In the Country

In a pile of papers on the telephone table, there are two family photographs in an envelope: they are waiting for Karen to find frames for them. The Lavery family like to have photographs taken whenever they all get together. Both of these were taken in the same place in Stella's garden, in front of an old wall grown over with a rambler rose: in both, canvas chairs have been put out on the grass for the adults, the children are sitting on a rug. The photos were taken less than a year apart: the first one was Stella's sixtieth birthday and the roses are blooming, the second was Stella and Jim's thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, and the roses are only in bud. Someone looked it up and found that the thirty-fifth anniversary was Jade, so everyone is wearing something green; Stella begged to be excused horrible jade objects for presents (someone did buy them crème de menthe, for a joke). Stella and Jim are Tom's parents, Tom is Karen's husband. Mostly the same people are there in both photographs; the family composition has only crumbled slightly at the periphery. In the second picture Jim's elderly mother is missing, because she is in hospital with a broken ankle; also Tom's sister Cordelia has a different boyfriend. In the first picture Karen has two children, two boys. In the second picture she also has her new baby, another boy. He's too tiny to put on the rug, only a few weeks old. She is holding him almost ceremonially, upright against her chest. Her face is half hidden behind him, glancing away from the camera, as if she's dipping down to kiss his scented scalp, breathe into that mysterious black baby hair which will fall out after the first few weeks. Already, now that her baby is sitting up laughing at his brothers, eating mashed banana, she's forgetting the secret of his first self: contained and pensive, with eyes as dark as blueberries, that seemed to know her.