Exposure by Amy Cook

Exposure

nonfiction by Amy Cook

There was this moment, that spring. Maybe it was May, but it was the sort of afternoon where the promised sun is still in absentia. Walking to the grocery, I saw an older man coming up the other way; a man of the sport coat and khaki genus; crooked tie species. These men are congenial; harmless.

And there was his square chin. A not-too-long nose. A jolly Howdy Doody mouth. There was a man’s face, unsheathed.

He had his mask roped around his wrist, this being our afternoon of liberation. The government had, just now, today, said that this was okay. It was all going to be okay.

This is a city of ruin, of empty storefronts and the ghost howl of too-frequent sirens. We will never be who we were. But at this moment, Howdy Doody-mouth and I, we are fine.

We grinned at each other like we had never seen another human being smile.

My cousin, our family photographer, almost died; it was a long time ago when we were halfadults on the precipice of life. His accident was a big deal; in the papers, on the news. My cousin and his car were under water for the length of a sitcom, and then he came back. Now, he has a wife and a child, and on the anniversary of his Lazarus day, he celebrates not just his own rebirth but the people who gave of themselves so that he might still be here. So that our family is photographed intact.

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Years Later

Two weeks before our grandmother died, all the cousins were together for Pesach. It was unusual that all nine grown-up grandchildren could find the time, but there we are, grinning in this picture, looking straight towards the future. We’re assembled on my aunt and uncle’s foyer stairs; my grandmother sits below us, in a dining room chair, surrounded by ambition, love, success, and hope. Next year in Jerusalem? We’re all here now.

There’s a second picture, one I don’t remember posing for. Someone must have said, “do something silly” because I’m draped over the railing, pretending to be asleep. My sister-in-law gives bunny ears to Grandma. Several cousins burn American Gothic stares. And my husband, bless him, is making the kind of face you warn your children about; keep it up, it’ll freeze that way.

My grandmother is looking down, almost off camera. There’s a softness in her gaze, a peal of laughter about to break. She’s looking at Brady, Cousin Sam’s little dog, who has chosen this very moment to run through our family snapshot. Brady is doing something silly, too.

When my grandmother dies, I travel to Bethesda to be with my family, though we’ll all have to make the trip back up north for the funeral. It’s just one night, but I want to be surrounded by something. Love, maybe; comfort. I want to drown in whiskey. I want to linger in tradition. I want to be on those stairs again. Hadn’t we all just been on those stairs? Where’s the little dog?

In grade school, I came in second in a spelling bee, because I couldn’t spell the word burnisher. I’d never even heard of it. B-e-r-n-i-s-u-r-e?

A burnisher is a hand tool used in woodworking.

Burnish the images into your memory so they can’t escape.

I liked the days I was ostensibly sick, growing up, because it meant a road trip. Our pediatrician’s office was in a town magically called West Windsor, a good forty-minute car ride from home. My mother would turn on LITE FM, and she’d sing the oldies while she drove. How often did I fake it so we could take the day, listening to music? Often enough.

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Janet Reno called us once. It was after my grandfather died. My uncle had been working at the FBI, and Janet (may I call her Janet?) paid her condolences by phone, while we were doing the dishes.

I told that story everywhere as high school currency. I was a weird girl.

When it became apparent that we were all going to die, I made a plan. At the first hint of fever (I checked three thousand times a day), my father would come to Manhattan from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We’d load up some clothes, and the cat, and apparently, take our novel virus to a part of the country that didn’t have it yet. Exposing my father on the way.

The logic, of course, was that at our hospital, the doctors and nurses were using trash bags to prevent exposure.

“What was it like?” our nieces and nephews will ask.

It was like living in a horror film or, like living in a jar, maybe. If you closed the lid tightly enough, maybe nothing else could get in.

We never got sick; not that spring, anyway. By chance, our comings and goings had kept us out of harm’s way, while so many others stood, unmoving, as the bombs rained down.

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