Snapshot

Anyone who has ever had to make a fire knows that there is procedure.  A fire takes steps to come into being. Firstly you must choose and prepare a location. Secondly fuel must be collected with the most crucial and critical part being the dry tinder. Once you have a bundle of tinder a spark can be applied. If the tinder takes and begins to glow then the ember must be blown until it bursts into flame. Once the flame has taken hold, and only then, should your fuel be added. This is how you make your fire.

“You used to be involved in photography, didn’t you?” I asked her across the table.

My partner’s parents and I sat at the dinner table. Over dinner chit chat had turned to talk, talk to conversation, and now the conversation turned towards the questions I had wanted to ask.

She looked up, and went to answer my question.

“I was as well you know.” His intervening comment was grating and discordant. I had long ago grown tired of his words, words born from a caustic past. For him a lifetime of control over the family had been the driving force behind every motive. My wife was away on another business trip and I had been invited for dinner. This was the perfect time for me say what I wanted. I was not affected by his words or delusions of power and had decided to utilise the dinner offer as a Trojan horse.

“Could you show them to me?” I asked her, ignoring him.

She lifted up her head and looked across the table. If a face can reflect back the life of its bearer than hers was one. It was a homely face. It made you feel comfortable, everything was in its right place. Her face exuded a submissive calmness, however, something changed in that brief moment.

“Really?” she asked, her question weighted with apprehensive hope, “You really want to see?”

“But you see,” His interruption, with that voice, was already stirring a stale taste in the back of my throat. I knew that he had seen how this was beginning to play out. How my question had suddenly began to stretch those ties that bind, the ties which had been firmly set in place over the years.

“You see, I always was interested in photography,” His lies had developed into his truths over the years, “I was quite good as well”. His tepid eyes began to warm as his memories began to pat him on his back.

However I knew that his wife’s skills had far exceeded those few he bragged of, skills she still possessed in a far locked away corner of the mind. Skills that had long ago been swept under the carpet, forgotten but continually walked over, forgotten but always there. No matter how elaborate or pleasing to the eye, a carpet can only conceal so much.

“I had all the equipment you see,” He continued, the spittle emerging from his bluish lips crudely imposed upon his bald and creased head. Rebellious hairs still clung to a wasteland of scalp, refusing to accept the inevitable. Narrow eyes looked out upon his guests in his house. The spittle drifted onto his finished plate of expected but unappreciated food, adding his own seasoning to an unappreciated life.

“I wanted to become professional but then I met her, you know!” he angled the top of his balding head towards her at the end of the table, a thin smile upon his lips, seeking my agreement and appreciation of his wit and his story.

“So can I see them?” I asked, turning the conversation back towards her, continuing the process that had been interrupted and to prevent bestowing any acknowledgement upon him.

“It may take some time to find them,” she answered, allowing time for an excuse, awaiting another link to be added by saving this moment for another time “I am not sure where I put them” she lied.

“But…” he started, seeing a little piece slip away before him.

“That’s fine,” I interrupted. ”Please try at least to find them. I really am interested in seeing your work.”  

 She excused herself from the table, with a smile, and left to find her past.

An uncomfortable silence is sometimes enjoyable for that very reason.  When you own the silence it becomes something else, someone else’s discomfort. And so it was until she returned, having recalled where they were rather quickly, disrupting the discomfort with her photography.

“Amazing,” I said after studying the poster sized photographs for some time. The silver shimmer of photos from yester year, photos of beautiful people in their day who danced across stages under spotlights, a monochrome of the past. “And this is all by hand?” I asked studying the darker lines that had been cut into the picture to emphasize the lines and features.

“Well we didn’t have Photoshop back then!” she joked, her screen of indifference beginning to lift. “We had to do every detail by hand” she explained. “A cut here, a cut there, scrape some off here.” she pointed out all the tiny alterations made by her own hand upon the print, each one having improved the overall effect of the photograph. On each piece the alterations were so small and easily unnoticed unless you had it pointed out for you. You had to look hard to see them. You had to look hard to see that someone’s hand had done the work on what you were looking at.

“They are amazing” I repeated in all the honesty I could manage to fit in a short sentence, hoping for it to fill more than just the few words without spoiling the overall, but cautious not to provide an over burdening of praise.

In the same summer I had learnt how to make a fire I had also worked on a farm picking strawberries. I made myself sick from eating too many. Everything in moderation I learnt.

“Why did you stop?” I asked, knowing the answer already, having been told by their daughter when we had discussed the achievements her mother had accomplished. Achievements no one would have accredited the timid woman with if they hadn’t been told. This was just one of the achievements I wanted to pull from the dusty shelf of the past.

“I just did.” She answered stubbornly and assertively, the flickering ember of hope dimming away.

“So where’s your equipment?” I asked, knowing where it had gone.

“I don’t have it anymore,” she answered, something losing itself in her brief moment of a release “It was sold.”

“Sold? But that’s crazy; you loved doing this didn’t you?”

 “Yes I did,” a flicker of hope which began to fade as quickly as it took hold, “but it took up too much space.”

He saw the need now to defend for his actions and so treacherously offered his reasoning.

“I sold them; they were just sitting there in the shed for years. It was a waste so we got rid of them”.

“You mean you got rid of them.” I corrected him.

“Yes,” she spoke up, briefly teetering on the edge of a lost dream, “He sold them, without telling me”.

“But you never used them!” he offered, instructing his wife as to the reasoning; he was the man of the house after all, his house, his rules. He could piss on the fire if he wanted to.

“So you sold them, then what? What did you do with the money?” I asked the man of the house.

His thin mouth spread into another smile, the spotlight was back where it belonged,

“Well I bought a new model,” he explained, “the latest Canon at the time”, his reasoning for abandoning the old in favour of the new, was for that of his progress, his own progress. With his wife’s portraits spread across the table in front of him, their monochrome eyes staring up from another past he asked me: “Would you like to see my photographs?”

“So maybe you should start again,” I was not letting this be turned into a sideshow. I was not going to assist his validations. Can a tragedy be rewritten? “There are plenty of courses.” I offered her.

She looked at her husband, her husband looked at her. Something passed, unsaid. It didn’t need to be said. Familiarity needs no introduction.

“I just don’t have the time,” she steadfastly answered. “There is just so much to do around the house, cleaning, washing and then making dinner. No there is no time.” She busied herself with taking away our plates. She scraped the vestiges of food from mine and hers onto his and then stacked them upon one another with his plate upon the top. She then disappeared into the kitchen carrying her past, present and future with her, safely protected amidst porcelain, stainless steel cutlery and soap bubbles.

His eyes followed her watching her walk away. He sniffed at the air.

“Can you smell smoke?” He asked.

“No, nothing”

“Ok, good,” he sat there, nodding, content, brandishing the thin smile of victory, “so would you like to see my photographs then?”