Saving Photos

Susan lifted her phone up from her lap and quickly thumb-clicked three pictures of the balding man sitting on the bench across the playground. Her eyes dropping from the old man to her phone, she switched to video in time to catch him raising up a camera with snubby lens, aiming it at a blonde boy at the top of a bathtub duck yellow tubular slide.

Susan’s eyes cut to the boy as he beat his little fists against his purple shirt with a Tarzan yodel before diving headfirst down the slide. The boy popped out of the bottom of the slide with a shriek cut off as he face-planted into the sand. She had instinctively leaned forward but then relaxed back in the bench as the boy, bare knees in the sand, raised his hands over his head laughing in triumphant victory. She watched as he got up and motored across the lot, his green Crocs kicking back shots of sand, his arms airplane wings flying him into the landing strip of his mother’s arms. When Susan looked back to the bench where the old man with the camera was sitting, he was gone.

* * *

“Just look at him,” Susan told Mark, her phone trembling in front of his face. “Tell me he is not taking pictures of that little boy!”

Mark sat the spatula down in the egg pan and reached out to Susan’s wrist to steady her hand. Squinting toward the screen, he said, “You’re right, that old guy with the camera definitely looks like he is taking a picture.”

She wrenched her hand away and went to the kitchen island saying, “He was taking pictures of little boys, Mark! Right in front of everyone at the park and no one did anything,” throwing herself into a bar stool. “This is serious,” she exclaimed, klonking the phone onto the island. Then, she started crying.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Mark exhaled as he turned off the gas and slid the pan to the back burner.

He went to Susan and put his arms around her. She turned her face to his chest. Hot tears soaked through his t-shirt and her nose rubbed against him with her small shuddering sobs.

Her voice muffled, she stuttered, “They j-j-just didn’t care.”

Mark spooned his chin on top of Susan’s head and squeezed his arms a bit tighter. Holding her. Being there. Not talking. He had learned talking did not do much good and could sometimes make things much worse.

His thoughts took him back to when it began. Or, after months of tests, procedures and waiting, when it had ended. Linda, their endocrinologist, had tried to be as kind and empathetic as possible. Mark listening carefully, asking all the questions, getting the final answer: there would be no babies. Not from Susan.

He had kept glancing at Susan in the office. Talking to her. Trying to draw her into the conversation. But Susan had sat silent and withdrawn. Her eyes fixed at the small portrait photo on Linda’s desk. A picture of her, her husband, and three children.

On the way home, Mark had tried talking but Susan just sat staring out the windshield. He knew what she was thinking. Susan was from a big family, not like Mark, an only child. She had joked about having dozens of kids. Then more seriously about four – so there wouldn’t be a middle. An oldest, like her, and three down to the youngest – the baby they would all spoil. For Mark, he just wanted to be with Susan and whatever made her happy.

Mark knew Susan felt like she had lost everything. But he hoped she did not think she had lost them.

When Susan started spending the days out of the house at parks and playgrounds while he was at work, Mark thought it was a good sign she was reengaging. The old Susan was coming back, coming back to him, coming together.

But she wasn’t and they weren’t. Tonight was a perfect example. Susan was upset and crying about how mothers (like Linda) didn’t care. They didn’t watch their kids. They didn’t want (deserve) kids.

Mark closed his eyes and whispered into Susan’s curly brown hair, “It’s okay, babe. We’re going to be okay.” But he wasn’t really sure they were.

* * *

Late that night, as Mark was sleeping, Susan lay next to him, her hands kneading the blanket under her chin, staring at the ceiling. She was thinking about the old man with the camera at the playground. How Mark just did not understand. That old man was taking pictures of children (babies), and no one was doing anything. No one cared, Susan thought. But she did, and Susan was going to do something about it.

* * *

The next morning, at the kitchen door to the garage, when Susan was handing Mark his lunch bucket (a nylon cooler bag they had been using for years), she gave him a wide smile and said, “Have a great day, hon.”

It caught Mark off-guard. He looked at Susan, the lunch bucket held between them, and her eyes were bright. She seemed…happy. Mark replied, “Thank you, sweetheart, you too.” And leaned in for a kiss, which Susan gave him with a big smack.

Mark grinned, heart lifting a bit in his chest. He gave Susan a little wave as he backed the Prius out of the garage. Mark felt better than he had in weeks and thought to himself maybe things were going to be okay after all.

As soon as Mark had pulled away, the smile fell from Susan’s face like a curtain. She spun around, the bottom of her terry cloth robe flaring out from her pale long legs and went back to their bedroom. On her knees, one hand on the rumpled blankets where Mark had been blissfully sleeping (not caring), she reached under the bed with her other hand and pulled out the gun safe.

