“This is really good, Mom. Thank you,” she says in a whisper.
“Mmm-mhmm,” Woody agrees. He pours another shot of whiskey, no coffee now, into his homemade mug.
“You bet,” Sylvie says, forcing a smile as she gets up to clear the plates. “Mari, are you still going to the movies with your friend?”
Though Sylvie had pouted yesterday when Marilyn told her she had plans this afternoon, she knows her mom’s giving her an out. Marilyn washes the plates, and then goes into her room and packs a few things into the CK One tote.
When she kisses her mother goodbye, Sylvie whispers in her ear, “Next year it will be better. We’ll have our own Christmas. A real tree. Real presents and all.”
Before Marilyn can reply, Woody says, from across the room, “That game was your father’s. He got it for his tenth birthday. We used to play together.”
Marilyn only nods, feeling herself splitting into pieces.
She steps outside into the bright, two p.m. LA Christmas day sun. She rushes toward James, who’s already waiting at the end of the block in the driver’s seat of his red Dodge. Upon opening the passenger door, the sight of his face feels like her first breath of air.
“You escaped,” he says.
“Thank god.”
“Merry Christmas.” He pulls a tape from the pocket of his pants and hands it to her.
Marilyn looks at the label—FOR MISS MARI MACK, it says. LOVE, JAMES.
She kisses the corner of his mouth, which breaks into a smile. “Can we put it on?” she asks.
“Try Me” begins as they pull off, and the day transforms. Woody and his drunken slurring, the faltering fake tree, the pain in Sylvie’s eyes—they slowly fade as Marilyn watches James behind the wheel. His hand moves to rest in her lap, and she lets her head find his shoulder as the cool wind brushes over her cheeks. The roads are quiet, and they sail down the 10 freeway toward the water in the golden winter light.
By the time they reach the ocean, Des’ree is singing “I’m Kissing You,” and Marilyn is wholly inside the feeling of being in love. The beach is nearly empty, the sky soft. They cross the sand, carrying bags and a boom box James brought. He lays out an old quilt while Marilyn puts the tape on and Des’ree continues midsong, crooning to the crystalline turquoise water.
“I pilfered this from Nana,” James says as he pulls a bottle of strawberry wine from his bag. “It’s been collecting dust in the cupboard for as long as I can remember.” He brings out two mugs printed with Christmas trees and pours.
They cheers each other, and the smell of the ocean water mixes with the sweet scent of the pink wine. After a few sips, Marilyn starts to feel her cheeks flushing, the softness of the hazy golden light, the coastal winter sky filling her up.
“This is suddenly the best Christmas I can remember,” she says. James grins back at her, his perfect white-toothed grin, as TLC starts singing “Diggin’ on You.” Marilyn laughs, sings along, Baby bay-ooo-baby baby …
Holding their mugs, they walk down to the edge of the water, where the waves leave stains on the sand that reflect the floating clouds above.
“Look!” James cries.
He gently scrapes the sand with his foot, to reveal thousands of small, colorful clam-shaped shells. At once, they begin to burrow back into the ground as the waves come over them.
“Wow. What are they?”
“Coquinas. When I was a kid, me and my mom would spend hours pulling away the sand, watching them dig themselves back under. They’re not here always—only once in a while, usually in winter—so we’d get really happy when they’d surprise us.”
As James squats to the ground and scoops up a handful of the tiny creatures, washing them in the water, Marilyn takes a mind-photo of his body bent toward the shore.
“They’re kind of magical,” she says, kneeling beside him and sifting through the intricately patterned shells.
“So are you.”
Marilyn laughs. “Are you ready for your present?”
“Sure.” James smiles.
Marilyn walks back to their spot and wraps the blanket around her shoulders, picks up the bags.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Come on!” she says, taking his hand.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see!” she shouts playfully as she rushes ahead of him.
