Page 58 of Kiwi Gold
“Well, no,” I said. “I’m a newborn photographer. This is my studio.”
* * *
Lachlan
I nearly dropped her foot.
Violet said, “Thecrying.Thewailing.Can barely hear myself think sometimes. Surely that isn’t allowed. You’d need a special license. Special rules. Soundproofing.”
Laila took a breath. That dark honey was creeping up into her cheeks again, too, and her footwasstill swollen. Too swollen to be dragging heavy bags of groceries around, and whatever else she’d been doing today. The running feet, like an army of squirrels, had started early this morning, and I’d caught a glimpse of her out the window, too, walking the dog with the girls.Limpingwith the dog and the girls.
Had I wanted to go out and take care of that? Of course I had. It was only natural. But she’d said goodbye pretty bloody firmly the night before, too, had practically shut the door in my face, and I didn’t need to be courting a restraining order. I’d take her out later in the week, before my trip to Saudi. Date Two of three. Practice.
Pull your head in, mate,I’d told myself.She’s a grown woman, managing her life.
And that was before the “newborn photography” revelation. Now? I was out. Definitely out. I was her dating consultant, and that was all. The woman didn’t even want to kiss me.
I was here now, though, and she still didn’t seem to know what to say, so I said, “Home-based business? Nothing special about that these days. Surely there’s no special permit required. It’s not dog grooming.”
“No,” Laila said, “there’s no special permit required. Not here in the CBD. Mixed commercial and residential, and I follow all the rules, no worries. Insurance, rates, paying my employee.”
“Cars coming and going,” Violet said.
“Two appointments a day, normally,” Laila said, keeping her composure with what I could tell was an effort. “One at a time. You can’t exactly do anything else, not with newborns. They don’t perform to schedule. And we don’t allow the babies to wail for any length of time. Crying would upset the parents, for one thing, and it definitely upsets the baby. Let alone the neighbors.”
“The parents,” Violet said. “What are the parents thinking, spending good money to have babies that young photographed? How much does it cost? I’m thinking at least a hundred dollars.”
“A fair bit more than that,” Laila said, still cool.
“Why,” Violet asked, “when they could take a snap with their expensive phone for free? We didn’t photograph our babies, and what harm did that do them? Surely you can’t make a living doing that, either. You’d be better off getting a regular job, going off to work while the girls are in school, unless you’re doing it for fun. Of course, all the single mums nowadays, with no father in the picture …”
“Darling,” Trevor said. “We were just going to mention the dog. And ask about the babies and where that was coming from. Out of interest.”
I wanted to say something. You could say that. Or you could say that I was burning to say something. Laila was so tense under my hand, I could feel it in herfoot.It wasn’t my place to say, though, was it? I was still trying to work it out when Laila said, somehow managing to keep her tone light, “I’m a widow, actually. I lost my husband in a … in a work accident, about a year ago. So you see—I don’t have much choice but to do the work I’m best suited for, as I’m all there is now. I’m sorry that hearing a newborn or two cry for a minute is so … so hard for you, but …”
She stopped, then, like the light had been switched on, and said, “Wait. Wait.” And jumped up. Unfortunately, she forgot that I had her foot, or maybe that her foot was sprained, because she stumbled and grabbed the table just as I jumped up myself and grabbedher.
“What?” I said.
“Oh.” She tried to laugh, and pushed back at her hair, as if it weren’t already smooth. “Sorry. I thought … Could you come back here with me for a minute?”
“Course,” I said, because what else could I say? And followed her back the way we’d come. She was limping, but she’d been limping all along, and then she was through the door into the front half of the lounge, folding back a Japanese screen, and entering a … well, I guessed it was a studio.
I hadn’t seen the big windows from inside before. Not stained glass, but I knew that. Leaded, you’d call it, and Gothic. Arched, and soaring five or six meters up at least, spilling the bright summer light inside and onto the pale wood floors. The floors weren’t refinished as they were in my own flat, but scratched and worn, though somebody’d done their best to polish them, and had put carpet under the sitting area, too. There was a black leather couch and a couple of armchairs, and things on stands that were probably some sort of photography lights. A big shelving unit filled with baskets of … something or other. A rectangular table covered with felt.
And framed photos all along the wall.
The photos were of babies. Well, of course they were, but there were so many of them, and they didn’t look one bit real. A naked baby, her body curled into a nest lined with folds of something soft and white, her hands under her cheek and a headband of purple flowers tied around her head. A bald baby with its head propped on its arms, popping up from a galvanized bucket with some rusty ironwork scattered around. Pretty silly, that one, but funny, too. A baby wrapped in crisscrossed fabric, only its tiny hands and feet peeking out, wedged into a quarter-moon-shaped wooden form. A Maori baby, or a Pasifika one, that one was, with more curly black hair than should be legal in a baby that new. A set of twins, tiny and fragile, in close-up, their skinny arms wrapped around each other and their mouths nearly touching. A baby sprawled over a tiny four-poster bed, its legs hanging over the sides. Silly again. A man’s big hands, cupped to hold a curled-up little form. Not asleep this time, because the baby’s eyes stared straight at the viewer, round and black as buttons. Rows and rows of babies.
Had my sisters ever looked this angelic? Not that I remembered. Hadanybaby? I doubted it. This was the Hollywood version of babyhood, or maybe the greeting-card one, because I’d bet money that Laila printed these photos on greeting cards for parents. Parents always seemed to think that the one image you were burning to see when you opened an envelope was their three-chinned, toothless, bald progeny.
Laila said, “Which ones are the best? Help me choose two or three.”
“For impressing strangers, who may have forgotten how much agro babies can give you?” I said. “The twins, and the moon. And the one with the hands, probably. Crowd pleaser, eh.”
She grabbed them off their hooks and limped back to the kitchen, where she handed the photos to the woman and said, “Here. This is what I do.”
The woman looked at them, one by one, then picked up the photo with the twins again as if she were studying it. Then she put it down. It landed with a clatter on the table, but she was already shoving herself up to stand and heading out.
