Chapter 17: Photographs and Memories

For Jaehla, poet and caster of spells.

Now you're expecting me to live without you,
But that's not something that i'm looking forward to...

I can't get used to living here,
While my heart is broke, my tears i cried for you.
I want you here to have and hold,
As the years go by and we grow old and grey.

such were promises we made*

Jaehla

It wasn't as if Karen didn't know it was coming. The years of holding it at bay, keeping the memories vague, sanitized, and safe when even allowed out, could last only so long. Ultimately, it had to be faced, and that fuzzy realization nestled in her mid-section like a beehive, a vague but relentless, unsettling hum.

She even knew, more or less, where it would come from almost as soon as she started mentally planning the conversion of the den into Laci's studio.

Still, there wasn't any reason to get all worked up about it in the first place. That was what? Twenty, twenty-five years ago? A lot of water under the bridge since then. And for Christ's sake, let's not create some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. It was a skeleton which had rattled many times as a reminder of its presence, however distant that might be. Nonetheless, she spent a considerable amount of unconscious mental energy trying to keep it dormant.

There was something else she was missing, something powerful and just beyond the reach of awareness.

The first real salvo actually wasn't too bad. Karen was driving back to town Friday afternoon from one of the rural outlying towns, where she'd met with a developer interested in parcel of land off the highway zoned industrial outside. It was a half an hour drive on back road shortcuts with not much to hold her attention. It was prime daydreaming time.

Rather than Laci, or tomorrow's shopping trip to Baytown, Karen's brain latched on to an indistinct memory from childhood which had been dancing on the horizon of her consciousness. What unfolded inside her head was more a patchwork of images and vague emotions, a sort of mental précis, the fine details of the event long since discarded as unneeded.

The ugly, monochromatic landscape, gray tree trunks and limbs stark against the receding, dirty snowpack, whirred by unnoticed. A small smile curled the edges of Karen's lips.

They came boiling out of the house on a warm, late spring morning, two girls of seven on a mission. They bounded across the lawn with a natural but clumsy grace, both carrying plastic bait pails and small aquarium nets. They were dressed in shorts, t-shirts and glittery jelly shoes. One of the girls, Karen, sported a mop of unruly dark curls, the other, Lisa, a long honey colored mane laced with diaphanous wisps of curls.

"This way," Lisa cried with a broad gesture as she made tracks for the far corner of the yard. There the verdant lawn abruptly yielded to the more thuggish puckerbrush. There weren't any trails or paths worthy of the name this early in the season, but that didn't matter a whit. Both girls were veteran swale grass trekkers.

Karen and Lisa had been an inseparable pair long before the concept of friendship was even imperfectly grasped by them. Neither girl could imagine herself as existing in the absence of the other. Had either stopped to consider the idea, they would have scoffed at the adult notion that the friendships of childhood rarely survived adolescence.

The girls were swallowed up by the rank meadow as they began their quest. Yesterday in school their science teacher made an assertion that was so outrageous it couldn't be taken at face value – it required hard evidence before they'd believe that pollywogs grew into frogs, and that you could even see legs sprouting from their plump, squirmy bodies. During last night's sleep over, they determined to put the question to rest once and for all.

Beyond the boundaries of the tended yard, the land was cut through by a small stream which was sluggish in high summer. Now however, it was still running high with the last of the spring runoff, which left the whole bottomland a great and fertile wetland. Karen instinctively yielded path-finding to Lisa this day. Saddled with older brothers who had no interest in waiting for her to catch up, Lisa had long ago learned to fear nothing in the fields and woods of the semi-rural neighborhood.

They barged ahead, swishing and snapping through the undergrowth, chattering like magpies the whole time. They'd gone no more than a dozen yards before the ground got spongy, then goopy, and finally ankle deep muck. Last year's cattails sported wild heads of fluff, and a new crop of reeds blended in with the old.

"My brother Bill says there's a snowmobile trail runs through here and there's a bridge over the stream," Lisa said with solemn authority. "That'd be a good place to start."

"Yeah, if we can find it in this mess."

"I can find it, don't worry, I don't get lost."

