Thwonk (6 page)

The cupid hovered over my right knee like Tinkerbell with an attitude. I sat on my shaking hands.

He raised his teeny bow. “There is no time to dawdle!”

I watched him, dumbstruck. Then suddenly, magically, I saw the answer to one of my problems. I was inches away from the photograph of the century! I’d call
Life, National Geographic
, the London
Times, People
, and
Scientific American.
I would become famous. I picked up my F2 behind my back and smiled.

The cupid shook his head. “Only you can see me, my friend. I am not photographable.”

I held my camera tight. “Let’s just make sure…” I raised the camera to eye level, my keen eye instantly catching the essence of a bona fide, flitting miracle…my finger whooshed across the clicker, which was…

Stuck.

Blast!

I slammed the clicker down again. It was no use.

“This,” said the cupid, “is an excellent time to inform you of the laws governing the Visitation.” He did an aerial somersault and landed on my bookcase. “First and foremost, only
you
can see me”—he smiled at Stieglitz—“and your dog, of course.” Stieglitz barked at the word
dog
and looked confused. “Secondly, you are to tell no one of the Visitation, until such time as you have reached a deeper plane of understanding and can address the experience with maturity and clarity.

“Thirdly,” the cupid explained, “we must press on or the Visitation will be rendered incomplete; we have a short period in which to accomplish monumental tasks, which will become clear to you in the doing—not until then. And fourthly”—the cupid hovered to the right of my nose—“I have come to assist you, Allison Jean McCreary,
not to harm you. The sooner you believe this basic tenet, the quicker we can proceed.”

I gulped. Earth rules I could handle:

But when you’re dealing with the cosmos, all bets are off.

The cupid rapped his quiver. “You have a photography deadline, I believe? A deadline that has brought you discouragement?”

I looked away. He had that right.

“It is possible,” the cupid said, “to reverse discouragement.”

I positioned myself on my purple Persian pillow with guarded body language.

“You were trying to please others with this photography assignment on love,” the cupid said, “not yourself.”

That frosted me!
He
hadn’t been battling massive unrequitedness.
He
didn’t have Pearly Shoemaker as a gut-busting editor.

“You cannot blame others, my friend. You are discouraged because you have not been true to your vision.”

“I don’t have a vision for love right now! That’s my problem! Would you please stop reading my mind?”

“I’m afraid that is impossible. It is not within my power to disconnect us. Confusion, when addressed, can bring forth clarity. Find something that reflects how you feel about love and photograph it.”

“
Thanks for that little tip! What do you think I’ve been doing for the last two months—skiing in Aspen? I’ve got massive blisters from trudging around this town trying to find one lousy shot that commemorates teenage love!
”

I stamped my foot, because I’d started to cry. “
I’m sorry!
” I wailed.

I buried my head as the cupid sighed impatiently. How was I supposed to express myself as an artist when every time I tried to photograph something about teenage love, I heard this little voice say that I would love Peter Terris until the day I died and he would never even notice me?

I was crying like a complete dolt, curled up in the fetal position on my purple Persian floor-pillow. The cupid glided over and handed me a tissue. “Blow,” he directed. “You need not fear this photography assignment. Art that reflects the heart and soul will always communicate with others.” He fluttered to the studio door. “You will sleep now, my friend.”

My heart thumped wildly. “I don’t understand what’s happening!”

“We can only hope that you will learn before it is too late,” the cupid responded solemnly. “We have been put together for a reason, Allison Jean McCreary. You need what I can teach you, and I”—he looked away sadly—“must right a wrong.”

My sinuses throbbed.

“My last Teenage Visitation was not deemed successful,” he continued. “When a cupid errs, he must right the wrong or he will never find peace.”

I bolted up. “You
erred
?”

“It was a combination of my failing and the young lady’s, I assure you.”

“You’re not good at this?”

“I much prefer visiting persons in their golden years, persons who have a wealth of life experience from which to—”

“
I got a second-string cupid?
”

He shot straight up, engulfed by fury. “
You will sleep!
”

He fluttered his dinky wings.

My feet started moving against my will; I stumbled downstairs to my bedroom with Stieglitz at my side. I shouted that no one could sleep with this amount of compacted stress in their lives; the teenage mind was not meant to carry such trauma!

I flopped my head on my pillow and crashed into dreamland; don’t ask me why.

I woke up at 6:33
A.M.
, not on my own. The cupid opened my blinds and announced, “Get up, my friend. There is much to accomplish.” He zoomed to the foot of my futon and perched there like a bird.

“What…,” I stammered, “needs accomplishing?”

He fluttered his wings, and pulled off my plaid quilt. “Get up,” he ordered. “I can only assist you if you get out of bed.”

I shivered. “What happened with you and that other teenager?”

The cupid glowed with irritation. “It is a personal issue that does not concern you.”

“Everything about you concerns me.”

“We will not speak of this again!” The cupid blew sky-high like a puny cannonball. “Wash, please!” He pushed me toward the bathroom and pulled the door open.

I stood fast. “I want to know who you are, where you come from, and what’s going on on!”

“
Silence!
” The cupid fluttered his tiny wings in irritation.

