Universal Harvester(58)

I left all this to ferment in the place where the people on Dad’s tapes had gone: the great nowhere, the land whose air assumes the familiarity of whatever surroundings it finds. But it was never far from me, I learned. It was contained, but still curious. Left to guess at the dark around it, it became subject to simple metabolic laws of action and reaction. When it all burst free from its tank at the house in Collins, I sold the place quickly through a broker, said a hard goodbye to yet another friend I’d never see again, and finally came home.

*

In the basement, just outside the darkroom, Emily hung her freshly developed prints on a clothesline: she’d finished a roll in Tama after their plans fizzled. She was glad there’d been no confrontation; there’d been that woman waving at them from the upstairs window, and they’d waved back uncertainly, but then continued right on down the street, as if they had business elsewhere and had only pulled up because they’d seen an open spot. Nobody wants to be a pest, or bring up unpleasant memories. It was nice just to spend the day taking pictures of old buildings.

They wouldn’t be there forever, the old buildings. Iowa seemed less bloodthirsty about its past than California, but she’d seen all the construction along the highway on the way in from Collins: mini-malls and motels, spaces for chain restaurants and cell phone stores. It’s in the nature of the landscape to change, and it’s in the nature of people to help the process along; there’s no getting around it. It’s the same everywhere in the end.

Still, when she considered her best shot from that morning—the old Tama Bank & Trust building, gray and imposing above the downtown square—she wondered what she’d already missed, what had gone missing from Iowa before she ever got there. There is no way of knowing. That’s what pictures are for, after all: to stand in place of the things that weren’t left behind, to bear witness to people and places and things that might otherwise go unnoticed.

It was so nice to have this hobby in retirement. There was so much to think about if you just gave yourself the time, even in places most people couldn’t find on a map.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is a book largely about mothers, and it would be a grave oversight not to thank my own mother, Mary Noonan, who always encouraged me in my writing, and gave to me, for my seventh birthday, a Royal typewriter, vintage 1936 or so, which set me on my way. Without that old Royal: who knows?

Thanks to everyone working and studying in Building 4 here at Golden Belt: it’s a pleasure and an inspiration to share this space with you.

Sean McDonald is my editor, and offers the gentlest, best suggestions, opening onto places I could never have found by myself: thank you!

Chris Parris-Lamb believed I could write books before I did. Neither this book nor the one before it could have been written without you. I am in your debt.

John Hodgman offered invaluable observations about this book during its writing, and great encouragement; how far astray it might have gone without your words of insight and support. Thank you!

Donna Tartt, you’ve been my steady companion in keeping the focus where it belonged as I wrote this book: a true confidant and a constant source of comfort and inspiration. Thank you, a dozen times over.

Thanks, too, to Steve Pietsch, Michael Ganzeveld, Lynsi Heldt, Lisa Chavanothai, Sarah Jane Gelner, Laura Lavender, and the many Iowans whose first or last names I borrowed for this book: only one of you, Steve, knew I was working on anything at all in this vein, but you were all with me in memory as I wrote.

And finally, to Lalitree Darnielle, née Chavanothai, mother of my sons and first hearer of these pages, through whom I first came to know Iowa, recurring thanks, here and in all that may follow.