Karen giggled, and then squealed as she almost lost her balance. She grabbed Lisa's arm and caught herself. She wrapped her arms around Lisa's neck. "Help me! I'm stuck."

The girls embraced and tugged and pulled until the muck reluctantly released Karen's feet. "I'm taking my shoes off," she announced, "Else the mud will suck 'em off." She reached down and gathered the footwear from the mud.

Neither girl was squeamish about sloshing barefoot through swamp muck. The going was much easier without shoes. Step-slurp, step-slurp. Their progress was steady until they came to a branch of the stream where the muck had been scoured away to firm, gravelly ground. The ground on the other side of the stream was higher and mostly dry. Alders took advantage and grew in profusion.

They pushed on through gaps in the alder thickets until they came to the main stream, the one that would still be there in July, if only a trickle. Now it was knee deep and running at a steady clip. "We're gonna get wet," Karen warned.

"Duh! We already are wet. This has gotta be the way to the bridge," Lisa answered, and they plunged in. They waded down the stream, and sure enough, they came to a rickety wooden bridge spanning the small brook. "There it is," Lisa cried. "Told ya I'd find it."

"I bet there's frogs all over the place," Karen said with confidence. As if in acknowledgement, a bullfrog belched a low, "BAH-roooop

The girls came to a mucky backwater of the stream where they found a profusion of frogs. They spent the better part of half an hour trying in vain to catch one. They were never quite fast enough. At last Karen, focusing intently, crept up on a frog, only its head exposed above the water. When she got near enough, her hands darted out and grasped the frog before it could dive away. "I got one," she squealed. "I got one."

They carefully inspected their quarry. Nothing special, just an ordinary frog, no signs of leftover pollywog features. Disappointed, Karen said, "What should we do with him?"

"Ah, let him go," Lisa said dismissively.

Karen squatted and released the captive frog. While she was down close to the ground, something caught her eye. It looked foamy and out of place, off where the swamp grass met the flowing water. "What's that? That foamy stuff?" she said, pointing.

Karen, Lisa right behind her, waded over to the unusual find. When they reached it, it was an irregular amorphous mass of what looked tiny eyeballs. "That ain't foam," Lisa declared, and without warning, she plunged her hand into the mass. "Ewwwww!" she cried in disgust, but she didn't pull her hand away.

Karen had to see for herself what was worthy of an "Ewwwww." She dunked her own hand in. It was like sticking it in a mass of gelatinous marbles, and the odd sensation was indeed Ewwwww-worthy. "What is it," Karen said in a voice tinged with disgust.

"I think its frog's eggs. 'Member the pitchers Mr. Saucier showed us? That's what they looked like."

"Well, if there's eggs, it must mean there's pollywogs around."

They moved slowly on the edge of the stream, and they came to a still pool by the bridge. Karen looked down, and at first all she saw were hundreds of little black things, no bigger than exclamation points darting about. On closer inspection where the water was still clear but close to the mucky, reedy ground where they captured the frog, she saw something flashing through the water.

Karen crept over as stealthily as she could. Her sharp, young eyes saw a shadow move in the water. She bent closer, her eyes fixed on her quarry – once seen, it couldn't be unseen. It was a plump, squirmy creature. A sharp pang of shock pulsed over her when she spied tiny appendages sprouting beneath the pollywog's tail. Could it really be?

Somehow Karen managed creep closer without spooking her target. She was the picture of pure concentration. Uncluttered by adult limitations, her young mind could focus like a laser while blocking out distractions. She carefully dipped the small net into the water behind the still pollywog.

No conscious thought was required to pull the trigger at the correct moment. Her hand flashed forward before the amphibian creature's nervous system even registered her presence. She triumphantly lifted the net and saw a dark squirming form. Before she was even fully upright, she was squealing, "I got one! I got one! Lisa! I got one! Look, look!"

Lisa straightened up from her own search-crouch. "No way," she said. "Did you really? You ain't lying?"

"No, no," Karen cried bouncing up and down on her tippy-toes. "Look!"

Lisa sloshed over, her own net and the bait pail in her hands. "Does it have legs?"

