‘Lemme see it!’ Meg cried.
‘Hold your horses, muffin,’ Mr Delevan said. ‘They take a little time to develop.’
Meg was staring at the stiff gray surface of what was not yet a photograph with the rapt attention of a woman gazing into a crystal ball.
The rest of the family gathered around, and there was that same feeling of anxiety which had attended the ceremony of Loading the Camera: still life of the American Family waiting to let out its breath.
Kevin felt a terrible tenseness stealing into his muscles, and this time there was no question of ignoring it.
He could not explain it … but it was there. He could not seem to take his eyes from that solid gray square within the white frame which would form the borders of the photograph.
‘I think I see me!’ Meg cried brightly. Then, a moment later: ‘No. I guess I don’t. I think I see -‘
They watched in utter silence as the gray cleared, as the mists are reputed to do in a seer’s crystal when the vibrations or feelings or whatever they are are right, and the picture became visible to them.
Mr Delevan was the first to break the silence.
‘What is this?’ he asked no one in particular. ‘Some kind of joke?’
Kevin had absently put the camera down rather too close to the edge of the table in order to watch the picture develop. Meg saw what the picture was and took a single step away. The expression on her face was neither fright nor awe but just ordinary surprise. One of her hands came up as she turned toward her father.
The rising hand struck the camera and knocked it off the table onto the floor. Mrs Delevan had been looking at the emerging picture in a kind of trance, the expression on her face either that of a woman who is deeply puzzled or who is feeling the onset of a migraine headache. The sound of the camera hitting the floor startled her. She uttered a little scream and recoiled. In doing this, she tripped over Meg’s foot and lost her balance. Mr Delevan reached for her, propelling Meg, who was still between them, forward again, quite forcefully. Mr Delevan not only caught his wife, but did so with some grace; for a moment they would have made a pretty picture indeed: Mom and Dad, showing they still know how to Cut A Rug, caught at the end of a spirited tango, she with one hand thrown up and her back deeply bowed, he bent over her in that ambiguous male posture which may be seen, when divorced from circumstance, as either solicitude or lust.
Meg was eleven, and less graceful. She went flying back toward the table and smacked into it with her stomach. The hit was hard enough to have injured her, but for the last year and a half she had been taking ballet lessons at the YWCA three afternoons a week. She did not dance with much grace, but she enjoyed ballet, and the dancing had fortunately toughened the muscles of her stomach enough for them to absorb the blow as efficiently as good shock absorbers absorb the pounding a road full of potholes can administer to a car. Still, there was a band of black and blue just above her hips the next day. These bruises took almost two weeks to first purple, then yellow, then fade … like a Polaroid picture in reverse.
At the moment this Rube Goldberg accident happened, she didn’t even feel it; she simply banged into the table and cried out. The table tipped. The birthday cake, which should have been in the foreground of Kevin’s first picture with his new camera, slid off the table. Mrs Delevan didn’t even have time to start her Meg, are you all right? before the remaining half of the cake fell on top of the Sun 660 with a juicy splat!
that sent frosting all over their shoes and the baseboard of the wall.
The viewfinder, heavily smeared with Dutch chocolate, peered out like a periscope. That was all.
Happy birthday, Kevin.
Kevin and Mr Delevan were sitting on the couch in the living room that evening when Mrs Delevan came in, waving two dog-eared sheets of paper which had been stapled together. Kevin and Mr Delevan both had open books in their laps (The Best and the Brightest for the father; ShootOut at Laredo for the son), but what they were mostly doing was staring at the Sun camera, which sat in disgrace on the coffee table amid a litter of Polaroid pictures. All the pictures appeared to show exactly the same thing.
Meg was sitting on the floor in front of them, using the VCR to watch a rented movie. Kevin wasn’t sure which one it was, but there were a lot of people running around and screaming, so he guessed it was a horror picture. Megan had a passion for them. Both parents considered this a low taste (Mr Delevan in particular was often outraged by what he called ‘that useless junk’), but tonight neither of them had said a word. Kevin guessed they were just grateful she had quit complaining about her bruised stomach and wondering aloud what the exact symptoms of a ruptured spleen might be.
‘Here they are,’ Mrs Delevan said. ‘I found them at the bottom of my purse the second time through.’ She handed the papers – a sales slip from J. C. Penney’s and a MasterCard receipt – to her husband. ‘I can never find anything like this the first time. I don’t think anyone can. It’s like a law of nature.’
She surveyed her husband and son, hands on her hips.
‘You two look like someone just killed the family cat.’
‘We don’t have a cat,’ Kevin said.
‘Well, you know what I mean. It’s a shame, of course, but we’ll get it sorted out in no time. Penney’s will be happy to exchange it -‘
‘I’m not so sure of that,’ John Delevan said. He picked up the camera, looked at it with distaste (almost sneered at it, in fact), and then set it down again. ‘It got chipped when it hit the floor. See?’
Mrs Delevan took only a cursory glance. ‘Well, if Penney’s won’t, I’m positive that the Polaroid company will. I mean, the fall obviously didn’t cause whatever is wrong with it. The first picture looked just like all these, and Kevin took that one before Meg knocked it off the table.’
‘I didn’t mean to,’ Meg said without turning around. On the screen, a pint-sized figure – a malevolent doll named Chuckie, if Kevin had it right – was chasing a small boy. Chuckie was dressed in blue overalls and waving a knife.
‘I know, dear. How’s your stomach?’
‘Hurts,’ Meg said. ‘A little ice cream might help. Is there any left over?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
Meg gifted her mother with her most winning smile. ‘Would you get some for me?’
‘Not at all,’ Mrs Delevan said pleasantly. ‘Get it yourself. And what’s that horrible thing you’re watching?’
‘Child’s Play,’ Megan said. ‘There’s this doll named Chuckie that comes to life. It’s neat.’
Mrs Delevan wrinkled her nose.
‘Dolls don’t come to life, Meg,’ her father said. He spoke heavily, as if knowing this was a lost cause.
‘Chuckie did,’ Meg said. ‘In movies, anything can happen.’ She used the remote control to freeze the movie and went to get her ice cream.
‘Why does she want to watch that crap?’ Mr Delevan asked his wife, almost plaintively.
‘I don’t know, dear.’
Kevin had picked up the camera in one hand and several of the exposed Polaroids in the other – they had taken almost a dozen in all. ‘I’m not so sure I want a refund,’ he said.
His father stared at him. ‘What? Jesus wept!’
‘Well,’ Kevin said, a little defensively, ‘I’m just saying that maybe we ought to think about it. I mean, it’s not exactly an ordinary defect, is it? I mean, if the pictures came out overexposed … or underexposed … or just plain blank … that would be one thing. But how do you get a thing like this? The same picture, over and over? I mean, look! And they’re outdoors, even though we took every one of these pictures inside!’
‘It’s a practical joke,’ his father said. ‘It must be. The thing to do is just exchange the damned thing and forget about it.’
‘I don’t think it’s a practical joke,’ Kevin said. ‘First, it’s too complicated to be a practical joke. How do you rig a camera to take the same picture over and over? Plus, the psychology is all wrong.’
‘Psychology, yet,’ Mr Delevan said, rolling his eyes at his wife.
‘Yes, psychology!’ Kevin replied firmly. ‘When a guy loads your cigarette or hands you a stick of pepper gum, he hangs around to watch the fun, doesn’t he? But unless you or Mom have been pulling my leg -‘