Picturing Will Read Free Page A

white house: leaded-glass windows that ivy would have to be pulled away from when spring came; huge maple trees with gnarled roots that twisted along the ground, and ash trees, recently planted, with slender trunks no thicker than a broom handle.
    Getting out of the car, she stepped on shards of gold crushed in the gravel: the plastic champagne glasses from the day before. Her friend Duncan, who often catered such events, said that pilfering had become such a problem that many of the rich people now relied on plastic for large gatherings.
    Because she thought someone might be watching her approach, she did not stop to photograph the crushed plastic. It was also too obvious a thing to photograph, though she often allowed herself to work her way into feeling something about a place by photographing in a perfunctory way: documenting what was there, then moving on. Seeing the obvious through the viewfinder always sharpened her eye for odd, telling details. Photographing a tree, she would see ants swarm a bit of food on the ground; shooting the side of the house, she would catch the reflection in the window of two trees whose overlapping branches seemed to form the shape of a cross.
    “Do you believe this is the same place where we had all that excitement one day ago?” the housekeeper said, throwing open the door. Jody could tell from her tone of voice that she was truly welcome. Except for the housekeeper’s wiry hair, it might not have been obvious that the woman was black. She wore a black uniform—or an unstylish dress—with a tan down vest. Blue plastic earrings dangled from her ears.
    “You didn’t go on their honeymoon?” Jody said, smiling.
    The woman shook her head. Clearly, she was more than a housekeeper. The day before, she had been sipping champagne and teasing the bride, threatening to slip into the steamer trunk so she could pop out when their ship arrived in Europe.
    Jody walked in, and the housekeeper turned to pour coffee without asking if she wanted any. “He was my second choice,” the housekeeper said, “but I think she did wonderful well for herself.” She handed Jody a mug of coffee. The aroma filled the room. “I want to tell you,” the housekeeper said, “he has got to be some nice boy for me to like him without him having no religious beliefs of any shape or kind. He told me his own parents, out in California, raised him to be an atheist.”
    “Who was your favorite?” Jody said.
    “An Episcopal boy who’s in training to be a doctor. And that has nothing to do with my personal religion, either, which happens to be Baptist. The boy she married just doesn’t have the charm Taylor Tazewell has, but the both of them are kind boys, and I guess that’s what’s important.” The housekeeper smiled. “It’s not one bit of my business,” she said, “but I can’t tell if that ring on your finger is a wedding ring or not.”
    It wasn’t. It was a blue enamel ring with a little strand of gold spiraling delicately through the enamel. Mel had bought it for Will to give her last Mother’s Day. “I’m divorced,” Jody said. “I have a son. Will.” She reached into her bag and brought out her wallet.
    The picture she carried of Will was several years old, a black-and-white Polaroid that had faded, so that now Will’s face was indistinct; it was not obvious that he was smiling. Like all photographers, she cared most about pictures of people she loved that were in no way exceptional as photographs. Maybe there was something special about the day a picture was taken (the first time Mel got Will to climb to the top of the slide and come down without his having to stand next to it, ready to reach for Will if he toppled), or even the day it went into the wallet (Will had cut it small, with Mel’s help, for the card-case of an old wallet she no longer had). The housekeeper’s face lit up, though, as if she had seen an angel.
    “I have two boys and would of had three, but one was taken from