Saturday evening I pulled up to Jo’s house ten minutes before five o’clock, feeling like I was ready to meet her parents. I wore a new pair of black wing tips my mom had come across in her store, a pressed pair of black slacks and a white shirt that I had spent more than half-an-hour starching and ironing myself.
I looked at the sky and thankfully we had good enough evening light that I figured as long as their backyard wasn’t awful I should be able to pull off a decent portrait. Then I took a deep breath and rang the bell. Jo answered. Thank God.
“Hey Alex, come in.” She was wearing the same slim-fitting, Oxford-blue dress she was wearing the night of our first date.
“Hello Alex,” her dad said walking out from the kitchen. Her mother rose from the couch where she had been reading some magazine and also walked to the front door to greet me. “I’m Michael and this is my wife, Samantha,” he said shaking my hand.
“Hey Alex,” Susan said coming down from upstairs. Then she tugged on her ear where my piercing usually was and smiled. I just grinned.
“That’s a good-looking camera. Do you mind if I ask what kind it is?” Jo’s dad asked.
Now, there are two things that really get on my nerves about photography. The first is when someone who doesn’t know the first thing about picture taking comes up and tells me what they think will make a good photograph, like if I’m on holiday with family and someone says: “Oh Alex, there’s this little bird over in the tree a hundred feet away that is so damn cute. You should take a picture of it.” The second is when someone tries to talk to me about my gear as though they know something just because they own a camera yet they have never even bothered to learn to change the aperture.
“It’s a Holga that used to be my dads,” I told him bracing myself for all of the camera small talk.
“Very nice. Jo’s grand-dad use to use a large format for his photography that I still have in the office. Would you be interested in seeing it?”
I was taken back. Jo hadn’t ever mentioned that photography was in her family.
“Yeah. I’d love to.”
“He was a real good landscape photographer back in the day. We used to go hiking up near Boulder and the Vail valley when I was a kid, and I would build a campfire or maybe do a little fishing while he would take photos.”
In his study was a beautiful antique, large-format bellows camera standing on a wooden tripod in one corner. “When he died, he left me his equipment. I still go out once in a while to take photos, when I really need some alone time, but I think the real spark jumped from my dad to Jolene. Look, that’s her grand-dad there,” he said pointing to a small black and white photo hanging on the wall.
“Who’s that other guy with him?”
“That’s Ansel.”
It took me a minute to process.
“Ansel Adams?” I said turning to him.
“Do you know his work?”
“Are you kidding? I used to look at Ansel Adams’ and Edward S. Curtis’ photos for hours wondering what it would have been like to haul one of those monsters around the mountains or valleys, taking photos before anyone knew anything about photography.”
“Really? Didn’t Jo ever tell you that her grand-dad knew Ansel?”
“No, she never mentioned it,” I said looking at the photo of the two men smiling back at me.
“Well, then you better see this,” he said flipping off the office light and leaving the room.
I followed him out through the kitchen and into the living room, and there hanging on their living room wall, as though it were one of their summer portraits, was a stunning print of ‘Moonrise, New Mexico’. The very photo I fell asleep to every night and woke up to every morning for more than 5 years.
“Are you kidding? Is it–”
“It’s a vintage, hand-signed piece; printed by Ansel himself.”
It was stunning. The depth of blacks and contrast in the photo was so much more than I had seen in my little magazine clipping, and there in the corner was the A-scribble A-scribble of Ansel’s signature.
“When I was twelve, I saw this photo in a magazine one day at my mom’s store, and I cut it out and pinned it to the ceiling over my bed,” I told him. “Then, one by one, I collected other photos that I pinned over my bed. Ansel’s ‘Half-Dome, Blowing Snow’, and Curtis’ ‘An Oasis in The Badlands’. Their work is so haunting. When I look at them I feel like I’m looking through a window at an actual moment, still being lived, somewhere in the past. I almost expect the Indian in Curtis’ ‘Oasis’ to turn and look at me.”
“I know what you mean. Sometimes I just sit and look at this village for hours. Thanks for being willing to come and take our little family’s portrait by the way. I thought Susan’s senior portrait turned out really nice. Much better than that studio we went to for Christmas photos last year.”
“No problem. Speaking of which, we should probably get to it if we want to still catch the light.” Then we all went outside and gathered around a newly painted, white gazebo they had in their backyard.
The light was good and I wasn’t nearly as nervous anymore since her dad and I had found some common ground to stand on, so I took the photo and we went back inside for dinner.
“Jolene says your mom owns the Thimbles and Lace in old Aurora,” her mother said.
“Yeah, that’s right. She’s had stores at different locations around town for as long as I can remember, but she seems to like old Aurora.”
“I’ve been in it. In fact I found a great pair of earrings I wore to our anniversary dinner last year. Do you remember that Mike? That little blue pair, with the little silver flowers?”
“Oh, I don’t know honey, I can’t always keep track of all of the jewelry you buy.”
