by Kyla Stone
I will those thoughts from my mind. I’ve already played this ‘what if’ game a thousand times. It always ends the same way, with more questions than I’ll ever have answers.
I finish the first batch and take out another. Most of the pictures are of my mother: Mom sleeping with her hands beneath her head like a prayer, Mom cross-legged on the floor with a stapler in one hand and a canvas frame in the other, Mom sitting at the table, bent over her daily horoscopes, Mom dancing with Lux in the living room, her head thrown back in laughter.
I was obsessed with capturing her then, of trying to understand her by freezing her image on paper. Mom always seemed like this unpredictable stranger, a wild creature of the forest, of the moon or maybe the stars, of places I couldn’t go or understand.
She was volatile, her moods erratic and shifting like oil in water, so much rage and joy and sorrow shut up in one woman’s body that she was never the same person on any given day.
I toss another picture into the pile, one of Mom slumped on the couch watching TV, face blank and glassy. The next photo stops my breath.
I hold it up, examining it in the halo of light. I’ve forgotten this picture almost entirely. Now everything comes flooding back. Maybe … but no, the face is too small, the features too indistinct to make anything out.
The negative. I drop the picture and grope through the jumbled box for the envelopes, searching for the right date. I find it and withdraw the sleeve of negatives.
Do I still have photo paper? Enough developer? I leap to my feet. The air hums against my skin, raises goose bumps on my arms. Am I ready for this? It doesn’t matter. I have to do it. Maybe I’ll find something … an answer, a reason … something. At this point, I’ll take anything.
My fingers tremble as I hold the negative. This is the last photograph of my mother ever taken, the last image of her, warm and breathing and alive.
I don’t know why she decided to leave us, why we could never manage to make her happy. I did everything I could think of to earn her love. I tried to be perfect. I never whined or complained or threw temper tantrums. I did all my chores without being asked. I earned good grades. I watched after Lux.
But it was never enough. We were never enough. I was never enough.
After all these years, I still don’t know why.
14
Lux
I’m alone. Always alone. Trapped inside my own skin, with nothing to do. Nowhere to go. Last night, I used the last of the cash I stole from Dad’s top drawer on the Village Inn Motel a few miles outside of Brokewater. I spent a sleepless night tossing and turning on a thin, lumpy mattress.
Today I’ve been driving around town for what seems like an eternity. The gas needle drifts lower and lower. Dread builds up inside me like a brick wall.
There’s nowhere to go. Nowhere to go but home.
I don’t want to go home. Lena is there, with her perfect little life. Always taking care of everything and doing everything right. Always reminding me of all the ways I fail. All the ways I’ll never measure up.
She’ll take one look at me and she’ll know. She’ll see the guilt scrawled all over my face. She’ll know what I did to Dad.
Dad. Dad is dying. Acid fills my throat. I can hardly breathe as I choke it down. Dad is dying for real this time. It’s my fault. I caused it and then I ran, just like a frickin’ coward.
I shove those thoughts out of my head. I can’t think about that. The black hole will swallow me if I let myself think like that. But I still don’t have anywhere to go. It’s too effing cold outside. I have to go home. I have no choice.
When I get there, everything is different. Because of Lena. She’s scrubbed every inch of the house until it’s gleaming. There’s no dust, no messy clothes strewn across the couch, no dirty dishes overflowing the sink and piling the counters, no mess anywhere. Instead of the gratitude I’m supposed to feel, resentment jolts through me.
The house is silent but for the creak of my footsteps. I walk down the dark hallway on legs like jelly. Phoenix is tucked inside my hoodie. She yowls angrily and kneads at my stomach, her tiny claws puncturing my sweatshirt.
I stand in front of Dad’s closed door, my heart throbbing in my chest, my eyes burning. I have to see him. I have to tell him how sorry I am, beg his forgiveness. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
I reach for the door knob.
“He’s sleeping.”
