“Everyone, I wanted to let you know that your former classmate, Judith Stanley, who, uh, died so tragically a few months ago, as you probably know, will have twenty of her photographs featured in this month’sHarper’s. It comes out tomorrow.”
He waits for the murmurs to subside, and inadvertently locks eyes with Charlie when he adds, “It features an introduction written by yours truly. I selected the photographs with—on behalf of Judith’s family, too.” Paul senses a slight and sudden shift in how his students perceive him: he’s no longer their insignificant community college instructor—however charming—but a big shot, a cool guy, a man of real substance and importance in the world.
A few hands shoot up and he happily answers their predictable questions.
“How did you choose which twenty to use?”
“Will they mention NJCC?” This one gets titters.
“Did you include that one of the couple you showed us last semester?”
“How can I submit my photographs toHarper’s?”
When he looks around for the next question, Paul spots Charlie’s raised hand, her darkly intent gaze. He could pass over her, pretend not to see her, but that would be weak—and he isn’t weak, is he? Still, he dislikes the serious set of her face, the way she looks at him like she’s prying him open. He’s pried her open many times, in his head, but the thought doesn’t protect him. It feels instead like he’s done somethingwrong, something gross, and that everyone here has seen him do it, too. He hasn’t and they haven’t, but still he cowers a little and calls on Charlie without using her name, pretending he doesn’t know it.
“How much was her family involved in the process?” she asks. A seemingly innocent question, but Paul is unnerved.
“Oh, uh, they trusted me to do the hard work,” he says, stretching his lips into a semblance of a smile. “But I ran my choices by them, of course, and won their approval.”
Charlie receives this blankly and carries on. “Amazing, too, thatHarper’slet you do the introduction. Congratulations.” He nods but bristles.Amazingbecause it’s wonderful? Oramazingbecause it’s a job for someone better? They didn’tlethim do the introduction; they begged him to. An exaggeration, sure, but Marty offered it to him without question, without hesitation, at the same moment he proposed publishing Judith’s portfolio. Paul takes a breath and tries to remind himself that she’s just a young know-it-all. She probably doesn’t intend her tone. He needs to calm down, be mature, bethe professor. Or be the man with a feature coming out inHarper’stomorrow.
“Yes, thank you. Not really surprising when you consider I worked with her on the photographs quite a bit and knew her work better than anyone else. And since I’m a professional myself—”
“And you were the last person to see her that night, too, right, Paul?” Charlie adds, interrupting. She sounds almost helpful, just listing another reason he might have been chosen, but Paul isn’t fooled. He hears the dark implication; so does everyone else. The room stills. All eyes are fixed on him, all ears tuned to hear how he’ll respond.Careful, Paul. Careful.Paul lets out a breath and shakes his head.
“I was. I hate thinking about it. I wish I—could have done something to stop it. But I was in here, and she was out there, and by the time I came outside, well…” He lets it trail off. Folds his arms across his chest and stares into the distance, to the back of the classroom, safely above and beyond his students’ unwavering attention.
“I only wish Judith were here to see thatHarper’sissue tomorrow.”He says it softly, conveying real regret and sorrow with his voice. He thinks that should get them on his side—even if it doesn’t win over Charlie.
“Me too,” Charlie says, her snide little voice echoing through the room. That’s it:Me too.As if she knew Judith at all. As if she has any right to talk to him this way, like a fellow collaborator on the Judith project. He fights the urge to march over and pull her up by the ear, in front of everyone. He wants to drag her—
“I can’t wait to see the feature tomorrow, Professor,” a young man whose name escapes him says in the awkward silence. Saving him. Paul’s simmering rage retreats; he looks over and smiles at the male student. A real smile.
“Thank you for saying that. I can’t wait to see it, either. I think you’ll all appreciate the photographs in the feature. Now go out tomorrow and buy one! Or two!” he says, laughing as they laugh, even though he’s still seething in Charlie’s direction. He turns around to hide it as students leave, half expecting to hear her cough quietly to announce her presence behind him, but there’s nothing, and when he turns around, she’s gone. Everyone’s gone. He’s blissfully alone, though he doesn’t feel blissful. Not blissful at all.
18.
Paul walks briskly to the newsstand the next morning, his heart pounding in his chest. TheHarper’sissue is there, front and center. He stops walking, stops breathing. His eyes land first on Judith’s face: wry, reserved, unknowable.I exist, it says.I’m here.And even though Paul knows better, it’s suddenly as if shewerehere, staring him down, challenging his bogus story of her “last wish.”This isn’t what I wanted, she’s saying with that closed expression of hers, and Paul checks over his shoulder to see if anyone else has witnessed his exposure as a sham. But there are only strangers passing by, utterly indifferent, and Amir gives his usual kind smile when Paul pays, asking him why he’s buying several copies. When Paul points a finger at his own name, under Judith’s on the cover, Amir claps his hands with real glee. He rummages behind him then and pulls out a cigar—a good one, Paul notes—and Paul takes it gladly, gratefully, his mood shifting like the ground beneath him. He’s happy again, proud of what he’s done. Who he’s become.A true success.
