Chemistry of Love

ACCORDION MUSIC

The antique camera was only $12. It was love at first sight, and Malcolm couldn't pass it up. He loved old things, especially technological or mechanical. The week before he had scored a brass orrery. It was just the Sun, Earth, and the Moon, but he was thrilled when he wound it and it worked, the two orbs noisily circling the central Sun at their different speeds.

He was a sucker for sequences and cause-and-effect.

It was the sort of thing that hobbyists and enthusiasts spent their time doing instead of the more interactive social activities. Time with others was just too much work; time by himself was easy and more interesting. "Things," even complicated things, just weren't as complicated.

Malcolm had terminal romanticism, a fatal emotional disease whose pathology is based on the need to recognize love-at-first-sight—or die alone. Many young women had shown interest in him, but if the first glimpse didn't trip that first domino, all of his emotional dominos were left standing.

Still, he knew that all he needed was that first one to fall. He imagined the orrery in his head, sentiments unrequited in permanent orbits, revolving around hopes and dreams, and gravity failing.

Yet, the dominos stood inert. And Malcolm navigated the machinations of his very practical, lonely world, tiptoeing over them, letting them stand to collect the dust of bygone opportunities.

He had joined several online communities dedicated to the vintage contraptions he loved; they traded pictures. He couldn't wait to post the video of his orrery.

When he had returned home from his fleamarket adventure, Malcolm examined his bargain camera carefully. It was obviously vintage, the label applied to any camera older than 50 years. This one, of the portable models of the time, was what was referred to as a "folding camera." Its expandable accordion-like bellows was typical of camera design between the 1890s to 1940s. To accommodate a longer focal length, a lever released a sliding mechanism to lengthen the distance from the lens to the film. Vintage.

Malcolm attended Swarthmore College and fulfilled the quintessential Swarthmore traits of being both intellectual and nerdy. Although he was enrolled in its chemical engineering program, he seeded his curriculum with liberal arts classes as well, one of which was his photojournalism course. It appealed to both his artistic sensibilities and his engineering inclinations because part of its curriculum entailed learning how to develop film. This entailed using the chemistry that was the standard of photography before digital image capture chips revolutionized the industry.

A lost art, certainly. Before pixels replaced silver halide molecules. Before thousands of selfies replaced having few-to-no pictures of one's self.

He loved the ambiance of alchemy under the isolated frequencies of his dark room's monochromatic photo-safe red lamp. He fantasized with a gestalt of one-part researcher with two-parts mad scientist. He felt creative when the projection lamp allowed him to dodge out, or burn in, isolated portions of a photograph to create fantastical dreamscapes.

For Malcolm, black-and-white film ruled.

While the later panchromatic color films were sensitive to all parts of visible light, even a red "safelight," orthochromatic B&W film was only sensitive to photons riding on blue or green: red was the right ploy. Red was a world away from the world, where visions appeared miraculously, people's faces arose from fuzzy wraiths, and other dimensions evolved and separated from the mundane. It revealed the world beyond that wasn't normally noticed by the busy and bustling in their everyday activities.

Malcolm was in his dark room, preparing his trays and chemicals when it occurred to him: if he could find the right film to take pictures with his newly acquired antique camera, might he produce antiquated images anew, with all of their nostalgic artistic effects making quaint magic?

With the usual light-leak safeguards in place, he left his dark room to retrieve the camera. He wanted to open it to see what type of film it took. The most common was 35-mm, but a camera of unknown age might take something else. He was anxious to get it open to see, but once retrieved, he suddenly stopped, just short of opening its back.

What if there were undeveloped film left in this camera? How dare he be so reckless!

He re-entered his darkroom to open the folding camera under the protection of his safe lamp. His hunch paid off.

From spindle to spindle, one 35-mm frame at a time flowed to span someone's still life—probably, now, long dead. Opening the back of the camera was like letting someone finally gasp out a breath held in for over half a century. The accordion of the camera once again played its song.

