EpilogueOne year later.The gallery is a small one, on a side street off the main drag, run by a woman named Agnes who wears reading glasses on her head and has opinions about framing that are essentially theological in their intensity.Maya has been working with Agnes for three months. The show is called 'Seventy-Three.' Agnes had suggested something more abstract. Maya had not budged.The photographs are hung at eye level, on white walls, with the kind of lighting that makes everything look like it was always meant to be seen this way. Seventy-three images of a woman in an ordinary city, doing ordinary things, looked at with extraordinary care.The opening is a Thursday evening in December. Priya comes, and the teachers from Maya's school, and Caroline — who has flown in from Portland and stands in the centre of the gallery for a long time, not speaking.People Maya doesn't know come too. They stand in front of the photographs and say things like: "You can feel how he looked at her." And: "There's so much tenderness in these." And: "Did he love her?"Maya is standing beside Agnes when she hears that last question — a young woman asking her companion, in front of the photograph from the rooftop at sunset.She thinks about how to answer a question she's been answering to herself for a year.Yes. With everything he had, for as long as he had it. In the only language he finally learned to use.She goes over. She introduces herself. She says:"Very much."* * *After everyone leaves and Agnes is locking up, Maya stands alone in the gallery.She looks at herself. Seventy-three times. From every angle, in every light.In each one she is exactly there — present and particular and real. Not performing anything. Just being seen.She reaches into her coat pocket. Her hand closes around something she has carried every day for a year.The red umbrella is at home, by the door.She carries the index card.Four sentences. His handwriting.
I'm sorry. You deserve better than this. Better than me, right now. Please don't look for me. I'll explain when I can. — DShe didn't look for him — not until the letter told her to come. She honored the request and she went when she could. She was too late and on time, all at once, in the way that some things are.She puts the card back.She takes one last look at the photographs — at herself, through his eyes — and turns off the light.Outside, it is cold and clear. The city does what cities do. She puts her collar up and walks.She thinks about Tuesday mornings and chamomile tea and a man who carried a camera everywhere and looked at everything and finally, finally, put the lens down.She thinks: I was seen. Past tense in one direction, present tense in every other.She does not cry on the street. She saves that for inside, later, where it belongs.But she smiles. She smiles at the cold December sky and at the street going on in every direction and at the small ordinary fact of being here, alive and moving, carrying everything.— THE END —