When they arrive below the pier, she guides James into the secret space of shadow cast by the wooden boards. She spreads the blanket onto the sand and hits play on the boom box, and, to the sound of K-Ci and JoJo singing “All My Life,” she whispers, “Come here,” as she bends to her knees. James does, wordlessly.
She hasn’t done this before, but encouraged by his moan, she grows more confident; she feels a thrill deep in her belly as the physical evidence of her effect on him deepens; she loves the rough-edged vulnerability in his voice when he moans, “Goddamn, Mari,” and then the convulsions of his body as he grabs onto her, pulling her closer.
“That’s the best Christmas present ever.” James grins as he comes back into himself. He lies down on the blanket and Marilyn rests her head on his chest, the sound of the waves gentle underneath Aaliyah’s voice singing, At your best, you are love …
“I think this is what it’s like to be happy,” Marilyn whispers.
“I think so too.” He smiles at her. From his bag, he pulls a gift messily wrapped in brown paper, topped with a red bow.
“What? You didn’t have to give me anything else. I love the tape.”
“Just open it,” James says.
She takes the heavy package in her hands, peels away the brown paper, and finds a camera.
A real camera.
A 35-millimeter Canon with a beautiful lens, along with a package of film.
“Oh my god, James. I can’t believe you did this. How did you—where did you get it?”
“My cousin owns a pawnshop in Long Beach, and I asked him to tell me if he got one in. I picked it up a couple of weeks ago. You have no idea how hard it was to wait to give it to you! I’m gonna do some work for him, man the store on Saturdays for a while in exchange.”
“James, I—I don’t know what to say,” Marilyn stutters. “Thank you.”
“It’s not totally altruistic. I’m excited to see what those pictures you’re always taking look like. I wanna see what you see.” James gently brushes the hair from her face. “I wish I could get inside of that head of yours—I mean, all the way inside of it—but if I can’t, at least maybe I can see through your eyes a little bit.”
Marilyn is already loading the film into the camera.
Click. James stands at the end of the pier, his body hovering between ocean and sky.
Click. The ball of sun suspends itself halfway underwater, fingers of light reaching across the sea.
Click. James emerges from the night into a puddle of brightness cast by a streetlamp.
Click. Rose stirs a pot on the stove, her grandson watching unnoticed from the doorway.
Click. Two teenage girls lean against the wall outside of Hope’s Mini Mart, one holding a Coke, the other holding a smoke.
Click. James stares back from behind a pane of glass, hand pressed to the car window.
In the three days since Marilyn has gotten her new camera, she’s gone nowhere without it. Looking through the lens makes her feels wide awake, wild with possibility.
* * *
Click. Justin sits outside their building eating a popsicle, his frank gaze teetering between innocent child and budding adult.
“Can I see it?” Justin asks as she walks up beside him, the ice cream truck’s music playing incessantly in the background. She’s just returned from a walk to the store to pick up milk and beer for Woody, and of course she brought the camera.
“Yeah,” she says. “But you have to finish your popsicle first and wash your hands!”
Justin inhales the rest in one bite and runs off. A moment later he reappears, fingers clean, red ri
ng still around his lips. She flips the aperture and f-stop settings to automatic and hands it to him.
“I’ll take a picture of you,” he says.
“Okay.” She smiles and shows him how to focus. Justin steps away, his face disappearing behind the camera. After a moment, he lowers it, shakes his head. Marilyn watches as he scans their surroundings. Finally he points to the ice cream truck.
“Stand over there,” he says, and she obeys.
“Lean against the truck,” he instructs. “And look away. Like—like you’re waiting on someone who’s not coming.”
Marilyn does, impressed by his directions. She hears the click, and Justin lowers the camera with a grin. When she returns to him, he’s slow to hand the camera back.
“When can I see the picture?” he asks.
“I’m going to print them myself after we get the negatives developed, but the roll’s almost finished, so hopefully soon. I put the settings on automatic for you, but there’s more stuff you can control. Do you wanna learn?”
He nods eagerly, scoots closer.
