If I Lose Her

by Greg Joseph Daily

  “Are you kidding? That’s great, babe! Congratulations.”

  “They said I’ll be the youngest artist they’ve ever hung. Did you hear that? They called me an ARTIST. Loretta said that they’ve wanted to start showing work from some younger artists to try and draw in a new generation of photo buyers.”

  “Wow, how much of the underwater stuff have you done now?”

  “Probably about a half-dozen pieces. Which, I want to show you some of when you get home.”

  Just about this time my mother came back in the room to tell me that they were ready to finally let me go home, which was fine with me since I was about to go crazy lying around in bed all day. So, Jo and my mother helped me out of bed even though I assured them I could handle it myself, and we headed home.

  I slept away the better part of the next two days, and when I was awake, either Jo or my mother were right there to make sure I had anything I could possibly need.

  Jo and I sat on my living room couch curled up under one of the blankets my mother kept beside the couch for movie watching. I was flipping through channels on television and Jo was trying to finish the last forty or fifty pages of ‘Angela’s Ashes’ without being distracted by the barrage of noise. Nothing was on so I clicked the television off and turned to her.

  “I thought you said you had something you wanted to show me.”

  “Huh?” She asked not lifting her eyes from her page.

  “Back in the hospital. You said you had some prints you wanted to show me.”

  Now she held her spot and looked up at me. “I do. It’s some of the stuff I was working on over the summer while you were gone.”

  “Well, let’s go see them.”

  “Are you sure you’re up for it?”

  “Yes, I’m so ready to get out of this house and DO something.”

  “Maybe your mom can run us over to my house.”

  “No, no. I’ll drive us.”

  “Are you sure you’re really ready to be driving again? I mean it’s been less than a week.”

  “I’m fine,” I said jumping up. Let me just change my shirt and get my mom’s keys.

  We walked out to the garage. I opened the garage door and we climbed into the grey car I had driven countless times, all the way to Minnesota and back.

  I sat down and buckled my seat belt.

  I felt my stomach tighten and my hands started to shake.

  I looked at them.

  I took a breath and rubbed the steering wheel.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I guess I’m a little more shaken up than I thought,” I said looking at her.

  “Maybe we should get your mom to take us.”

  “No, I’ll be okay. I need to drive again sometime anyways right?”

  I put the key in the ignition, and we slowly backed out of the driveway.

  It was peculiar. I had been driving for years now, and it was always something I did without even thinking about it, like flipping a light switch or surfing the internet, but now I had this heightened awareness that the machines around me, in driveways, in parking lots, on the road, could kill me. We made it to Jo’s house without any trouble, but neither of us had said anything to each other on the way.

  Her parents and sister were off listening to a guest lecturer at their church.

  I followed Jo into the house and up to her room where the photos were that she wanted to show me, which felt like I was walking on hallowed ground since I wasn’t allowed up near her bedroom when her parents were home. She opened the bedroom door and I looked around as I walked in. Christmas lights framed her bedroom window and a Fiona Apple poster hung over her bed. There were dried flowers covering the top of her dresser, pictures of me squeezed in the crevices of her vanity mirror and stacks of my letters on a small table by her bed. In the corner of her room was a couch where large prints sat like guests at a dinner party waiting to be served cocktails. They were wrapped in white plastic so I couldn’t see them until she lifted the first one out of its protective covering.

  “Oh my god Jo, are you kidding me? How did you do this?” I asked.

  Her face lit up to my reaction. Then I reached out and took the print from her.

  The image was taken from above a young woman in a white dress that floated out around her while she knelt in water with her arms held out over her head. The photo was aged and the colors were muted down almost to a kind of metallic sepia. A drop of vibrant color came from purple wilted flowers that the woman held in her hands.

  “This is really beautiful Jo. Is it Amy?”

  “Yeah. They’re all of Amy.”

  She took the photo from me.

  The next one was taken underwater of Amy in a cornflower-blue-silk dress lying in a kind of weightless, suspended animation with her face just above the surface of the water where you couldn’t see it. The waters surface created a mirror image of her body, which was so pale I couldn’t help but feel sad for her.

  “Oh wow. How did you do this?”

  “It took a few weeks to get the hang of photographing in the pond. Do you remember how every time we’d move those leaves and dirt would get kicked up and cloud the water? I had to get into the water with her, and we held ourselves up by that rope for probably an hour and a half until the silt settled down before she’d float out a ways and I would let myself down. You should have seen me. I had a wet suit on and a snorkel and my camera wrapped in my waterproof bag. You would have been proud.”

  “Jo I AM proud. These are amazing. I mean this is on a whole different level than the stuff you were doing before I left, and don’t get me wrong, you were already doing some amazing work. It’s just that… I mean… wow Jo. These are so good.”

  She leaned her head on my arm.

  There were five or six more prints like these, but there was one in particular that just took my breath away.

  “Which one is your favorite?” She asked me laying them out on her bed.

