Lilly never said it outright, but I think she’d been hoping her library run would catch more eyes. As we were leaving the Faces show, she told me she could imagine Window-shopping, or Two girls, or Asleep there. Not the others, she said, they were too dark, but those three photographs would be a good fit. It wasn’t a question, and it didn’t come decked in bravado the way the boys talked about their art: Kyle with his proclamations, Leon with his scorn. The way Lilly said it, it was thoughtful—deferential, even—but also unshakably certain, and I knew that she belonged in that museum. It was just a matter of time.

38. Grocery store, New York, 1955

JOURNAL ENTRY, OCTOBER 1955: Once again I have John to thank, because I wouldn’t have met Ken if John hadn’t asked me to mind the register while he went to “freshen up.” As it was, you were asleep in your pram and John was in the back room getting high when a man about my age walked in. After looking over the shelves, he asked me to recommend something recent, so I handed him the latest issue of On the Wind. This got him asking all sorts of questions about poetry that I couldn’t answer, so as an excuse, I explained that I was a photographer. That got him asking more questions, but these I could answer until John reappeared and helped Ken with what he’d really wanted, which was a new novel to read.

When Ken came the next day and asked for me (you were asleep again), John pointed to my usual place at the typewriter in the back, where Ken and I talked as I typed. Just as I was telling him about the lordly line of women I’d caught waiting for the register at the A&P, he asked in the most charmingly nervous way if I wanted to meet him for dinner. I said yes, so long as I could find a babysitter, which really threw him. Then I pointed to you, still conveniently asleep in your pram, and said if that changed his mind, then no hard feelings; but he looked at you and he looked at me, and then he shook his head in an almost puzzled way and said that no, it didn’t change a thing.

I don’t remember Ken very well, but I grew up with some weirdly specific ideas about fathers that must date back to him: dads put you to bed so that moms can be in the darkroom; dads don’t mind eating TV dinners if moms are out taking pictures all day; on weekends, dads cook so moms can catch the golden hour before sunset. In the 1950s, there wasn’t even a word like “progressive” to describe dads like that, because dads like that did not exist. But Ken did, at least for a little while.