Sentencing
I see I
made the papers again today. There's even a picture buried back on page
seventeen. It's the same one they featured during the trial: a picture
of Lizbeth and me together at the lake. Lizbeth is sitting, huddled
really, in the midst of that great jumble of boulders that mound alongside
the cliff by our cabin. It's a good quality print, good composition,
with the massive shadowing of the rocks and an angled glint of lake
water breaking up the foreground.
I
remember the day my father took this picture, using a vintage Zeiss-Ikon;
no quickie digital camera for the artist in him. It took most of an
afternoon and I remember the way he kept making us move until Lizbeth
was finally wedged into a crevice at the bottom while I stood spread-eagled
across the gap above her, arms spread wide for support, fingers pinched
tightly into the surrounding rocks. Daddy then rowed out onto the lake
for distance, and leaning his camera
almost into the water, caught the lightness of sky over our heads that
lent a clear perspective to just how high the cliff extended above.
It's
a very good picture—aside from its technical merits—because
it seems to suggest much more than it depicts. It has an asymmetrical
quality that's a little unnerving, chiefly because the picture was shot
at an angle which makes the boulders look slightly off balance. There's
a suggestion that only my out-stretched arms keep the rocks from collapsing
downward onto Lizbeth.
In
his younger days, in the days when that picture was made, my father
was a master photographer. He collected antique cameras and used them,
polished and dismantled and protected them, the way any loving hunter
cares for his weapon of choice. He never had any great financial success
from photography but it was a good source of pocket money, and when
he was shooting for pleasure, he could do extraordinary things.
Like
this picture of Lizbeth and me amongst the rocks. I remember the summer
it was taken. I was sixteen and Lizbeth about five. It was the last
full summer I spent at the cabin with Daddy's family. My parents divorced
when I was ten and for most of the school year I lived with my mother
but summers and the occasional holiday I spent at Daddy's cabin by the
lake.
During
that time I was almost a mother to Lizbeth myself, her natural mother
being less than ten years older than me. Neither of Daddy's wives was
really capable of mothering. My own mother never quite got over his
leaving. She was beautiful and so men liked her but she never seemed
to really understand them, nor why any of the husbands she'd accepted
had ever wanted to marry her.
Pictures
can have an instinctively deep affect on people, especially pictures
that are graphically strong. When the prosecution brought the blowup
of the cliff scene into court, I put up such a fight that my attorney
got it removed but not before the jury had a chance to see it. Daddy
never came to the trial. His wife said he was too weak. But he would
have understood how a picture like that could affect judgment. Those
sharp etched lines where the cliff meets the sky fairly scream aggression,
especially when contrasted with the soft smooth romance of those ancient
boulders jumbled below.
I
was probably jealous of Lizbeth, even when she was small, but I don't
remember that part of it now. In fact, looking back on those years,
I would say that I loved her then more than I've ever lived anyone else
in my life. She was a simple child, small but complete in her way. Unlike
me: I was complicated and difficult, uncomfortably large of body and
face and never quite filled with anything.
Except
perhaps those three or four summers at the cabin when Lizbeth was just
a toddler and looked to me for everything. I remember the expression
in her eyes and the slight pursing of her lips that made her look like
an infant seeking nurturance. We shared a room and some nights she would
climb into bed with me and rub the collar of my nightgown in her sleep.
There was a little strip of satin there and by the end of summer she
had worn it completely off on one side. If she slept on the side where
my gown had no ribbon, I would sometimes wake in the night, choking
from the weight of her arm stretched across my chest so that she could
reach the frayed remaining strips.
Those
were summers filled with posturing and posing. Lizbeth and I were basically
on our own and lots of mornings I would make peanut butter sandwiches
and pour bottles of apple juice so that we could spend our day at the
lake. There was a path but both of us preferred the more difficult route
over the boulder cliff. The longer path zigzagged flatly around, occasionally
becoming overgrown and somewhat reedy. But there was permanence to the
rocks, and where the sun rested, they radiated the same soft warmth
as human flesh.
Sometimes,
when Lizbeth and I would be playing hide and seek amongst the trees
and maidenhair ferns, she would suddenly take a serious turn and I would
know that Daddy was watching us somewhere with his camera.
I
remember once when we'd hiked to the lake and Lizbeth, although afraid
of the water, insisted we go in for a swim. I stripped down to my underwear
and, taking her onto my back, swam out to the farther rocks. Lizbeth
could sense when she was being watched and the knowledge often made
her reckless. One moment she was there, the warm
smooth muscle of her belly tight to my spine, and the next she was gone.
