She’d made her darkroom out of the tiny room. Really it was more of an alcove with a door, no bigger than a walk-in closet. Mine had my desk, a chair, and a small bookshelf that left me just enough space to slip inside and sit down. Lilly had her enlarger in there, shelves to store her chemicals, and a table for her trays, with a big bucket beneath the table for dumping her used chemicals and a jug for carrying in hot water from the sink in the main room. That didn’t leave much space for anything or anyone else, but in the dark, the sense of smallness fell away. Whether I stayed thirty minutes or three hours, I felt better going out than I had going in. Spending time with Lilly in the dark that way felt intimate, like being in bed minus the sex. I could see how easy it would be to devote your life to something like that. Suddenly it was obvious to me that Lilly was doing the same thing with photos that I was doing with poems, Leon and Cass with theater, Judy with paintings, and Renaldo with dancing: we were all seekers and revealers of truth.

LETTER TO WALTER AND DOROTHY PRESTON, FEBRUARY 1954: Perhaps you noticed from the address on the envelope that I’ve moved. I have learned the only way to work properly is to rent an apartment of my own. Don’t worry, my new upstairs neighbor is a woman named Deborah, who has been living on her own for years, so you see, it’s really not so unusual! She’s been very happy to show me around, so I feel quite comfortable and welcome.

21. Legs, New York, 1954

A basic description of this photo would make it seem boring: half a step stool and the bottom portion of a sitting man. Because of how Lillian framed it, it’s not boring. On the left side of the picture, the two legs of the step stool mirror the seated man’s legs on the right in a way that’s funny, except the joke is made complicated by his tragically skinny ankles and weather-worn hands, which rest on his thighs like lost gloves. More complicated still, the photo somehow makes me feel as much for the stool as for the sitter.

When I was little, I remember Lillian moving orphaned mittens from the middle of sidewalks to the spiked uprights of the iron railings that fronted buildings. She’d tell me she didn’t like the idea of them being left alone. Once when I was around sixteen, after one of our endlessly repeating fights, Lillian told me that more than anything else, she had hoped to spare me that lonesome feeling. The way I’d laughed made her flinch, which felt pretty satisfying at the time. No mother can save her child from loneliness, but for a mother like Lillian, it was truly futile.