Wednesday, November 18
The photographer asked Willa to put her chin down.
Willa put her chin down.
“Not that much.”
She lifted it.
“A fraction.”
Jo, beside her, said, “He wants you to have a chin. Don't take it personally.”
Willa laughed, and the camera clicked.
“There,” the photographer said.
The room at the Bellwether had been turned into a place where nobody was supposed to notice they were being arranged. Two chairs, a plain backdrop, a little table with a cup on it. Jo had objected to the cup because it wasn't hers. The photographer had offered to remove it. She'd decided she liked it.
They were taking pictures for the special first, and a few of the two of them together for whatever happened next. Nothing announced. Mae had said that twice, kindly, while somebody steamed a crease out of Jo's sleeve.
Willa had worn the black shirt. It looked better than it had in her bathroom. Somebody had put a small amount of powder on her face and told her not to rub her nose. This made her nose the only part of her body she could think about.
Jo sat with her feet planted, one hand loose in her lap. She knew how to offer a face without becoming fixed in it. Willa watched her do it and tried to stop watching.
“Look at your daughter,” the photographer said.
Jo turned.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Willa said.
“Then why are you looking so guilty?”
The camera clicked again.
They took a break while the lights were moved. Willa stood by the monitor and saw the last photograph appear: her own head tipped toward Jo, mouth open in the beginning of a laugh. Her mother looked amused and slightly smug, exactly as she had in the room. It was a good picture. Willa hated how good it was.
“That's us,” Jo said.
It was. That was the trouble with it.
The photographer went to get another lens. Mae was in the passage on a call. Jo looked around the room, then back at the image.
“We should get one with Beth.”
Willa didn't answer.
“Just a picture. The three of us. Before she goes.”
“She's working.”
“Later today.”
“She said she couldn't do today.”
“She said she couldn't do the clothes. This takes ten minutes.”
Jo reached for her phone. Willa started to say she could do it, but the woman with the powder brush had come back.
“Can I get you while we've stopped?”
Willa sat. The woman tipped her chin up with two fingers, very lightly.
“Close your eyes.”
Across the room Jo said, “Hello, darling. Have you got ten minutes?”
The brush went over Willa's forehead. She tried to hear whether Beth had answered at once.
“Not now. Later. We're having photographs taken, and I thought we could get one with you. While everybody's here.”
Something cool touched Willa's nose.
“Sorry,” the woman said. “You can open.”
Jo had turned a little away from them. She was looking at the place the extra chair could go.
“I know you're working. I thought before Friday—”
Willa sat very still while the brush went under her eye.
“Not for that. One for me.”
Jo waited. Willa could hear the photographer opening and shutting something in his case.
“All right,” her mother said. Then, more quickly, “All right. Go on. I'll talk to you later.”
She lowered the phone without ending the call, saw it was still lit, and pressed the screen. The photographer came back carrying the lens.
“Are we adding someone?”
“No.”
He looked at the empty space, then toward his assistant.
“Two, then. We'll bring that light in.”
Jo nodded. The woman finished Willa's face and offered her a mirror. Willa said it was fine without looking. She went to her mother.
“Not even ten minutes,” Jo said.
“I wanted one too.”
Her mother glanced at her. Willa thought she'd said the wrong thing, that it sounded as if she too had been refused a photograph by Beth. Then Jo said, “You were always looking away. Both of you. I used to think we'd have a whole family album of the backs of your heads.”
Willa smiled.
“Dad took those.”
“He took what he was given.”
Jo put the phone in her bag. She missed the opening the first time and pushed it in harder than she needed to.
“Your hair,” Willa said.
Her mother held still while Willa freed a strand caught beneath the jacket collar. Willa went back to her place. The photographer was waiting for her.
The photographer had taken the cup away. Willa noticed its absence more than she'd noticed the cup. He asked whether they could try standing.
Jo stood at once. Willa followed.
“Closer.”
They moved closer.
“Willa, can you put a hand on her shoulder?”
She did. Her mother's shoulder felt smaller under the jacket than it looked. She could feel the shape of the bone, the warmth through the cloth.
“Relax the fingers.”
Willa relaxed them. Jo reached up and folded her own hand over them for a second.
“She's worried I'll escape,” Jo said.
“I'm worried he'll ask me to lean.”
The photographer laughed and took the picture. Jo laughed too, caught by the accuracy of it, not a joke they'd prepared. Willa could feel the old ease return before she had agreed to it.
They worked another twenty minutes. There were good pictures. Mae came back and liked one of them, then another. The photographer showed Willa the two he thought strongest.
In one, she looked like her mother. In the other, her mother looked like somebody who loved her.
“Which?” he asked.
Willa pointed to the second.
“Good,” Mae said.
Jo didn't ask to see which she'd chosen.
Afterward, Willa wiped the powder from the sides of her nose in the dressing-room mirror. The skin was pink underneath. She'd had a good face for nearly an hour and couldn't leave it alone.
Jo came in carrying the little cup from the photograph.
“They let me have it.”
“It wasn't yours.”
“It is now.”
Willa smiled.
Her mother set it on the table beside the tissues and sat down.
Jo looked at the mirror. “She won't come Friday.”
“She leaves Friday.”
“I know when she leaves.”
Willa waited.
“I don't mean the show. I mean before. The house. A goodbye.”
“Ask her.”
“I meant to.”
Willa turned from the mirror.
“On the call?”
“I didn't get that far.”
Jo looked tired now that the photographer had stopped asking her to move.
“I won't be doing this again.”
“Photos?”
“The whole thing.”
“You'll work.”
“Not like this.”
Willa could have said the studio would be better. She didn't know that. She could hear in Jo's voice a place where all the years of being collected, dressed, introduced and applauded had become a life she couldn't entirely want to leave.
“I'll be here,” Willa said.
Jo looked at her.
“Yes,” she said. “You will.”
Willa put her hand on the back of her mother's chair. She kept it there until Jo got up to change.