"I dunno yet, I think so."

Lisa arrived, her brow furrowed skeptically. "Let's see it," she demanded.

Both girls peered into the bottom of the net. "Holy Moly," Lisa breathed with a solemnity appropriate to the wonderment of their discovery. "It does have legs!"

"Ohmygod," Karen said in a whisper approaching awe. "I can hardly believe it! Lookit that, two legs. Does that mean this is gonna turn into a frog?"

"I dunno, I guess that's how it works."

"So what're we gonna do now?"

"Maybe we can watch it change into a frog. Let's put it in the bucket and go ask my Dad, he'll know."

"So would mine. I betcha stupid brothers never even knew pollywogs could have legs."

Lisa filled the bucket with cloudy swamp water, and Karen dropped the creature into the pail. It was only after she saw it swimming around that she allowed her body to relax. "OK," she sighed. "Let's go show our dads, they'll know the truth."

It was over. The booty from the morning's shopping trip to Baytown was scattered about the dining room until the den was ready. There were a few pieces of furniture that needed moving to one side, but aside from putting up the protective curtains and floor covers tomorrow, the hardest part was going to be the built-in bookshelves. Five large plastic totes stood ready to be filled with books, photo albums, and assorted decorative knick-knacks.

Karen's low-level anxiety eased up some in the general excitement of the shopping trip. Who knew? Maybe they could put the photo albums away without looking at them. Those albums held the stark reminders of a time she tried so hard to forget.

Maybe, Karen considered, she had everything under control. Yesterday's fuzzy but pleasant patchwork recollection had been benign enough. Maybe.

Because she was missing something, a vital connection that was as yet just out of mental reach.

Laci reached the collection of photo albums first. They were in one of the bookcases flanking the gas fireplace. She pulled a folio off the shelf, and said, "Karen, what are these? Picture albums?"

Karen looked over. "Yup, from back in the olden days when we dealt with real pictures instead of computer images."

Laci opened the volume she'd taken down. Each page had six pictures covered with acetate sheets. The pictures were of strangers to Laci. "Who are these people?" she asked.

Karen pushed a wayward curl of hair back in place, and said, "I don't know, honey. Let me look." Karen finished what she was doing and came over to Laci.

Laci had the album opened and she studied the pictures protected by the acetate sheets. "These pictures are kinda old."

Karen leaned over Laci's shoulder. "Oh," she said immediately, "Those are pictures of my grandfather."

"Grampy Cy? The one who used to give you tractor rides?"

Karen smiled and nodded, "Yup, that's the one, Grampy Cy."

"Why Sigh, anyway?"

"Grampy Cy, short for Cyrus, his name."

"Oh. Who are these other people?" Laci said, pointing vaguely at the pictures.

"Let's see, well there's my Mom and Dad, it looks like this was taken before I was born, so it must have been right after they got married."

"Oh Karen," Laci said, with a delighted smile and a gleam in her eye, "Your mother was so pretty in this picture."

"She still is. She's aged very gracefully, not that she's all that old, she's not, she turns sixty in a few months."

"Your Dad's handsome, too."

"Yes he is, very handsome."

"Did guys wear their hair that long back in them days?"

"Listen to you, 'back in them days'. Them days were the 1970s, and yes, guys wore their hair long then, this would be right around the time the Vietnam War ended, the tail end of the Hippy era. You've listened to music from then, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones." Karen chuckled suddenly. "I remember Grampy didn't have much use for the hippies, or their music." Karen dropped her voice a couple of octaves, and said, "Bunch goddamn lazy bastards sit around all day on their lazy asses, smokin' dope and lookin' for handout from the government, the world's going to hell in a hand basket." She returned her voice to its normal range. "And that's what he thought of that."

Laci giggled with delight. "I wish I could have known him, he sounds so cool. Is your Dad anything like him?"

