The Art of the Kiss Read online

  Contents

  The Art of the Kiss

  Copyright

  Acclaim for Holly Schindler’s Work

  This Story

  Michael

  From The Fairyland Times - June 6, 1974

  Michael

  Sharon

  From the Studio Walls - Bottom Step #1

  March 25, 1967

  Photography Fact - Portrait Class, 1979

  This Story

  From The Fairyland Times - March 4, 2018

  Michael

  Michael

  Michael

  Sharon

  Michael

  From The Fairyland Times - March 24, 1967

  April 28, 1967

  Michael

  Michael

  June 11, 1969

  Excerpt from Wikipedia

  Sharon

  From the Studio Walls - The Art of the Kiss

  Sharon

  Michael

  June 14, 1969

  From Michael's Notebook - 1969

  From Michael's Notebook - 2015

  Michael

  On Air

  Sharon

  From The Fairyland Times - April 10, 1969

  May 30, 1969

  From the Studio Walls - Murio's, 1969

  Sharon

  July 4, 1969

  Sharon

  Michael

  July 6, 1969

  Michael

  August 2, 1969

  From the Stuido Walls - Murio's, 1975

  May 9, 1987

  Sharon

  Heather

  Sharon

  Michael

  Sharon - Images, 1978

  Michael's Letter to Sharon, 1978

  Michael

  On Air

  Michael

  From the Studio Walls - 1980-1989

  Sharon's Laptop

  Sharon

  Heather

  Sharon

  On Air

  From The Fairyland Times - May 7, 2018

  Michael

  Sharon

  From the Studio Walls - Bottom Step #2

  From The Fairyland Times - March 7, 2001

  Sharon

  This Story

  Sharon's Favorite Photo Album

  From The Fairyland Times - 1989

  Sharon

  Photography Fact - Intro to Photography Class, 1984

  Michael

  Sharon

  From The Fairyland Times, September 3, 1974

  Sharon

  From The Fairyland Times - March 12, 2012

  Photography Fact- Black and White Photography Class, 1998

  Sharon

  Michael

  This Story

  Michael

  From The Fairyland Times - June 27, 2018

  Photography Fact - Basement Chat, 2018

  On Air

  Let's Go

  Michael

  Sharon

  July 5, 1969

  Michael

  From Michael's Notebook - 2018

  Sharon

  July 4, 1970

  Michael

  Sharon

  Michael

  This Kiss

  Michael

  Sharon

  From the Studio Walls - Hands, Then and Now

  This Story

  Photography Fact - Portrait Class, 2018

  From Michael Minyard's introduction, The Art of the Kiss

  Sharon

  Michael

  On Air

  Reviews

  Holly Schindler

  ~The Art of the Kiss~

  Holly Schindler

  The Art of the Kiss

  Copyright © 2019 by Holly Schindler

  Published by InToto Books

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover image by BluedarkArt, courtesy of Shutterstock

  SuperFly Brush Font by Sam Parrett and Deputy Serif by BlackBird Foundry, both courtesy of Creative Market

  Acclaim for Holly Schindler’s

  Previous Work

  ★ Breathtakingly, gut-wrenchingly authentic—

  Booklist starred review

  ★ Exquisitely imagined—

  Publishers Weekly starred review

  Awards

  IPPY Awards Gold Medal

  Foreword INDIES Book of the Year

  Silver Medal

  ~This Story~

  This is the story of a man. And a woman.

  And a rut.

  Unwelcome and unexpected, maybe. Sneaky and slow forming. But there it was, a rut just the same. By the time this man and this woman finally recognized the rut’s existence, it had already been gouged so deeply into the earth that neither one quite knew how to climb out.

  When had it started? The same way a rut starts for anyone. At the exact moment this man and this woman had succumbed to a comfortable rhythm: the swinging back door of their days, the routine comings and goings, the divvying up of the morning sink and knowing whose turn it was to pick up the lemon for the tea, and at the end of the day, a shared meal and scraped dishes and the flicker of the blue TV light through the living room.

  Ruts, when they form, always begin at the exact moment you have found your satisfaction.

  So it went with Michael and Sharon, who had been digging their rut for a good fifty years.

  At least, until one sweet June day, when they found it disturbed by a force not unlike a Midwest tornado.

  Of course it was good that the rut had been disturbed. Of course kicked-up dust eventually settles. But before that could happen, for a while, Michael and Sharon were surrounded by chaos. Dirt flew in their eyelashes. Everything stung.

  This is the story of Michael. And Sharon. It is the story of their beginning. And it is the story of the time they began again. They each have their own side to tell: Michael, who saw life as the most magical of all the fairy tales, and Sharon, who viewed the world pragmatically, in black and white.

  The rut had no perspective of its own.

  Ruts never do.

  But they can change the perspective of the people who happen to be standing in them.

  That’s the insidious power of a rut.

