LETTER TO DOROTHY PRESTON, FEBRUARY 1955: I’m sorry to disappoint you, but everything is exactly as Father described. I won’t be coming home or giving up the baby. I plan to stay here, living as I am. Try to understand that I am thriving, and that while I face many challenges, they are the challenges I have chosen. Father mentioned that you almost joined him on his trip. I wish you had! While I don’t think you would have approved any more than he did, I think that, unlike Father, you would have seen my happiness and taken some comfort in it. But you were not here with Father, and now you write that until I come around to the “only sensible course,” I won’t be hearing from you again. Mother, how close did you come to making the trip? Did you pack a bag, then stop at the door? I would have liked to see your face, to hug you one last time, but if you truly mean what you have written, then I guess this is our goodbye.

DEBORAH BRODSKY: That was a crazy time. Lilly was putting in extra shifts at Barrow Street, as well as getting ready for the library show. To do all that, she needed more hours than were in the day, just like me when things were down to the wire with the magazine. It was funny, but she didn’t smoke or drink, so when she asked about “some sort of help,” I thought she meant an assistant. Which she did, but in the chemical sphere. I gave her a few Dexies and told her how they worked, and after that she became a force of nature in a way that’s possible only when you’re still nineteen. She traded Tuesday nights for darkroom time, stopped coming up at all, really, so I made sure to go down at least once a day with a sandwich or a piece of fruit. Lilly told me she was pretty sure the Times guy hadn’t known she was pregnant when he offered her the library gig, since she’d kept on her winter coat. An invitation like that wasn’t going to come twice. It wasn’t as if she could have told Mr. New York Times camera editor: Sorry, I’m about to have a baby, come back again in the spring. If I were her, I would have done the same thing—back then you could drink or smoke or whatever else while you were pregnant and not even your doctor would blink—but I can’t help wondering if working double time like that sped up the rest of her, too.