Timeless Photograph

I pulled the photo from the box, looking at the two figures pictured upon it.

It was my mom, when she was much younger, next to a young man that I didn’t recognize. 

“Hey mom,” I asked, turning to my mother, who was sifting through another box of photos. It was about time that we went through them anyway. “Who’s this?” I held the photo out to her, and she took it, her blue eyes scanning the photo.

“I have no idea,” she laughed, handing it back to me. “It was too long ago.”

“You took a picture with him,” I said. “Surely you remember?”

“No idea,” she repeated, laughing again. “I have no idea who that person is.”

I examined the mystery person next to my mother. Sandy hair and green eyes, he sparked no memory for me. Flipping over the photo, I noticed a small logo in the corner, as well as a date and address.

Punctual Pictures.

Punctual? 

It was a horrible attempt at alliteration, and it didn’t even make sense. Pulling out my phone, I typed in the address.

Nothing.

Nothing came up. I tried the store name, and still there were no relevant results.

I glanced at the address again, examining it. The streets in NYC were numbered. It shouldn’t be too hard to find. 

Setting the photo aside for later, I returned to the box, sifting through more photos, each a snapshot of the past.

The next morning, grabbing my bike, I set out, the photo tucked carefully in my jeans pocket. I pedaled in the bike lanes, watching the blocks pass by. It was fairly orderly here in the city, with just the right amount of chaos to make anyone feel out of their element.

Finally, I found the place. A small, narrow store, shoved in between a tall apartment building and a bustling french restaurant. 

Punctual Pictures, the sign read in bold, neon letters. 

Locking my bike to the lamp post, knowing I wouldn’t stay long, and pushed through the door of the tiny business.

“Hello?” I said quietly, and as politely as I could.

Pictures hung on every inch of the wall, some in frames, some not. Black and white photos, photos in old - yellow tints, modern colored photos. 

“What do you want?” A rough voice demanded, and I spun around, jumping.

A burly man, curly hair sitting on his head and glasses sitting on his nose, looked down at me. 

“Umm…” I stuttered. “Are these… yours?” I gestured around to the pictures on the walls. He nodded.

“I’m a photographer. Do you need one?”

“A photographer,” I repeated, trying to imagine the giant man behind the tiny lens of a camera.

The man nodded, miming holding up one of the devices. 

“I take pictures.”

“All of these?”

I wandered over to the wall, standing in front of a large photo, yellowed with age, of a young couple looking severely at me.

“Most. I… collect them as well, you could say.”

Sticking my hand in my pocket, I pulled out the photo that I had found. 

“Do you remember taking this photo?” I asked, showing it to him. I tapped one of the figures. “That’s my mom.”

He squinted at the photo, then took it and brought it closer to the light.

“I take lots of photos,” he said, somewhat apologetically. “I do not remember. But I can look it up!” He took the photo over to a small desk perched in the back of the narrow store, and opened a laptop, immediately tapping keys on it as he flipped the photo over.

Again, my eyes wandered to the photos that decorated the walls. There was no way he could have taken them all. My fingers drifted close to a crumpled photo that looked like it could have been the first photo taken ever. He wasn’t old enough to have lived then.

“Is your mother Claire Barrett your mother?” I turned back to him.

“Yes, that’s my mom.”

“She and a Joseph Cox ordered some pictures of the two of them. This was one of them.”

I took the photo that he returned, scribbling the name on the back. Joseph Cox. I had never heard the name.

“Do you have a way of contacting Joseph Cox?” I asked, after a moment of standing there, thinking.

The man’s eyes narrowed. 

“I can’t give out that information.”

“That’s okay.” Skittish at his hostile tone, I tucked the picture back in my pocket and left the store, climbing onto my bike. 

I took a moment, pulling out my phone and searching up the name. I was hoping for social media, something I could find out about him. I was surprised to find myself reading an obituary. 

He was dead.

I scrolled through a news article that had come up with his name.

A car crash.

No, a car explosion. Engine set aflame right after the car had run into a tree.

Joseph had been driving.

I looked at the date of the news article, hoping it would give me a clue. 1970. 

Before my mom was even born.

I blinked. The date must have been wrong. He couldn’t have died before my mother was born. Slipping the photo from my pocket, I looked at the date on the back.

1997.

There was no way.

I scoured the news article again. The young man lost control on his way to his house in King’s Point Forest.

King’s Point?

I recognized the name, but I looked it up to make sure.

A small park, to the west of where I was. Not too far. 

Stashing my bike in an alley, locked to a fence, I paid the bus fare to King’s Point, looking for more answers to a question that wasn’t all too clear to me.

Maybe there would be some of his family there, someone who would know what really happened to Joseph Cox.

The park was overly-manicured, barely a remnant of the forest that I knew once stood here. I walked along the paved paths, past the tennis courts and swimming pools.

Small stone obelisks stood at random intervals, and at a glance at the words engraved on the side of one, I realized that they were small memorials to people in the past. 

Finally, I found one marked ‘Cox’, scrubbed clean by the park’s many gardeners, but still half hidden behind a hydrangea. Which, probably, wasn't native to the park.

The sun was setting over the horizon, the light rapidly fading as I crouched next to the small column.

Cox Manor, 1883. That was all. Once, a house had stood here, surrounded by the forests that no longer were. 

That house had held answers. Answers about a man who had died and yet was alive.

This obelisk held nothing.

The sunlight was gone now as I walked slowly back to the streets, wandering through the planted flowers and trees, all the people deserting the poor park.

A sound rustled behind me, and I cast a glance over my shoulder, quickening my pace.

You couldn’t be too cautious in the city.

My mother’s warnings flashed through my mind as I walked, and a shadowy figure stepped onto the path before me, his face awash with light from the lamps along the path that were now flickering to life.

It was a face I recognized. A face that hovered next to my mother’s in a photo that she didn’t remember, taken at a place that barely existed. The face of someone who had died.

And my screams almost masked what he said.

“Hey.”

*All places used in this story are used in a fictitious way, none of the historical elements, as far as I know, are not real.*