This was a while after my father had left us, a couple years, and I knew that she had. Men called our house on the telephone and my mother told me they were just plumbers or electricians but then had me hold the phone for her while she went into the other room to pick it up. She’d also begun sending me over to Randy’s to spend the night when she went to “dinner parties” and “socials,” and I’d later watch through Randy’s bedroom window as these men brought her back home around ten o’clock or eleven. They often sat in the idling car for several minutes and on some occasions walked together to our front door, where I could see these men kiss her hand, her cheek, perhaps touch her hair before leaving. She never told me their names or what they did on their dates or in their cars or what she thought of them. I don’t blame her for this.
Some things are better left unsaid.
“I don’t know,” I told Louise, but I suppose I’d waited too long to respond.
“She’s a lucky woman,” she said, “to get a fresh start like that. You tell her that when you see her. You tell her how lucky she is.”
“Okay,” I said, and Louise walked out of the room.
Jason slammed the door behind her.
“Open that door!” she said.
“Make me!” Jason yelled, and offered me another high five.
“Showtime,” he said.
I sat down on the corner of the bed as Jason retrieved a manila envelope from the hidden compartment in his closet.
“Check this out,” he said, and sat next to me.
Jason unclasped the envelope and revealed a stack of professional-looking photos in black and white. “You like that Lindy girl?” he asked me. “Take a look at this.”
He began riffling through the pictures in his hands, all of which I immediately recognized as photos of the neighborhood. There were pictures of women walking with strollers down the sidewalks, a photo of Mrs. Kern pulling weeds. I saw pictures of Artsy Julie doing cartwheels, a candid shot of my mother driving down Piney Creek Road in her car.
“Wait,” I said. “What are these?”
“My dad left his office door open a few months ago,” Jason told me. “I nabbed what I could.”
“The locked door?” I said. “What’s in there?”
Jason looked up at me. “You want to see the good ones or not?”
“Okay,” I said.
Jason separated a stack of about ten photos from the bunch. He quickly looked them over and then handed the stack to me. “Merry Christmas,” he said.
These photos were a dream.
And the subject, of course, was Lindy.
The first three shots were of Lindy laid out on a blanket, sunbathing in the front yard like she sometimes did. Lindy leaning back on her elbows. Lindy looking up at the sky. The photos were all taken from the same angle, but zoomed at different distances, as if the artist had taken his time. One shot of just the collarbone, I remember, the straps of her childish bikini. The next group was of Lindy on her bicycle, a slight grin on her face as she hopped a small bump. Then the flex of her thighs as she reverse-pedaled to stop. The frame of the bike between her legs as she stood atop it, no longer riding, and talking to someone off camera. This was a perverse miracle, I knew. But I didn’t care.
“Who took these?” I asked.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Jason said. “Hurry up. No time to jack off now.”
I flipped through the next few photos and they were all of equal value.
Lindy in a handstand. Lindy singing to herself as she walked.
What words, I wondered? What thoughts?
How could a boy like me know them?
“Can I keep this?” I asked.
“You perv,” Jason said. “You’re just a fucking perv, aren’t you?”
I was thirteen years old at the time. I didn’t even know what that meant. Chalk it up to another time he put a distance between us.
But after much begging, Jason told me I could keep the photo of Lindy singing because it wasn’t in his regular rotation. He warned me not to get it all sticky. He made me promise to return it the minute he asked me to, and he was serious.
“If my dad finds out you have that,” he said, “he’ll kill you.”
I was willing to take the chance.
This was Lindy we were talking about. For once I was not afraid.
With her photo in hand, her mysterious song in my grip, his father would have to sprout wings to catch me.