JOURNAL ENTRY, MARCH 1961: When I said we were spending the night at Kaja’s, you were thrilled. Since it was your first sleepover, you didn’t think to wonder why I was sleeping over, too. I waited until morning to tell you the rest. I was so nervous that I wrote down what I was going to say. Ken and I needed to live apart, I told you, because we wanted different things. “Like what?” you asked. “Children,” I said. “Ken wants more children, but I don’t. I just want you.”

You smiled and said, “That’s okay. Daddy already asked me, and I said you could.” “When did he do that?” I wanted to know. “A long time ago,” you said, and smiled even more. As I tried to explain about having only so much energy and attention and not wanting to divide it any more than I already did, somehow it came out that Ken was not your father. You became very still. “But I always call him Daddy,” you said. “Why did he let me call him that if he isn’t?” This wasn’t a question I was ready for: I’d been too busy thinking of how to put things so that you’d know the separation wasn’t your fault.

I said, “Ken loves you so much that to him you are his daughter.” But this wouldn’t do, and your face grew pale. You looked at your small suitcase and the stuffed monkey sitting on your lap. “Are we ever going back?” you asked. I shook my head, and your stillness became unnerving. All I could do was watch you, waiting to see what would happen next.

You were like a storm cloud bursting. You pounded your fists into the sofa and kicked and thrashed, and after you fell onto the floor, you didn’t stop. When I tried to console you, you pushed me away. “Why didn’t you tell me?” you raged, your kicks landing on the floor, the furniture, my shins. From the corner of my eye, I saw Grete and Kaja standing frozen in the doorway. Each time I reached out, you fought. Your fury was like nothing I’d ever seen. Only after you thrashed in such a way that your head hit the table did you let me hold you. “He lied!” you sobbed as you clutched at me, burrowing into my chest. “He’s not my real daddy, and we are never going back.” Your anger tore at you like it was breaking you in half. The only thing that felt worse than being so unprepared was my guilty relief that your rage had shifted away from me.

56. Self-portrait, Brooklyn, 1961

This isn’t the first shadow in Lillian’s work: there’s also that picture of Charles in the park. I could say this proves Lillian’s secret sense of connection to my long-lost sperm donor, but I think by the time she took this, she’d forgotten that other portrait almost as completely as she’d forgotten him.