Fitting Ends Read Free

melodrama or sensationalism. It’s almost romantic, in its way, like those solemn and stirring photos of thunderstorms over the prairie that sometimes appear in magazines like
Life
or
National Geographic
.
    Of course, I don’t know if that’s the way she really saw the thing. But I am one of those who can’t help but see a relation between style and soul. I can’t avoid imagining this eleven-year-old girl, her bike tipped beside her, her gangly bare legs shifting as she steps back—this child standing before a great disaster and slowly, with a purity of self-possession, arranging the scene in the crosshairs of the camera. That is what she was, what she could have been.
    PM 4:01:37
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    My god, more panoramas. They’ve stopped the car—this one has really impressed them. But I’m not really paying attention. I take another long sip of beer, thinking that this one will be the last, this one will put me to sleep. I lean back and close my eyes. I keep thinking of sex.
    I’ve masturbated twice since I’ve been here. Once, the second day of my visit, I kneeled in the basin of the bathtub with the shower running hot on my back; the next night, I did it in bed, surrounded by fistfuls of toilet paper, which I used to clean away the snotty evidence of my passion.
    It bothers me now, thinking of it—considering it again, actually. Ten years ago, I would have been disgusted to learn that I’d still be jerking off at age twenty-five, thwacking away at myself while playing some blurry mental pictures of a girl I’d seen at the airport. I haven’t had a steady girlfriend in over a year. The pathetic twitch of my stockinged feet makes me feel less horny.
    I wonder if I seem pathetic to my sister, or to her husband.
    When I awoke this morning, the baby was already taking her nap, and I slouched through the kitchen in my T-shirt and sweatpants, heading for the coffee. I felt like a brother-in-law—smelly, shiftless, liable to steal a few towels. I could feel it as I crossed the room. She was showered, brushed, dressed in some bright color. Chipper. She is still on maternity leave from the photo-developing store where she works. Picture Palace, it is called, nestled in a mall on the outskirts of the town where we grew up. I could feel her gaze as she turned to look at me this morning, and at that moment she wasn’t anyone I knew—just an anonymous little wife and mommy in the center of her ranch house. She could have been anyone. I stood there, listening as she hummed along deliberately to the soft rock on the radio.
    You’d think that after two years at the Picture Palace she’d at least be able to hold a video camera with some competence. But when I look back at the TV screen, the image is wobbling helplessly. It’s had more beers than I have, it seems.
    This is the bridegroom’s first appearance. She has trained the camera on him at last, and he seems to be posed in front of some great view. He straightens, grinning broadly, as if the majesty of the backdrop has conferred a mantle upon him. But we can’t see the background. She has pulled in too close, and all we can see is my brother-in-law, from the waist up—a typical medium shot. “I think you’re too close,” he says. “You’re not going to be able to see anything.” He waves his hand at her, and she begins to step back, slowly, hesitantly. We can hear the crescendo and decrescendo of a car passing on the road behind her. She keeps stepping back, the frame jiggling, and I can’t help but imagine that she will back onto the highway just as a car comes up the hill. We’ll hear the screech of brakes, her scream, and then the screen will go black. It would be a good scene in a thriller, especially since he keeps directing her to go farther, farther. “Keep on going,” he says. “You’re okay. Keep on going.” His eyes narrow as he waves