He knew what his next mission was.

***

CHEMISTRY AT WORK

All of them hung there, lifeless. Two-dimensional beings hanging on dripping sheets from a length of string across my safelight room. The glow of red means stop, but the alchemy continued. Shadowy whispers come to life, from the gossamer dead to better living through chemistry.

There they are. They're here.

Real people summarized, summoned, and put into planar constraints for the tertiary beings who brought them out. All dead from the last generation. Dripping with solvents. Emulsion meeting silver iodide where zombies claw themselves out to join the living.

Chemistry sublimated the images from the cellulose nitrate to mannikin-like human silhouettes. It was the Bizarro world, however, the negatives portraying an alien, reversed tableaux. He engaged his projection lamp and focused the images as best as he could, given the limitations of the film substrate from age.

Further along his journey, he next bathed 8x10 paper sheets, each holding a secret, into a series of chemical tubs. There they floated. Then, like the pros of yesteryear, he used string and clothespins to hang his prints. From the roll had survived about a dozen images. As expected, they were "vintage" looking—slightly foggy and suffering a lack of contrast.

They were pictures of a woman.

Malcolm gasped. He had never seen such a visage. Even at his age, he saw with eternity's filter. A permanence of devotion flowed from him to the 2-dimensional, hanging, wet 8x10 images.

Stack 'em up, let 'em fall: a domino tottered, and soon the entire wave of motion undulated along the correct neuroreceptors: it was love at first sight!

It was his right brain that saw in her everything he had wanted in a life mate; it was his left brain that had ignored the fact he was probably looking at a phantom.

Malcolm knew what Mario Puzo must have meant when he scripted Michael Corleone's love for Appolonia Vitelli in Sicily to be a thunderbolt.

He did some quick arithmetic in his brain. He calculated her age, by this time, anywhere from being in her 70s at the youngest to—well, he surmised—she could be long dead.

Nevertheless, she was the one. He knew he hadn't been foolish to wait. And even though she was unobtainable, he now knew such a thing was possible. There were other strings of dominos waiting to fall.

She mesmerized him. She stood, at ease, with her graduation robe hanging open to reveal her coquettish posture. It was a tease that had reached through a half-century to hook him. He was so stunned, he almost turned on the overhead lights to get a better look—but stopped short to remain in crimson safety. He must mind his muscle memory, he thought, to prevent a disaster.

She wore a graduation cap on her head. Of course it was jaunty, as she could only wear it. The curls in her hair defined her femininity with a playful attitude.

He closed down his photography room for the evening and had his usual mundane frozen meal and a beer. He took a shower during which he thought about her: at least one of them was naked, he laughed. He shamelessly fell in love with her a second time, but then the hot water ran out.

He knew it would take overnight for the prints to dry, so he planned to skip his morning classes to spend time with her and a magnifying glass.

That morning, the prints hung ready, passing in review on the clothespins. He seized what he felt was the best one, first, and began to examine her in the full light.

The eyes could say it all. He could appreciate the naqib, worn by Muslim women, showing only their eyes. She had those squinty-type smiley eyes—a whole face crammed into them; a whole personality flashing out to the rest of the world. Little did she realize that her broadcast would cross the time barrier, creating a chronic boom that shook Malcolm to his core.

Offset media, the conflict between imagery and time, evaporated.

Her smile was a gift to whomever it was launched. He fantasized it was for him. Of course it was for him. It had to be. He was the one making the rules here, after all.

A smile, he thought, was his favorite part of a woman, because it was something offered just for him. Her face and body language, frozen in time, really was just for him, as well. Here and now, there was no one else on the planet looking at her. Just him. Malcolm and Mystery Graduate. Malcolm and his fictional love-of-his-life. Malcolm had been imbued with the elusive love-at-first-sight. Fictional? Did it matter?

At the very least she could be in her 70s, but the reality was that she was likely dead. He looked at her picture, there—starting out in life anew, with all that living ahead of her. But now it was behind her. And him. Does anything that lived once—anyone who loved at one time—remain intact somewhere? Or everywhere?

