Deb, I do get it. In principle I even agree, but that doesn’t mean I forgive her.

89. Ticker tape, New York, 1966

If you’re a glass-half-empty type, those white lines look like damage, as if the photograph is a pane of fractured glass or something someone took a key to, like they must have really had it in for all those faces pressed to the windows and done their best to scribble them out. But really, those people are just gazing at the confetti-filled air above a parade.

For the next two years, I was the type of person who would have seen the confetti. Samantha was yesterday’s news, and I’d stopped giving cops or magazine stands or even Nina a second thought. When the phone rang every first Sunday of the month, Grandma and I talked as if we were sitting at her kitchen table eating apple spice cake and looking for birds; and between knock-knock jokes, Grandpa quizzed me with spelling words and the times tables. In decent weather, Kaja and I walked around making up stories about the boarded-up buildings or playing hide-and-seek between parked cars. Since Lillian didn’t get home from work until at least six-thirty, I was in charge of cooking. This meant I ate a lot of mushy spaghetti with ketchup, but it also meant my mother did the dishes, which seemed like a pretty good deal. Maybe it wasn’t the way other kids lived, but for those two years it was close enough.

GRETE WASHINGTON: The MoMA telephoned while I was rolling meatballs. Almost I did not answer because I did not wish to soil the telephone with the meat. Everything was quite confused at first. I had forgotten that Lillian had given Mr. Tsaregorodcev my phone number. Mr. Tsaregorodcev thought he was calling Lillian. When a strange Swedish woman said hello, he apologized and hung up. Thank goodness he called a second time, because I took his number and telephoned Lillian right away. Soon she and Jane arrived with big smiles. I poured two glasses of aquavit and two glasses of cola, and we toasted to Lillian’s wonderful news.

LETTER TO DEBORAH BRODSKY, SEPTEMBER 1966: When I learned that Rope swing would be shown with other photographs of the “moment,” including work by Granois-Levais and Wilson, I went weak in the knees in the best possible way. I explained it to Jane by comparing myself to a musician who gets invited to perform with John, Paul, George, and Ringo. She rolled her eyes and informed me that George was the only Beatle worth anything. Then she asked if this meant she could get a new dress. I explained that my photo was just one in over two hundred and that the opening would go late. There wouldn’t be anyone at MoMA to keep an eye on her or to take her home in time for bed. Jane was so surprised to learn she wouldn’t be going with me that her jaw literally dropped. At first I thought she was angry, but when she shook herself like a wet puppy and practically danced into Kaja’s room to play, I realized that I’d witnessed her liberation. Being told that this photo and this invitation had nothing to do with her severed her remaining ties to the girl she’s worked so hard to leave behind.