She knew she didn’t have much time.
We spent the afternoon cooking here in the kitchen as the rain poured down outside. Mom played old country classics on the stereo, and soon, even I was humming along, chopping and stirring and mixing with her at the counter. All our fights about Emerson and my college choices were put on hold, like we hit pause in our mother-daughter battles. Looking back now, I can see it was a perfect day: no deep forced conversation or anything, just simple, comfortable togetherness.
The kind I’ll never get with her again.
I look around the kitchen. I can almost smell the scent of oregano and basil, see mom pirouetting between the refrigerator and the stove-top. I hug myself, trying to hold the happy picture in my mind. I can’t remember the last time I let myself just think about her. After it happened, and I fell apart, I figured the only way to keep going was to block it all out completely: the good memories, along with the bad. I’ve worked so hard to push down any thought of her, scared to death that the moment I let her picture fill my thoughts, or conjure up the sound of her voice, then I’ll see her body, laying there all over again. And, worse, feel the familiar tight bands of steel smothering my breath, the rush of hot panic that crushes me alive.
But here I am, thinking about her, and I feel OK. Sad, yes. Wistful, and regretting, and edged with all my usual guilt and anger, but not so bad I can’t keep it under control.
Maybe I’m ready to start remembering.
I exit the kitchen door and cut across the lawn to my photography shed. Inside, I find everything where I left it: chemicals in their bottles on the shelf, plastic basins stacked in the sink. And that airtight box of old film canisters, waiting to be developed after all these years.
I feel a calm settle over me, and almost before I can think twice, I find myself setting out my equipment in a routine I know by heart. I check the heavy drapes block out the light completely then I flip off the lights, so I’m bathed in the warm red glow of the safety light. The afternoon passes in a quiet, calm haze as I unspool, and mix, and wash, adding chemicals and rinsing until the negatives are hanging in thin amber strips around me, and I’m bringing the first images to life on thick glossy paper.
I gently swirl chemicals over the paper in a basin, watching the faint outlines of the image begin to show through. I’d forgotten how soothing the whole routine is. Most people find it boring: they’d much rather have the instant pleasures of a digital camera, where you can see the image right away on the screen, and upload them to the computer in an instant. For the last four years, I’ve been the same: snapping photos on my phone, and texting them in the same moment. I told myself it was better, hassle-free and easy, but now I know they were just lies I told myself to forget the strange comfort of being here in the dark, making pictures from nothing like I’m some kind of magician, taking memories and casting them onto the page.This reel of film is from that summer, four years ago. I travel back in time with every new photo. Carina glaring, nose in her cellphone as she texts all her friends about what a drag her vacation is turning out to be. Dad, fleeting, always at his laptop, with an eye-roll to get my camera out of his face. And mom, always outside: sitting on the beach for hours, staring into the horizon.
I trace her face gently, hanging the photo up on the line to dry. How did we not see it? She was fading away right in front of us, but we never guessed. I guess she was determined to hide the truth: wearing makeup, and baggy linen clothes, and forcing her voice loud and bright to hide the shake of uncertainty. In this shot, she’s in a lawn chair down by the sand. Her hair is dancing in her eyes, and she’s got a smear of sunscreen on one cheek. She’s laughing into the camera, teasing me about something. She looks happy. At peace.
I smile to myself and move on, finding whole rolls of film full of Emerson. The two of us, hugging close on a windswept beach. Driving the back-roads. Laying half-buried under the tangled sheets on his bed. Fragments that send me deeper back into my memories, down a different road this time, to when I lived in a constant state of nervous exhilaration, my pulse jumping at the slightest touch.
Desire…
I can see it all in the delicate lines of the prints: those late nights clinging breathlessly to him in the front seat of his truck; sneaking him up the back stairs; muffled laughter under my covers. Emerson’s gaze pierces me even through the photographs: dark and thrilling and full of fierce affection. I feel a deep pull of lust, tracing the outline of his face—years younger, but just as conflicted.
God, we were consumed by each other. It was like nothing I’d ever known, the compulsion to drown myself in his touch and never come back up for air. There was no slow fall for us: no gentle hesitant dates, and shy flirting. Right from the start, loving him was like hurling myself off a tall cliff and hoping like hell he would be there to break my fall. And when I hit the ground and found myself all alone in the world, without him, without my mom, I tried to forget this summer altogether. Pretend like it had never happened. Anything to stop the endless agony, the wretched guilt and pain and creeping suspicion that it was all my fault.
That they left me because I wasn’t enough to make them stay.
I thought it was healthy. Moving on. But looking around, at the photos hanging around me, wet on the line, I realize there’s a place in my heart that’s been empty and frozen ever since. Numb.
And now it’s cracking wide open.
Emerson was just the start of it, the first shard through my tough defenses. He broke my steel shell, and now I’m feeling all the emotions I’ve ignored for so long: sadness, and sweetness, hurt, regret. Even passion.