13. Thirteen
Thirteen
“You like these?” Irma asks, black-framed, rectangular glasses low on her nose as she looks from the photo she’s holding to me. Her expression and tone skeptical.
It’s been two weeks since I went to the lake. Two weeks of stealing away to photograph landscapes within a couple hours’ drive of Ledger. After they were all developed, scans emailed to me, I printed and brought in the best ones. Mostly black and white—just like she does. There are only fifteen keepers of the dozen rolls I’ve shot, but they are crisp; perfect from any technical standard. Straight horizons and tack-sharp focus.
The rest I saved in a file titled nonsense on my computer and don’t give them a second look. I’ve been out of the game a while, but I know how this works. People don’t want messy details and abstract still-life images now any more than they did twenty years ago.
I swallow, smoothing my cream slacks. “Umm, yes?” I clear my throat, summoning confidence before repeating: “Yes.”
“I see.” She takes another photo out of the stack. “And what do you feel when you look at them?”
My eyes narrow. “Feel?”
She sets the photographs down, a black-and-white image of a rocky creek from a local state park on top, and pulls the glasses from her nose, letting them hang from a beaded chain around her neck. “ Feel. Photographers never make images that pierce the soul if their own souls aren’t pierced first.”
I shift the weight between my legs, uncomfortable from her question or my shoes or both or neither.
“Umm.” I shuffle through the photos, slipping one out of the stack from the day I went to the lake. “I feel peace,” I start, the image in my hand taken from where I stood on the beach after the crying woman left. Water reflecting the scene like a mirror. “It was quiet this day, nobody there really, and it was peaceful . . .” My voice trails off as I look from the photograph, filled with flat water, tree-covered hills, and boathouses on the shore, to Irma’s face, which is frowning.
“I see.”
And, because her silence is a loud and deafening thing, I decide, like some insane person fresh out of the asylum, to fill the void to make her see what I see. What I need her to see.
“And, you know, I know these aren’t anything new. Not fresh, or anything, but I worked with what I have. I mean, there are only so many ways to creatively photograph the landscapes of North Carolina.” I laugh; she doesn’t. “Same vistas over and over. And it has been a long time, so these were just a test run. My plan”—I start stacking the photographs, placing them back in the portfolio I brought them in, hoping they catch on fire—“is to go farther. To see different places.” She looks from the photos to me, skeptical.
“And how do you plan to do that?” she asks. “You have kids. A husband.”
A lump seemingly made of barbed wire forms in my throat.
“I’m getting a-a-a—” I can barely swallow, much less finish that sentence. “A break.”
She raises her eyebrows.
“Yes. From my marriage.” I clear my throat. “And, once that happens, I can do more. I won’t be so-so-so limited. I’ll go out more. And see more. And photograph something more exciting than all this. And this town. Which, as I’m sure you’ll agree, is the dullest place on Earth and, if anything, sucks any inspiration right out of the creative part of the brain.” When my voice turns scratchy, her lips press together tightly.
Every godforsaken tick of the clock thuds against my eardrums with its relentless cadence and sends a dull pain fledging at my temples.
I swallow.
She’s quiet.
I swallow again.
“You aren’t a landscape photographer,” she says in a matter-of-fact tone that turns my confidence to smoke.
“Not this landscape, no. But other landscapes—more exciting ones—that’s where my heart is. If I—”
“It won’t matter,” she says sharply. “Your composition is perfect.” She takes the portfolio from my hands and selects a shot of a waterfall. I used a slow shutter speed to capture the blur of the water, leaving everything else tack sharp. The lines draw the viewer in, directing the eye to where the water flows. “This photo is technically flawless, you did nothing wrong, but it looks like a stock photo. A Viagra ad.”
“A Viagra ad . . . ?”
My image looks like a malfunctioning penis. Awesome.
“There’s no passion.” She puts the photo back in the portfolio. “What were you thinking of when you were shooting?”
“Thinking of . . . ?”
She huffs a frustrated breath. “Yes, June, thinking of? Stop repeating me, for God’s sake. It’s unnerving. What motivated you to take this photo? Why this spot? This waterfall? What does it mean to you?”
My thoughts scramble like eggs with the intensity of her gaze and rapid fire of her questioning. Despite the cool breeze blowing through the propped-open door of the gallery, my armpits are sweating.
“Just say it already. Don’t filter yourself. This isn’t a classroom, you won’t fail.” She’s annoyed, arms crossed over her flowy top.
“I-I-I—” I look down at the photo, wanting something profound to come from my mouth, but instead: “I was thinking about how to take a photo that you would like. That would look like what you have here. That looks like you shot it. This spot was picked out of convenience and because it’s pretty. It means nothing to me. Not really.”
With my confession, I slump; she softens.
“Ah,” she says, eyebrows arched high on her forehead. “You’re one of those types.”
“Those types . . . ?”
“The type that tries to be what everyone else wants.” The look on her face is smug, as if she’s just analyzed me like a photograph with all the details in perfect clarity. Like she knows me.
The brief second of feeling like she just ripped the skin right off of my skeleton quickly turns to anger. She doesn’t know me. She has no clue what type I am. My nostrils flare. “No, that is not who I am.” My voice wavers, making me wonder if that is who I am. No. “I just shot these to fill a portfolio in a rush. Once I have time—space—I can shoot new places and—”
She shakes her head, raises her hand, and cuts me off. “You don’t need new places to take photos that feel like something.”
