Multiple Exposure

By Shana Thornton

MULTIPLE EXPOSURE shares the impact of war, and generations of military service, on a family. The “war on terror” has captured the lives of the U.S. military and their families for over 10 years, and Ellen Masters' husband has been repeatedly deployed. In this novel, Ellen shares her desires to connect with her husband and family, and to discover her own strength by training for a marathon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9780985794705

Book preview

life.

1 EXISTING LIGHT

The cave was dark in the night and all the day. The cave was hollowed out with moans and whirling whispers, and birthed darkness into the light, allowing her self to be used by the water and limestone, the bear, the tribes and visitors. They torched the walls to create a guide, but only the bear could nestle, could soothe and settle the milk in her breasts. Those paws scratching out a low dip for a bed. Palm of the earth cupped for their hairy grunt and slumber. The bears didn’t know anything about graffiti, the stuff I spray-painted when the boys held my feet in the palms of their hands. They didn’t know those feet kicking the columns, pounding, pounding, pounding repetitions to topple the innards of the interior. Another sweaty boy’s running will—his full might to kick a column in the cave formed by a patient drip. Hacking to sever the crack at the base of a stalagmite. Those bears didn’t see it. They already left and didn’t allow the invisible to consume them. The bears took those hefty strides. They followed a path out of here, to a range that jutted onto higher elevations. Their mother led the passage and they had been gone for so long that we almost forgot this place belonged to them. People had forgotten too much about the cave and its inhabitants, and out of what was left, we wove the lies with our own history.

*****

Memories filter in and drift out again, and it’s easier for me to remember other people’s histories, and facts about their lives, rather than my own youth. I do remember the first plum I ever ate, probably because my dad died that year, and everything changed for me. I can’t recall when the hallucinations began, but around this time they started to take shape. The star Sirius was somewhere in the sky overhead illuminating the hot breath of the Big Dog constellation. The Dog Days of summer baked the grass in the field where my cousins and I drank the juice from plums. I was seven and the only girl. My cousin Jordan was a year older and naturally curious about spiders and anatomy. He had three younger brothers, each a year apart. My older brother Tyler was twelve, and too sophisticated to be curious about anything. I was submerged in the ways of boys who wanted to be men—their world of searching, tracking, tagging, and classifying.

Aunt Darcy gave us red waxy plums from the family trees used for making brandy. The plum trees my family cloned over and over swelled with virgin juice that was called almost too good to be fermented since they produced good eating and drinking fruit, or so I had heard. Even though I was offered plums all my life, the puckering look on someone’s face created my easy refusal to bite into one until then. That summer day I don’t recall any reluctance. My teeth simply tore into the skin, puncturing the taut dark exterior that gave way to the soft, sweet flesh inside. I slid a piece of plum into the corners of my mouth to chew. Just below the ear, my jaw caught and jumped with the sharp ripple of waxy sweetness that escaped from the skin of the fruit. My nose squished itself into full lips with a hard pucker. My eyes shut and fluttered and opened wide. I quickly took another bite and held the juice from the skin in the dip of my tongue. The plum contained the perfect tartness. No other fruit, or even candy, could match it.

Aunt Darcy sat on the shaded patio connected to the greenhouse, where trees had been grafted. She called with one echoing shout that pitched itself on the end of my name. Ell—LEN! Then she flicked her fingernails into the sun above her head, waving me toward her. I was barefoot. The juice of the plum ran down my arm and chin and streaked across my feet. As I approached the patio, I picked up my shirt again to wipe away the stickiness.

Don’t show your navel to the boys, Aunt Darcy whispered as she put up a flat hand with cinnamon-colored nails as a sign that the boys should not come any closer. They trailed behind me and were closing in quickly. I was confused.

Your belly button, she said. Don’t show it to the boys.

I didn’t understand. I looked down at my stomach and expected to see something suddenly different about my belly button—perhaps an extra oozing body part, a sign that said NO boys allowed, a black hole into outer space. But there was only a wrinkly little indention as if a balloon had been tied off and floated far away somewhere. That’s how I began to imagine it sometimes once Aunt Darcy brought it to my attention—that it was a secretive area of the body.

Aunt Darcy continued, You’re growing into a pretty girl and you shouldn’t show the boys your navel. That’s private. She whispered even though they couldn’t hear us.

I didn’t show it to them.

