I can tell Jane is disappointed by the new apartment, but I’m hoping the coziness will make her feel safe again. Of course, the best remedy will be if the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case means that our photographs will get the verdict they deserve. In one sense, it’s already too late: good or bad, no court ruling will change what Jane said to me through Kaja’s closed bedroom door. I pretend that framing her with my fingers will hold her image in my mind, but I know that today’s memory of her face will fade. Each day I mourn the daughter I cannot keep and each day, over and over, I press that invisible shutter.

86. Duke of everyone, Brooklyn, 1965

It’s not as random a title as you might think, though that painted lettering on the sidewalk is easy to miss. When the paint was fresh, those three words were probably a lot more legible, but now they blend in with the dirty concrete so well that without Lillian’s title as a hint, your eyes would probably go straight to the brick walls on either side of the empty lot, which bear the outlines of a building that no longer exists. Obviously, I wasn’t with Lillian when she took this, or it would have been relegated to the imaginary portfolio she took with her fingers.

My mother wasn’t the only one with a vestigial camera reflex. Let’s say I spilled the orange juice, or lost my house key, or told Lillian she was a shitty mother. As Samantha, I would have wrapped myself in a curtain, or found some sun to stand in, or grabbed a book to read while sitting upside down on the couch wearing nothing but a knit scarf, called for my mother, and—snap snap—instant reconciliation. As Jane, I was out of luck. For homework one night I was supposed to fill in a family tree, which triggered the predictable unpleasantness surrounding my desire for father data and Lillian’s inability to provide it. This cascaded into my usual claims of dissatisfaction and my mother’s counter-claims of ingratitude, which escalated into animosity (mine) and coldness (Lillian’s), culminating in insults (mine), an object thrown (me again), and capped by storming off and slamming the apartment’s sole bedroom door (guess who?). There I was in the bedroom, about to reach for one of Lillian’s dresses and eyeing my stuffed duck, when I froze. My mother and I were mad at each other, but our primary grievance-diffusing technique was no longer available. So instead, I lay on my bed and listened to Lillian stealth-wash the dinner dishes (the more upset she got, the quieter she became, like some kind of passive-aggressive mime). Next was the silence that signaled her walking across the living room on little cat feet, followed by the barely audible click of the darkroom door. To say this became the way we settled our differences is both true and false. True, because it’s what we were left with; false, because it didn’t settle a thing.