The Art of the Kiss Page 2

  I’m a girl who listened to the fights on the radio with my dad. I’m a girl who was just fine without a man around when Michael stuck his foot in the mostly-closed door of my life.

  But if this story’s getting told, it’s not getting told without me. And I can tell you right now, that day he came clomping down the stairs, screaming my name, I figured whatever he was yelling about was something innocuous—I don’t know, dryer lint.

  I closed the laptop and pushed it aside, like I always did when he started chatting and interrupting my thoughts.

  But then he had to go and push that old camera under my nose. Let me tell you, I got hot fast—Dad used to say I could go from zero to livid in two seconds flat. He’d once said I could have been a world champion boxer myself.

  Sure. Boxer. One jab to my lip, and he’d have been in the ring, going at the opponent bareknuckled.

  He just liked the fact that I was tough.

  Unlike houseplants. (Really. What’s the point?)

  But that camera had once been the most important physical object of my entire life. (Well, that and my wedding ring, anyway.) If a girl ever had reason to get sentimental about something, it’d be that old Nikon.

  Still. Magic?

  I never thought so.

  You want to know what magic really is? It’s a synonym for inexplicable. Lucky.

  There’s no real magic in the world. Not literally. Fairy tales are a bunch of childhood nonsense.

  And I hadn’t been a child in eons.

  “I mean, you’re not using it, right? So—maybe somebody else should.” Michael rattled the donation box again, already filled with a few of our own expendable household contraptions: an electric pencil sharpener, a blender in chic 1978 avocado green. Someone else would love the macramé owl. Someone else would step into the skins we’d shed.

  It should have been easy. I mean, it’s not like electronic gadgets have souls. They don’t have feelings or make plans or become part of our cheering squad. Which, of course, is why they seem interchangeable. Why it’s easy to update or flat-out discard our gizmos. Why it’s with less than a shrug that we can trash an oven that’s cooked a decade of Thanksgiving turkeys. Why you don’t give so much as a second thought to slapping a $1 garage sale sticker on the kitchen telephone where your little boy—no, no, young man—had once worked up the courage to call a girl for the first time. Why it seems reasonable to recycle the record player that had played the first love song you’d ever danced to with your husband.

  You keep the memories. You discard the out-of-date devices.

  Usually, anyway.

  “Someone else might have a use for it,” Michael said, pointing at the Nikon.

  “I might use it again,” I blurted.

  A knee-jerk reaction, really. I put the camera back in the felt-lined case and squeezed it onto a shelf packed with two padded camera bags full of various lenses, a light meter, and an old folded tripod.

  I didn’t look at Michael. I couldn’t have stood the smug look that was surely flashing on his face. I wasn’t sure what his goal had been. What he hoped to accomplish.

  All I knew right then, at that moment, was that I felt in my gut that the old camera—dented and scratched and definitely the worse for wear—wasn’t done yet.

  Neither was I.

  From the

  Studio Walls

  ~

  Bottom Step

  #1

  Eight-by-ten, black and white. The photo of her dad hangs where Sharon would be sure to bump into it, whether she was stepping out from behind the front counter or rushing to greet a new group of students in the back.

  By now, it’s been up long enough that a thin haze of dust has adhered itself to the top of the frame like skin. Like something that can’t come off, not without some pain attached to it.

  Markers of time are often like that.

  But the picture itself was little more than a fluke. Taken as a joke, really. A candid shot, snapped on day one of her new business, that photography studio in the basement of her childhood home. A portrait snapped in the same way little Sharon—the one still in pigtails and anklets—had once stuck her tongue out at her father.

  Back when she was little, the stuck-out tongue was a term of affection. Being raised by a single dad meant you learned to express what was in your heart in a different way. A way most mothers would have considered unladylike at best.

  Not that Sharon even knew, growing up, that their life was different. Her mother had died young in a horrible wreck before Sharon had said a single word of English to her—not so much as a “hello.” Sharon only knew her father and their own ways.

