The Photographer

made coffee and served Natalie and me chicken soup. The three of us sat at the kitchen counter, and Itzhak lay near Natalie’s feet. Fritz was in Boston for the weekend, celebrating his brother’s fiftieth birthday.
Natalie told us about her upcoming concert. Amelia listened for a few minutes, then checked her phone, sent a text, then checked her phone again.
“Delta,” she said, “I totally forgot that I have to drop by one of our sites in Lower Manhattan. Would you mind hanging here with Natalie while I’m gone? Only if it’s convenient, of course.”
Once I’d processed her words, I felt a dull aching sensation in my chest, similar to how I’d felt when she asked me to photograph the town house. Amelia had invited me to her house for this reason specifically. Maybe she’d gone running with me for this reason too. Perhaps she could have left Natalie alone for a couple of hours. Or she could have had Natalie join her. But it was so much simpler to invite me over as the family friend who had nothing better to do.
While Amelia was out and Natalie was practicing the cello, I let myself into the garden apartment, having observed that no one was home. I moved a stack of books from the bedroom to the living room, opened the closet doors, and left a small puddle in the bedroom. Before leaving, I studied the photographs on Gwen’s bedside table again. The picture of her in the Bahamas had probably been taken two years earlier, judging from the clothing the women were wearing and the quality of the photo. It was clear that Amelia and Fritz didn’t think much of Gwen’s personality. Yet, somehow, this woman had ten friends who wanted to spend their vacation with her in the Bahamas. What did she do to make them like her?
I returned to the main house before Natalie noticed I was gone. When Amelia came home in the late afternoon, I gathered my belongings. “Oh, don’t leave yet,” she said, her voice rising and falling in a lovely cadence. “I was hoping we’d have some time together.”
I felt flushed and warm with pleasure. She had the capacity to alter the chemistry of the air around her instantaneously, as if a drug was pumped into the room when she entered and I was breathing it in involuntarily. I found it almost impossible to go against her will.
She poured us each a cup of coffee, and we sat together at the dining table. She spoke softly, but intently. “The thing is … I thought that Fritz and I were on the same page about having a baby.”
The sound of Natalie playing a sonata on her cello drifted down the stairs.
I pressed the nails of my right hand into my left palm. “I understand how stressful it is,” I said. “I’d like to help you in any way I can.”
“You know, when a birth mother chooses us,” she said, “we can’t hesitate.”
I took a sip of coffee, choosing my words carefully. “I understand.”
“Adoption makes the most sense for us, but it’s taking so long. If it doesn’t happen soon, we’ll have to go out of state for a surrogate.” Amelia pushed her hair behind her ears.
I sipped my coffee again, mainly to distract from any telling signs of anxiety in my face or voice. “You’re considering surrogacy, then?”
“I’m considering everything.”
“What about a friend or a relative?”
“There isn’t anyone, not someone I could ask.” She pushed her hair behind her ears again.
I hesitated, looking for the right words.
“I’d do anything to help you, Amelia. You know that, right?”
“I know.” She smiled at me.
“You’re such an amazing mother to Natalie. If you want another child, you should be able to have another child. It shouldn’t be so hard.”
“Thank you, Delta.”
The sun was low in the sky, shining through the glass doors into the great room. I took another sip of my coffee. “It doesn’t seem fair. Pregnancy and childbirth were easy for me,” I said. “So easy.”
“You were lucky,” she said, then paused at the sound of quick footsteps coming down the stairs.
Natalie appeared with a piece of paper in her hand. “Mom, I need you to sign this form for my field trip.” Natalie lingered in the room after her mother had signed the paper. Amelia turned to sift through some mail on the kitchen counter. My window of opportunity had closed.
I was scheduled to shoot a birthday party the following Saturday at noon on the Upper West Side. The clients had a five-year-old daughter, Hazel. From one phone conversation with Hazel’s mother, Brooke, I visualized her as a brunette with sun-damaged skin, an athletic build, and overdeveloped calf muscles. It was a game I often played with myself. After a phone conversation, I would create images in my head of the client and the family members. The majority of the time, my images would prove to be accurate.
The night before, I’d purposefully left my cardigan sweater at the Straubs’ house so that I would have a reason to go by there after Hazel’s party and spend a few minutes in their house. Five minutes in the Straubs’ home made a difference to me. The ache behind my sternum diminished quickly in their presence.
In freezing rain and sleet, I took a car from my apartment to the Upper West Side. Clients always covered my travel expenses, as I usually carried heavy equipment—a tripod and a ball head, external flash units, light stands, reflectors and diffusers, and my camera case with lenses, filters, and an exposure meter.
Hazel’s family greeted me at the door, including all four grandparents, Carmen and Sergio Fernandez, Sarah and Howard Cohen. I peeled off a couple of wet layers and entered the apartment, a classic six in a prewar doorman building. I identified Hazel’s mother—the sun exposure and the overdeveloped calf muscles. But I got the hair color wrong. She was a redhead.
The grandmothers gathered around me. “I need a picture with Hazel,”