“Okay,” Evan says. “I’m hanging it up.”
I can barely hear him over the bathroom vent, and I have my nose pressed against his shoulder blade because of the horrible chemical smells, but when he reaches up to unscrew the red lightbulb and turn on the bank of lights over the vanity, I stop his arm.
“Not yet, we haven’t had the moment of the big reveal.”
He runs his hand over my hair and turns me in his arms so I can lean into his chest.
“So,” he says. “It’s kind of dark in here.”
“It’s a darkroom.” I breathe in his smell to crowd out the developing chemicals.
I don’t mind the dark, and because it’s Christmas, we’ve been busy putting lights up everywhere. High, so everyone knows we’re okay. In here, the dark has kept the fragile negative from getting overexposed.
Out there, the Christmas lights expose everything, us, our new and fragile love, the New Year.
Light and dark have their purpose, in them, we can see different kinds of things, or protect others. Or sometimes, the most beautiful lights would not be seen as well without some blackness behind them.
Joy is myriad and luminescent.
He kisses my neck. “How well can you see the picture?”
The room is small, with lots of white and reflective surfaces, but it really is light tight. The red bulb makes everything grainy, and I really can’t pick up good visual details, of anything, but I’ve been in here so long, Evan talking me through the whole process because I’ve wanted to know everything.
He’d been as precise in the process as a seasoned bench scientist, explained his homemade enlarger, the developer, stop bath, fixer, and the stages of rinsing.
The bathroom was crowded with both of us inside, hardly any room to move, especially with the piece of plywood he’s cut to lay over the vanity as a table.
Everything he had explained to me before he put in the safelight and I watched his grainy shadow move my print through the process.
I had insisted on an eight-by-ten, and I was anxious, because his enlarger could be a little iffy with the film exposed from the pinholes. I’d had to wait until yesterday to use the camera to expose my film because Christmas Eve’s Eve had stayed gray and stormy, and we’d stayed naked.
Christmas Eve dawned sunny, and we took my camera outside to expose my film.
To make out in the snow that had gotten hip deep through the drifts.
My mom came into town today, a full trolley of luggage with suitcases that made Evan’s van incredibly useful, and I was so proud of her for playing it cool with Evan.
Even if I couldn’t.
There has been lots of laughter, and knowing looks, and looks that know are the best kind, of course. There have been presents, impractical ones.
Misunderstandings cleared up to make way for love in the New Year.
Carols are playing from every radio station.
I reach up and curl my hand around his nape, pull him down to me.
“Is this the part where I’m irresistible?” he says. I can feel him smile against my temple.
“There’s always that part, but yes, and I’m drawn to you despite my hard-boiled and gruff exterior.”
I kiss him, not an almost kiss.
“Is it good?” I ask. He breaks our kiss to look up at the picture, hanging behind me. It’s an exposure of me—I know that.
We set the camera up on a fence post and I stood in its line of exposure, close-up. I wanted to see how it saw me.
“It’s beautiful, Jenny. You’re looking right at the camera. Your eyes are—so happy, wide open. Your hair’s kind of blowing across the bottom of your face, but it looks pretty and wild like that.”
“Turn on the light,” I tell him.
He turns on the vanity lights, and I step in front of the picture hanging up over his bathtub.
I look gorgeous.
I touch the print on the edge of the paper, to tip it up away from the glare.
“What’s she thinking?” Evan asks.
“I think she has a lot to look forward to. I think she knows that it isn’t how her eyes see that makes her a scientist, but who she is that lets her see the world. I think she’s thinking about how much she hasn’t seen, yet.”
“Yeah, so much.”
“Hard to imagine.”
“Exactly,” he says.
He kisses my temple, my neck. I turn for a real kiss.
Think about all the small things in the big world.