Sofia Drummond-Moore
My boyfriend is making an art film about the landscapes in which murder victims were found. One is in the desert. A lingering shot of sand, a hill sloping upwards in the background, a rock to the left. He says he lets the shot go on as long as it takes. I’ve asked, as long as what takes? He says as long as it takes to for him to see the person who was left there.
When he first showed me the film in progress he had only two landscapes. The first was a river. There was a title card that said “Sadie How, 22, wore her favorite blue jacket that day and never drove anywhere without ginger candies to offer in case of carsickness.”
I didn’t know what to expect next, if I would see blood, a gaudy chalk outline. So when the river came into focus there was dread mixing with the wine in my stomach. I searched the rocks for flashes of wet red. Searched the bottom of the river for death.
I didn’t see it, whatever it was he so doggedly filmed in the slow moving river for almost fifteen minutes. Near the end he stood from the couch beside me and walked closer, almost obscuring my view. There, he said. She’s there, he said. He tipped his head at the screen.
For me the screen hadn’t changed.
Do you see her, he said, looking back at me, sweetly flushed.
Mmm, I said, nodding sagely.
How was she killed? I asked him.
He shook his head, regretfully, like he could see I didn’t get it.
The next clip began with “Olivia J., 14, won significant prizes for her knowledge of math. Owned three pairs of roller skates.” Olivia’s was of a backyard, summer, brilliant green grass, thick hyacinths weighing down the background. The clip only lasted a minute. My boyfriend shared a knowing look with me. I saw nothing.
I looked it up later. Her father shot her accidentally.
I never got it. There was nothing in his shots besides the rooms, the dirt, the concrete, the water. No flowers or teddy bears even. I think it was his earnestness that got under my skin. By the time I broke up with him there were others, “Benjamin” a five minute shot of a little blue house, “Dorian” forty-five minutes of an empty pink wallpapered room. I got so bored I started counting by threes in my head as far as I could.
When my brother died I stared at the chair he’d been sitting in for hours. I called my ex-boyfriend from my bed, a bog of tears, and asked him to film it. Begged him to help me see.
He did, sweetly. He filmed the chair for twenty minutes. I watched him. I watched his face change and his shoulders, high by his ears at first, relax with almost an audible thunk. He stopped recording and smiled at me, softly, with a heavy understanding I didn’t want.
When I watch the footage back, I just see his chair. Just an empty fucking chair.
***
The film is appearing in a prestigious museum. My brother’s chair is in it so I go. The gallery’s packed. No one looks at the other art. Even though it’s almost four hours long, a crowd stands in the dark room with my ex-boyfriend’s film. I watch until my brother’s chair. “Anthony, 31, fed ravens on Sundays and preferred peppermint lip balm.” The old woman next to me is crying. A man in a business suit has his hand pressed hard to his chest. And there’s his chair.
In front of me there’s a beautiful woman in green, about my age. Her eyes are wide and wet at the screen.
What is it? I ask, clinglingly, weak. What do you see?
She looks at me with the same sweet flush I would see on my boyfriend. She doesn’t say anything but pulls me tight into her fake fur jacket. While she and the rest of the room stare forward at the screen I look back.
I can hear the sound of the air conditioner coming through the speaker. Of the cars on the road outside my brother’s house. A construction vehicle beeping in the distance. The low hum of the so familiar. The woman holds me tight against her.
When I turn back to the screen the chair is still empty.
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Sofia Drummond-Moore (she/her) is an emerging writer born in Santa Fe, New Mexico to park ranger parents. She grew up in National Parks around the U.S. She graduated from Knox College with a BA in Creative Writing and has an MFA in Screenwriting from the American Film Institute. Her work can be found in X-R-A-Y Lit and Waxwing and is upcoming in Door = Jar.