Read In Search of Us Page 21


  “Thanks.” Marilyn laughs.

  “She’s cute,” he says to James over her shoulder. “Very white, but cute.”

  “Alright, yo, enough. Back off my girl.” James gives him a playful jab.

  “We all used to be out chasing the ladies every weekend, but now this one’s always like, ‘I’m hanging with Mari,’” Noah complains as they walk across the campus, pretty with old brick buildings, a wide green lawn, and palm trees.

  He lets them into the darkroom, and it’s even better than the one at Orange High. He shows her where the chemicals are and tells her she can use his photo paper.

  “Thank you so much.”

  “No worries. In exchange, you only have to lend me James for a trip to the mall.”

  “Just make sure he doesn’t find any girls to replace me,” she jokes.

  “Don’t worry, I’m wingman.” James smiles at her.

  When they go, Marilyn gets to work, setting up her baths and slicing the negatives into six square rows. After making a test strip, she lays them out on a paper over the contact printer. She hopes, a deep, hungry hope, that she will find at least one image that looks like her mind-pictures, that there will be at least one that will make James proud, that will be enough to satisfy whatever he’d imagined when he said he wanted to see through her eyes. She exposes for nine seconds and moves the sheet to the developer bath, watching the translucent frames make their marks. It nearly stops her heart, those miniature squares bursting full of James, of the texture of their lives together. When she’s pulled the sheet out of the fixer, she hangs it to dry and uses a pen to dot the photos she’ll print.

  Marilyn obsesses over exposure times and framing, trying to make each image as sharp as possible. She puts James’s Christmas mix on the tattered boom box somebody’s left behind, and flips it over and over again, listening to each side who knows how many times. Erykah Badu’s singing, You know that you got me … when James comes in.

  “Hi, Mari Mack.”

  “You scared me!”

  “It’s already been four hours.”

  “Are you serious? I had no idea!” Marilyn says as she pulls her print out of the developer.

  “Noah had to take off. He said we should just lock up when we go.” He moves to peer over her shoulder. In the photo, James stands at the end of the pier, floating between water and sky, almost as if he could step into the horizon.

  “No, don’t look yet!” she says as she drops the paper into the stop bath.

  “The anticipation is killing me,” James jokes.

  She pushes him back against the wall and kisses him, their faces illuminated by the single infrared light.

  “Well, don’t get too excited. I’m still learning,” she says, a wave of nervousness coming over her.

  She moves to place the picture in the fixer and swishes it back and forth. Finally lifting it out, she hangs it on the line to dry beside the others.

  Something about pictures, at least the ones that matter—they seem to store memory, not just of a single moment, but of all of the invisible moments that led to it. She looks at her work: James on the pier. Justin eating a popsicle. James lying on his couch, arms in a cross over his bare chest while Justin tugs on his sneaker, looking coyly at the camera. James’s silhouette, seeming to swallow the sun as it sets over the water. Their building from the outside: orange tree, chipping pink paint, scattered petals, wash waving from a line, and a dim figure, impossible to identify, behind a second-story window.

  “Okay,” she whispers quietly. “You can look.”

  James comes up behind her, stares at the photos.

  “What do you think?” she asks after what feels like an epic silence.

  “I think they’re beautiful.”

  “You do?”

  “I do.” He turns to her with a smile. “Is that what I really look like?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “What do you mean, no?”

  “This is still. You’re always in motion.”

  “That’s what I love about your pictures, though. I mean, one of the things I love. They aren’t stuck. You can feel the movement that’s happening, or about to happen.”

  Marilyn grins. Though the tangible film version is imperfect compared to the moments she’s frozen behind her own eyes, these, at least, she can share. They exist.

  “I just have to print one more,” Marilyn says. “Then we can go.”

  * * *

  Later that evening, when Marilyn delivers the black-and-white print to Justin, he looks as if he’s seen a unicorn. In the image, she reaches out to the camera, her fingertips in sharp focus, her face blurring softly behind—cheekbones, lashes, jaw, all as if rendered with soft brushstrokes.