I know you didn’t mean to, but when you wipe your mouth, they can see it. Boys are curious. Here’s a towel so you can wipe your mouth. Just be careful and don’t raise up your shirt in front of the boys!

I kept tugging at the bottom of my shirt the rest of the day. My cousins and brother walked in the crispy golden grass, combing it for spiders and other bugs. Jordan kept aquariums that housed black widows that we found around Granna’s garden. Knobby and loud, Granna was an atypical grandma, and I created her name when I was a baby with fat legs and no memory retention. Granna wouldn’t spray insecticide to kill the spiders no matter how many we found. Jordan had found a black widow in a web underneath a G.I. Joe Jeep. Another was under the lip of the concrete stairs leading to the basement. A brown recluse lived in the retaining wall on the outside of the basement.

Jordan wanted to know what his mother had told me.

Nothing, I said and moved my head so that a clump of my blonde hair fell over my eyes. I turned away behind my shoulder. That was my defense against my cousins. It was a defense that didn’t work later in my life too often, but at least Jordan respected that simple gesture.

At seven years old, I was taller than Jordan and his brothers. Actually, I was almost level with Tyler and he was five years older, almost a teenager. My pale shoulders sagged as I strolled across the field, away from the pack of boys. I’ve learned that this posture signals weakness and invites others who are stronger to follow unless they have more promising prospects for play, so I’ve tried to correct my spooned-over shoulders, among other things.

Come on, tell us, Jordan pestered me and followed, which made the other boys follow too, even my brother. If I had confidently marched across the field, they might have left me alone. But I sneaked a sulking glance over my shoulder.

Jordan begged to know what his mother had said. He trailed after me, repeating, Come on and tell us. When I felt far enough away from Darcy so that the swell of the field obscured the looks on their faces, I revealed that my navel was supposed to be a secret. Jordan asked to see it in order to make sure nothing was wrong with it. He excitedly thought that I might have a deformity of some sort.

A colored navel or one that oozes green liquid, he said laughing. Oh, or a teeny baby might be stuffed in there and if we close one eye and squint, we might be able to see it swimming inside of Ellen’s private parts.

He wanted to see it, and so did his little brothers who nodded their heads in unison. I glanced toward the greenhouse but could only see the top points of glass reflecting the sun. I took a deep breath and lifted my shirt and turned my head to the side with my eyes closed. The boys were quiet. I waited for a few seconds but they were too quiet. I opened my eyes and looked at my navel, then at the boys. They had lifted their shirts and were staring at one another’s navels. Jordan lifted up his shirt too. Looks the same as mine, he said. He stared over at Tyler who squatted to the side of them. What about yours? Jordan asked.

Forget it, gay-wads.

What’s a gay-wad? Jordan asked.

Tyler stood and strolled back toward the house. Stupid little kids, he muttered.

He’s weird, Jordan said and glanced quickly at me. Sorry, Ellen. He let his shirt fall down.

That afternoon we found a scorpion in the grass. Tyler almost stepped on it with his bare feet. We blinked with full-moon eyes. None of Jordan’s field guides mentioned that scorpions should live here.

The scorpion was then housed in its own special aquarium. About a week later, it killed one of the black widows and the brown recluse when my cousins decided to have a fighting competition with the arachnids and insects they had collected. Jordan wanted to know if a spider would eat a scorpion. I couldn’t watch the fights. I saw two minutes of the scorpion versus the black widow. The scorpion unrolled its stinger with a sudden sharp arch that seemed to vibrate repeatedly for an instant then recoiled. I was mesmerized in that moment, but walked away, imagining the terror they both felt.

That was the summer Aunt Darcy decided that I couldn’t shower with the boys or change clothes in the same room anymore, either. I could hear them laughing in an adjoining room. I could hear them arguing in the shower. Another rule came that night when I could no longer sleep in the same room. That’s when I suddenly knew too much without being able to name it. Maybe I tried to forget the disconnection from my family by drinking at such a young age. Maybe my dad’s death and drinking caused the hallucinations of the boy and the Native tribe, or maybe I drank to forget my real life and imagined another one around the cave.

*****

Cumberland Cave had smooth teeth carved into the limestone. Eighty years ago, they were precisely polished stone steps that swayed along the cliffs with deep curves. They welcomed big brass bands performing on riverboats that docked in the city. Musicians from Benny Goodman’s band left the riverside and the city; they cruised out of town and carried trumpets and drums, the clarinet, into the twilight area of Cumberland Cave where they danced audiences into the kingdom of swing.

