I let go of Lil’s arm. My hand was trembling, and I was grinning like I had won the lottery. I’m not a religious man, but it is hard to overstate how predestined this felt, as if every choice in my life had been made in the service of this moment. Then Lil shook her head and smiled in her thoughtful, distant way. I can’t have more children, she said. Anticipation had heightened my senses to the point where I could distinguish tiny, almost invisible freckles on the skin near Lil’s mouth. She spoke with such certainty that I thought at first there was some medical reason, some condition she had inherited from her mother; but as she continued, I realized it was simply her opinion that one child was enough, which was absurd. I have a brother and a sister, I told her. You told me yourself that your parents tried to have more. I love Sam, I explained, but she is not our child. I want our child. I want Sam to have what I had and what you should have had. If you think about it, nobody chooses to have just one. Lil shrugged. I do, she said. Then she tilted her head to the side to look at me through one eye, the way she did when she was sizing up a photograph. It felt as cold and distant as the gaze of a reptile. I tried explaining again. I told her we could hire a nanny, that the advantage of a job promoting stupid but lucrative books was that it allowed for certain conveniences. And then I explained—because it seemed necessary—that if we hired a nanny, Lil could continue with her photography. Sam’s bedroom was large enough to share. I had deliberately given her the biggest one. Nothing would change, I said. Now, instead of looking at me like I was a curiosity, Lil looked at me like I was nuts. Everything would change, she said.

52. Married couple, Brooklyn, 1960

JOURNAL ENTRY, MAY 1960: Seeing as the only other dedicated photography spaces are Little Gallery and Aperçu, I suppose I’ve run a gauntlet of sorts. Ted Ipplinger is a photographer who works in advertising. If Karen Ipplinger does something besides manage the Picture Shop, she didn’t say. The gallery consists of an empty studio apartment on West Seventy-eighth, with a partition down the middle to increase wall space. They were interested in the new work, the Brooklyn photos Mr. Wythe had described. Would I mind coming uptown?