The Small Backs of Children Read Online Free PDF Page B

hands. Later, it will be professionally and lovingly developed again—this time by hand, not machine.
    Calling from a crackling phone in some hole-in-the-wall, she does give the editorial assistant one direction: Make sure the writer gets a copy of the photo. Send it right away. Write “this is the girl” on a scrap piece of paper. Then she hangs up, smiling, thinking of the writer. Hoping for her intimacy.
    And so, the first time the girl comes to the house, the writer is at work on her novel.
    She takes the package into her living room.
    She pulls the cardboard strip that slits the belly of the package open.
    Briefly she pictures the photographer’s hands.
    She reaches inside and pulls the framed photo out.
    It is wrapped in brown paper.
    Scrawled across the front of the paper in some stranger’s hand: This is the girl.
    A whisper of star-cluster emotions move briefly through her heart. She stares at the handwriting.
    She unwraps the photo.
    She looks.
    Her pupils dilate, as they do in the dark, or when we shift focus from something far to something near, or when we are very much attracted to something, or when we enter an altered state.
    Yes. This is the girl.

The Hands of a Boy
    Once, when her husband was out of town at a film festival where his work was appearing, the writer took their son on a photo shoot. She bought two Kodak Instamatic cameras. She drove to the edge of the big river running through their city. It was a gray day—the kind of gray sky where the clouds look like they are holding the rain in their arms. They ran alongside the river along the river rocks, brushed their bodies inside patches of river reeds, examined a dead seagull drawn inland, collected little shells and stones. She showed him how to use the Kodak camera. His hands more adept at making things than he had language for. His cheeks two blooms.
    They took photos for hours.
    When she had the film developed, she took joy in his images—barely focused close-ups of rocks and sand and detritus. Odd-angled images of water and broken glass. The big gray of the sky that day. The eye of the dead seagull. And then she saw an image of herself that he’d taken. Her blond hair blowing acrossher face, her too-red winter wool coat, her arms so outstretched for him that they look as if they are about to pull off and away. It may be the truest image of herself she’s ever seen.
    She makes a promise to herself: Remember to let go. When the time comes. Remember that you must.

The Widow’s Watch
    The widow hears the girl make noises in her sleep. One night, when she hears the girl moaning, she pulls a blanket around her own shoulders and pads her way to the girl’s bed to rub her back, to take her from nightmare to otherwhere, but when she arrives at the body of the girl she realizes she is not moaning.
    She is laughing.
    Another night, the widow is again pulled from sleep by the sound of the girl—she is walking toward the front door. Is she sleepwalking? The widow believes it: Whatever this girl has been through, it must have lodged in her subconscious forever. Likely this girl will be haunted the rest of her life. But again, when she reaches the girl, when she extends her arm out to wake her or stop her from leaving the house, she sees that the girl is not opening the door.
    She is instead placing her cheek against it. She is kissing the door. She is smiling. Then the girl curls up on the floor at the base of the door and sleeps deeper.
    Then there is the night the widow hears singing. Is it singing? Again she rises from her bed and moves toward the girl’s bed, but the girl is not there. The widow moves silently toward the front door, but the girl is not there either. The widow’s heart makes a small tightening fist in her chest. But then she looks toward the kitchen window and there the girl stands, looking up and out, the moon lighting up her face. Eased by the sight of her, the widow listens.
    The girl is not singing. In her hands is a tiny