Fiction by Cuyler Meade

Some Stories We Tell Ourselves, And Some We Don’t

This photo album meant something to Susan. She said it was a way to make something that lasts. It never meant much to me. Not sure I recall ever opening it. Sat on this shelf since the last time she touched it. That was back when Susan was still Susan. Now she’s gone. Not gone like she was gone at first. Gone-gone. Five years. She didn’t last, but the album did. So I guess in that sense she was right.

The things you find packing up an old house.

The first page is just one picture. Vertical. Centered. Ancient. I’m happy. She’s happy. You’re supposed to be happy on your wedding day. We were. We didn’t know.

Second page you see her flair for the dramatic on display. She cut the edges with those scrapbook scissors. Pinking shears, they’re called. A crinkle-cut border doesn’t change the squalor of these memories. But even then, she was happy. I was happy, sometimes. In these pictures, of rugged apartments and ragged clothes, of paint stains and soap suds, I was mostly happy. In spite of the dirty living, I was happy.

These go on for a few pages. Then the kids arrive, and the pinking shears are hidden away. We took so many pictures in those days. Especially with Debbie. Debbie’s first smile—just like her mom’s, same dimple. Debbie’s first park—the one around the corner from that second apartment, with the wood chips that gave me a splinter and Debbie tried to eat. Debbie’s first stuffed bear. Debbie’s first spoonful, steps, birthday (my mother-in-law took this one—Susan is in it). We slowed down with Jon. Just too much to do to take photos all the time. Or maybe we took them and never developed them. Same difference.

She bought a new camera around this point. I remember fighting over the cost. Guess she was right, again. These pictures are much sharper than the others. Clean and crisp. Bright colors. If perhaps a little soulless. Maybe that’s because I’m not smiling. Or maybe it’s because her smile is obviously false. Kids are bigger. These are spaced out though. Recitals. Ballgames. Prom dates in front of the maple tree. Graduations. We stand and smile like the perfect happy family. This camera is good enough to catch we’re lying to it. She printed them anyway. Pasted them in here. Memories.

Some of these aren’t pasted. Or were and they weren’t pasted well enough. Looks like she wrote on the back of them. Wonder if they all have writing. Debbie Junior Year Class Play – Guys & Dolls. She wrote these lightly, in pencil. Slanted, curvy letters. Gentle hand. Jon w/Jazz Band – 8th. Etcetera. Not many pictures of me, but more of me than of her. Makes sense I guess. Her camera.

Back here they’re all loose. Just kind of stuck to the pages by the friction of time and nothing else. They protest with a loud sort of cracking sound when I peel them off. These were from my retirement party. Debbie was at college. Jon still home was the only reason we were hanging on together. Look at these guys. Their saccharine faces toasting to me and my life to come. Some life. I should call Dennis, I heard his wife died, too. Wow, there’s Polly from sales. Looks as good as ever. Wonder where she is these days. We had some times. Dave Retirement w/Friends Susan wrote. Yeah, I guess.

She really fell off keeping this album together after this point. Hard to blame her. Honestly, kind of incredible she made it this deep. What was the use? What soft, warm, Kodachrome memories did she want to preserve? There’s no photographic evidence of what was really happening. Of our real lives. Of the times I stayed late at the office just to avoid coming home to the madhouse. Of the times we woke the kids shouting at one another. Of the battles with Debbie about boyfriends and pot. Of the nights I stayed with Polly when she thought I was in Newark on business. None of that’s in here. And now she’s gone, there’s hardly anything of her for me to even remember her by. Not the way she was. Not the way she pretended to be. Nothing.

Must’ve been in counseling we agreed to get couples pictures taken. Waste of money. The counseling and the pictures. Nothing helped. We never bothered with a divorce because she got sick and then it all seemed kind of pointless, and what were either of us going to do anyway? She stuck around a while longer and by then I had nowhere to go. But here it is, the big glamor shot we took at the department store together. Good gravy we look ridiculous. Me all stuffed into that shirt, and her, in that gigantic dress because she thought she looked fat. 

She wasn’t fat. And who cared if she was. My face is all red. Had we been fighting that day? You can’t tell by the look of her. Or maybe you can and I just don’t remember what a true smile looked like to know the difference between one and whatever this is. Who knows. Who cares. We didn’t know it when we took the pictures, but she was already sick. She’d make it another ten years but she was sick already even then. Maybe she knew it and didn’t say. I didn’t know. But she was already forgetting things. Calling me her dad’s name. Writing letters to dead people. Telling me old secrets from when she was a kid. All I know, she might not have remembered if we’d been fighting or not when we sat for this picture. Amazing she even thought to print it out and put it in here. She wrote on the back of this one too.

Dave & Susan (me), After His Affair (Polly).