A Mother’s Private World Inside a Public Museum

The Photo Booth by Mark Chiusano

The photo booth in the museum lobby was in a lonely little corner away from everything else—the exhibit entrances, the front desk, the restrooms. It was a little gauche, after all. Photos for two bucks fifty. It seemed to the baby’s mother that the booth had the aura of the carnival about it, but maybe it was just the velvet red curtain. She had noticed the curtain first, one winter morning, midway through her maternity leave. The museum was the only place she could go to get out of her Kleenex-smelling apartment. That morning, she unwrapped herself from jackets and scarves, deposited her garments with the coat check (she was the first patron, it being exactly 11 am. Of course she had been awake since 5). The baby stirred in the pouch, disturbed by the change in temperature. This baby liked the cold, and wide open spaces, and colors (even if the books all suggested the baby was colorblind). The baby also liked to breastfeed. Like now. And here was this photo booth and its red curtain. Beckoning. 

The baby’s mother found that no one much used the photo booth in the museum’s early hours. The dedicated weekday patrons or school groups had the Egyptian collection to see. They walked past the photo booth without noticing it, their eyes on the long cardboard maps that were handed out and soon discarded. If the baby’s mother placed her feet in the right direction—forward—she did not get interrupted. Or if she did, there was a polite knock next to the curtain first, asking if she was almost done with her picture. And she’d have time to detach her daughter, cover up. Yes, yes, so sorry. But mostly, she could sit there in the dark for fifteen minutes, or thirty—some mornings, forty, fifty—and let the baby nestle and burrow and drink. The baby’s mother would close her eyes, or look down at the round, mostly hairless head, or watch mindlessly as the screen offered different photo packages for purchase. 

One morning, a guard peeked in. Everything alright? A young man. The regulation suit, loose tie. The baby’s mother didn’t have time to pull her nipple away. 

Sorry, sorry, the guard said. He closed the curtain. But from below where it hovered, the baby’s mother could see the guard’s heavy black boots lingering there. 

I’m just taking a picture, she said to the curtain. And then she did, for the first time. The click of the machinery. The startling flash. The first one pulled the baby’s smooth head up. The next made the baby start to scream. The baby’s mother hurried to empouchify, and emerged next to the guard to claim her portrait, one she would keep forever. It was the usual format, three pictures atop one another. The first was very Madonna and Child. The second looked like some villain was coming for the kid. The third featured only the baby’s mother’s exhausted face as she leaned forward, she guessed, to begin the departure. Did she really look that tired? Glancing down at the strip it occurred to her that each image was the size of a wallet photo, like the one her mother had kept in her wallet of baby-her, before she died. 

The guard still stood there, looking at his boots. Sometimes you gotta wait to get the right picture, he said. He said this without a smile. He looked like he was new on the job.  

I’m Ada, she said. This is Bridgie. 

I do the lobby for the morning block, he said. She assumed this meant she had cover to use the photo booth. His nametag said “Bill.”

---

There were some policies at the Brooklyn Museum that made amazing sense to Ada in the dawn of her matrescence, beyond Bill’s lenience about the photo booth. For example, caretakers could take strollers into the museum and among the collections, even big bulky strollers like Ada’s, which her husband loved, or the two-seaters that the nannies wielded expertly like giant boats, like the cargo ships her mother liked to look at coming into New York Harbor, under the Verrazano, her mother sitting on a particular promontory (Ada was told) above the highway, Ada at her breast. Ada had been thinking a lot about her mother since Bridgie was born. She was told this was natural, her mother having died when she was sixteen. But Ada declined the museum’s munificence and left the stroller at home. A pouch worked just fine. Another good policy was the pay-what-you-will entry, of which Ada did indulge. 

The bad policies, however, included a rule that you could not eat in the lobby. This Ada learned when Bill came up to her with those black boots clopping and his hands jammed into his loose pockets. It was not the way the other museum guards walked: fists enclosed behind their backs, slowly. 

Hey, you can’t have food over here, he said. 

