The Photographer

by Mary Dixie Carter

  I looked more closely at her amethyst necklace and noticed that the links were soldered together, an indication of twenty-four-karat gold. I breathed in her intense lemon-and-bergamot perfume. It was too much for my heightened sense of smell.

  “You know,” Amelia said, “Ian’s like our family.” The subject of Ian had come up a couple of times over the last week, with Amelia using me as a sounding board. She clearly didn’t want him to leave the firm, but supporting Ian’s ambitions was in line with her self-image.

  “I suggested he should talk things through with you,” I said, “but he says he can’t … desert you.”

  “Desert us?” She laughed weakly and set a plate of green grapes, cheese, and crackers on the kitchen counter.

  “You know … starting his own firm.”

  Amelia’s eyes widened. I could tell it was an effort for her to maintain an expression of equanimity. “Ohhh.” She took a large sip of wine.

  “I told him you’d support him.”

  She hesitated for a split second. “Of course, we would.”

  “Whether that’s clients, referrals, infrastructure,” I said. “Because I know how much you care for him.”

  “Anything … of course.” Amelia smiled with her mouth, but her eyes betrayed something akin to resentment.

  * * *

  I was twelve weeks pregnant with a confirmed fetal heartbeat. If Dr. Krasnov recognized that I had never carried a baby to term, he hadn’t ratted me out thus far. I felt that he and I had reached a truce of sorts. He explained that I’d passed a critical milestone and the likelihood of miscarriage had significantly diminished. Upon hearing his words, a sensation of expansiveness and levity moved throughout my body and filled me completely.

  Amelia was standing by in the waiting room at my request. I did take some secret pleasure in these moments, when she was the outsider who was forced to wait for me. I had the critical information before she did.

  Afterward, she was invited into the doctor’s office and offered a seat next to me. “So far, so good, Mrs. Straub.”

  The look on her face was like someone who had just finished scaling a mountain.

  My power was increasing daily. I was carrying a life inside me. I had an indisputable purpose. My value in other arenas—my professional value, my value to lovers and friends, had never had the same gravity. Not even close. Amelia needed me and it was a life-and-death kind of need. I could feel vibrations of anguish and desire radiating off her.

  The doctor shook her hand. “Now Ms. Dawn can continue care with her OB.”

  Amelia stumbled over her words. “Thank … thank you so much.”

  While waiting for the elevator together, she embraced me. “You’re a miracle.” I noticed how chapped her lips were and considered offering her some lip gloss, but thought better of it. I remembered the high-end pot of lip gloss on her desk in her home office. I doubted that she’d want to use my brand of lip gloss. Neither would she want my germs.

  A sick feeling threatened me, but, just as quickly, it subsided.

  * * *

  Amelia drove me back to Brooklyn in her silver Mercedes SUV and insisted that I join her for lunch at her house. Occasionally I allowed myself to acknowledge why she adored me so much. Of course, it was because of the baby. It wasn’t real love. Or was it? I understand why some women get pregnant to secure a husband or hold on to the one they have. It’s the ultimate power.

  I rested on the sofa in the great room, and after a few minutes she brought me a turkey sandwich and a glass of ice water and placed them on the iron coffee table. “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “My dreams are coming true. I want the same for Ian.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “So Fritz and I called him.” She sat down next to me. “We told him he should start his own firm.” Amelia smiled with what seemed to be considerable effort. “And that we’d support him.”

  “Wow.”

  “And that you were his strongest advocate in making it happen.” She beamed.

  I took a bite of my turkey sandwich and swallowed.

  “I guess … he was overwhelmed or agitated,” she said, “especially anxious regarding his mother’s health.”

  “I’m sure he’s grateful.” I chewed on a piece of ice in an effort to quell my nausea.

  “Well … we’ll miss him.” From her tone of voice, it sounded as though she were speaking of someone from the distant past.

