The Portrait Was Supposed to Show Me Exactly as I Am — Until I Saw What My Friend Had Softened

PART 10

Friday afternoon, two hours before the doors opened, Beth called me from the gallery bathroom.

I knew it was the bathroom because the room echoed and because she whispered, “I may have made a mistake,” with the acoustics of a public restroom.

“What kind?”

“The opening remarks kind.”

“You agreed to speak. That was already a mistake.”

“Mark added a line about women choosing authenticity over vanity.”

I closed my office door.

“No.”

“I know.”

“Lorraine chose vanity at the nostril level. We support her.”

Beth laughed despite herself.

“What do I say?”

“Say the project changed while you were making it. Say the subjects had different ideas about retouching. Say you learned to ask better questions.”

“That sounds like I’m admitting I screwed up.”

“You did.”

Silence.

“Angela.”

“What?”

“Could you occasionally say something emotionally supportive before the audit finding?”

I leaned against my desk.

“You built a good show.”

“Thank you.”

“You also screwed up.”

“There she is.”

After work I went home, changed into black pants and the navy blouse from my original sitting, then changed again because wearing the same blouse felt like trying too hard to make a point.

I chose a deep red jacket instead.

The red reading glasses went into my purse.

In the bathroom mirror, my silver streak caught the overhead light.

For half a second I considered smoothing it down with a little color spray I kept for important meetings.

I had bought the spray before my divorce and used it without philosophical conflict for years.

I picked up the can.

Then I put it down.

Not because gray hair had become sacred.

I simply did not want to spend the opening evening wondering whether I had hidden it to make Beth’s new portrait easier to defend.

At the gallery, the café next door had sent trays of small sandwiches, olives, cookies, and the kind of sparkling water people drink when wine would make the wall labels harder to discuss.

Rita arrived first in a cobalt blouse.

“Do I look authentic?” she asked.

“Painfully.”

“Good. I had my hair blown out for forty-five minutes.”

Noreen came with her husband and immediately showed him that her shoulder scar had been restored.

“See?” she said. “That’s the one.”

He looked confused.

“The one what?”

“Never mind. You’re why women need friends.”

Lorraine brought flowers for Beth and announced that nobody was allowed to ask whether the arrangement symbolized aging.

Kendra arrived late from work and carried her laptop until Mark physically took it from her.

The women were not united by a philosophy.

We were united by having our names on the same wall and by knowing more about one another’s under-eye preferences than most friendships required.

At six-thirty, the gallery filled.

There were neighbors, Beth’s clients, a few local arts writers, office friends, family members, and people who had simply wandered in after seeing the event sign outside.

I stood near the back while Beth gave her remarks.

She looked nervous.

“When I started Second Light,” she said, “I thought I was making a project about how women at midlife look. I learned very quickly that I was making a project about who gets to decide what a good photograph is.”

She glanced toward me, then toward the other subjects.

“I also learned that ‘natural’ and ‘honest’ sound simple until eleven people are standing in front of eleven photographs of themselves. Some people wanted permanent marks kept. Some wanted certain things removed. Some wanted a lighter hand than I first used. There isn’t one correct amount of retouching. There is a correct conversation, and I did not have enough of those conversations early enough.”

The room was very quiet.

Beth continued.

“The photographs you see tonight are the versions each subject approved. The show is better for that.”

Then she thanked the gallery and stopped.

No confession.

No public whipping.

No speech about courage.

I was relieved enough that I almost cried, which annoyed me.

A woman I did not know came up to me ten minutes later.

“You’re Angela?”

I nodded.

She looked from me to the portrait.

“It really does look like you.”

I laughed.

“That’s the hope.”

“I mean, you look prettier in person.”

There it was.

The sentence I had spent the week trying to outgrow.

I could have explained the project. I could have told her why the portrait mattered. I could have made the stranger understand that prettier was not the test.

Instead I said, “Thank you,” because she meant it kindly and because not every sentence required conversion.

Later a man in his thirties stood in front of Rita’s portrait and told her the expression looked “fierce.”

Rita said, “I was thinking about parking.”

He laughed as if she had made a joke.

She had not.

The opening survived ordinary misunderstanding.

That may have been my favorite part.

Near eight, Tess arrived straight from a planning commission meeting.

She hugged me, found my portrait, and stood in front of it for a long time.

“Well?” I asked.

“You look like you’re about to tell somebody their expense report is late.”

“Perfect.”

“I like it.”

I nodded.

Tess took out her phone.

“Stand beside it.”

My body moved backward before I thought.

Old habit.

“Why?”

“Because I want a picture of you with it.”

I looked at the wall portrait, then at her phone.

“Do not take twelve.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

I stood beside the frame.

Tess lifted the phone.

“Don’t do the email mouth.”

“Beth has been talking.”

“Everybody knows about the email mouth.”

I laughed.

She took one picture.

I did not ask to see it immediately.