Chapter 5
The first hour of the party goes just as I expected it would, gathering guests in small groups and pairs and counting down to “Say ‘Happy Anniversary’!” Faced with the camera lens, some fiddle with their hair or try to smooth away fat by smoothing their clothes, while others freeze in place with gleaming plastic smiles.
In either case, the resulting shots will be lifeless, like the studio family portraits from years ago that hang on my own living room walls.
Samantha will be pleased.
As the hours pass, the party’s taut atmosphere begins to loosen.
Voices rise, raucous male laughter explodes now and then, and a low bank of cigarette smoke hangs just below the living room ceiling.
Someone has cranked up the volume on the background jazz music—Hal’s favorite—and a few guests sway languidly to the beat.
I start to tense at every loud sound, as if wandering through a hostile landscape.
I don’t like noise, crowds, or parties; I try gulping champagne to fortify myself.
As the wine warms and loosens me, I start to drift through the rooms more easily, hoping to catch a glimpse of Tom.
Patty, my neighbor from across the street, calls me over to her group of three. Her nails dig into my wrist as she leans close and practically shouts, “Is Tom really okay? My god, when we saw the ambulance, we thought he was dead.”
I pull away from her. She probably wouldn’t have put it that way if she weren’t a little drunk, but it still rubs me wrong. Diana and Mercy, the two neighbors standing with Patty, eye me expectantly.
“He’s fine,” I say. “Just look at him.” I point across the room to where Tom holds court in a circle of semi-balding men. He’s telling a story, gesturing broadly, with the men all nodding along.
“He does look well,” Patty admits, taking a drag from her cigarette and blowing smoke beside my head.
I squint as her eyes search my face. “And how are you? First Rosie, then Tom.” She looks sorrowful, but also intrigued.
It isn’t her pain or grief, after all, and besides, I’m a curious case: a respectable mother and housewife who won’t join the bridge club because she prefers taking pictures.
Walks everywhere with that camera in hand, snapping pictures left and right.
Is it a hobby or a bad habit? Hard to tell, Patty might say.
“Sorry, I see Samantha calling me over. She and Hal need their anniversary portrait taken. Lovely to see you ladies.” I slip from Patty’s grasp and walk toward the far corner of the room.
Samantha hasn’t called me over, of course; she and Hal have already posed several times.
Now she has her arms slung around Hal’s neck and is planting a kiss on his cheek; he rears back with a quick, surprised grimace.
I raise my camera quickly, capturing the moment before his features relax into a smile.
They look at me when they see the flash, blinking and smiling, Samantha leaning into Hal.
I take another shot for show and wave at them before walking away.
When I raise the first print later from its acid bath, I’ll see a drunk, disgusted husband and a sweetly adoring wife.
It isn’t the whole truth about them, but it’s part, and I’ve caught and recorded it with my uncanny eye.
I feel slightly guilty but too lit up after taking a real photograph to feel truly bad.
I think Paul would encourage my behavior, my almost-lack of remorse. Photography is an art, and art can be a razor blade, peeling back layers of civility to reveal stark truths, he told us recently. I found myself nodding along, writing it down.
I move through the rooms now, hungry for more—more opportunities to reveal stark truths.
I feel like I’m ruling the party in my blue satin heels, catching glimpses here and there of the gathering’s dark underside.
I notice the Millers from three doors down, huddled in a corner, clearly having a subdued but vicious fight.
Their faces are taut with anger, though they’re surrounded by blissful party noise.
They stare at me with the flash, but I’ve quickly aimed the lens to the left of them, at a larger group of happy, laughing people.
I move on, spotting and shooting: a smoking man—a stranger to me—leering openly at Rhoda Staunton; my neighbor Maura looking sick to her stomach before rushing from the room; and Tom himself, my Tom, mouth and eyes wide as he entertains his pals.
I hardly notice it’s him, my husband, when I focus and shoot; I only see a man acting like a clown.
I won’t show Tom the finished print, of course—and I tell myself I won’t show Paul either.
Unless it’s very good. Unless all of these party pictures are as good as I think they might be. Unless I feel a distinct need—or even a responsibility—to share my photographs with my professor who specifically requested them. Almost an assignment, I tell myself.
I jump when a hand touches the cool, bare flesh of my upper arm. I think, irrationally, that someone’s come to punish me for my cruelly revealing pictures, but it’s only Samantha. She’s beaming.
“Did you get everyone?” She leans toward me, a little off-kilter, blowing hot booze breath in my face. I tell her I have. Her mouth drops open and she grabs me by both arms.
“You!” She sends another blast my way. “You and Tom! We have to get your picture, too!”
I try to demur, but Samantha won’t hear of it. She takes my hand and pulls me along behind her. We extract Tom from his group and Samantha plucks the Nikon from my hands.
“Oh,” I say, reaching out for it protectively.
