PART 2: THE MIRROR COMES DOWN
Years went by.
Mom kept up her treatment, though her scars never disappeared.
Some mornings, she wore makeup.
Other mornings, she didn’t.
One afternoon, she pulled the sheet off her bedroom mirror and folded it into the linen closet.
She began going grocery shopping without asking me to come along.
Then she attended one of my school events.
She sat near the back.
When I spotted her, she waved.
I waved back so eagerly that the girl beside me asked who I was looking at.
“My mom,” I said.
***
Mom still had difficult days.
Sometimes she changed clothes three times before leaving the house.
Sometimes a stranger’s stare sent her home early.
But she stopped apologizing for being seen.
By the time I was grown, we’d settled into a comfortable routine.
I visited on Sundays.
We cooked dinner, watched terrible game shows, and argued over whether the contestants should have known the answers.
Then Mom noticed something about our family photographs.
There were dozens of pictures of me.
School dances.
Birthdays.
Graduation.
But after the fire, Mom was missing from almost all of them.
She’d always volunteered to hold the camera.
One Sunday, she spread several albums across the living room floor.
“Look at this,” she said.
I leaned over.
It was a photograph from my graduation.
I stood beside a flower bed, holding my diploma.
“That’s a good picture.”
“Yes,” Mom said. “But I was there too.”
I looked at her.
She closed the album.
“I think I’d like to learn photography properly.”
She signed up for an evening class at the community center.
A month later, she mentioned someone she’d run into there.
“Morgan.”
I stopped chopping carrots.
“Morgan? Dad’s old friend?”
“The same.”
I remembered him from childhood.
He’d worked with Dad in their small renovation business before the fire.
Morgan used to bring doughnuts on Saturday mornings when he came to talk about jobs.
After Dad left, I saw him a few times.
Then he vanished from our lives too.
“What’s he doing in a photography class?” I asked.
“Apparently, trying to figure out his camera.”
“Oh!”
Mom smiled.
“He asked whether I’d worked out the timer. Neither of us had.”
They became friends.
Sometimes they met for coffee after class.
Sometimes Morgan helped Mom carry her photography equipment.
But he never pushed her to do anything.
When she wanted to try taking portraits outdoors, he went along.
When she preferred to work alone, he let her.
***
A few months later, Mom invited me over for a photograph.
She’d set a camera on a tripod in the backyard.
“Sit here,” she said, pointing to the bench.
“What’s the occasion?”
“Nothing. I want a picture of us.”
She set the timer and hurried to sit beside me.
The first photograph caught only Mom’s hand as she dashed into the frame.
The second showed me laughing because she’d nearly tripped over the garden hose.
The third was the one she printed.
We were sitting shoulder to shoulder.
Her scars were visible.
Neither of us was looking directly at the camera.
She framed it and placed it on the living room mantel.
Not long afterward, she told me she and Morgan were seeing each other.
I was surprised.
Then I saw them together.
He listened when she talked.
He laughed at her terrible jokes.
And when she said she wanted to carry her own camera bag, he didn’t argue.
I liked him.
More importantly, Mom did.
***
Ten years after Dad left, I was visiting Mom when someone knocked on the front door.
She was upstairs getting ready for dinner.
I opened it.
My father stood on the porch with a suitcase.
