Picturing Will Read Online Free

winter-hard. There would be no photograph of eggshells, and there would be no photograph of the crushed plastic in the driveway. At that moment, though, the photograph that would be taken began to exist. A rusty blue pickup started to bump its way into the driveway. She photographed the approach, as documentation. She photographed the man opening the door on the driver’s side and his companion, hopping out the other side. If they saw her, they gave no sign. They walked toward the house, one tall man and one small man with a funny way of walking, never turning to look over their shoulders.
    She waited until they got to the door, then began photographing in earnest. And luck was with her: the wind got in the photograph. A wind blew up, and in an almost palpable way it reinforced the empty space that surrounded the men. Then she moved quickly to stand behind the tripod and photograph the men as the door opened, the lens compressing distance until their truck was no longer a respectable distance from the house but a huge presence, large and threatening. It existed in stark contrast to the branches blowing in the breeze, overwhelming the three small people who stood in the doorway. The housekeeper was squinting against the rush of air. Jody clicked and knew she had the right picture. The photo caption would read: After the Wedding. It would be one of twenty or so pictures she took in the county that winter that, to her surprise, would make people stop dead in their tracks to stare—photographs that revealed what she knew about the world in 1989.

THREE
    I n the late afternoon, the sun moving toward the west struck the globe of the ceiling light, sending prisms of color against the walls, mottling the furniture, and electrifying the edges of the big silver mirror. Jody’s camera equipment was pushed against the back wall. A tangle of cords was piled up in the corner, making her think of blacksnakes stunned in their crawl. Will liked to put his rubber snakes in among the cords. Sometimes he would wind them more neatly and place his collection of windup toys in the corral. Often, when Jody began to pull out the cords, she would topple Godzilla, or a family of apes in graduated sizes. Ah, she thought, staring at her improvised home studio, what a noble profession. She had put on hip-waders to walk into the lake amid lily pads in order to photograph one wedding couple setting sail in a canoe. She had loaned her size-eight shoes to a bride whose heel began to wobble just as she was about to walk down the aisle and had photographed the ceremony in her stocking feet. In the beginning, when she had almost no money and hadn’t believed in her heart of hearts that she could support herself and Will by taking photographs, she had bargained with one groom’s father for a weekly supply of baked goods in lieu of a fee. At least half a dozen times before she met Mel she had wished that she was marrying the man the bride was marrying. She routinely lied in admiring wedding rings that were no more attractive than pebbles. Camera raised, she would close her eyes for a few seconds and pray that the marriage taking place would last, however unlikely it might seem at the moment—that it wouldn’t become some dreary statistic of failure down the road. She often went home with blossoms stuck in her hair and rice in her shoes. She had also gone home and wept, unaccountably.
    Right now, Will was at his Friday-afternoon hobby class. So far, he had made fourteen ashtrays (she did not smoke) as well as a dozen tiny human forms with arms outstretched so that they resembled Mel’s favorite corkscrew. Mel thought that whatever Will produced was a work of genius. Mel had also been presented with several ashtrays and had been told at great length about the ones that broke during firing. The ashtrays were lined up on Mel’s desk at work (when they were in New York last, he had taken Will to see them), and he assured Will that everyone at the gallery