Half World: A Novel Read Online Free
Author: Scott O'Connor
reached up and pulled the chain and the room disappeared.
* * *
The paper rose to the top of the pan, breaking the surface of the developing liquid. A fuzzy image of a woman in the Grand Canyon parking lot, standing by the car next to their station wagon, a cigarette held between her lips while she stretched her arms behind her back. Henry had focused the camera on Ginnie, but at the last instant he’d moved and activated the shutter, photographing the stranger behind his wife.
He lifted the picture from the pan, clothespinned it to dry on the line he’d strung overhead. His first successful print. An image he alone had witnessed and captured and documented. The woman unaware of being photographed, the negative and print seen only by him. An airtight process. A perfect secret.
He placed the next square in the solution and let it sink.
* * *
A box with the cameras and audio equipment arrived. Henry spent a morning attaching it all to the wiring Isaac had threaded through thewalls of the north apartment, positioning the microphones, placing the cameras into the small compartments the boy had cut into the ceiling.
When he was finished, he stood in the south apartment office, looking through the new window, wearing the headphones and listening to the empty-room hiss of the north bedroom. He could hear the faint sound of honking horns from a few streets beyond the open window, and then, just barely, the ticking of his watch, which he had placed under one of the beds. He stopped the recorder, rewound the tape, listened again to the previous few seconds. The just-passed car honks, the old air in the room, the ticking of his watch. He replayed it again, to be sure. The captured moment.
* * *
He gave each of the children a photograph from the trip, which he told them he’d had developed and framed at a shop in the city. Thomas on the banks of the Mississippi with a riverboat paddling in the distance; Hannah blowing a gum bubble at a filling station in New Mexico. Hannah was particularly moved by her picture. She hung it on the wall beside her bed, fascinated with the photo, not so much because of the image but because she couldn’t remember Henry taking it. A recovered instant she hadn’t known she’d lost.
He gave Ginnie a photo from the Grand Canyon, the image he’d taken after he’d snapped the picture of the other woman. Ginnie standing by the station wagon, hair blowing in the wind, hands clasped at her waist. She placed it on the mantel in the living room, proud of both how poised she looked in the photo and Henry’s skill in taking it. She jokingly called it her fashion shoot. Hannah asked her to re-create the pose and Ginnie obliged, lowering her hands to her waist and tossing her hair, eliciting an admiring smile from Hannah, much overly loud whooping and clapping from Thomas.
And my photographer, she said, nodding to acknowledge Henry, who shook his head and raised his hands, waving off the renewed round of applause.
* * *
After dinner in the evenings, while Ginnie washed the dishes and Hannah retreated to her room and her homework, he sat at the table with Thomas and his transit maps and rail schedules. Henry removed his watch and set it on the table and called off times and Thomas pointed to the spot on the map where the train would be at that moment. Twelve-fifteen on the B Geary line and Thomas tracing a finger along the route, bringing it to rest at the correct station. Always the correct station.
Most nights were like this, the two of them at the table until the fraught, complicated bath-time process, Thomas unclamping himself from his invisible railroad tracks and getting into the tub, Ginnie rushing to get him soaped and rinsed before he felt his fuel was completely depleted. If she spent too much time washing his hair or scrubbing his nails, Thomas flew into a frenzy, splashing and kicking, screaming, Henry running in to pull him from the tub, pin his arms to his sides,
* * *
The paper rose to the top of the pan, breaking the surface of the developing liquid. A fuzzy image of a woman in the Grand Canyon parking lot, standing by the car next to their station wagon, a cigarette held between her lips while she stretched her arms behind her back. Henry had focused the camera on Ginnie, but at the last instant he’d moved and activated the shutter, photographing the stranger behind his wife.
He lifted the picture from the pan, clothespinned it to dry on the line he’d strung overhead. His first successful print. An image he alone had witnessed and captured and documented. The woman unaware of being photographed, the negative and print seen only by him. An airtight process. A perfect secret.
He placed the next square in the solution and let it sink.
* * *
A box with the cameras and audio equipment arrived. Henry spent a morning attaching it all to the wiring Isaac had threaded through thewalls of the north apartment, positioning the microphones, placing the cameras into the small compartments the boy had cut into the ceiling.
When he was finished, he stood in the south apartment office, looking through the new window, wearing the headphones and listening to the empty-room hiss of the north bedroom. He could hear the faint sound of honking horns from a few streets beyond the open window, and then, just barely, the ticking of his watch, which he had placed under one of the beds. He stopped the recorder, rewound the tape, listened again to the previous few seconds. The just-passed car honks, the old air in the room, the ticking of his watch. He replayed it again, to be sure. The captured moment.
* * *
He gave each of the children a photograph from the trip, which he told them he’d had developed and framed at a shop in the city. Thomas on the banks of the Mississippi with a riverboat paddling in the distance; Hannah blowing a gum bubble at a filling station in New Mexico. Hannah was particularly moved by her picture. She hung it on the wall beside her bed, fascinated with the photo, not so much because of the image but because she couldn’t remember Henry taking it. A recovered instant she hadn’t known she’d lost.
He gave Ginnie a photo from the Grand Canyon, the image he’d taken after he’d snapped the picture of the other woman. Ginnie standing by the station wagon, hair blowing in the wind, hands clasped at her waist. She placed it on the mantel in the living room, proud of both how poised she looked in the photo and Henry’s skill in taking it. She jokingly called it her fashion shoot. Hannah asked her to re-create the pose and Ginnie obliged, lowering her hands to her waist and tossing her hair, eliciting an admiring smile from Hannah, much overly loud whooping and clapping from Thomas.
And my photographer, she said, nodding to acknowledge Henry, who shook his head and raised his hands, waving off the renewed round of applause.
* * *
After dinner in the evenings, while Ginnie washed the dishes and Hannah retreated to her room and her homework, he sat at the table with Thomas and his transit maps and rail schedules. Henry removed his watch and set it on the table and called off times and Thomas pointed to the spot on the map where the train would be at that moment. Twelve-fifteen on the B Geary line and Thomas tracing a finger along the route, bringing it to rest at the correct station. Always the correct station.
Most nights were like this, the two of them at the table until the fraught, complicated bath-time process, Thomas unclamping himself from his invisible railroad tracks and getting into the tub, Ginnie rushing to get him soaped and rinsed before he felt his fuel was completely depleted. If she spent too much time washing his hair or scrubbing his nails, Thomas flew into a frenzy, splashing and kicking, screaming, Henry running in to pull him from the tub, pin his arms to his sides,
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