“I want something more . . . alert.”
All the seniors had been tasked with submitting a baby photo for the yearbook, and the deadline was soon. Eleanor, that year’s editor, grew closer to a nervous breakdown with each day that passed. Her voice over the intercom during the daily announcements had become shrill. “Please,” she’d say. “Please just email me something soon.”
“Have you chosen yours yet?” Ana asked, returning to the sofa to get back to the drawing she was doing.
“We don’t have any.”
She turned to a new page in her sketchbook.
“None?”
“I don’t think so. He’s never shown me anything.”
“May I draw you?”
“Really?”
“Just a ten-minute sketch.”
She patted the sofa cushion next to her and I sat. She studied my face before she touched charcoal to paper. She looked at my eyes, my ears, the slant of my nose, my cheekbones and my neck and the tiny freckles across my cheeks that no one ever noticed. She reached out and untucked my hair from behind one of my ears so that it fell forward.
She began to draw, and I looked at her as if I were drawing her, too. Her eyes and her ears and the slant of her nose. The flush in her cheeks and her laugh lines. The flecks of lighter brown in the darker brown of her eyes. She’d turn to her page and then look up at some part of me. I found myself waiting, each time she glanced down, for her to look at me again.
“Okay, I found two,” Mabel said. “This one says I’m ten months and I finally look like a human. This one is less baby, more toddler, but it’s pretty cute, if I do say so myself.”
She dangled them in front of us.
“Can’t lose,” Ana said, beaming at the sight of them.
“I vote baby,” I said. “Those chubby thighs! Adorable.”
She went off to scan and send it, and Ana and I were alone in the living room.
“Just a few more minutes,” she told me.
“Okay.”
“Want to see?” she asked when she was done.
I nodded, and she laid the book in my lap. The girl on the page was me and she wasn’t. I’d never seen a drawing of myself before.
“Look.” Ana showed me her hands, covered in charcoal. “I need to wash up, but I’m thinking about something. Follow me?” I followed her across the room to the kitchen where she turned the brass faucet handle with her wrist and let the water run over her hands. “I think he must have something to share with you. Even if he doesn’t have many photos, he’s bound to have at least one or two.”
“What if he didn’t end up with my mom’s stuff?”
“You’re his granddaughter. You were almost three when she died, yes? He would have had a photograph of his own by then.” She dried her hands on a bright green dish towel. “Ask him. I think, if you ask him, he will find something.”
When I got home, Gramps was drinking tea in the kitchen. I knew it was then or never. I would lose the courage if I waited until morning.
“So we’re supposed to turn in baby pictures for yearbook. For the senior pages. I’m wondering, do you think you have one somewhere?” I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. I heard my voice go high-pitched and shaky. “Or, like, it doesn’t have to be baby baby. I could be two or three in it. Just little. I think we don’t have any, which is fine, but I’m supposed to ask.”
Gramps was very still. He stared into his teacup.
“I’ll look through some storage. See if I can find something.”
“That would be great.”
He opened his mouth to say something, but must have changed his mind. The next day after school when I came inside, he was waiting for me in the living room. He didn’t look at me.
“Sailor,” he said. “I tried but—”
“It’s okay,” I rushed in.
“So much was lost.”
“I know.” I was sorry I was making him say this, sorry to have brought back memories of what was lost. I thought of the way he yelled at my counselor. “You remind me to remember them?”
“Really, Gramps.” He still couldn’t look at me. “Really. It’s fine.”
I’d known better, but had asked anyway. I was sick with the way I’d upset him and sick, also, with the way I’d let myself hope for something that didn’t exist.
I walked along Ocean Beach for a long time, until I reached the rocks below the Cliff House, and then I turned around. When I was back where I started, I still wasn’t ready to go home, so I sat on a dune and watched the waves in the afternoon sun. A woman with long brown hair and a wet suit was nearby, and after a while she came to sit next to me.
“Hey,” she said. “I’m Emily. I was one of Claire’s friends.”
“Yeah, I recognize you.”