“I wasn’t sure I was going to see you again,” Jackie says. She’s smiling, but it looks skittish. Not a word Claire would usually associate with Jackie Callas.
“I told you you would,” Claire says.
Jackie looks down, fussing at the carpet with her bare toes. Her hair falls like a curtain, concealing her thoughts from Claire. “I know. I guess it was hard to believe.”
“Can I come in?” Claire says.
Jackie steps aside quickly. “Of course. I just have a couple things to finish in the darkroom, and then we can have some lunch. I’ve got leftover pizza?”
“Darkroom?” Claire says. She slips her shoes off at the door, and Jackie ushers her towards the hallway. The door Jackie shows her through is the only threshold in the house Claire hasn’t yet crossed—the stairs to the basement. Claire’s house doesn’t have one, so she’s a bit startled by just how pitch black it is—Jackie seems to have blocked the small windows to keep any light from getting in. Claire can’t see anything at all until Jackie flips a switch, and the room lights up in a strange red glow.
There’s a strong chemical smell on the air down here. Several tables hold differently colored plastic bins. Claire has to duck a little to avoid strings of photos draping from the ceiling like clotheslines. On a sturdy desk against the wall is a large piece of equipment that looks like a microscope. There’s a sink in the corner, a couch on the opposite wall, and stacks of differently sized photo paper scattered everywhere.
“This is where I develop my prints,” Jackie says. Under the red light, she looks eerie and eccentric.
“You do it all yourself?”
Jackie takes a photo from one of the tables, still shiny with liquid, and clips it to one of the clotheslines. “I like to have control over every aspect of the process. Someday I’d love to have my own gallery too, but that’s a bit of a pipe dream.”
“What are you working on right now?”
“I just finished up a commercial gig. Advertisements for a perfume company,” Jackie says. She moves to a different table,one crowded with six different bins. “But my pet project is in here.”
Claire peers into one of the bins. It’s hard to see under the red light, but swimming in some kind of clear liquid is a large photo. It’s hard to tell if it’s in color or black and white—it’s an amorphous form, like an ink blotch against a light background. “What is it?”
“Look closer,” Jackie says.
Claire squints down at it, trying to see whatever Jackie wants her to see. The liquid makes the shape a little wobbly. She tilts her head this way and that. There’s a shape that could be a head, and perhaps shoulders. Breasts below, and flowing hair. “It looks like a woman. With wings, maybe?”
She stares, and stares, and—
“Wait. It’s an orchid,” Claire says suddenly.
The flower is twisted and shadowed, but the lighter lines that streak up the petals make it clear. Jackie has formed another image with the negative space. Now that Claire has seen it both ways the image keeps shifting back and forth, orchid and then woman and back again.
“I was going for an ambiguous image. I’ve always been fascinated by them,” Jackie says. She trails a finger across the liquid over the photo, sending ripples across the surface. “Finding new images in the negative space. There’s no background, and no fore. Just two interpretations of the same thing.”
“Like a brain-teaser?” Claire says.
Jackie shows Claire to a string of photos hanging above their heads. “Exactly. I have a whole series on flowers. The patterns you can find in the petals. Playing with angles. Light and shadow.”
Claire reaches out, touching the edge of one of the photos. It’s still damp. “How do you come up with this kind of thing?”
“I don’t know. Hidden things jump out at me, I guess,” Jackie says. Claire could swear by the sound of her voice that Jackie is looking at her, not down at the photo, but when she raises her head to check Jackie’s gaze is down on the bins again.
“I wish I could see things the way you do,” Claire says. The hanging photos make all sorts of shapes using flowers—a tulip shot from above, which looks like a king is emerging from the petals bathed by a golden sunrise. A lily that echoes the shape of a ballerina.
“You see things in your own way. You’re an artist,” Jackie says.
Claire scoffs, shaking her head. “I told you, I gave it up when I got married. And I could never make anything like this.”
“What kind of art did you like to make?” Jackie asks.
“I liked to paint everything I could see,” Claire says. She drifts through the room while Jackie pulls the photo out of the liquid with tongs. “And I used to sketch people at the park.”
“Really? Just passersby?”
Claire shrugs. “I like to see what I can capture in a single image. I always feel like I can understand someone better after I’ve drawn them.”
