Just Once Read online

  ‘How?’

  ‘Any number of ways.’

  ‘Why are you being so vague?’

  ‘With the brain, most of what we know is vague.’

  Frankie didn’t like the sound of that. But she hadn’t liked the sound of much since Charley had come knocking.

  ‘I can’t stay here. I can’t help him or be here for him. I’m not his wife.’

  ‘He doesn’t remember his wife.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean she isn’t.’

  Dr Halverson didn’t answer.

  ‘You understand, right?’ Frankie didn’t know why she wanted the doctor to absolve her.

  ‘I understand that in his mind none of the things that happened in the past two decades actually happened.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean they didn’t.’

  ‘To him it does.’

  Charley

  Mexico City. May, 1980

  Charley rose before the sun, slipping out of the bed so he didn’t wake Frankie. He got dressed in the bathroom, then grabbed his Nikon and snuck out. If he was lucky he’d be back before she woke, and she’d never know he’d been gone.

  Stepping out of the Hotel Genève and on to the dark streets, he hurried from the tourist area toward the area tourists should never go.

  If Frankie had woken, she’d have wanted to grab her own camera and come along. He would have hesitated to bring her where he was going. Not only was it not safe, but he would not be able to focus – ha – on his subjects if he had to worry about her. Besides, she would have insisted on photographing the sun coming up, or the mist swirling across cobblestones. Something artsy, not real. Fine for her, but stuff like that made his teeth ache.

  Charley was still at AP, though he was beginning to get itchy feet. Something Frankie didn’t understand since he was on the road all the time. How could he want to move on, when all he did was … move on?

  The need was more about the feeling inside him than the places he went, a near obsessive desire to record the world – both its tragedies and triumphs. But Charley couldn’t seem to articulate that inner yearning well enough for Frankie to grasp what he meant, and it didn’t matter. Frankie told him to do whatever he needed to do, go wherever he had to go, she’d always support him.

  Before he’d had Frankie to come home to, he’d wandered, but it had been more about running from something rather than to something. He’d had to get out of Illinois, away from his father and the farm. Now he had to find the next astonishing picture, and the next and the next – with a little Frankie time in between.

  His wife still worked at the Milwaukee Journal, but when she wasn’t, Frankie didn’t want to shoot work-type pictures. Charley had tried to grasp the point of photographing a swirling sand dune or an aquamarine ocean. Sure they were pretty, but they didn’t change anything. Only tragedy, sorrow, perhaps a little blood, a lot of sweat and a few tears could do that.

  ‘I see enough sadness every day,’ Frankie said. ‘Don’t you?’

  He did, but recording it was something he couldn’t stop – even when he was on vacation. This morning he planned to photograph the young men he’d seen in the alleys: their homes, their parents, children, grandparents. Then he’d hurry back to the hotel and take his wife to brunch.

  He brought only one camera and a light meter, then filled his pockets with film. Flashing a bag of expensive equipment wasn’t a smart idea where he was going.

  He spent an hour walking up and down the streets where the sewage swirled into the rainwater. Little kids played in the sludge like it was the local swimming pool. He handed out coins to the people who allowed him to photograph them. An old, toothless woman making tamales just outside her doorway. An ancient man whittling himself a new walking stick. A young, very pregnant woman carrying a basket on her head, three children of varying heights following in her wake and a stray dog too.

  He lost track of time – nothing new. What was new was that he needed to get back to Frankie, so he did something he shouldn’t have. He took a shortcut down a side street. It was empty. It was daytime. What could happen?

  He was halfway down the alley when a shuffle too close behind made Charley turn. He ducked just in time to avoid the two-by-four that had been meant for his head.

  The wood glanced off his shoulder. Before he could recover his attacker swung again, catching Charley in the arm. If his camera hadn’t been around his neck, he’d have dropped it as his hand went numb.

