Her Mother's Daughter (74 page)

Photo 2. The men have come outdoors and joined the women. All of them, with the exception of the photographer, are sitting in the aluminum chairs, or the Adirondack chairs softened with yellow-and-white-striped plastic-covered cushions. Now that we can see them, it is clear all of them could appear in an ad for the good life in America. Ed is wearing pale blue summer slacks, a fine white pima cotton shirt, with a silk tie, blue with a red paisley figure, given to him last Christmas by his daughter Anastasia. He wears this tie although he prefers more striking and dramatic patterns and colors, because he has been told his daughter has good taste. His shoes are cordovan moccasins, either brand-new or rarely worn. His socks are old-fashioned, navy blue ribbed cotton and lisle, therefore it is just as well that only a glimpse of them can be caught between his shoe and the cuff of his slacks. Bradley Carpenter is wearing beige linen Daks with Hush Puppies in the same shade, matching his socks and his light knit shirt, short-sleeved, open-collared. Although he is on leave, Justin Selby wears proudly the uniform of the United States Army with a captain's bars on his shoulders.

This shot focuses on the group of adults. Belle is leaning slightly forward as Brad reaches out to light her cigarette. He is smiling at her flirtatiously, and she has a pleased wry expression. Joy's bare back is to the camera—a lovely slender back, tanned by the Mediterranean sun during a week's vacation in Torremolinos which immediately preceded the departure of the Selbys from Germany at the end of Captain Selby's tour of duty and was made possible by the reliability and trustworthiness of their three German servants—maid, cook, and nanny—who will be sorely missed. Justin appears here in profile, his straight black hair combed firmly back, his cheek, smooth and unlined as a statue's, even darker than usual because of the Spanish sun. The blur in the right background is Jonathan doing a somersault.

Photo 3. Another shot of the same people, taken, obviously, after the photographer has hailed those who were turned away from the camera. This time, Belle, Joy, and Justin are facing the camera. Joy is smiling broadly, and appears to be concentrating on her smile. Justin is staring impassively, even sternly, at the camera, concentrating, it would appear, on avoiding any imputation of frivolity. Belle is distracted, she has turned at the last moment to call something out to her husband, who is just barely visible as he leaves the scene to fetch Belle's sunglasses from the house.

Photo 4. Billy, crowing with laughter as Jonathan creates another blur.

Photo 5. Someone has managed to stand Jonathan still, probably Billy, whose hand he holds. They are both smiling with delight. The front of Jonathan's pale blue knit suit is stained with green and brown streaks.

Photo 6. Arden, on her stomach, deeply engrossed, with her legs up in the air swaying to the music of whatever she is reading.

Photo 7. Arden appears to have been summoned, for she looks up from her book and around at the camera. There is an expression of annoyance and disdain on her face.

Photo 8. The three children stand together. Billy is looking down at Jonathan with great sweetness, smiling, and Jonathan is half-turned, looking up at Billy. Beside them, her legs touching at the knees and feet pointed outwards, Arden glares at this interruption of Laura Ignalls (Arden's pronunciation) Wilder's
Little House on the Prairie.

Photo 9. Jonathan, in a rare still moment. He is sitting in the grass looking dazed, having just somehow collapsed from his cartwheel, hitting his head. He has a round pink sweet face, big blue eyes, and at the moment, a puzzled expression. These children are very beautiful. The older ones are beautiful too, but their expressions are already clouded and shadowed in ways that prefigure adulthood. There is a tinge of sadness in Billy's face; in Arden's, of anger.

Photo 10. Joy is speaking and gesturing, her smile gleams, her eyes are aware of Justin beside her. He listens, as erect in his chair as if its back were not slanted, his face expressionless except for a slight upturning of the sides of the mouth as he gazes straight out into the camera. Belle is leaning forward in her chair, straining to hear her daughter. Ed is gazing into space.

