Page 66 of Flirting with Forever

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

NAOMITRACE’SATTICwas not the kind of place that had secrets. Every single item was perfectly labeled in a perfectly sized storage Tupperware. Besides, the things she stored up there only took up half of one wall anyhow. The woman was infamous for ruthlessly tossing away keepsakes. Mary had clear memories of her mother nodding briskly at an A-plus essay Mary had brought home and then promptly tossing it into the recycling, seeing no reason to keep it.

Which was why Mary was surprised to find herself in the attic on Sunday morning, her mother pointing to which clear plastic boxes she wanted Mary to shuffle around.

“That one there. No. Wait, it’s the one next to it. Yes.”

Mary blinked at the perfect label that ran along the side of the box. “Photographs,” it read.

She was surprised to see that her mother kept a miscellaneous box of photographs in the attic because Naomi was strictly a photos-belong-in-photo-albums sort of person. Mary had thought that all the photos her parents owned were currently neatly shelved alongside their John Grisham and Agatha Christie collections in the living room.

But here she was, staring down at a plastic shoebox filled to the brim with old photos.

“Here,” her mother said impatiently, gesturing for Mary to hand over the box. Then she reached her hand out and firmly helped Mary step out of the maze of other boxes. Mary had a flashback to her childhood. Slipping at the edge of a pool and falling into the deep end before she could swim. There was the sun, too bright through the water, the white-bubbled panic slipping out of Mary’s nose and mouth. And then there was her mother, a firm hand under Mary’s armpit, yanking her up and out of the water, pushing her wet hair back from her face. “You’re all right,” her mother had said. Firm, clear, comforting.

“Come, sit,” Naomi said now in that exact same tone of voice.

Mary was a little mystified. Her mother was perched on top of one of the larger storage boxes, moved to the side just enough for Mary to have room as well. This was unusual. When her mother had asked her to help her in the attic, Mary assumed that there was some baking utensil or end-of-the-summer decoration her mother wanted brought down. It hadn’t occurred to her that her mother had wanted to sit in the warm attic and look at forgotten photos.

Mary sat down. Naomi was already digging through the box.

“Wait!” Mary stilled Naomi’s shuffling fingers with a hand and reached in to pull out some old Polaroids she’d never seen before. “Is this the day I was born?”

“Oh, don’t look at those. I look like I’d been baking on the side of the road for a week.”

But Mary was stunned. Her mother never looked less than perfect and here she was, so young it was almost painful to look at her, her blond hair messily pulled back, her cheeks red, her eyes swollen, staring at a little bundle in her arms in utter amazement. She’d never seen so much emotion on her mother’s face before. Mary dug through and found two more. All of them were obviously taken within the same few minutes. Because there was Mary’s wrinkled, mutinous face poking out from the hospital-issued pink-and-blue blanket, there were Mary’s parents beaming for the camera, looking like they’d been through the ordeal of a lifetime. And then, lastly, there was a photo of Naomi asleep with Mary on her chest. Naomi’s hair was sticking out every which way, her mouth gaping open she was sleeping so hard.

“I can’t believe you let someone take these,” Mary mused. Naomi did not approve of candids.

“I didn’tletanyone take them. Tiff insisted.” Naomi sniffed.

“She was at the hospital the day I was born?”

Naomi nodded. “She told me I’d treasure these photos one day.”

“And now they’re in a box in the attic,” Mary said drily.

“Well, I didn’t throw them away, did I? Here, put them back in. It’s not what I’m looking for.”

Mary did as she was told, but she watched her mother carefully. It was true that her mother hadn’t thrown the photos away. In a house with not an extra ounce of fat on its bones, maybe that really did mean that, in a way, her mother treasured these photos. It just also meant that her mother couldn’t bear to display a photo where she didn’t look Hollywood-ready. Mary reflected on all the photos in frames downstairs, family portraits taken by professionals, all of them. And even the ones in the albums were all particularly flattering to her mother.

There was a series of photos lining one hallway of her mother’s pageant days. Glamour shot after glamour shot of Naomi looking utterly stunning, even with her outdated coif of a hairdo and sparkly, outrageous gown. The only photo they had of Naomi showing any emotion other than a beatific smile was the single photo of the Miss Connecticut crown being placed on her head. Tears streamed down her face as she stared in shock out at the crowd. Mary had seen plenty of media representations of pageants in which the winner delivered a sort of practiced shock in order to endear herself to the crowd. But anyone who looked at that picture would know that Naomi truly hadn’t expected to win the title.

“Here,” Naomi said, shoving a small stack of photos into Mary’s hand. “This is what I wanted to show you.”

Mary thumbed through the photos. They were of her mother and father at various events. A couple shots from some barbecue, a few from school events of Mary’s. Mary was in early high school in these photos, her swim team sweats in one photo, a homecoming dress in another photo. Then there were two of her mother on her own, candids. Her slicing carrots for a salad in one of them and her in the driver’s seat in the other. In neither photo was she aware she was being photographed.

“Tiff took these ones too.” Mary knew instinctually.

“Tiff took pretty much every photo in this box.” She sniffed again. “She just loved taking bad pictures of me.”

Mary squinted up at her mother in surprise. “You think these photos are bad?”

To Mary’s eye, her mother looked relaxed and natural in the candids, as lovely as always. In the posed ones at the school events, her mother looked just how she’d remembered her looking from that time period. Nothing bad about it.

“You don’t see the crow’s-feet and the turkey wattle?” Naomi asked caustically, pointing at the virtually nonexistent flaws in each photo. “My hair was starting to change texture, and I had no idea how to style it yet. Hence that hairstyle. I’d started to gain weight too. Hadn’t yet joined Weight Watchers.”

“Mom...” Mary trailed off, shocked at her mother’s harsh appraisal of herself, at the realization that her mother kept a box of ugly photos tucked away in the attic.

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