I turned on the faucet and started washing my face like a machine that had been plugged in.

“For some,” the cupid acknowledged, “trusting is a long journey.”

I washed my face longer than usual, hoping that Neutrogena and water would bring clarity; they didn’t. The cupid handed me a face towel like a butler. “Please be dressed in ten minutes.”

I clutched the towel.

“And bring your camera.”

He fluttered his wings, closed
my
bathroom door, and left me in the blackness of the final frontier.

It was 7:13, Sunday morning. Stieglitz, the cupid, and I moved down the sun-soaked, frozen streets of Crestport, Connecticut, just as normal as you please. We turned by the police station and its somber, crime-busting hedges.
The cupid did a triple back loop and dive-bombed a patrol car. I clung to a lamppost.

Help!
I wanted to shout.

“Turn right, please,” said the cupid.

“Where are you taking me?”

“To the beach.”

“Why?”

“Patience, my friend. You must learn to see with new eyes.”

I grumbled that if seeing with new eyes meant losing touch with gravity, I was against it. I crabbed that it was unnerving to take orders from a creature that only I could see! I pointed a shaking finger at the cupid and felt a tap on my shoulder.

I swung around to face a very large policeman.

“Everything okay, miss?”

“Uh…”

He put his hand on his nightstick. “You want to talk about it, miss?”

The cupid zipped around the officer’s head and landed on his hat. My mind stretched toward its outer limits. I said I had the lead in the school play and that I was acting out my part, which took place on a bleak, wintry street so that I could sense the cold, numbing futility of my character in her true surroundings. I took a huge breath and prayed.

“Well, now,” said the officer, “that sounds like some play, little lady.”

I said believe me, it was the role of a lifetime, and
backed away onto Browning Road looking massively dramatic. Trish would have been proud. Stieglitz strained on the leash, his tail dragging.

“Heel,” the cupid commanded him.

Stieglitz clipped into a perfect heel. Traitor. The cupid zipped along millimeters from my earlobe.

I shuddered. “I almost got arrested for being a psycho!”

The cupid soared upward and swooped down; his wings buzzed faintly. “Turn left, please.”

“It’s prettier over here—”

“
Left!
” he ordered.

I went left past the huge stone houses set back from the Crestport Beach.

“A little past these bushes,” he directed. “Let your dog off the leash and open yourself to the experience.”

I groaned that I’d had enough experiences for one day and released Stieglitz to careen on the snowy sand. The cupid motioned me forward. He soared over the boarded-up Snack Shack. He perched on the lifeguard’s chair. He skimmed the polluted water of Long Island Sound as it splashed against the rocks and went back again in nothing resembling waves.

“How do you do that?” I whispered.

The cupid zoomed through the air as the wind whooshed across the sloppy gray lot.

I kept walking. I loved the beach in winter. It was wild and free without that putrid smell of suntan lotion.
I didn’t even mind February because I was partial to black-and-white photography. All that silvery beauty and subtle tonality.

I pulled up my collar and shoved my hands in my pockets as it started to snow. I lifted my face as the big flakes fell. They glided from heaven and covered the beach.

A Heinz ketchup bottle washed up on shore and I remembered sitting on this very beach with Todd Kovich who said I was rare and pretty and who kissed me like he meant it. Two hours later he went to Yale.

I jammed the Heinz ketchup bottle between two rocks and tore off five quick shots. It spoke to me. About rich people in big boats who dump their trash without paying the price. About massive oil spills and disappearing rain forests. About mounting nuclear waste and Julia Hart.

That’s when I saw it.

Just to the left of the embankment that jutted out to the Sound. It was painted on a huge, craggy rock set apart from the rest. It read:

I laughed as snow twinkled down. Love in the age of angst! It was perfect Valentine funk.

“Of course it’s perfect,” the cupid said hovering over the rock.

“How did you know about this? I was here five days ago; I didn’t see it.”

A sunbeam illuminated the scene. “Make available light work for you, my friend.”

“Yes. I know what to do.”

I focused my F2 to the left of the rock, I studied the rock, looking for the best angle—from the right, I decided. The sun soaked into Donna’s muddle, the rock sparkled like quartz. I tore off four shots that would immortalize Donna in the hearts and minds of millions of Americans. I worked quickly, not knowing how long the sunbeam effect would last. I remembered my father’s words: “Let the camera know what you’re feeling.”

I took a deep breath. I was feeling strangely in control. I moved in close (amateurs forget this), caught the rock in stark detail at an angle that made it look like a gravestone, and blurred the surrounding elements by going to a wide aperture setting. A pigeon landed on the rock.

“Perfect,” I whispered, “keep it steady, steady…”

The pigeon posed standing, pecking. I watched for small moments when he would reveal himself. He squawked. I caught it. He scratched. I got that too.

“Fly,” I told him.

He fluttered like a butterfly and I jiggled the camera on purpose to get an impressionistic blur that would no doubt get me a four-year photography scholarship at NYU. I was perspiring despite the cold and focused in close for the Ultimate Rock Shot, capturing the consummate confusion of my generation. My finger lowered the shutter, light streaked against the film.