Ada looked up from her miserable yogurt. It seemed like a rude way to say it. No “ma’am.” Though of course ma’am would have made her even more indignant. Still, she felt crabby. 

She pointed over at the nannies and their brawling kids, jumping chaotically on the round cushion-couches, clutching juice packs. How come they can do it? she asked.

Bill started getting hot too. 

Seriously? he said. They’re kids. You want me to bug little kids? 

I have a little kid, she said. 

He looked down at her pouch and seemed to soften. 

I know, he said. Bridgie. When she can eat, then you’re all good. 

Technically she’s eating what I’m eating, and if I can’t eat, then she can’t. 

Bill did not seem to know what to say to that. His hands were still in his pockets. Ada noticed that he was using cologne. Maybe it was his first job. 

He looked away towards the glass entry, Eastern Parkway, the silent stream of cars. The nanny-kids squirting their slime packets.

Fine, he said, just don’t drop it and get me in trouble. 

I don’t want to get you in trouble Bill, she said. 

As he walked off, she felt happier, if only because it was her first adult, non-husband conversation in days. 

She watched the nannies, one of whom nodded at her. She watched the toddlers, their impossibly large hands. Bridgie stirred and started shrieking, so Ada got up, and the photo booth was right there. The darkness calmed the baby, and Ada resisted feeding her again—she’d been warned to stop snack feeding unless it was a desperate situation—and the baby kept her eyes open and looked up at Ada. Ada looked down and did not move for a long time. Only when she needed to go to the bathroom did she disturb the red curtain. 

After the bathroom she wandered the museum. There was no clock, something thrilling and surprising about maternity leave. As long as she fed and changed the baby, she had no whims to follow but her own. Her husband would be back home at 5:30, but before that . . . . She circled Arts of Asia, the American Wing. She was, of course, too exhausted to think much about what she saw, but the baby was so light, now that Ada was mostly healed. So snug. Ada shifted the pouch slightly at the Judy Chicago Dinner Party exhibit so that Bridgie could take in some of the symbols of femininity, the triangles, the heroes, the silverware. The baby seemed to track more around the Joan of Arc plate. Ada went down to the café and had a turkey wrap, something she’d missed brutally during pregnancy, and then she was tired, so she went back into the photo booth and closed her eyes. The baby was warm against her, and they both fell asleep, and then they both woke up, and the baby wanted to eat again, and so she did. The sounds of people walking through the lobby were there but muffled, and Ada had the sense that when she emerged it would be almost dark. She was right. She pulled the red curtain back and headed for the coat check, but the cologne hit her first. The guard’s heavy boots. He was leaning against a wall. She wondered if he’d been on his feet this entire time. 

Hi Bill, she said.

The mar of their morning disagreement about food seemed as far in the past as it was. 

Jesus, she said, long shift!

He nodded, looking down at her shoes. Just sneakers, comfortable. Now they were mom shoes. 

Guess so, he said, although apparently it’ll feel shorter later. 

She smiled, glad to crack through. So you are new then, she said. 

He straightened up. What made you think that?

Don’t worry, she said. I’m new too. 

He stared at her, as if calculating. You’re in the museum a lot, he said. 

It’s a free country, she said. Somehow she was annoyed again. Her back and forth had been wild these first months. 

Ok, Bill said. 

He pushed off and walked a little stiffly towards some patrons waiting near the bathrooms, turning awkwardly at an angle away from them before the encounter. 

Ada bundled herself up for the cold walk home, and Bridgie started squalling. 

---

She stayed away from the museum for the rest of the week, chastened by being noticed. She tried the lobby of the central library a few blocks away on Flatbush, but its echoes made the baby tense. On a sunnier day she trekked to the main entrance of the botanic gardens, remembering vaguely a school field trip as a child and a series of greenhouses. Her mother had chaperoned. But when she got to the gardens the price tag was steep for a single entry, and the greenhouses were all the way on the other side. When she found them, Bridgie had finally acclimated to the cold and seemed overstimulated by the sounds of the heating generators behind the glass. She wouldn’t latch to eat, an uncommon occurrence. Ada fed her with difficulty and shivered outside, staring blankly at the barren lawn. 

