Zone 5. It’s called middle gray. That’s how I felt in Darla’s darkroom.
Middle gray.
Not black, not white. Just middle gray.
Zone 5 is 50% gray. If I metered me, middle gray, in Darla’s darkroom, I would be 50% Darla. Halfway toward putting my head in the oven, I guess. I mean, I’d never felt suicidal. Was that how she felt? Not-suicidal? Because maybe she didn’t and maybe I wasn’t and maybe we weren’t anything alike.
Once I got into Darla’s darkroom, I turned on the big light, not the darkroom amber, and hoisted myself onto the countertop where I could just sit and breathe and forget about everything I’d seen that morning. Maybe if I stayed in the darkroom forever, I’d never have to see anyone’s infinity ever again.
I was finally here. It smelled like a mix of chemicals, but mostly a pungency that reminded me of the way the locker room smelled at school. Bad, but not strong. Or strong, but not bad. Pick one.
On one shelf there were huge flat boxes of photo paper that would now be over thirteen years old. Darla used all high-quality fiber paper—nothing resin coated or plastic. I knew from Dad that her recipes were attempts to double the lifetime of her images.
Ironic, isn’t it?
Darla worked tirelessly to make pictures live longer and all of her pictures outlived her.
Oh well.
So, there were boxes of old paper, big jugs of old chemistry and all the darkroom equipment a girl could want. Three enlargers—one huge one that had its own stand and two regular-sized enlargers on the counter. Trays to fit up to 20 x 24-inch prints and tiny ones for 4 x 5-inch negatives. Squeegees. Tongs. Film tanks. Aquarium heaters for keeping developer warm. Plastic graduates of every size. A print washer. A print dryer that she’d made herself.
Everything. Everything was here. Darla was here.
The sketchbooks watched me from their shelf above the big steel sink.
I stared at them and wondered why I’d really care about crazy recipes for selenium toner or platinum developing or whatever. I stared at them and wondered what images she chose to paste into hers. Would they be anything like mine? It was scary suddenly having the answers accessible to me. I just wanted to work in here. Make it my own. Make it Glory’s darkroom. Wipe out the one secret place of Darla’s in this house. I wanted her gone so I didn’t have to wonder anymore. I wanted her here to show me how to do it. I wanted both things.
I wanted neither thing, really. I’d rather have been part of a boring family of suit-wearing certified public accountants. A mother and a father. No secret darkroom necessary.
My phone rang.
“Do you have it?” Ellie asked.
“Oh shit,” I said. “Yeah. Sorry. It was a weird day.”
“I know, right?” she answered. I didn’t know what she meant by this, but I wondered if maybe she was seeing things, too. The future. The past. Bat-vision.
“Come over and get it, okay? I can’t stop what I’m doing.”
“Are you seeing it? When you look at people?” she said.
“Just come over.”
I reached up to a stack of Darla’s notebooks and pulled them down onto the counter. There were three of them. Two had mostly notes about chemistry. Metol, sodium hydroxide, potassium bromide, hydroquinone, sodium thiosulfate, acetic acid, boric acid, etc. I can’t say I was all that interested in chemistry.
Her other sketchbook was just like Dad’s and just like mine. Pictures taped in, captions written underneath. I set it aside because I wanted to read it later. Not now. Not with Ellie coming over.
I walked around the room and touched things knowing that I was touching what she would have touched. I opened the door to the print dryer. I closed it again. I opened the two cabinets under the sink and found thirteen years’ worth of dust and scattered mouse droppings. I turned the knobs on the enlargers and made the bellows open and close. I saw a cabinet mounted high on the wall behind the enlargers and I stood on the stool to reach it. It was mostly more darkroom equipment. More chemistry. But then I saw the corner of something black poking out from behind the cabinet.
I had to stand on the edge of the countertop to reach over and feel for it, but there was a gap between the wall and the cabinet—a sketchbook-wide gap. And into that gap was shoved another black sketchbook like the others. Except this one had been hidden.
It took me a minute to pry it out and then get off the stool and inspect it. It had a title taped to the front. Why People Take Pictures. I ran my finger along the black darkroom tape that held the title in place.
It was a weird title.
The implied question seemed as hard to answer as why Darla devoted her short life to making pictures last longer when she, herself, didn’t.
Why do people take pictures?