Adair's Photo Album [1] [2] [3]

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Image Number 3

This is the picture of Morgan and me that wound up on the cover of the paperback. We were aiming at reproducing the feeling of the title: Hold Me Close, Let Me Go. They sent a photographer from New York. Morgan made her own preparation, not drinking any fluids the day before, To make her cheekbones higher for the picture, and also insisting the night before, when she arrived in town for the event, that she couldn't go see Edward 11 with Dad because she had to find an all-night beauty salon that would cut and highlight her hair by the next day. I had said they wanted our clothes to be color coordinated with each other, and she brought her entire wardrobe and spread in out in piles on the kitchen table. She went to the play, worrying about her split ends. We need not have worried. Deborah Feingold, the famous photographer, arrived in sweatpants, with two assistants. The stylist, Caroline, arrived with suitcases full of spackle. Deborah explained that she would go to pieces during the day about not being the one in front of the lights, about not having a book herself, and then would return to stern professionalism. She snorted at the green suit I had chose and said, "SOFT! WE NEED SOFT!" I crept away in shame and reemerged in a pink sweat and khaki pants and she said, "Yery nice." We learned the "fake lean," where you look as if you are supporting your face in your hand, in a pensive shot, but are actually just resting the hand lightly, as otherwise it would cover up part of your face. We learned little Mona Lisa smiles. We worried about how we looked, but Deborah dismissed such fears, alluding to what could happen in the magic of "postproduction." We obeyed commands.
"Little smile, please, mom."
"Hide that hand, daughter. "Lower your chin, Mom." I would look down pensively, as if worrying about a night when 16-year-old Morgan had slid open her window and disappeared into the night again, and into the eyes of Aaron, the cute assistant holding a huge white "fill card."
It was as if we were playing a loving mother and daughter for the camera, snapping to attention when Deborah crumpled a Polaroid and said, "let's go to film-and yet we did not break apart, put daylight between us when Deborah put her camera down.

Image Number 4

My mother at Ocean Beach in about 1946.My mother was a knockout, with long black curly hair, big brown eyes, and a tan hard-earned at this windy and cold stretch of sand. She spent weekends on that part of Ocean Beach called Muscle Beach, allowing the bodybuilders to do handstands off her back- they were far more interested in their own curves than in hers, she says. One of the muscle men was an ex-GI who was always in the water, swimming like a seal, his blond hair pasted blackly against his sleek head. This was my dad.