Disappearer

What will it be like when you can see every picture ever taken of you?

By the time Niamh arrived, it was dark enough that I could see her grin but not her tears. At least, not until she sat down. She was about to explain, but then the waiter stopped by our table, and Niamh bit her tongue. I placed an order. Cold air settled over the patio; the wind flicked the tablecloth around.

When no one was looking, she showed me the picture. It was intimate, the sort of image that feels like it will dissolve in your hands. Only a newborn and a parent tend to get that close.

“It’s not even racy,” Niamh said. “Why do I feel so humiliated?” The answer was that the image, through some providence of light and composition, had trapped her, had found, within her, a downy seed. “I can’t bear it!” Niamh said. “I can’t bear it!”

Appetizers arrived. I had ordered the spiciest dishes on the menu, hoping to burn through Niamh’s pain. Instead, her tears multiplied, to the point that she had to lie down on a bench. Her eyes widened at the lanterns swinging overhead.

I made sure: the picture had been taken with her consent. So there was nothing to be done from a legal standpoint. We ordered a dessert of rice and mango, and I suggested that we look at other photos of her in order to soothe the sting of the new one. “I don’t let anyone take pictures of me,” she said. “This is why.” 

We turned to the candids. As an introvert, Niamh hadn’t spent much time in that part of the verse. It took some convincing. “I’ll filter out any bad stuff,” I promised.

Let me describe, in as much detail as I can summon, Niamh’s three favorite candids. 

In the first, Niamh is the photographer. The picture is of her mother. It was taken in Galway when Niamh was a girl. Niamh’s mother is leaning her head forward and making the kind of exaggerated smile parents sometimes make for their kids. Her mother looks to be about 40 years old. The photo was taken in front of a mirror, and Niamh appears as a reflection, her smile as bright as her mother’s, in love with the woman before her, in love with the moment.

The second photo is at an outdoor café, by the Spanish Steps in Rome. A middle-aged man has torn a page from a book and is holding it up for the camera. We see the book’s title at the top of the page: Japanese Death Poems. The words below it read: “I constantly aspire / to be the first to pierce / my dagger in the eggplant.” A note tells us that this poem was composed in 1723. On the left side of the photo, unaware of this poetry, is Niamh. She sits in profile, wearing large orange sunglasses and holding an espresso cup. Her lips are pursed. Perhaps she is mid-sentence. Perhaps she wants to be kissed. She is 20 years old.

In the third, taken in Squamish, British Columbia, she barely appears. The photo is a landscape: mostly mist, trees, and mountains. Far in the distance, a handful of pixels at best, we see Niamh. She’s wearing a green windbreaker, a hiking pack, and purple rain boots. Nobody is with her. It’s nearly dusk. She’s 30 years old.

When we were finished with the candids, Niamh put her hand on her collarbone, and I watched her hand move up and down, up and down, perfectly calm, as she breathed. “Haven’t you ever wished,” she whispered, “that the world was even bigger?”