  I noticed that I was extremely warm. I removed my sweater so that I was only wearing a tank top. No one would have known that I was pregnant. My stomach was still practically flat. Amelia studied my body. I could tell she was in love with it, in an odd, objectifying way.

  There were times when I thought Amelia might view me as being in service to her—as her inferior. Surrogacy isn’t entirely dissimilar from prostitution. I have no ethical problem with prostitution. It’s a class problem. I’d slept with a guy for money twice, in a hotel room in Florida. He was a loser. So fucking him for money made me into a double loser. Then I left Florida and came to New York.

  Amelia probably felt as though she were paying me indirectly—with her love and attention, with the time I spent with Natalie, and with the under-market apartment. But she might not have realized that I no longer needed payment.

  She moved down to the end of the sofa next to my feet. She removed my socks and pressed her thumbs into pressure points on the arches of my feet, my heels, and my toes. At first, I was surprised that she would debase herself so. But then it dawned on me that she believed her actions were in service of her child. So there was an element of ego and self-preservation in her behavior. “Some pressure points really support the body’s immune system and strengthen it,” she said, “allowing the baby to receive all the nutrients and vitamins that it needs.”

  Her fingers were resting on the faint scar from Itzhak’s bite. She didn’t seem to notice it.

  Natalie appeared in the doorway with her camera in hand and snapped a photo of us. “Is Delta sick?”

  “No, I’m fine.” I sat up on the sofa.

  “Natalie, the baby’s healthy so far.” Amelia looked from Natalie to me. She clasped my hands. “What a mitzvah.”

  “Mitzvah means ‘good deed,’” Natalie explained to me.

  “What’s your favorite boy’s name?” Amelia asked Natalie.

  “BoBo.” Natalie opened the refrigerator door and looked for a snack.

  Amelia frowned. “Sweetheart…”

  I wanted Amelia to drop the subject. It was obvious that Natalie was not going to engage.

  “Do you know if it’s a boy?” Natalie opened a kitchen cabinet and rummaged through it.

  “A sixth sense,” Amelia said. “I like the name Emilio.”

  “Did you forget about the ‘evil eye’?” Natalie asked.

  “I’m not naming the baby now,” Amelia said. “Just getting ideas.”

  Natalie pulled out a box of saltine crackers.

  “This baby,” Amelia said, “will change everything in our lives.”

  Over the last few weeks, I’d continued to research surrogacy laws in New York and had confirmed what I already understood to be true. If a surrogate changes her mind and wants to keep the baby, the genetic parents don’t have a lot of recourse. Even if the Straubs and I’d had a written contract, it would be worthless. That meant I would have the power to make my position in the Straub family permanent. My leaving would not be an option. I planned to bring the subject up in the right way at the right time. I would make sure Amelia understood that I wasn’t trying to take anything away from her. Amelia, Fritz, and I would be partners on an exciting journey. We would raise the child together.

  Natalie took a bite of a saltine cracker.

  “I feel like it’s a second chance for our family and my marriage,” Amelia said.

  “Because your first chance failed?” Natalie licked crumbs from her lips.

  Amelia was choosing not to notice her daughter’s jealousy. “A
baby brings positive energy into a home.”

  “You’re so full of it,” Natalie said.

  “Shut your mouth.”

  Natalie closed her fist around a saltine cracker, causing it to crumble in her hand. “Fuck you.” She dropped the box of crackers onto the counter and ran out of the room and up the stairs.

  I wanted to follow Natalie, but I had a feeling that Amelia wouldn’t appreciate it if I did.

  Amelia looked up at the ceiling and breathed deeply. “Privilege. It’s a double-edged sword. Natalie’s surrounded by children who have no clue about the world. I had to work like a dog to get where I am. Natalie thinks my life and Fritz’s should revolve around her. News flash. Getting all the attention doesn’t make you a stronger person.”

  Amelia needed to believe what she needed to believe.

  * * *

  Half an hour later I found Natalie reading in her room and suggested she come down to my apartment for a photography lesson. When she arrived, we bundled up and walked around the block with our cameras.

