Esther looked at her face and started laughing. She walked over to the small desk in the corner of her room and pulled out an old Life magazine. Gretchen had seen tons of these magazines in thrift stores sold for twenty cents apiece, dusty boring rags from the sixties. Esther handed it to her niece and Gretchen opened it to a bookmarked page.
There, in a quarter-page black-and-white photograph, was a woman crouching down, holding a Nikon, this Nikon, while a tank drove behind her and thick black smoke rose in the distance. She appeared to be maybe forty years old, with little round glasses, dressed in combat fatigues.
A WILL OF STEEL:
E. E. AXTON PHOTOGRAPHS ANOTHER WAR
Gretchen looked from the page to her aunt, whose eyes were dark and bright. It couldn’t be. Her heart was pounding hard. How had she never even considered the last name and the possibility of being related to E. E. Axton? Even if she was only a kid, how had her mother neglected to tell her they were related to E. E. freaking AXTON? This seemed the biggest omission, maybe the biggest lie of her childhood. What else didn’t she know about her own life?
“Another war,” Gretchen whispered, looking at the article.
“Yeah,” Esther said. “Vietnam. Before that I was in Poland,” she said, “then Japan.”
Gretchen was stunned. E. E. Axton had photographed Auschwitz, Hiroshima. No wonder she’d been holed up in this house for decades, drinking, acting crazy. No wonder she wasn’t all that bothered living near the site of a mass murder.
Who knew what she’d seen in Vietnam—or in World War II. Gretchen looked around again at the photographs on the wall. She could now see that some of them were very old.
Esther just never knew how to come home, Gretchen thought. And this place must have been as good as any.
Her aunt gave her a look of wry recognition, then held out the camera and said, “You want it?”
“Are you kidding me?”
“I’m not kidding you,” Esther said gravely. “There’s a new roll of film in there and a few dozen more rolls in the darkroom. It’s yours. Right now. Here.” Gretchen reached for it but Esther pulled it away quickly and said, “On one condition.”
“Anything.” Gretchen was in such awe of this woman and her work she couldn’t believe she was standing in the same room with her, let alone related.
“You stay,” Aunt Esther said. “The whole summer or until the work is done. You stay and you continue the work. You’ll see,” she said. “Take the camera. You’ll see. There’s such a short time left. Only days until the anniversary. You’ve got to get out there and capture the light. Document it. But be careful. Very careful. You’re a smart girl or I wouldn’t do this.” Then in a lower voice, almost a whisper, she said, “When they realize I’m gone, they’ll take the house. So don’t leave the house.” She trailed off, and her eyes went blank and hollow.
Gretchen reached out and held her great-aunt’s hand. She wanted the camera, but it was becoming horrifyingly clear there was something very wrong with the old woman, and she wanted to help. Esther needed to be in some kind of assisted-living facility. She needed medication, or maybe to go live in an old-folks home for retired war reporters or something. This was just too much.
“Will you promise me?” Esther asked, looking deeply into her eyes.
“Yes,” Gretchen said. Thinking, I am promising I’ll get us both the hell out of here. Tomorrow. I am promising I’ll get you somewhere where you can get the respect you deserve.
Her aunt, looking relieved, handed her the camera. Gretchen took off her Leica and placed the Nikon around her neck in its place.
“I started seeing them first when the camps were liberated,” Esther said, talking quickly, her eyes glazing over. “And then in Vietnam, everywhere. Everywhere. In the cities and in the villages, even taking a break back at the hotel. They followed me to the hotel. I got used to it. Knew I was doing something no one else could do. That it’s a part of who we are—this family. That’s why I came back here when it was over. I’m done, Gretchen. But someone has to finish the work.”