Now I see there are so many marks that you can’t see one for the other. It’s all part of the texture.
Without me the light is still there. The shadows are still there. The camera is still there.
Sometimes it feels like I have been missing my whole life.
NOVEMBER 12 1993
I believe in pain and I believe in art.
I believed they could create each other.
But this pain creates nothing. It does not emanate. It only absorbs.
NOVEMBER 14 1993
I used to be so afraid of dying. There was so much I wanted to finish. I imagined all my ambition and talent exiting my body with that final breath. There were times I wanted to die, and that image saved me. The idea that without my body as its stove, that fire would burn out, curl up and out like a wisp of smoke.
But picture the wisp: how it might dance in the wind. It might be more beautiful than anything I ever dreamed.
27.
KATE
Kate shook her head in instinctive denial. Theo went over to the sink and wrapped his hands around the edges, bracing himself against its heft.
“You want to know what happened?” he asked, his back to her. “I’ll tell you. It was a Friday. I woke up early. I had to finish a science project. I had done it all myself. Other kids got their parents to help. Mine were busy. They were home all the time, but they were busy. I got dressed, brushed my teeth. Went to the kitchen to make breakfast. I made myself breakfast most of the time. Sometimes my mom set out some cereal or a bag of bagels, sometimes not. I remember the kitchen was so quiet. No sounds even coming from overhead. Usually I could hear one of my parents bumping around at that hour, but not that day. I had an hour to finish the project before school. I was pouring myself a bowl of Cap’n Crunch. That’s how well I remember that day. I know what cereal I was eating. I know because I can’t stand the smell of it anymore, even the texture … I was pouring it into the bowl when I felt … something. A zip up my back. I looked out the back window and I saw it. Her.
“She was standing in my dad’s raincoat down at the bottom of the yard, right before the trees start. She was staring out at the woods. Staring at nothing. I thought about opening the door and calling out to say hi, but I didn’t, because if she was in the middle of working I wasn’t supposed to disturb her. And sometimes it was hard to tell if she was working. I watched her, wondering what she was doing, and then she knelt down. Like she was praying. I had never seen her pray before but I had seen pictures of church on TV. Then she took something out of the coat pocket … I thought it was one of her little Leicas. I don’t know when I realized it was a gun.
“I saw her put it up to her head but I still didn’t understand. Then I sort of understood, like the way you see lightning before you hear the thunder, and I wanted to move toward her but my feet were stuck. And all of the sudden she went kind of stiff, and then her hand moved, and there was a loud noise. I still wake up to that noise. It goes off in my head over and over. It’ll go away for weeks or months, but it always comes back. It’s my alarm clock. The sound of the shot. How her body snapped to the side, and she fell.
“My feet came unstuck. I dropped my bowl and ran outside. The grass was wet. It’s always wet that time of the morning. I hadn’t put on a coat, it was cold. I was running … She … I couldn’t see her head for a minute, it was in the grass. Then I realized it was because she didn’t have a head. Half of it was pulp. I could see her brain through the hole. Everything was blood, black, red. I grabbed her. I don’t know why. I knew she was dead. I was only eleven but I knew right away she was dead. Still, I grabbed her arms and I shook her. Nothing happened. Just more blood, coming out of her neck, what was left of her head, so