  “They are all really beautiful, but I would have to say this one is my favorite,” I said pointing to one of Amy, in a red dress, holding flowers, while doing a back flip underwater, only it didn’t look like a back flip. It looked like she was in a kind of circular, weightless dance with the dress engulfing her like a ribbon of flame. The background was black, but you could see just enough of the leaves of the edge of the pool to let you know that it was photographed here on Earth, which made it feel that much more supernatural.

  “I titled it Weightless, and I want you to have it.”

  I turned to her.

  “Jo you must have spent hours printing this. I can’t take it.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I have the negatives. I really want you to have it.”

  “This is beautiful, thank you,” I said then I kissed her.

  “We should probably get going,” she told me.

  In the days that followed I had the photo framed with the intention of hanging it in my room, but when my mother saw it, she liked it so much that she had me hang it in the entryway of the house, and there it hung until I left home.

  Eighteen

  It was a hot August afternoon, two days until the beginning of my senior year, and I was waiting for my cousin to arrive from Texas. Just about everybody I knew had heard about my accident and how I totaled my car, and I was given two or three offers to buy vehicles from friends and family but nothing inspired me until my cousin Mike called me one morning and said that he was on his way back to Germany with the Army and wanted to know if I would give his 68’ Cougar a nice home. He only wanted the $3,000 for it that he paid hoping to restore it, but he had only gotten around to putting a new engine in it before he was called back to duty. It took me about .25 seconds to say yes since the insurance on my little rabbit gave me about $2,000, I had a little savings of my own and my mother chipped in the rest.

  Mike called on his way telling me that he had crossed the Colorado border and that he should be to my house by 2. It was 3:30, and I was anxiously pacing bac
k and forth in the driveway when I saw his Dodge pickup truck turn the corner on my street.

  He pulled up, jumped out of the truck and we hugged each other. We didn’t see each other nearly as much as we would have liked since he was Army reserve, but when we did see each other we were like brothers.

  “Here it is,” Mike said handing me the key attached to the key fab with a Cougar logo. Then he walked back to the trailer the truck was pulling, grabbed the corner of a canvas tarp and pulled the tarp back revealing the sleek white lines of this beautiful muscle car. Then he walked to the back of the trailer and extended the ramps while I climbed up the side of the flatbed and into the driver’s seat.

  “Bring her straight back and you’ll do just fine,” he hollered.

  I slid the key into the ignition and turned the car on. The engine rumbled like the deep guttural growl of the cat this machine was named after. I put it into reverse and slowly backed her down the ramps onto the street. He folded the ramps back onto the trailer and jumped into the passenger seat.

  He told me about the engine and the five-speed transmission as I got on the 6th Avenue highway and headed for the foothills.

  We stopped by Smash Burger in Apple Wood for a burger and shakes while Mike told me about his latest girlfriend and how things were going for him in the reserves. It all sounded so exotic and exciting for me since he was nearly seven years older than me, living on his own and traveling the world.

  “Are you scared going back in?”

  “Nah, it’s no big deal. We don’t really fight wars any more. I’ll probably be running security for some two stars or something, drink a lot of beers and be back home before I know it. How ‘bout you? What are you doing when school’s over?”

  “I don’t know. I really like the photography, and I think I might want to work for a newspaper or something. The girl I’ve been dating for a while now is applying for scholarships to some universities and she keeps talking to me about college this and college that. She thinks I might even be able to get a grant or something to help pay for it.”

  “College is bullshit man. I mean, if you want to work in an office for the rest of your life maybe, but there are guys I know making six figures working as security contractors, and they haven’t been to college a day in their life. Besides, the army needs photographers too. If ya like, you can give my recruitment officer a call just to ask him some questions,” he said reaching into his wallet, pulling out a business card with the Army Reserve logo on the back and handing it to me. There are all sorts a crazy perks to bein’ in the army,” he said. “Whenever you go to bars you never buy your own beers, hell, I got pulled over on the way here and all I had to do was accidentally on purpose show the sheriff my military id and he just shook my hand and let me go. Just think about it,” he said slapping me on the shoulder. “We should get goin’. I need to be back by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “You’re not staying the night at least? We’ve got plenty of room.”

  “Nah cuz, you know I’d love to, but I gotta report for duty first thing Monday mornin.”

  We drove back home, and I watched him leave. Then I went inside and called Jo to tell her how amazing the car was and how great of a time I had had with Michael. I wasn’t going to see her any more that weekend because she was busy running around with her parents getting what she needed for school. That was fine. I would pick her up Monday morning and she could see the car then. I hung up the phone and looked at the card Michael had given me. Army Reserve.

  The first day back at school felt different this time than it had all the years before, because now Jo and I were seniors. This meant that I had a lighter class load though Jo was going to do some AP courses, and we were now some of the oldest kids on campus.

  I couldn’t have cared less whether I had this math class or that science lab, all I wanted to do was get to the yearbook room.

  I stopped by the office and showed the assistant principle my schedule and how I was one of the seniors on the yearbook committee this year.

  “There’s been some changes.”

  “What kind of changes?”