"In some ways, but mostly no, Dad's his own man. Oh, he worked every bit as hard as Grampy Cy did, Gramps wouldn't tolerate any son of his not busting his ass sun-up to sun down, but my Dad wasn't the type to need to be told to work, it's in his blood. Gramp wasn't one who really understood things like music and art. He once told me he didn't need to see no damned pitcher on a wall to know what was beautiful. My Dad had broader ideas of beauty than Grampy – not better, just broader. One of the reasons he never made much of a fuss about loving classical music was because he knew Grampy would grumble about it, call a load of rich boy BS. But, much as he'd grumble about things, he was as soft as the middle of a poached egg. He always knew how to talk to me and make me feel better about things in a way that was ... I don't know, practical but very gentle and loving."

Laci listened to Karen's small ramble with attentive fascination. She sighed wistfully. "I wish I had a grandfather. Or even just a father."

Karen gave Laci's shoulder a squeeze. "I know baby."

"I want to see some more pictures, I think they're cool."

For the next half an hour, they pored over album after album. Karen's conscious mind was so occupied with remembering the good times that she let her guard down.

At last, they came to the albums of photos in which Karen herself was the center of the photographers' attention, or at least a prominent participant. Laci became particularly animated. She took great pleasure in seeing Karen as a growing young girl, commenting frequently on how pretty Karen was.

When they opened an album containing pictures of her approaching puberty, Karen disregarded the goose walking over her grave, and the knot of anxiety in her gut suddenly surging and squirming.

Laci flipped the page and scanned the neatly arranged photos, and one in particular caught her eye. Karen and a very pretty girl about the same age had their arms around each other's shoulders while they mugged for the camera. "Karen, who's this girl?" Laci asked innocently enough.

"Wait, let me see, who?"

Laci pointed at the picture. "This one."

Karen never expected it to hit so hard.

Karen looked at the picture, hesitated, looked at Laci, and the connection flashed in her brain like a lightning strike. Is this what it's all about?

And with that, she started to lose control, and once started there was nothing she could do to stop it.

"Ummmm," Karen said, struggling to find the words, but she was already falling headlong down her rabbit hole. "Ummm, she was, ummm, Lisa, my best friend when I was growing up," was all she could manage.

"She's pretty, really pretty."

Karen looked at Laci again and that brought on the torrent. She sobbed and tears squirted out in a hot stream.

"Karen!" Laci cried, startled. "What's the matter?" Her voice was tinged with alarm.

Karen continued to stare at the picture. She brought her trembling hand to her mouth, and groaned in the most heart rending way Laci had ever heard. "Karen, you're scaring me! What's the matter?"

Karen tried to collect herself. "It's OK baby, I'm OK." Karen looked up at Laci, and a fresh sob wracked her.

A vague, unfocused, but delightful excitement filled Karen as she and her best friend ever Lisa burst from the house and raced each other down the deck's stairs onto the back lawn. It wasn't yet nine o'clock, and already the air was hot and sultry, but Karen hardly noticed. Summer was now officially underway, and she and Lisa had the day to themselves.

Karen subconsciously understood this summer was the last time she could be a kid, carefree and unencumbered by the burdens of growing up. Even then, she sensed the moments of pure, unselfconscious childishness would be fleeting. The end of this summer marked the start of seventh grade, middle school, when school life became increasingly regimented and compartmentalized.

None of that mattered this sweltering day as she and Lisa bounded across the lawn toward the thick, overgrown meadow. Splotches of color splattered the tangled field as early summer wildflowers rose up and lifted their heads.

The two girls hopped and jumped into the sweet smelling hayfield, giggling as they went. Karen knew where they were going and she simply followed Lisa, who always seemed to know how to reach where they wanted to go. Neither girl had learned to be truly jaded yet, so they could run off chasing butterflies ("Flutter-byes," Karen called them) and dragonflies as they made their unhurried way.

Who cared if it was childishly silly and ephemeral? It was summer, and they were truly best friends, preferring each other's company to all others.

The way they looked at each other and interacted bespoke an unusual intimacy in their friendship, something that was quite sensual yet natural.

They plowed through the reluctant-to-yield hay, jumping and hopping when it was the only option, giggling all the while. Karen felt especially exuberant this day. It would be the last like this. Next weekend marked the beginning of the great migration to the lakeside summer camps, and they would still hang out together every day. Lisa's family camp was a mere mile down the road from Karen's, and a mile to an energetic twelve-year-old girl was no more than a brisk walk.