  He recognized the young man as one of those who’d stood smoking and watching Charley earlier. He’d been alone. He hadn’t seemed like a threat.

  Foolish. The kid was thin, dark and twitchy. He was either on drugs or he wanted to be.

  ‘Damelo.’ The guy pointed to Charley’s Nikon, then curved his fingers toward his palm in a beckoning gesture.

  Charley shook his head.

  The man took out a knife. ‘Damelo.’

  ‘OK.’ Holding up both hands in a gesture of surrender, Charley began to remove the camera from around his neck.

  The fellow lunged, jabbing at Charley with the knife.

  Charley swung. The Nikon, several pounds of solid metal on the end of a leather strip, connected with the guy’s temple and he went down like a puppet off his string.

  Charley never glanced back until he reached the stone entryway of the Hotel Genève.

  He wiped his forehead and blood dripped off his arm. A bright shiny trail led across the ceramic tile behind him.

  ‘Señor, you need the doctor.’

  ‘Si. Gracias.’

  He led Charley to another room, away from the guests, then made a call. In less than five minutes a man arrived with a black bag and stitched Charley’s arm.

  ‘Policia?’ the doorman asked.

  Charley shook his head. What was the point? The kid was long gone.

  Besides, the less hoopla that surrounded this the better. He’d prefer that his wife never discover what had transpired, but considering the bloody state of his clothes and the stitches in his arm, that wasn’t going to happen.

  After thanking both the doorman and the doctor, then paying them, Charley hurried to his room. Frankie sat on the veranda drinking coffee, wearing the orange kaftan she’d bought in the marketplace the day before. She turned with a smile that froze as her eyes went wide. She dropped the cup, and it shattered on the tile.

  ‘Stay!’ he ordered, her bare feet only centimeters from the broken glass. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘With that much blood on your shirt you cannot be fine.’

  ‘Still have my camera.’

  ‘And stitches.’

  ‘You should see the other guy.’ He lifted his Nikon. Not a mark on it. ‘This thing is great.’

  She touched his face. ‘You’re great. Every time I see you I think I can’t love you more and then … I do.’ Her voice went thick on the last two words.

  ‘Why?’ he whispered. He knew why he loved her – just her voice, her scent, the sight of her could make him sane again – but why in God’s name did she love him?

  ‘Because you’re … you.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘That’s not a reason.’

  ‘Why do people fall in love?’ She brushed her fingers over his hair. ‘Because I like curly hair?’ She touched his lips. ‘The way you say my name?’ She tapped his forehead. ‘The way you think?’ She lifted both hands and traced his eyelids with her thumbs as she murmured, ‘The way that you see.’

  ‘The world?’

  She gifted him with a small smile. ‘Mostly the way that you see me.’

  He put the camera aside and kissed her. One thing led to another, and they never did get brunch.

  When Charley woke, the curtains were drawn; the room was dim and someone was retching in the bathroom. He opened the door.

  Frankie waved him away. Her face was chalk white. ‘Don’t watch.’

  He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t just leave her there.

  An insidious thought hustled in. Was she pregnant? />
  No. Despite all the recent uproar over side effects, Frankie was on the pill. Her doctor assured her that she was young, healthy and proper monitoring would negate any possible issues.

  ‘Must have been something I ate,’ she managed between dry heaves.

  ‘You didn’t drink the water, did you?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Gack. ‘Except …’

  ‘Except what?’

  ‘I brushed my teeth. Would that do it?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  She dry heaved again.

  ‘Probably.’

  He wet a cloth with cold water and washed her face, then got her a clean nightgown and helped her back to bed. He crawled in next to her, pulling her into his arms. ‘For a minute I was afraid you were pregnant.’

  Frankie stilled. ‘You sound like that would be a bad thing.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it?’

  ‘We are married.’

  They hadn’t discussed children beyond the agreement to use contraception, which to him meant none but to her meant … what? He’d thought they’d talked about everything, but they hadn’t talked about this, and he wasn’t sure why.

