The Sun in Your Eyes by Deborah Shapiro

the most lucrative kind—it generated more cultural capital than actual capital. But, as I learned from Andy, Jesse came from a family whose mini-empire of supermarkets had been dismantled and dissolved. But not before certain trusts had been established and, in Lee’s case, well-maintained, thanks to her mother. On top of that, Linda West, former model, muse, and party girl, had turned out to be a remarkably savvy businesswoman.
    The more I looked at Jesse’s picture, the more I saw the resemblance to Lee. The sleepy, wide deep-blue eyes that darkened to violet at the edges, the fullness of her mouth, softening the sharpness and structure of her other features. They had faces— made for cameras and stages, made to be looked at. Lee shared with her father (and her mother, I would come to find out) a powerful, preoccupying magnetism. So that, in a group photograph, you’re always drawn to them first. When you can’t look at them anymore because you know you’ll never get to the bottom of them, then you start seeing the other people in the frame and wondering where the picture was taken.
    â€œDoes Lee talk about him at all?”
    â€œSometimes. Yeah. Last year some guy was writing part of a dissertation on him and wanted to talk to Lee. She agreed to, but in the end it just weirded her out. Like he was projecting all this stuff onto her father. But I think what really upset her is that she didn’t know if it was a projection or not. I mean, she never really knew her father.”
    I hardly knew Lee then, but I already wanted to protect her. I was at the beginning of something, something I didn’t want to disappear.
    T HERE WAS A girl we knew in college named Kirsten. She and Lee could both be impetuous and headlong. Kirsten was ultimately more successful at it, I think because she was more shallow. She treated our women’s studies class to a graphic video of her girlfriend in bed and then got married not two years out of school to a guy she met while knitting in Prospect Park. We understood sexuality could be fluid. But we barely recognized her at the wedding without her dark eye makeup and bulky boots. What threw us was the realization that that had merely been a look in the same way that the letterpress place cards, the tea lights twinkling in the trees, the greenery in mason jars, her reworked vintage bridal gown, was all a look. Her ardor for performance seemed to exceed rather than express a passion for her groom. As though she were getting married largely for the pictures and a license to throw dinner parties. Lee and I scoffed. But it also made us insecure about who we were and what we should want.
    â€œI envy her tolerance for being embarrassed,” I said to Lee. We were sitting on a stone bench on the grounds of an old estate, drinking champagne, not too far from the guests on the patio but out of earshot. “No, but I do. She doesn’t care. She’s not cowed by self-consciousness.”
    â€œI think the word you’re looking for is shameless,” said Lee.
    â€œYeah, but we say that like it’s a bad thing. Where does shame ever get us?”
    â€œKirsten’s a nutbag, okay? She throws a nice party though.”
    Late into that night, music continued to drift out of the open French doors of a ballroom to the sloping lawn where a group of revelers kept going. In the early but still dark hour when dew starts to settle over everything, Lee and Kirsten and I found ourselves alone down by a boathouse. In my mind’s eye we are sleepily draped across various surfaces, women in a pre-Raphaelite painting.
    â€œI’m knitting him a pair of socks,” said Kirsten, apropos of nothing but the digressive course of the conversation we’d been having. We nodded in an indication of listening.
    â€œNo, like, I’m knitting my husband a fucking pair of fucking socks . I have the yarn and the needles and everything all packed up in my bag for