6. Six
Six
Over the next few days, absolutely nothing changes. My fake happy marriage is exactly the same as my real unhappy marriage.
Camp is blissfully absent while I am a complete lunatic.
Camp coaches baseball every afternoon and plays softball with his friends—I run around like a lunatic.
Camp sleeps on the floor, the lull of his breathing letting me know that he is completely unaffected by our arrangement—I stare at the ceiling and let my thoughts spiral. Like a lunatic.
I drive the boys to preschool, listening to them scream the same words over and over.
I offer to help Lyra organize scholarship applications; she repeatedly declines in the name of waiting for Dad.
I show up to the high school prom committee meetings, making endless to-do lists of materials and vendors and fabric colors and finger foods.
I feed the dog.
Camp goes on his morning run before I’m up, showers while I make breakfast, and leaves while I get the boys ready for school.
He makes no attempt to change anything. And, though my decision has been made, I expected . . . something. A fight? Some sort of remorse? Whatever I’m looking for, there’s none. He could be happy as much as devastated and I’d never know the difference.
The few minutes a day I do see him, I want to slap his stupid face.
Of course, I don’t. Instead, I play nice and try to hide the fact I want to slap his stupid face.
As annoying as he is, I tell myself it’s not that bad. Tolerable. We don’t touch. Outside of our conversations in front of the kids, we barely talk. It’s not ideal, but it’s manageable. It’s only a few more months. Seventy-one days, to be exact.
On Friday morning, the house is quiet, everyone else at school and work, and I go into the closet in the garage and pull out the tub labeled June’s Photography Stuff. Across the scratched-up, crayon-colored kitchen table, I unpack my camera, lenses, and now expired rolls of film. Paraphernalia of a life not lived. So many stories I was going to collect with this gear, but all it collected was dust. Seventeen years sitting on a shelf, doing nothing. Like me.
It’s weird now, looking at the equipment—just glass and plastic—and the flood of memories it holds. Mental snapshots of who I was, who I thought I’d be.
Who I never became.
Now here we sit, me with crisis bangs and not a damn clue.
Thor’s blocky head lands on the edge of the table, slobber clinging to his jowls as he eyes the gear like it’s the juicy rotisserie chicken of his dreams.
“Don’t even think about it,” I mutter, not bothering to look at him when he whimpers.
I need a plan. Some way to use this stuff to make money.
My dad’s voice from twenty-two years ago blasts in my ears.
“The hell you plan to do with that degree?” he asked, baffled. “ Visual Arts?!”
When I grinned, he frowned. “ Make things people like to look at. Tell stories.”
His frown deepened.
My dad was an accountant, and more than once, he showed me how the numbers of being a photographer would never add up.
Now, staring at my gear, needing a plan to support myself, I wish I’d listened to him.
I’d taken my first photography class in high school and fell in love with it. To be able to capture a moment and freeze it forever felt like something of a superpower. At a time when digital wasn’t really a thing, I printed every picture I took, driving my parents crazy with the albums. I gifted photos to everyone for every occasion. Stuck them to lockers, in greeting cards, on refrigerators and car windshields.
Some of my favorite memories were in that class. A room I felt entirely myself with people who were creatively themselves. Molly Burchfield always photographed flowers at her family farm. Kip Johnson took photos of animals—dead or alive—from his tree stand during hunting season. And Reed Simmons . . . I squeeze my eyes shut on the thought of the name, the blurred image of his eighteen-year-old face. He became my best friend in the class, and then . . . and then.
But me? I was drawn to snapshots of everyday details. I loved them. The spray-painted stop sign. Empty beer bottles in a field. Flip-flops on the shore of the lake. Confetti on the ground after a party. Hands wrapped around waffle cones, covered in sticky streams of melting ice cream. I couldn’t get enough of them. They told entire stories without saying a single word.
As much as I knew these snapshots of life weren’t going to get me taken seriously, I fought it. Told anyone that would listen in my first college classes I was shooting weird things in the name of fine art.
