Page 28 of The Photograph

Her mouth drops open. “Who trod on your toes?” she mumbles under her breath, rising from the couch and flouncing over to where her stuff is strewn all over the dining table and disappearing into her room. I blow out a slow gust of air. I’m not sure how long I’m going to be able to tolerate her living here.

The buzzer makes me jump, and I tell our doorman Darius to send the entourage up.

My mom enters the apartment arms stretched out, eyes brimming with tears.

“My only son!” she croons, dragging me into a warm hug and I’m drowning in Joie de Vivre perfume. I grin at the nude picture on my wall behind her head, before pulling back and smiling at her.

Lorna pushes past me into the kitchen.

“You got anything to eat, Dessy?”

Marla has now reappeared and she tuts from a barstool.

Lorna opens her mouth and puts her hands on her hips. Lorna spent all her teenage years studying, holed up trying to get into law school. There was no time for exercising and, despite my best efforts to reassure her, she has been sensitive about her weight all her life. Whereas Marla has an active social media account where she shows off her figure and poses in freebies that companies have sent her.

“Will you two not start!” Mom says.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Marla says and flounces off into her bedroom.

“She’s staying here?” Lorna says, eyebrows raised in horror before she sticks her head in the fridge and comes out holding a bottle of white wine.

I laugh at her expression. “Yeah, yeah she is. Caught me at a weak moment. Shoot me now.”

“Des, honestly,” she says, “you were always too soft with her.”

She places the bottle on the counter and opens the cupboard above my head, pulling out three glasses.

I widen my eyes at her. “Treat me like her parent, why don’t you?”

A grin creeps over her face. “Okay, I’m sorry. You put up with us all and did an awesome job,” she leans in and kisses my cheek. “I heard a rumor there’s a new man on the scene?”

She pours out the wine and hands one to me and I take a sip. I wasn’t intending to drink today, but there’s no avoiding it with these two.

“And thank God for that!” Mom says loudly. “That George character was way too caught up in his own problems and good looks.”

Her description of George echoes my own thoughts so precisely that I want to laugh.

I circle my finger at the pair of them. “And who told you that …?”

Lorna smirks before bending down and pulling a large bag of chips out of the cupboard. “You should know by now that Marla can’t keep her trap shut about anything.”

“I heard that!” Marla shouts from her room.

Mom glances up from her screen and tuts. “Don’t talk about your sister like that.”

I pull out a bowl, and Lorna empties the chips into it, catching my eye and I immediately want to giggle. Mom can’t keep her mouth shut either.

“So that’s the reason for this sudden visit?”

“What do you think of these nails?” Mom says, turning her phone around to show us a lady having some rainbow acrylic nails put on.

Did she just change the subject? I stretch out my hand. “What do you think, ladies? How well would nails like that godown at work? I think the two new homophobic members of my team would love it, don’t you?”

“I didn’t mean you, Dessy,” Mom says, slapping my hand gently.

At the same time Lorna says, “You have homophobes on your team? In a tech company? I thought they were all chichi and LGBTQ+ friendly.”

“They are the worst bunch of people who have ever been put together in the history of time, and that’s no exaggeration,” I say.

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