Chapter 9
He planned on waiting until the next day to start, but two hours after getting home, hauling boxes up the stairs and stacking them neatly by the dining room table, Paul stares down at the tidy piles he’s made after inhaling dozens of Judith’s prints.
He’s lingered with her in desolate small towns, felt the electric pulse of the city, and soaked in the eerie quiet of her suburban neighborhood.
He’s reunited with the sad girl at the parade, who seems just as vividly, painfully alive as he remembers, and he’s examined Judith’s face reflected in store windows, ponds, mirrors, toaster ovens, shards of glass…
in every reflective surface imaginable. Her poses range from powerful to playfully arch; she stares a challenge at the viewer that is completely at odds with the Judith he knew.
But of course, he hardly knew her. Knowing what he knows now, and knowing how she died, he sees disturbing details he missed before: slumped shoulders, averted eyes, a haunted look.
As if she’d seen the man over her shoulder and snapped the shot anyway.
Paul finds himself squinting at every self-portrait for signs of him, even knowing these are the cropped prints, stalker-free.
Was he there? Paul wonders, staring at Judith reflected in a window.
Behind her, you can see the sidewalk across the street and a small part of a field beyond; that’s all.
But was he standing there, somewhere in that space, watching her?
He guesses he’ll find out tomorrow, when he reproduces her self-portraits, just as he promised Tom he’d do.
He’s as eager to look as he is uneasy. Even given the edge he’d have with Marty if he found Judith’s killer lurking in her photographs, it freaks him out.
To see the man who killed Judith—to actually see him, preserved on film.
Paul reaches for a glass of liquor that isn’t there, the ghost of a drink like the ghost of the cropped-out man. He shivers. And steps away from the table—gratefully—to pour himself a few inches of whiskey and light a cigarette.
While he blows smoke into the cold night air, Paul remembers how he learned of Judith’s death.
He was sitting in this same room, in his armchair, watching local news about a “shocking death”—a middle-aged housewife murdered in New Jersey.
Paul didn’t know it was Judith, of course—how could he?
The housewives of New Jersey were legion.
But when the announcer said the body was found in the parking lot at NJCC, Paul snapped to attention. He’d held class the night it happened.
Early the next morning, he called Betty in the main office and asked for the full story.
When she said Judith’s name, Paul felt a moment of vertigo.
Judith Stanley, really? Betty had confirmed it softly and said she was sorry, though there was an edge to her voice.
It wasn’t long after that the police called, but in the quiet, shocked interim, Paul fixated on the way they’d described her on the news: as a stalked and murdered middle-aged housewife.
When she was really, he wanted to say, a fucking artist, a brilliant photographer, an innovator.
Should he call the TV station and tell them?
He didn’t. He couldn’t. They wouldn’t want to hear.
But here he is now, sitting close to the bounty of her work, the proof he needs to say what she was: a fucking artist, a brilliant photographer, an innovator.
Soon he’ll tell Marty, tell Harper’s, then hopefully go on and tell the world.
Yes, despite what Judith told him she wanted.
She was wrong, though, wasn’t she? And if she’d known how she would end—silenced and killed and deprived of her photographic voice forever—Paul is certain she would have changed her mind, she would have given her approval.