Under the moonlight, people were pushed by the humidity, smothered toward the cave, where cool air currents gushed out of the darkness. In the white-gloved hands of ladies, fans fluttered beside the delicate moths of dusk. Helen Ward’s voice serenaded across the salty, sparkling limestone. In the pockets of men, you could smell flasks, shots of Tennessee brandy made by my family. Even during the prohibition, the Masters family continued making their traditional plum brandy and bribed the local authorities. Granna said that most of the farmers were caught up in making applejack, brandy from apple trees, but the Masters focused on plums. Smart decision since those temperance ladies waged war on the apple tree cause of the Jack’s trading it and cut them down. Plums made it through. She smiled. The Masters family always turned the tables and my Granna was fond of playing Benny Goodman’s song. Since the mid-1800s, the plum trees had been cloned and cultivated with care about a mile from Cumberland Cave. Masters Brandy quenched the thirsts of the cave’s visitors for generations and those stories grasped my attention since I could prop my head up to listen and skin my knees on the trails surrounding the park.

The afternoon I found the turtle, I had sneaked and tried my first sips of the family brandy. After the hot flush of swiping the brandy and running away, my young mind didn’t think about which direction, just away, I found myself perched on a short bluff close to Cumberland Cave. Then, I wandered the trails until the heat blurred my vision and dragged my shoulders down, until I stumbled and scraped my palms, elbows, and kneecaps. Tiny rocks and dust embedded into the skin and got trapped in the blood. Anticipation quickened my pace as I approached the cool entrance to the cave, longing to sit in the cold shade and place my hands on the stones to stop the stinging sensation that pulsed across my limbs. I was thinking about the stage and what it must have been like to hear the big bands. In our house, Granna had pointed to a photograph of Helen Ward, her name signed with a red pen across the bottom. One of Edythe Wright in a thin dress and Tommy Dorsey with a trombone. All signed to The Masters Family. The music, You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby, an elusive sunny side of the street, filled my childhood with nostalgia for something I had never experienced.

On the trails, I imagined that Edythe Wright removed her high heels while she walked around the lake toward the cave. I wanted to envision where she stood on the stage. My sweaty hair clung to my face and shoulders and caused a constant irritation. I climbed the ramp to the cave and stopped while I twisted my hair swiftly into a knot on the top of my head and wound a band around it tightly. It fell forward and perched itself like a horn on the front of my head. That’s when I saw the turtle sitting in the center of the platform. Its eyes closed slowly as if absorbing me. Then, it looked as if it had been awaiting my arrival. I could feel its focus on me in the emerging silence. Turtle? I said aloud. Turtles stretched their necks, poised on the toppled dead trees along the edge of the lake, but I had never seen one on the platform.

As I walked closer to the turtle, the smile slipped from my face. I saw the slick, wet pulse oozing with yellow running tissue and dark pieces of jagged shell crushed into the tender, exposed flesh. Part of the shell splintered into the turtle’s back right foot. The turtle moved its head in and out of the shell with sleepy old eyes. The shell looked like it had been smashed. My head was hot, and I felt trapped as I looked around, enraged, searching for the boys responsible for the cruelty.

No people were in sight. There was silence except for the cicadas, chirps from cardinals, squirrels bouncing through leaves. The turtle retreated in and out of its splintered and broken shell, stretching its neck toward me, in a constant rocking motion, as if at some point when it retreated, the darkness would be there waiting for her, the home that she had always known would cover her safely once again. I searched at the turtle’s foot, followed the bloody trail twenty yards to a small pool of blood that shined in a circle of sunlight filtering through the trees.

I looked up and found myself standing underneath the bluff that hangs over the cave’s mouth. My head pounded at the temples as my hands trembled. Above me, a rock ledge was lush with ferns, small cedar and oak, violets, stones, and leaves. The turtle had fallen onto the concrete in an effort to reach water. It crashed onto the pavement. Dropped, probably flipped back feet overhead at least once, just like in one of those lazy cartoons. Only in real life, the turtle fell from the rocky, rugged overhang where vines and tiny rocks and water dripped onto the concrete platform that was poured into the mouth of Cumberland Cave.

