles into a large garbage bag still sitting by the hallway. It was easy not to feel guilt far away, in the city where bigger things happened and memories were fluid and quick and more open for interpretation. But here they were, there, in front of you, and your father is your father, and it was only one more day, or maybe two. She began to clean once more, and rained down the disinfectant she had bought. She scrubbed hard, and it felt good to clean things, organize them. After a half hour she moved to the family room and dusted and touched old books and magazines; she sprayed more and scrubbed more as her father drowned and dreamed in his patched chair. This was a battle she could frame, organize, and win. She would clean every inch of this fucking house, until it was spotless and odorless and free from all the dead and dying things. She would have to sell it, of course, call around the nursing homes and show them to him, which was another visit to this place. She must contact the lawyer, too, to get power of attorney. And what were his finances like anyways? Or did he have a living will, or investments or other secrets, holdings, or instructions, after such long separation, to which she was not privy? She felt heat rising through her chest once more and started towards the front door, but stopped. Again she came to the mantle. Her father had placed the picture of the toilet bowl back next to the others, and with a glance over her shoulder to her still dreaming father,

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she looked over the others: their old house and her mother, in white. How prim and proper, she was then. And then her, off for college, what she remembered to be the happiest day of her life. Next what looked like a body, dark and contorted, and a final frame, with no picture. She paused and picked up the second to last up and brought it to the kitchen. At a glance it looked sexual, and she felt flushed. With one hand she bent over and withdrew her readers from her purse and leaned back to turn on the overhead light. When she looked at the picture again, in focus, she did not drop it, because people do not drop things that are important, not like in the movies. But rather, she stared at it and tried to understand, or didnt, not really, tried not to even, and then understanding all at once, a feeling overtook her, tightened the skin around her eyes, raised her cheeks, bringing up quivered lips. And she mightve cried then had she not squinted her eyes and pursed those lips and set the picture down with a calm that is learned and practiced. It was now midday and heat overwhelmed her, up through her chest to flush her face and lighten her head to the point of spots in her vision, of not really being there, in the kitchen of her dead mother and dying father and past life. Another death rattle from her father, the sound of a lawn mower through the open window. Hot stillness, sweat clinging cotton to skin, wet fabric under arms and breasts, ass and thighs. She brought her hands to cover her mouth and sat there for a moment before standing and moving, forward, anywhere. Away from her father, those sounds, the upturned frame of a memory she didnt have and never wanted. Marcie moved through the kitchen with quiet and measured steps, like a ghost, making no noise, mind blank, walking past the marble island, the fridge, the lemon scent

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of her labor, through the mudroom and tried to open the doors to the dining room. It was locked, but she knew how the right push at the right angle would let her through, and with a practiced shove from her youth the door banged open and admitted her entry. As a child she hated this room, the cold formality of it, how certain rules applied only within its boundaries. Sit upright now, no elbows; yes maam, thank you sir. You must be washed and ironed and laced to enter here. Oh how kind, and isnt it lovely? and you simply must give me the recipe for this quiche. She had loved to enter it when her parents were out, to move things just an inch, to put her feet up on the coffee table, to disobey. It was her mothers domain: Each crystal and candle and vase were without fail just so, the plastic hibiscus arranged right here, so it brings out the drapes, darling. And Marcie had played the part for her and their company as children of a certain age and disposition do, blonde hair curled and cornflower blue dress creased, smiling and passing the peas, the butter, the salt, the water. Now be still. Pose. Now she flicked the light switch with anticipation for that stillness, that organization, the matching plastic flowers and drapes. So when the lights brightened the dark room and she saw what had become of it, her world collapsed and other planets collided and she found herself on a new one, landscape strange and air hard to breathe. Where the dining table had been two china cabinets faced each other, an old bed sheet above them, a gateway, the sheet slanting down beyond them, affixed to two highbacked chairs, couch cushions to either side. She paused only for a moment, still, then stepped between the cabinets and began to see the pictures. ****

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Francis had awoken with a start to the bang of the living room door and sensed all in a moment what was occurring. Through the fog and disorientation that accompanied the seconds and minutes between his dreaming and waking lives, the twin ideas of his project and his daughter, the discomfort that had haunted the edge of his conscious mind since her arrival, burst through to the realization and dread that something was wrong, had been wrong, and was in the coming minutes to become worse. The joints of his body cracked with more urgency and pain than before as he braced his withering arms against the torn fabric of the recliner, raising himself to a crouch before standing to a stoop. He stood there for a moment and felt a growing anxiety and pressure, a quickening of pulse. The open windows gave a horrific glare and clarity to the room, and the antiseptic smell of lemon or pine placed his mind for a moment in the fluorescent hospital corridor, the horrible whiteness of a beeping patient room. He breathed deep, and his hand trembled in arrhythmic beats as he reached for his glasses. **** In the living room Marcie reached her own unsteady finger out to touch the first picture under the arch, and then another, and another. Here, a dead sparrow on a wooden deck, neck broken and feathers askance. There, a profile of a young face, mussed black hair, focused eyes. This one, a round table of boys, brown bags and lunch trays, the fat one laughs and others eat and a boy in glasses stands to get up.