Amir lights the cigar for him, leaving Paul to stand on the sidewalk, puffing, staring at the cover, which reads:JUDITH STANLEY, Suburban Housewife, Murder Victim, Visionary Photographer: A Portfolio.Edited and Introduced by Paul Sorenson.He loves seeing his own name but hates the descriptors they’ve used for Judith. He tried to get them to change them—or their order, at least—but the editors (not Marty, whoagreed with him) won out. They said it would sell, and Paul concedes the point; those descriptors alone could compel people who aren’t usually interested in art to buy the issue in droves. And Paul wants it to sell. If it doesn’t, then what will he have to show for his hard work, for the risks he’s taken?
Paul buys a croissant and coffee, then heads to the tiny park not far from his apartment. He sits on a bench, takes a deep breath, and flips through to the portfolio. It’s right in the middle: a centerfold. He smiles at the sight of his byline but doesn’t read the introduction yet; he skips ahead to Judith’s pictures. It’s like seeing them for the first time, in all their vibrant, playful, breathtaking beauty. He stares at each one, knowing thathe himselfselected these, put them in order, had them published—and here they are. He feels as though he’s floating in air, observing himself from above. He seems to watch himself flip back through the pages to his introduction. And then his own words bring him back to earth; he shuts out everything but the lines before him, the lines he’s written:
To the everyday observer, Judith Stanley would have seemed like an average woman: a housewife, a mother, and the unassuming resident of a suburban New Jersey town. Like so many women of her age and middle-class status, she had a hobby, too: taking photographs. When she enrolled in my Introduction to Photography class at New Jersey Community College, I, too, was fooled by her appearance. I saw her as a quiet, self-contained woman, probably trying to fill her empty evenings now that her children were gone. I didn’t give her much thought at all; though older than my average student, she blended in, became just another face among many in the lecture hall.
When she handed me her photographs one night after class, everything changed. It was like I’d been sleepwalking, andJudith’s pictures smacked me awake. That’s how good, how original, how startling they were. Especially the self-portraits. I’d never seen anything like them, and I was well-versed in the current trends of portrait and self-portrait photography. Judith was doing something thrillingly new, yet she had no idea. She may have known that she was “good” at photography, that she had a knack for seeking out idiosyncratic subjects and views, but she didn’t know how uncommonly gifted she was—and neither did anyone around her. I’m honored, and so grateful, to have been the one to first recognize Judith Stanley for the major talent she is—or rather, sadly, was.
I didn’t know, when we met, that Judith was being stalked. Sometimes by telephone: it would ring and no one would answer, or the caller would say terrible, intimate things to her over the line. He followed her, too, as she traveled around taking photographs, keeping his distance but always there, and appearing, she said, as a shadow in the background of many self-portraits—though she religiously cropped him out, and you’ll see no sign of him in this selection. He approached her a handful of times and then finally, tragically, he stabbed her after class one late fall evening. He left her for dead in the parking lot, then vanished into the night. I’m haunted knowing that if I’d left the building sooner and spotted her lying in a pool of her own blood, I might have saved her. Her killer has yet to be found.
It was—and is—a terrible loss. To her family and friends, of course, but also to the rest of us, as you’ll soon discover yourself. I never knew Judith the mother, Judith the wife, or even Judith the friend, but I did know Judith the photographer. And she was mighty. Sheismighty. She was struck down far too soon, but her work will endure. Over the past weeks, I’ve worked diligently to select twenty of her moststriking photographs for the portfolio that follows—a true feat, given that nearly every photograph in her substantial oeuvre is striking.
Judith had been wary of sharing her photographs publicly; she was a private person. But on her last day in class, which was also, sadly, the last day of her life, she asked me to help her publish her work. I was eager to do so. She was eager, too; I only wish she could have lived to see this exquisite portfolio come to fruition. Welcome to the world of Judith Stanley: small-town parades, suburban parties, self-portraits, lovers’ spats, outcasts, and city sights as you’ve never before seen them. Enjoy these glimpses of our mundane lives made wholly new through the lens of Judith’s incredibly uncanny eye.
Paul Sorenson, Photographer and Photography Instructor
Paul looks up and around, almost expecting the oblivious passersby to tell him,Well done.He thinks his introduction is really quite good, and aside from that, no one who reads it will miss the glaring proof of his interwovenness with Judith Stanley. Tom Senior won’t like it; he won’t like how Paul has rendered the details of his wife’s ordeal in print, either, though he’s hardly said more than the newspapers and television news did in their lurid accounts. He’s done it more tastefully, more respectfully. Tom would have to acknowledge that. And how could he tell the story of these pictures, and of Judith, without that essential background? He takes an overlarge bite of his croissant and washes it down with a fast, hot swallow of coffee as if swallowing down Tom’s disdain, cleansing it away. He chews and sips more slowly after that, determined to enjoy this moment that may be a turning point in his life. And when he wipes the last crumbs from his mouth, takes the last drink of coffee, he heads home. After all, his telephone might be ringing.
19.