I quickly ran back to the turtle and knelt in front of it. As I glanced through my hair that had fallen into my face, I saw a boy, dark with black hair falling down his back. He carried a fishing pole made from river cane and glanced over his shoulder in my direction, but continued forward. Hey! I shouted, thinking maybe he could help me know what to do. I shouted again, closing my eyes in the middle of the shout, and when I opened them, he was gone. Gone. I looked behind me, and nowhere did I see him. The turtle pushed its head into my hovering hand. I was astonished by the turtle’s determination to reach the water—the continued journey after the tragedy of its fall. After the shocking smack of concrete, the turtle had dragged itself toward the water, bits of shell falling along the way, slivers of flesh, a deep wet stripe of blood that didn’t completely fade for months. I returned daily and could mark the spot years later, even if I couldn’t really see it anymore but had only memorized the location from my reverence to the turtle.

I didn’t know what to do, except kneel there in front of it, my hand stretched out, hovering over the dark, scrabble skin of the turtle’s legs and neck. Its smooth shell screamed and swooned and pierced its wet, fragile body. I stood there without any ideas about how to stop the pain. The turtle wanted to go to the water, I thought, but it didn’t make it. And suddenly, I couldn’t deal with discovering more pain, more death. I trembled and turned away from the turtle and started down the ramp again, looking for the boy. I stopped. My shoulders sagged and swayed, and sweat slid around my face and tickled my skin and ears. That irritated me. I couldn’t get the image of the turtle’s eyes out of my mind, and the way it stretched its neck out to me, and just as abruptly, I turned and quickly scooped up the turtle. I didn’t know what made me do it, but I had to. The wet blood stuck to my palms. I bobbled the flesh in my hands thinking that I didn’t want to add to the turtle’s pain while it tried to retreat into its home. Small, quick streams of blood wrapped swiftly around my wrists and dripped to the ground as I turned the corner. At the shoreline, I closed my eyes as tightly as possible, and whispered, Please forgive me turtle. I want to take away your pain, and placed the turtle in the water. It sank with blood catching the clouds of mud and algae in the water. The feet tried a frenzied run, a quick thrash and let go. I saw its legs fan limply against the mud before the water was too clouded to see any more details.

As I hurried around the lake and crossed the creek, I noticed the boy staring from the bank with his fishing pole in hand. His dark skin had blended into the trees that stood on that edge of the lake, where old trunks spilled over and started the stream running to the river. That same stream passed Aunt Darcy’s house. I stopped and faced the boy. His eyes were fixed on mine and his mouth was a straight line, as if he knew what I was doing, that I had killed the turtle. I wondered what I would do if he said something to me about it, but he looked down at the end of his fishing pole where a shiny fish flopped in shattered glints on the end of the line. Then, he glanced at me through the corner of one eye as he tilted his head with a smile. His black hair suddenly arched away from his back and his body thrust itself as his arms shook in the air, in imitation of the fish. He laughed and pointed at me and flopped his arms again. A car horn blared in my ears suddenly and I looked down at the pavement, the street, the Cadillac and the man waving his arm and beeping. I moved to the side of the street, bewildered by how I was there, and looked back to the shoreline, but didn’t see the boy. The man rolled down the window, You alright? You lost?

I pointed ahead of me, into the sun, I live just up there. Sorry, I thought I saw someone, and I didn’t see you there.

Try to pay attention. You could get ran over.

I was walking by this time. Sorry, I interrupted.

Hey, have you been— The driver began to ask but another car was behind him, horn beeping, driver throwing up a hand. Hurry home, kid, he said and muttered, Masters family… always… as he rolled up his window and flipped his sun visor down.

2 DEPTH OF FIELD

I fell in love with David amid all the books and his photographs of every corner. Falling in love helped me remain disconnected from my thoughts. You might think that since he was a photographer and we built a small darkroom in the basement of the house we rented that I’d have all kinds of darkroom intensity and passion to talk about, but I don’t. The truth is, the darkroom cloaked us, and when we were in the same space with all those chemicals, I couldn’t smell our sweat and heat and saliva. I liked that, to be alone with our smells and know they combined to make something different. Too much covered it as the years passed. I always wanted light, to be able to see what was going on. I didn’t close my eyes when I made love to David, not then anyway.

We met in college. David was originally from Montana, but his dad was in the Army and moved the family all over the Southeast. Just before he retired, he ended up in this town. After David started college, his parents moved back to the mountains. David called them by their proper names then. Phil and Linda were back where they could drive around with a shotgun mounted to the window of the truck, back where people had sense enough to turn on their headlights every time they got into the car to drive, back where you didn’t