If I Lose Her

by Greg Joseph Daily

  IF I LOSE HER

  Greg Joseph Daily

  Text Copyright © 2011

  Greg Joseph Daily

  All rights reserved

  ONE

  I was sixteen that afternoon I climbed the steps of my mother’s attic looking for a box to carry junk in to the Goodwill. In the light of the single bare bulb I leaned forward and tried to read labels like ‘memories’ that were scribbled and scratched through.

  The first box was heavy with Christmas ornaments. The second and third were folded clothes I had never seen before. Then I nudged a box with no label that felt lighter, so I picked it up and set it in front of me. I pulled back the folded flaps, and there it was, like it had been waiting for me all along.

  I reached down and gently touched the caramel-colored leather. The heavy metal buckles. The broad strap.

  I lifted it out of the box.

  I ran my finger along the outline of a monogram ‘C’ pressed into the leather of the front flap.

  C?, I wondered. If I had thought carefully I might have realized whose it was, but I was more interested in what was inside. And since my mother and I respected each other’s business, I decided to carry it down to the kitchen and ask her about it rather than start rummaging through it on my own.

  “Hey, did you find a box? We need to get going,” she said fiddling with her earring as she walked into the kitchen. Then she took a mug out of the cupboard and poured herself a cup of coffee.

  “No, but I found this.”

  Then she turned.

  When she saw the bag all of the immediacy went out of her.

  She smiled.

  “I had almost forgot that was up there.”

  “What is it?”

  She touched it like it was an old friend. “It was your father’s.”

  My eyes must have grown because she looked at me and touched my cheek.

  “I was going to give it to you when you turned eighteen, but there’s no reason to wait. Why don’t I take the stuff to the Goodwill and you stay here.” Then she pulled me close, kissed my forehead and left.

  I sat there for a while just looking at this pregnant leather bag. A part of me didn’t want to open it. Was it tools? Was it jewelry? Was it the reason he left? Mom said she was going to give it to me when I turned eighteen. Did dad leave it for me to have when I turned eighteen? The bag was only a little larger than a lunch box, but inside it was a vast amount of possibilities. Maybe there was a letter to me inside. Maybe a recording of some kind. Maybe a video.

  I pulled it close to me.

  If I opened it then I would know. I would know what was in it. I would also know what wasn’t. What if there wasn’t a letter? What if he hadn’t left it and hadn’t wanted me to have it? As long as I didn’t open it there was some kind of hope.

  I worked the buckle that held the top flap shut. Then I lifted the flap.

  The inside was padded and lined with canvas.

  All I could see was a piled black strap, so I pulled on the black strap until a silver camera rose from the bag. It was cold. I set it aside and looked deeper. There was the faintest smell of something like cologne but softer. I found another lens, longer than the one on the camera, which I set aside as well.

  Most of what was in the bag didn’t make much sense to me. Round pieces of glass of different colors in two plastic envelopes. Brushes. Cloth. A grey rubber bulb with a brush on the end that I squeezed, shooting air into my face.

  The side pockets held three rolls of film, some cords, caps and a small flash. So far not what I was hoping to find. There was one pocket left, a small one zipped shut on the front of the case. I pulled on the zipper.

  Inside were some folded receipts, a small printed manual for the flash and a tiny notebook held shut with a cracked rubber band.

  I looked at each receipt. This one for film. That one for batteries. I leafed through the manual, which was nothing more than a manual. Then I pulled on the rubber band, which broke as I pulled it off. My heart sank as I saw that it only held hand-written notes on distances for flash and calculations for film speed and marks with f/’s that I didn’t understand. Then I found, tucked in the last pages of the book, a small photograph. It was of my father, probably in his mid-to-late twenties, smiling and holding the camera up like he was asking my permission to take my photo. That’s when I started crying.

  I wiped the tears from my cheek and took the photograph into the living room where a framed image of my dad and mom hung on the wall. These were the only photos I had ever seen of my father. They looked like they had only been taken a few months apart.

  As a child I would often go to garage sales with my mother and finger through boxes of old photographs, imagining that if I could just break through that tiny barrier, that paper-thin boundary, I could travel back to when that photo was taken, and the moment I wanted to return to more than any other was the one hanging on the wall before me.

  My love of vintage moments led to a fascination with some of the great photographers like Ansel Adams and Edward S. Curtis, but I never had a camera so I never tried. I also never knew my father had been a photographer. I went back to the kitchen table.

  All of those dials and windows and strange marks made the camera seem like a puzzle box that held a tiny time capsule inside.

  I picked the camera up and turned the little black dial on the body clockwise, counterclockwise. I pulled down the slide and popped open the camera’s back. Little rods and shutters. I slid the shutter, delicate as a dragonfly’s wing, to the side, with my fingernail and looked through it at the upside down world small as a drop of water. Then I closed the back of the camera and picked up the extra lens. Two lenses, one on the camera and one not. Huh, I thought to myself. I took the rear cap off the lens and looked through it, but I couldn’t see anything. At one end of the lens, there was a dial with strange marks in yellow and white. There was also a tiny infinity loop in red that I touched with my finger. Infinity. At the other end of the lens was another dial, which I twisted. This made the lens grow like a telescope.