Photos 11–22. Julie, in various phases. Pictures taken over the course of an hour or two. She has a round pink sweet face, large blue eyes, a happy smile, and a dab of hair poking out from under her fine handkerchief-linen bonnet trimmed with lace. She is caught by the invasive photographer asleep; drooling; with one eye open and one closed; smiling a broad toothless grin and reaching out to someone (her father) whose arms alone are visible; perched happily in her father's arms (his head turned to her, only the back of it visible in the photograph); held more formally and a little uncomfortably, by her mother, who is smiling broadly at the camera; by her grandmother, who seems to be tickling her tummy, and whose face is hidden, although the baby is laughing uncontrollably; on all fours on a small white blanket placed on the grass, head up facing the camera, mouth open, eyes wide, awed, discovering, an explorer.

Photo 23. Justin holds up for the camera a map of Germany and is pointing to the area where Heidelberg is found. Attending upon him are Brad and Ed, both absorbed in the map, Brad holding a glass in his right hand, Ed not. You cannot see Justin's face in this shot.

Photo 24. Joy is presenting Belle with a box, wrapped in flowered paper and a bow.

Photo 25. Belle has opened the box and is holding up a large (one-ounce) bottle of L'Air du Temps, her favorite perfume. In the background, Justin's face is hidden by a movie camera with which he records this scene. The movie camera and the perfume were purchased in the PX at Heidelberg. The movie camera will go on to record other openings of other gifts, Ed holding up an enameled penknife with a nail file, bottle opener, screwdriver, can opener, and other attachments cleverly contained within it. The movie camera will focus on the opening of each of these attachments. It will, briefly, show Anastasia with a strained smile holding up a bottle of Shalimar, Billy holding up a knife similar to Ed's but a little thinner, and Brad holding up a German beer stein. Since the movie camera neglected to record Arden's gift, its nature has been irremediably forgotten.

Photo 26. This is a close-up of Justin with his mouth open. He is speaking. He does not gesture as he speaks, nor does his facial expression change. It is not recorded what he was saying.

Photo 27. The picture taker has changed, and this and the following few shots are not as clearly focused or well-composed as the earlier ones. They are, however, just as cherished by those who received copies of them. Here is Brad, standing smiling behind Anastasia, whose face looks strained and who seems to begrudge the camera a smile. He has a glass in his hand and is toasting the camera. His face is a little lopsided.

Photo 28. Here are Brad and Anastasia standing with their children. The children look off into the distance—Arden's foot is up at the toe, suggesting she is tapping it. Billy's face is extremely sad, his eyes sunk into their sockets, they seem to grip emptiness: it must be a trick of the light. Anastasia has her hands resting lightly on the children's shoulders, but her face is stiff and strained, its lines deepened and darkened by the sunlight. She looks disdainful. Brad stands behind them, taller, they conceal his emerging potbelly, but not his receding hairline. He is smiling, but here too, his face seems puttylike, unfinished, like a clay head molded by a sculptor who then changed his mind and has begun to change his work. You feel you should throw a cloth over it until it is done.

Photo 29. Belle stands in the center, a stiff smile on her face. Joy stands to her left, smiling broadly at the camera. Anastasia stands to her right, her arm about her mother's shoulder, looking at her with an expression of tenderness.

Photo 30. The original photographer seems to have returned to the job. This picture shows Joy and Justin standing together, Joy smiling broadly, Justin brown and smooth and erect, without expression. Joy's head is turned a little toward her husband as if she is watching to try to catch his reaction. He looks straight at the camera.

Photo 31. Joy and Justin with Jonathan and Julie. Justin holds the baby; his profile seems to smile. The baby's mouth is open, her eyes veer wildly. Her bonnet has come off and her wisp of hair stands straight up. Joy is trying to smooth it down when the picture is shot, and her head is turned away from the camera.

Photo 32. This is the one picture that shows the photographer's skill, having been taken with great speed after photograph 31. The group is the same, but in this picture, Joy has turned back to the camera and appears to be crying out with surprise. She is smiling and protesting at once, in a good-humored way. She is clearly a person who finds herself as well as the world amusing.

Photo 33. Belle and Ed standing formally but smiling side by side. Despite the sun hinted at by the shadowing on their faces, Belle has the sequin-trimmed sweater draped over her shoulders. Ed's hands are clasped behind his back in the manner of the Prince Consort. He holds his head at a precise angle so the sun will not reflect on his eyeglasses and turn his eyes into two round silver dots. He has learned to do this after many experiments.

