Learning to See Page 10

  I SURVIVED THE next three days. Maynard surprised me by coming home from his studio several times a day to check on me and the baby. Each time he arrived at our door, I’d melt into his shoulder, inhaling the sharp smell of turpentine. We’d plunk down on stools on the porch. While Maynard held the baby, I’d listen to him tell me about what he was working on and who’d stopped by his studio that day. I’d roll my neck, rub at the small of my back, all while trying to absorb the sunshine beaming down on me over the stucco wall next to us. It felt as though I’d been shrunk and dropped into a glass jar. Though I could see everything around me, colors were not quite right, sounds were muffled, my depth perception was off, and everything seemed distant. I wanted to crack the glass that encased me and escape, but I was so exhausted. I could scarcely lift my arms from my sides to hold the baby.

  Imogen visited every few days for several weeks, each time bringing food. Several clients arrived bearing flowers and more food. Seeing their faces awakened something inside me. My senses seemed to sharpen.

  One morning I awoke and realized the baby had slept for five hours in a row. I brewed coffee in the kitchen. My hands did my brain’s bidding without the slight delay that had been unnerving me since Dan’s birth. I picked him up, felt the soft fuzz of his downy head against my cheek, and sank into a chair. Under my palm resting on his back, I could feel his little heart beating with the persistence of a hummingbird’s wings. He fit so marvelously against my chest and shoulder, his legs pulled up underneath him, curled like a fiddlehead fern. The smell of powder, his warmth, the threads of blue veins rooting underneath the velvet of his skin—he was mine.

  Imogen visited the following day, saw me nursing, and said, “You look better.”

  “I am. Thank you for all of your help. I’m not sure what I would have done without you.” I removed Dan from my breast and lifted him to my shoulder, patting his back. “I’ve been thinking about getting back to my studio.”

  “Already?”

  “Yes, Elke Minor stopped by with those lovely flowers.” I pointed to a cut-crystal vase of irises in the middle of the table. “She asked when I planned to be back in the studio and it got me thinking.”

  “Elke is one of your clients?”

  I nodded.

  “Figures she didn’t bring something useful. No food or clothes?” Imogen said with a sniff. “It’s easy for her to think about getting back into routines—your clients probably hire baby nurses for all of their children.”

  I ignored Imogen’s grumbling and leaned my cheek against the side of Dan’s head. He grew heavy. “I’ve been thinking that maybe I can bring him to the studio and still get work done. Ah-yee is the oldest of six, so she knows her way around children. I could offer to pay her a little more,” I whispered. Without waking the baby, I rose and walked into our bedroom. Sliding him off my shoulder, I placed him on his belly in the middle of our bed. His tiny hands balled under his chin and his knees curled into his chest as though he were a snail pulling into its shell. Before returning to the kitchen, I slid down next to him, breathing in his milky scent and tracing the whorls of dark hair feathering his skull. His vulnerability made my throat thicken. All curled up, he was barely longer than the length of my forearm. The stir of feelings he brought up in me left me breathless. With a sigh, I returned to the kitchen, stretching out my arms and shoulders while taking my seat across from Imogen once more. “Thank you again for all of your help. What would I have done without you?”

  She nodded. “When are you planning to go back?”

  I glanced over my shoulder at the bedroom door. “As soon as I can. We could use the money. Maynard’s work is selling, but it’s inconsistent.”

  “You won’t be able to do as much as you once did.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Maynard should go back to advertising work. It’s steady income. Once the boys arrived, Roi took that teaching job at Mills.”

  I stood and moved to the sink to wash dishes. “Maynard’s painting is going all right. He’s got loads of material from his last few trips. Bender’s been telling him he could put together a couple of shows in the Midwest. Maybe the East Coast too. He seems very determined and optimistic.”

  “Advertising work could provide some steady income.”