  I set it aside and looked at the much shorter lens on the camera body. It too had the same yellow and white marks and the tiny red infinity loop I touched with my finger again. They must be interchangeable. I pulled a small silver lever I found and turned the lens. It came off in my hand, and I put the longer lens on the body. I looked through the viewfinder, and with another twisting of the lens I could draw distant objects closer to me. Then I rummaged around in the camera bag.

  What I didn’t realize at that moment was that the camera I held in my hands was going to give me a new way of slowing down and seeing the world.

  I decided then: if my father had been a photographer I would be one too.

  Two

  A short time later I took a job on the yearbook staff, giving me the chance to get out of two class periods a week in trade for taking photos. This was great. What was better was the key to the photo closet. I was falling in love with my little Holga, but this little brass key gave me access to three camera bodies and about a dozen lenses. But, more importantly, it gave me access to a supply of film and a dark room where I could begin developing my own work. The smell of vinegar reminded me so much of stop bath that the two would become interchangeable.

  There were eight of us on the yearbook staff, and we all had to share the small darkroom. My days were Mondays and Wednesdays.

  The second Monday of the new semester I had just finished shooting a boys basketball game and thought I had a great shot of Michel Collins, the school’s most valuable player, performing a game-winning jump shot from the three-point line, so I went down past the auto shop to the old brick shed that had been turned into the schools darkroom. The red light was on over the door, which m
eant someone was developing film and the door would be locked from the inside.

  I looked at the rota hanging on the door and saw that someone named Jo was signed in. So, I knocked.

  “Wait”, came a feminine voice. “Twenty-two seconds.”

  I waited for her film to finish.

  Then there was a click of the deadbolt and a pair of beautiful eyes looked at me through thick-rimmed glasses and the slit of the open door.

  “Yeah.”

  “Uh, I just came down to develop a couple of rolls of film.”

  “Sam said nobody used this after four.”

  “I work with Sam on the yearbook, and I just finished shooting the basketball game. I wanted to take a look at what I got. I didn’t know anyone else would be here either. I can come back later.”

  “No, that’s okay. I only have one roll left,” she said stepping back from the door.

  I walked into the room where steel tables and plastic tubs glowed red from the safety light like a scene from a Stephen King movie.

  “The sign-in says Jo.”

  “As in Jolene,” she said walking back to where two rows of images hung from wooden safety pins like fresh laundry.

  “Ah, I’m Alex,” I said setting my camera bag on one of the tables and taking out the yearbook-issued camera body I had used for the shoot.

  “How are the chemicals?”

  “They’re still good. You can use this. I just finished with it.” She handed me a small steel container that I could drown my film in until their black and white images emerged.

  Film has to be pried out of its roll, wound on a spool and sealed in a light-tight container in absolute darkness. You can do this by turning out the lights or by using a large, black bag with a zip on one end that your arms slide into. Since I was not alone in the darkroom it was the courteous thing to use the bag, so I unzipped the nylon womb, laid out my film and my tools, zipped it shut and reached in.

  The trinkets I juggled with blindly were the small metal container, my rolls of film, two metal spools to wrap the film onto, a bottle opener and a pair of scissors to clip the ends of the film. It was enough of a trick to open the film, wrap it onto the spools and clip the ends in a dark room where there was plenty of room to maneuver, but I was not accustomed to the confined space of the bag.

  There was a sudden sharp pinch, and I jerked my hand out of the bag. “Ouch!”

  I looked and saw a single streak of blood crawl down my finger. Then I went to the sink. Tear drops of red fell from my finger and swirled into the drain.

  “Are you okay?” Jo asked.

  “Yeah, I just got myself trimming the end of the film.”

  She left her tub of floating paper and brought me a bandage from the first aid box sitting by the door. My hands were wet, and my finger was still bleeding so she tore open an alcohol pad with her teeth and pressed it against the finger I held out to her.

  “Ow, that stings!” I said pulling my hand back.

  She smiled. “Come on. It’s not that bad,” and she took my hand again. “Just look away from the pain. That’s what my dad always says.”

  I turned my head.

  “Does it work?”

  “Maybe a little.”

  Then she pressed the alcohol pad against the cut again, and I felt it all the way down the back of my hand.

  While she held it there against the heartbeat at my fingertip, I looked at her photos hang-drying over the sink. One was of a tree at night holding the orb of a streetlight in the palm of its skeletal hand. Another was of a bird half-peeking out of a potato-chip bag. There were three or four of a dog playing with a toy and one of a double exposure of a woman’s portrait overlaid with the face of an older woman.

  “I really like this one,” I said reaching out and touching the edge of her double exposure.

  “Thanks. It’s my grandmother.”

  “In both of them?”

  “Yeah, I found some old photos of her from before she was married. I took a picture of one of the photos and used the negative of that to superimpose over the image I took of her a few months ago. It’s for her birthday.”

