Silent Retreats by Philip F. Deaver

Author:Philip F. Deaver [Deaver, Philip F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780820343198
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 1988-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

The following evenings are difficult for Roberta. On a couple of them, she's at my place. She cries, and spends hours on the phone. She's back to smoking, which she'd quit a couple of years before I met her. I listen while she talks to friends, sitting at my kitchen table with the lights out and the long white cord of the phone stretched from the far wall. She occupies herself this way while I'm working in the darkroom just a few feet away.

The night after the funeral she calls Howard. "Hey, Howard," she says. "It's Roberta. You okay?"

"I know," she says.

The pictures I'm working with were taken from about two thousand feet. This particular work is for a developer who wants to tuck a mall into a hillside.

"Well, is the family gone?—not yet?" Roberta is asking Howard.

"Look, I didn't call to ask what I can do. Are you relieved and refreshed by that?" She laughs, all indications being that this struck a chord with Howard. "I'm gonna tell you what I'm going to do—little change of pace, right."

"Right," she says, levity subsiding. "I know, Howard.

The pictures I'm developing show highways and neighborhoods, the roofs of used-car places, an occasional line of traffic at a light. Even at so low an altitude, over a dense population, I don't see anything readily identifiable as a person except for maybe those small specks dotting the edge of a backyard pool. Staring down through the camera sometimes I imagine that I'm looking instead through a microscope, into a petri dish. There's a rough eruption of green mold in the corner, microscopic cauliflower—wait, it's a forest. At 2,500 feet, a cemetery is easy to identify, the stones in rank and file, an occasional canopy, an occasional burst of color from flowers. But you don't see many people. People from above are about the size of their hats.

"Look here," she says to Howard, taking a deep breath. "I'm carting in food tomorrow. Might last you a couple of days if you ration it."

I peer through the curtain, reminding her of the other offer.

"Oh yeah, and my friend Daniel—you've not met him yet. He's a professional photographer. If you find a picture, Howard—of Michelle, you know?—get it to me and we'll make it big and pretty, for posterity. That little girl of yours, someday she'll . . ." There's no way Roberta will make it through this sentence.

I look back out at her.

"I gotta go, Howard—right—I love you, too. Hang in there. Have your mom be sure to throw the door open wide around noon tomorrow. I'll be on the run."

"Okay," she says then, after a moment, and clicks off. She puts her head down on her arms on the table.

A few years ago I was doing a job for a surveyor. This was back in Illinois, and actually, completely without knowing it at the time, I recorded a stop-action sequence of an auto accident. It was all silently unfolding down there, inside the view of my camera, and I didn't notice.

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