Shutter(39)

“That was the idea. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“What do you want?” She stopped her sketch.

“I want stability. And I want to fix Grandma’s garage.”

Mom laughed. She turned away from me and dug into her knapsack, a green bag full of holes. She brought out a square of fabric wrapped around the body of a slightly used Hasselblad 500 C/M. She held it with both hands and looked out into the breezy canyon. I waited to hear the snap of the exposure. Instead, I heard nothing. Just the building of the wind beneath our perch.

“You know, I took a picture of your father with a camera just like this. Well, older, of course, and heavier.”

“My father?” I was surprised. “I thought I just hatched.” There was an uneasy silence for a few seconds. “I never heard you talk about him before. Not since I was a baby.”

“You can’t remember being a baby,” Mom said. “That’s impossible.”

“I can do a lot of things that I’ve never told you about.” This was the first time I had ever challenged my mother. I didn’t like it. “I can remember. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I ruined your plans.” I rose and shook the dust from my jeans. “I’m sorry.”

She handed the camera to me.

“This is yours, now. You’ll have my cameras. All of them.”

I was stunned. “When did you buy this, Mom? It looks brand-new.”

“A while back.” She stared at the camera in my hands. “I thought about getting back into portraits. You know, just mess around with a nice camera again. I took it out to Grandma’s last week—I have a nice print of her in front of the house. I’ll show you later.”

“Mom, you need to keep this.” I pushed the camera back onto her lap. “You can take a picture of me. Right now. Do my portrait out here!” I was excited as I turned around and around, searching for the best backdrop. My mom stepped a few feet to the right.

“Right there. Stop.” Her hair rippled in the wind.

She put the camera on top of a flat rock and pressed. I could hear the shutter open and close even through the relentless wind at my back.

After that, my mom showed me how the camera worked, and I was able to frame a great shot of her with nothing but the heavens behind her, a sea of blue and white. She was so beautiful.

WHEN THEY STARTED calling and threatening my graduation date, I finally went back to school. It felt weird to leave my mom at home alone, to leave her sick like she was.

“I’ll be fine, Rita,” Mom said. “Just go to school.”

The first day that I returned from my “sickness,” I was summoned to the guidance counselor’s office. I was only a month out from graduation, and it probably hadn’t been the best timing for a two-week absence.

Mr. Kepthart wore skinny ties and silk shirts and combed his hair into a two-inch black helmet. He loved to eat peppermints and always kept a huge jar of those soft ones on his desk.

“Want some candy?” He pointed at the jar.

I shook my head.

“You’re about graduate. Aren’t you even the tiniest bit excited?”

“I guess I am. I haven’t really thought about it.” I noticed hummingbirds outside his window.

“Rita? Everything okay at home? Plans still the same?” Mr. Kephart rummaged through my files. “You still going to that photo school in . . .” He couldn’t remember.

“In San Francisco. No. I’ve decided to stay home.”

“When did this happen?” he said.

“Last month.” I closed my backpack and began to eye the door. “My mom’s just having a hard time. She’s sick.”

“Oh.” He shifted in his seat. “Is she okay?” He looked concerned.

“She was okay when I left her this morning,” I said.

“Let me know if you need anything.” He wrote a number on the back of his card. “That’s my home phone if you need to call me outside of school.”

I HEARD THE scratch of a record on the turntable when I came home. It just crackled and whirred, then popped. Over and over. I knew something was wrong. I ran through the door to find my mom on the floor. I tried to shake her awake, but her eyes stayed shut. I called the ambulance.

On the ride to the hospital, my mom’s eyes opened to small crescents, and she smiled and took my hand. She was entering late-stage renal failure. Her liver was also not working, and her creatinine levels were through the roof. It was all just happening so fast. I called Grandma that night and she was at the house by dawn.

I was thankful that Mom’s doctor was in a new hospital wing. The older hospitals were the worst as far as seeing ghosts goes. We made the trip to the hospital early every morning, and while the dialysis machine performed its magic, I would go to school. Mom and Grandma would sit there and watch soap operas and do crossword puzzles. But my mom wasn’t getting any better. The doctors had no idea how her kidneys had become so weak—one was barely functioning, and the other had stopped functioning altogether. My mom was in her late thirties, so her diagnosis left the doctors with no explanation. They tried to question her about exposure to chemicals, gave her a million tests, but it was a mystery. They started talking about finding a donor.

“She can have mine,” I said as I watched the dialysis machine work.