“There’s something called the depth of field,” Marilyn tells him, “that determines how much of the picture will be in focus.” She thinks it would be easier if she could show him in an image.
“Wait here,” she says.
Forgetting about the groceries abandoned on the steps beside her, Marilyn runs upstairs and pulls a few of the copy machine photo replicas off her wall, hardly taking notice of Woody at his computer. When she returns to Justin he peers over her shoulder as she flips through the pages.
“That’s cool,” he says. “You collect pictures?”
“Yeah.” Marilyn smiles.
Justin points to a photo of a girl in front of a small, rural house. She wears a tiara, her hands in a loose prayer shape over her mouth, her eyes tilted upward.
“I like this one,” he says, staring back at the girl as if he could discover something in her gaze.
“Me too. It’s by a photographer named Robert Frank.”
Next Marilyn finds a Gordon Parks photo of a young boy lying on his back in a field, a june bug crawling over his forehead. The plants in the foreground and the brush growing just behind are blurry, but the boy’s face is crystal clear.
“See,” she says, pointing at the picture, “this has a shallow depth of field, meaning that not a lot of the picture will be in focus.”
She flips to another page, pointing out a picture of a desert road, with a single car, that extends like a sharp line of light into the distance. “And here, everything’s in focus, so it has a deeper depth of field. Does that make sense?”
Justin nods, absorbed.
Marilyn opens the back of the camera. “The aperture is the opening that lets in the light. The bigger it is, the more shallow your depth of field, and the smaller it is, the deeper it will be.”
She shows him where to set the aperture on the ring of the camera, how to set the f-stop and measure the light. The concepts are complicated—at least she’d thought so when she first learned in her photo class last year—but Justin seems to understand intuitively.
She watches him hover over the camera in concentration, lifting the lens to his eye, setting and resetting the functions.
“Reach out,” he says. “Like, toward me. Like you’re waiting for someone to hold your hand.”
Marilyn hears the click as Justin takes the shot, and turns to find Woody standing at the top of the steps glaring down at them. He locks his gaze on Marilyn’s before he moves to go back inside.
Anxiety webbing through her lungs, Marilyn glances at Justin, whose brow furrows above his wide eyes. “I’m sorry, Jus, I gotta go. I’ll see you later,” Marilyn says, retrieving the groceries and the camera.
She steps into the apartment, her heart loud in her ears. Woody looks up, his eyes narrowed to slits. At once, her fear is eclipsed by rage. Who would find it possible to have anything against her hanging out with the sweetest kid she knows? She thinks of what James had told her: anger can be fuel. And so, jaw clenched in determination, she puts the milk and beer in the fridge, then, without a word, she straps her camera to her body and walks back out into the day.
She stands in front of the building and aims her lens at their duplex, Woody’s shadow figure in the window. She knows as the shutter clicks that the picture will be perfect.
A woman paces outside of Mr. Steve’s 24 Hour Pawnshop. She couldn’t be too much older than Marilyn and James are—just barely enough to have decisively crossed the border into adulthood. She wears tennis shoes with neon laces, a jean skirt, and pearl-colored studs, her hair pulled back tightly from her face into a neat little bun on the top of her head. She has the straightest posture Marilyn has ever seen.
“Wait,” Marilyn says as James opens the car door. He sits back in the driver’s seat, watching as she pulls her camera out of its case. She focuses on the woman standing in the shade under the sign for the shop, the window glass between them offering a reflection of a nearby palm. Click.
* * *
“Morning,” James says to the woman as he unlocks the door.
“You’re late,” the woman replies, looking at the watch on her wrist. “Thought y’all opened at nine. It’s nine-oh-six.”
James smiles. “Sorry,” he says as she follows them in and drops an engagement ring on the counter, a simple gold band with a diamond at its center.
