There were pictures of a tired-looking Georgia with a messy braid and hollow eyes staring at the camera with a small smile, a black-eyed infant with a swollen face topped by a tiny blue hat in her arms. There were close-ups of wrinkly feet and miniature fists, of a naked behind and a mass of black hair. Everything documented down to the smallest detail, as if every detail had been noted and celebrated.
As we turned the pages, the time passed. The squalling infant with the bunched up face became a smiling baby with two teeth and drool on his chin. Two teeth became four, four teeth became six, and Eli celebrated his first birthday with a cake that was bigger than he was. In the next shot he had two fistfuls of icing and a bow on his head. In the next picture the bow was gone and there were globs of icing in its place.
“He was the messiest kid. I couldn’t keep him clean. I finally just gave up and let him enjoy himself,” Georgia whispered, looking down at the smiling child. “We gave him his first pair of boots that birthday. He wouldn’t take them off. He would scream when I tried to remove them.” She turned the page and pointed at a picture. Eli was asleep in his crib, his diapered rump in the air, his hands tucked beneath his chest. And he was wearing his boots. I laughed, but the laugh broke in my chest and I looked away quickly. I felt Georgia’s eyes glance off my face, but she turned the page and continued on.
Christmases, Easter-egg hunts, and the Fourth of July. Pictures of Halloween and Eli holding a sack of candy wearing only a cape and a pair of underwear made me think about his Batman pajamas—the pajamas he had on whenever I saw him. “Did he like Batman?”
She looked at me sharply.
“Did he have a pair of Batman pajamas?”
“Yes. He did.” She nodded. Her face was as white as the freshly painted walls behind us. But she turned the page without another word.
There were pictures of camp-outs and parades and the posed shots with slicked down hair and a clean shirt, which he rarely had in the candid shots. He was comfortable in front of the camera and his smile filled the pages.
“He looks happy, Georgia. It was a statement more than a question, but Georgia nodded, answering me.
“He was a happy kid. I don’t know how much I had to do with it. He was full of mischief, full of laughter, full of all the best things, even though I didn’t always appreciate it. Sometimes I just wanted him to hold still . . . you know?” Her voice rose plaintively, and she tried to smile but the smile wobbled and slipped and she shook her head, as if to underline her confession.
“I told you I wouldn’t lie to you Moses. And the truth is, I wasn’t the best mother in the world. I wished so many times that I could just have a second to breathe. I was tired a lot. I was trying to work and go to school and take care of Eli. And I just wished for silence. So many times I just wanted to sleep. I just wanted to be alone. You know how they say, be careful what you wish for?”
“Georgia . . . stop.” I didn’t understand why she was insisting on making sure I knew the “truth.” It was like she felt unworthy of any credit at all. “It looks to me like you did just fine,” I said softly. She swallowed and closed the book abruptly, shoving it off her lap and scrambling to her feet.
“Georgia,” I protested, following her up.
“I can’t look anymore. I thought I could. You’ll have to finish alone.” She wouldn’t look at me, and I knew she was barely holding onto her composure. Her full mouth was taut and her hands were clenched as tightly as her jaw. So I nodded and didn’t chase her when she ran for the door. Then I sank back down to the floor and held the book in my arms, clutching it tightly, but unable to open it. I couldn’t look anymore either.
Moses
AN IMAGE OF GEORGIA glimmered and grew—a laughing mouth and brown eyes, blonde hair flying as if she rode a horse that I couldn’t see. But she wasn’t riding a horse. She was bouncing on the bed. It was a bed covered in a denim quilt trimmed in rope and dotted with lassos. I watched her through Eli’s eyes as she soared up and down once more, and then collapsed around him. Eli’s giggles made my chest ache as if I were the one laughing, as if I were the one who couldn’t catch my breath. Georgia smiled down at me as if to kiss me goodnight, as if I were staring up at her from the pillow that bunched up in my periphery. Then she was leaning in, kissing my face. Kissing Eli’s face.
“Goodnight, Stewy Stinker!” she said, nuzzling the curve between his shoulder and his neck.
“Goodnight, Buzzard Bates!” he responded gleefully.
“Goodnight Diehard Dan!” she immediately shot back.
“Goodnight, Butch Bones!” Eli chortled.
I came awake shivering with a stiff neck and a wet cheek where I’d slobbered on the photo album Georgia had left. I’d fallen asleep clutching it, and it had ended up beneath my head on the floor. I wondered if it was my discomfort that had awoken me, or if it was the dream of Georgia kissing Eli goodnight, but I eased myself up and rose to my feet, only to feel the all-too familiar sensations of unwanted company. My fingers flexed and began to cool and I pushed back the overwhelming desire to fill the freshly painted walls with something else. Something alive. Or something that once had been.
I tested the waters carefully, resisting the call of creation, and I peeked through the shimmering falls, trying to get a glimpse of who it was that waited on the other side. I wanted to see Eli again. I was afraid he wasn’t coming back.
At first I thought it was Molly. Her hair was similar, but as I let the waters thin, I could see that it wasn’t. I let her cross, keeping my back to the wall, watching her curiously. She didn’t show me anything. Didn’t send images of loved ones or pieces of her life gone by. She just walked toward the longest wall in the family room, the wall Tag and I had covered in white paint. We’d covered all the walls, erasing everything. She laid her hand against it, almost in memorial. It reminded me of the way people traced the names of the soldiers on the Vietnam wall Tag and I had visited in Washington DC. That wall hummed with grief and memory, and it drew the dead when their loved ones visited.