9. Nine
Nine
“How’s it work?” Ty asks, eyeing the canister of film as I load it into the camera.
“Well,” I start, pulling it into the winder and cranking the arm. “This film is covered with special chemicals, and when the light hits it, it saves the picture.” I smile at him, closing the back of the camera. “Then, it goes into more chemicals, and the pictures stay on the film and can be printed out.”
Strike one! An umpire calls from the background at the same time Hank climbs on my lap. “What are you going to take pictures of?”
I adjust his boney behind on my lap as Ty brings the camera up to his face, little green eye peering through the viewfinder.
“Hmm.” I look around, the scene of a bunch of high schoolers on a Saturday morning baseball field is about as far from the wild landscapes I once planned on photographing as it can get.
“Get Daddy,” Hank says, pointing to Camp where he’s coaching third base.
Hinged at the waist, hands on his knees, iridescent-lensed sunglasses on his face to hide his expression, he looks toward the batter who scrubs his cleats in the clay, orange clouds puffing up around home plate. Camp lifts a hand, scrubs his knuckles across his mustache three times, slides a palm down the opposite arm, claps twice, then nods. The batter responds by lifting his chin and squaring up to home plate, bat pulled back, jaw set.
I click the shutter, Camp oblivious, his intense gaze going from pitcher to batter.
I take four photos of him in a row: Serious as he watches the pitch. Standing upright when the bat connects with the ball. Watching the ball fly over center field. His head back, mid-laugh, when the ball soars over the fence.
When the crowd cheers, I laugh, watching Camp through my viewfinder as the batter rounds third and gives him a high five. For a split second, I’m a seventeen-year-old girl watching a boy live his dream.
“Can I see the picture now?” Hank asks, tugging at the camera from my hands and my attention from the field.
I show him the back of the camera—the solid piece of black plastic a far cry from the modern screens of digital age—with a dramatic frown. “This is old school, kid, you gotta wait for the good stuff.”
As opposite from exotic or exciting as it can get, I lean into a morning of photographing nothing special. Getting to know my camera again. Light. Shadows. Lines. Remembering what it means to compose something ordinary and make it look extraordinary.
I shoot Lyra standing with her friends, laughing as they look at their phones and take selfies. I take photos of the boys, right before I drag them out from under the bleachers where they are eating all the popcorn off the ground. I photograph the crowd, making them blurry, clearing the details but somehow making the image sharper. More real. It could be a story about no one as much as one about anyone.
When the game is over and the boys chase Camp to the locker room, I load another roll of film and wander around alone, capturing details. The light hitting the chain-link fence, cleats in the dugout, the empty bleachers. The scoreboard. The bases. The umpire pulling his vest off. The smudged lines in the clay.
Then, somehow, I’m on the other fields, photographing the soccer goals, a rogue softball, the tackling dummies and practice football jerseys piled up.
“June!” a deep voice calls in unison with a high-pitched, “Mama!”
Coming out of the locker room, Camp and the boys move toward me in the parking lot, and I drop my camera in my purse.
“What were you doin’ out here?” Camp asks, pulling his sunglasses off as he falls into step next to me.
“She was taking pictures,” Hank says, making Camp’s eyebrows shoot up and my throat pinch.
I shift my weight between my feet, not wanting to discuss it. Almost embarrassed. “Just playing, you know. It’s nothing.”
Camp grins. “It’s not nothing , J. You always loved it so much, I never understood why you stopped.”
My jaw drops straight to the asphalt beneath my Birkenstocks, and I look at him—so much genuine sincerity on his face—a deluge of thoughts blowing through me.
Starting with: Are you fucking kidding me? Can he not see that I was forced to choose between him and the kids and everything else? Surely, he’s not that na?ve. Hell, given our current situation, maybe he is that na?ve.
“I was just playing,” I say, blinking away from his gaze. “Boys, you ready to go? Lyra’s riding with friends, and I know your dad has stuff with the coaches, so—”
“He’s coming with us,” Hank interrupts.
“What?”
No.
No.
“He’s coming with us,” Ty repeats, shoving a handful of rocks into his pocket.
I pin Camp with a glare, which he meets with a smug smile. “I said to the coaches, ‘ We spend too many Saturdays together, we should take today off.’ So I planned a picnic.”
“You planned a picnic.” I set my purse in the passenger seat of the van and cross my arms over my chest.
