The rest could go to the fire or the fans, but this, and this alone, she would keep, she decided. She put it under her arm and went outside to see how her fire-stoker was doing.
“Is that the last of it?” Maxine said, looking at the box under Tammy’s arm.
“No, I’m keeping this.”
“Oh? Okay.”
“It’s just pictures of Todd.”
The fire was still burning strongly; waves of heat rose up out of the half-finished pit, making the air undulate. While she stared at the fire Tammy opened the box of photographs, and as she did so some instinct-a kind of repugnance for the woman who had obsessed so often on these pictures-made her toss the box lid aside, and with one unpremeditated movement, pluck the pictures and the little roll of negatives out of the box and toss them into the middle of the fire.
“Changed your mind, huh?” Maxine said.
“Yep.”
The flames were already curling around the first of the series, but Maxine could see him clearly enough.
“He was younger then.”
“Yeah. They were taken on Life Lessons.”
“Are those the negatives you’re burning?”
“Don’t ask.”
“That must have cost you a small fortune. But he surely was a good-looking man.”
The first of the photographs had been consumed. Now the second and the third.
“Are these the last of it, then?”
“I think so,” Tammy said. “They can argue over the rest.”
“Only I’m parched. Watching fires is thirsty work.”
“You want me to get you a coke or a beer?”
“No. I want us to get back in the car and go home.”
“Home,” Tammy said, still looking at the fire. The sixth, seventh and eighth pictures were being consumed. The roll of negatives had already curled up into a little black ball.
“Yes, home,” Maxine said.
She took Tammy’s hand, and kissed the back of it. “Where you belong.”
The last of the photographs had come into view, preserved from the heat of the flames on which it sat by the bottom of the box. This was always the picture she’d stared at most often, and most intensely; the one in which she’d often willed Todd’s gaze to shift, just a few degrees, so he would look out at her. The fire had caught it now. In a few seconds it would be ashes.
Suddenly, just as impetuously as she’d delivered the pictures into the fire, she now reached down and plucked this one out. She blew on the flames, which only encouraged them.
“Here,” Maxine said, and snatching the photograph from Tammy’s hand dropped it to the ground and quickly stamped out the flames.
“You left it a bit late for a change of mind.”
Tammy picked the picture up, nipping out the last orange worms of fire that crawled around its charred edges. Three-quarters of the image had been consumed, and the remaining portion was browned by the heat and dirt of Maxine’s stamping, but Todd’s face, shoulder and chest had survived. And his eyes, of course, just one second from meeting the gaze of the camera. Imminent, but permanently averted.
“You really want to keep that?”
“Yes. If you don’t mind. We’ll frame it and we’ll find a place in the house where we can say hello to him once in a while.”
“Done.” She headed back to the house. “I’m going to call the airport. Find out when the next plane back to Los Angeles is. Are you ready to go?”
“Just say the word.”
Tammy looked down at the picture in her hand. Maxine was right; she had left it a little late to salvage it. But there might come a time when she and Maxine needed the comfort of this face; when they were no longer young, and the imminence of his gaze would carry with it the promise of a reunion in another, kinder place.
She glanced up, to be sure Maxine had gone inside, then she gave the bitter-smelling scrap of photograph a quick kiss. Having done so she smiled at the man in the picture, and at herself for all her years of vain adoration. Well, she’d made her peace with it, at least. She slipped the photograph into her pocket and went inside, leaving the fire to burn itself out in Arnie’s half-finished handiwork.