  ~Michael~

  Once upon a time, in a town called Fairyland—

  Hey, wait a minute. Don’t roll your eyes one sentence in. Don’t start backing up, saying the opening line of my story sounds like the setup for a bad joke told on amateur night at a comedy club.

  Give your skeptical side a breather, just for a little while. Come along with me, into a tale that takes place in a small Missouri town named Fairyland.

  Perhaps the founder was addle-brained. Maybe he let his eight-year-old name the town. Then again, maybe, even then, he had a gut feeling. An inkling that something…what’s the word?—bewitching—would wind up taking place inside the city limits.

  All I know is, in the town of Fairyland, I lived a real-life fairy tale.

  Now you’re rolling your eyes. Yeah, right, you’re thinking. Me, some old guy with white hair and trifocals and a creaky knee. You think a guy like me doesn’t look like fairy tale material. Certainly not Prince Charming.

  To that, I have to say you’re completely, totally wrong.

  In the town of Fairyland, I won my one true love.

  And in the town
of Fairyland, I touched magic.

  Now there you go, assuming my tale is going to involve a one-size-fits-all kind of magic. The sort that spews purple sparkles out of a wand.

  The story I have to tell is not a bunch of two-dimensional coloring book garbage.

  Sometimes, though, objects really can be magical. I’ve held a magical object myself. A camera. The old kind. With film. A 1967 Nikon F.

  You’re leaving me again. You’re drifting away. I can feel it.

  Don’t. Stay with me. It’s the truth. Magic exists in this world.

  Try this. I think it’s one thing, even here when we have only just met and skepticism is at its zenith, that we can both agree on:

  What the old tales of our childhood got right—more than anything else—is that the most powerful item in the world isn’t a spell or a potion. Not a poison apple or a godmother or a spinning wheel that can make gold. It’s not even the camera that wound up changing the course of two lives—mine and my wife’s.

  The most magical, most transformative thing?

  It’s a kiss.

  In the storybooks, kisses can turn frogs into heartthrobs and wake comatose princesses. Kisses show people for who they are, deep down, underneath the glass slippers and the stepsister warts and the royal family titles. A kiss can shine a regular searchlight on the truest love, the love that was always meant to be.

  When it’s real, a kiss has the ability to change everything.

  Especially in a town called Fairyland.

  Did I get you that time? Are you listening? Intrigued? Good.

  Where was I? Ah, yes:

  Once upon a time, in the town of Fairyland, I learned that fairy tales are real. I saw for myself everything a real kiss can do.

  Excerpt from

  The Fairyland Times

  June 6, 1974

  A record-breaking traffic jam brought the entirety of Fairyland to a stop shortly after noon on Saturday. While rumors originally circulated that an automobile accident had been the cause, it was soon discovered by Fairyland police that the jam was started by a photograph.

  Sharon Minyard, owner of Minyard’s Photography, located off the downtown square, said, “I still can’t believe it happened. We’ve been getting more visitors lately, every day a few more. And then suddenly, on Saturday, it exploded.”

  It isn’t the first time Minyard’s photograph, The Art of the Kiss, received such positive attention. Three years ago, Minyard submitted her photo—a black and white of a kiss shared with her now-husband, Michael Minyard—to the International Alliance of Professional Photographers, for their annual competition. The photograph took the top prize, winning Mrs. Minyard thirty-thousand dollars in award money, and allowing her to put a down payment on her own photography studio and shop, where you can sit for a portrait, take a class taught by the photographer herself, or buy the latest in photography equipment.

  “Of course I had to hang the photo in the shop,” Minyard said. “It’s the reason I even have the shop in the first place. But I had no idea it would elicit this kind of response.”

  Since Minyard’s opening last month, admiration for her photo has been immediate and swift-moving. Customers have described the powerful print to other Fairyland residents, who then show up to view the image themselves. Interest gained momentum until last Saturday, when enough Fairyland-ians arrived in front of the Minyard studio at once to cause a traffic jam. One that continued to keep traffic either at a standstill or crawl for roughly two hours.

  Minyard herself acknowledged that the subject matter was no doubt a big part of why she won the prestigious photography award. “Too many images we see today are so dark. The news is so dark. It’s nice to get a breather from all that every once in a while.”

  Her customers, however, insist it’s far more. Carol Bernard, a college freshman back in Fairyland for the duration of her summer break, mirrored the sentiment of all who came to view the image, stating, “When I see her photo, I know that it’s possible. True love exists. The fairy tale can be real for everyone.”

  ~Michael~

  I suppose I was puttering. Isn’t that what we say old retired men do? Men who have been married fifty years and have creaky knees and wear trifocals?

  Puttering. And rummaging around our apartment with a big cardboard box marked “Donations - Citywide Rummage Sale.” Whistling. While Sharon was downstairs in the shop. I popped open our hall closet door, the one with all the junk.