“I planned a picnic,” he echoes, amused.
I huff out a breath. “I heard you, Camp,” I say through gritted teeth, moving my mouth like a bad ventriloquist. “Why did you do that?”
“Because I love my wife and am happily married.” He blinks, as if it’s entirely insane that I’m mad. As if us pretending to be happily married meant we need to do all of this. Together . Like a real happily married couple.
Pockets full of God knows what, the boys slide the back door of the minivan open and climb into their booster seats while Camp and I have a silent argument with our eyes. My narrowing, nostril flaring, head tilting battle only finds a ceasefire from the roar of a motorcycle.
Reed.
Fingers lifting off one handle in a half wave at the stop sign and a lift of his chin, I return the wave with a too-big smile in his direction before he drives away.
“Friend of yours?” Camp asks, opening the door to his truck that’s parked next to me.
“Reed Simmons,” I say, letting the name steal all the oxygen off planet Earth and cause Camp’s expression to falter exactly the way I hoped it would. Take that, you smug sonofabitch. “He sends his best.” I smile sweetly as I drop into the seat of my minivan. “Let’s go on a picnic, honey .”
I’m a spiteful bitch. I know this because when the picnic is a disaster it warms my cold heart like summer asphalt on bare feet. In this moment of Lyra looking at Camp in outrage over a picnic table while mosquitoes nibble on our skin, I’ve never been so elated. I’ve never loved bugs and bad food more.
“Dad, this isn’t gluten-free bread!” Lyra cries, looking at the sandwich like it’s about to bite her.
I swat a bug on my arm, blood bursting on my skin with the kill, and press my lips between my teeth.
Camp’s eyes narrow, looking at the bread like he’s trying to will it to turn into something else. Something gluten-free.
“Gluten-free . . . ?” He runs a hand through the long hair on the top of his head. “No, I don’t think so . . .”
She huffs out a breath, pulling the bread off her ham and cheese. “Mom, why didn’t you tell him?”
I scoff. “Don’t pin this on me, Ly. Your dad did all this.”
“Why are there seeds in the crust?” Ty asks, leaning toward his paper plate until his nose hits the sandwich and he sniffs.
“You think that’s weird,” Hank chimes in. “The cheese has holes.” He presents the table with a piece of Swiss cheese. “And it smells weird.”
“Okay, okay, okay. The sandwiches aren’t a hit.” Camp scrubs his knuckles across his mustache. “I brought more.”
Out of the cooler, Camp pulls a container of raw broccoli, a bag of apples, and, my personal favorite, a jar of pickled beets from the local farm stand. At the kids’ puckered faces, I can’t contain my joy and bark out a laugh.
“What’s wrong with all this?” he cries. “I know you guys like apples . . .”
Lyra snorts a laugh and grabs an apple. “Sure, Dad.”
The boys each grab apples and hand them to me, making my eyes go to Camp. “Did you bring a knife?”
“A knife?”
“Yes, honey , a knife. To cut the apples. Ty won’t eat them whole, and Hank doesn’t eat the skin.”
He nods, squinting into the cooler, again, as if he’s hoping it’s a kind of magician’s hat that will make cutlery and new ingredients appear.
“I did not bring a knife,” he says, hands going to his hips.
“Who are the beets for? Gross,” Lyra asks around a bite of her apple.
“Your mom. She loves them.” He looks at me, shoulders slumping slightly. “At least, she used to.”
And I see it there, something Camp never feels: defeat. And dammit, as much as I love watching him fail, love seeing him live my life and struggle through it, his gesture makes my cold heart warm just enough for me to notice. Because it’s Camp, and I do love those stupid beets. And even more, he’s trying. For what feels like the first time in over a decade, maybe more, my husband is making an effort off of the baseball field.
I could say I don’t. Could make him look like a fool in front of our kids and remind him of all the reasons our marriage isn’t working, and yet . . .
“I do love those beets,” I say with a grin, swatting a buzzing mosquito away from my face. “Here.” I lean over the table and rearrange the nearly inedible ingredients, making a sandwich for Hank of all bread and ham, Ty gets plain cheese, and Lyra has ham and cheese roll-ups. I twist the lid off the beets, putting one on each kids’ plate, along with the broccoli—which I serve with a look that says you will eat this, and you will like it. Out of my purse, I pull out my camera, set it on the table, and find the utility knife I keep for emergencies—mostly when the boys tie something to something else that shouldn’t be tied together—and slice the apples, peeling the skin for Hank.
