Judging by the angle, Lillian must have been standing beside the bed, gazing down on a roommate, since she couldn’t have practiced her usual photography-walk method as a Memorial inpatient. Surrounded by the whiteness of the bedsheets, the sleeping woman’s head and one visible hand look like anatomical specimens, carefully laid out for inspection. That, plus Lillian’s off-center placement, turns what could have been a peaceful image into something foreboding.

The first few days Lillian was in the hospital didn’t feel that different for me, except for not having someone to say goodbye to in the morning, and no one answering back when I said things to the closed darkroom door as I watched television or did homework after Bohack’s. My mother explained that since the cancer cells were only in her bone marrow, all she needed were a few transfusions to bring up her red blood cell count, and she’d be released from the hospital. I told her I was fine at home on my own. It sounded like she’d be let out pretty soon and, anyway, I was the one who cooked dinner and bought groceries, but Lillian didn’t like that. Angie’s mom didn’t like me, so staying there was out. When Danny’s mom called the hospital to say I was welcome to stay with them, I didn’t think my mother would go for it, but she did. Angie said I was probably the only girl in South Brooklyn with permission to live with her boyfriend. She sounded so sure I lived a charmed life that I almost believed it.

By this point, I’d eaten so many times at Danny’s house that living there didn’t seem like too much of a stretch. The McAlisters said grace before every meal, and there was a crucifix in every room except the bathroom. Mrs. McAlister went to Mass every morning and was a light sleeper besides; after the third night, I gave up on the idea of Danny sneaking out of his room after everyone else was asleep. Mornings, I walked to school with Danny’s brother and sister. Afternoons, we’d do homework together at the kitchen table after my Bohack’s shift. Friday and Saturday nights, Danny and I had to be back from the movies by nine-thirty or face Mr. McAlister. Ironically this meant that during the two weeks I lived with Danny’s family, we fooled around less than before; but our brief opportunities buzzed with the combined electricity of living like boyfriend and girlfriend and brother and sister all at once.

LETTER TO DEBORAH BRODSKY, APRIL 1970: I’d been blaming the aches, breathlessness, and tiredness on some sort of flu, but I should have known from my camera hand that something more was wrong. For the first time, it felt like deadweight. Even after the transfusions, that heavy feeling is still there. Though I haven’t stopped taking pictures, snapping the shutter has become an empty reflex, like a hiccup or a sneeze. I know this should upset me, but that would require energy I do not have.