The Art of the Kiss Read online

  The adults had given them permission to play while they’d been waiting for me. And by the time I’d finally shown up, they were too far into their games to stand still and pose.

  The whole thing was a giant wreck.

  And then I remembered, finally, what you said. “Let the camera show you the way. Ask for its help.”

  So, armed with the memory of the promise I’d made to be kind, and with your own words swirling in my head, I turned my back on the Lius. I whispered to the Nikon, “I’m not asking. I’m begging. Which shows how desperate I am. I’m pleading with everything I have, which I know doesn’t sound like much. But to me, it’s the whole world. Today’s shoot is everything. The beginning or the end. This guy’s the sort to tell everyone all about me—either in a good way or a bad one. This is make-or-break time. Either everything I want for my life begins to happen right here or everything falls apart.”

  I sucked in a breath. And for what had to be the six thousandth time, I raised the camera to my face.

  The moment I looked through the viewfinder, I gasped.

  The park wasn’t bathed in the severe glow of midday sun. Not anymore. Instead, as I swiveled, scenes before me grew sharper—more colorful—shifting like the bright beads inside a kaleidoscope. Had I finally twisted the right knob? Adjusted the lens in the right way?

  The camera will help you, if you let it…That’s what you’d said.

  “Show me the right spot,” I whispered to the camera.

  A streak of light etched itself across the viewfinder as if to say, This way. Follow me. And I did. I chased it across the park until I found myself staring at an old elm tree. Underneath its limbs, the light was soft and yet not too shady. The colors were summery and delightful, and the glare of the sun promised to be out of the Lius’ eyes.

  I called to them, pointing at this new spot.

  The weary family followed my instruction. Can you believe it? They were still with me, for some strange reason. They gathered into a strange, semi-unorganized, exhausted clump, shaking their heads as if asking wordlessly, What next? Climb the tree?

  Without lifting my eye from the viewfinder, I motioned for everyone to smoosh a little closer together. The tiniest details cleared, coming into perfect, sharp focus. When the colors grew strong enough to pulse, I pressed the shutter button.

  That time—finally—the camera granted my wish.

  ~Sharon~

  Was she joking? Waiting for me to laugh? Playing with me? As Heather seemed to have, for a second, questioned my motives on the day we met, I started to wonder about hers. Had she cooked up some sort of plan? Was she up to something dastardly?

  Judging by the look on her face, it seemed the girl believed it. All of it.

  I knew it couldn’t be true. The camera showed her the way. Come on. I’d used that camera for decades, and it wasn’t like the thing had ever literally talked to me. Not like Heather had described. Whatever Heather thought had happened in the park was nothing more than the power of suggestion.

  “I was so grateful to have taken one picture,” Heather babbled, “it just didn’t occur to me to try to take another. Not until I was in the car on the way back and it was too late.”

  I hummed as I worked to develop the photo, my fingers fumbling a bit in my hurry. Was I trying to reassure Heather? Or myself?

  It was going to stink. It had to. Who got the just-right shot the first time around? For that to happen would have to be a work of…

  Well. A work of magic.

  Magic. Are you listening to yourself, Sharon? You know that’s hogwash.

  When I hung the picture on the line, Heather grunted with disappointment. “Not exactly award-winning, is it?” she grumbled.

  Staring at it, a ripple of utter shock started at my head and trailed down to my toes.

  What was this? I’d prided myself on never, not once, ever dismissing Michael and his metaphors, his poetic views. Not even during that first Fourth of July.

  But I had, hadn’t I? All that stuff about the camera being magical. I’d cringed and turned against it.

  Now, though, I had to ask myself if he could have somehow been right.

  It was ridiculous to think it, and yet, how else could I explain what was right there in front of my eyes?

