6. Photograph
PHOTOGRAPH
BOYCE AVENUE & BEA MILLER
EMORY
“So how many of those do you have?” Molly inspects Jordan’s tattooed forearms as he inspects Pamela from head to toe.
I have to admit, I’ve done a bit of inspecting of my own. For science… and the tea my sister will inevitably ask for later. Nothing more.
Intricate patterns of ink trail across the expanse of Jordan’s tanned arms, hidden under the cuff of the denim button down he’s wearing.
Flowers, a compass, the wing of a butterfly.
I wonder what possessed the clean-cut, quiet med student I once knew to cover himself with so much art.
It’s a bit of chaos, where twenty-something-year-old Jordan appreciated structure and order.
It’s funny what ten years can do to a person.
How time and life shape each of us so differently, leaving behind glimpses of who we were at ten, fifteen, and twenty but evolving us into completely new beings.
It’s survival adaptation. The physiological, sociological, and every day behaviors we have to change so that we can simply live. Breathe. Exist.
I think about the girl I was ten years ago and know that I’ve been so irrevocably changed, I’d hardly recognize myself if I were to meet her right now in this barn.
So I can’t help but wonder what stories the art on Jordan’s body would tell me about the ten years he’s been missing from my life.
Was he as affected by James’ death as I have been while he was off evolving into the man he is now?
Where has he been? Why did he leave—though I suspect I know the answer—and why is he back?
Then I remember, repeating to myself the mantra I only just told Dinah this afternoon: I don’t care.
I can’t. I’ve got a life and a daughter, and a farm to lose, and I already lost Jordan a long time ago.
We’ve been in the barn for a while now, giving me ample time for a near-complete mental breakdown, unbeknownst to my companions.
Molly has, therefore, also taken this time to ask an exhaustive list of questions for the anomaly—a man—kneeling in the hay.
“Do all motorcycle riders have tattoos, or is that just your thing?”
Jordan closes his eyes, stethoscope pressed against Pam’s shrinking belly, and a wavy lock of dark blonde hair falling just across his forehead, listening intently before he removes the device and wraps it around his neck. “Too many to count, and tattoos and motorcycles aren’t mutually exclusive.”
He winks at her, and Molly mouths, mutually exclusive.
I just know she’ll be finding a way to work that phrase into conversation at some point.
She whistles long and low, something her Uncle Jacky taught her to do when she’s impressed, before she launches into a rapid fire inquisition now that it seems Jordan has reached a pause in his examination, though she doesn’t actually give him time to answer.
“Did they all hurt? Which one hurt the most? I think I want an alpaca tattoo on my cheek. It has to be sparkly, though. Or at least with colors. Or maybe it will be a corsage. My Uncle Jack brings me corsages every week. Do you know what a corsage is? Could I ride your motorcycle sometime?”
Yeah, that’s never gonna happen. Tattoos or motorcycles.
“I bet your mom was real mad when she found out about all of these. Especially that one.” Molly scoffs and leans forward, poking her pointer finger into the wing of a bird peeking out on the back of Jordan’s neck, the very tattoo Dinah will want to know every detail of—Jack would be so proud.
Jordan chuckles, a sound that grates against my skin. Too familiar, and yet, foreign. Like the wisp of a memory I can’t quite grasp onto.
“Molly!” I grab her errant hand and pull her flush against my front, resting my hands on her shoulders. “Personal space,” I remind her. “And, we don’t touch stranger’s… skin.”
Excellent reprimand, Emory.
“We aren’t strangers though, Mama. We have nicknames and everything. Right, Dr. Doolittle?”
Jordan lifts his knuckles, the only piece of skin I can see untouched by ink, and pumps them against my daughter’s. “Right, Little Red. Ask me anything you want. We’re not strangers at all.”
I think I must be having trouble controlling my face, because when his gaze flicks to mine, Jordan changes course.
“But, I mean… you’ve got to be sure to obey your mama, alright?
If she says to cool it, ya gotta listen.
” He pulls the ends of the stethoscope back and forth across the back of his neck. “You know my mom, Dr. Rafferty—”
Molly gasps, impressed. “Dr. Raff is your mom?”
“Yeah, she is.” Jordan smirks and nods, rubbing his hands soothingly along Pam’s snout and between her ears. She leans lazily into him, as charmed by the blast from my past as Molly. The little traitors. “And you better believe if Dr. Raff tells me to do something, I do my best to listen.”
