Housemates by Emma Copley Eisenberg

Author:Emma Copley Eisenberg [Eisenberg, Emma Copley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

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They stood there in the shed a long time, way longer than Leah was expecting, way longer than anything that was normal. They looked at each other. Then Bernie looked away from Leah and began walking around the room. She walked one way, then walked the other way. She didn’t speak. Leah watched.

What happened next was that Bernie asked Leah to help her move everything they’d put into the car here, into this shed.

Also the trash from upstairs, Bernie said.

Cameras too? Leah asked.

Yes, Bernie said, except one, and except the film. Film I’ll use.

It took them several hours. After they moved the boxes and cameras from the car, all except a little 35mm camera—a Canon AE-1 like the first one Bernie had ever used—Leah found some contractors’ trash bags and then they used those, stuffing in his magazines, his bills from the water company, his hunting catalogues and clothing catalogues and mass letters made to look like personal letters in fake computer-generated script. They smooshed in Daniel Dunn’s cans of oil, his crushed Poland Spring bottles, his Monsters, his Red Bulls, his USB cables and defunct tangled phone cords, his handkerchiefs crusted in dried snot. In the shed, Bernie directed Leah to empty them out again, to pour them onto the floor.

When they were done, there was a great pile in the middle of the shed. The boxes were more or less at the bottom of the pile but gravity had done the rest of the organizing, the rags and empty cans up near the top and the water bottles—half-full—near the bottom.

What now? Leah asked.

I’m going to photograph it, Bernie said, already halfway out of the shed. It was dusk—a good time to take a picture, not that it mattered since they were working under the fluorescent lights of the shed. But Leah watched Bernie’s back as she ran away toward the car in that good light, and then her front as she came back with the tripod and the big camera.

A couple hours later, at the house’s front door, standing on the porch, Bernie would turn the bolt to its locked position, put the keys Benjamin Pogden had FedExed her on the small table by the entryway so she couldn’t change her mind, and pull the door closed.

But when she stepped back into the shed now she was out of breath, panting with anticipation.

It’s like he always said, Bernie said as she began setting up the camera. You don’t capture a moment in a photograph. You make one.

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