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All of them arranged in secret order, taped to the glass of the cabinets, behind them the dusty tumblers and vases, wine glasses and plates, once spotless, but dusty and broken now. She touched all the pictures with her fingers and felt their age and fading gloss and growing realness and stepped further, the sloping sheet beckoning her to stoop down, then kneel, then crawl. Bones on sand, the bent wheel of a bicycle, a woman with her head down, cigarette smoke rising in curls, white against black. Marcie emerged through the chairs into a new darkness, a hiding spot from her youth, and reached to a lamp placed there on the floor. The light flooded under the table and cast shadows over curated memories and bits of wood between them. Pictures on every surface. A crumpled, crusted tissue. A cat staring, hunched over, melancholy. A girl in a shopping cart with wooden animals around her neck. A bare breast, a fire, a boys young knees. Hotness overwhelmed her and sweat dripped down the small of her back, down her brow, down her chest, and her knees and wrists stung with weakness. She choked back the conspicuous ridiculousness of her situation, the fantasy around her own immediate reality, and wondered how all this was possible. She imagined her father kneeled there too, like a child, taping these rectangles of his past all around him, thinking what, for what purpose. There was an exit at the end of the table, the only opening in the cloth that hung all around her, and she crawled through it. The next room was taller, somehow, and she sat up. A thin white sheet overhead let light into her entrapment, more cabinets, upturned ottomans, chairs, no bigger than a

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phone booth. Among the jagged edges and legs and smooth surfaces of wood was another world, another exhibit, and where once mightve laid back issues of Real Simple or National Geographic, all arranged just so, were now pictures of war, a hundred of them if not more, of red intestines in brown mud, of a man hunched in a corner clutching himself, neck back in pleasure or pain, of a tin tray and brown meat and beige potatoes, of a woman in a corner, beckoning the lens forward. She started to cry then without being aware of herself, a hundred pictures and a thousand stories never spoken, not to her at least, and she stooped down to a small rectangular opening and into another space. **** The picture of her was gone, Francis saw. To remove it upon Marcies arrival had not occurred to him, not really, though he saw now that with a certain subtle perversity, buried far below the simple occupations and reminisces of his fading mind, he wanted to be found out, to force reaction, destruction. He turned now and shuffled to the kitchen where the frame remained upright on the table. Picking it up, the memory of the day returned from where he kept it inside that glass and he saw her again not as a still image but a moving, breathing, suffering person. 56 years. The sound of her crash to the floor. The movement of her paroxysmal spasms. His feeling of helplessness, loss, weakness. Her look of horror through the lens. He set the frame down and again felt helpless as he turned towards the living room door. Under the bright light from overhead and the midday sun glaring through the windows he began to see the reality of his life. Dirt still remained in the corners, dust on

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the shelves. Cracks and scratches ran the length of the scuffed wooden floor and all was faded, old. Marcie never did learn to clean proper. Moving past the counter and refrigerator he braced himself against the realization that he was a sad and pathetic old man with little life left to live, who was alone in this world save the filial obligation from a distant daughter, one who had long since ceased to care for him. He stopped then, having reached the living room door, and reached for the knob. **** Here were four white sheets hung from the ceiling that swayed when Marcie entered. What they held were not a confused boys obsessions or a young mans secret horrors but a record of moments both great and small that made up the man who was her father. There was a picture of her crowning from her mothers womb as she screamed in terror and pain and joy between those of an open book and a barstool; one of her as a child on the ground crying next to a broken bike among a series of strange facesa woman talking with wild gestures to blank air, a smiling child across a bus aisle, an intimate grin of painted red lips. There, a moment she remembers, her own outstretched arm slamming her bedroom door behind her. And here, a series of an American lifea picnic, her mother laughing, one just moments after a race. On each wall she looked for order, narrative, structure, but found none. The images before her competed against each other, the banal versus spectaclepark benches next to naked flesh, street signs below a mountain vista, a lone tree against a crowded room. There were strangers and family, those unawares or with sidelong glares. Here was her fathers life and at last she could confirm how little she had played part. Hundreds of pictures, life after war, 19 years of a

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child at home and how few she counted of herself among the many. There, a picture of her mother crying. Next, a syringe needle, poking sagging flesh. The heat and helplessness and confusion in her chest raged into anger and she tore at the sheets. She ripped them from the ceiling and threw them and her arms and her body into whatever she could find, and the chairs and tables behind her crashed into a pile, taking with them other sheets connected to the table and it all came down with her screams. She picked up a chair and threw it against the china cabinets and glass broke, and they crashed, and she panted for breath. And then here she was, standing there in the middle of it all, pictures scattered among the broken furniture and rumpled sheets, the life of her father who now stood silent behind her, watching it all collapse. **** Here, last, a picture of an old man in a mirror. He wears glasses and stands ramrod, at attention, in a brown knit cardigan over a white undershirt tucked into black slacks. With his hands he holds a cheap disposable camera to his chest, pointed at his own reflection, his eyes focused through the mirrored glass on the small black circle of the lens. A flash.

END

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