When you run a wet comb along my daughter’s bangs, I realize who you are. 

I step back, watch. You’re a choreographer of sorts. Shifting my daughter’s shoulders, lifting her chin, tapping a dimple to draw out smiles (It’s safe, sweetheart). If you notice me at all, it’s probably as a blob (collection of cells) in your periphery. Another helicopter mom. I’m only here because my daughter streaked her sweater with magic marker (pink line for hormone hCG) before her class’s slot (10 am for D&C), so she needed a clean top fast, and my husband had a meeting.

It’s chilly here in the gym (clinic room), and the second graders shiver-jump in line (waiting room), but you’re unrushed, methodical, switching out the backdrop stand according to some formula of complementary hues, my daughter squirming in her swapped sweater (Your clothes go in this locker). It’s admirable, your effort at modest perfection. Are you like this with every subject? I imagine you are. Still, when the kids make faces and my girl giggles from nervousness (It’s the anesthesia), you laugh along. You check the form for her name. 

Anna (____). 

“Good job, Anna Banana. A couple more.” Your trembly hand smooths her flyaways. The clicks and whirrs of your camera are clean-sounding, definitive (a monitor, instruments on a tray). 

Are you seeing my face in Anna’s, however faint? Your own face is scored after twenty years, but also softer. I remember that time in brief exposures. Your gear and your fixie bike. The Arbuses and Winogrands taped to the brick wall behind your bed. After six dates or six months, whichever’s first, your straight-faced answer when I asked when you’d photograph me. The gold cross around your neck tapping cold between my breasts. A five-dollar bill for the L train to my apartment, since my satchel had been stolen. A paper bag with a half-eaten halvah bar and a stale bialy. Me hanging up after the fourth ring, deciding I’d pay for it myself. Extras shifts, graveyards, weekends. Your message on my machine, erased. I’m on a shoot. We’ll talk, okay?

Finished, you gesture Anna off the swivel chair with a bow and hand her a grape Dum Dum (a Lorna Doone, a cup of apple juice). She skips my way, happy it’s over, demanding I tell her dad she did good. You give the seat a twirl. And our gazes meet. Briefer than a click. Your face an afterimage. Then you wave over the next kid (Follow-up in three weeks). 

Anna rejoins her classmates. I wonder if there’s a business card I can grab, but why, really? (Here’s a pamphlet with support services.) As I leave, I watch you pull a fresh comb from one of those barbershop disinfectant jars. How you turn away and release the fluid with a hard snap of your wrist (You can open up; this is a confidential space). How the clutch of combs in the jar bobs and wavers before going still.