  “What do you want for your birthday?” I asked.

  “It’s two months away.”

  “Let’s go to a museum together.”

  Her eyes brightened. “OK.”

  “There’s a photography exhibition at MoMA that opens in November. I think you’ll like it.”

  It was mid-October. The weather had turned cold, and the sun was approaching the horizon. Natalie took out her camera.

  “It can be harder late in the day,” I said.

  She took a picture of a blue jay flying from one tree to another.

  “That one will turn out blurry,” I said.

  “I hope it does,” she said. “You can’t freeze the bird at one moment in time. I want the photo to say time doesn’t stand still. My mom doesn’t realize that. She’s too old to have another baby. She’s ancient.” I hoped that Natalie refrained from this line of thought when her mother was around.

  We walked almost all the way around the block. “My mom said I can stay over with you tonight.”

  “I’m so glad.”

  Natalie photographed the evergreen magnolia in front of the Straubs’ house. I had to remind myself it was my house too.

  “Do you have morning sickness today?” she asked.

  “I feel all right.” My morning sickness usually died down around 2 P.M. each day.

  “Piper told me her mom had morning sickness when she was pregnant with her little brother. She said if you’re not nauseous every day, it means the baby isn’t healthy.”

  I found it hard to swallow. “Piper has a lot of information.”

  She put her hand on my abdomen. “I can feel the baby.”

  She was right. I’d felt a fluttering sensation over the last few days.

  Once inside my apartment, she took off her coat and shoes and left them by the front door, as she’d been trained to do.

  I opened a package of chocolate chip cookies, placed several on a plate, and brought them to Natalie. She sat cross-legged on the sofa with the plate in her lap. Slowly and methodically, she took little bites around the edge of a cookie. “You’re going to have a baby and then give it away,” she said. “I don’t get it.”

  A strong pressure in my sinuses spread to my ears and throat. I felt faint. “Don’t worry. I will see the baby.” She didn’t understand that our lives were going to be overflowing with light and love.

  That evening, Natalie and I sat together on the sofa and looked through the photos she had shot on the viewfinder of her camera. She had a strong point of view. For photographers, that was rare. Of course, she lacked skill, but what she already had was almost impossible to teach.

  “‘If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you,’” I said. “‘If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.’”

  “Hmm?”

  “It’s something Jesus said about self-expression.”

  I also had a point of view, but I chose to avoid it most of the time. Were I to embrace it, I would have had to acknowledge other things that I was not interested in acknowledging. People like me created useful stories to paste over other stories. Because the real stories would take you on a deep dive to hell. If you knew for a fact that you’d break into a thousand pieces on your way there, then you might say to yourself, well, Jesus was actually wrong with regard to me.

  In my case, I had a structure to my life and my mind, and I wasn’t going to trade that in for anarchy and chaos.

  Natalie was different than I was. She could stomach her reflection in the mirror, not just once, but over and over, each and every day. She could look at herself and say, This is the person I am. I have nothing to offer that doesn’t come from a place of darkness and ugliness.

  I lay in my bed that night with Natalie in the next room. I rested my hand on my abdomen and felt the faintest movement. The baby was going to provide a pathway out of the grime that had been clinging to me for all these years. I had a window now, and I could see what was possible.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It was Saturday morning. I heard Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” from the living room. Natalie’s iPhone was playing. She didn’t see me. Her head was back, her arms in the air, and she was singing and dancing with abandon: “And the fakers gonna fake, fake, fake, fake, fake…”

  Natalie ate a chocolate croissant for breakfast. I made coffee for myself. She perused the apartment, looking at my books, my desk, and in my closet.

  I showered and dressed. When I came out of the bedroom, I saw her standing in front of me with her backpack over her shoulders. Her arms were crossed in front of her body and she was staring at the ground, as if she didn’t want to meet my eyes. “I need to go upstairs and make a quick phone call.” She turned abruptly and left.

  Initially she’d said she wanted to stay for the whole morning.

