Snapped by Pamela Klaffke

cry.
    Gen says nothing about my maybe faux pas. I introduce her to Eva, whom she seems surprised is there. “She’s my date,” I say. “Ted said I could bring a date.”
    “Oh, dear, I hope I’m not imposing, Mrs. Wright,” Eva says.
    “Not at all,” Gen says with a smile.
    “You have a lovely home,” Eva says.
    “Thank you. Come, everyone’s around back.”
    The backyard, like the house, is huge, exactly how I pictured Eva’s parents’ house to be. Ted leads the men around the perimeter of the lawn, stopping occasionally to point at a plant. He’s carrying Olivier around like a football. The ladies are perched on the wraparound veranda sipping lemonade with napping babies slung nonchalantly over their shoulders. Like Gen they’re all wearing jeans and heels and tightT-shirts the colors of sherbet. I quickly calculate the ratio of fake breasts to real at five-to-three, with Eva, Gen and me being the three.
    The women are friendly and have perfected that dewy-glow makeup that doesn’t look like makeup that I can never get right. These are women, I determine, who know the tricks to using bronzer and how to blend shimmery concealer into the inside corners of their eyes to make them pop. I feel dumpy and shapeless in my stinky black dress—the dark cloud, a sulky teen. The drop-waist dress has three-quarter-length raglan sleeves and an asymmetrical hem. It was a gift from the designer, a Japanese New Yorker whose fashion star is on the rise. You can’t even get this dress here. I know that these women wouldn’t know that and that makes me feel better, or as superior as a hungover woman wearing a stinky black dress on a hot summer day can feel.
    I listen politely as the women talk about their babies. They all have something to say about training their husbands to do this or that. They sit on committees with Gen or live in the neighborhood. They complain about the traffic driving into The City and swap wine recommendations that they jot in leather-covered notebooks. I’m not sure if any of them work or not or did and now don’t and I couldn’t care. I claim a chair in a shady spot on the veranda and my headache dulls the horror of glowy makeup and implants.
    I fuss with my camera. I promised Ted I’d take some shots of Olivier. I focus on Eva, who is relaxed and mingling effortlessly with the suburban sophisticates. I snap a few pictures of her and then all the ladies want their pictures taken—solo, in pairs, as a group, with babies, without. They summon their husbands and I’m a mobile Sears PortraitStudio, but not too mobile considering I refuse to budge from my shady veranda chair.
    I’m trying to get a shot of Ted and Gen and Olivier. I release the shutter just as Eva comes into frame. Ted hands Gen the baby and slips inside the house. “I can do it,” Gen calls after him.
    Eva touches the top of Olivier’s head. “You stay put and we’ll take care of everything,” she says to Gen.
    The cake is dense and soggy with strawberries. I’m told it’s special-ordered from a popular organic bakery. It has no icing. Gen props Olivier on her lap and Ted starts everyone off with the birthday song, first in English, then in French. I hate my singing voice so I fidget with my camera and mouth the words and hope no one notices. Gen and Ted blow out the one candle. I get the shot. My work here is done.
    Eva rushes around clearing plates, refilling glasses of lemonade and cooing over babies. I motion Ted over and ask when they’re going to open the presents. I want to see his face when they unwrap the gay sailor suit.
    “We’ll do it later—after everyone leaves,” he says.
    “What?”
    “It’s a private thing.”
    I stare at him unblinking, confused.
    “It’s not like when we were kids, Sara. There’s a real movement toward not making a spectacle of opening gifts in front of the other kids.”
    “A movement? ”
    “It promotes competition and places too much value on material things.” Ted