His physics teacher—whose class he was skipping that very morning—taught him that time was an illusion. Mystery Graduate must be somewhere just as sure as he was here now. She lives on—in that somewhere.

He looked through the different photosheets. Inspecting each with his magnifying lense, one of them—the worst one—offered him a clue. In the corner on some bricks was an almost undecipherable sign that said, "Swarthmore." He shouted out loud.

Of course! he surmised. It had been a local antique shop. Here, near his university. And hers!

He scanned the photos into files on his computer. How great would it be to find out who she was! How she lived!

At his computer, he went into the Swarthmore portal and navigated toward the alumni section. The database of alumni was not helpful, because it didn't have the yearbook pictures of each year. While he was prepared to look at each one, he was dead in the water.

The alumni section had a blog. Malcolm had an idea.

He uploaded the pictures of Mystery Graduate with the question, "WHO IS SHE? WHO IS 'MYSTERY GRADUATE?'" Then, he added a comment that included his name, hometown, and university email address.

The Swarthmore world responded with deafening silence. Mystery Graduate would remain dead and gone, without as much as a footnote for his life's heartache.

Malcolm attended Swarthmore for three more years and earned his chemical engineering degree. He ended up working for an engineering consulting firm in Philadelphia.

Beyond that Mystery Graduate footnote to his sophomore year, he had gone through some fleeting romances during his remaining college semesters. But he found himself chasing a special smile that was long gone. And those eyes. The other eyes and smiles—the insufficient ones—all came and went. There were never those squinty smiley ones able to hold an entire laughing person in them; or that special part of a woman called a smile, meant just for him. For him, all such features on the others were just poses and not personal messages.

His dominos began accruing dust once again.

There were times when he hadn't thought about Mystery Graduate, but then, between romances, he would wax romantic and bring up her images again. And he would fall in love again.

Over time he wrote an entire script about her, which revolved around himself, as most self-indulgent fantasies do. He was glad he had never heard from anyone about the images of her he had posted. Any real story would have spoiled the novel he had written in his head.

Until nearly six years later.

***

A STRANGER CALLS

"Malcolm? Malcolm Ferguson?" It was a female voice.

"Yes, this is he."

"You have no idea how hard it was to get to you."

"Who is this, may I ask? Do you know me?"

"No, I'm sorry. My name is Marie...Marie Steward."

"What can I do for you, Miss, er--"

"Mrs."

"--Mrs. OK. How can I help you?"

She sounded like an elderly woman, as best as that sort of thing could be determined over the telephone. "I'm calling to help you, actually. But first I had to go to the Administration Building, Junior Division."

"At Swarthmore?"

"Yes. I had to reverse hunt your Swarthmore email address—and lemme tell you—they don't want to just give those out."

"Mrs. Stewart?

"Yes, yes. Sorry. I know who it is!"

"Yes, we've established that. It's me."

"No, no, Mr. Ferguson. I know who Mystery Graduate is."

Malcolm froze.

This was not something he had wanted merely blurted out. He hadn't prepared. He wasn't ready. There was such a private legacy between them, albeit one-sided, that he imagined he'd be eased into any identification of her. It was like skipping a whole novel to find out the protagonist dies in the end, instead of having the story unfold and blossom in its own deliberate beauty.

"Don't tell me," Malcolm blurted.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I mean, let's meet for some tapas or something. Or a drink."

"Mr. Ferguson, really, I think that--"

"Oh, please don't get the wrong idea. Not to be creepy or anything, but all this comes as something of a big revelation—my spending so much energy back then wondering who she was."

"She was Grace. Grace Starling."

Grace. He paused. Of course her name was Grace. It was like he had known it all along.

"You won't meet me, then?"

"No, I really shouldn't. I wouldn't do that sort of thing. I don't know you. Please understand."

