The Photographer

Her skin was extremely soft. A circle of diamonds sparkled on her ring finger. All her fingers were long and slender. I wondered if she played the piano.
“I can’t stay pregnant. It’s devastating.” Amelia’s shoulders collapsed. “It’s biological, I guess, the intense need for another baby. Maybe a desire to be young again?” She laughed awkwardly. “And the miscarriages destroyed me.” She wiped several tears from her cheeks and smudged black streaks of mascara across her face in the process. “I’ve got to keep up this appearance. Maybe it’s for Fritz’s sake. I think he needs me to be the strong one.”
I heard Natalie’s footsteps on the stairs. Amelia pulled a tissue from the box on the counter and wiped away her smeared mascara. Natalie walked into the kitchen, wearing shorts and a torn T-shirt, her gangly arms and legs exposed. Did she know about her mother’s longing for a baby, the miscarriages? Amelia didn’t seem the type to play it close to the vest.
“Hi, Delta.” Natalie turned to her mother. “I need help with my math assignment.” She put a few stapled pages down on the white marble top of the kitchen island.
“My daughter’s in the most advanced sixth-grade math class that ever existed.” Amelia handed the papers back to Natalie. “She doesn’t actually need help.”
“I do.”
“Homework’s not my job!” Amelia closed her eyes tightly, turned her head away, and held her hands out to indicate that she wasn’t going to look at the homework. She reminded me of a child who was refusing to eat her vegetables.
I’d always been good at math and felt reasonably confident that I would understand Natalie’s math, even if it was advanced. Still, it was a risk. “Can I try to help?”
“Fine,” Amelia said. “But, Natalie, don’t get used to it.”
Natalie and I sat down at the farmhouse table. In lieu of flowers, a wrought-iron menorah served as the centerpiece. Itzhak crawled between her feet. I’d noticed that the dog liked being close to her. Natalie’s homework included several pages of word problems with fractions and decimals, but not beyond my ability, and not beyond Natalie’s, either. She probably wanted attention more than she wanted or needed help. She wanted someone to care about her homework, to care about her.
Amelia slipped upstairs and returned half an hour later in a cream-colored pantsuit and kitten heels. Hovering over Natalie, she stroked her hair. “All of our dinners are client dinners.” I detected self-righteousness in her tone. “We never leave Natalie for a social event.”
Perhaps Amelia thought I was judging her, and wanted to convince me she was a devoted mother.
“Of course,” I said.
Amelia kissed Natalie on her forehead. “Delta, feel free to watch TV or borrow a book after Natalie’s in bed.” Amelia headed to the door. “We’ll be home by midnight.”
When Natalie and I finished her math, we turned to a diorama she was working on for a school contest—a three-dimensional model of an ideal public park. I attended an unexceptional public school, not a fancy private school like Natalie. I don’t remember ever having had an assignment like hers—empowering and harnessing my ingenuity. She took it for granted.
Natalie wanted to start with a carousel. “I used to go to the one in Prospect Park with my dad,” she said, “and also the one near the bridge, with glass around it.”
I know a lot about carousels. More than the average person. I’d probably spent hundreds of hours on the bench in front of Cinderella’s Golden Carousel. I can still picture each horse in detail. I can still hear the music.
Natalie and I cut out each component of the carousel and each individual horse, then mounted them on cardboard. We cut out and mounted the children also. Each cardboard child had distinct features and unique clothing. Natalie must have thought about the personalities and the inner lives of each child as she was drawing him or her, and the result was a group of diverse children. I found such a holistic approach extremely unusual for a child. Many adults who considered themselves artists didn’t think that way.
“You remember in Mary Poppins,” she said, “when the children jump into the sidewalk chalk drawing of an English countryside. They land inside the drawing, and the whole world comes to life. And then they ride the carousel, and the horses jump off and just keep running, away from the merry-go-round, through the fields, anywhere they want to go?”
I nodded, not sure if I’d ever seen Mary Poppins at all.
“They’re attached to the carousel, going round and round, and they’re stuck there. But then, all of a sudden, they realize they can ride their horses anywhere. It’s like they could do that all along but didn’t know it.” She demonstrated with one of the cardboard horses, moving it through the air in leaping arcs around the room. “Every time I ride a carousel, I tell my horse to jump off and run away.” She laughed. “None of the horses listen to me.”
She finally glued the last horse into place.
We moved on to trees, a garden, rock formations, and a playground.
Natalie studied the completed diorama. “One day I want to build this park for real,” she said to me conspiratorially.
“Are you going to be an architect when you grow up, like your parents?” A sharp burn of envy pierced through me, but it was mitigated by the unassuming expression in Natalie’s eyes.
“If I’m good enough.” Her quiet tone of voice indicated she didn’t believe she would be. It was as if she thought there was only so much talent handed out to one family: Her mother had most of it. Her father had what was left over.
“You’ll be good enough.”
“I hope I win the contest,” she whispered, though we were the only two people in the house.
I felt myself becoming concerned for Natalie. She was a very sensitive girl. As much as I admired Amelia and Fritz, I sensed that they were not fulfilling their daughter’s needs. She didn’t