I dived over and over until I felt like one of the rocks myself.
Lizbeth
meanwhile was preening for Daddy atop the boulder pile. Daddy had two
cameras with him that day, his proud old Leica single reflex and a newer
Nikon, both loaded, and he caught the whole charade on film. Lizbeth
loved cameras and Daddy's old cameras certainly loved her.
A
condition of the judge's sentencing is that I must remain within the
confines of the cabin property except when going to work or to prison
to teach my photography class there. I don't mind. In fact, it's given
me an opportunity to organize Daddy's library of prints and negatives.
I'm thinking of arranging the ones of Lizbeth and me into a memorial
binder. Someday he might like that.
The
cabin's been enlarged over the years, but even in the beginning, one
room was set aside for Daddy's darkroom and it was always off limits
except by his invitation. The main doors to the cabin had no locks on
them but the door to the darkroom did. Even now, even with his permission,
I sometimes feel like an intruder going into his room, examining his
things.
One
day I did find some experimental prints that seemed to be hidden. Close-ups
of odd things, things that weren't but still looked like human body
parts. I would never tell Daddy I found them nor would I show them to
anyone else. I haven't even thought about them overlong. No matter what
your age or acts, there are some things you don't want to know about
your parents. All the same, I saw that those pictures were good.
I
remember one summer when Daddy invited a few of his students to visit.
They wanted to see his equipment, his darkroom, and his pictures. He
started dragging out prints of Lizbeth and me, describing our lives,
and one boy who'd been looking at me said: "Wait, aren't these
your daughters, standing right here?"
Daddy
laughed and the students laughed with him, because of course we were
right there and could have spoken for ourselves. But to Daddy, those
pictures were more his children than anything flesh and blood could
ever be.
Winters,
Daddy's family lived in a suburb near the school where he worked as
a teacher, an adjunct professor at a midsize community college. He taught
American History although he would have preferred botany, since nature
was his second interest. He also had a darkroom at the school, which
is gone now, of course, but then he was a faculty advisor for student
publications. That's how he met his second wife. He was a man surrounded
by youth. Not obsessed but immersed in it. He always knew the kids'
songs and styles, clothes and hair trends.
Daddy
taught me everything I know about photography, treating photography
like the science he never got to teach. He helped me prepare the portfolio
that led to my first job. Because of him I included a series of nature
shots, and although I've never done nature professionally, those were
the pictures most commented upon. He was a very good teacher but I know
now that some of his attitudes were wrong. The only relationship photography
could bear to science would have to come about through alchemy.
Viewpoint
is everything. I try to tell my students at the prison that, especially
with regard to nature photography. You must have respect for your subject.
A tree cannot be moved to create symmetry. The camera has to be moved.
The slightest twist of a tripod leg can be just as effective as moving
mountains might have been. I'm exaggerating. But the same general principle
applies to family snapshots or fashion photography.
It's
often hard to tell when I'm getting through to the women at the prison.
Sometimes the form of their lives has been so distorted that I think
normality appears to them through a fish-eye lens. One woman, Almyra,
got permission to show me her quarters. Block seventeen, row three,
cell five. It's an uncommon allowance but my guess is that the
warden wanted me to feel just how narrowly I'd missed those lockup procedures
myself.
I
don't know anything about Almyra's crime; it's not really acceptable
to ask. But cell number five had every square inch of open wall covered
with pictures ripped out of magazines. At first I thought there was
no system, just that she stuck up any which took her interest or which
would fit into the remaining open space. But she was testing me.
Most
of the photos were from travel magazines or nature. That would have
been my choice, too. But when it came to people, Almyra had only a series
she'd torn from some ancient geographical magazine of African natives
with their tired brown breasts hanging bare to the camera.
At
first I thought it was racist on her part, since she's white. That was
the test. I didn't ask, but when I pointed to several, Almyra nodded
and said she felt closer and stronger with those heavy wombed brown
women than she had ever felt to the perfumed plastic tit models in popular
magazines.
I
wish Lizbeth could have known Almyra.
Lizbeth
tried fashion modeling for awhile. She came down to the city right after
college and got a few small assignments but it was already too late.
She'd already tried too many things that makeup couldn't hide. Men,
women, alcohol, drugs. I let her live with me until I couldn't stand
it anymore, until she stole everything she could sell, including her
self many times over. I finally made her go and that's when she moved
back up to the cabin to really begin her death.
I
shouldn't have let her stay with me in the first place, but I never
seemed to be able to say no to Lizbeth. It's funny, because at the trial,
the prosecution's psychiatrist hinted that I might have had some sort
of unnatural hold on Lizbeth. Actually it was just the opposite. I think
he came to his conclusion because I helped her with the abortion. That's
another thing about Lizbeth that I should never have gotten into.