  “Wow, I would not have thought to take a picture of a picture and use the negative for something.”

  “You see old people all the time, but I never thought of gran as an old lady, just a woman in an old body, and I wanted to do something that showed how I felt.”

  I was drawn to keep looking at the half-present faces, while she dried my finger and wrapped it in a plastic bandage.

  “Thanks.”

  “Sure. You can just turn the lights off and finish on the table if you want.”

  “I don’t want to mess you up.”

  “That’s okay. I’m not in any rush,” she said pushing her glasses back from the tip of her nose.

  Two or three dark hairs clung to her lips.

  “You have a…” and I reached up and brushed them aside.

  “Thanks.”

  I turned and walked back to the bag.

  One roll of film was lying loose in the bag so I had to finish winding and putting it away before I could work on the second. Then I laid everything I needed out on the table and walked to the light switch by the door.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  I flicked the switch.

  I carefully made my way to my scattering of tools, popped open the film reel, wound it, trimmed it and sealed it in the container with no more difficulty. All the while thinking less of my photos than of Jo. Jo with her thick glasses that enlarged her eyes; her black curly hair that had stuck to her lip; that smile she smiled when I jerked away from the sting of the alcohol. What was she thinking about while she waited for me to work on my film across this galaxy of dense darkness?

  It was so quiet. I tried for a moment, but I couldn’t hear her.

  “Finished,” I said softly as though the dark had turned this room into a church or mausoleum. She didn’t reply.

  I slid one foot in front of the other and waved my hand back and forth in front of me as I walked to the light switch.

  “I’m going to turn the safety light back on. Are you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  With a click the room was red again.

  I poured the first chemical into the steel cylinder and the smell of the chemicals stung my nose. I watched the clock on the wall above where she sat with her back toward me, and I could hear the slosh of her pushing a print back and forth in a tub with a pair of large wood tweezers.

  Time’s up.

  I poured out the developer and poured in the stop bath. I watched the clock again. She let her shoe drop so that it hung from her up turned toes and transferred the print into the second tub.

  Time’s up again.

  I poured out the stop bath and poured in the fixer, swishing the container around in a circular motion. Then I looked up at the clock again and at her again.

  I hadn’t noticed her much before, when I walked into the darkroom and only a little more when she bandaged my finger, but now triggers were firing. Her black bra strap skating out from under her shirt. The long line of her legs growing out from her pleated skirt. I swallowed.

  I went to the sink, rinsed my film and hung it to dry on lines opposite from where she hung her last print: a flower vase broken across concrete steps.

  I wanted to say something, but I didn’t.

  I picked up my loop and looked closely at each frame of my film. The shot I had hoped to get of Michel Collins was blurry. Damn.

  I heard her bag rustling. Then I turned to see her sliding a set of prints from earlier into a paper envelope, which she put in her book bag.

  “You said you know Sam. Do you come around the yearbook office much?” I finally asked.

  “No. I have fourth period with her.” No? Shoot.

  “Well, thanks for bandaging up my battle wound.”

  “Sure,” she said brushing her hair back behind her ear and tossing her bag over her shoulder.

/>   Say something. Say SOMETHING!

  “Hey.”

  She stopped with the door cracked open.

  “Do you drink coffee? I’d love to buy you a cup, for …you know,” and I held up my finger.

  “No.”

  NO! Shoot!

  “But I do drink hot Chocolate if you want to shell out the big bucks for that.”

  Big bucks? Does she think I’m cheap?

  “Well, I am willing to spring for dinner if that sounds better.”

  She paused.

  “How about hot chocolate? Do you know Dumo on sixteenth?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well I’m showing some photos there on Friday, at seven. Wanna come by at six?”

  “I’ll see you at six on Friday.”

  She smiled again and left.

  Realizing I didn’t know anything else about her I ran to the door and out into the hall.

  “Hey.”

  She turned.

  “Could I get your number…you know, just in case?”

  She walked up to me, pulled a pen out of her bag and wrote her number on the back of my hand.

  “See you Friday,” she said. Then she turned and walked away.

  See you Friday. I thought to myself looking at the phone number.

  She had circled it with a heart.

  Three

  I had never been to an art exhibition before so I didn’t know how to dress or what to wear except what I had seen in movies, so I decided to wear a simple black suit and white collared shirt with no tie and the two top buttons undone. I had also wanted to bring something. Not just flowers or chocolates; something more personal.

  I parked around the corner from where Jo said the gallery was, took out my wrapped gift and my small Holga camera and made my way. Dummo. I probably wouldn’t pick a name like Dummo myself, but whatever.

  It was a fall evening, and Santa Fe Blvd, where all the small galleries are in Denver, was strung with little white lights. It wasn’t cold, just fresh, and the winter snow taste of the mint in my mouth melted as I walked down the street. I stopped and looked at myself in a darkened window full of wedding dresses. I adjusted my collar, ran a hand through my hair and smiled. I was ready.