I won a competition, a photo of an on-campus concert where the band was in focus but everyone dancing in the field was blurred with motion, and it was put on the front page of the Appalachian State student newspaper. One image was picked to hang in the library—a shot of students covering the courtyard with books and blankets, some throwing frisbees. But it wasn’t straightforward; I shot it through a prism, making the image mirrored and fractured. Distorted to a point it straddled abstract and perfect reality.
Finally, it happened. Carving my own way came to a record-screeching halt by way of red-penned margin notes in a collection submission. “Tell a Story” was the assignment.
So I did.
I told the tale of a baseball game tailgate party. I shot details. Keg beer spraying into a Solo Cup. Burgers grilling. Face paint. The bare chest of a girl who drunkenly flashed me when I pointed my camera at her.
Then came the words of the note: There’s a point in every creative’s life where they have to decide if they are shooting for themselves or for others; one choice will make a career more difficult, but not impossible. Choose wisely and with eyes wide open.
Translation: Make pictures that will make people smile when they are tucked under windshields, or make pictures that will make money. I hated the note, considered ignoring it, but knew deep in my bones that wasn’t who I was. I had always been good at everything I did—grades, sports, photography—but it wasn’t by paving my own way. I’ve never been one to trust my own instincts. Instead, I lean on experts. Those who had proven what to do by already doing it.
I knew if I wanted to make photography a career, I needed to push aside what I wanted—what I felt in my bones—to be the kind of photographer that the world wanted. There was no future in a photo of a random lamp and slice of watermelon sitting on the side of the road or too up-close shots of familiar faces. No value in getting experimental with draping pieces of fabric over the lens or refracting light with a prism. Silly snapshots and intentionally weird images would get me nowhere. Landscape photography would.
A new dream was hatched. I shed the silly creative skin of my youth and grew into something more mature. I bought every book created by Irma London—the biggest female name in landscape photography at the time—and studied her work. I threw myself into my new plan: Camp would play baseball, and I’d see the world and photograph it. Little details were garbage; big pictures were golden. Breath-stealing vistas would be my new passion.
I chased that. I waited tables to make ends meet and photographed every landscape I could . . . until I got pregnant.
The abrupt end of my story sends a heavy breath gushing out of me. I refocus on the pile of equipment.
Thumb pressed between my eyebrows, I squeeze my eyes shut, willing inspiration to appear from years and years of making art that I’d hidden away.
It doesn’t matter where I’ve been or what I’ve loved, I need money. A job. A way to provide some sort of stable life for myself. My kids.
Think, June.
There’s family photography . . . no . Over my dead body am I going to spend my days photographing other families when I’m failing my own.
Wedding photography? Pass . My marriage is ending, love is dead.
Which brings me back to my plan B dream: landscape photography. In college, the path I’d planned led to me photographing remote landscapes, filling pages that inspired others to travel. And, aside from the fact that I don’t know if people even still read magazines, that’s not happening. I’m stuck in Ledger.
My phone vibrates with a text.
Camp: Mornin darlin I left my practice bag in the bedroom if you have time can you drop it by the school I’d love to see you.
I grind my teeth. Darlin’?
I’ve seen Camp play this game when we’ve argued. Turn diabetically sweet when I’m feeling anything but.
Well, two can play this game of pretend, asshole.
Me: Sure, honey. I’d love to.
“There she is!”
Camp’s words startle me to a stop as I pass an open door to a conference room. Instead of the grimace I want to make at the severe odor of fresh paint and new carpeting and the blindingly white walls—I fake a too-big smile.
He stands, smug, holding court from the head of a long, rectangular table, one ankle crossed over the other as he leans a hip casually against the edge. In a hunter-green Ledger High School Lake Trout polo shirt, khaki-colored golf pants, and shoes that look like every toe has a spot, he grins, extending his arms out to me.
“I was just sayin’,” he continues, southern drawl thick and the opposite of charming as I step into the room and give a small wave to the familiar faces of coaches, board members, and Dani who all smile politely in return. “I wish my amazin’ wife would be here to see this. And there you are. Showin’ up like a boomerang. To forever and back.” His reference causes confused expressions to form on some of the faces in the room, but I glare. He grins wider. “This is what the printed maps of the complex will look like.”