  “This is the picture I took,” Justin says, as if to confirm the truth of this fact.

  Marilyn laughs. “You like it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re really talented, Justin. You have a great eye.”

  “Can we go take more?”

  “I have to work on finishing my college applications, but next week, I promise.”

  “Maybe you’ll be a photographer like Mari,” James tells his brother.

  Justin looks to her, as if for confirmation of the possibility. She smiles at him. “You could be.”

  He nods, suddenly serious. “How did you decide that’s what you wanna be?” he asks.

  And in the question, suddenly Marilyn knows what she will write in her college essay.

  * * *

  Six hours later, after midnight, she rereads her words, written and rewritten by hand, detailing how her experience as a commercial actress and model has inspired her love of being behind the camera. At first, she explains, taking pictures gave her a sense of agency she didn’t otherwise have, of control (as James had said all that time ago on the beach).

  She writes about her countless “mind-pictures,” describing the image of the palm trees standing like soldiers out the window of her tiny bedroom; the grief on her mother’s face, staring out at her dream home lit up for Christmas by another family; her neighbor hanging a hummingbird feeder, a bird tattoo on his shoulder and a real live bird in the air, hovering just above. When his eyes met hers and she “snapped” her picture, it was her own version of love at first sight.

  She writes about how she believes all these invisible photographs began to change the way she sees—being behind even an imaginary lens had seemed to bring the world within reach. Now that she’s in possession of a camera, she’s grateful that she will be able to learn to translate that into something concrete, tangible. I often think about taking pictures, she writes, like snatching an image out of the hands of time that would toss it away. A picture can be held, shared, passed on. It can exist anew in each viewer’s eye.

  She doesn’t know if the essay’s perfect, or if it will be the key to open her future. But she knows it’s what she wants to say.

  December 31: Marilyn and James sit in the library with a stack of nine-by-twelve manila envelopes and a pile of papers before them, carefully going through each other’s applications, checking for errors. Marilyn relishes reading James’s boyish handwriting organized into neat lines, his thoughts on the value of music and running and his responsibility to his younger brother. He finds a single error on one of her short answers (where she’s written aperature instead of aperture), so she pays the ten cents to the library printer and recopies the page.

  Then, together, they address their ten envelopes. Marilyn insists they save the best for last, where they finally write, Columbia University in the City of New York, Office of Undergraduate Admissions, 212 Hamilton Hall, Mail Code 2807, 1130 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027.

  Marilyn looks up as James sets down his pen, meeting her eyes across the table.

  “So,” he says. “Guess we’re ready?”

  “Yep.”

  * * *

  In line at the post office, Marilyn kisses each envelope.

  “For good luck.” She gri
ns at James.

  “Don’t get lip gloss on my college apps!” he jokes. “I might get disqualified.”

  They’re still laughing off their nervous energy when the clerk signals them to an open window. They stand side by side and hand over their envelopes.

  “Bet you both get in,” the clerk says as James gives her thirty-two dollars, part of a small loan from Eric that he’ll work off with an extra morning at the shop.

  * * *

  As they walk to the car and pull onto Olympic Boulevard, the day is impossibly wide open—the space that they had filled with their hours of work suddenly empty.

  Marilyn takes James’s hand, squeezes it.

  “What do we do now?” he asks.

  “I guess we should celebrate, right?” Marilyn replies. “It’s New Year’s Eve after all.”

  “I have an idea,” James says after a moment. He flips on the radio, where Prince is singing Party like it’s 1999. He turns it up, and they drive, one instant at a time, into the future.

  * * *

  The sun sets over the ocean in the distance, leaving traces of soft pink light in the sky as Marilyn and James hike up Runyon Canyon, carrying burgers from In-N-Out and a six-pack of Woody’s beer that Marilyn snuck from the fridge, reminding herself to replace it tomorrow. While it’s not champagne, “at least it has bubbles!” she’d said to James.