“Well anyways, I thought it was a lovely little shop.”
“Thanks.”
The food was good and I was hungry.
“So Alex, what are your plans now that summer is soon upon us?” Her dad asked stirring a cube of butter into his pile of mashed potatoes.
I put down my fork and wiped my mouth with the edge of my napkin. Then I looked across the table at Jo. I forgot to tell her. “Uh, it looks like I am going to Minnesota with my mom.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, my mom likes going up there sometimes to sell brooms to some of my grandfather’s old customers.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“Probably all summer,” I replied slowly.
I kept watching Jo for a reaction.
“Do you have family up there?”
“My grandma still lives near there, but we go mostly so mom can just get away for a while.”
I could tell that Jo was trying to process everything I was saying, because of how she was playing with her food instead of looking at me.
“When are you leaving?” she asked finally looking up at me.
“The Friday after school gets out.” This meant just over two weeks.
We spent the next hour or two chatting about my family and their family, my future dreams, which I had no idea about since I was only eighteen, and we munched on dessert. Then the evening wound down and it was time for me to go.
“Thanks for coming,” her dad said shaking my hand, “you really should come around more often.”
“Yes Alex, it was lovely to meet you,” her mother echoed.
I said goodbye to them and her sister and Jo walked me out to my car.
“When were you going to tell me about Minnesota?”
“I’m sorry. Mom just told me that we were going this afternoon, and I hadn’t had a chance to talk to you about it. She said that I could stay if I wanted to, but then she went on about how this is probably our last summer together before I move out and how she doesn’t think she would be comfortable driving all that way by herself and…” I pulled Jo close, wrapped my arms around her and rested my cheek against her head. “Should I stay?”
“I don’t want you to stay just because of me.”
/> “Well, they say that absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
“I’m already too fond of you,” she said and I laughed. “You’ll write me right?”
“Of course.”
Eleven
School was out for the summer and we were officially seniors.
Even though I was not leaving until the morning for Minnesota with my mother, Jo and I decided to say our goodbyes the night before so that we weren’t rushed.
I pulled up to her front door and gave a quick beep on the horn letting her know that I was there. A gentle breeze blew the smell of someone’s freshly mowed lawn through my open window, and I could feel the cool air rustle the hairs on my arm, giving me goose bumps.
She had curled her hair and pulled it up into a bun. A single curl hung down across her glasses. Under her arm was the little black purse with a silver clasp that she always used on special nights out, and she was carrying a medium sized box wrapped with a red bow.
I got out of the car and opened her door.
She walked up to me, smiled and scrunched her nose for just a second, which was her way of saying ‘Hey you’, and it got me every-single time.
I let out a single soft whistle between my teeth.
“Wow, you look…nice. You heading somewhere special?” I said in my best flirty tone.
She put her hand on my cheek. “Oh, I don’t know. You wanna take me somewhere special?”
I swallowed. Then I smiled.
“I’ll take you any-where I can,” I said, to which she responded with a short perk of the eyebrows and a smile that was much more Aphrodite than sweet schoolgirl. Then she got in the car.
I took a deep breath and shook my head as I walked around the car.
Now, Jo was an attractive girl, but she wasn’t exactly front-of-the-magazine when it came to fashion or trends like her sister was, which meant that most of her best features, like her legs, were hidden away behind tattered jeans and vintage tee shirts, but tonight she was wearing a white blouse, a pair of open toed, black heels and a black-pleated skirt that ended just above her knees that drew no small amount of attention to her legs.
I tried to focus on the drive downtown, but I couldn’t stop looking at her ankles, slender legs, sexy knees. Then she caught me.
“That’s a nice skirt,” I said trying to hide my roaming eyes.
She smiled and put her hand on the back of mine.
“You like it? Susan said she wouldn’t let me leave the house without me letting her do my hair and makeup, and I figured, why not? It can’t hurt letting her do me up once right? My mistake was telling her that, because next thing you know, half her closet is on my bed and I’m trying on my fifteenth pair of shoes.”
Then Jo started playing with the hair on the back of my neck. She didn’t know it at the time, but this seriously turned me on, and I mean all the way on.
I have to focus on something else.
“Well, you can definitely pull off a skirt like that better than she can.”
“Really? I don’t think so.” Then she stopped playing with my hair and turned to look out the window.
This wasn’t the shy push off she was good at when we were flirting or playing around with each other. This was something deeper.
“Jo. Hey, look at me.”
She turned and looked at me with a huge question in her eyes.
“Don’t you realize? You’re beautiful.”
She turned away.
I don’t know for sure because she kept looking out the side window, away from me, but I am pretty sure she was crying. She wiped her cheek once or twice then reached for a tissue in her purse, which she tried to conceal in the palm of her hand.
“So, where are we going?” She asked after a minute of silence.
I wanted to say more but decided that it wasn’t the right time. Instead, I made a mental note to start telling her more often how beautiful she was.