She nodded coldly back and haughtily claimed the space, deciding to go even further this time, potential teenagers be damned.

So, she returned to the museum. Time really did pass in strange ways. The grand total of her preceding days had been the planning and execution of forays with Bridgie. No: her husband had cooked dinner one night. The next night, takeout. Another, thawed chicken breasts her past self had frozen before the baby was born. But these were minor events, curators’ notes the size of index cards next to the big paintings, sometimes inscrutable and terrifying and full of emotion and force. That was the weight of a moment with Bridgie. Which felt even bigger and more majestic in the photo booth, its soft carpeted walls, the dull sounds inside and out. The baby felt more human-sized there in the booth. That morning before lunch some teenager pulled the curtain aside without even asking and the shock of it made Ada indignant. Shouldn’t the kid be in school? She just said, It’s occupied. Like a bathroom. But after a minute she fled to the round lobby couches and tried to ignore the sound of the nanny-toddlers screaming. 

When she wandered back to the photo booth, Bill stood next to it, nodded at her. She nodded coldly back and haughtily claimed the space, deciding to go even further this time, potential teenagers be damned. She took Bridgie out of the sling and put the sling under the baby on the seat and let her lie there, first looking up, and then looking down when Ada flipped her over. Ada’s legs guarded the edge. For some reason the baby did not mind this position today, did not scream. 

A clank against the side of the photo booth disturbed her. Under and around the curtain she could see what it was: twin metal poles connected by a thick red rope on top, denoting entrance closed, but in an elegant way. She saw the base of the poles and the give of the rope and then the poles separated and the rope disappeared above the curtain, going taut. A pair of heavy black boots went by. 

Closed, sorry, she heard Bill’s voice say as another pair of feet approached—sandaled, socked, ridiculously. 

Machine’s messed up. It’ll be back up later maybe. 

Ada smiled and put a finger to her lips, looking down at Bridgie, as if the baby knew what it meant. 

She could have looked at her phone in the photo booth of course, but something about the space discouraged it. The darkness, the quiet, the way Bridgie was an equal presence. Once that afternoon she took the phone out after a text buzzed—her husband, elegantly phrased logistical questions, well-meaning—but the light of the device was harsh and alien. Bridgie screamed. Ada put the phone on airplane mode. She fell asleep. She woke up stiff, itching to get out and stretch. The poles and rope remained. She maneuvered herself and the baby around.   

Bill cut a meandering path from over by the coat check to the booth, and she took slow steps, as if she were still tentative about the baby being in the pouch. She wasn’t tentative. 

Come as much as you want, he said. Free country. 

She grinned. The fact that he listened to her moderately thrilled her. Not a lot—she had to admit she did not find him attractive. He was too young and awkward. But it was nice to have a friend in a place like this.

Those boots, aren’t they bad for standing? 

He looked down, as if he hadn’t thought of it. 

They’re cop boots, he said. Like department issue. 

Oh. 

My brother thought that would help. Cops stand around a lot too, ya know. 

I guess so. Do you want to be a police officer? 

No, fire. I’m waiting to take the test. 

She put her hand on the back of Bridgie’s head. She was vaguely aware that there was a waitlist. He seemed tragically thin to be a firefighter, but now she considered anew the military buzz of his hair. 

What about you, you got a job? 

It struck her—she hadn’t thought about it in weeks. 

I do, she said. Before. After too. I work for the Board of Elections.

Just saying the words lifted the fog a little, the row of dim cubicles, the C train, the ballot machine contracts she’d done her legal read on before leaving. A different fog. But she didn’t want that. She vowed not to say the words again. She was in a snow globe here, the cushioning of the photo booth. The quiet galleries, clean, empty restrooms. 

Bill glared down at his shoes and put his hands on his hips. 