"Yes," Malcolm agreed, "I do. But can you tell me anything about her?"

"I hadn't really seen her since college, so I really don't know. She was president of some pre-med society at Swarthmore. I was in it, too, until I realized that if medicine meant acing chemistry, then I needed another vocation. You can probably Google her. Grace Starling, like the bird. Have a blessed day, Mr. Ferguson." Click.

"Wait! What year were you—" Malcolm was talking to himself. But the dominos lining up for him yet again.

Grace Starling.

He wrote the name down and set it aside. He had several engineering projects due soon and couldn't put them off over some puerile crush. When he sorted out his deadlines he found a place to insert Grace Starling.

It would be several days before he would revisit his Grace in whatever way she might present. First, he Googled her, and filtered by "images." Comparing the foggy image to anything of legitimate pixelation was difficult; additionally, the images ranged from young women to obituaries. Next, he used Google Lens, and found many similar photographs of quite different women. Then he researched Swarthmore's Pre-Med Society in each year recorded.

Grace Cara Starling, President, Swarthmore Pre-Med Society, 1971.

There she was!

A single name on a single list, but from there her story unfolded as quickly as gossip. She had majored in Zoology and then had done graduate work in Genetics. In his web browsing he was able to sign up for the Pre-Med Society alumni email. Couldn't hurt.

From Swarthmore postgraduate school, she attended the Touro Infirmary School of Nursing in New Orleans, which he was disappointed to find no longer existed, having closed in 1987 after 91 years. From Touro Infirmary, she served in the Air Force as an RN at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C.

And then the gossip abruptly ended in 1967. Malcolm figured she must have gotten married which erased her surname from any history thereafter. The case when cold. Time of death: 1967.

***

NÉE, STARLING

It was pure luck that Malcolm received the email about the Pre-Med Society's 50th reunion of members from 1971. It was held in the Spring of 2021, and once again, Grace—as she was the only "Grace" found on search—appeared again as a solitary name on a single line of the list.

Grace (née Starling) Taylor, 1971, Dallas, TX.

The search engine floodgates opened, for Grace S. Taylor was apparently very discoverable, including phone number and address.

His first outreach was by letter. Handwritten and sent by post:

Dear Grace,

I don't mean to intrude, but I have something you might want. I had purchased an antique camera and found some undeveloped film in it, which I developed. I believe the pictures are of you at your Swarthmore graduation. Below is my contact information. Sincerely, Malcolm Ferguson, Swarthmore Class of 2011.

A week later, Grace S. Taylor replied, via the email he had included with his address and phone number.

She uses email. Not bad, for a Boomer, he thought.

Dear Malcolm,

The world is smaller than we think, isn't it? Yes, I would love to see those pictures. I'm not so good with email, so I have a friend helping me with this. So, could you email them to me, perhaps? Yours, Grace.

Malcolm lied in his own email response:

Dear Grace,

I'm sorry, but I just have 8x10 paper photos. I don't have a scanner, but it would be an honor to hand-deliver them to you. I guess I could mail them to you, but I really want to see your reaction. It's so weird how they were in an old camera that finally got to reveal its secrets. We can meet somewhere and you can bring your husband if you'd like, since you really don't know me. Sincerely, Malcolm.

After a back-and-forth exchange, plans were finalized:

Dear Malcolm,

I am a widow, and I'm back in my hometown of Hershey (like the chocolate!). You can visit me on August 2 at 10:00 AM in the social area of the Hershey Silver Center. Attached are the directions and phone number. I look forward to seeing what you have. Lovely. —Grace

Malcolm was relieved he wouldn't be traveling to Texas to see her, especially in August. It had been an unseasonably warm summer for most of the continental US. All nostalgia and feelings aside, that might have been a deal-breaker—flying out, renting a car, flying back, time away from work, etc. To Hershey would just be a drive of only a couple of hours.