Photos 34 and 35. Both of these are group shots taken with a timer, and include the entire family. In the first, Ed is standing on the end, where he ran after setting up the camera on its tripod. It is Anastasia's camera and her tripod, but Ed wanted to take the shot so she has left the arrangement to him. In the picture, he is tense, strained. This setting up of camera, tripod, and timer has taken him nearly twenty minutes (during which the children fidgeted, fussed, and the baby cried; Belle sighed loudly and lighted a cigarette, Brad went to the kitchen to refresh his drink and Justin's, and Anastasia whispered in her daughter's ear a plea for patience). The operation seems to Ed a miracle, the work of a master controller, and he is not sure, although he has checked everything twice, that he possesses the skill to work it.

In the picture as it is finally shot, Belle is in the center, smoking, her face arranged in a sophisticated, knowing expression; Joy is (after all) caught unprepared, looking downward and trying to arrange Jonathan's hair, which is wild as a halo around his sweet face. Brad also seems unaware that the moment has arrived finally, and is looking to the right, his face appearing a little angry about something unknown, but at the same time he seems not to want to be angry, so that his expression is unclear. The children look overjoyed—an accident, because just before the timer snapped, Arden announced that it had better hurry up or she would wet her pants, a remark that made the two younger ones burst into uncontrollable giggling. Anastasia too is smiling broadly, unselfconsciously, perhaps also giggling at Arden's crack. The baby, in Joy's arms, looks uncomfortable. Only Justin is unmoved, spare and erect.

Photo 35 is similar, having been taken the same way, but since the camera was already set up, people were more prepared. Belle smiles directly at the camera, but she must be thinking something she does not say, because her smile is a sarcastic smirk. Anastasia is smiling with the strain always apparent in her face when she knows her picture is being taken. Joy is smiling happily. Ed, perhaps sensing what Belle is thinking, looks sober and thoughtful, gazing down at the grass. The children are tired and have seated themselves on the grass with their arms entwined, smiling sweetly, Arden in the center, one boy on each side. Justin, strangely caught unprepared in this shot, is looking down at the children with a worried expression.

They are, overall, pictures of a happy comfortable American family. There is the golden glow of summer sun filtering through green trees on green lawn, a green thought in a green shade; and although skin tones range from Joy's fair skin to Justin's dark one, none is
really
dark, and all of the skins have the golden tone which indicates a standard of living that permits vacations at beaches, or at least sunbathing or sitting of an afternoon in a garden.

The picture taker would like you to consider also the names: Stevens, Carpenter, Selby. You would never know from such names that there was an ounce of anything but WASP blood in any of them. Nor could you tell this from their appearance. Whether blond and blue-eyed or dark-haired and brown-or hazel-eyed, they have the look of people raised in privilege. They are certainly middle-class Americans. Belle looks almost aristocratic, and there is a look on Anastasia's face that makes her unsuitable dress unimportant, that gives her the appearance of being a person who sets her own standards. The background is equally impressive—green lawn, a bed of brilliant flowers, trees. The shot is so focused that the garage does not appear, nor the driveway that separates this 50' X 100' plot from its neighbor. These happy smiling people could be living on a small estate on the North Shore of Long Island, or in the wealthier exurbs of any large American city. These are Americans who have
made it.

Photo 36. To the sociologist-historian, this photograph appears to have been taken somewhat later than the previous ones. In support of this hypothesis, we offer first, the fact that it shows all the adults with the exception of the older daughter, Anastasia, seated in a rough circle. It is therefore likely that she is again the photographer. A half-filled glass stands in the grass, tipped precariously against the leg of her empty chair. Second, this picture is somewhat less sharp than any of the others. We may deduce from its fuzziness, as well as its lack of sufficient light, a lack that could have been alleviated had the picture taker opened the aperture, that the photographer was at this time somewhat less clearheaded than earlier. In addition, the facial expressions of all the subjects (with one exception) are more animated, less controlled, than before. And finally, the writing on the tag accompanying the negatives is nearly illegible. It would appear the photographer wanted to finish this roll of film regardless of her condition.