  But there he is, as he’s been for decades, frozen in time, one in a sea of framed photos all over Sharon’s shop, her studio. There he is—in that picture, decades younger than Sharon is now—forever sitting on the bottom step of the basement stairs. Can of Pabst in his hand, pepper-gray, curly hair shooting out from the crown of his head like springs from a busted gadget.

  Caught in a half-grin, his belief in Sharon shines bright in his eyes. Sharon tells herself, even now, there’s a hint of admiration glowing in his eyes too.

  Day one. The beginning of it all.

  A beginning that had only come to be after a lifetime of Sharon listening to her father’s buck ups and you can’t quit nows. A life of you’re smarter than the rest of thems and make them listens.

  A beginning her father had insisted on.

  “You can do this, Sharon,” he’d told her over dinner at their favorite Chinese place, less than two hours after her college graduation. “Any numbskull can get some crummy job. So what? You can make a real go of it.”

  Day one. A studio in her father’s basement. Her father smiling at her, so pleased that she had agreed to go after it. Hunt her dream down, chase it, track it.

  Day one.

  It remains one of Sharon’s favorite images on her studio wall.

  And perhaps the most important.

  ~March 25, 1967~

  Maybe, Sharon was already thinking as she stood in the parking lot, tattoos were visual proof of bravery.

  Not that she was brave at all. No matter what her dad tried to say. He was her dad; it was his job to pick out nice adjectives and pin them to her shoulder. In reality, she was having a hard time making herself go inside the parlor.

  It was supposed to be easier to take her photos at home than in Columbia, the university town where it still felt like everyone was watching her. Judging her. Gearing up to run her off their property. She needed to put together a portfolio for her photography course. The same class she’d signed up for with a shrug and a “Why not?” The extracurricular course that had felt so surprisingly familiar and comfortable, right from the start.

  Except for the permissions thing. That still felt weird.

  Who was she to ask permission? Like she was some sort of professional. Really. They were going to see through that the minute she brought it up. Mostly, at twenty-one years old, she felt like an overgrown kid.

  But then again, part of her tried to reason, why wouldn’t she be intimidated by the tattoo parlor? Wouldn’t anyone in her right mind feel that way? The place was rough—it even looked rough for somebody who’d grown up listening to the fights on the radio. And to add to her uneasiness, it was located on the corner of the same block that had long had the reputation for being the rowdiest in Fairyland.

  It was kind of funny, actually, the idea of Fairyland having any streets at all that were seedy. Oh, sure, the place was big enough that you never did literally know everyone; it was big enough that you had police cars and actual crime and unemployment and hardship. But all those things kind of seemed like an affront to the town itself. In a town named Fairyland, it often seemed that even the trash piled on the curbs, waiting for pickup, should have twinkled.

  Sharon tried to imagine it: magic trash. Somehow, the idea wasn’t enough to bring a smile to her face.

  She shook her head, silently scolding h
erself for her foot-dragging.

  “Fine,” Sharon grumbled, clutching her camera and stomping into the tattoo parlor in the same way that people ran to the end of a diving board and launched themselves off the edge, all at once, straight into the water.

  The inside was no less rough than the outside. In fact, it might have been worse. Not grimy, not grungy. But it was the kind of place that implied it had seen some of the worst parts of human nature. Cracked leather chairs. Guys with similar cracked leather faces. Brutal-looking guns filled with needles. The entire shop frowned at her mere presence. Not the men inside it. The shop frowned.

  The owner—thick, sun-weathered skin, gray-streaked goatee, cigarette between his fingers—chuckled at the sight of her.

  Sharon straightened her back, tossed her long black hair behind her shoulder, and marched closer to him.

  Another man—even taller and beefier than her father—was getting ready to lower himself into a chair. He eyed her with curiosity (and perhaps a touch of amusement) as he continued to unbutton his shirt.