***

"AMAZING GRACE! ...I ONCE WAS LOST BUT NOW AM FOUND..." — John Newton

Malcolm was surprise when he saw that the Hershey Silver Center was a nursing home. Then, why wouldn't it be. He knew Grace was elderly. Why should he be surprised it wasn't a social facility or community center?

He was met at the door by a middle-aged orderly. The man was in a facility's company uniform and stood there looking like he was expecting, Malcolm, which he was.

"Hello, I'm Manny. I help with Ms. Taylor." It took Malcolm a moment, then realized she hadn't had her name, Starling, in a very long time.

"I'm Malcolm Ferguson, Manny. Pleased to meet you." Manny eyed the large clasped envelop under Malcolm's arm.

"Are those the famous photos?" he asked. "She's been talking about nothing else lately. I guess we all want to recapture our youth—or at least remember it, y'know, reminisce."

"Yes, Manny. I think that's true."

"She really has no photos of her younger self," he said. "This will be so nice for her."

"Well, they were very old when I got my hands on them, so I'm afraid the quality isn't very good."

"That won't matter, Mr. Ferguson. She's had her cataracts taken care of, but still I wonder how well she sees."

"Her vision only needs to be as good as the pictures turned out, and she'll see them just fine," Malcolm answered with a laugh, although Manny didn't get the joke.

Manny escorted him through the reception area, where Malcolm signed in and received a visitor sticker to place on his shirt. From there was a circuitous path dodging slow-moving residents, many obstructing the path with walkers. The place smelled of rubbing alcohol. It was old but clean. The residents all looked happy, and they seemed additionally delighted to get an actual visitor, Malcolm labeled as such on his shirt.

"Hello, Visitor," one person actually said to him. He smiled and nodded.

Finally, Manny presented him to a large room, much like a cafeteria, with many folding tables surrounded by folding chairs. The place was mostly empty, except for a few tables where two or three persons sat playing cards, checkers, or chess. Manny pointed to a table that sat under a row of windows facing East, streaming the late morning sunlight through.

There she sat.

Her back was to him, as if she wanted to face the sunlight. Manny walked him around to face her.

She must have been in her late 80s or early 90s. She seemed stunned to look at Malcolm, and she remained so unresponsive that he wondered about her cognitive abilities.

"Can she...does she...?" he stammered.

"A hundred percent," Manny smiled.

"May I sit down?" Malcolm asked her. She nodded with a smile, but the smile was all in her squinty eyes. Then she produced a real smile, just for him.

"Hello, Malcolm," she said after a moment. "Please do sit."

"Hello, Grace," Malcolm answered. "It's good to see you in person. The pictures don't do you justice."

"Is that a good thing, Malcolm?" she asked. That's when he realized she had her wits about her.

"See for yourself," he said, unclasping the large envelop and taking the 8x10s out. He placed them down in front of her, but she didn't look down at them. She just stared at Malcolm, eyes and mouth still smiling.

This continued until Malcolm started getting a little uncomfortable. What was she thinking behind her eyes and lips? Here was someone old enough to be his grandmother—or at least his mother—with her whole life lived, nothing left to prove, her legacy now signed and sealed and delivered.

"Grace?" asked Manny. Is it OK if I leave you two alone?" She didn't respond. Malcolm counted the seconds, and Manny retreated silently away after many of them.

"What?" Malcolm asked Grace. "What are you thinking? You haven't even looked at the photos."

"Tell me, Malcolm," she finally spoke.

"Yes, Grace?"

"Tell me what you see here in front of you when you look at me."

"I see a beautiful woman, Grace."

"Oh, please! I'm not falling for that. Tell me what you really see, please."

Malcolm thought for a moment. He knew he couldn't get away with anything short of the truth. Why not? he thought. Why not tell her what he really thought?

"I see an elderly woman who has lived an entire life, with a sense of mortality and completeness no one my age could begin to understand. But, here's the catch—I'm in love with you."

Grace smiled. Eyes and lips smiled. "And?"