  “Well, the yearbook staff won’t have access to the darkroom anymore. It’s only for art students now.”

  “What? How are we going to process anything?”

  She didn’t reply. She just smiled and told me to go have a look at the yearbook office and come back to her with any questions I might have.

  “Okay,” I said taking the keys.

  I walked down to the yearbook room and came to the door. The single lock on the door handle had been replaced with a new higher quality doorknob and a dead bolt. Okay?

  I unlocked the locks and switched on the light. The room was freshly painted and smelled like a new car. Two rows of iMacs sat along either wall draped in plastic. The old steel cupboard where we used to keep the camera equipment was replaced with fresh wooden shelves, and on them sat about a dozen unopened boxes of various sizes. They all read: “Canon”.

  I walked over to an iMac and lifted the plastic. The machine was clearly brand new and the spotless monitor, about the size of my bedroom television, reflected my astonished look back at me. I covered the monitor again and walked over to the shelves of boxes.

  This is all new gear! I thought to myself reading the various labels. Four new camera bodies, lenses, bags, the works. I was glad Jo wasn’t around because I’m pretty sure she would have seen me drooling.

  I took one of the boxes labeled D30 and opened it. It looked like the camera I had bought just before the beginning of the summer only there was one significant difference. This was digital.

  I don’t know anything about digital.

  I peeled the plastic away from the battery and put it in the camera, opened one of the brand new lenses, attached it then turned the camera on. No CF card present, the monitor on the back read.

  CF card, cf card, what’s a cf card?

  I decided to utilize one of our new computers, so I set the camera down, pulled of the plastic and …power button, where’s the power button? I had never used a Mac before. I was use to just clicking the power button on the front of the tower underneath the desk. The only problem was that there was no tower, there was nothing underneath the desk except my legs. All I had was a keyboard, a mouse and a monitor. I ran my fingers along the edge of the monitor and turned the monitor around. The power button was on the back. I pushed it, watched the screen light up and found my way onto the internet.

  A web site explained that a cf card was a memory card that slid into the side of the camera and showed me what it looked like.

  I rummaged around the new boxes and found a stack of memory cards still sealed in their packages. I tore one open, slid it into the camera and saw the camera come to life. I lifted the camera to my eye, focused on a computer across the room and clicked the shutter. Then the camera started to glow. I looked down and saw the photo I had just taken being displayed on a small screen on the back of the camera. HO-LY CRAP! I thought as it sunk in how this single function was going to change everything I knew about photography. I clicked off a few more images and watched them one by one display on the small screen.

  To explain what this meant is difficult.

  I could go to a baseball game, do everything in my power to make sure that the exposure was correct and all it would take was the clouds to shift or the sun to come out without me noticing and my entire roll could get messed up. Now, all I needed to do was check the image on the back of the camera, once in a while, and I would be golden. This doesn’t even mention the hundreds of hours each semester I wouldn’t be spending developing film anymore or the hundreds of dollars it would cost every few months to develop my personal work.

  It was 2:30. 4 o’clock was our first scheduled yearbook meeting.

  On a clipboard hanging from the new wooden shelves was a list of the names of everyone on staff this year as well as a checkout system for the camera gear. I recognized a few of the names, but most of them were new. This
wasn’t surprising since most of the staff last year were seniors, and they had all graduated. I wasn’t sure ANY of us would know anything about working with the new digital gear since these cameras had to have cost thousands, so I sat down with the camera manual and the Internet and tried to give myself something of a crash course in digital photography.

  By the time people started showing up I had a thimble full of an idea of what jpegs and mega pixels were. Of course most everyone was early since they were chomping at the bit as much as I had been to be back in the staff room, so when everyone was present we made our introductions and opened all the shiny boxes.

  Not everyone on the yearbook staff is there for photography, but everything had gone digital so everyone was nervous and excited to work with the new and untested equipment.

  “I’m sure there will be a learning curve,” I told them. “But, I’ve been playing with stuff and it doesn’t look that terribly difficult.”

  Then I showed them what little I had learned about turning the computers on and powering up the gear. A couple of them had Macs at home so that wasn’t a big deal. At the end of the meeting we still had one last bit of business to attend to.

  “We still need to elect an editor,” Susan said, who was one of the new seniors who had worked with me on the staff last year. “And I’d like to nominate Alex.”

  I tried to explain that I didn’t know much about the gear and downplay my interest, but I will admit that I was excited at the opportunity.

  It was unanimous. I was the new yearbook editor.

  Everyone shook my hand. We scheduled weekly meetings, turned out the lights and locked the door. I went down to the vice principal to tell her who the new editor was. She congratulated me and handed me a packet of papers outlining how this was going to be less fun that I had originally thought.

  When I saw Jo after class, I told her about me becoming the new yearbook editor and how we had gone fully digital.

  “I’ve been reading some articles about digital photography online, but I’m still not convinced,” she told me as we drove to Smash Burger. She had never been there before and wanted to try it. “It doesn’t sound like the quality is as good as film, and what about the darkroom. I love developing in the darkroom.”