  She’d clearly taken a multi-generational family portrait. Every member was looking off in a different direction—some at the camera, some in the distance, some at each other. Hair in various stages of disarray. One kid dangled upside-down, knees hooked on the lower branch of a nearby tree. One of the grandmothers had her head thrown back mid-laugh. A little boy dressed differently from the rest of the family stood in the center of the front row, his arms wrapped around the neck of a little girl who was kissing him on the cheek.

  “It’s awful,” Heather moaned. “I’m toast. Totally scorched black inedible toast.”

  “I couldn’t disagree more,” I said quietly, my head spinning and my pulse beating with the force of a giant’s footsteps. The girl had an innate sense of timing. Intuition—the kind that couldn’t be taught.

  Then again, was it innate? Or was it the camera? Was it showing her the way? Had it shown me the way too?

  What’s the deal with that camera, anyway? Heather’s large, round eyes begged me to tell her.

  I sighed and said, “Take it to your client.”

  “I can’t take that,” she groaned.

  “Take it.”

  ~Michael~

  The phone rang, sending me scrambling up the stairs.

  As much as I could scramble, anyway. I sure didn’t want the girls to know I’d been eavesdropping on them again.

  “This is Michael, right?” The voice on the other end of the line was deep and resonate, but unsure at the same time.

  My head spun as I pushed my glasses up. I was still trying to make sense of what was going on downstairs. Had I raced up here for nothing more than some awful scammy phone call? It seemed we had become prime targets, two residents now over sixty-five, still with our old-fashioned landline.

  I was about to hang up without a word when the voice on the other end started rambling, “…never seen anything like it—not even when I offer free concert tickets to the tenth caller who can answer some obscure trivia question…”

  “I’m sorry—who is this again?” I gripped the receiver, ill at ease.

  “Tony. From KTXY.”

  “The radio station. The, uh, the DJ.” My head was still trying to catch up.

  “You wouldn’t believe the calls,” Tony said.

  “Calls?”

  “From listeners. You jammed the lines.”

  A horrible sinking feeling invaded my stomach. Had they complained? Had my words come out in a confused jumble? Had I rambled too much? Didn’t they all realize I hadn’t been able to stop once I’d gotten started? I’d doubted, as I’d pushed myself away from the DJ’s microphone, returned the headset, and stepped back out into the afternoon sun, that any of it had made any sense at all.

  “Are they angry?” I asked. “Did I say something—?”

  “No. And yes. What I mean is, they’re not angry. But they all want to talk to you. So does my boss.”

  “About what, may I ask?”

  “A regular spot. On air.”

  “Who wants to listen to me?” I wasn’t sure if I was arguing or honestly wanted to know.

  “They’re already listening to you, Michael.”

  ~Sharon~

  Images in a tucked-away portfolio:

  Rotten Wood in a Doorframe, 1978

  &

  Guts, 1978

  I went through a phrase I generally like to call my Ugly Period. Took pictures of the broken, the rotten, the rusted, the splintered, the corroded.

  One of my all-time favorites turned out to be a black and white of a rotten header—the horizontal beam on top of a doorframe.

  Not that “favorite” is the right word, not really. These were dark images. Pictures taken while I was searching fo
r some meaning—as though there’s ever any sense to be made out of a tragedy. Pictures I took in the midst of trying to feel tough again.

  These weren’t images I ever intended to hang. I took them for me. Developed them—said what I needed to say—and then put them away.

  Finished. Done.

  Before I closed the book on it all, I’ll admit, I spent a good amount of time alone, just staring at the pictures. Especially the doorframe. It had this look—like the whole building around it could collapse at any moment. Sometimes, with the image in front of me, I could almost hear the sounds of splintering and cracking.

  And yet, the building stood.

  I guess some people, especially back then, expected women to cope with—I don’t know—ice cream. Shopping sprees. Days spent under the covers. Long crying jags. As for me, I had these pictures of crumbling, decaying objects that were somehow not finished, not completely. In the midst of the worst, they seemed to invite hope. Asked to be renovated rather than razed.

