Read Nothing but a Smile Online
Authors: Steve Amick
Nothing but a Smile (38 page)
Most of the houses were going to be that bare-bones ranch style, but she spoke to the developer personally and insisted they get one of the few with a second floor, maybe even an attic. “It's always better when there's an upstairs,” she explained to Wink. “You and I never would have
been
if I hadn't had extra room upstairs.” She grinned and tugged at his coat, pulling him close, and he grinned, too, thinking what she was thinking—of the apartments above the shop back in Chicago, of course. But she could see the real estate man, standing just beyond him, hands in pockets, and looking a tad flummoxed, frowning a little, eyebrows disapproving, and she almost spoke up and explained what she meant to this eavesdropper, thinking he might have taken her “upstairs” to mean her bosom, her bustiness, not the apartment.
But she decided to just let him think whatever he wanted to think. She knew what having an upstairs meant, and the man she loved knew what it meant, and all the rest could go to hell— or, at least, to the privacy of their own home to think their own dirty thoughts in peace.
And soon, now, they would be able to do the same.
She knew what was in the trunk without having to examine every last thing the boy was uncovering, digging around in it now that he'd dragged it down to the front hall, and she sat in the empty dining room just through the archway and did her best to respond as he called out questions, occasionally crossing over to show her a curled photo or piece of equipment. “That's a flashbulb … ” she said, thinking even he should know that one. She identified the safelight, the film pack tank, the remote release bulb. “Some sort of wartime pinups … ” she said.
He seemed to know what the enlarger was and not to open the packs of unexposed Kodak photo paper, though she doubted it was still any good. She knew he couldn't have been expected to identify the leg makeup or two-sided tape they used to hold the wigs and costumes in place.
“That all stays with me,” she said. “All of it.”
She didn't know the name of the facility or even what state it was in, but she knew she could take a few belongings with her, even those too big for the room they would give her. Each resident would have a storage space, Billy had told her over the boy's tiny Dick Tracy phone.
She knew this last was a cell phone, but she also knew how much it deviled her son, and the grandson, to think she was still living in an ancient time. She even knew that the cell phone could miraculously take pictures with less effort than picking your nose, though they weren't true photos in any sense, and that the boy had
been using this system to send Billy updates on the house and supposed repair problems he'd discovered while emptying it, all sent through the air to California with the help of computers.
She knew that people did it this way now—they could empty and sell off a house that they hadn't set foot in for years.
There were certain things that were crisp as an amber filter with panchromatic film and still others that remained out of focus—like what this young man's name was, the one packing up her house, though she was pretty sure he was her grandson. Her son Billy's son from his second marriage. And what the boy's wife's name was. Or if they even
were
married and not just living in sin.
She knew the Argus C3 the boy held in his hand had been owned by two husbands. She knew it was manufactured by the Argus Camera Company, originally of this very town, that her husband Wink had used this very camera, this Brick, as it was called, to finally do better than finalist and win the Pulitzer. She knew that was in 1954, for a photo essay of Jonas Salk—an average day with his family and codiscoverers, shot all around Ann Arbor.
She couldn't remember the address of this house they were in, but she knew it was in Ann Arbor, too, and it was the only place she'd known as home since late 1947, back before the town boundaries had moved far beyond them and there were trees outside, providing cover, providing the landscaping company an excuse to overcharge her son for raking leaves because, as she also knew, you still couldn't rake leaves over the computers.
She knew that Wink had worked for Argus for a time as a consultant and executive director while still doing freelance photographic essay assignments for
Life, Time, Playboy
magazine …
She couldn't remember what the machine was she was hooked
up to now—what it did or who had hooked it up to her. But she did know she was supposed to leave it alone and not fool with it.
She did remember the name of Wink's doctor—Zaret, it was. Or maybe Zater—the hopeful, energetic fellow up at the university hospital who'd tried, twice, to restore full use of his right hand through experimental surgery. Neither attempt worked, but neither did it make his hand any worse. And, as Wink had put it, the fellow
meant
well.
She knew Wink had never managed to properly retrain his own hand enough to paint or illustrate but did go on to teach photography and journalism at the U of M after selling the camera shop downtown on Liberty. Going out on the occasional photojournalism assignment, and into town for classes, he felt, took him away from their home plenty enough.
The boy had seen the girlies in the trunk, but he didn't seem as worked up as she'd thought he might be. Maybe he'd seen enough these days on the computers. He was a grown man, after all—but he did seem captivated by one shot in particular and, after standing in the archway squinting at it in the late-afternoon sun, he brought it to her.
“Gram,” he said. “This looks like the old cottage up north, but who's the lady?”
It shook in her hand, but she knew what it was. Judging by the hairdo, 1950 or ‘51; judging by the location—the sparkly ripple at the water's edge, the curve of pine trees along the beach, and the white puffs of clouds—summer. She must have just been starting to get her figure back after baby number two—
Baby Manny,
they'd called her at that point—and she was clowning by the lake with one side of her suit unhooked, her bazoom poking out like one large, winking eye.
She wondered where the kids were—maybe napping back in
the cottage. It looked bright, like midafternoon. Maybe Billy and Manuela were off on a day trip to Petoskey or Traverse with their aunt Reenie and uncle Keeney, if they were there visiting, which they often were. They certainly weren't right there on the beach with them. She didn't think she would have carried on like that so that anyone could see.
Special thanks to
Bob and Connie Amick, Huck Lightning, Bruce Amick, Walter Amick, the Ann Arbor District Library, the Argus Museum, Vicky Baker, the Bentley Historical Library, Guy Berard, Nan and Stan Bidlack, Bill Brown, Jere Burau, Cheryl Chidester, Bill Cusumano, Dominique Daniel, Bonnie Delaney Meg and Brian De-laney Tim Delaney, Cecile Dunham, Rachel Eckenrod, Elk Rapids Village Market, Elmers Glue, Ithamar Enriquez, Erik Esckilsen, Gina Fortunato, Dr. David Freiband, Al Gallup, Deb Garrison, Matt Garrison, Janice Goldklang, Jennifer Green, Alison Griffith, Rich Griffith, Manuela Guidi, Naomi and Ted Harrison, Carol Holsinger, Dave Keeney Leonard H. Lillard, Fran Lyman, Mike Madill, Maria Massey Matt Miller, Pamela Narins, Sunny Neater, Chuck Pfarrer, David Platzker, Steve Rogers, Eric Revels, Jonathan Sainsbury Vanessa Hope Schneider, Grace Shackman, Jack Spack Jr., Elaine Spiliopoulos, Joe Veltre, Dietmar Wagner, Deb Waldman, Suzanne Wanderlingh, Caroline Zancan, and Dave Zaret.
Steve Amick is the author of
The Lake, the River & the Other Lake.
Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he received a BA from St. Lawrence University and an MFA in creative writing from George Mason University. His short stories have appeared in
Playboy, The Southern Review, New England Review, Story, McSweeney's,
in the anthology
The Sound of Writing,
and on National Public Radio. On walks with his wife and young son, he often passes the original Argus Camera building.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Steve Amick
All rights reserved.
Pantheon Books and colophon are registered
trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Amick, Steve.
Nothing but a smile : a novel / Steve Amick.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-37805-7
1. World War, 1939–1945—Veterans—Fiction. 2. Chicago (Ill.)—
Fiction. 3. Michigan—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3601.M53N68 2009
813'.6—dc22 2008024390
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