There would, however, be others intruding on their time together once at camp. Days where they could escape and just be by themselves, away from the throngs of cousins, other kids they knew from school, and others they did not know at all except as part of the camp mob, would be hard to come by.

So today had an unspoken and unacknowledged urgency to it. That urgency was pleasant for Karen. It hung in her midsection like a glowing orb. As they bounced through the hay, they set a nest of white moths a-scatter, and Karen cried in glee, "Lisa! Check out all the little butterflies."

"Never mind the butterflies," Lisa answered, gesturing broadly for Karen to come on. "I wanna catch a dragonfly and they're down here by the swamp."

In the spring, the area was truly a swamp, the small stream that cut through the meadow overflowing with run-off. But now, it was reduced to patches of mud and muck and small pools of water, and where the stream was more substantial, reed grass and cattails stood sentinel. On the other side of the mucky area, another swath of meadow sprawled out to a tree line. Each year it seemed the tree line grew further into the meadow.

"It's all yucky over there," Karen squealed.

"What, you turning into a big baby?" Lisa called back. "'Fraid of a little mud?"

"Who you calling a baby, I'm here, right?"

"But you're whining about it."

Putting an end to the questions, both girls stepped into muck at the same time, clean pink tennies instantly ruined. Karen laughed with delight. "I told you it was mucky," and as if to prove her point her feet slurped when she lifted them.

"I don't care, we're almost where it gets swampy, that's where the dragonflies are. Butterflies don't come out until later, out in the field," Laci said with an authority Karen couldn't deny.

And so it went. Dragonflies turned out to be harder to catch than butterflies. In spite of their size, the creatures were agile. Both girls cried out whenever one of the insects came near her head, the fading childish legend that they sewed your mouth shut if you swore was still close enough to have some effect.

It was Karen, focused in on one seemingly sluggish specimen, who finally caught a dragonfly in her cupped palm. The insect buzzed frantically, making Karen squeal, "It's gonna sting me!"

"No it is not," Lisa retorted, and Karen relaxed as her friend drew close. "Let's see," Lisa said, "but be careful, don't let it get away."

Karen ever so carefully cracked open her cupped palms and both girls looked at the frantically buzzing creature. Karen's squeamishness over holding the maddened insect faded, replaced by curiosity.

"Wow, it's big," Lisa proclaimed. "I wonder why they call it a dragonfly, it don't look like a dragon or anything."

Karen squinted at her quarry. "Maybe it's a damselfly, my Dad says he uses fake damselflies when he goes fishing."

Lisa shrugged as she studied the insect. "What's the difference?"

"I dunno," Karen. "Maybe one stings and the other doesn't."

"It hasn't stung you yet, or you'd be crying like a baby."

"No I would not," Karen scoffed. "But it's freaky the way it buzzes. I'm gonna let it go before it does sting me. You want it?"

"Not me," Lisa said, stepping back. "I seen what I want to see."

Karen carefully opened her hands, and the creature, whether dragonfly or damselfly, made its escape, immediately flying off in a huff to do whatever it was doing before its capture.

Lisa grabbed Karen's hand and tugged. "C'mon, let's go see if the butterflies are out yet."

Off they went, two pretty young girls caught in that indeterminate but brief slice of time between childhood and puberty, still eager to romp through meadows and swamps chasing whatever caught their attention. Undeterred by the growing heat and humidity, they studied brightly colored wildflowers, and chased after the few butterflies they saw. They sloshed along the edges of the cattail thicket, red-winged blackbirds taking flight at the girls' intrusion into their world.

They used last year's cattails in a kind of pillow fight, swinging away while clouds of fluff filled the still, humid air like a snow flurry before landing and clinging to them wherever possible.

When they picked new specimens, Lisa said, "My brother Steve says you can eat cattails."

"No way," Karen scoffed. "How you gonna eat that? It's all like cotton or something."