As they eat, without complaints this time, I pop a beet in my mouth with a satisfied moan. Camp nudges me with his elbow from next to me, amused look on his face as I bring a napkin to my mouth, chuckling around my chews.
“Thanks for savin’ me,” he says, low enough the kids can’t hear over their too-loud conversation. “How did you know how to do all that?”
“We eat dinner every night, Camp.” One simple statement summarizes everything he’s missed.
He looks at me, his mouth open slightly, but says nothing.
“Mom, when did you get this camera?” Lyra asks.
“College,” I say with a smile, picking it up. “I wanted to be a photographer. Digital was just coming out, but I couldn’t shake the magical pull of film. The mystery of shooting something and having to wait to see what you made.” I pull it up to my face and fill the frame with Lyra’s beautiful face—pink hair pulled into messy pigtails—and capture the moment. “See, now you’ll have no idea if you have broccoli between your teeth until this gets developed.”
“Hey!” she cries, running her tongue over her teeth. “Can I try?”
I pass her the camera, showing her the buttons and settings. She points the lens at me then lowers it, waving a hand through the air. “With Dad.”
“Right, of course.” I flick my eyes to him, scooting closer on the bench.
His arm reaches around my waist, pulling me to him, and my head drops onto his shoulder. For one click of the shutter, I feel how well we used to fit together.
When she pulls the camera away from her face, she grins. “Guess you’ll have to wait and see if you have beet juice on your face until the film’s developed.”
“Ha. Ha,” I say, throwing a napkin at her as I sit up straight. Camp’s palm moves from my waist to the small of my back where it lingers. Where I notice.
“Why did you quit?” she asks, pointing the camera at the boys who now have broccoli shoved up their nostrils. When she pushes the button, nothing happens. The film is out.
“Hm.” I fish another roll from my purse and reload the camera as I try to figure out how to answer her in a way that doesn’t sound depressing. “I got busy with you. Life is . . . busy.”
Camp’s hand drops from my back, silence hanging for a beat.
“Well, judgin’ by how bad the rest of my food choices were”—he swats a mosquito on his neck—“and how awful these bugs are, I’m guessin’ my only chance of redemption is ice cream on the way home.”
When the kids cheer, I start stacking paper plates and sweeping crumbs into a pile.
Lyra helps repack the cooler as Camp walks the boys to the minivan, wrestling with them the whole way, causing giggly screams to cut through the park.
“That a new shirt?” Lyra asks, eyeing the bright yellow fabric.
I tug at the hem, which barely brushes the top of my jeans. “Um. Yeah. I got it yesterday. I don’t know—maybe it’s silly.” I tug the hem again, suddenly self-conscious. “I just liked the color—thought it was a little different than my usual. I might return it—”
“Why? I love it. That color looks great on you.” She gives a wry smile. “I might have to steal it.”
I puff out a laugh, staring at her as she finishes clearing the table, her confidence the opposite of mine.
“Dad sucks at packing lunch.”
“Hm,” I agree with a small smile, watching as he makes faces to the boys in the back of the minivan. “That he does.”
“Even with the bad food and bugs”—she shrugs—“this was fun.”
I nod but don’t say anything, because she’s right . . . this was fun. I wonder if someday she’ll also realize it was fake.
“You stopped photography because of Lyra?”
Camp’s voice from the floor in the darkness of our bedroom startles me. I roll to the edge of the bed and look down to where he’s lying. With one arm crooked behind his head, the other palm resting on his chest, he looks up at me. The streetlight through the window illuminates his face just enough for me to make out his features. The bump on his nose, the bristles of his mustache, the unfair smoothness of his skin.
“I guess.” I pause, wondering if we’ve never had this conversation. How we’ve never had this conversation. “I don’t think it was as cause and effect as that though. Not as definitive. I had a baby, I was too tired to think about it, and we were living with my parents, which . . .”
A breath wooshes out of me with the recollection of that time. Camp was off trying to make it in the world of baseball, and I was alone with a baby. Our bank account was made up of more dreams than dollars, and my mom welcomed me and Lyra into my old bedroom with open arms. What I didn’t account for was that my parents would drive me crazy. Between their weird routines and seeming rediscovered sex life, it was the last place I wanted to be. Photography was the last thing on my mind. “I was trying to survive; you were trying to figure out baseball . . . I just kind of forgot about it. I thought I would do it when you figured out your career, but then . . .” My voice trails off with that, and he sits up.
