Fitting Ends Read Free Page A

his hand at her.
    Of course nothing happens. She stops at last, and he is framed in what I remember from a film class as a
plan américain
, a full body shot. There is the mountain range he wants so much to appear in front of—jagged peaks coated by a pale haze, like a picture seen through a sheet of onionskin. He shifts; he waits for his presence to be recorded there.
    PM 5:24:11
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    So many gaps! Over an hour has passed since they last turned on the camera, and you know that so much has happened in the space between one jump cut and the next. They talked; moods shifted; subtle plays of interpretation and intent have been calculated as their conversation in the car ambled on, whirring smoothly and then slowly. Their minds wandered through miles of memories, associations, abstractions.
    But all this has passed. It has evaporated, like steam or smoke, so that all that remains are atoms and molecules, un-traceable and free floating, combining at last with other detritus to form dust, or rain. Who remembers what they were thinking twenty minutes ago? What was the last thing you thought before you fell asleep last night? Who knows what motivated a certain choice of words, or why the expression of a listener, a certain eye movement or flicker at the mouth, was interpreted in the way that it was? None of that remains.
    And yet a tape such as this one is saved—these images, always ruined by the inescapable self-consciousness of the performers, by the camera’s moronic lack of subjectivity. This, which says nothing about who my sister was or what’s inside her,
this
is permanent.
    They’ve set up a tripod, or perhaps they’ve merely balanced the camera on the hood of the car. In any case, they both appear in a frame that is obviously not handheld. My brother-in-law leads. He glances back at the camera, then stops. They are at some scenic turn-off again, it must be fairly high up because there are patches of snow on the rocky slopes in the background. They stand there for a moment, facing each other, both in profile.
    And then he starts to sing. It isn’t clear at first, but slowly his voice grows bolder, and his thin tenor strains distantly from the speakers.
    â€œI’m on top of the world,” he sings, “looking down on creation . . .”
    He lowers himself uncertainly to one knee at the second chorus, spreading his arms wide, like some old vaudeville actor rehashing
The Jolson Story
, a sweep to his gestures. For a time he holds an imaginary microphone in his fist, then forgets and spreads his palms, letting it fall to the ground with what would be, I imagine, a clatter of feedback.
    I watch my sister’s face. It expresses the usual sort of pain we feel when someone sings to us. How are you supposed to react at such a moment, especially if you know that it’s being recorded for posterity? How do you hold your posture—what expression is appropriate? You can see these questions pass over her as he sings. She tries at first a polite attitude of attention, her arms limp at her sides; then a more responsive pose, smiling or nodding or putting a flattered hand to her throat as he goes through his various mimelike maneuvers. She’s mortified, though. You can see that in the furtive flicks of her eyes toward the camera.
    The person I grew up with, the one I knew, is in there somewhere. I press Pause as she looks sidelong, and there she is—this is her, really, I think—though the image trembles as it is held there and thin white static lines blur across her face. That’s my sister.
    There was a time, about five years ago, when my sister was once wholly the person that I must now use the Pause button to locate. Which is to say that she, the former she—or my construct of what she was—has slowly disintegrated. This sidelong glance, for example, exists here as only a few seconds of expression, barely noticeable. But once, such an ironic look would