"I'm not saying it's true. You know my brothers, sometimes they lie, sometimes they tell the truth, so you never know if they're making stuff up or not."

"It might look like a fudgsicle, but I'm not gonna try eating it."

Lisa's face melted into a wicked grin. She swung her cattail and thumped Karen's upper back. Laughing, she said, "But they sure are good for knocking some sense into you."

The cattail fight was on. Squealing with delight, they chased each other, swinging their weapons but rarely connecting. The game came to an end when a spooked deer leapt up from its hiding spot in the swale grass, and bounded off, its white tail raised in alarm. They jumped into a startled embrace that lingered after the deer disappeared into the tree line. They were in constant physical contact of one sort or another, as if they were extensions of each other.

All the while, Lisa's inner compass kept them from straying too far from their destination. They moved toward it slowly but inexorably.

The old shed was the slowly deteriorating remnant of what was once a place to store haying equipment during the summer months when these fields were still mown three times a season. They'd discovered it two summers before as they flitted about on their explorations. Late last summer, they'd begun to speak of it as their special hiding place, a place where they could safely retreat from the wider world. It was their unspoken destination all along.

Only one corner of the old shed still stood relatively intact. The rest of the structure had long since collapsed into a heap of grayed wood overrun with field weeds. An unruly blackberry patch, grew at the intact corner, its web of thorns demanding respect.

They were holding hands and laughing. They ducked under the shelter provided by the tangled bushes and the remnants of the old roof. It was pleasantly cooler out of the hot sun. "I hate wet feet," Lisa grumbled as she pulled her mud stained tennies off.

"Me too," Karen said as she pulled her own tennies off and set them on a broken beam so they might dry some in the sun. She felt the warmth in her midsection grow when she looked at her friend.

Lisa was a strikingly pretty girl. Her lithe and willowy body offered secret promises of delectability in times to come. Lisa usually let her long, honey colored hair with its wisps of natural surf curls go untamed. Her lips were full and lush, and her green eyes flashed with restless impetuosity.

Karen herself was a pretty girl, her body every bit as sleek and willowy as Lisa's. Her hair, rather than the long, thick mane of her friend, was a nest of unruly curls forever falling over her eyes. Her brown eyes and lush mouth seemed to join forces to give Karen a vast repertoire of expressive smiles and frowns.

Together, they would surely make a formidable team for freshly hormonal boys to confront once the girls hit the fullness of puberty. Karen was aware of the expectation that dating boys was just around the corner. For the life of her, she simply could not grasp what was so special about boys. That must come with the still theoretical P word. Periods meant, she was assured, the onset of womanhood.

For now though, boys could be damned. It was Lisa who had her full attention, Lisa who was her best friend, Lisa who made her tummy feel warm and achy. At night, she often lay abed before sleep came, imagining both of them teaming up to effortlessly solve all of the world's ills. There was no reason to believe anything would ever happen to rend them asunder. Karen was hardly the first naive prepubescent to believe childhood friendships, however strong, would last forever.

The first mutters of thunder were faint enough that they might be passed off as the rumble of an overloaded pulp truck on the road almost a mile away, but the western sky was blackening in the distance. Karen was beginning to feel antsy. "Maybe we oughta go back before it rains."

Lisa grinned at her and gave her an elbow nudge. "What? You still chicken of thunderstorms?"

Karen squirmed uncomfortably. "I don't like 'em is all," she muttered. "Beside, our folks might get worried."

"You're such a sissy," Lisa teased, but her beautiful green eyes sparkled playfully, and she was smiling in a way that made Karen's private area feel pleasantly squirmy.

"Am not," Karen said without conviction, captured and held by her friend's steady gaze.

"Don't be a baby. We'll stay dry here, and we'll be together." She subtly patted the spot of bare ground next to her, calling Karen closer.

"OK," Karen sighed, and she slid over. Now the thunder was louder and unmistakable, and the black sky was laced with occasional streaks of quivering light. Suddenly Karen wasn't sure if her heart was racing because of the storm, or because she was tucked up close to her friend. "You've got cattail thingies in your hair," Karen observed.

"So?"

"Want me to take them out?"

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