I whirl around. Lena stands at the end of the hallway, her hands balled into fists on her hips. One of the old boxes from the laundry room sits at her feet. I didn’t even hear her come upstairs over the thundering of my own heartbeat.
“Where have you been?” Her voice is sharp.
That familiar bitterness ripples through me, all the old wounds rising to the surface. “Around.”
“Around where?”
I lift one shoulder, let it drop. “With friends.”
“Friends? What friends? You’ve been gone for almost three weeks!”
“So? You’re my keeper all of a sudden?” “Can’t you even—wait. What is that noise?” Phoenix lets out another yowl.
“My new cat.”
“Your new—?” Her face contorts, her nostrils flaring. “You disappear for three weeks and come back with a cat?”
“So what?”
“And just who’s going to take care of it?”
I bristle at the insinuation in her voice. “I am. Obviously. What’s your deal?”
“What’s my deal? Do you have any idea how worried we’ve been?”
“I was fine.”
“I sent you texts. Called you a dozen times. Aren’t you worried about Dad?”
“He’s fine.”
“He’s not fine.” Her jaw clenches. “Dad is—he’s dying.”
I taste acid in the back of my throat. “They’ve said that before.”
“No. It’s for real this time. He has a hospice nurse. He’s going to die.”
Her words strike me like hammer blows. I can’t bear to hear her say it out loud. I can’t stand here even one more second. I turn away from Dad’s door and open my own door, grasping the handle with shaking fingers. I shove my way inside and lock it.
Lena rattles the doorknob. “Lux!”
“Leave me alone!” I yell. “Just stop it!”
Phoenix hisses and scratches. I pull her out of my hoodie pocket and drop her to the floor. Three stinging red welts appear on my wrist. I stand there, staring at my room, my eyes throbbing.
The paper star mobile hanging over my bed, its dozens of colorful, three-dimensional stars attached to fishing line. The paper star chains draped over my curtain rod, twined around my bedposts. My origami creatures on my dresser next to my mom’s old perfume bottles I never use. The clothes usually strewn across my floor are now folded neatly on my bed.
It feels like a stranger’s room. Like I haven’t been here in months, maybe years. Everything is the same. Everything is different.
Lena pounds on my door again.
I hear Dad’s voice. “Lena,” he says, his voice muffled. It sounds different, weaker.
Lena’s footsteps walk away. “I’m coming, Dad,” she says.
I clamp my hands over my mouth, stifling the low moan rising up in the back of my throat. My father is dying.
What have I done?
15
Lena
In the darkroom fashioned from the downstairs bathroom, in the silence and the warm red glow of the safelight, I work. I scrub a stray strand of unruly hair off my cheek with my forearm and remove the glossy eight by ten from the enlarger using a pair of chemical-resistant plastic tongs.
I drop it emulsion side down into the tray of developer chemicals set on the makeshift wooden counter and start the timer. Wetness seeps over the surface of the photo paper, coils around the edges, drags it down and under.
It’s been two days since I found the photograph, two days for the question to spread like mold, festering through my brain, obsessing eve
ry thought, every waking moment. I’m both drawn and repelled, entranced and terrified.
I pick up the edge of the photo paper with the tongs, flip it over, and gently rock the tray. The paper moves in its chemical bath, swells and falls in tiny waves. I check the timer.
Dark smudges form over the whiteness, lines and shapes and patterns. A rope of dark hair, the curve of an ear. The first marks are a light gray, the color of fog. They darken and expand like a stain, the gray of clouds swollen with rain, the gray of shadows, of silver hair, of dusk, of ashes.
The shades of gray deepen to charcoal, then to pitch. Crisp ebony lines strike out, developing from a white void into the ladder of a spine, the gentle arc of a shoulder, a bowed head and silvery eyes like two beads in a string of Catholic prayers.
I lift the paper with the tongs. The excess liquid runs in clear streams off the developed photo. I dip it into the stop bath and then the fixer solution, completing the steps from habit, everything in a precise order, for the precise time, at the precise temperature. I put the photograph on a rack next to the others to dry.
