Chapter 51

I had to read a chapter of Hemingway's "Old Man and the Sea" for English and do some busywork homework for History — the answers were all either bold headings or found in captions under the pictures in the chapter we were assigned. I was done within a half hour.

Jack had an hour and a half between the scheduled end of Nancy's appointment and his long string of appointments. I went into the kitchen and started looking through the freezer.

"Chicken pot pies from the Chicken Pie Shop OK for dinner, Jack?"

"Sure. Sounds good. Have we got enough for three?"

"If you can get by with only one of the large ones."

He said, "Nancy, would you like to stay for dinner?"

She looked at me cautiously. "Uh, I wouldn't want to put you out."

I smiled and said, "It's no big deal. It'd be kind of fun to have someone over who's not family."

"OK. If you're sure."

"Alright. I'll make a salad to go with them."

Jack said, "Good, Honey. Now Nancy. What do you like to do other than Volleyball?"

I preheated the oven, got out my cookie sheet and put three of the big chicken pies on it. They're better if you can eat them fresh, but you end up reheating them anyway if you don't eat them at the store. They'd recently started selling them frozen, both at their downtown store, which had been there forever, and a couple of "organic" grocery stores. These three were the last of a bag of them Daddy had given us when Wanda dragged him into a grocery store. That was one Pandora's box I never had the guts to open. Daddy always waited in the car or came back for me at a specified time when I went grocery shopping.

Bozo was on his rug in front of the sink looking sad so I invited him to come out to the living room with me. He must have been told to leave Nancy alone. I can't imagine him allowing a new person to just sit at the table and talk to Jack in peace. He was happy to follow me.

I curled up on the couch with the Pictures box next to me. I opened it up to find three photo albums inside. The first had 1991 — 1995 written on the cover.

I opened it to find that each page had a clear plastic cover on it that could be peeled back from the binder edge. Pictures went underneath and the plastic was then put back over them. There wasn't any glue involved but the pages must have been treated with something. If you kind of smoothed the plastic from the outside in, it would stick to the parts of the page that weren't covered with photos. There were several different sized pictures; some Polaroids, 3X5s and 5X7s.

In the beginning, all the pictures had Vivian in them. A young, beautiful, vibrant, long-haired Vivian who showed no sign of the cancer that would eventually eat her alive. There were a few with my father but the majority were only her. I imagine he took most of them. She got progressively heavier as the pictures documented her pregnancy. Here was an older version of me, carrying my developing fetus before my entry into the world.

I hadn't really thought of myself as beautiful before. Daddy and Jack said I was but, as Wanda said, we women all find faults with ourselves. Looking now at the sheer beauty of this woman and recognizing how much she looked like me, I realized that I was beautiful, too. It wasn't a vain thing. It was more like a guy looking at a picture of himself and realizing that he was muscular.

There was a variety of pregnant pictures. There were some at the zoo, the beach and other places the two of them had gone to. All of the pictures that included Daddy were at places like these. But then there were the candid shots, doing everyday things. A picture of her from the back, standing at the stove, just turning around as if Daddy had called her or she heard him sneaking around back there. Sitting in a rocking chair with her feet up, swiping at a loose strand of hair.

One of the most beautiful was taken in the bathroom. It was obvious she had just gotten out of the shower. She was wearing a terry cloth robe that wasn't quite big enough to cover her. The belt was hanging loose, not long enough to tie in a knot. She'd used a couple of safety pins, one above where her belly was starting to jut out and the other at the top of her legs. There was a slit of her swollen stomach visible, kind of like a slice of fruit, about two inches at the widest point. She was drying her hair with a towel, sticking her tongue out at the photographer, her head bent to the left at about a 45 degree angle. You could see the smile, even with the tongue sticking out and her blue eyes just sparkled.

After the pregnant shots came the hospital. Two of them were of Daddy holding me. He was wearing different clothes in each shot so they must have been taken on different days. Both of them almost made me cry, seeing the joy, the love on his face as he stared into mine as if lost. There was a picture of me in a crib, next to the bed my mother was in. And there were several of her in the bed, holding me. In a couple she was feeding me from a bottle.

Next up were the growing up shots. Daddy with a safety pin in his teeth, changing my diaper. My mother giving me a bath in the sink, Daddy's arm coming in from somewhere to the side of the picture, supporting me while she washed me. Me in a stroller, a goofy hat on my head. Me crawling around, standing in the living room while holding onto the coffee table, my father kneeling behind me, his hands spread, ready to catch me if I fell. About two years' worth. And then they stopped.

There was a blank page in the book and then there were two more sets of pictures. One was of Daddy playing with me in a park. He was pushing me in a child's swing; one with holes for the legs to fit through. Me sitting on a playground merry-go-round, holding onto one of the metal handles as Daddy pushed another one. Me going down a slide, Daddy waiting at the bottom for me. The other set was of me and Daddy at the beach. I had a child's two-piece bathing suit on, frills around both pieces. There were pictures of me building a sand castle. I had a bucket and shovel similar to the ones I'd put in the changing room for Laurie. There were several of me in the water with Daddy. Standing in water up to just below my knees, splashing Daddy. Him swinging me around so my lower legs dragged in the water. In one I was on top of him as he swam on his back, in another he was just about to duck under the water with me on his shoulders. That was it for this album.

The thing I noticed immediately about both these sets is they weren't as good as the others. They had been taken from some distance away. You could tell who the two of us were, but it wasn't like the others in the book where the photographer was right there, taking the picture. These shots were all taken by someone who was out of the immediate area. Someone who wanted pictures but didn't want to be seen.

I put the book back in the box and went to our room for a Kleenex. I wiped my eyes then blew my nose, wondering what would have happened if she came up to us one of those days she'd covertly taken pictures? I wondered how it felt for her to look at me, her daughter, knowing she could look but not touch. What would Daddy have said if she stopped by to visit for an hour or two, only to disappear for another six months or a year?

The pies had about 5 minutes remaining before they'd be done. I went back into the kitchen and Jack and Nancy were just shooting the breeze.