Chapter 10: Family

I HAD NO APPOINTMENTS after school during Thanksgiving week, but I was scheduled to have Amy from Chicago in the studio Sunday afternoon. We were still in school Monday and Tuesday and had a half-day on Wednesday. I didn’t rush right home. I went to the studio and worked on Patricia’s Playboy photos and printed a bunch of photos I’d been slow at getting done. Proof sheets were being returned to Anna for orders of senior photos and Attic Allure photos from the past few weeks. I was going to try to get them all delivered before Christmas break.

I was printing a lot of second copies of my classmates for my private portfolio. I couldn’t display or sell their prints unless they were my models, but I could certainly have a collection of my own. I imagined that in ten years, when it was time for a class reunion, I’d personally have the best yearbook of photos of my classmates in existence. There were only six girls in my class I’d not seen naked. Four were engaged, and two were very religious. That last category included Anna.

I looked over my gallery wall that included pictures that I had releases for. I needed to find new space for Patricia’s birthday photos and for Pris’s birthday photos. I understood Pris was making a display of her photos and planned to give me a copy of it. I’d supplied her with two sets in 10x17 size. But I had a set of normal 8x10s, too. I spread those and Patricia’s photos on the table so I could judge where to put them.

Before I got things all arranged Wednesday afternoon, I heard a knock at my studio door and ran to see if Chris was coming for a visit. It wasn’t Chris. It was my sisters. Kat had brought Deborah and her daughter Cameron to see me since I hadn’t come straight home from school. I hadn’t realized Deborah had arrived already. There were a few hugs and I had my baby niece pushed into my arms while Deborah went to look around my studio.

Oh, yeah. Family visiting the studio without having been prepared for what little brother was taking pictures of.

“These are beautiful!” Deborah said. “Oh, my! Kat, you shouldn’t be looking at these. You run home and I’ll discuss it with our brother.”

“Deb, the human body figures prominently in artwork of every medium,” Kat lectured our older sister. “I expect I will be in classes where I’m painting nude models, just as Nate photographs them. What you are looking at is not pictures of naked girls, but artwork that features the human figure.”

I could almost have quoted that from what Mom and Uncle Nate told Kat the first time she saw my pictures. She’d refined the statement somewhat and Deb was flabbergasted.

“Oh. I see,” Deb said. “And Mom and Dad know about all this?”

“Dad helped build the darkroom. Mom stops by occasionally to see my new work. That picture is hanging in our living room,” I said pointing at Avery under the streetlamp.

“I saw that, but didn’t look closely at it. I thought it was a painting of some angel or saint. It’s truly artwork,” Deb breathed. “And you do all these photos here?”

“Well, obviously that picture was taken outdoors as were a few of the others. My section of village leaders was all taken onsite. Or mostly. I actually coaxed Mom into a studio shot,” I laughed.

Deborah looked around at the props and backdrops while I danced with Cameron across the floor. When I turned around, she was sitting at the table with the selection of Patricia’s and Pris’s photos. She didn’t say anything, but opened my album of personal favorites, including my classmates.

“Are these girls of age?” Deborah asked.

“Not all of them. That album is kind of my record book and is not for public display. It seems a lot of my classmates wanted to have an Attic Allure photo for their senior memory book.”

“You mean you have seventeen-year-old high school classmates who come to the studio and undress for you to take their photos??? Nate, how many girls have come here to have photos like these?”

“Um ... Well ... I have photos of twenty-one of the girls in my class. I had a few seniors last year who posed. And I had ten models who came out from Chicago this summer for portfolio photos. Most of them are private and not for public display. The picture with all the ribbons over there is one of the models, though. She’s given me special permission to display that one photo of her. She’s coming for another sitting on Sunday.”

“Thirty-five or forty? Why? Why would they come here to get this ... Attic Allure photo you take?”

I walked over to the gallery and looked at the photos. I pointed at Patricia’s photo on the motorcycle. Janice’s calendar picture. The girls on the porch smoking. Lori’s picture as she looked at her breast and her picture on the truck. Avery’s picture under the streetlight. Amy’s picture as a strung-out girl in despair. Kat on the rocking horse.

“They all come hoping that I’ll capture them like these photos. They want to reveal their inner selves, and to do that, they reveal their bodies. For some of them, the photo session is a kind of counseling session. They leave here feeling better about themselves.”

“You don’t just do it to see a bunch of naked teens?” Deb persisted. I grinned at her.

“That’s a side benefit,” I said.