After I wash my hands, I tug the next negative from its protective sheath, touching only the square edges. I’ve been experimenting with the last four prints, readying myself. Nervous energy thrums through me. Memories ride close beneath the mantle of my skin.
I’m sick of this purgatory. My father’s way doesn’t work. Ignoring doesn’t work. Pretending doesn’t work.
Nothing works. I need to see, to know, to discover what I never thought I’d find: a reason. And if not that, at least a way to understand.
I place the negative in the enlarger’s carrier, emulsion side down, slide the carrier into place, and flip the knob, throwing an image onto the easel. I adjust the aperture to full open, fiddle with the grain focuser until every shape and line tapers to a fine razor point.
My heart pulses in my throat, blocking my air.
The picture is of my face—solemn, mouth tight, eyes downcast—in the full-length mirror in my parents’ bedroom. The angle is wrong, the flash glancing off the glass. I’m fuzzy and unfocused. But reflected in the mirror, above and to the right of my face and the white starburst of the flash, a figure sits on the bed. She is crystal clear, as if the camera knew something the twelve-year-old photographer did not.
Her narrow shoulders hunch inward like broken wings, hair like a molten river flowing down her back, fingers woven tightly together, hands clasped like a prayer. There’s no color in the negative, but I know every hue and shade in that room: the tiny blue cornflowers in the white, white wallpaper, her faded mustard-yellow nightgown, the gaudy salmon-pink bedspread.
Her eyes gaze at something off-camera. I squint, examining the purse of her lips, the slight flare of the nostrils, the tilt to the corners of her eyelids.
What did her eyes reveal when she believed no one was looking? What secrets did they release? I can’t tell from the projected negative. I need more. There’s too much gray, too much ambiguity.
I crank the enlarger’s body up, cropping out my face, the bed, her hands and torso. I want only the face, the eyes. I place a sheet of photo paper under the easel’s arms, activate the timer, and make the first print exposure.
For the next two hours, I work tirelessly, using up and abandoning dozens of prints, constantly adjusting aperture size and exposure time, trying different filters, varying the lengths of processing time in the developer solution.
Each print is capable of perfection. And each print fails miserably.
My mind drifts back, trying to remember that day, everything that happened. Mom was in the middle of one of her frenetic art phases. She always worked in the corner of the living room, parallel to the large picture window for the best natural light.
She primed a canvas and set it on the easel. She set out her tubes of paint, sap green, cadmium red, brown madder, alizarin crimson, and burnt sienna, squeezing the tiniest bit onto the wooden palette.
She used long-handled camel hair brushes. I once asked her if the camels hurt when the artists took out their hair. She laughed and laughed, until she could breathe enough to explain the hairs were actually from squirrels, horses and goats, not camels. She was sure no animals were hurt in the process.
“Always paint back to front,” she told me, like she forgot I used a camera, not a brush. “It’s easier to paint over something than to try to paint around it.”
I was curled up on the couch with a book, watching her more than reading. Dad was on a truck run. Lux was in her room, building a diorama out of her origami animals for a school project.
It was Tuesday afternoon, two days before she killed herself.
“You want to create the value contrast to catch the eye of the viewer.” She laid in all the shadows to establish form, darkening the background. She dipped the tip of the two-inch brush in the blue and used feather-light strokes to blend in the sky. She stippled in grass and bright yellow flowers.
Slowly, the shape of a girl appeared, rimmed in shadows, her back to the viewer as she fled, her hair flying behind her, her head half-turned. “Add something dark to frame your center of interest. It draws the eye. Don’t be pedestrian or boring. There’s nothing worse than boring.”
“There’s nothing worse than boring,” I echoed. The sharp smell of turpentine stung my nostrils.
“Exactly.” She stared at the canvas and sighed. “It’s not right. Something’s not right.”
