“Say ‘Cheese’!”

I hated antique shops. I hated the concept, the idea, of owning something that was previously someone else’s. Almost as though it was an encroachment on their private lives, and their memories from such a long time ago. Anyway, I’ve never had an eye for antiques, and paying to buy old grimy black things that stand out ostensibly somehow didn’t seem to be for me.

Even so, when Carla told me that she wanted to go to the antique store down the street, I couldn’t refuse. Partly because, in the few weeks that I had spent in America, Carla had been my only friend. And in those few weeks, we had fallen madly in love with each other. I knew going with her to the antique store would make her smile, and so I went with her.

Carla had a way with things like that – old letters, old furniture, old books, old photographs. In her life, memories were the most powerful component, and although I didn’t quite understand the importance those memories had for her, somehow, I knew they were important to her, and made her just the person who she was. She was a romantic, a young passionate woman with a raging and wild imagination, and she loved weaving stories around the little things that she found in her favourite antique stores and flea markets and pawn shops she always seemed to know about. We never really knew if any of her stories were even close to the truth, but it was fun nonetheless. “Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose,” she used to say, and even though it was just a cheesy line from an old TV show, I thought I knew just what she meant.

Now that Carla and I aren’t together, I understand what she meant about memories. It’s also one of the reasons why, out of all the forays into the local antique store, there’s only one that stays persistently on my mind. It was a usual drizzly day, and we hadn’t really planned to go and check out the antique store, at least not for another week or so. Still, there was nothing better to do as we were caught in the drizzle, and somehow the thought of dancing in the rain didn’t quite seem very alluring in that moment. So, Carla dragged me into her favourite little store, and I followed silently.

The shop didn’t really look very different, and as always, I felt like I was in a strict library, not allowed to speak one word. “You’re in the company of memories now,” Carla told me. And then we spent the rest of the evening in silence, lost in the past of the strangers who had left their possessions there, in the company of second-hand memories.

There were a lot of things in the store that day – an old wooden cupboard, grimy chairs with dirty cushions on them, letter holders stuffed full of old letters that the previous owners hadn’t bothered to throw out. I also found an old diary, one that belonged to a 13 year old boy named Brian McWallace. I wondered if I should read through the diary, contemplating the morality of the issue, but it had been taken care of Brian in his boyhood – he’d never written a word in the diary. The first time when I had wanted to be a little like Carla, and wander into the world of imagination, and making up stories befitting the lives of the former owners of the things we held in our hands, Brain McWallace had thwarted that desire, by leaving the diary entirely blank. I threw it back on to the shelf, surprised to find myself so frustrated for something as insignificant as the inability to think up a story. I wasn’t Carla, and I knew I couldn’t make up a story for the fantastic life of Brian McWallace, so I left the diary back on the dusty shelf and went about looking for her amidst the old junk.

I think back then, I was immature to think that there was no value to old violins and old guitars, and was a bit too quick to judge them based on the amount of grime they had acquired over the years. Maybe if I knew everything I know now, I might have been able to see those old things in the dingy shop in a better light. However, I didn’t know anything about the value inanimate things absorb over the years, which can make them seem priceless to some people, even if they seem worthless to others.

But Carla knew. She knew just what every single one of those grimy little artefacts were worth, because she knew how to calculate something’s worth in more than just monetary terms. I found that the slight bit of allure that I had felt a moment back had faded off, and I was bored. I wanted to sit with Carla again, even if it was just to hear one of her little stories. I picked up the first thing that I passed by – an old, faded violin with just one string – and went to Carla looking for a story.

I knew she would tell me all about the violin’s incredible journey, and the applause it had received (maybe at the Carnegie Hall?), but she didn’t. When I found her, in the back of the little shop, she had already found her treasure for the day, and didn’t really seem too interested in the violin I had so painstakingly picked out for her. Instead, she was looking at an old, faded picture.

It was a normal looking picture, something that can be found in any old family. Three people, looking out of a car. Nothing great in that, right? Sure, they looked happy, but then, isn’t that how most people have their pictures taken? Don’t their faces automatically go into the ‘smile, there’s a camera pointed at you!’ mode the moment they know someone’s clicking their picture? I didn’t know why Carla was looking at that picture, and sitting there waiting for her story to come out, I felt a little bored. And a little stupid, too.

But the story didn’t come that day. For some reason, Carla didn’t want to venture into the lives of the people who made up that picture, and she didn’t want to talk about the travels they may have had in the car with the window rolled down. She didn’t want to know the reason why they looked so happy in the photo. She just sat there, silently, staring at the picture in her hand. So, having nothing else to do, I started looking at the picture, too.

And then, a very interesting thing happened in the dark, dingy shop. From looking at the picture, I went to looking at the people instead. I started wondering where these people were, the two women and the young man, all of them so full of life and laughter and happiness. I found myself wondering if the photographer had said “Cheese!” before pressing the button that bottled their moment of happiness forever, capturing them on that little piece of paper that Carla was holding. I wondered what they were so happy about, and if those dreams, those fantasies, they came true. I wondered if they made any memories that day or not, and how long they were together after that picture was taken, to cherish those memories. I wondered why the photograph, the tangible proof of their intangible memories, and their intangible happiness, lay forgotten in this old Missouri antique shop. And I wondered who these people were. Even then, as I sat there with the girl I was so crazy about, holding a photograph that had neither of us in it, I knew I’d always remember this moment.

“We can ask the store manager who these people are, can’t we?” I asked.

“No,” said Carla. “Let’s not do that.”

“Why not? Maybe he knows these people,” I said.

Carla looked strangely thoughtful, and finally said, “Because life – both ours and theirs – deserves a sense of mystery.”

In the end, we bought just the picture of the three strangers sitting in the car with their happy smiles that day. She said she would want me to keep it. She thought maybe it would help to get me started building some memories (second hand though they were), and start living life the way she did for a change. I never thought it would work, but in a strange way, it did.

Carla and I broke up six months later. It wasn’t a pretty break up, and I returned to India soon after that. In the wake of the fights, and our fallout, I had thrown away all of our pictures. It’s been many years since I last saw her, and I’ve sometimes found myself wondering where she is, and what she’s up to these days. In those moments, I take a look at that picture, the one that we stumbled upon all those years ago in her favourite little antique store. And even though I have nothing else to remind me of her, that old picture is all I’ll ever need – even though it doesn’t have Carla or me in it. Because I understand now what she meant when she talked about memories – how they really are a way of holding on to the things that you have loved in the past, the person that you were in the past, and the things you never thought you would lose, in the past.

~

Inspired from Magpie Tales. They asked for a poem, but I’m no great shakes at that… so, I wrote this one instead.