I don’t know how many more Saturdays I woke up to my mother taking pictures through the window before it occurred to me to ask if something was wrong. She said she was just a little draggy, and supposed it was one of those colds that can be hard to shake, or maybe the dregs of the flu she’d had over Christmas. In retrospect, this should have triggered an internal alarm, but I had other things on my mind, like whether I should wear my blue skirt or my red pants to the movies, and if growing my hair out would make me look older. Angie thought it would, but Danny liked it short because he preferred a girl who stood out from the crowd.

LETTER TO DEBORAH BRODSKY, MARCH 1970: It’s because I can remember being fifteen that Jane makes me feel so old. Fifteen was when I picked up a camera and felt the curtain of my life lifting. That feeling chimes every time an image spreads across a piece of photo paper but now, instead of being fifteen, I’m thirty-five. Before you laugh, I know perfectly well that thirty-five isn’t old; but Deb, I’m so tired! I’m sure my tiredness comes partly from being in mourning. The darkroom hasn’t felt this lonely since the summer I moved from East Sixth to Brooklyn Heights and left our darkroom hours behind. Having Jane with me reminded me how that small space expands in the right company. I know her new independence won’t erase our shared time just as distance hasn’t erased yours and mine, but that doesn’t mean I’m not sad to see it end.

I thought I was ready for Jane’s teenage self. Then I met her boyfriend and felt so dizzy I had to sit down. It’s one thing to hear a boy’s voice on the phone; it’s another to see him at your front door. Jane hadn’t told me he was older. He seems nice, but Deb, he’s eighteen!

Between any two people, there is always an unbridgeable distance. I used to think basic biology meant that the gulf between me and Jane would be smaller than the one between you and Yuma. Now I know that isn’t true. Son or daughter, your flesh can attain a shape so different from anything you could have imagined that the notion it was once inside you feels like a fairy tale.

98. Untitled [Child playing hopscotch], New York, 1970

A few weeks later, Lillian stayed in bed as I got ready for school—Lillian, who only ever took sick days to buy herself more camera time—and at the end of the afternoon, when I came back from Bohack’s, she was still there. This went on for about a week before she made a doctor’s appointment. Things seemed normal for a while after that. Could I bring home more steak? she wanted to know. The doctor said it would help. Then one Friday I came home to an empty apartment—unusual but not unheard of, since sometimes my mother got sidetracked on her walks home from work.