Empire of Light (39 page)

A kindly nun with wispy silver hair warmly received Lucia and hurried the poor girl into the grand Mess Hall straight away where they sat in the cozy breakfast nook to share a meal of tomato soup and hot buttery crusty bread. Given the tragic events of the day, Lucia didn’t have much of an appetite. Yet, even in her distressed state, the perceptive little girl still couldn’t help but notice the nun’s strange and frequent glances up to a photograph which hung above the nook.

“What is that?” asks Lucia.

“That is a 1963 Dodge Travco,” responds the nun with a smile.

A picture of motor home sitting in a wheat field didn’t seem right for an orphanage, even to a five-year-old girl.

The hour grew late, and Lucia could barely keep her tear-filled eyes open. The nun escorted the sad little girl through the twisting antiquated orphanage grounds until they finally reached the girls dormitory. The nun was certain the other children would take good care of her. A special group, they were, friendly almost to a fault.

Lucia barely stepped into the grand foyer of the dorm before the entire population descended upon the girl, engulfing her within a cyclone of humanity and affection. With everything Lucia had gone through that day, this was just too much, too soon. The child bolted away from the group in a panic.

It was Lucia’s clever new roommate who eventually discovered her hiding beneath the stairwell, embracing her indigo colored knapsack as if her entire world were locked inside. Once the roommate coaxed Lucia to her room, she shooed away the others, including the nun, and shut the door tight.

The roommate apologized for the overly enthusiastic welcome and then tried as best she could to explain the children’s surprising behavior. She told Lucia of the legend of the
Breakfast Nook Photograph
, a tale that had been passed down through generations of residents, slightly twisted through time.

Long ago, there was a little boy who had once lived in the very same orphanage. He had received a camera for Christmas, a Brownie, which inspired him to become a brilliant photographer when he grew up. Decades later, with thanks for his countless years of kindness and generosity, the children of the orphage gifted him with a 1930 Number 2 Beau Brownie camera on his fortieth birthday. With it, he traveled the country in his old motor home, performing righteous acts in the name of God and capturing beautiful moments of humanity and goodwill on film.

By the time he had reached old age, he had lived such a splendid life that God himself couldn’t wait for him to set up house in Heaven. Upon his death, the old man was swept up into the sky with such a rush that his motor home, the whole kit n’ caboodle, was caught in the mystical slipstream and yanked into Heaven behind him.

The photo that hung above the breakfast nook was a picture of that very trailer, taken seconds after he died, and seconds before the vehicle vanished into the ether, snapped with that very same Brownie camera that was gifted to the man on his fortieth birthday.

“The Mess Hall photograph is blessed,” the roommate said.

And it was because of that picture that all the children in the orphanage were filled with hope and love, just brimming with the stuff, as evidenced by the slightly overzealous welcome, of which the roommate apologized, once more.

Lucia politely listened to the entire story, and then when she was quite certain the roommate was finished, she whispered softly to her
,“Lies.”

Before that day in September, the old cliché,
youth is wasted on the young
, could never be applied to Lucia. She was an old soul who loved her youth like it were a miraculous second chance, as if her first shot at childhood had been wasted, toiling away in something akin to a Dickensian internment camp. And the only things she adored more than her life as a child, were her parents. She treasured them like the precious diamonds that were kept under glass within her family’s store. Lucia had once believed in fairy tales because she had lived one.

That belief died the moment the stranger entered her parents’ store and taught her different. She told her roommate how she had just watched the life vanish from her mother’s eyes. Her heart was full of nothing but pain, there was no room left for such silliness as a blessed photograph.

She advised her roommate to grow up, but fast.

Lucia spent the following weeks buried in inconsolable grief; and the more the nuns or the other children reached out to her, the deeper she withdrew into darkness. Her only constant companion was that indigo backpack where she buried the souvenirs of a breathtakingly happy life.

One frosty day in December, she passed by the Mess Hall and couldn’t help but take note of the lavish Christmas decor. The hall glistened with silver tinsel and shimmering candlelight. The walls were draped with black forest garland, which was splashed with vibrant hits of crimson holly, burgundy ribbons and golden bows. There was a time when such décor would’ve warmed Lucia’s heart, but that day, she entered the decked hall for no other reason than to marvel at how empty the room left her.

Out of the corner of her eye, she spied a mysterious young black man positioned near the breakfast nook, staring intensely at the photograph of the motor home in the field of golden wheat. She thought he looked graceful in his dark blue suit and metallic yellow tie. That is, until she noticed the designer’s tag, which remained stitched upon his sleeve.

She giggled.

For the first time she could remember, she giggled.

Her dad had habitually left tags on his new clothes and then ventured out into public. So much so that her mom took to carrying around a small sewing kit to remove them, or to repair the garment after her father would attempt to rip it off like an impatient child.

She watched the man as he removed an old fashioned camera from a leather case slung about his shoulders. He then donned a pair of dark sunglasses, which seemed strange to Lucia, seeing how they were inside the dimly lit Mess Hall.

He aimed the camera at the breakfast nook photograph and engaged the shutter.

Curiously, the man seemed immediately heartbroken after taking the shot for he gazed down at his camera as if it were broken, beyond repair.

He slowly removed his sunglasses and sat dejectedly upon the breakfast nook bench, gently resting his hand atop the ancient looking box.

Outside the orphanage, up in the dark grey sky, the clouds broke for the first of three times that day. Sunlight beamed through the breakfast nook’s window and illuminated the Brownie’s green art deco faceplate.