“She’s so cool. You’re lucky.” Molly has admired Jordan’s mom since she could toddle after her around the farm on well checkups for the girls.
If she goes on to become a veterinarian, it will be thanks to the natural love for animals she inherited from her daddy and, in large part, because of Dr. Rafferty’s influence.
“I think your mom is pretty dang cool. Raising you to be so strong and smart and taking care of this farm. You are the lucky one.”
The compliment scratches against the delicate balance of plates I’m spinning, nearly toppling this one-woman circus of mine. Because, though I try with all my might, I’m failing. Abysmally. And for whatever reason, I don’t want Jordan, more than anyone else, to know.
Jordan pats Pam’s side and stands, towering over us from where we’ve been seated on hay bales, waiting for a health report.
Leaning against the stack of bales, he says, “Listen, I need to talk to your mama for a few minutes, so why don’t you go round up some of the girls to introduce me to.
And then later, I’ll tell you all about when I knew your mom…
and how cool she was when she used to ride on a motorcycle. ”
“What?! No way!” Molly’s jaw drops and she turns to me like I’ve been living a lie for her nine and three-quarters years of life. “Do you have tattoos, too?”
Jumping up, I brush stray hay from my jeans and pull my girl up with me, shooing her from the barn. “That’s enough of that. Go on and find some of the girls in the front pasture. We’ll meet you there in a second.”
Molly nods, begins to scamper out of the barn, but then stops in her tracks and asks, “Dr. Doolittle, can you stay for dinner?” She bobs on her toes with her hands in her pockets, holding back her excitement.
“On Friday nights, Mom lets me eat all the cereal I want—as long as I put blueberries and bananas into the mix—and we watch The Princess Bride in our jammies. They are mutually exclusive. But I bet you could wear what you’re wearin’ now, this time.
And next time, you can bring your PJs. You do wear PJs, right?
Because this kid in my class, Garth”—she rolls her eyes and spits out her tongue like just staying Gassy Garth’s name is repulsive to her—“he says his dad sleeps naked. Can you believe that? No jammies. And he has a wife! Are you married? My mom doesn’t have a husband because my dad died before I was born, but she never mentioned that he slept naked—”
“Molly!” I love this child, but she will turn every hair on my head gray.
Jordan’s doing a poor job of holding back his chuckling beside me.
An alarm goes off on my phone. The one telling me it’s time to feed the girls and get everyone on the farm to their respective beds for the night.
“Dr. Love can’t stay for dinner. He’s too busy.
And we need to do chores before movie night. ”
She deflates, firmly planting her heels on the ground. “Oh. Okay.”
Her big green eyes become sappy, puppy-dog ones, immediately cast down like I’ve stolen her favorite bone.
“Next time, Little Red,” Jordan says apologetically, though I doubt after ten years of absence, he’s all of a sudden interested in spending any extra time here, let alone eating cereal on a Friday night, when he could literally be anywhere else.
“Yeah, okay.” Molly smiles halfheartedly.
I tell myself I’ll make it up to her with sprinkles in her cereal tonight, and whipped cream, and probably a slumber party. As I work out the internal guilt of disappointing her, she rushes from the barn, quickly out of sight, heading in the direction of the front pasture.
“Sorry,” I say, crossing my arms. “She’s got no filter.”
Jordan smiles. “I like her. She’s…”
“Chatty? Charming?” I can’t help but smile imagining how very delighted my girl will be to describe every single detail of those tattoos when she recounts them all for Dinah the next time we see her. “Maybe a little judgemental about your tattoos?”
“Maybe a little.” He nods, chuckling softly. “But mostly, she reminds me of James.” And just like that, the unspoken truce between us shatters. Though Jordan doesn’t seem to notice. “She has his smile, ya know? It’s nice to be around her. Makes me feel like…”
“I know.”
The truth is, Molly is more like James than I ever thought possible.
It’s more than her dimpled smile or the way her two front teeth came in just a little bit crooked, just like his were.
Nature over nurture has proven itself with every passing year that Molly falls more in love with animals, or memorizes the best lines to her favorite movies and quotes them exactly like her dad would, or the way she makes friends easily and for life.
Jordan’s friendship was a testament to that ease.