May flash tale #1 - "Easier" (Patreon)

Maynard, KY

“For the life of me, Hayley, I don’t understand how you could possibly imagine that is appropriate for a family photo.”

Mom is saying all the right things, but her daughter doesn’t blush like she used to. It’s as if, at nineteen years of age, she’s finally gotten a mind of her own.

Hayley pushes her shoulders back. “What are you saying? That black lives don’t matter?”

Mom glances at Dad – Jump in any time – and smiles thinly. “You know that’s not what I mean. I’m glad you’re developing a political consciousness…” (Is she, though? Is she really glad about that?) – “But I don’t think slogans belong in this picture. We’re planning to use this for our Christmas cards.”

Hayley returns the smile, just as thin. “Too late to change it,” she says. She looks down at her phone, and the conversation is over.

Mom gives her husband a harder look – Take the reins for once, she’s your daughter too – but really, the T-shirt isn’t the biggest problem. That would be the bleach blonde look seventeen-year-old Harper has shown up with. When did that even happen?

Harper looks up from her own phone, gives the side of the red tobacco barn a desultory wave. “Don’t know why you insisted on this place. Two-hour drive from school, you’re lucky I made it at all.” She shakes her head – her mother really has become so insensitive, so selfish – is it menopause? Is this what happens to women in the fifties, they lose all sense of perspective?

“I chose…we chose this place,” Mom says, her throat tightening, grasping Dad’s hand, “Because we wanted a traditional family picture.” She looks down appraisingly at her white dress; she chose the sleeveless even though she knows she doesn’t have the arms she used to. Dad had told her she looked perfect, but let’s be honest, she could show up in overalls and he wouldn’t notice. “We wanted a photo that would…” – here she looks over at the woman standing by the barn doors, fiddling with reflectors and diffusers – and she raises her voice loud enough for the photographer to hear – “roll back the years.”

The auburn-haired woman raises a hand before adjusting on her camera. “Darn tootin’,” she says, and smiles. “Gonna be just like the good ol’ days.”

Mom groans. They’ve been ripped off. Serves her right for clicking on that sentimental ad on Instagram. Yes, there’s the picturesque barn backdrop, yes, it’s a day of perfect weather (which is quite the turnaround from the thunderstorms threatening until they got off I-65 and the skies cleared - “a meteorological miracle,” Dad said). But it won’t be enough; not with Harper ruining her beautiful hair, not with Hayley refusing a pretty dress for the sake of a social statement no one was asking her to make.

Dad reads her mind, murmurs in her ear, “Remember when you could dress them up how you liked, sit the baby on your knee.” He smiles. “’Like little dolls’, you said.”

Mom shakes her head. “What was I thinking?” She looks at her daughters through teary eyes. “We can’t get that back, look at them. It’s like they’re hell bent on ruining our holiday picture.”

“Canon EOS R5,” says the photographer conversationally, standing right beside the couple. “Great for handheld.”

Mom jumps a little in surprise. “Where’d you come from?” she asks.

The woman – she’d told them to call her MJ, but Mom thinks that makes the woman sound like an auto shop worker – grins. “I’m like magic,” she says.

And then MJ looks directly at the daughters. You should go over to them,” she tells the parents. “Don’t want any bruises.”

Mom blinks. “Any what?”

But Dad is taking her by the hand, and all four family members are side by side at the barn doors. Mom has time to look at the red and white paint – it’s perfect, almost too perfect, as if it’s more an illustration than reality – and then the sky turns dark, just as MJ raises her voice and says something…impossible. Unintelligible. Terrible.

And then Harper is a baby. Just a few months old, in Mom’s arms. Mom gasps, manages not to drop her infant daughter.

Dad doesn’t gasp. He cries out. Although really, he should calm down, because he wasn’t left holding the baby; all he must do is hold three-year-old Hayley’s hand.

He gapes at his little girl. “What….what’s…” He can’t finish the question, but MJ is able to answer it anyway.

“It’s not real,” she says, “just a glamor.” She beams at the family. “Such a cute family.”

Mom looks down at the baby and sighs. Harper has lost most of her seventeen years, but she has also the totality of her anxiety and self-consciousness. She gazes at her mother with perfectly innocent blue eyes. Mom kisses Hayley’s head, inhaling the baby’s scent and smiling. “So beautiful,” she says softly.

Dad recovers his breath; glamor or not, this feels and looks entirely real. He crouches down and grins at Hayley. “Look at you, what a pretty dress.” He fusses at the sleeves of her white cardigan and says, “Pretty girl, just like Mommy.”

Hayley nods, twisting her lips, as if she’s tired, as if she’s had a blow to her head. But then she reaches up and touches her matching hairbow with a pleased expression. “Jus’ wike Mommy,” she parrots, and then she swings her father’s hand enthusiastically.

“Okay folks,” calls MJ, aiming her Canon at them. “Still as you can. This thing’s got shake correction, but it can’t work miracles.”

Mom steadies herself, like a statue, and then can’t help asking, “How long do we have?” Meaning, like this, back in time, two decades younger, with perfect children who wear what you dress them in, who are happy to be good for Mommy and Daddy.

“Just long enough for me to take my shot,” MJ replies. “But it’s okay. The picture lasts forever.” She rests her finger on the shutter button. “Smile!”

THE END

Parents struggle to get their unruly daughters ready for a family photo and remember when the girls were too little to walk away. – Anonymous1812