  ‘You want kids?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course.’ She leaned back to see his face. ‘You don’t?’

  ‘I …’ he began. All he’d ever wanted was his career and her. He’d never thought of kids, but now that he did … ‘No.’

  ‘No,’ she repeated. ‘You don’t want any children, ever?’

  ‘The world is so fucked up, Fancy.’

  ‘And our child might fix it.’

  ‘You believe that?’

  ‘Yes! You want to just let the world implode?’

  ‘I’m not sure there’s any stopping it.’

  ‘So you plan to photograph the flames and do nothing?’

  ‘Yes?’ The word came out a question because he knew it was the wrong answer, but it was his answer.

  She sat up, pulling herself out of his arms. The movement was too sudden and her face whitened again. She lay back down, closed her eyes.

  Panic fluttered. Would she leave him over this? ‘Sweetheart—’

  She held up a hand, kept her eyes closed. ‘Give me a second.’

  ‘I’ll order room service. Some soup maybe? Toast.’

  The hand she’d held up slapped over her mouth, and she pressed it there for several seconds before lowering it to rest on her stomach. ‘Do not speak of food.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What about adoption?’

  He’d never considered that either.

  Frankie opened her eyes. She was still so pale they glowed brilliant green even in the half-light. ‘Wouldn’t it help the world to raise a child who has no one?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘You don’t like kids?’

  ‘Sure.’ Some of his best pictures were of kids. They were so natural, so at ease, even around a camera.

  ‘Then why not have some?’

  Some? How had they gotten from one to some?

  ‘I’ll still be gone all the time. You’ll be alone.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be alone or lonely if I had a child.’

  ‘You’re lonely?’ This was the first he’d heard of it.

  This was the first he’d heard of a lot of things. He loved his wife more than he’d ever thought he could love anyone. He knew her as well as he knew anyone. But he was beginning to realize that he didn’t know her as well as he should.

  ‘No,’ Frankie said. ‘Well, yes. Sometimes.’

  Charley became uneasy. Lonely wives as beautiful as Frankie weren’t lonely very long.

  ‘You could travel with me.’ He did better alone, but he wouldn’t do well at all if he lost her.

  ‘I have a job. And you do better alone.’

  God, he loved her so much.

  ‘Maybe we could adopt one child,’ he said.

  She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. ‘Your mouth says one thing, your face says another.’

  ‘What does my face say?’

  ‘Maybe we could be saddled with a bone-marrow-sucking troll, which we have to walk over a pit of poisonous vipers, barefoot, to obtain.’

  Charley touched his face. ‘It says that?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Frankie took his hand.

  Hers was still ice cold, so he took the other one too and held them between his to warm them. ‘I’d do anything for you.’

  ‘And I’d do the same for you.’ She took a deep breath and something flickered in her eyes – there and then gone so fast Charley wasn’t sure what it was, though he didn’t like it. ‘No kids. OK.’

  ‘I didn’t say—’

  ‘You didn’t have to. A child isn’t something you do for someone else. You do it for the child or you don’t do it at all.’

  She was right, and since she was agreeing with what he wanted, he let her.

  ‘Let’s sleep a while.’ He pulled her into his arms and told himself everything was all right.

  When the phone rang, Frankie was so deeply asleep she didn’t wake up. Charley grabbed it before the second ring.

  ‘Charley?’

  He had to stretch the cord to its limit to get into the bathroom so he could find out what was so important that his boss had called him while he was on vacation. He couldn’t recall it ever happening before. He actually couldn’t recall being on vacation before.

  ‘Mt St Helens erupted in Washington,’ Stanley said. ‘They’re saying it looks like a bomb went off.’

  ‘Casualties?’

  ‘Yeah. Don’t know how many yet. I need you to get there and find out.’

  Through the crack in the door he saw his sleeping wife, too pale, so still. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘The last time we had an eruption like this was …’ Paper rustled. ‘Maybe 1912? This is the biggest story of the year.’

