The Drowning House Read Online Free PDF Page A

light picked out the lines that were starting in his forehead, the shadows under his eyes. Was that what made him look suddenly so sad? And so fixed in that sadness, as if the thoughts he was having were the same ones he had had many times before, the only thoughts he could have?
    “Well,” he said, “okay. Since you want to know. I wish her hair wasn’t in her face. I wish her overalls were clean. But that’s not it really. This isn’t my Bailey. I don’t know her. It’s a beautiful picture of …” He shook his head. Then he turned toward me so that he was backlit, a dark figure without a countenance. “I know I’m a lousy judge. It’s probably really great. So let’s forget that. Let me say instead that sometimes it’s as if we’re just, I don’t know … props. Interesting, but only in the context of your artistic vision. Whatever that happens to be at the moment. The Laughing Girl. The Man by the Window.”
    “You forgot the Snotty Lawyer.” Now I was glad I couldn’t make out his face. It was easier to speak my mind to that dark outline. “Do you hear yourself? Do you hear what you’re saying? You, the hotshot litigator? What happens to people when you put them on the stand? I’ve heard you planning it. So don’t tell me it isn’t deliberate.”
    “That’s different. I’m talking about us.”
    “I don’t recognize the distinction.”
    “I know you don’t.”
    “Michael, I can’t keep my life in compartments. One for work and one for home. One for you and one for Bailey. I can’t measure out my feelings like that. So it’s true, I admit it, my work and my life overlap. What’s wrong with that? I’m a mother and a photographer, for God’s sake. Why can’t I photograph Bailey? Oh, yes, snapshots for the album, those are fine. But if I choose to photograph my child in any other way, you think I’m exploiting her?”
    I felt the blood rising to my cheeks as I went on. “You’re right, the Bailey you know isn’t the one I do. Your Bailey sits perfectly still. In a chair. Her hands are in her lap. She looks at you. Isn’t that whatyou’d like? Isn’t that your vision?” I couldn’t have explained why the thought of it was so unbearable. But I could feel a hot whorl of anger spiraling up inside me like smoke off a smothered fire.
    “Just because something’s ordinary doesn’t mean it’s contemptible.”
    I hardly heard him. “You know what I think? I think it drives you crazy that what I do is something you don’t understand. You don’t get it. You don’t see what I see. So you want me to photograph in a nice, obvious way that’s easy to understand and that makes you comfortable.”
    He shook his head, but without conviction. In matters of taste, Michael was deeply, thoroughly conventional. I’d once taken a picture of Bailey gazing out a window with her eyes wide and one small finger up her nose. I loved its unself-consciousness. Michael hated it. Why was I still trying to win him over? When of course he would have preferred a traditional portrait—his daughter, dressed and posed, looking into the camera. Looking at him .
    He didn’t answer. To his credit, he kept the photo of Bailey on the credenza in his office. He was still trying. In those days, we both were. And one afternoon a former classmate of Michael’s who worked in marketing stopped by. A client, he explained, was launching a campaign. The picture was exactly what they wanted. It captured a child’s energy, her exhilaration. It didn’t look posed. She wasn’t a model, was she? That made a difference. She didn’t look like a professional. “Your daughter?” he said. “Outstanding. Your wife took it. You must be proud.”
    And in fact he was. Almost immediately, for the first time, Michael was truly proud, even if he didn’t entirely comprehend what it was the marketing people saw in the photo. All it needed was for Richie (and the others who came after) to endorse it.
    I admit, the vindication,