  Other favorites from the Ugly Period—also tucked away in the same portfolio—were of the insides of cars. All the stuff under the hood. The hoses and belts. Ernie, the mechanic at the Fairyland Garage, told me I was driving him crazy. But still I came, day after day, taking pictures of the cars that he’d dismantled. The cars he was in the process of fixing. The best of the lot, a picture of a half-taken-apart engine, its hoses and wires disconnected and laying around in what looked like a completely random order, I’d titled, simply, “Guts.”

  Sounds bizarre, I know. I’d spent so much time capturing living beings. Revelers inside Murio’s or townspeople racing back and forth on the streets of Fairyland. Portraits. School photos. And there I was, taking shot after shot of inanimate objects.

  Right then, the inanimate was solid. Safe.

  And I guess, if you really want to know the truth, back then, I thought if I kept at it, at some point, answers would finally emerge in the darkroom.

  Look, if you want to get all psychological about it, the pictures I was taking were how I saw myself—broken, rusted. All my hoses unattached. Parts missing.

  I’d lost a baby—one that had been planted in a spot where it could never grow. “Ectopic” sounded like a foreign word the first time I heard it spoken directly to me. “Tubal pregnancy,” that was the terminology I was more familiar with. But either way, it meant the same thing. I’d lost a child. Before I’d even known about it. It also meant I’d learned I was one of the women who wouldn’t go on to conceive another.

  It might not have been high on my list of things to accomplish, becoming somebody’s mother. But I didn’t like having an opportunity taken away before I’d made up my mind one way or another about the issue. That much didn’t sit well with me.

  I felt like fighting, if you want to know the truth, but I didn’t know who deserved a punch or a raised voice.

  Maybe me.

  Mostly me.

  All me.

  That was how I felt, anyway.

  Michael wasn’t demanding anything. Not for me to hurry and shake my blues, for lack of a better word. Not for life to hurry up and get back to our old normal. He wasn’t even encouraging me to fall apart in his arms for a while, giving him a chance to feel strong and sturdy and needed.

  I was the one making the demands on me. The one that felt like I needed to get back in shape. Back in order. Back to working condition. Put in the bolt. Reattach all those disconnected hoses. Shore myself back up.

  Michael, forever the optimist, regarded my Ugly Period as necessary—but far from permanent. Those pictures were the same thing as me blubbering on somebody’s shoulders. Falling apart for a little while.

  And he knew that by letting me work through it on my own, he was actually acting as a sturdy support beam in the doorframe of our marriage.

  He knew I’d get there.

  Poor Ernie hoped he was right.

  ~Michael~

  Letter to Sharon

  left on her pillow

  1978

  And so it is. And so we’re here.

  What am I to say to you, my raven-haired love? My partner in crime? Killer of my favorite African violets? Burner of my morning toast? Eyes that make me see the world differently?

  We find ourselves at an end. That’s what it is: a nevermore. And perhaps this conclusion we’ve found is not a classic fairy tale ending.

  At least, it’s not the kind of ending we read with a smile. It’s not the kind of ending anyone would cheer for in the movies.

  A mere breath ago, it seems, we rode into the sunset. We did! You and I, together. Look at us. Here we are, in what was supposed to be the middle of our happily ever after.

  And yet, even here, we find it. A tragedy. A finale. A nevermore.

  Here, post-sunset, our aching hearts are wondering why.

  We’ll never know—or understand.

  All I know is we’ll love on. One minute after another.

  Because, quite simply, my dear, you and I are a twosome. A complete match. Able to cry, or mourn, and together find a way to laugh again.

  I do believe in messages from the universe. And this one is telling us that we were simply destined to remain a complete twosome.

  I come back to our sunset. The one you and I rode into. Remember? The moment we did, we were perfect together. You and I weren’t simply good enough. We were everything.

  Aren’t we everything now?