  Considering the continuing hostage crisis in Iran and the upcoming presidential election, doubtful. But the tingle Charley always listened to started up at the base of his spine.

  His gaze went to Frankie again. ‘Get someone else. I’m on vacation.’

  ‘You’re never on vacation.’

  ‘I am now. I’ll be home next week.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll really be home next week.’

  ‘I mean you’re really not going to Washington?’

  ‘I’m really not going to Washington,’ Charley repeated, then crawled back beneath the covers.

  ‘Did I just hear you tell Stanley to get someone else?’

  Charley sighed. Now she woke up.

  ‘You did.’

  ‘You sure?’

  He nodded because he didn’t think he could say the words again. But Frankie had just given up children for him, the least he could do was give up one assignment for her. Although it probably shouldn’t have been that assignment.

  The photographer Stanley sent to Washington won a Pulitzer.

  Hannah

  Washington DC. September, 1990

  Heath had been coughing for the past week. He blamed the cigarettes he shouldn’t smoke and the slight flu he’d contracted. Luckily neither Hannah nor Carol had caught the bug. He’d had a sore throat and headache, followed by vomiting. Not pretty but it hadn’t lasted long.

  Hannah rapped on the bathroom door. ‘I want you to see a doctor.’

  He opened the door, coughed again, then kissed her forehead. ‘I’m fine, worrywart. Go to work.’

  Today was Hannah’s last day at National Geographic. Tomorrow she’d start packing to return to New York. She hadn’t gotten a job yet, so she’d have to live with her parents.

  Carol had hired Heath full time at You. Hannah was so jealous she could taste it.

  She’d enjoyed her internship; everyone at National Geographic said she’d done a great job. But when she’d asked about a position, she’d been told there wasn’t an opening.

  She hadn’t seen Charley Blackwell again. He’d been out on assignments all summer. Charley wa
s a star at National Geographic. All the plum projects went to him. He always got the best shots. He’d won a Pulitzer six or seven years ago with his photo of the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut.

  Right place, right time Charley, they called him.

  Hannah thought, in the case of a terrorist bombing, that should be wrong place, wrong time, but she didn’t mention it.

  He’d been nominated for a Pulitzer on several occasions before – the first one being the photograph from San Francisco that Heath had mentioned – and a few times since.

  So when Charley Blackwell walked into the National Geographic offices on Hannah’s last day, she wasn’t the only one excited by it.

  He wore trousers the color of sand, and his black shirt made his blue eyes gleam. His teeth seemed blazingly white, or maybe that was just in contrast to his tan. Add to all that a pair of scuffed boat shoes worn without socks and he appeared to have been hanging out in Hyannis Port with the Kennedys all summer when, in reality, he’d been in countries where people would kill for air conditioning or less.

  He hung around, had lunch with an editor, met with the boss; he was on the way out when he stopped in the editing room.

  ‘Hey …’ He snapped his fingers.

  ‘Hannah,’ she supplied.

  ‘Right. Sorry. Do you have those slides I gave you?’

  She handed him a bag with the containers.

  ‘Thanks.’ He started to leave.

  ‘I loved the essay,’ she said.

  She could tell he wanted to go, maybe needed to, but he came back. ‘You did?’

  ‘I thought it was …’ She searched for the perfect word to describe what those photos had made her feel and couldn’t find one. She had to settle for the lame: ‘Brilliant.’

  He didn’t appear impressed with her critique.

  She ground her teeth, centered her thoughts and tried again. ‘Basketball hoops are the same everywhere – like people are the same – and then again they’re not.’

  ‘Just like people,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked at her, really looked at her. ‘I didn’t think anyone would get that but me.’

  ‘Why – uh – did you start photographing basketball hoops?’

  Charley shrugged. ‘I wanted to do something …’ His gaze drifted off along with his voice.