"Do you believe in love at first sight? The proverbial thunderbolt? Because that's what happened to me when I developed these pictures of you. I was with you on that day, loving you. I had waited all my life for you, and there you appeared afloat in the tub of reagents from an image from last century."

"Why, Malcolm? Why do you feel you loved me?"

"Don't really know. That's what the thunderbolt is, right?"

She nodded. "It's a little difficult to comprehend, though, Malcolm, don't you think? You're in love with a young woman in her early 20s. Not with me. Look at me, Malcolm. I'm not the woman in those pictures anymore."

"You are, Grace. And I am looking at you. I see the same person I loved then and love now. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to ask you out or propose or anything, but it is possible for two human beings to feel this way outside of inconveniences like impracticalities and impossibilities. It's a human thing that can sidestep time, right?"

Grace observed the way the younger man across from her regarded her. She accepted what he was saying. And even though there was nothing that could be done to bring such feelings to the full fruition that courting, marriage, sex, and life experiences with children could attain, there was a baseline of love running a current between them. Grace felt it.

Was it two-way?

"You know, Malcolm, the answer is yes, I do believe in love at first sight."

"For me, I've always wondered what it would have been like being contemporary with you. Meeting you when we were the same age. Maybe even having a life together. How our timelines mismatched! Woe is us, right?"

"Malcolm, listen to me. I look at you, too, and I wonder what my life would be like with you, were I around your age."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Don't you see? I believe in love at first sight because I am experiencing it right now, looking at you, here and now. Is that so hard to believe?"

Malcolm was stunned. Was such a thing even possible?

It was.

"Yes, Malcolm. You may have wondered all this time, but now I'm the one wondering. Don't misunderstand me, I loved my husband, rest his soul. He was a good man. He and I had beautiful children and a beautiful life and no regrets. But something about you, what you did, how you came, how you look—right now—overwhelms me. Your eyes that say so much to me; your smile that is meant just for me. While I grieve for my husband, now I grieve for us, on our two different trains in life. But it's the same destination, even though mine pulled into the station a long time ago. Yes, Malcolm, I grieve. For the life that might have been." She extended her hand onto the table and placed it on top of Malcolm's hand.

Physical touch.

There are things that are ineffable. Things that cannot be expressed in words, poems, or song. Love at first sight is love's sight, and Grace's and Malcolm's interlocked.

"Go, Malcolm. Live your life. I've lived mine, but there's something about our visit that puts it to bed, so to speak. Even though we couldn't live out a life together in entirety, there is always now. It can be timeless, if you know how to let it become a part of you. Thank you, Malcolm, for loving me. Thank you for being you. And thank you for the photos."

"You haven't even looked at them," Malcolm said. His throat was a bit lumped when he did.

"Oh, I will," she promised, still not taking her eyes off of him.

About this time, Manny returned. "Ready for your lunch, Ms. Taylor."

"Yes, Manny. Mr. Fergusing was just leaving."

After lunch, she finally looked through the photos, one at a time. They seemed incomplete, without the magician who brought them back from the dead. She grieved for her husband and grieved for her life not lived with a love-at-first-sight. Isn't that the real way it should be? Did she merely settle with her late husband? Should she have held out? If so, would it have taken until now, August 2, today? Then she would never had had her two children. Or helped so many in her medical career.

***

POSTPRODUCTION

Malcolm drove the two hours back in silence. He went back to his profession. He went back to his life. He went back to his antiquing and mechanical devices and photography. Love-at-first-sight seemed distant now.

Perhaps he would get lucky soon, or even one day; or perhaps it would take half a century for him to bump into someone he could love—and who would love him back—from the other side of a sadly asynchronous timeline. Even if it were impractical and impossible.

A month later, when he read the obituary for Grace S. Taylor, of Hershey, Pennsylvania, he cried for days. Maybe most of her was an architecture rendered in so much detail in his mind. But it had to be as real as it was for Grace, because we each make our own universes: that August 2 encompassed two creations that for once in a double lifetime, coincided.