Livora Gracely

Fifteen Years of Looking

The album was thick. Somehow, she made room for their laughter.

Clara moved her camera bag to make room for Grandma’s album. Then she moved it a little farther.

“Fifteen years,” Grandma said, lowering the book onto her lap.

“I can see why you needed both hands.”

They gathered on the orange sofa, their fresh tea safely on the table. Grandma opened the cover. A page lifted with a soft rustle, revealing a flower bright with droplets.

Clara leaned toward it.

“The edge of that petal.”

“I nearly missed the light there. I was busy trying to keep my sleeve out of the wet leaves.”

She turned the page. A butterfly rested along a slender branch, its patterned wings clear against the softer colours behind it.

Nina traced the outline in the air.

“You gave it somewhere to stand without losing any of it.”

“I moved until the dark body stopped disappearing into the branch.”

Elise waited while they looked, then touched the margin of the next page. An old boat sat among reeds, with mist stretched across the water beyond it.

“That one,” she said.

Grandma smiled. “I wondered whether you’d find it.”

“The wood feels rough. But the water’s almost nothing.”

Mira looked from the boat to the flower. Three loose prints of the flower, butterfly, and boat lay on the table beside their cups.

“They’re so different,” she said. “You couldn’t use the same arrangement for all three.”

Grandma held the page open.

“I tried with the boat. Much too tidy. I had to come back and let those reeds occupy more of the picture.”

Elise looked again at the reeds. Clara reached for her notebook, then left it closed while Grandma turned another page.

Something for Her to See

They lingered over the album until Mira took her phone from her pocket.

“We still owe you something.”

Grandma looked up.

“The photographs you asked us to bring.”

Nina drew out her phone too.

“Mine is a portrait with an unfortunate amount of elbow.”

She showed them a woman laughing, one raised arm crossing part of her face.

“I’d asked her a question. Then I wished I’d waited for her to finish waving.”

“What was the question?” Grandma asked.

Nina told her. Soon the others were laughing, and Grandma asked to see the next frame before Nina put the phone away.

Clara’s picture showed part of a market stall. Hanging bags interrupted the wider scene she had meant to photograph, making overlapping shapes and stripes across the foreground.

“I couldn’t see the whole place. I almost deleted it because of that.”

Mira tilted the screen slightly to avoid the window reflection.

“Have you tried looking at just those shapes?”

“Yes. I keep changing my mind.”

Grandma looked closer. “Leave it with us a moment.”

Elise showed a shoreline beneath mountains, the foreground clear and the distant peaks softer than she had intended.

“This still doesn’t work for me,” she said. “But I kept it so I could find the position again.”

Grandma nodded. “I’d like to see what you make when you go back.”

Then Mira opened her gull.

Its enormous head filled the screen. Behind it, the little boats remained in their interrupted arrangement.

Nina laughed first.

“He seems pleased with his contribution.”

“I wasn’t,” Mira said. “At the time.”

Grandma studied the sharp eye, then the beak pointing beyond the picture.

“What was it looking at?”

“I don’t know.”

“Show me the frame before it arrived.”

Mira opened the orderly harbour. Grandma looked between the two, asking where Mira had stood and whether she had made any pictures afterwards.

Mira moved closer on the sofa, holding the phone where they could both see.

A Name on the Print

When they finally put their phones down, Elise reached toward the boat print on the table.

“Would you sign this for me?”

“And the flower?” Clara asked.

Grandma fetched a pen. Mira waited until she had finished the first signature before asking for a small print of the winter birds as well.

“After seeing your notebook,” Mira said, “I’d like to remember this properly.”

Grandma paused with the pen in her hand, then smiled.

Nina watched her write her name.

“We’ve admired your photographs all afternoon. Now we’d like one with their photographer in it.”

One More for the Album

They came to learn her angles.
They left with a place beside her.

Clara set a camera on her tripod facing the sofa. Mira checked the edges of the frame; Elise moved a cup away from the place where Nina intended to sit.

Grandma started to rise.

“Stay there,” Nina said. “For once, we have you in the right place.”

Clara set the timer and came around the table. Mira shifted to make room beside Grandma, while Nina settled at the front of the sofa and Elise leaned in from the other side.

The camera began its steady little beeps.

“Everyone here?” Clara asked.

“Except the gull,” Grandma said.

Mira’s smile broke into a laugh.

“He’d take up half the photograph.”

Nina looked toward her, laughing too. Grandma’s shoulders shook beneath her cardigan, and Clara rested a hand on them just as the shutter sounded.

They checked the picture together.

“No one is looking at the camera,” Elise said.

Grandma held out her hand for a closer look.

“May I have that one?”

Clara nodded.

Grandma opened the album again, near the back, and slipped a small piece of paper into an empty space.

Nina glanced at the thick stack of pages.

“We fit?”

“Yes,” Grandma said. “The gull will have to bring his own album.”