He points to the screen behind him.
While most schools, especially in towns as small as ours, have busted-brick gyms and just-good-enough fields, Camp’s five state championships coaching the baseball team in the last decade put Ledger on the map, helping secure funding for the beast that’s being projected onto the wall. In the center of the map—where we are—is a large building with a gymnasium, locker rooms, conference rooms, a small banquet hall, and offices, Camp’s as athletic director included. Outside, the baseball, softball, football, and soccer fields surround the building, gravel paths connecting them to one another.
It was his wins that led to the funding, and, working closely with architects and builders, he’s been part of every step. The complex won’t just be for the kids of Ledger to play at; the goal is to host tournaments and become an athletic destination for the region.
“Impressive,” I say, hating that it really is. Then, because I can’t not, I add, “Good thing I have everything under control at home so you can spend so much time working on this.”
He brings a hand to his chest, overzealous look of relief on his face. “Can y’all believe what a perfect and supportive wife God gave me? What did I do to deserve such a woman?” Without warning, he pulls me in for a too-long hug that makes me grunt.
“What the hell are you doing, Camp?” I hiss in his ear as every eye in the room looks at us, a few of them chuckling.
“Pretendin’, of course,” he whispers, squeezing me tighter until I wriggle myself free, glaring at him before giving a tight smile to the rest of the room and taking a step back toward the door.
“Well, I’ll leave y’all to it.” I pin Camp with another wasted glare, lifting his bag toward him. “I jus—”
“Nonsense, we were just wrappin’ up.” He lifts his chin toward the room, a silent yet charming, meeting over .
Jack, Camp’s assistant baseball coach, steps next to us. In his early thirties, Jack has boy-next-door good looks with shaggy brown hair that always hangs from under his ball cap and a friendly smile.
“June,” he drawls, giving me a half hug. “Good to see ya.”
Before I can respond, Dani’s with us, across from me, the four of us forming a kind of circle.
“Hi, June,” she chirps. “Isn’t the complex great?” Her bouncy youth makes me feel like a crypt keeper. She probably shits fairy dust. “Jack—and Camp, of course,” she says as she giggles, a breathless sound, and her cheeks go pink before she continues, “have been working so hard to get it all finished for the dedication. All those late nights will be worth it, right?”
Her bright eyes go from me, to Camp, to Jack, and something—not jealousy—bangs against my sternum.
“Of course,” I say, involuntarily grabbing Camp’s hand with mine, interlacing our fingers with a squeeze. Her gaze follows the movement, something flittering across her face. Ha! I lean against him, sweeten my voice and stare at him with doe eyes. “But, you know, what’s a few late nights in the scheme of a lifetime of happy moments together?”
“It’s all for you, baby cakes,” he says, smooth, dropping my hand to wrap his arm around my waist. I swallow the vomit that threatens to shoot out of my mouth.
“You two are so cute,” Dani says with a grin. “Aren’t they, Jack?”
Jack snorts a laugh, adjusts his ball cap. “Cute is the last word I’m using to describe that mustache.”
They laugh; my blood boils.
“Ha! Yes. Very cute we are,” I say, brushing a hand across my bangs as I step out of Camp’s arm and toward the door. “I should get going.”
“See ya at dinner, J.”
Over my dead body.
Since the taco dinner debacle earlier in the week, he hasn’t been home.
“Right, well, I doubt that. We have to eat early tonight because Lyra has . . .” I wrack my brain. “Homework.” I wince. “Yes, Lyra has so much homework that we need to eat early—at four thirty—so I know that won’t—”
“Sounds great, I’ve been meanin’ to start eatin’ dinner at four thirty.” He turns to Jack. “You good with runnin’ practice today?”
Jack nods.
My jaw drops.
Hell freezes over.
With a wink and the slightest of twitches of his mustache, he turns his back to me, jumping into conversation with Dani and Jack, letting me know with his silence and charm, meeting over.