The Mother in the Back Row

“Hi there. Did you need something?”

“I’ve got your balance,” I said. “I wanted to put it in your hand myself. You worked hard today.”

“Oh. Thank you so much.” She stood up and wiped her palms on her pants and took the envelope. And then, like any young person who is in business for herself and has learned the hard way, she slid the check out to be sure it was made out right.

She read the amount. Then she read the top left corner, where the bank prints your name and address.

She read it again.

“Jill Novak,” she said. “Novak. That’s the bride’s maiden name.”

“It is.”

“Everything I’ve been paid for this wedding came from Lauren. Her card for the deposit. Her name and Matt’s on my contract.” She turned the check over and back again. “I’ve never seen this name before tonight.”

“No. You wouldn’t have.”

She pulled the folded paper out of her back pocket. It had gone soft from a day of being sat on. She opened it and ran her thumb down it, and I could see my daughter’s neat typing, and about two-thirds of the way down, a line with pen marks beside it.

“It says, ‘Jill, beige dress, back row, group photos only.'” She looked up. “That’s all it says. Jill. It says ‘Dad’ and it says ‘Sandra’ and it says ‘Grandma Novak,’ and then it says ‘Jill.’ I thought you were an aunt. I thought you were maybe a godmother. I’ve been calling you Jill all day.”

“That’s my name.”

“Mrs. Novak. Who are you to the bride?”

“I’m her mother.”

The DJ was playing the last song. It seemed a long way off.

Paige looked at the check, and then at the list, and then at me in my forty-four dollar dress with my coat already over my arm. I watched it come together behind her eyes, every frame of that day, and where I had been standing in each one.

“I took over six hundred pictures today,” she said slowly. “You’re on the edge of maybe nine. I don’t have a single one of you with your daughter. Not one.”

“It wasn’t on the list. You did your job fine. That’s exactly how she wanted it.”

“Why would she want it that way?”

“She had her reasons, and they’re hers. Her father’s here. It’s been a long time since he was.” I snapped my purse shut. “I’m not complaining to you, Paige. I only wanted to pay you. You earned it.”

She did not put the check away.

“My mom died when I was nineteen,” she said. “I have one picture of the two of us from after I was grown. One. It’s out of focus, and I would trade you every lens in this bag for another.”

I did not know what to say to that, so I said nothing.

“I’m not going to tell your daughter her business. I work for her.” She folded the list. “But in ten years she’s going to call me and ask if I have one of the two of you, and I’m going to have to tell her no. I can’t do that. I’m going to ask her for five more minutes.”

“Don’t make a scene on my account.”

“No, ma’am. I’ll only ask.”

“Paige.”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“If she says no, you take no. And you leave it there.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she said. And she picked up a camera, with my check still in her other hand, and walked across the dance floor.