I give her tense instructions on how to focus, none of which she hears; she tells us to smile.
I’m certain Tom is grinning; I can smell the booze and cigarette smoke on him, and he leans into me a little more than usual, his hand hot on the small of my back.
It’s too hot, really, so hot I want to shake it off.
When Samantha finishes and hands the camera back, I loop the strap around my neck with a grateful sigh.
“I hope you’re watching it a bit, Tom,” I say quietly, scanning his face. “The doctor said—”
He waves me away. “I’m fine, fine. He told me to relax, didn’t he?
I’m feeling pretty relaxed.” He laughs and gives me a wet kiss on the cheek, not unlike the one Samantha gave Hal.
I probably look like Hal did, grimacing.
I don’t like wet kisses or drunk men. I don’t like my husband when he isn’t himself, and he isn’t himself right now—too loose and hot and silly.
The party is loose and hot and silly, too—and becoming more so by the minute.
I tell Tom I want to go home, but he shakes his head slowly like a child. So I leave him to go to the bathroom.
I’m eager to sit in a locked, quiet room and close my eyes for a moment.
But when I open the door to what I think is the bathroom, the slice of hall light reveals a darkened bedroom instead—the master bedroom.
There on the king-sized bed, a shirtless man is pinning a naked woman down, pressing the flesh of her V-ed arms as he grunts and moves against her.
Her head is flopped back but she brings it up, sees me, and says, “Oh,” with her mouth so perfectly circular that, even in my shock, I think about lifting my camera to my eye.
But I’m frozen. The man never stops moving and grunting but the woman keeps her head up, staring at me, terrified.
I don’t know whether she’s terrified at the sight of me or if it’s the man who terrifies her, if it’s what he’s doing, how he’s pinned her down.
“Stop!” she screams, finally—at me or the man, or both of us—and I slam the door, walk quickly down the hall.
I try another door: locked. I try the next door.
It swings open to reveal a small, empty bathroom.
I lock the door behind me and lean heavily against it, closing my eyes.
Pain goes searing through my middle. I wrap my arms around myself and stumble over to sit on the closed toilet lid.
I hunch my body and tell myself, It was just a couple having sex in the dark.
Having fun. But I don’t believe it. I never saw his face, but I recognized the kind of man he was: the kind who’d held me down and branded my thighs.
I never saw his face, either. Or—I could never remember it, even though Grandmother and the police kept pressing me about it.
Think, Judith, what color were his eyes?
I couldn’t tell them. When I tried to recall his features, they blurred into an awful mask.
Grandmother would sigh in frustration, and tell me he’d never be caught if I couldn’t remember.
As if the burden were mine—as if I alone were responsible for what he’d done.
I feel responsible now, too. When the woman—a stranger—looked up at me, she reminded me of Parade Girl, though there were no tears marring her face. She was in trouble, though, and I left her there. Left her to suffer alone.
I unlock the door and go tearing past a confused guest who’s been waiting for the bathroom.
I fling open the door to the bedroom and see…
nothing, no one. Only a bedside lamp casting a yellow glow over the newly tranquil scene.
I step closer and study the bed, spotting a few telltale wrinkles in the otherwise smooth duvet fabric.
They tried to tidy things before they fled.
I leave and look down the hall toward the living room.
Everything is the same: the nodding, talking, laughing heads, the skein of smoke hanging in the air.
The smell of booze. As I draw closer, I smell more: light body odor mingled with heavy perfume; the tang of imported cheese on people’s plates; and smoke, smoke everywhere.
Veiling everything. I scan all the faces, looking for the couple.
I go from room to crowded room, ignoring Tom as he waves me over to where he stands with two neighbors.
I walk on through the dining room, my eyes furiously searching.
But they’re nowhere. They’ve disappeared.
He took her somewhere—or they left together happily, willingly. Or the woman managed to run away.
“Judith,” Tom says. Right behind me. When I turn, I can tell he’s sobered up a little. “Everything all right?”
“I was just—looking for a couple I saw. Someone I thought I recognized.”
Tom furrows his brow and scans my face. “One couple just left. I don’t think we know them, but I saw them leave,” he says.
My chest tightens at this, to hear they left together.
If it was them. If it was, it means the woman didn’t escape, that he led her out with his hand gripping the back of her neck, pushing her forward.
She might have smiled at Samantha and Hal and wished them well in a tremulous voice before vanishing through the door, into the night, with the man close behind.
“Judith?” Tom asks. My eyes refocus on his face. He looks as weary as I feel.
“I’m tired, that’s all. Can we go home now?” I lean my head against his chest, inhaling the familiar Tom smell of drugstore soap, sweat, and warm skin. A good man, a pure man. Nothing like the one I saw tonight.
I pull back from Tom with a tired smile. He takes my hand and leads me home.