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By Root 2291 0

in a fuzzy white turtleneck sweater and a red vest, whose skin is rusty with liver spots and whose smile does not reveal her teeth, with a brushed-steel bouffant, pearl earrings, and a matching necklace, whose eyes are smoke-colored and haloed with cataracts, who was clearly a beautiful woman in her youth, and whose dense rosy perfume you can almost smell through the photograph, as if, on the day it was taken, her perfume had been powerful enough to waft through the lens of the camera, seep into the celluloid of the film, and later transfer from the negatives onto the matte-finish color print to finally sublimate through the glass of the frame and into the nose of the photograph’s viewer. Surrounding these two old people in the center of the image are six adults and five children, the adults standing beside and behind them and the children seated in front, three girls in blue dresses with faces flexing authentic smiles and two boys in matching blue jackets sullenly faking theirs. Of the six adults, four are men and two are women, one of whom is Lydia, though her hair is different and she looks younger. Most of them have blond hair and crooked teeth. These are Lydia’s siblings, of whom she is the youngest. This is her family. They are all dressed in cheap formal wear. A gold Wal-Mart logo peeks out from behind the frame in the bottom left corner of the photograph.

Behind the ellipsoidal cherrywood dining table, directly opposite the front door, a sliding glass door (21) opens onto a small patch of backyard, which features a red brick patio and a square of grass surrounded by low-cut hedges, in which tulips grow in the spring.

At this point the living/dining room spills into a cramped and narrow but serviceable kitchen (22), its perimeter defined by the line where the wood floor becomes tile. (The pattern of the kitchen floor tile is big beige tiles set in a grid with smaller, diamond-shaped tiles of lazulian blue set in every other conjuncture of four tile corners. Like this:

.) The kitchen features the following amenities, listed counterclockwise from the northwest corner of the room: pantry (23), counter (24), sink (25), dishwasher (26), counter (27), cabinets (28), oven/stove (29), counter (30), refrigerator (31). The stove is gas; the countertops are of speckled pink Formica; a coffeemaker, a toaster, and a microwave sit to the left of the sink; the wooden cabinets are built into the wall; a window above the kitchen sink looks out into the backyard and the alley just beyond it; three potted philodendrons stand in a row on the windowsill; the kitchen walls are painted pale yellow. The refrigerator is white, and several magnets cling to the surface of its door, pinning in place some slightly unfocused snapshots of Lydia smiling cameraward in the company of various unidentified friends, relatives, or loved ones.

In one of the photographs, Lydia is sitting in the company of three other women, all of whom appear to be about her age. They are all smiling. They are wearing bright swimwear: indeed, they appear to be wearing little but enough clothing to cover their breasts and genitals; their smiles are wide and seemingly genuine; their eyes are shadowed behind sunglasses. Lydia is wearing a canary yellow swimsuit. The women sit together at a table beneath a pink umbrella, on what looks like the outdoor patio of a restaurant, in a sunny, pleasant place that is very far away from here, both geographically and psychologically. The three other women are holding drinking glasses whose stems slope curvilinearly upward into elaborate shapes, containing unknown liquids, decorated with tiny umbrellas and colorful straws that twist up from the bowls of the glasses. Lydia, situated at the far left of the photograph, is conspicuously the only person in the photograph not holding one of these colorful beverages; in Lydia’s hand there appears to be only an ordinary glass of orange juice. Lydia also looks oddly swollen in the picture, with a considerable belly that looks out of proportion to the rest of her body.

Rounding the corner of