She picked up a rag and wiped excess paint from the brush before dipping it into a cleaning jar. She scrubbed her hands and punched out a text on her phone. “I need your father. Where is he?”
She slammed the phone down on the end table and returned to the painting, a frown etching a line between her eyebrows. “What’s it missing?”
“It’s perfect, Mom.”
But she didn’t hear me. She dashed into the bathroom and returned with a toothbrush.
“That’s your toothbrush!” I said, like she didn’t know, like she just needed reminding.
She waved it at me. “Always be prepared to sacrifice everything for your art, Lena. Everything.”
She riffled the bristles of the white paint-laden toothbrush, snapping her wrist and flicking paint from the brush, spattering the canvas like snow.
“There can’t be flowers and snow,” I pointed out.
“Of course there can,” she huffed. “It’s art. Art is magic. Art is dual. It can be more than one thing at once.”
“Okay,” I said, not really understanding.
She checked her phone with her clean hand, her face darkening. “What’s your father doing? Why isn’t he answering my calls? Am I not important to him anymore?”
She returned to the painting, glaring at it in disgust. “There’s no soul.” “I like it,” I said in a small voice.
“It’s trash. Any true artist can see that.”
She picked up the brush again, her mouth taut. She painted wildly, frantically, slapping on strokes of alizarin crimson, burnt umber, and olive green, filling the canvas with shadows pulsing with dark, brooding color.
I just sat there, my fingers tightening around the book. I watched the picture turn from bright and beautiful into something dark, confusing, and unsettling.
“How come your pictures aren’t nice?”
She looked up, her eyes burning like embers. “Art isn’t nice, Lena,” she said fervently. “It isn’t pretty. Art is powerful and provocative and painful and ugly. Art is brave. Art makes you feel.”
“What am I supposed to feel?”
“You’ll know when it happens.” Her voice came out hard and fast. She punctuated each word with a stab of her brush at her painting. “Don’t be afraid to put your whole soul into it, Lena. Put your whole self in, even when it’s not polished or lovely or what you think people want to see. Your art is not for them. Your soul is not for them. You understand?”
My throat was closing up on itself. There wasn’t enough air in the room. “Yes,” I managed, but
I wasn’t fast enough, convincing enough.
She turned on me. “Am I wasting my time with you? Do you get it, yes or no? You can’t be like them!” She flailed her arms. “Do you see it? Do you see my soul in my art? Is it there or not?”
I didn’t know the right answer. It sounded like she wanted me to say yes, but just a moment earlier, she’d called the painting trash. I didn’t know, but I was desperate to get it right, to make her happy again. “Yes!” I gulped. “Yes, I see it.”
“No!” She leaned over me, shaking the paint brush inches from my face. “You don’t! It’s crap. It’s worthless. And so am I. I’m a lousy, worthless piece of—” She slumped down into a sitting position, the brush dropping to the carpet. She cradled her head in her hands. “I can’t. I can’t do it anymore. Where’s Jacob? Where is he? He’s barely returned my calls. He’s ignoring me. He’s found someone else. He’s found a better family than us, I know it. He hates me. He hates us.”
I shrank back against the couch, tears springing into my eyes. “Dad hates us?”
Before she could respond, her phone rang. She snatched it. “Jacob? Where are you? What are you doing? I’ve called you twenty times!”
She accidentally hit the speaker button. “… area with bad reception.
I’m so sorry. Is everything okay?”
“No! No, everything is not okay, thanks to you! How am I supposed to do this? I’m so stressed out, I can’t even work. Do you understand how critical my art is to me? All I want is to talk to my FRICKIN’ HUSBAND and you won’t even do that. Are you planning to leave us, is that it? Is that why you won’t return my calls?”
“What? No! That’s crazy.”
She leapt up like the carpet was on fire. “What did you just say? You think I’m crazy?”
“No!” he said loudly, then again, more softly. “No, of course not. Look, Eve, I have three more days, then I’ll be home.”
