You can tell the couple in the front window is married, because otherwise no way would she be fixing his comb-over with her fingers while he eats his soup. I’m not sure what grosses me out more, her need to adjust him in public or his apathy at being publicly adjusted. It’s clear that Lillian thought there was something sweet about them. I can see how they might have reminded her of Grandpa Walt and Grandma Dot: not the tacky grooming part, but the married-for-so-long-personal-boundaries-disappear part. My grandparents were the first old married couple I met, leading me to believe that old married couples were like cows or peanut farmers, things that existed only outside New York.

By the time Lillian snapped this one, she had already taken most of the photos that would end up in the Lacuna show, and we’d been living with Grete and Kaja for almost a year. Considering Lillian’s total disinterest in housekeeping, it couldn’t have been easy on Grete to have us as roommates, but I only remember squabbles between me and Kaja over things like whose turn it was to use the blue china cereal bowl, and our fierce dedication to an endless series of competitions in which Kaja struck me as superior in everything that mattered. Probably I’d been jealous of Kaja from the moment I first saw her riding that playground horse, but my jealousy didn’t find its size and shape for years to come.

Different addresses aside, Kaja’s parents were still married. According to her mom, it was hard to get divorced in New York, but Kaja was pretty sure Grete still loved him; whereas Kaja believed her dad when he said that he was broke and divorces were expensive. Kaja preferred them split up: Paul did more stuff with her as a sometimes-dad than he’d done as an always-dad. I must have seen Paul a few times when everyone lived in Brooklyn Heights, but back then fathers weren’t any more noteworthy than postmen, and I hadn’t paid attention. Now when he brought Kaja back from Harlem on odd-numbered Sundays, I took in his wire-rimmed glasses and his skinny striped tie. I saw that he and Kaja had the same eyebrows, the same mouth, and charisma to spare, an aura of glamour that generally belonged to the rich or famous but which Kaja and her father exuded just walking through the apartment door. Seeing Paul on one side of Kaja and Grete on the other, I thought of an ice cream sundae: fudge, caramel, vanilla.