The woman watches him, wordless, as James takes the ring and examines it under the loupe the way his cousin taught him. As the woman shifts her weight, shoulders still back and upright, Marilyn has a sudden memory—it must be from her earliest days in LA—of looking over the counter of a shop just like this, Sylvie passing her own engagement ring. Marilyn can see it perfectly now. It was silver, with tiny diamond studs across the band and a large blue stone—must have been sapphire—at its center. Hazily, she recalls how she’d hold on to her mom’s hand, twisting the blue stone round and round on Sylvie’s finger. How much she’d loved its dusky gleam, the way it caught the dim light in her bedroom.
But mostly, she remembers the vacant expression on her mom’s face when she’d collected the money from the bearded man on the other side of the counter.
“Didn’t work out, huh?” the man asked.
“He died,” Sylvie replied bluntly.
The man handed over a business card. “Let me take you out sometime.”
Sylvie took the card with a polite smile, but as soon as they walked out the door into the too-bright strip mall parking lot, silent tears had started to fall across her face, leaving little trails in her makeup. She threw the card in the nearest trash. Marilyn felt her own hot tears on her cheeks. After they got back into the Buick, Sylvie started the ignition and turned to her, wiping her eyes and then her daughter’s.
“Don’t cry, baby. We’re on to better things. One day, we could have a hundred of those pretty rings if we want to.”
* * *
“I can give you two hundred,” James says to the woman.
A moment of silence, and she nods. He opens the register and counts the cash, hands it over. She takes it and goes, the door chiming behind her.
The rest of the morning is quiet as they work on tweaking their college apps. Marilyn’s still unhappy with her essay. All she’s been able to think to write about is why she wants to go to college, but each time she rereads her own words, she sees only a girl hungry for escape. School is about more than that for her, she knows it, but she can’t place her finger on what it is she wants to say.
“Don’t get so anxious about it,” James has advised her countless times. “It’ll be harder to think straight.” So she picks up Slouching Towards Bethlehem and begins rereading, hoping for inspiration. A man comes in and buys a power drill. Marilyn walks across the lot and buys tacos for lunch, and they picnic in the cool interior of the shop. James’s cousin, Eric, walks in, swinging his hips in exaggerated circles to “Si Te Vas” on the radio. Marilyn bursts out giggling.
“What up, cuz?” Eric says in greeting.
“What up,” James replies as Eric turns to Marilyn.
“So this must be the photographer who’s smitten my cousin.” He raises his eyebrows toward her.
“I’m trying,” she says shyly. “Thank you so much for the camera—”
“Don’t thank me. Your boy’s working for it.” He turns to James and winks.
James gives Eric the rundown of the morning, after which Eric says, “You lovebirds are free to fly, then. See ya next week.”
And so they flee the shop, into the Saturday-afternoon sunlight.
* * *
As soon as James pulls into Fotek, Marilyn jumps out of the passenger door and hurries inside, composing herself before the French-accented man behind the counter, handing over her $3.25 and taking the neat cardboard cylinder containing her film.
“Got it?” James asks as she gets back in the car.
“Got it.” She grins, and as he pulls off she breathlessly unspools the roll and holds the negatives up to the window, peering at each tiny translucent blueprint of the picture that has been stamped there. She moves through them one by one, trying to imagine what they’ll look like on a contact sheet, trying to guess which she’ll print. It feels like magic, the moments taken from their fleeting days and pressed into permanence.
They’ve already gone over the question of where she can print the photos, since she wants to do it herself: Immaculate Heart, unlike LA High, has a functioning darkroom, and James has planned to sneak her in with the help of his buddy Noah. Noah’s taking a photo class, and the school lets their students have access on the weekends.
When they pull up at James’s school, Noah’s already waiting in the parking lot, leaning against a newish-looking truck. He’s a short black guy with big curly hair, unlaced green Adidas, and a bright checkered shirt.
“What up,” he calls as they walk toward him.
He gives James a hand slap and turns to Marilyn.
“You stole my boy,” he says with a smile, “but I guess I forgive you.” To her surprise, he wraps his arms around her in a hug. “You smell good.” He makes a show of sniffing her hair, flirty in a benign way.