It
was during her freshman year in college. I found a box of Daddy's prints
from that time. Fortunately she did go away for college. I suppose that's
another thing they could blame on me. I thought it was important that
she get out into the world and I insisted that they let her live in
student housing rather than commute from home. She looked so young in
those pictures, still like a child herself. The best one has just her
hair, her neck and one bare shoulder dropped away from the lens. The
sun must be setting behind her but Daddy had side lit her face as well.
She was probably a little cold. Her skin looks tight and all the fine
soft down which naturally covers the human skin is aroused, creating
a rim-lit effect which Daddy has caught like a whole body halo.
I
don't know if she was pregnant in that picture but she had the same
radiant look about her when she was telling me the names she'd picked
out. Maybe they should have let her keep the child. But no, I didn't
think she was capable, either, and the truth is I don't think she ever
would have been. So I was the one who took her down to the clinic.
When
people can't hear, you shout or learn to communicate with your hands.
When they can't see, you buy them glasses or a trained dog. But what
about those who have a congenital lack of feeling or who lose it at
an early age? I've yet to hear of a way to help them out of that.
I
have a whole series of Lizbeth assembled now, in basically chronological
order. They start with her as an infant, swaddled and sleeping on the
lake bank—like something precious hidden amongst the rushes. I
always liked the picture, although I suppose as a child I ruined it
because protruding into one side of the background is the toe of an
incongruous sneaker from me—my father's firstborn child. Daddy
made a big deal of the composition's being spoiled at the time but I
don't know why. It wouldn't have been the first time he cropped me out.
There
must be thousands of pictures here of Lizbeth. Lizbeth at first grade,
first date, first prom, first pimple. Lizbeth first at everything. I
don't think I want to take the time, my sentence isn't that long, but
I'll bet these pictures could almost be assembled and flipped to generate
movement, like those old fashioned movie cards. Some contain just her
and some have extraneous people in them who would jerk in and out of
her life so quickly they'd be more sensed than seen. Her mother for
one. Probably me. Daddy's in all and yet none, of course, since he was
always off camera, behind the lens.
They
could have used such a device at the trial, instead of all that conjecturing.
I think pictures make excellent witnesses. In real life, you blink and
something important is lost. Or you're looking at a person's face and
miss the movement of a hand. With a photograph you can stare as long
as you want to in a way far more personal and
direct than you would ever dare to in real life. A telephoto lens allows
you to zoom in as close as a kiss, only better. Because when two faces
come that physically close, natural vision becomes distorted. But when
you put a lens between, clarity is enhanced.
As
it turned out, I'm glad I agreed to the plea bargain. My lawyer thought
I should let the trial continue. I just wanted to get it over and a
year at the cabin with four hundred hours of community service seemed
fair. It was my lawyer's view that no jury would convict me of first
degree murder, which required premeditation on my part. She thought
I would be acquitted on even a lesser charge. About the strongest evidence
working against me was the phone call from Lizbeth and that suggestive
picture of us amongst the rocks.
I
shouldn't have denied that call. Better yet, I should have refused it
to begin with. It certainly wasn't the first time Lizbeth called me,
despondent over one thing or another. It also wasn't the first time
I told her I wouldn't come, I wouldn't help. But of course like every
other time she asked, I came. She looked so lonely and vulnerable standing
atop the cliff. At first I thought it was just another pose. That she
would never actually jump. She could never do anything without an audience.
And I have to admit that it made me sick to look at what had become
of her.
She
should have jumped. She should, for once in her life, have taken control
and done something for herself. But even at the end, even when she could
barely drag herself up the hill, she couldn't move herself over it.
And whatever Lizbeth couldn't do for herself, she wanted me to do for
her. So I gave her the push she needed.
I'm
sorry now. Not for what happened to Lizbeth at the end, but for all
that came before. I've had nightmares about that picture of the two
of us in the rocks and sometimes I wake with my chest aching from the
weight of supporting that mountain up over our heads.
I've only
seen Daddy once since it happened. Lizbeth's mother brought him to the
cabin and he sat with me like a civilized human being and wanted to
know what had happened to Lizbeth and me. Who was to blame? Should he
feel guilty? And I sat across from him there, facing into the sunlight,
thinking what fine detail I could capture on his face with a single
white reflector and a one-fifty millimeter lens and when he asked about
the guilt, I said no, I didn't see why he needed to feel guilty. After
all, how much guilt can one person bear in a lifetime?