  The place reeked of testosterone and pain, not unlike the boxing gym her dad had dragged her to once. Sharon had all but forgotten the awful experience, but it came roaring back in the most unwelcome way. It had been one thing to listen to the fights, she remembered, and another entirely to actually see men hitting each other. It was bloody and brutal and mean.

  That was exactly how the tattoo parlor felt: bloody and brutal and mean. Making it even worse was the fact that Sharon had no father to hide behind.

  But what was she going to do? Run away?

  Still trying to get her mouth to work, Sharon let her eyes bounce among the designs hanging on the walls. She didn’t want to see the shirtless man.

  The old metal chair creaked as he sat, grabbing her attention.

  She stole a quick look, finding that he already had a tattoo in progress on his left arm. A giant leopard.

  And if his tattoo was in progress, didn’t that mean the leopard was being completed in spurts? That the pain was so bad, it could only be sustained for so long? That at some point, it all became unbearable?

  The idea made Sharon’s scalp feel tight. It was suddenly too cold in the parlor. She shivered.

  “You come for the show?” the man in the chair asked, clearly perturbed by the way she was gawking at him.

  “I—I—”

  Her face was getting hot. Oh, come on, Sharon chastised herself, you’re not blushing, are you?

  Sharon turned toward the owner. Or he might have been an artist. Who knew? But he, too, was scowling, cigarette sticking straight out between his lips.

  A new feeling came to Sharon. It engulfed her awkwardness, her embarrassment at being too young and inexperienced. The feeling, simply, was resentment. Permission. She took offense to having to ask and to everything the word implied about the imbalance of power between her and this man who might or might not grant it to her.

  Maybe it was the way she’d been raised, her father insisting she barrel her way into a situation like any man would.

  Standing there in the tattoo parlor, eyeing the men staring back at her, she knew that the outside world did not view her as her dad did. She was young, yes, which really did mean these men automatically thought she had no right to wear any hint of authority. And she was pretty, which meant she could not also be smart. She was a woman, which meant she could not also be good.

  She could see it in their faces.

  The men grew amused. They wore crooked, knowing smiles.

  She gestured toward her camera, the one her father had bought her, the one he’d insisted on when she’d mentioned the class. “I’ve got a feeling about this,” her dad had told her when he’d given her the Nikon. The best he could find. Far better than Sharon had imagined he’d purchase when he offered.

  “I’m Sharon Grayson,” she announced, her voice buzzing against the parlor walls. “A photographer.” The first time she’d ever introduced herself that way.

  The men chuckled. But it wasn’t just laughter. It was dismissive. Their chuckles said, “Photographer, eh? Sure, sweetie.”

  Sharon’s lip began to curl. She hated being sweethearted. Even if it was only in her imagination.

  The owner—or artist, Sharon still didn’t know for sure—took a drag on his cigarette that made all the wrinkles on his face deepen. There were stories in that face begging to be told—chapters and chapters of them.

  The kind of stories Sharon wanted to capture on film.

  So she tamped down her growing anger, held up her camera, and announced, “I was hoping you’d let me take a few shots. A tattoo in progress.”

  He cocked his head to the side, asking, “What for?” His tone suggested she’d brought her camera to his shop the same way little kids sneaked cameras into carnival freak shows.

  As Sharon started to explain that wasn’t what she’d had in mind at all, he mumbled, “Ain’t really the kind of place for a girl.”

  That did it.

  “I’m a photographer,” Sharon corrected. “I already told you that. I go in search of the best photos. Period.”

  And because he still wasn’t convinced, Sharon smacked the man in the chair with the back of her hand. “Move over,” she said. And pointed toward the small feather design on the wall.

  Heart ready to burst, she announced, “Put it right there,” pointing to the inside of her wrist.

  The men nodded slightly, with appreciation, and it felt to her that even the shop stopped frowning. She was no longer an observer. She was one of them.

  And if they were all one and the same, she wouldn’t depict them as freak-show stars.

