The Furious Spinner

I'm in the photographic mode lately, as you've witnessed. Mario has started calling me Martha Effstop. Following along in that vein, I am pleased to post Frames by Mario Milosevic. This story was originally published in Asimov's, July 1995.



Frames

#1
Janet found an unexposed roll of super 8 film in the box of odds and ends her father had sent to her with a note that read: Here is some stuff I don’t need anymore. Maybe you can find a use for it. The film was still in its airtight yellow pouch. Janet pushed aside an old quilt her grandmother had made years ago and found the dusty old super 8 camera her father had used for mental Olympics competitions, piano recitals, birthday parties, and vacations. This was before camcorders and vcrs. Janet set up the camera on a tripod in the living room, training the lens on the maple tree in the front yard.

#2
The camera had a stop motion button that exposed one frame at a time. Janet loaded the film, attached the remote release cable to the stop motion button, and clicked a picture of the tree. It was late afternoon. Sweet light, she remembered a photographer on a television talk show once called it. The sun low, the air clear, the light golden, almost solid. The leaves on the maple tree illuminated like actors on a stage. She nodded. Sweet light.

#3
Janet stirred vegetables around a wok and remembered being told when she was two years old that she was a genius, a prodigy. She was able to speak several languages by the time she was three, invented calculus by age four, and composed and performed symphonies at five. Her parents had high hopes for her but she was more interested in her friends.

#4
She created her friends the day after her third birthday party when her father had told her she needed to stop having fun and spend more time with her math books. She thought and thought and thought about what kind of friends she wanted to have. She wanted them to like her. She wanted them to be smaller than her. She wanted them to pay attention to her. There were about a dozen of them and they did all those things. After that, Janet’s friends would come around occasionally and take her away from her genius activities. Her father fretted whenever she spent time with her friends. Janet, he said, you need to keep up with your studies. You could be the greatest mind the world has ever seen.

#5
Janet turned off the stove and went to the camera and snapped another frame. Then she went back to the kitchen and poured the vegetables over a plate of rice. She ate slowly, in dim light, glancing up at the wall clock every few minutes. By the time she finished her meal she was in complete darkness. The moon cleared the horizon a few minutes later. It’s silvery light seemed cold, but interesting. She rose and snapped off two more frames.

#6
At the super market where she worked the midnight to seven a.m. shift, Janet smiled at the customers and pulled their groceries over the laser scanner. Someone looked at her with that glint of recognition she had grown to hate. Say, he said, aren’t you that girl, that genius? Janet felt her face turn red and silently cursed that local reporter who had unearthed her story and published a recent snapshot of her along with those pictures of her at the mental Olympics television show from thirty years ago. Everyone tells me that, said Janet, but would a genius be working at a Safeway? I mean, really! The man laughed and picked up his change and groceries. I guess you’re right, he said, but you sure do look like her. Janet remembered the super 8 camera on the tripod at home.

#7
Janet bought a pint of ice cream and a spiral bound notebook after she punched out. She got home as the sun was rising. She sat on the couch in her living room and studied the maple tree as she ate the ice cream. The tree looked as cold as her hands felt holding the carton. She stood and walked to the camera and held the remote cable in her hand. She exposed five frames, spaced a minute apart, then recorded the date and time of each exposure in her notebook. Later she brought the notebook up to date by recording the dates and times of the first three exposures.

#8
Janet’s father phoned her and asked if she found any use for the box of odds and ends. I don’t know, Dad, she said. I used the movie camera. Do you think that was a good idea? Her father hesitated then said, Sure Janet, sure. You’re really going to be something. Do you know that? You’re going to be someone great, someone people will talk about for a long long time. Janet’s friends came into the living room then. She dropped the phone and told them all about the movie she was making. It’s going to take me a whole year, she said. They nodded and clapped their little hands and she hugged them tight.

#9
Janet played with her friends for the rest of the morning. She felt flush with joy as they each pressed the button on the camera several times and she carefully recorded each frame in her notebook. The tree will change over time, she said. The leaves will turn color and fall off, the branches will get snow on them, the buds will come back after winter and then the leaves will grow again. It’ll be a cycle. Then we can play the movie and watch the tree change over time. Won’t that be fun? Her friends nodded.

#10
Janet’s friends left soon after noon. Janet was too tired to try to talk them into staying. Come back, she said. We will, said her friends. As long as you remember us.

#11
Janet’s boss said she was doing an excellent job. You’re so good, Janet, he said. I’ll never understand for the life of me why you, a genius, wants to work here, but I’m glad you do. You’re so good. Janet nodded and tried to smile but it was not the same as smiling at the customers. She wanted this job too much, she had to be too nice. It wasn’t fair that people thought she was so smart. It wasn’t fair. It was like they wanted her to think she was a failure. She thought about her notebook. It was almost all she thought about as she spent her nights scanning people’s groceries. She had begun to embellish her notebook with comments about her feelings and her state of mind at the moment each frame was snapped.

#12
A year after she started, the movie was finished. According to Janet’s notebook, the film was exactly one thousand, six hundred, and forty five frames long. Less than two minutes. She got the film developed then set up the projector so that the movie would show on her living room wall.

#13
Janet made popcorn dripping with butter, sprinkled with salt. She waited for her friends to come. When they arrived they snuggled around her like little kittens. They were soft and warm and cuddly. Janet thought of all the people over the years who said she was a genius. She wasn’t. She just knew how to make friends. She reached over and snapped on the projector. The wall counted down numbers: five four three two. Then a beep and a crackle.

#14
The maple tree was like a sculpture on the wall, jerkily growing from a lushly green thicket of leaves to a smear of orange, yellow, red, then a frosty white, a stark crooked outline against the sky, and finally a fresh green thicket again. Then the wall became bright white and the film spooled through the projector to the end. Janet did not snap off the projector. She felt tears well up in her eyes. She wanted to tell her friends that that was the genius. The tree was genius. She wasn’t. She just knew how to make friends. It was a good movie, said the friends. We really liked it. She hugged them and they stayed for a long time. Janet was as happy as she ever remembered being in her life.

#15
When they disappeared again Janet saved the film in a little canister and put it away for safe keeping. She spent many hours reading over her notebook. It was a good film: it brought her friends back. That knowledge filled her with joy.

#16
Eventually she started thinking about a new project to bring her friends back. She was pretty sure they would like a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge made out of toothpicks. After her next shift at the super market she bought several dozen boxes of toothpicks and a lot of glue.

copyright © 2005 by Mario Milosevic

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