I sat down at the head table with Theo.
His parents on his side.
Dr. Theodore Callaway Senior in his calm blue suit, and Dr. Kora Callaway, a vascular surgeon in Dove gray, her hands folded in her lap with the particular stillness of a woman who can hold a small artery shut for 15 minutes without trembling.
My father came to the head table with his camcorder.
My father had bought that camcorder in 1996, the year I was born.
He had filmed every family event since.
He had filmed my fth birthday, the one in which my mother had told my grandmother in front of everyone that she was smothering Petra.
He had filmed Caroline’s first piano recital.
He had filmed every Thanksgiving.
He did not film with his eye.
He filmed with the eye on the camera so that the eye in his own head could close.
He held it up at me.
“Smile, sweetheart.”
I smiled.
He filmed.
My mother came up to the head table at 1:15.
She was wearing a periwinkle dress and the yellow housecoat sweater from 2008, looped over one arm as a wrap.
She was carrying two oxblood leather albums.
She tapped a champagne glass with a butter knife.
The garden quieted.
“Friends,” she said, in her bright hostess voice. “Before we cut the cake, I’d like to give my daughters a small gift from our family. A keepsake to remember this beautiful day.”
I felt Theo’s hand find mine under the tablecloth.
I gave it one steady squeeze.
He did not let go.
“Caroline, sweetheart, come up here.”
Caroline came up.
My mother handed her the thicker album with great ceremony.
“For my Caroline. A life full of memories. From your first day at Memorial Hospital all the way to today. I’ve been working on it for years.”
Caroline opened it.
She turned three pages.
She actually cried.
My mother held her cheek.
The garden gave a soft, approving “Ah.”
“And now,” my mother said, turning to me, “my Petra.”
I stood up.
Theo stood with me.
So did Susanna.
Two steps behind me.
My mother walked over.
She held up the second album.
She tilted it slightly for the cameras, including my father’s, which was a foot from her shoulder, blinking its red record light at me like a small, irritated eye.
“Petra, sweetheart, we’ve thought a lot about this. You’ve always been such a different kind of daughter.”
A small ripple of laughter in the garden.
A few of the wealthier women.
“And we wanted to give you something that fits you.”
She handed it to me.
“You never really gave us memories worth keeping,” my mother said, smiling, her voice carrying across the white linen all the way to the periwinkle-blue Episcopal priest in his folding chair. “So, we thought we’d give you a fresh start.”
She opened the front cover in my hands.
In front of the 92 guests.
In front of my father’s camera.
Empty page.
Empty page.
Empty page.
Empty page.
Empty page.
Empty page.
Six guests at the back laughed.
Father Eastston did not.
Theo’s parents did not.
Aunt Hattie, in a green hat in the back row under the name Hattie Lockwood Pace, leaned forward in her chair.
Owen Sloan, three tables to the left, set down his fork.
I did not cry.
I did not raise my voice.
I held the album.
I waited 4 seconds by my own count.
I had practiced this part in front of the mirror in my bathroom.
I took the microphone gently out of my mother’s hand.
I said into the microphone, with as much warmth as I could manage, “Mom, Dad, thank you. You’re right. There should be memories worth keeping in this album.”
My mother smiled.
She had not yet heard the trap.
She heard the words.
She did not hear the floor under them.
“Let me show everyone,” I said, “the ones I added myself.”
I closed the front cover.
I turned the album over.
I lifted the back cover, and I worked the loose lining up with my thumbnail, slowly, the way a conservator does.
In front of 92 people.
In front of a camera.
In front of my mother.
With my whole hand steady.
A single Polaroid fell out onto the white linen.
First, a four-year-old holding a sand dollar on a screened porch.
Then the second.
Then the third.
Then the fourth.
14 of them, in a fan across the table.
My mother’s face did not change at first.