* * *

Susan was back on the playground bench with one hand in her Michael Korr purse Mark had bought from her Amazon Wishlist last year for her twenty-fifth birthday and the other holding her phone in her lap. She was a little fuzzy about how long she had been sitting there and couldn’t really remember the walk through the neighborhood. Like far off seagulls, she could hear the playing children’s shrieks and squeals, but Susan was lasered-focused, unblinking, on the bench across the sand where she had last seen the old man with the camera.

The sun had moved across the sky. Susan’s eyes were stinging from the small beads of salty sweat snaking into them from her forehead. Part of her felt very thirsty but she was not really focusing on that or how her hand holding the phone was radiating pain from cramping. Her other hand, in her purse, was cramping too, and felt slick with damp perspiration. Susan was feeling a sense of growing panic. She thought if she moved at all, somehow, the old man with the camera would appear and leave before she could do anything.

Susan began blinking her eyes, almost uncontrollably, fast as she could to clear her vision, but it only made it worse. She raised her left hand up, keeping the phone pointed across the lot at the bench, and scrubbed one eye after the other with the back of her hand. For a few moments, everything was blurry, so she shook her head, which helped a bit. That’s when she saw the old man with the camera.

He was two benches down on Susan’s left. She had been concentrating so hard where she had seen him before, Susan had not even glanced in that direction.

She stood up and almost fell back down on the bench. Her legs were wooden and unfeeling. Susan teetered for a moment then shouldered her MK bag on her left and tightly clutched her phone in her left hand. She began to stiffly walk toward the old man with the camera.

Susan had only taken a few halting steps when the same little blonde boy, this time in purple pants (he likes purple, flashed through her mind), came splay foot running across the sand toward the old man’s bench. “Oh, no,” Susan whispered, and began to move faster, her legs and thighs shot gunned with jabbing pins and needles.

She was still only half-way to them when Susan saw the little boy’s mother trudging through the sand from the springy horse. She was smiling. “Why is she smiling at him?” Susan muttered.

The mother sat on the bench with the little boy between her and the old man. The little boy was flutter-kicking his legs, his Croc feet barely over the edge, butt-bouncing on the bench. The old man reached down under the bench and lifted a wide rectangular black portfolio. The little boy began clapping.

Susan was now just a few steps from the bench. She stopped. Her body wavering. Her right hand mechanically reaching into her shoulder bag.

The mother and the little boy were focused on the old man as he pulled a large, matted picture out of the portfolio. It was a blown-up photo of the little boy on top of the slide with his arms flung out to his sides and a huge sun-lit smile on his face. He looked glorious.

The little boy was shouting, “It’s me, it’s me, it’s me!”

His mother answered, “It is, Peter! Didn’t Mr. Jacobs take a nice picture?”

Mr. Jacobs looked over the mother’s shoulder and made eye contact with Susan. His smile sagged and his grey shot eyebrows rose as his eyes widened. He said something to Peter’s mother, and she glanced over at Susan and then did a double take. Her eyes also widened and she instinctively put her arm around Peter’s shoulder.

Peter’s mother took the picture from Mr. Jacob with her left hand while also using her arm to slide Peter off the bench. He looked like he was about to blast off back to the playground, but she took his hand in hers and, with one more backward look, led him down the sidewalk – away from Susan.

She’s afraid of me, thought Susan, of me. And a choking laugh burst from her lips.

Susan took the few steps to the bench and collapsed. Her yoga pants covered legs spread, her phone locked in a death grip in her left hand, the Glock 17 in her right hand – resting in her lap and slightly pointed toward Mr. Jacobs.

“You were taking pictures of children,” she gritted out, facing the playground, not looking at Mr. Jacobs.

“Yes,” Mr. Jacobs replied softly, “yes, I was. I do.”

He shifted to his right to face Susan better and her hand with the Glock jerked. He flinched but continued, “Since my wife and son, Elise and Jonathan, passed, it is what I do. I take photos of happiness. It is what saves me from using a gun, like you have there, to end the pain.”

Susan turned to Mr. Jacobs and began, “How...”

“COVID,” he replied with a sad smile.

Susan turned fully to him and whispered, “I can’t have babies.”

Mr. Jacobs, his hands on his knees, turned them palms up, fingers spread and said, “Ah, I see.”

Susan dropped her phone, the gun and collapsed into Mr. Jacobs arms, her face buried in his shoulder. She wailed as if her heart was breaking.

* * *

“Then, after Liberty Park, I’ll head to Memory Park,” Susan gushed as she dropped the small Tupperware tub of baked (flour-free) crackers into Mark’s lunch bucket and handed it to him with a flourish.

“Wow, that’s great” Mark replied, taking the bag. “This has been your busiest week yet. What’s next?”

“Well, the Etsy sales have been incredible and just so fulfilling,” Susan paused.

“What?” Mark asked. “Your photographs made more money the past two months than I did last year.”

Susan reached to the laptop on the kitchen island and spun it around so Mark could see the display.

He looked down and saw on the screen an adoption website. He looked back up at Susan, her lower lip between her teeth.

Mark choked out, “Yes, please!”

And Susan rushed into his arms.