If I Lose Her

IF I LOSE HER

Greg Joseph Daily

Text Copyright © 2011

Greg Joseph Daily

All rights reserved

 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.

 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 meant 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.