  I honestly didn’t expect anything amazing to happen. I was cleaning the place out. That’s all. It was Saturday morning. A morning known for sleeping in and pancakes and not shaving. Perhaps the slowest, most uneventful morning of the week.

  So it goes with magic. It never really does show up with advanced warning. It never politely rings the doorbell before busting in and demanding change.

  Anyway, there I was, swinging open the door, only to find magic staring me right in the face. Stored away in a box, on the top shelf. With the old VHS tapes and the empty fish bowl. Like somehow, Sharon was done with it. Like magic could ever get used up or out of date.

  I grabbed the old camera, wondering how it had drifted in there with all the other items doing nothing but waiting for their turn to finally be thrown away.

  I found myself believing, in that moment, that it was the answer to the problems that had crept into our life. The solution to getting out of the not-quite-horrific but definitely-not-completely-splendid place we’d found ourselves, half a century into our time together as a couple.

  “Sharon!” I shouted, bounding down the stairs, my donation box in my hand. “Where are you? Do you hear me?” I was going so fast, my tennis shoes were making the squeaky sounds you usually hear on a basketball court.

  The shop was empty, as I’d expected it to be. Empty just as it had been, for the most part, for years. We’d experienced a mass exodus in excruciatingly slow motion. Victims of modern digitalization. In all honesty, I hadn’t fully noticed how horribly quiet the shop really was until after my retirement from the paper.

  Seemed like it just kept getting deader from there.

  Sharon, who had been something of a celebrity in the era when that really meant something—before people were famous simply for being famous, when the limelight only found you because you could pitch a baseball or sing or write books or take stunning photos—had, in more recent times, become a footnote in the history of Fairyland. Kind of a smudged footnote at that. Nobody really remembered Sharon, not anymore.

  Truth be told, the studio-slash-store that had once been the source of so much pride for both of us had become a sad relic. Unseen or ignored—what was the difference? It stung the same. In a complete reversal of roles, we were now supporting the store. Living on social security and managing to keep the lights on only because we’d long ago purchased the small building outright and collected rent from our neighbors. Over the years, we’d played landlord to a hairdresser, a florist, an insurance salesman, a tattoo parlor. A few cafés. A bookstore, once.

  No matter who hung “Open” signs next door, they never did seem to generate any foot traffic for the camera shop. Nobody even came by looking for directions to the lake anymore. Everybody used their phones for that.

  And Sharon? She worked, but not in the same way. She kind of puttered herself. Took digital photos and stored them on her computer under the lock of a password. Or she propped her elbows on the counter, wading through random daydreams, one after another, and staring through the front window, wistfully watching the world pass by. The same world that had once lavished her with love, then so cruelly turned its shoulder, leaving her behind.

  I’d come to think of her situation as being confined to an old-age coma. The Brothers Grimm would have surely called it a spell. And the horrible part of it was that she’d done it to herself. No wicked queen, no poison apples.

  It absolutely broke my heart. All those days, all those hours she was racking up behind the counter doing nothing. I’d offer to relieve her, a
nd she’d just wind up going out for a walk. I couldn’t believe it. A talent like Sharon’s withering and dying on the vine.

  But it was all about to change. I knew it.

  “Look what I found,” I announced breathlessly, clattering her old camera case against the glass-topped display counter.

  My sleepwalking beauty stared down at it. The tiniest of changes flickered across her face. Come on, Sharon, I thought. Wake up.

  “It’s okay to donate this one, right?” I asked, pushing the camera case a little closer. Nudging her. Even though I didn’t want her to donate it—and knew, in all honesty, she never would. I wasn’t actually asking her to donate it. I was asking, instead, that she remember.

  Sharon flinched. She flicked the latches, exposing the old Nikon.

  It didn’t look special at all, there in the unforgiving fluorescent lights. It did look like junk. All those scratches and gashes. That large dent on the left-hand side.

  Sharon and I both knew better. In fact, I was part of putting the magic there. Decades ago.

  Come on, Sharon, we can tap into that magic again. I know we can. Believe it.

  ~Sharon~

  Once upon a time, my foot.

  Look, Michael’s telling you his side of the story, describing our lives from his point of view. That’s fine. He’s got this whole lovely metaphorical thing going. Which is definitely worth a listen and all that. Really. I’m not an unromantic person.

  But I told him the day we met I wasn’t a fairy tale kind of girl. That’s still the case. I don’t do pink frilly anything, and to this day, my houseplants are mostly dead.

  Really—what’re you supposed to do with the things? Either I don’t water enough, or I drown them. What’s the balance? Why’s it all a secret?

  Stupid plants.

  I don’t have time to go around babying a bunch of weak green shoots. Fragile flowers that droop because the sun isn’t hitting them at the exact right angle.

  No, I definitely don’t have time for that.

  Or the interest, frankly.