2.22

[I suppose I should clarify sometimes when things are fictional and I write in first person. Well, here it is.]

Mom sent me into town today to pick up a used camera for Dad's birthday. She found it on Craigslist and has been texting the woman all day about the price and the meeting. Because she works weekends and I don't, I got corralled into doing her a favor. I have four hundred dollars in an envelope and I'm driving to town.
The restaurant for the meeting is in a place I never really go. Let's be honest, I never really go into town anyway, but this breakfast joint is on the far side of nowhere, so I guess I'll have to suck it up. I walk in the door, and I guess I'm supposed to be looking for a woman in red scrubs. I guess a doctor, a nurse? Someone just off the graveyard shift? The hospital is just over the ridge. There's no one wearing red, so I just take a seat. The waitress looks confused at me when I wave her off. I'm already five minutes late and I don't need any reason to stay here if the woman shows up with the camera.
Through the glass door, I see a large truck pull up and a red shape jump out. I catch myself halfway through a deep sigh of relief as I stand up, envelope in hand.
She swings the door wide and scans the room and I've already made a mistake. Her eyes catch on me and, well, she was always fast. She figures it out. I know she does, because she's already back out the door.
I sort of hop-skip around tables to catch up with her, but she's already got her keys out to get into her truck by the time I scuff-scrape a stop at her bumper. The vast expanse of the hood lies between us, and she's so small I can barely see her above the shoulder.
"Georgia was your mother. I should have known."
"You're going by your middle name?"
"Well, it's easier, I guess, on the Internet." She stops with keys in hand. "Why the hell would you--" but she cuts herself off. I guess she didn't need the answer, after all.
"I'm just here to buy the camera."
"Oh, right." She looks mad as ever, like I just left the door open when I went to take out the trash. "You can just have it--" she says, flipping the strap over her shoulder "--if you promise to just leave me alone, okay?" The camera bag comes flying up over the hood and lands with a hollow metallic thunder. I don't even move.
"That's not what you agreed to. You should at least take the money."
"I don't want your money. I don't want--just go."
I reached up, slowly, and took the bag off the hood. The truck was still between us, and I couldn't read her body language seeing only her face. I was starting to sweat, but it wasn't that hot in the sun. I was just nervous. "You deleted my mother's phone number?"
"What?"
"You didn't know Georgia was my mother. You deleted my mother's number from your phone."
"Terrence--" her hand to her temples, eyes scrunched shut--
"I'll go. I just wish we could talk once like adults."
She rolled her eyes like when I used to tell a terrible joke, and then I'd lean in for the punchline she already knew and I would punctuate it with a smile and she would smile because she couldn't help it and that was just what things were, no changin' them, and yet. The door to this big new truck was open and she threw herself inside. She honked twice before backing up and I felt the memory rip me as she honked twice, just like always, and she left me there in her town holding her camera that used to be full up of my pictures of my life. I wonder if the photovoltaic cells remember the shape of her face. I wonder if there were so many pictures of her on the sensor that it's aged into a phantasmal memory of her, if every cell is charged up with a specter, if every picture it will ever take will still have traces of her in the wear patterns of the electronics, if every photograph for the rest of its life will contain a ghost of her.