“Then what, June?” he asks, propping himself up on a forearm. “Because I didn’t play baseball you couldn’t do what you wanted?”
And just like that, I relive it all like it’s in real time.
I got pregnant with Lyra, had a baby, and got tired. Camp was chasing his dreams of playing in the majors, so I waited. Waited to see what he was going to do—who he was going to be—before I decided what I wanted. Then came the injury. And though the recovery was slow, I was so sure he was going to recover. We both knew it. His big break was coming.
Then the phone call. I’ll never forget it. He was at spring training, and I was in the tiny apartment we finally rented to escape my ever-humping parents. Lyra was sick, wouldn’t stop crying. I felt like I hadn’t slept in days. “How’s the arm, Camp?” I asked between her screams.
He didn’t answer me. “What’s going on there?”
I said something to Lyra, trying to soothe her, both of us yawning. Both of us feeling so damn defeated. “She’s sick, can’t shake the fever. It’s fine.”
Then he paused, long and weighted, as if he was trying to work up the courage to tell me the bad news. “They don’t think my arm is going to get better, J, they aren’t extending my contract.” His voice caught, and my throat, nose, and eyes all burned like they’d been stuffed with hot coals. My heart shattered to smithereens for him. “ But the year I had in the majors made us enough money, financially we are fine. You can stay home with Lyra, and I’ll come back there—we can buy my parents’ house, it’ll be perfect for us—and there’s a position at the high school. It’s mine if I want it. It’s all going to be okay.”
And there, while Camp confessed his baseball career was over, I refused to speak up about anything else. To tell him I didn’t want to live in Ledger or his parents’ old house or spend my whole life pouring into other people’s cups. It was what he wanted, and I would do it. For him. For us. Even as Lyra screamed in my face, I believed I’d figure it out. How hard would it be? My mom had done it. Stayed home, raised three kids. She seemed to come out of it mostly unscathed.
I went from chasing dreams to chasing kids and started shoving things in a box, never telling Camp what I really thought about anything. No matter how hard. Ever. Because : I could do this. I could do this. I could . . .
“June?” Camp’s voice brings me back to the present. A dark bedroom and separate beds.
My eyebrows pinch and I lift my head off the bed. “No, I didn’t say that. It’s not about what you did or didn’t do, Camp. It’s-it’s”—I pause, letting out a long exhale—“it’s that your dream was shattered when you were injured, and you seemed so happy with me being able to stay home with Lyra. I wanted to be good for you, for her. Then the next few years . . .”
I look at him, our shared history connecting us like ends of a complex spiderweb.
“The next few years,” he echoes. Saying it all. The hard and the ugly. The pieces of life people sweep under the rug.
I drop my head to the mattress, turning my own gaze to the ceiling. Quiet.
Same ceiling; separate beds.
“Lyra called me simple.”
“June, that’s not—”
“Don’t, Camp. Not now. We’re beyond all the placating. I know I’m simple, especially to a teenager. It’s hard to believe I ever was who I once was. But I feel it right now, hard, everything I never did.” An unamused laugh rumbles in my chest followed by a thick silence that coats the room.
“How did you know Reed was in town?”
I roll on my side to face him again. “He came into an art gallery I went into. The Ledger Art House—it’s new. He’s a photographer of all things, in town because his dad died and has an installation there.”
“Of course he does,” he replies, bitter.
One heartbeat. Two. Twenty beats later, he speaks again.
“You should go take photos tomorrow, J. I don’t have anywhere I need to be.” His eyes meet mine, dark in the night. Crescent moons flickering up at me.
“You don’t have to do this, Camp. Change who you are because we didn’t work. I can figure this out a different way. Manage on my own.”
He scoffs. “I’m your husband, you don’t need to manage .”
I want to tell him managing is all I’ve been doing for years, but instead, I say, “Only for seventy more days.”
Another silence. My pulse thumps in my throat; my mind spins in a million directions.
“I didn’t know you were unhappy.”
Unhappy . It punches my chest.
I know I’m not living the life twenty-two-year-old me envisioned. Know I’m living in a town I thought I’d escape with a husband that doesn’t feel like a partner . . . but unhappy? It’s so . . . severe.
He doesn’t say anything else, and, lost in my own head, neither do I.