“Well, I thought somewhere like the Brown Palace would be nice, but I didn’t want our last meal to be some stuffy hotel steak. So, how’s Paris sound?”
“Paris sounds good,” she said finally turning to look at me again.
We drove downtown to the café and chatted about what her plans were for the summer. Every two or three years, her parents liked taking a road trip to a national park. Rocky Mountain National Park. Zion National Park. The Grand Canyon. Her dad especially liked anywhere where there was desert, since he had grown up in New Mexico. If they couldn’t afford a longer road trip, either because of time or finance, they liked to at least get away to one of the many campgrounds scattered around the Colorado mountains. There wasn’t going to be any extended event this year, just a four-day weekend up Golden Gate Canyon to stay at their favorite campground.
Susan had grown out of camping four or five years earlier, but this made Jo love the camping trips even more. Now she got some good alone time playing games and going hiking with her parents. After that she thought she might look for some part-time work, mostly just to keep herself busy.
We pulled up and parked across the street from the café that was busy, inside with people listening to the live band brought in a couple of times a month and outside with people smoking and chatting about god knows what.
“I have something for you,” I told her as I turned of f the car and reached into the back seat.
“I have something for you too,” she said sliding her hands over the lid of the box on her lap.
“Let me go first,” I told her, handing the gift to her about the size of a shoebox wrapped in butterfly print.
She took it, tore the paper away and lifted the lid.
“I told you I would write you, and I want you to write to me.”
She lifted up a pad of paper printed in flowers, a stack of matching envelopes and a roll of stamps.
“There are enough stamps there for you to write me every day for 3 months,” I told her. Then she moved the stationary aside and found the small blue box with a hinged lid. She picked it up and opened it. Inside, in a small pile, lay a gold chain and a locket. She opened it. A tiny photo of me smiled out at her.
“Alex, I love it,” she said running her finger around the edge of the photo. “Help me put it on.” I did. “Now open mine.”
I untied the bow and lifted the lid.
The first thing I noticed was the cloud of her fragrance that rose to meet me. First was a stack of seven photos that she had taken of herself. Around her house, around school, one was even of her in the darkroom back on campus. This one I liked the most.
“I’m going to send you a new set every week,” she told me.
I kept digging.
There was a pack of Oreo’s (my favorite cookies), a letter that I wasn’t supposed to read until I was at least two states away, a brown leather bracelet with button clasps, and then I lifted up a white tee shirt- thin with holes. I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it at first, then I realized that the intoxicating bouquet I was smelling came from this.
I lifted it to my nose and drew deeply of it.
“I usually only sleep in that and my underwear,” she told me. “Now that I’m giving it to you, I’ll only be sleeping in my underwear. Just remember that when you’re off in Minnesota.”
At that moment, for the briefest of moments, she could have asked me for anything and I would have said yes, but she didn’t. Instead she leaned over, kissed my cheek and got out of the car. I took another deep inhalation of this amazing mix of her perfume, lotion and natural body fragrance before I put everything back in the box and followed her inside.
For the next two hours, neither of us was going anywhere for the summer. We were both entirely present on this little island in time of music and sandwiches, laughter and spiced tea. Then the music stopped and it was time to say good night.
I dropped her off at home and we said our goodbyes. I tried to convince her that there was no reason to cry, but she convinced me that there was and then I left.
Twelve
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Northfield, Minnesota is just shy of 900 miles from Denver, and my mother always made sure that the 14-hour trip was part of the fun. We would leave early. I would check the tires and the oil while she filled the car with gas. Then we would grab a quick breakfast of coffee and muffins on our way out of town. The air always smelled clean in the morning and with almost no one else on the roads, I felt like we could drive until the end of time.
Not long after being on the road, my mother would turn on Celine Dion and before I knew it we would both be singing ‘It’s All Coming Back to Me Now’ at the top of our voices while cruising down I-80. We would head East through Sterling, and with a steady hand and taking turns at the wheel, we could make Lincoln, the half-way-point just around lunch. It was our tradition, for at least the last five years, to stop at Sloppy Bob’s BBQ, off the highway just outside of Lincoln, for what was just about the best pulled pork sandwich I think I had ever eaten before or since. Then we would be back on the road with the intention of seeing the ‘Welcome to the land of ten-thousand lakes’ sign shortly after dark.
Along the way I made sure to capture frame after frame of our trip. Most of them were of mom with her long, curly blond hair laughing behind a driver’s wheel or asleep on a pillow leaned up against the passenger window. There was one of both of us smiling over a plate of barbeque sandwiches and another of her paying for something through a gas station window. As the mile markers rolled past, I marked our trip with clicks of the shutter.
“How are things between you and Jo?” She asked somewhere between Des Moines and Ames.
I put the book down I was reading and looked out over the wide-open spaces that make up most of Iowa.
“Things are good. I’m just going to miss her this summer.”
“It’s not necessarily a bad thing to pull back and let your relationship breathe a little.”
If I Lose Her Page 6
