“Show me.”
“Okay,” he said. “But I’m afraid you won’t be able to touch it. It’s fragile.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“You just sit here, and I’ll hold it up and show you.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Now, Sailor,” he said. “Don’t do that. Don’t be like that. This is something special.”
He looked pained, and I was sorry.
“I’ll only look,” I said.
He nodded.
“I’m excited,” I said.
“I’ll get it. Wait here.”
He came out with fabric folded in his hands, a deep green, and he let it unfurl and I saw it was a dress.
I cocked my head.
“Birdie’s,” he said.
“She sent you her dress?”
“I wanted to have something from her. I told her to surprise me. Does it count as a gift if you ask for it?”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
Something struck me about the dress. The straps were scalloped; white and pink embroidery decorated the waist.
“It looks like something a young woman would wear.”
Gramps smiled.
“Such a sharp girl,” he said approvingly. “This dress is from when she was young. She said she didn’t mind sending it, because she isn’t as slight as she used to be. It doesn’t fit her and it’s not appropriate for a lady of her age.”
He took another long look at the dress, and then he folded the sides in and rolled it down from the top so that it never left his hands. He hugged it to his chest.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
Later, while he washed the dinner dishes and I dried, I asked, “Gramps, why don’t you ever talk about Birdie with the guys?”
He grinned at me. “Wouldn’t want to rub it in,” he said. “Not everyone can have what Birdie and I have.”
A few days later, I was on the floor in Mabel’s living room, looking through photo albums. “I was not the most beautiful newborn,” Mabel said.
“What are you talking about? You were perfect. A perfect little grasshopper. How about that one!” Ana pointed to a photograph of Mabel wrapped in a white blanket, yawning.
“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.”