Body Surfing by Anita Shreve

a collage is, right?"
    Julie nods.
    "I wondered if you would lay them out on the table for me so that they'd make a nice composition."
    Sydney sits back on the sofa, ceding the table to Julie. The girl, who is used to following Sydney's instructions, flicks through the packet of photos and begins to sort them. Beachscapes. Pictures of the house. Photographs of the lobster pound and the grocery store in the center of town. After a time, Julie begins to place them on the coffee table. Sydney watches with growing excitement.
    Selecting nine photographs from the pile, some vertical, some horizontal, Julie sets each down in relationship to the one before. She does not hesitate and she does not pick up a photograph once she has put it down. When she has finished, she sits back, squints at the collage, then pulls the photographs apart from one another by a quarter inch. Then she puts her hands in her lap. Done.
    Sydney leans forward to examine the assemblage. A sole picture of the house in shadow, the darkest photo of the lot, sits just below and to the right of center and acts as an anchor. The other photos bleed out from that central picture in color and tone and in actual geographic proximity to the house. More surprising is the selection of just the nine pictures, four to one side, five to the other, the extra photograph on the left balancing the weight of the central dark image. The girl knew instinctively not to use all of the photos. The end result is visually pleasing. More than pleasing. Accomplished. Julie, who cannot understand eighth-grade math and is incapable of mastering basic punctuation, is clearly gifted at the art of composition.
    "You've got quite an eye," Sydney says.
    But the girl seems disturbed.
    "What's wrong?" Sydney asks.
    "There aren't any people in your pictures," Julie notes.
    "How about a walk?" Sydney asks after a time.
    Julie examines Sydney as if through a film Sydney has come to think of as milky. "All right," Julie says, ever compliant in the way of a girl who finds most of life pleasurable.
    "We'll go through town. Stop by and watch them playing tennis." Sydney bends forward, collecting the photographs, wishing she didn't have to destroy Julie's effortless composition. "We'll do this again," she says.
    The village center on a Saturday afternoon is crowded with packed SUVs and two sets of renters: the first group wistful, reluctant to leave after their two-week stay; the other buoyant, fetching provisions in anticipation of a long-awaited vacation. Julie and Sydney skirt the lobster pound and the general store and head along a tree-shaded lane. Even the meanest asbestos-shingled cottage and the weediest lawn seem inviting in the hard sunshine.
    Sydney can hear the thwack of the ball before she can see the players. A thwack and a grunt. She tries to identify the source of the exertion. Male or female? Young or old?
    When Julie and Sydney reach the court, they stop, by unspoken agreement, just short of revealing themselves. Sydney is intrigued and wonders at Julie's motives. Not wanting to be seen wanting? She wonders something else: Are her own motives the same?
    In the distance, she can make out Victoria in tennis pinks and what looks to be a pair of new running shoes. Jeff, beside her, about to serve, has large sweat stains under his armpits, rivulets of perspiration trickling down the sides of his face. He brings his racquet down in a ferocious display of pure power. The ball hits just inside the line and seemingly out of the reach of Ben, who nevertheless makes a nifty return. Having had a smattering of tennis lessons during her strenuously WASP period, Sydney can follow the game. Beside her, Julie has her fingers pressed to her mouth.
    "What?" Sydney asks, smiling.
    "Dad."
    Julie's father has on an abbreviated pair of tennis shorts he might have bought forty years ago--pale gray from many washings and so worn as to be comically revealing. His white legs are shocking; he looks a different race