  In the split second before the tattoo gun bit into her flesh, Sharon promised herself she’d never be a mere observer. She’d always fight to be seen.

  She was never going to be invisible.

  ~Photography Fact~

  Sharon Minyard’s

  Portrait Class

  1979

  I’ll start this class with the most important concept you can ever learn about portraiture. The concept I want you to take with you all the way through our time together. This entire class. A concept I hope you’ll carry with you as you exit my door and head out into the world to take your own portraits on your own time. It doesn’t matter if you plan to take portraits professionally or just want to take better pictures of your friends and family.

  Listen. Repeat this to yourselves:

  Whatever makes a good portrait for a man should make a good portrait for a woman.

  Sounds reasonable, you’re thinking. Maybe you even feel a little let down. Maybe, you think, I built that up, acted like I was about to unleash some great life changing revelation, and all I gave you was a no-brainer.

  It’s not, though.

  What makes a good portrait for a man should make a good portrait for a woman.

  And yet, that’s not really the case, is it? A woman is invariably posed to best showcase her beauty. Bare shoulders, pretty round face. A man is posed to present himself as strong. Intelligent. A person of his own making.

  That’s what the print media would have you believe, anyway. Every single time you flip through their pages.

  Portraiture, so often, is about making someone appear attractive. And so, to achieve that end, what do we rely on? Stereotypes. Clichés. Oversimplifications. Women need to be soft. Men need to be strong.

  I didn’t want to photograph stereotypes. Neither should you. It’s why I vowed, early on, never to differentiate between the sexes in the portraits I took. Male or female, the goal was to bring out the extraordinary in every face, in every shoot.

  Every single human being is, in their own way, unique.

  The thing is, when you stop trying to make your subject attractive, and just focus on finding it, that extraordinary, unique, standalone quality—whatever it happens to be for that person—when you capture it on film, your subject becomes attractive. A vision. Stare-worthy. More so than if you had set out with t
his goal in mind.

  Funny how that happens.

  ~This Story~

  Our story continues with a girl. And a dream that is digging its heels in the ground, refusing to come true.

  This girl—the one chasing her dream—will become the disruptor in Michael and Sharon’s world. The fully-formed F5 tornado. The rut eraser.

  Of course, Michael’s decision to bring that camera downstairs was a big part of it. It helped put everything in motion.

  But the camera would have stayed on their studio shelf, where Sharon put it, never to be removed from its case, had Heather and the busted fragments of her dream not showed up on the Minyard doorstep.

  Don’t expect Heather to tell you much of this story.

  Michael and Sharon will. They’ll put ideas in her head and words in her mouth that may or may not have ever really been there. Because they each view Heather, this great disruptor, through the filter of their own eyes.

  But don’t for a second think this is somehow a devious exercise. Don’t think that either one of them is using Heather as a way to bend the truth—or flat-out lie to you.

  We all fill in the blanks. Maybe not in such elaborate ways as Michael and Sharon are about to. But when a friend is short with you, don’t you tell yourself it is because they are in the midst of a divorce—trouble at home? Or when a spouse is upset, that it has to do with trouble at work?

  We couldn’t be the source of anyone’s trouble. Absolutely not.

  Doesn’t that sound familiar?

  Don’t we put together scenarios in our heads—perhaps in part as a kind of self-preservation—that explain the behavior or wants or ideas or dreams of the people in our lives? Don’t we invent a running narrative for all the people we deal with on a regular basis?

  So do Michael and Sharon. They have created especially elaborate scenarios about Heather.

  As we begin, Michael the old storyteller will set the stage, introduce the characters. Explain how he sees the pieces all fitting together.

  Sharon, less reliant on verbal description, will tell us about a single scene that’s been stuck in her head. One she feels perfectly sums up a big part of Heather’s story. One that really got her thinking about the story she’s shared with Michael for half a century. A scene that doesn’t require what she might call “all the long-winded fuss.”