I don’t want him to. Call it vanity or fear, I’m not sure what, but something inside me recoils at the idea of documenting this time of my life. In the film, I have makeup and wigs and costumes and a character to hide behind. But here in the unforgiving light of day, there’s nowhere to hide. It’s just me and my battle scars and bald spots. He’s asking to memorialize it when I just want it to be over.
“A few,” I relent.
His triumphant grin makes me regret my acquiescence immediately because give Canon an inch and he takes a road trip. In a few minutes, he makes quick work of fiddling with the buttons and setting the timer.
“Look into the camera?” I ask, nervous for some reason.
“Look at me,” he says, bending, taking my lips between his, sucking gently. I lose myself in the kiss.
The camera goes off and I pull away, looking from his face to his lens.
“So just a picture of us kissing?”
“Can I take a few more?” he asks, walking over to grab the Polaroid camera.
“Okay.”
He extends his arm away from us, aiming at our faces pressed together. He captures us kissing, crossing our eyes, laughing. The camera spits each photo out and Canon lets them fall to the ground, not bothering to stop until several photos litter the floor, scattered at our feet. He collects them, opens a drawer with clothespins, and clips the photos of us to a line that stretches between walls.
“This one,” he says, picking up another camera, “was one of her favorites. It’s an EOS DCS3. Expensive at the time and a little unwieldly, but she used it a lot. In Greek mythology, Eos was the goddess of the dawn who rose each morning from the edge of the ocean. What do you say?” He aims the camera at me. “Just a few?”
Norests on the tip of my tongue. It somehow feels different than when he took pictures of us together. Me standing alone in the light, no makeup or a persona I can don and doff, feels more exposed, vulnerable.
I nod permission, but give him nothing to work with. I stand in a pool of light and stare back at his camera. He doesn’t do that photographer thing—coax me, direct me, encourage me to pose or “give” him anything. He just clicks, changes the angle of her camera, of his head, the camera’s eye never leaving me.
“You done?” I ask.
“Not unless you want me to be.” He lowers the camera. “I’d like to take more.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to remember you exactly as you are right now.”
I scoff and shoot him a sour look. “Right now? Like this?”
He nods, his expression sober. “Exactly like this.”
There is such love in his eyes, such . . . I don’t know . . . adoration . . . that for a moment I don’t know how to respond. It is a look, a love that reaches in and fills me up. I’m about to yield because that look could get this man anything he wants, when a wave of nausea overwhelms me. I rush from the studio, zigzagging from unfamiliar room to unfamiliar room until I stumble into a bathroom just in time to vomit. I haven’t eaten anything, so it’s a violent, fruitless expelling, but I hug the bowl tightly, my tears running into the toilet. I’ve tried to ignore the persistent pain battering the inside of my skull since I woke, but the heaving worsens the agony, and I close my eyes against light that has suddenly become unbearable. Slumping on the cold tiles, I let my body go limp, praying for oblivion.
“Dammit,” Canon curses, rushing in and scooping me up off the floor.
I want to tell him I can walk, but I honestly don’t know that I can. My head flops onto his shoulder.
“Neevah, baby.” I’ve never heard his voice this way. Desperate, panicked. Frightened. “I’m taking you to the emergency room.”
I open my mouth to tell him that’s unnecessary, but a sob comes out instead. It’s a wretched sound, and I resent my body for making it. I taste tears and grip his shirt with one weak fist.
“Mama. I want my mama.”
Most times when I’ve really needed her in the past, I’ve had to make do on my own. As I give in to the debilitating fatigue, I don’t believe this time could be any different, but I have to ask.