The Saving Graces by Patricia Gaffney

Author:Patricia Gaffney [Gaffney, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780061859892
Google: zIvZgVKqU4UC
Amazon: 0060598328
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2004-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

"Yeah, right." "I read that women who have positive body images have twice as many orgasms as women who don't." "Yeah, well, don't worry about me, I'm just fine in that-" "Shh," I repeated. If you kept quiet and listened, sometimes you could actually hear what we were saying on the tape. But usually it was only a crackling din, because we were all overlapping or talking at once. This always-surprises me when I look at our old movies, the fact that we never shut up, and what we say rarely sounds important or even particularly coherent. Yet at the time, I always think we're being quite lucid and succinct.

"Fitness camp! Remember that?" Emma pointed at herself on the screen. "I lost seven pounds in six days." "I lost three." "Four, and I gained it all back." "In the first week." "We ought to go there again," Rudy said. "That was so much fun." We laughed at the pictures of Emma and Rudy cutting up in the rustic cottage where we stayed for a week, back in 1990. "Fitness camp"-the poor woman's health spa-was just a YWCA camp in the Poconos. We'd gone there instead of someplace nicer because, at the time, Emma didn't have any money.

"You are such a jerk," Rudy said affectionately, ruffling Emma's hair. "Why can't you ever look normal?" It's true-whenever I point the camera at Emma, she either turns her back or makes a face, or else she makes some subtly obscene gesture, like resting her chin in her hand and extending her middle finger alongside her cheek. All with a siy smile that's funny, I suppose, but childish: I can't tell you how many perfectly nice still photos of the group she's spoiled by putting "horns" behind someone's head at the last second.

I'm rarely in these videos; I'm the cameraperson, a thankless job the others barely tolerate-until it's time to look at the finished product. Then you can't get them away from the TV set.

"Oh, here it comes. I hope," Emma said, rubbing her hands together. "Lee, did you put it in? Did you? I bet you took it out." I should have. But I didn't, and I hope that squelches for all time anybody's claim that I am not a good sport. And this is why I like being the photographer-because look what happens when someone else (Emma) gets her hands on my camera.

We were having a regular dinner meeting at the house on Capitol Hill Rudy and Curtis had just bought, and I'd brought the video camera to film it, intending to give Rudy the tape afterward so she could send it to her mother or sister or whoever she wanted-her family never visits, and I thought it might be the only way they'd ever see her new home. The other thing was, I had just come from ballet class; I was hot and sweaty and I didn't feel fresh. I asked Rudy if I could take a shower before dinner.

"Oh, here it comes, here it comes;' Emma said gleefully.

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