The first photograph of the angel of Crystal Beach was taken by our own local newspaperman, Howie Foster. After stealthily drinking four lukewarm Labatt Blues in the back seat of his car, while his brother laboured for hours in the May sun, Howie mounted his pricey Canon camera atop his tripod and began snapping.
Was the erection of the Ricky Esposito Memorial Gazebo newsworthy enough to earn us the cover? Not likely, at least not during a holiday weekend, and especially not considering the gazebo technically stands on private property. We guessed that the enormous twenty- by twenty-foot hexagonal structure would be used for the occasional wedding, or maybe, if we felt ambitious, we’d offer it to a book club for summer meetings or the local seniors’ choir if they wanted to sing show tunes in an outdoor bandstand. To be honest, we weren’t really thinking about how the gazebo would be used, only that it needed to be built.
The reason Howie ran the gazebo story—the reason he was there rather than fraternizing with other red-nosed men in a nearby beer tent—was because he wanted to do right by his brother, Joe Foster, who was celebrating his tenth year sober. The cover photo and accompanying news article were Howie’s ways of being an enthusiastic, albeit a condoling, witness to his brother’s recovery.
The fact is, everyone who showed up that day showed up in service of somebody else. Tamara was there because she was falling in love with me, or she was falling in love with the feeling of love; in other words, the sex we were having was fucking blessed. My mother was worried—though not about me—that she’d be excluded from a notable event in our small community. Dr Rahn Johnson was there for my mother. Dolores Longboat was showing her steadfast friendship to Bobby. Hal and Bobby, Rose and I, well, we believed we had a higher calling. We were truly summoned by divine purpose. Or divine purpose is one way of looking at it. I might also say I had no choice.
The photo in The Fort Erie Times: front row, left to right; Rose Esposito, Barbara and Starla Martin, Tamara Matveev, Roberta Varin: and back row; Dolores Longboat, Wendel Swartz, Howard and Joey Foster, Rahn Johnson, Harvey Varin, and little Lucky (just “little Lucky”) perched on top of Hal’s shoulders. We were a wide-smile group; new buddies, recently consummated lovers, both blood and unconventional family, each of us allowing a day’s worth of honest work to yoke us together. And in this way, the photo does not lie.
The article made no mention of angels. No ghosts. No miracles. No lady of blessed whatnot. No harbingers of transformation. Nothing supernatural at all. Those of us who had seen her were doing our best to keep her a secret. We were in awe of what we had seen and also mortified. Saying it aloud would have made it more real, too real and too soon. Therefore, the May 22 cover page headline read, “Memorial Gazebo Built with Salvaged Wood from Crystal Beach Amusement Park.”
Days after the local paper ran our story, we studied the newsprint grain, the pixels. “Do you see her?” Her hourglass shape like an elegant smudge.
Since The Fort Erie Times article, there have been other photos, better-quality photos in more reputable newspapers. But this clipping is the one stuck to Barbara’s fridge, another is taped to Rose’s hall mirror, and a third is proudly framed and hangs from a beam of our revered Ricky Esposito Memorial Gazebo. Some claim to see her right away, others denounce her as a trick of light and shadow. Either way, it’s unmistakably Etta standing beside me in the photo. The angel of Crystal Beach, Ontario. Her filmy arm stretched forward, as if someone has just asked her to dance.