Maybe I’m doing it wrong, he said. I’ve definitely been getting blisters. 

The maternal instinct in her flourished. It was unbelievable that she had a maternal instinct now. She reached over and put one hand on his suited arm, which tilted Bridgie. The baby’s eyes opened wide. 

You’ll wear them in, she said. Soon you’ll be running around here chasing art thieves. 

Or little kids, he said. More like that. 

It occurred to Ada all at once, in a kind of a weather change, like a bank of clouds storming in, that someday Bridgie would be a little kid. Running, talking. 

---

They developed a routine. He worked the lobby. She showed up precisely at opening time. In the hours preceding, she would be dying to get out of the house, get off the floor, where she lay with Bridgie and shook rattles, just a way to not be in the bed, now that she could at least bend down and not accidentally pee, or open her wound. Her husband, to be fair, had the baby for the hour after Bridgie woke up until he had to (got to?) get on the train to go to work (skyscrapers, engineering, he was an expert in windows and natural lighting), and though her husband did push it until the very last minute, he also did leave every day. The wind whistled cold air through the door as it opened and then closed. She always walked as quickly as she could to the museum because she couldn’t remember what the pediatrician had said about lowest allowable outdoor temperature for the baby. 

In the warmth of the museum, she felt her shoulders unhunch. Bridgie seemed to smile too. Ada could never tell exactly what was a smile, versus gas, but it was something about the unclenching of the eyes. She waved to Bill, who came over and made a funny face at Bridgie, who did not respond, and then she paid her dollar and went to the café to get coffee and then came back to the photo booth. Bill would be sliding the rope across. 

She would feed Bridgie, or just sit there, let Bridgie look at the flittering images. Screens were a worry but not much of a worry yet. That would come later, she was sure. Only very rarely would she take a picture. It cost $2.50, first of all. But also, it felt almost like evidence. Marking the time. She liked the time unmarked, the pictures fleeting, the baby feeding and not feeding and then sleeping again. 

Once, she felt the baby’s bowels loosen sitting there in the photo booth and it all came to her at once. She did not want to move, she could not move. She realized how much of her energy she spent just getting to this space, to the museum. She needed a den. If this space had not worked for her, she would have found another. The shining clean bathrooms and their changing table were only a 10-second walk. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She was paralyzed, even with the sweet stink. She did nothing until Bridgie started squirming and then wailing, the diaper turning sticky. She shush-shushed the baby to no avail and unpacked her changing pad, a diaper, wipes. 

The wailing wouldn’t stop. She was one wipe through when a foot came in. Big, black, and booted. Bill’s, of course. Waggling beneath the curtain sort of frantically. Suddenly the velvet rope clanked and detached, was hidden. She closed the diaper back up shit-full and threw the wipes, open, into her bag. The baby seemed surprised by the return of the diaper and closed her mouth: she was uncomfortably looking at the screen by the time a white-haired supervisor peeked in. 

Are you, the supervisor said. Oh. 

Oh sorry. 

Is everything alright in here? There’s been a noise complaint. 

Wow, really? 

I guess she’s quiet now. Maybe a bowel movement? 

Ada sniffed Bridgie’s backside, widened her eyes as if in realization.  Look at that, I’ll go take care of this. 

The bathroom’s that way. 

I know. 

Coming out of the photo booth she saw Bill, leaning against one of the mighty pillars in the lobby, his worried glance. 

She stopped by him after the bathroom. Her energy had returned for the task but now was ebbing. 

Thanks, she said. 

You get caught changing her? 

I don’t think so. 

Then a thought occurred to her. 

How’d you know I was changing her, though? Are you spying on me? 

She hadn’t meant it as an accusation, just playful. But his cheeks turned red, like they’d been iced. 

I’m sorry, he said. I don’t mean anything by it. I’ll stop. 

She cocked her head. 

Why are you staring at me all morning? she asked. But she already knew. 