We were all home for dinner and Dad was computing the time for the Thanksgiving turkey and whether we’d want him to bake pies. Kat and Deb both volunteered to help bake pies and said they’d get at it right after dinner. We were sitting around and just letting the meal settle before we started cleaning up when there was a knock on the door. I jumped up to go answer it and was bowled over by my other sister.

“Naomi! You came home for Thanksgiving! How did you get here?” I yelled as I danced around with her.

“I’ve been on a bus for twenty-two hours. Where’s the bathroom?”

I pointed her to the stairs and she ran up before she even greeted anyone else. We were all waiting at the foot of the stairs and applauded when she came back down. She did look sharp in her Air Force blues with a white shirt and dark blue tabs. Her hair was short and under her blue and white hat.

Everyone greeted her and we shuffled around the table to put another chair there and get her fed.

“So, the bus dropped me with my duffle in front of this odd-looking grocery store that advertises men’s suits and shoes. I had no idea where you lived, but I saw the Methodist Church as the bus came into town. Then a police car rolled up beside me and he was really nice. He asked if he could help me find anyone. I told him I was looking for you and he got really friendly and said to please let him deliver me. Which was nice because it’s getting really cold out. He said he was Constable Stoney and knew my brother pretty well. What kind of trouble have you been in, Nate?”

“No trouble, really. I just gave him some photos.”

“Really?”

“Your brother took pictures, first of our former constable that helped me get him canned,” Dad said. “Then he discovered he had photos that led to the solution of a lot of petty thefts and vandalism in town. Stoney was a godsend when it came to dealing with the situation.”

“So, it’s your pictures that get you in trouble?” Naomi said as she winked at me.

“You have no idea,” Deborah said. “Our little brother is a professional photographer. For real.”

It was fun to get caught up with my sisters, even though they had declined to help me with my CO references. Sleeping arrangements were a little stressed. Deborah and Cameron got my room. Naomi got to sleep with Kat. I got my sleeping bag out and slept on the couch in the living room. I was thinking maybe I should make up the bed in the studio and spend the night there the next day.

That would be strange and a big temptation to have Chris stay with me. It would definitely violate the principle of no sex in the studio. I couldn’t help but imagine Chris and me in that bed for a night together. It was a little uncomfortable. There were no springs and the mattress was really just a piece of foam rubber over the plywood. But I was sure it was better than the back of the Belvedere or the couch in our living room.

Dad was up at five to get the turkey stuffed and in the oven. Fortunately, some people slept longer than others. Getting six and a half people through our one bathroom could have been a task. As it was, I got in and out of the shower fast, just in time for Deborah to take little Miss Cameron in and get her cleaned up after her night. She came down and sat at the kitchen table with her robe open and almost two-year-old Cameron attached to her right breast.

I guess I kind of stared for a minute. It was something I’d never seen. I don’t mean just my sister’s boob, but I’d never seen a baby being nursed. I thought everyone used bottles and formula.

“You might as well take a picture. It will last longer,” Deborah said, scowling at me.

“That was what I was just thinking. It’s ... such a beautiful thing. Would you do that in the studio later so I can take a really good picture?”

“You want to take a picture of your sister’s boob?” she growled.

“No! I want to take a picture of ... Well, I guess your boob would kind of be in it, but I meant of feeding Cameron. She looks so content and happy,” I said.

“She’s always happy when I’m feeding her. I guess. If it’s not too explicit. John loved watching me feed her. I’m sure he’d like a picture. I don’t know about sending it to a photo lab, though.”

“You don’t need to worry about that. I do all my own photo processing and printing. Nobody else needs to see it.”

“You mean like the album of cute high school girls that no one is supposed to see?” she giggled.

“You caught me with that open because I was transferring photos to it from my album that Uncle Nate will want to see when he gets here,” I said.

“Uncle Nate and Aunt Grace are coming today?” Naomi asked, coming into the room. “Oy. How does a little girl like Kat take up so much room in the bed? Maybe I should sleep on the sofa tonight.”

“I take up more room than Kat does,” I said shaking my head.

The family kept gathering. Kat was last down, looking daggers at Naomi.

“You kept elbowing me all night,” she growled. I put a tray of bacon and eggs on the table and everyone started digging in. We didn’t have enough chairs in the kitchen, so we spread out to the dining room, too.

“We’ll need the other two leaves in the table in order to seat thirteen,” Mom said. “Nate, you need to run out to Dad’s storage unit and find the high chair. We’ll need the folding chairs, too.”

“Why do we need thirteen places?” Naomi asked while counting on her fingers.

