My mother had taken me to a beauty consultation at a department store.
It was me at 17.
A woman there promised they could make my face look “more feminine.”
I remembered the powder, the young employee beside the camera, and the adults discussing my upper lip as though I couldn’t hear them.
“That much hair will be difficult to conceal.”
A woman there promised they could make my face look “more feminine.”
“She’ll need regular treatment.”
“Girls are terribly sensitive at this age.”
I had stared at my hands until the appointment ended, then cried in the restroom.
I had tried not to remember that afternoon.
“She’ll need regular treatment.”
***
I looked up at Arthur.
“Where did you get this?”
Arthur sat opposite me.
“I worked for the company that produced those consultation photographs.”
I stared.
“Where did you get this?”
“You?”
“I was 19,” he said. “It was one of my first jobs.”
I looked at the photograph again.
The young employee.
The camera.
A boy who wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“It was one of my first jobs.”
“You were there.”
He nodded.
“Yes.”
“I remember asking you whether I looked terrible.”
Arthur closed his eyes.
“You were there.”
“And I didn’t answer.”
“No.”
I remembered his silence perfectly.
The consultant had laughed and said, “Well, that’s why we’re here.”
“And I didn’t answer.”
I had wanted someone to tell her to stop.
Nobody had.
“Why do you still have this photograph?” I asked.
Arthur rubbed his hands together.
Nobody had.
“Years later, a former colleague contacted me while clearing out an old storage room. He’d found a box of photographs and consultation cards that should have been destroyed long ago. Your name was written on the back of the photograph. I remembered the appointment when I read it, and I asked to keep it.”
“He’d found a box of photographs.”
I turned the photograph over.
My name was there in faded blue ink.
He had kept that afternoon for decades while I had spent those same years trying to forget it.
“I should have told you I had it, Holly. And I should have asked whether you wanted it back.”
My name was there in faded blue ink.
He pointed to a faded card bearing my mother’s name and our Chicago address.
“I recognized the appointment,” he added. “I remembered you.”
“You remembered me for sixty-one years?”
“Not every day. But I never forgot what happened.”
“I remembered you.”
I studied his face.
“Then how did you find me?”
“Your full name and your mother’s were on the consultation card. I’d looked for you now and then, but I never found anyone I could be certain was you.”
He glanced at the photograph.
“How did you find me?”
“After my wife died, I tried again. I found your name in an old community newsletter online. It mentioned your granddaughter and the roses you grew. Then, months later, I saw a dating profile with the same name and details. I thought it might be you. That’s why I kept asking about your childhood.”
“I tried again.”
I set the photograph down before my hands could bend it.
“So you didn’t match with me by chance.”
“No.”
I looked at the photographs in the box.
Then at Arthur.
“Why?”
“So you didn’t match with me by chance.”
“My wife struggled with her appearance,” he explained. “She told me how cruel beauty advertisements had been when she was young.”
Arthur smoothed one curled corner of the consultation card.
“After she died, I began thinking about the work I’d done. The things I’d said. The things I hadn’t said.”
“My wife struggled with her appearance.”
“And you decided to find me?”
“I wanted to apologize. At first, I thought I’d tell you immediately,” he said. “But I enjoyed talking to you. I was afraid you’d never speak to me again.”
“So you dated me instead?”
“I wanted to apologize.”
His face reddened.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Arthur, you asked me for photographs of my face.”
“I thought you were becoming more comfortable with yourself.”
“Was that your decision to make?”
