Everything is fine, my adoptive brother wrote to me once, and then it isn’t. Everything in my world is neutral, he wrote, and then it goes dark. Our house depressed me, childhood depressed me, school depressed me, our dog depressed me, my shoes depressed me, my books depressed me, you depressed me, our parents depressed me, the tree outside my window depressed me.
I knew then that his writing to me of everything that depressed him, in combination with his miserable birthday photo, was the first real clue that my adoptive brother had been thoroughly miserable before he killed himself. His suicide had not been out of the blue, it had been arranged and thought out. In order to find more photos of him as substantiating evidence, I had to flip past several grotesque photos of myself from various stages of childhood and young adulthood. As an adult, whenever I saw a photo of myself, I immediately destroyed it, even if other people were in the picture. Of course, I missed a few. Sifting through the pile, I found a picture of myself in front of a birthday cake. I wore a pink polo that I thought made me look more feminine. Tears were in my eyes, my lips were pursed; I looked like a miserable duck. To each look miserable, we were twin infinitives. The point is, I myself did not want to exist photographically, and it was very devastating for most people.
Many years ago, my adoptive mother insisted on visiting me at my college dorm in Iowa.
There are no photos of your family, she observed as we stood together in my dorm room.
It was strange to me, the way she said your family. The way she said your family made it sound like something detached and distant from both of us. She might have been talking about Ethiopia.
Why are there no photos of your family? she asked me. Don’t you miss your family?
I tried to explain my position on photography. It’s just that a second captured on film doesn’t accurately represent the real world, I said to her.
She looked at me as if I were some kind of Native American New Age-y person.
People who call themselves photographers are fake, I went on, the real charlatans of our time. Behind a photo is a perfectly fake person, scrubbed of all flaws, dead inside.
Everyone is attached to photos, I said, and I have no attachment to photos, I never have.
Photos are sentimental, I said, and I’m not a sentimental person.
You’re ashamed of your family, she said, you’ve always been ashamed of your family. What did we do to you, Helen? Why are you so angry with us?
I told her that they had done nothing to me, that they had raised their adoptive children perfectly, that I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
You’re lying, she said, you’ve always had a talent for exaggeration and drama. That’s the reason you went to college, she continued. To hone your dramatic flair. I’m sorry your father sent you here, I’m sorry your father paid for this.
She gestured around the dorm room.
I laughed because we were both standing in a tiny airless concrete cell.
I’m sorry he paid for it, too, I said, I’m sorry he paid for the cheapest college I got into.
No one wanted to hear about my anger, especially not my adoptive mother. Her face came back to me; in my mind, I saw her mouth shaped into a bird beak. Her hands were on her hips in an exaggerated pose of disapproval. She wore a collared shirt with flowers embroidered on it, a shirt she considered to be dressy, the most appropriate shirt in her wardrobe for a weekend college visit.
A few weeks later, an envelope arrived in my dorm mailbox with nothing in it but a truly grotesque family photo taken by a professional photographer at a department store: my adoptive parents and my adoptive brother smiling vapidly in front of a fake brick fireplace. My adoptive brother’s eyes were especially glassy, like a mounted animal specimen. Of course I wasn’t in it, and it pleased me to think of them as a unit detached from my own existence. My college roommate Beth watched me tear it up and throw it away.
You’ve always been a coldhearted bitch, she said with admiration.
16
A policewoman was at the front door. She was peering in through the window next to the door when I happened to walk through the foyer. I just happened to be walking by, fresh from the toilet, when I saw her peering in rudely. I opened the door, hesitantly.
Hello?
Hello. Is Mrs. Moran in?
I’m afraid not. She’s out with the grief counselor.
Okay, dear, what about your dad?
The policewoman seemed to think I was younger than I was, and I couldn’t tell if she wanted to be invited in or not.
I’m checking to see if everything’s okay, she said.
Because of my activism against the police, now that one was in front of me, in flesh and blood, I wasn’t sure how to react. I’m sorry, I’ve been home the entire afternoon, doing nothing, I said, is there anything else?
Well, she said, this is for your mom. She thrust forward a plate with something wrapped in foil.
Out of curiosity, I accepted it, and shut the door.
I brought the plate into the kitchen and removed the sheet of foil. F O I L is a beautiful word, I thought, almost as beautiful as T I M E. On the plate was a white double-layer cake, frosted. I helped myself to a slice, then another, with a large, hefty bread knife. I brought my plate into the den. I had no idea when my adoptive parents would be back, or for how long the house would be this empty, how long I would feel this stillness spreading out in front of me. How silly it is that we organize life with minutes and hours and days and months and years. Time is a human construction, like gender and race and capitalism. I took a few bites of cake. Wild animals don’t have a concept of hours, birds don’t have a concept of days, not even fish… Suddenly, the house phone rang. It took me a moment to see that it was buried underneath a pile of photos.
Hello? I said cheerfully.
It’s Thomas, the voice said, I’m free now.
You were supposed to call me on my cellphone, I said, not my adoptive parents’ house phone.
Sorry, do you want to talk now? I just got off work.
Could you meet me somewhere? I said.
Where?
I haven’t been back here in years and I don’t have a car, so somewhere close by.