Lift Read Free

something—weaving a hot-pot holder, peeling off your toenail polish, memorizing the dialogue between Troy and Gabriella—to notice me skulking around with my Nikon.
    I had my camera the day Claire put her foot in the ocean for the first time. We’d stopped off at a stretch of beach after lunch at this greasy, delicious Mexican place and even though it was too cold to swim, Claire, you stripped off your clothes and greeted the sea like an audience, or your oldest friend. Before we got back in the car, you had to wash the sand off your body in one of those almost-painful public showers where the pressure’s been set too high. You found so many ways to thrill yourself in those jet streams, ways that would make your Catholic grandmother blanch. NeitherDad nor I were inclined to stop you. You’re only two and a half once.
     
    After a couple of years of family photography jobs around Berkeley, Children’s Hospital in Oakland hired me to take the cover shot for its donor report. I was so flattered. I charged my batteries and packed up my macro lens—the one for super close-up shots, like eyelashes and baby toes—and drove to Oakland, thinking that I should go for one of those hand-in-hand shots, a big adult hand holding a preemie hand. I hoped the newborn’s fingers would be small enough to make the contrast really dramatic. I actually hoped that.
    I was a few minutes early, so I hung around the lobby waiting and watching. A young guy came in on a bike, wearing his baseball hat backward,looking like the boys I knew in college. I watched him dig around in his pocket and show the nurse his license, and she nodded. “Your son is in Room Eleven. I’ll take you back.” I started looking around at everyone then, wondering what news they were waiting to get and which of them seemed the most ready.
    I drifted over toward a huge dollhouse by the check-in counter and marveled at the tiny lamps with pleated fabric shades and pulls no bigger than sesame seeds. In the parlor, there was a miniature silver tea set that had a pitcher, a spoon, and a sugar bowl with a lid that you’d need tweezers to pick up. Upstairs, a girls’ room had twin spool beds with pink coverlets. The whole thing was protected by Plexiglas, to make sure nothing bad happened to it.
    Eventually, I was led into the NICU, where the babies were the same way—tiny, mesmerizing, protected by Plexiglas. Ken, a small, earnest guy who escorted me around, took me to Leon, born the day before, at fourteen ounces. He had a tube down his throat and wires taped to his chest. Near his face, someone had laid a piece of fabric about as big as a gum wrapper. Ken said it was a scent square.
    “Parents wear the fabric on their skin—moms tuck it in their bras, dads rub it between their fingers—and before they leave for the night, they set the square by the baby’s nose,” Ken said, “so he’ll know them when they return.”
    My mouth went dry. I found an Altoid in my purse and sucked it like it was an anti-anxiety pill, or a pacifier. Ken introduced me to William, a NICU nurse who’d been singled out for his giant hands. I snapped my lens into place and positioned Leon’s hand in William’s. People would respond to the image of those tiny fingers, they’d write checks, even without seeing the scrawny legs, the bulging,salamander eyes, the baggy skin that had been expecting so much more.
    Ken and the hospital folks loved the photographs, and in time I buried the memory of that room full of eggshell fragility and found ways to convince myself that I’d never have to go back to Children’s.
    When the printed brochure arrived in the mail a month later, I held it out for Dad and said, “Claire was born ten times bigger than that baby. Can you imagine?”
    But Dad doesn’t play that game. He’ll stew all night about a technicality in a contract at work that may or may not lead to a spat with a strategic partner, but real things? Things involving you guys? I don’t