  By the time they’ve reached the peak, the sky now edged into darkness and the city below awakening in a twinkle of light, she and James are floating—above the pedestrian concerns of their city, above the street corners and the apartment buildings and the cars honking and the sprawling mansions and the dirty stars.

  James pops two beers open on the side of a rock. They toast.

  “To you,” she says to James.

  “To you,” he says back.

  “To 1999,” James says, clinking his bottle against hers again.

  “To 1999,” she replies, and then, “To New York City.”

  “To New York City,” James says, and they both laugh, making a game of it. “To your photographs.”

  “To pawnshop cameras and ocean pictures,” she counters.

  He meets her gaze. “To the color of your eyes.”

  “To your perfect smile.”

  “To favoritest Christmas presents ever,” James says with a grin, and she blushes.

  “To James Brown.”

  “To Joan Didon.”

  “To being at our best.”

  “To love.”

  “To love.”

  A firework explodes in the distance, as if it had only been waiting to celebrate the sky’s final darkness. And then another, and another, scattered across the city.

  “I won’t leave you, you know,” she says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, next year. No matter what, I want us to be together.”

  James puts his hand on hers. “We just have to wait and see, Mari. I wouldn’t let you give up everything you’ve been working for.”

  “It’s you I don’t want to give up,” she insists, her voice rising.

  “Okay, shh,” he says, wrapping his arms around her. “It’s you and me, kiddo. Whatever happens, we’ll figure it out.”

  She stares into his eyes. “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  James unwraps their burgers and pulls a single white votive candle from his backpack, lights it.

  Marilyn grins. “A romantic picnic.” The tiny flame burns between them as they eat, watching the bursts of light on the horizon, popping open new beers.

  “To man-made miracles.” “To tiny colored clam shells.” “To libraries.” “To Pink Panther popsicles.” “To Romeo and Juliet.” “To broken bottles.” They go on toasting, celebrating the moments and objects and feelings that have made up their months together.

  “To the first night you kissed me,” Marilyn says.

  “Did I? I thought you kissed me.” He grins.

  “Not so, but I’ll toast to that anyhow.” She laughs.

  They both sip, and she can feel her head starting to fill with bubbles. Her desire for him arises with immediacy; it is something she can almost taste, like the air before a thunderstorm. She puts her lips on his lips, and she knows—this will be the night. This is right.

  She reaches into her purse, pulls out a single condom that she bought at the corner store, imagining this moment would come. She offers it to him.

  James takes it and raises his eyebrows at her, a small smile blooming across his face.

  * * *

  Marilyn stands, her hands against a railing for balance, the City of Angels spread out below her, the heat of his body behind her. She feels his grip on her shoulder, pulling her against him, his hand resting gently on her throat.

  “You want this?” he whispers.

  “Yes.”

  She stretches her arms out like wings, looking out as he pushes himself inside her, little by little, and then all at once. She feels herself opening into the horizon—and it hurts. It hurts in her body. It hurts the way that it hurts to let someone in.

  “Are you okay?” he asks.

  “I need to see your face,” she says. And she does, suddenly, urgently. He spins her around, pushes her back against the railing. She gasps as he’s inside her again, a groan in the back of his throat, his expression one she’s never seen before—lucid and concentrated, stars spreading behind his head as he looks at her, as he looks into her.

  She runs her hands over the muscles of his back, his shoulders, pulling his body closer, pulling him deeper. The diamond in her mind has become a thousand diamonds and they belong to her and to James. The future is no longer a single point of light but a whole sky. Scattered and shot through.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you.”

  For the rest of her whole life, she will never have a story that’s not his too.

  “Hold me like a bear,” James says, and she squeezes him with all her might.

  “Hold me like a lion,” she answers in a whisper, and he squeezes her back, his arms locking her body to his.

  “Grrr,” James growls to her.

