Chapter 11 #3
“I was going for an ambiguous image. I’ve always been fascinated by them,” Jackie says.
She trails a finger across the liquid over the photo, sending ripples across the surface.
“Finding new images in the negative space. There’s no background, and no fore.
Just two interpretations of the same thing. ”
“Like a brain-teaser?” Claire says.
Jackie shows Claire to a string of photos hanging above their heads. “Exactly. I have a whole series on flowers. The patterns you can find in the petals. Playing with angles. Light and shadow.”
Claire reaches out, touching the edge of one of the photos. It’s still damp. “How do you come up with this kind of thing?”
“I don’t know. Hidden things jump out at me, I guess,” Jackie says. Claire could swear by the sound of her voice that Jackie is looking at her, not down at the photo, but when she raises her head to check Jackie’s gaze is down on the bins again.
“I wish I could see things the way you do,” Claire says. The hanging photos make all sorts of shapes using flowers—a tulip shot from above, which looks like a king is emerging from the petals bathed by a golden sunrise. A lily that echoes the shape of a ballerina.
“You see things in your own way. You’re an artist,” Jackie says.
Claire scoffs, shaking her head. “I told you, I gave it up when I got married. And I could never make anything like this.”
“What kind of art did you like to make?” Jackie asks.
“I liked to paint everything I could see,” Claire says. She drifts through the room while Jackie pulls the photo out of the liquid with tongs. “And I used to sketch people at the park.”
“Really? Just passersby?”
Claire shrugs. “I like to see what I can capture in a single image. I always feel like I can understand someone better after I’ve drawn them.”
“That’s how I feel about my camera,” Jackie says. She dips the photo into a different bin of liquid, sloshing it around a bit. “The lens is like a filter that helps me see things in a new light.”
Claire keeps following the strings of photos hanging all around. “You really like flowers.”
“I’m terrible at keeping them alive, but I love to photograph them. My father is a florist. He doesn’t talk much, but he’ll talk about plants,” Jackie says drily. She puts the photo into a third bin and carries it to the sink. “He used to tell me the hidden meanings behind all of them.”
“Like acacias?” Claire says. “Your tattoo. Do they mean something special?”
Jackie doesn’t answer for a minute. She seems to be washing the photo under the running tap, and Claire has already accepted that her question won’t be answered when the faucet turns off.
“They mean hidden love,” Jackie says quietly. Her back is to Claire. Her voice sounds strange. “Concealed emotions.”
Jackie clips the photo up to dry with the rest. It drips slowly onto the concrete floor, leaving dark patches near Jackie’s feet that Claire can see even in the dim red light.
“You said you got the tattoo to remind you of something,” Claire says.
“I did say that, didn’t I?” Jackie turns around, drying her hands methodically on a towel. Her eyes are fixed on it, her brow furrowed. “You have a way of getting things out of me.”
“I do?”
“Yes. Without even trying, apparently,” Jackie says. She tosses the towel onto the edge of the sink. “I think I’d tell you just about anything, if you asked.”
Claire wishes above all else that she knew what to ask right now. Her mind has gone blank. She wants to know everything about Jackie, any crumb that she can find, and now when she might actually open up Claire can’t come up with a single thing to say.
“Does the tattoo have to do with the man you loved?” Claire blurts.
Jackie makes a noise. It’s almost like a laugh, but there’s something else to it that Claire can’t figure out. “Right. The man.”
It’s obvious that it was the wrong question to ask. It’s as if an invisible shutter has slammed down between them, and Claire’s stomach sinks. “Sorry. I just—you said hidden love, and I thought—”
“I didn’t get it for a man,” Jackie says.
She’s tracing over the tattoo with her fingers, brushing over the lines of the acacia branch without needing to look.
Her eyes are fixed somewhere to the right of Claire, and totally unreadable—the red light is casting strangely over her features, obscuring some details and sharpening others.
She looks like one of her own photographs come to life. Light and shadow.
It all feels significant, and Claire isn’t sure why. She takes a step towards Jackie, but stops when her hip hits one of the tables. The mystery liquid splashes up, leaving spots on Claire’s dress, and Claire couldn’t care less about possible stains.
It seems to snap Jackie out of her strange mood. She straightens up, dropping her arms and stepping out of the direct path of the light. Her face falls into darkness as she shakes her head a little and heads towards the stairs, slipping past Claire in a wave of herbal shampoo.
“Not that it matters,” Jackie says. “That’s all over, now, isn’t it?”
“Jackie,” Claire says, but without a follow-up question she’s left blinking in Jackie’s wake as she climbs the stairs two at a time.
“Are you hungry?” Jackie calls loudly, disappearing into the upstairs hall. “I’m famished.”
In the light of day, it’s as if their conversation never happened. Jackie is her usual self. The rest of the afternoon passes over pizza and sodas, and Claire tries to set aside the strangeness in the darkroom.
It’s startling, how quickly it all becomes a new norm.
Jackie’s discomfort with the subterfuge of their friendship is clear for the first few days after Memorial Day, but eventually they both slip into the habit—she gives Claire a spare key so that she can come straight inside rather than knocking, to reduce the likelihood of being spied on.
If Jackie phones the house, she only does so when Pete isn’t home.
The ruse of it all becomes second nature.
Claire’s mother is wrong. She has to be. If lying to Pete is what it takes to keep this, then she’ll do it happily.
Perhaps Jackie is changing her, like Pete says. Maybe it’s for the better.