Double Exposure

Abstract

When she gets back her prints, she realizes her husband shot the film first— so their daughter pumps a long rope swing over her brother’s football team like an autumn goddess, her friends’ faces at her fifteenth birthday party smile through yellow and black numbered uniforms, knee-pad legs are heaps of leaves the girls jump into weeks later without realizing, boys rush a ball down a green field of girls with their feet in the air as they leap— the giant dog has an oak leaf stuck to his nose in the middle of a lilliputian huddle; and here she is, mother, part Chinese restaurant, part stretched on the bed. Her daughter trails long blonde lawns of sunbright leaves down both sides of face and body like a veil and train, and the family portrait is all raked up in a pile, starting to blow away.