His eyes flared and he said he shouldn’t be talking and he went over to the photo booth to quietly push the poles and red rope even further out of view. His boots clopping. She headed for a less comfortable section of the museum but felt very happily conscious of the way she must look to him, an amalgam of bed and rest and femininity. It wasn’t so bad, then. Her daughter in her arm’s crook. 

She did not want a flirtation. It should be repeated, she was not actually attracted to Bill. But it didn’t hurt to talk, to stand, to listen. They were in public. She reminded herself: she was doing nothing wrong. 

She headed for a less comfortable section of the museum but felt very happily conscious of the way she must look to him, an amalgam of bed and rest and femininity.

Or mostly wasn’t. Was it wrong to start thinking more carefully about what she wore to the museum in the morning? Was it wrong to put on makeup before she left, Bridgie down on the little portable pillow while she applied? Wrong to spend less time in the photo booth? She should get her steps in, this is what one of the doctors told her in the hospital before leaving—remember, steps are the best exercise, other than Pilates. She walked around that whole museum every day, over and over, and the way she knew it was wrong was that she walked like she was getting a sweat in when she was alone in a gallery, or with just other patrons, but if she saw a guard, she slowed, she paused, she became a normal museumgoer again. 

---

He disappeared at the end of January. It was only two days in a row, plus perhaps the weekend, though she did not know for sure about that. The weekend was her time to be somewhere other than the museum, with or without Bridgie. The Thursday and Friday, it was a hulking female guard in the lobby, glowering and no-nonsense. Ada recognized her from her usual posting on the American Paintings floor, a particular room with a few massive landscapes. The guard’s voice called out to patrons that they were too close to the mountains and streams. Ada wondered if the female guard and Bill ever had conversations.  

On Monday Bill was back, and even as she went through the security posting, the bag check (a different guard, whose name she didn’t know, reaching into Ada’s bag to push diapers and lotion around with a drumstick), the lobby, he walked boldly across to her. Ada saw that he was clutching a brown paper bag in front of him. Two hands. 

I went to Myrtle Beach, he said, with my brothers. She hadn’t asked, but she nodded anyway. You ever been there? he went on. 

No, she said. She pushed down the ungenerous feeling that she didn’t actually want him approaching her like that, like she owed him something. She was still just visiting, a guest, at this place where he worked. 

He seemed surprised by her shortness, and perhaps it made him cut to the chase. 

Here, it’s for Bridgie, he said. 

She took the paper bag. Inside was a child-sized t-shirt that said, “I’m a Surf’s Up Kid!”

I figured she’d grow into it, he said

Wow, she said. 

Kids love the water. Both of my nephews do. 

She wondered what Bill’s nephews were like. She wondered what any child over the age of one was like. She found writing on clothing incredibly tacky. Her heart dropped at the idea that this was what Bill’s nephews would want. Not that it was any of her business. It certainly wasn’t any of her business. 

It’s so big for her, Ada said. 

You’re right.

A plume of Bill’s cologne slapped the air, as if he were sweating. 

She plumbed the raised lettering on the surface of the t-shirt with her thumbs. 

Well, maybe she’ll grow into it, Bill said again. He clomped over to a wall by the bathrooms.

I hope she does, Ada said. Only later did she realize she hadn’t really said thank you. 

She only stayed the morning in the museum that day. It was unseasonably warm for February. Spring was coming. Soon she would be able to just walk in the park or the streets of New York, watch them blooming. She would not need the four walls of the museum. She put the t-shirt in her little diaper bag, where it got in the way of the things she needed, her water bottle, wipes, a throw-up cloth, so many diapers. The red curtain rope of the photo booth was waiting for her there after her turkey wrap, but this time she opted not to use it, took the sunny walk home. 

Opening the door, key in the lock, Bridgie wide-eyed at the jostling change in motion, Ada was surprised to see the lights on and music playing. Their one street-facing window open, a breeze coming in, and the sway of tree branches. Her husband on the couch stood up with a start. 

You’re home early, he said. 

No, you are, she said. 

Yes, well. He smoothed his t-shirt. 