“Oh, Nate’s girlfriend and Kat’s boyfriend are brother and sister, so we invited them and their parents and sister to share Thanksgiving with us,” Mom said. I think that was the first time I’d heard that bit of information and wondered if Chris knew they were coming here for dinner. For that matter, I wondered if Julie would be upset they weren’t spending the day with Danny and Ronda.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Kat said adamantly. “I told Brian he couldn’t be my boyfriend until we were sixteen. He’s just a friend.”

“You tell ‘em, girl,” Naomi said.

“So, which girlfriend is this?” Deborah asked, giving me a smirk.

“Don’t tell me he has more than one!” Naomi said. “You cad!”

“There are three lovely photos on his desk upstairs. One of Nate in a nice-looking suit, and two of girls in formals on either side of him.”

“Chris is on the left. Ronda is on the right,” I said. “It was our pictures from the Valentine’s dance. If you looked at all the pictures on my desk, you’ll find our prom picture, too. It has all three of us. But it’s Chris who’ll be coming for dinner if Mom invited the Evanses.”

“I think it might be time for a sisterly intervention,” Naomi said.

“Oh, don’t get carried away,” Deborah admonished. “At least wait until you see his studio. And you should take Kat with you when you go, so she can explain it to you.”

“Explain it? I loved the picture of Kat on the hobby horse. Did you know it’s in her room? I mean the horse? She let me sit on it this morning. It’s so cool,” Naomi said.

“Nate gave it to me for my birthday,” Kat said. “I love it. You should see my painting of it.”

“Yes! Show us!” Deborah said. Kat ran upstairs and came back soon after with her stack of watercolors.

“I’m going to learn oil paints next summer,” she said. “It’s too hard to pick up a new medium when I have to focus on school.”

She laid her paintings on the table. There was a really nice rendering of the horse. Her art was really coming along. But then there was a series of paintings that we all gaped at. They were self-portraits of Kat on the horse. The first two were in dresses. The third, she was dressed in her summer shorts and was barefoot. In the last painting, Kat was nude. Oh, it was not explicit. She’d made her hair long enough to cover her budding breasts, and her position on the horse hid her privates. But it was still identifiable as a naked Kat.

We were all speechless.

“I need to put these away now. I don’t want them out where Brian could see them. He wouldn’t understand,” she said. She gathered up the paintings and ran back upstairs.

“Um ... I guess I should go out to Henry’s and get the high chair,” I said into the silence. Dad tossed me the keys to the Falcon and I left in a hurry.

Thanksgiving dinner was at 2:00 and it was really fun. Uncle Nate and Aunt Grace were thrilled that Deborah and Naomi had come home for the holiday. Uncle Nate was extremely happy to meet Chris and told her to take good care of me. I think he also mentioned seeing her photograph and she blushed.

“I don’t model for Nate anymore. We decided the studio had to be kept pure and have no ... um ... you know ... relationship stuff. Ronda and Anna and I all help out in the studio, but we don’t model,” Chris said. I almost choked when she was trying to figure out what to say instead of ‘no sex.’

“Hey, Julie,” I said to Chris’s fourteen-year-old sister, “I’m glad you came to join us today. I’m sure you’d rather have been at Danny’s house, but we’re really glad you came here.”

“Oh, yeah. No biggie. Danny’s becoming such a Ken Doll. I mean, he’s good looking—for a boy—but if he’s going to be a doll, he needs to let me dress him up. He wants to do it all himself,” Julie said.

“Gosh,” Chris said. “I was thinking of going to visit Ronda this evening and inviting you to go along.”

“Oh, I’d go and hang out, but I’m not tripping on the idea.”

“Kat? You’ll tell me if I start to turn into a Ken Doll, won’t you?” Brian whispered to my sister.

“Oh, there’s not much chance of that. I mean, really, Danny’s a centerfold. You’re just a nice guy,” my sister said. I wasn’t sure that was a compliment, but Brian seemed okay with it.

“Well, I’m ready for our after-dinner trek to the studio,” Uncle Nate said. “I’m sure his sisters would like to see the studio. How about you, Ray? Have you seen the studio?” he asked Chris’s father. I shot a panicked look at Chris and saw her gulp.

“No. I’ve heard so much about it. Darlene and I would love to find out where our daughter hangs out all the time.”

“Why don’t you guys go ahead,” Deborah said. “I saw the studio yesterday. How about Julie, Brian, and Kat stay here with me and we start clearing the table and getting the dishes done?”

“Um ... I’ll help, too,” Chris said. “Like Dad says, I’m hanging out there all the time.”

I think Brian was about to protest but Kat cut him off.