  “Grrr,” she growls back, and paws gently at his chest.

  “Hold me like a tyrannosaurus,” James says.

  Marilyn laughs. “Tyrannosauruses have tiny arms!”

  “Like you!” James says.

  “My arms are not tiny!”

  The midday light spills in through the window, catching itself in Marilyn’s hair, on James’s cheekbone, now in his laughing eyes. Woody hasn’t returned from his stint at the casino, and Sylvie’s off at work. When she woke at noon, Marilyn called James and he rushed upstairs, body still smelling like sleep.

  He wraps his hand around her bicep. “Rar,” he says, his face inches from hers, scrunched up playfully as he grabs her waist. “Rar,” she growls back, half giggling.

  “You’re fierce, though.” James smiles. She gently bites at his neck and he shuts his eyes, lets out a throatier growl and pushes her onto her back. He kisses down her stomach, quick, playful kisses, and pauses at her cotton underwear, dotted with cherries and tearing at the seams. He looks up at her, and a stillness falls over the room, the sunlight now making a hot spot over her heart.

  As he rests his head on her belly it promptly growls.

  “Who’s there?” He laughs.

  “Hungry.”

  “Hungry who?”

  “Hungry me!”

  “Let’s feed you.”

  Her stomach growls again and James picks up Braveheart, her stuffed lion, moving his head as if he were speaking to Marilyn’s tummy.

  “Rar!” James says in a high voice.

  Marilyn giggles and looks down at him. This is what it’s like to be in love with James Alan Bell on the first day of 1999.

  “Wait one second. Stay right there,” she says, and gets up to take her camera from the corner of the room. She frames the image of him tangled in her My Little Pony sheets, face tilte
d upward, light playing over his skin.

  Click.

  And then another sound. The front door opening. Marilyn’s heart spikes in panic. The footsteps are Woody’s.

  “Wait here,” she whispers to James as she quickly dresses. James reaches out and grabs hold of her hand, but she pulls away and slips out the door, where she finds Woody in the kitchen. Marilyn knows by his demeanor that the outing at the casino wasn’t a winning one. The faint smell of booze seeps from his body and travels across the room.

  “Hey,” she says.

  “There’s no beer.”

  Shit. In the haze of James, she’d somehow forgotten to replace the six-pack they took last night.

  “You want me to run out and grab you some?”

  “Where’s the one that was here.” His question sounds like a statement.

  “I don’t know.”

  Woody slaps her across the face. It’s so sudden, at first her brain cannot process what’s happened.

  “Don’t you lie to me.”

  Marilyn raises her hand to her cheek, starting to feel the pain.

  “You want free rent and now you think you can take what’s not yours and lie about it? You and your mother ever come to see me for eight years until your broke asses needed a place to stay? And if you get one of those fancy houses she wants, think I’ll be invited? Y’all will disappear into thin air again, like I was nothing, like I am nothing. You don’t love me. You don’t love me. You don’t give two shits about me, and now you wanna steal my fucking beer and lie about it—”

  James rushes into the room.

  “What the fuck are you doing in my house?” Woody explodes.

  James puts a hand on Marilyn’s shoulder, starts to pull her away. “I was just going,” he says coolly, though she can feel the heat coming off him.

  “If your father saw what a little slut his daughter’s become—”

  This is the last thing Marilyn hears before James closes the door behind them.

  He keeps his arm around her, keeps walking. He won’t let her collapse. He guides her down the stairs. The orange tree in the yard is full of fruit. The glints in the cement remind her of the shattered glass in the moonlight, the night they broke the bottles. He opens the door to the passenger side of his red Dodge, parked just outside the apartment. Marilyn steps into the car, smells the leather air freshener, the softer scent of his body. She sees the raindrop-shaped stains of dirt on the windshield, a brochure advertising carpet cleaning. An old cup from In-N-Out on the console, the Hard Knock Life tape on the dash. She tries to notice these things, each thing.