  Tragedy can’t be allowed to convince us that somehow, that’s changed. That somehow, you and I are no longer enough. That our life together is incomplete.

  There is nothing to fix, Shar. There never was.

  I am—and have always been—certain of the strength of us.

  It is a simple thing, but here it is: I love you. I love what we have. The good and the sweet and the sad of it. Ugly pictures and dead plants. You and me curled up on our couch at the end of a long day, jazz floating through the air. That’s what I live for.

  And that, my Sharon, is indeed the guts of it all.

  ~Michael~

  The afternoon following Tony’s phone call, I settled into the chair in the radio station, not sure if it felt more comfortable than it had the first time around.

  “Okay,” Tony said, clapping his hands together once. “Got you all set here.” He pushed a microphone closer to my face, handed me a set of headphones.

  The lights flashed red and green all at the same time, like a confused traffic light not sure who to let through the intersection.

  I frowned at the blinking red lights. Sharon hadn’t been confused in the least. The way she’d instantly handed the camera over, the way she’d scrambled downstairs when our buzzer rang...She’d let Heather in. Of all people. Heather. I had unearthed that camera to remind her who we’d been to each other. Not just at the beginning—who we’d always been to each other. All that we’d weathered, everything that had happened to us. Always before, we’d emerged from disasters in the same way that camera had—battered and dented, but still capable of working, of making something beautiful.

  Instead of sending my Sharon closer to me, the newly-reintroduced camera was sending her toward a person who had literally just walked in off the street. Sharon picked a stranger over me? She felt farther than ever before.

  “Can’t believe your wife didn’t hear you the first time,” Tony went on. “Judging by the calls, I’d say you’ve really hit a nerve with our audience.”

  It wasn’t lip-service. I knew that. I’d already gotten a surprising number of emails forwarded to me from the station. Unintentionally, I’d hit the nerve endings of Fairyland’s residents. But why hadn’t my words struck Sharon’s nerves like a tuning fork? Why didn’t they reverberate inside her? Why wasn’t she reacting to the message meant for her?

  It was scary, actually.

  “…everybody clamoring for you to come back,” Tony continued. “Your wife’s got to be the only one in town who didn’t hear you.”

  To be honest, I was certain she
had heard me. But my wife shrugging me off was too much to admit out loud—especially to Tony, who was still basically a stranger.

  “I couldn’t believe she missed it, either,” I said, my dry mouth clacking with each word. “She rarely ever turns your station off.”

  “Chalk it up to first timer’s bad luck. But she’ll hear you now, eh?” Tony asked, nudging my shoulder. “I mean, even if she doesn’t, she’s surely bound to hear about it from one of our other listeners. Judging by the way they’re all talking about you, I mean. Sure to pick up on the chatter somewhere.”

  He pointed. The “On Air” light flashed.

  I stared at the black surface of the microphone.

  This time around, I could imagine the entire town of Fairyland staring back at me.

  ~On Air~

  M irror, mirror, on the wall, dear listeners.

  Yes, it’s me again. The old storyteller.

  Coming to you from Fairyland—where magic is real.

  Oh, you might not have guessed that was what I believed, not based on my words the last time I spoke to you. All that lamenting I did about boredom creeping into fairy tales. Maybe you thought I was the sort to dismiss any talk of magic.

  But I do. I believe it’s real.

  It’s gasping, though. It’s been wounded.

  That, you’re surely thinking, sounds like the work of a hostile arch-enemy. Like somehow, a villain has entered our idyllic surroundings.

  And you would be right.

  Where can we find this scoundrel?

  I must be frank with you. The worst thing about villains is that they’re so well disguised.

  They look like cuddly puppies or harmless little creatures who are in something of a bind themselves. They look like someone you want to befriend. They have perfect little ringlets and big innocent eyes and sometimes, to really tug at your heartstrings, they’re orphans. They act sweet and talk about their dreams, and you wind up wanting to help them.