The Photographer by Mary Carter (best summer books TXT) 📕

“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