What a beautiful camera,
she thought, just as the clouds regained power of the sky and blocked the sun’s rays.

Lucia cautiously moved to him, standing just out of reach of the bench. For the first time since she’d arrived at the orphanage, she felt compelled to approach another human being.

“Hi,” the man said to her with his infectious smile.

“Hello,” she responded quietly.

“I’m Jason.”

“I’m Lucia.”

“Lucia? I like that name. You know that’s Latin for,
light,
right?”

“Duh,” she said sarcastically.

Jason laughed. She moved closer to him, close enough to reach out and tug at the designer tag sewn to his sleeve.

“So, you gonna be returning this suit after you’re done with it or what?” said Lucia, mocking the way her mother would frequently tease her dad.

Jason looked down at his sleeve and laughed even harder than before.

Lucia liked his laugh.

“I can take care of that, if you want,” she offered.

“Yeah, that would be great. Please,” he responded.

“I bet your pockets are still sewn shut, too.”

Jason covertly ran his hand across the sewn seam of his right pocket.

Lucia unzipped her indigo backpack and warily rummaged through the murky bag of memories. She squinted and furrowed her brow and attempted to navigate through all of the clutter within the deep dark pocket to find the object of desire. She suddenly paused in frustration and thought to herself,
I could use some light.

Jason recoiled, startled as Lucia suddenly up-ended the indigo bag and dumped its entire contents upon the table in a boisterous clamor. The two sat and stared at the pile of knick-knacks, a child’s treasure trove of trinkets and baubles.

At the sight of it all, Lucia took a troubled deep breath, a succession of staccato gasps of air, really, before she softly began to shed tears. The little girl realized that she had not allowed herself to cry, or allowed herself to feel much of anything but hopelessness, since arriving at the orphanage.

So starved for compassion, she even allowed Jason, a stranger, to hold her, just a little. She quietly pushed herself away from his embrace and quickly busied herself.

Hastily, she ruffled through the pile of knick-knacks until she found a small plastic box, a stitching kit, the very one once owned by her mom. She removed the seam cutter and immediately began to dissect the label from Jason’s sleeve, one strand of thread at a time.

Outside the orphanage, up in the dark grey sky, for the second of three times that day, the clouds broke. The sunlight pushed through the window and glinted off a small silver plated object that sat among Lucia’s trinkets. The flicker caught Jason’s eye. He glanced at the table and spied the jeweler’s glass.

The flickering loupe sparked an idea within Jason. He quickly asked Lucia if he could borrow the small magnifying glass.

She hesitated, the seam ripper poised just above a thread.

“After I’m done with your sleeve. Honestly, how does someone leave the house looking like this?” Lucia said, aping her mother’s words another time.

The clouds once again regained dominion over the sky and blocked the sunlight from the room.

Lucia patiently finished removing the tag, going as slowly as possible, not eager to have a stranger lay hands on the cherished keepsake. However, the job eventually had to come to an end.

Upon seeing the label tossed onto the table, Jason eagerly snatched the silver plated loupe and opened it, exposing a powerful little lens. He jumped up on the bench and examined the vibrant Kodachrome print hanging on the wall. Specifically, he stared deep into the window of the motor home.

He was stunned. Embedded in the photograph, he saw himself.

There Jason sat, next to the old Cinematographer, his arms thrown up in the air in shock, his pose ironically caricaturing his current emotion. It was then that Jason realized that his mentor, Edgerton, had known his face for decades. He knew of Jason Tisse even before Jason Tisse was ever born. Seeing his face during the application process, Jason realized that Edge probably moved Heaven and Earth to get him accepted into AFI.

As Jason climbed down from the bench in a stupor, he thanked Lucia for the use of the loupe and then asked her where she found it.

He immediately regretted asking the question.

Lucia recounted the sad events of her life in graphic detail.

Upon hearing her story, and believing that all objects have energy about them, Jason couldn’t bear to allow the Loupe to remain buried in a schoolgirl’s backpack. He looked at the table and discovered a silver necklace tangled within Lucia’s pile of baubles.

It was one of a dozen silver necklaces which were hand crafted by her mom. The chain, which hung from Jason’s hand, was the single one left dangling from the wrought iron display as the stranger hastily snatched at the cluster of silver before making tracks into the wind.

Jason threaded the jeweler’s glass onto the necklace. He stood behind the seated girl, majestically draped the heirloom about Lucia’s graceful collar, and clasped it shut.

Lucia gently rested her fingers upon the treasure, touched, but not certain she wanted to be reminded of that day, everyday, just yet.

She barely mumbled, “thank you,” before quickly changing the subject.

“This is such a beautiful box,” she said.

“It’s a camera. It’s called a Brownie,” Jason responded.

“A Brownie,” Lucia whispered to herself, remembering the legend her roommate had recounted. Could this be the very same camera from the fairy tale?

“Would you like to take snapshot with it?” Jason asked.

To her surprise, Lucia’s heart began to race, as if it knew something that she didn’t. She didn’t answer straight away as she tried to wrap her mind around what all this could possibly mean.

“Yes,” she finally answered.

She stood, took hold of the camera and immediately lined up a shot of the breakfast nook photograph, to Jason’s surprise.

Before he allowed her to fire off the shot, he offered Lucia the use of his dark specs.

“Not sure if you noticed this, but we’re indoors,” she answered sarcastically.

“Fair enough,” Jason responded with a smirk.

She took aim and fired.

FLASH!

The image of her mom crawling on the ground and reaching out to Lucia, as she cowered under the jeweler’s desk flashed before her.