During the week she rarely saw him out of pressed button-downs or pajamas.

I hopped off early and thought I’d relax for a second. 

Relax? she asked. 

I know, I know. 

She found that her heart was pounding. 

To make up for it, he went to help her untangle herself from the sling, kissing Bridgie. Then he started to empty the diaper bag. 

What’s this? he asked. He held it up. Magnificent, perfectly ugly. 

Ada didn’t look at the gifted shirt. Bridgie spit up a little, she said. I had to grab something. 

The museum sells these? her husband asked.

It must have been a pop art show. 

Ah, her husband said.

Later, he said she had a right to be a little cross with him, he knew he should have come to relieve her, it was just so nice by the window, the wind coming in, the start and stop of it, there even seemed to be a hint of sea. 

---

The next morning, she woke up and the bed was empty. The clock said 8 am. The baby monitor was off. She threw herself out of the sheets. 

Good, excellent timing, her husband said. Eggs are ready. 

Bridgie was cooing in the kitchen in her expensive bouncer. 

You didn’t need to take her. 

I’m off today. I took off. Those buildings can design themselves for the afternoon. 

The eggs were fluffed and full of cheddar cheese. 

Go get a manicure, or just relax. We have a bottle.

I’d still need to pump. 

Her husband stopped where he’d been cleaning the dishes. Right, right, he said. 

Which is why they headed to the museum together, him pushing an empty stroller she knew they would not use, the baby perched alert and restless in the cocoon on her chest, looking over at her dad. The unusual presence. 

She had nothing to feel guilty about, of course, but still she felt it, as they swanned across the lobby and Bill started walking towards them but then noticed and stopped. It was too late because her husband flagged him. 

Hi there, permissible to bring this in, I hope? 

The stroller. 

For sure, yeah, Bill said. Hi there. 

Bill was waving at Bridgie. 

Say hellooo, Ada said, fingering her daughter’s fingers. Come on, the check-in’s over there. 

Her husband turned his head sideways as he bought their tickets.

Bridgie’s a celebrity here.  

She knows everyone, Ada said. She fussed with the baby’s head. 

That’s wonderful, her husband said, putting down the full admission price for the two of them. 

Was it possible that Bridgie angled her body towards the photo booth? No, certainly babies couldn’t see so far at that age. Ada maneuvered them to the elevator, the smooth ride up. The other elevator riders beamed at them, their happy family. 

Ada remembered something her mother had told her. It disturbed her that she’d just remembered it then. How many aspects of her childhood, of her life with her mother, were sitting unprobed in the depths of her memory, waiting to be regurgitated? It had been a few days before Ada’s parents’ tenth wedding anniversary; she must have been eight or nine. There is nothing wrong, her mother said, and that’s a blessing. Ada remembered her mother fingering a card her father had left before he went to work. 

I have to go to the bathroom, she said now. Can you take the baby? 

The long unwrapping. Bridgie yipped when they tried to put her in the stroller. Ada strapped the baby to her husband instead. 

There’s one in the lobby, Ada said. 

She took the stairs down, out of habit. Felt the energy in her leg muscles, their capability. The sun pierced the stairwell windows. Soon it would be nearly summer and she’d avoid the museum, except on rainy days. 

Bill looked up as she came into the lobby. Maybe she had a head of steam on her. His boots, she noticed, were gone today, replaced by boxy white sneakers. She pulled the curtain back on the photo booth and closed her eyes in the dark. 

He joined her. It was his feet first, then his bony hand. The polyester blue of the standard-issue uniform sleeve. His nose. So many things remained a mystery—his address. His interests. His mother’s name. 

Your husband’s pretty fancy, huh? he said. 

She shook her head and the lights of the photo booth screen blurred. She leaned in. 

She wondered if somewhere in the museum there was a composition like this, two faces clutched uncertainly, then two silhouettes, then one. The woman’s face with her eyes closed, the man’s open out of shock. She wondered how a frame would change things, or who the artist was, or would be, if they took a picture here, in the photo booth.