“There is mature content in the studio and it’s not appropriate for us kids,” she told him. “Let’s get the dishes done up and I’ll show you and Julie my horse and my paintings.” That settled things pretty quickly.

I ended up leading a pretty good procession the three blocks to the studio. It included my sister Naomi and Chris’s parents. Grace and Mom ended up staying back to help with the dishes.

It hadn’t quite made it above freezing and there was a pretty good wind, so we bundled up. At least there was not much snow on the ground. I’d been keeping the steps cleared because of all the kids who had been coming for pictures. Everyone took their shoes off once they were inside when they saw me do it. I started in on the guided tour, telling everyone that Dad and Mr. Kowalski had built my new darkroom for me, but I also still used the old darkroom that Dad and I built upstairs where the bulk of the props were stored. Of course, there were two things that drew everyone’s attention—especially Mr. and Mrs. Evans. That was the gallery and the prominently positioned bed where we’d last photographed Patricia on Sunday.

Mrs. Evans went to the bed and tested it. She seemed satisfied that it was too uncomfortable to get into much trouble on.

Uncle Nate glanced at the gallery and went directly to the two series of photos that I’d laid out for him while Chris’s parents looked over the gallery with Naomi. Dad sort of stood back and watched the action.

“That’s Tor Berg’s daughter, isn’t it?” Mr. Evans exclaimed.

“Yes, sir,” I said calmly. “Patricia is sending an application to Playboy Magazine to be a featured model. I was privileged to photograph her portfolio. Chris wrote the storyline for it. She’s a great help in staging photos and managing the scenes. She often does makeup for the models as well. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

“Now, Chris isn’t your business manager, is she?” Uncle Nate asked. “I recall her name is Anna.”

“Yes, sir. Anna Marx. With all the senior photos and orders for photos we’ve had this fall, I couldn’t possibly have kept up without her. As it is, I’ll be printing photos for the orders pretty much every day until Christmas.”

“I know this one, too,” Mrs. Evans said. “It’s Lila Anson’s daughter Priscilla.”

“Pris came up with the entire concept for her eighteenth birthday set,” I explained. “All the photos are being made up into book covers. It was her idea to use mannequins as her partners because she didn’t want to work with an actual boy. I think she settled on the title To Kill a Mannequin for that one.”

“Very clever,” Mrs. Evans said. I thought she was warming to the whole idea of my photography—as long as it wasn’t her daughter in the picture. I didn’t think she’d noticed the one of Chris in her lingerie.

“I was really prepared to give you an earful,” Naomi said, coming up to me. “Respect for women and all that. These ... After seeing what an artist Kat has become, I see it somehow skipped over me and hit my younger siblings. This is art. It’s ... They are all so beautiful.” My sister gave me a hug.

“We’d like him to take a good portrait of you in uniform,” Dad said. “Did you see the one he did of your mother over there?”

“That one and the picture of Kat on the hobby horse are my favorites,” Naomi said. “Yes, we can do a portrait session tomorrow.”

“So, you mentioned wanting to get a car,” Uncle Nate said. “What do you have in mind?”

“Well, when I did all the senior yearbook photos at the school, I had to talk Chris into borrowing her family’s station wagon in order to get my equipment from the studio to the school. And I didn’t really take that many things with me. But the backdrops and frame are ten feet wide, so even when they are all rolled up, they still need a ten-foot space to put them in. So, I’m thinking a van of some sort. Right now, it looks like the best bet is a VW Transport Microbus. I just haven’t found one yet. I’d be open to one of the Chevy, Dodge, GMC, or Ford vans, but they just don’t have as much class as the VW.”

“I can see those all as good options,” he said.

“When Chris took me to Dubuque a couple of weeks ago, we even looked at a used milk truck. I liked it except it only had one seat and even laying something all the way up over the step well, I wasn’t sure I could fit a ten-foot drop in it. Otherwise, it would be pretty cool to have an old delivery truck with my studio name painted on the side. I see the Charles Chips truck and always think it’s pretty cool.”

“I’ll keep an eye out in Chicago. There are likely to be more in the metro area than out here in the sticks.”

“That would be great.”

“I am surprised at the kind of photos you’ve been taking,” Mr. Evans said. “Keeping in mind my only experience with your photography was looking through the yearbook and the wonderful photo of Christine you took at the cemetery. But I have to say that looking at your work, I can actually understand why so many young women are willing to come in here and pose for you.”

“What you don’t see, Ray, are the photos of a dozen models who have come out from Chicago to have portfolios shot,” Uncle Nate said.