  I turned my attention to unloading the dishwasher, which I’d run the night before. I placed all the bowls on one shelf and the plates on a different shelf. When finished with that task, I loaded the washing machine and folded the towels that I’d left in the dryer. I’d purchased expensive Turkish towels when I’d moved. I enjoyed folding them and running my hands over them.

  Then I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat on the patio outside my back door. I contemplated the cherry tree, the birds, the sunshine, and found all of it too perfect this morning. I felt certain there was a flaw hidden somewhere.

  I heard an incoming text on my phone. It was from Amelia. We have a problem here. Please come upstairs.

  My stomach dropped. Something bad was about to happen or had already happened.

  I wrote back: Sure. Just a few minutes.

  Natalie had appeared disturbed by something. What had happened to her? The floor underneath my feet was shifting. I needed to know the nature of the problem. I couldn’t walk into the Straubs’ house defenseless, without the necessary tools.

  In the bathroom, I splashed cold water on my face and dried it. Then I applied moisturizer, under-eye concealer, mascara, and lip gloss. I combed through my hair. Finally I was pleased with my reflection in the mirror.

  I walked up the stairs, entered the Straubs’ front door, and proceeded down the hallway. From across the room, I could see that Amelia, Fritz, and Natalie were all seated around the dining table. The morning sun was shooting in through the skylight from above and through the bifold doors. Amelia’s skin looked bright white in the sun. Her lips had disappeared, but her dark eyes were taking up more space than usual in her face. Next to her, Fritz sat expressionless, his eyes flat and dull. Seated across the table, Natalie was looking down, seemingly focused on pointing and flexing her bare feet.

  As I approached, I could see that Amelia was holding something in front of her. I took a few steps toward her. It looked to be a thick pile of papers in her hand. I took a few more steps and could now tell it was a stack of photographs. I neared the table, close enough to see th
e edge of the top photo, and then recognized it. I felt the ground dropping out from underneath me.

  It was a graphic photo of me and Fritz in bed together—including a computer-generated image of Fritz’s naked groin that I’d photoshopped and fine-tuned until it appeared completely realistic. I’d scrupulously deleted all such photos from my hard drive, but I’d chosen to keep a few of the prints.

  I was falling. “Oh God,” I said. “That was … was so stupid.”

  “What is this?” Amelia whispered.

  Fritz looked up at me, as though he were hoping for a valid explanation.

  Amelia flipped to the second photo in the stack. Then the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth. She laid them out on the dining table in front of her. They were photos of me and Fritz in different sexual positions. Over the last few months, whenever I’d been bored, I’d gone back to these photos. Sexual experimentation in the photographs had been exciting for me.

  I tried to laugh, but it came out sounding like a cackle. “Oh God, see, I had a photo-editing challenge with my colleague.…”

  “What … what the hell?” She held up a photo of me, Fritz, and her in bed together. A ménage à trois.

  I felt myself to be in free fall, in a vertical drop. “… and we were using a new program, trying to create realistic photos … and…”

  Amelia stood up from her place at the dining table, her face moist and pink and her eyes cloudy. She looked feverish and wild. “Are you fucking Fritz?” she bellowed into the atmosphere.

  “No!” Fritz yelled loudly.

  “Amelia…” I said.

  “Yes or no?” she said.

  “No!” My mind raced for a way to escape. I looked around the room for possible exits. Itzhak was crouched low in the corner, growling.

  “What is it?” Amelia gasped. “Barbie and Ken having sex? Are you so desperate you need to fuck my husband in a picture?”

  She fanned the remainder of the photos out like a hand of cards. Then she placed them back on the table in a stack, and separated them out, one by one. I held my breath. She came to one of herself and me drinking martinis at Buttermilk Channel, then one in which I was very pregnant and we were shopping on Court Street, then one of me cooking in the Straubs’ kitchen, and one of her feeding me birthday cake. And next, the photo of Jasper lying asleep in Natalie’s room.