“But maybe just not these landscapes,” I argue, my desperate CPR on a future that’s flatlining in a gallery at the hands of my hero. The one thing I was always good at, now another failure. I’m screwed. Starting over with nothing. Bad mom. Bad wife. Bad photographer. “You know, Ansel Adams was known for photographing the West, and you did so much of your iconic work in—”
“You’re too old for me to coddle.” Ouch. “You aren’t Ansel Adams, and you aren’t Irma freaking London. You aren’t a landscape photographer.” She pauses, letting the words hit with their intended severity before continuing. “Are you a photographer? Absolutely. But you haven’t found your subject matter. Your muse. Or maybe you have, but you just don’t see it. Or won’t look for it.”
In my silence she crosses the room, retrieves a leather book—a portfolio?—and hands it to me.
I blink at her.
“Open it,” she commands.
I do. Shocked when I see what’s inside: not a flawless landscape photo, but a snapshot. The woman I recognize as being Irma, though I know she’s decades younger, with a man. He’s as stunning as her. Long shaggy hair with loose curls, dark eyes, scruff-covered chin. Her face is pressed against his jaw, nose smooshed down as she smiles against his skin. He’s grinning wide.
I lift my eyes to her, and she dips her chin; I flip the page.
On the back of the photo, a scribbled handwritten note: “lover, Argentina, 1997 . ”
My eyes lift to hers, but her expression doesn’t give anything away.
The next photo is her with a group of dark-skinned kids. Their hair is cut short, nearly shaved, and the beaded necklaces around their necks stand out against their bare chests as much as the bright white teeth of their smiles on their faces. Irma is in the middle, their arms wrapped around her neck in a hug. On the back: “kids, Namibia, 1999.”
In our silence, I flip through the pages. Not a portfolio; an album. Her with old women. With farmers. More kids. Locations of various years and as many locations. In every single one, her smile is face splitting. On what feels to be the hundredth one that’s noted lover, this time a woman, I look at her again, this time with raised eyebrows, and she gives me a knowing smile.
Irma has a weakness for hot men—and, if her labeling is correct, the occasional woman. Though, judging by how happy she is in every picture, maybe it’s more of a penchant.
“I shot for them. Inspired by them. I met the people—some local, some like me, chasing a shot or a study or something else— then I picked up my camera. Channeled them. Tried to embody my time with them by capturing the landscapes in a way that felt like them.”
She takes the album from me and points to the large canvas on the wall. It’s a trail, shot in color, but the light is low, probably blue hour—the time just after golden hour when everything is bathed in warmth but just before night swallows day—and, even though it’s beautiful, it’s somber. “What do you feel when you look at this?”
My response is instant. “Sadness. Lonely.”
She nods, staring at it. “I shot this right after the one that didn’t love me back.” Her voice catches on the words, surprising me. Irma London, award-winning, world-travelling photographer, knows heartbreak.
“I . . .” The roll of a motorcycle rips through the air and grabs my attention. It roars to a stop, the rider pulls off his helmet, blue eyes sparkling, and pushes the kickstand down. My throat pinches.
No.
On top of everything Irma just said, I can’t deal with Reed Simmons right now.
I take my portfolio from her, the walls of the gallery closing in. My breaths are suddenly shallow, like poison ivy got shoved down my throat. All the photographs with feeling smothering me. Death by art. Reed’s boots cross the sidewalk; dread swells.
“Well thank you for your time, Irma. I’ll think about it.” I clear my throat, my words coming out rushed. “What you said, I mean. I’ll think about it all.”
It’s too late. He’s here, I’m trapped.
“June.” Reed grins, running a hand through his hair, smile slicing his scruff-covered jaw. He scans me in my cream-colored suit, approving look in his eyes. “Got those scans?”
Irma slides the portfolio out from under my arm and passes it to him before I can respond. “She shot these.”
He thumbs through them, humming and nodding. “They’re nice,” he says when he gets to the last one, snapping the portfolio closed and handing it back to me.
“Nice?” I ask, bristled by the word.
He shrugs. “Nice. Safe.”
Safe? Of course they’re safe, it’s a collection of limp dicks.
Irma makes a sound from next to me that I translate to I told you.
I glare at her. Then Reed.
She gestures toward the wingback chairs at the front of the gallery, taking a seat as I do the same, Reed standing next to my chair, smelling like cloves and soap. Pissing me off. He’s good; I’m not. He’s living a dream; I’m not.
“A good landscape photographer makes the viewer either feel like they are there or wish they were. Yours do neither,” she tells me, hands folded on her lap.
“I—”
“It’s probably not her subject,” Reed says, not letting me defend myself as he drives another nail into my heart and leans on the back of Irma’s chair. Crossing one denim-covered leg over the other, he works his teeth over his full bottom lip, as if in deep thought about how shitty I am.
“That’s what I told her,” Irma responds, as if I’m not sitting there. As if my entire vision of my future isn’t being torn to shreds. Again.
When I graduated, all I wanted was to be a photographer. I went to college and got a degree built on that truth. And now, these two people—professionals that I’ll never be—are having a full-blown discussion on how that will never happen. Something about vision and passion being volleyed between the two as I sit in a pantsuit that cost too much money.
“I think that’s a great plan. June, will that work with you?”
I shake my head. “Sorry—what?”
“You and Reed should get together, brainstorm. He can help you. God knows he never had a vision when he started shooting.” She chuckles.
“I’m free tonight,” he says, grinning. “That is, if Camp won’t mind.”
Since the demolition of my ego that started the second I walked into the gallery today, I force myself to square my shoulders and lift my chin. “What I do has nothing to do with Camp. I’m free.”
“Then it’s a date.”
“No,” I say, looking at him with conviction for the first time since he sauntered back into my life. “It’s not.”