  With my back to her, I grimaced. Maynard would never forgive me if I asked him to take a job like that. He’d done that kind of work in the past and sworn it off. No, he needed to be free to continue painting. I turned and leaned my back against the sink to face Imogen. “Dan’s a good baby and sleeping for longer stretches. I miss my camera. I can do this.” And I truly believed I could.

  Chapter 14

  April 1964

  Steep Ravine, California

  The skunky smell of saltwater floats toward me as I pick my way down the sandy beach, careful of the pain lurking in my side, ready to pounce and bite if I provoke it.

  “Grandma,” Nathaniel calls, rushing up the beach toward me, churning up a small sandstorm in his wake. His cheeks puff in and out with exertion, but as he reaches me, he slows, his movements suddenly deliberate and controlled. He places something onto my outstretched hand with the same type of care I imagine he’d use with a sacred artifact. A small blue robin’s egg, shattered along one side and empty, rests on the meat of my palm.

  “My, now that’s an unexpected find down here.”

  “I know, I know! How did it end up on the beach? Where’s the chick?”

  I shake my head, all the while watching his pale green eyes, the color of sea glass, widen with the wonderment of possibilities. After offering a couple of ideas for how the egg landed down here, he darts off again, eager for more discoveries. Though he’s gone, I can still see his afterburn image in front of me. His expression of delight. The little gaps in his smile and the streaks of sand tracing along his sun-bronzed cheekbones.

  Sudden coolness crosses over me. I shiver and look up to see the sun blocked momentarily by a cloud. I glance at my wristwatch. Dan and Mia are due to arrive in a few hours to help us pack and head home. I lift my arm to shade my eyes against the glare of the sun off the wet sand. On the hillside above, the cabin, all angles and worn shingles, clings to the ridge like a barnacle. Below it, farther down the beach away from me, the grandchildren knot over something at the waterline, probably a jellyfish or some marine oddity. When I drop my hand back to my side, the corner of the MoMA envelope inside my pocket nudges at my palm. Four days have passed since it arrived. I keep the letter close but have said nothing about it to anyone. I’m still making sense of it.

  I consider calling out that it’s time to clean off, brush hair and teeth, and pack bags, but then what? We’ll just sit in the main room looking out the window wistfully to the ocean below. No, it’s foolish to disturb the children. Here, away from the city, they need to lose themselves in the beauty of the wide-open sea, the wind, and worlds that exist under every rock along the beach. There will be plenty of time for tidying when they get home. When we’re here, I try to let them set our schedule. Time at the beach is for letting the children bask in fresh air and freedom.

  Nathaniel bounds back toward me, something new in his hand. “Another find! This shell is all brown and crusty on one side, but when you flip it over, look at the beautiful evening sky on the smooth part inside.”

  I follow his instructions. Sure enough, a pale blue twilight color glows where his finger points. “You’re getting very good at seeing things, really seeing them.”

  “I’ve been practicing.”

  “Good. It takes a lot of practice to see things as they are, not as you want them to be.”

  “Did you practice seeing when you were my age?”

  “Oh dear, I’m still practicing. Every day.”

  He nods with satisfaction and then pushes his head toward me to reveal a seaweed crown atop his blond hair. “Look”—he says—“I’m a Neptune.”

  I admire his handiwork, enjoying the unexpected change of direction in our convers
ation. “Here, you can be whatever you want.”

  He considers this. “What’s a bonapart?”

  “A bonapart?” I squint, trying to make sense of this question.

  “Yes, Dad says when you’re here, you’re not the bonapart you are at home.”

  Realization lodges in my chest with a thud. Bonaparte. Napoleon Bonaparte. After years of warfare, Dan and I have finally arrived at a fragile truce, but still, he holds much against me. Anger, resentment, betrayal. It’s all in the riptide below the surface. “I believe he’s referring to a famous French emperor.”

  “Emperor?”

  “It’s a fancy word for ‘king.’” My knowledge of aristocratic titles is a bit uncertain, but he doesn’t press me.

  “So, your castle is back at home?”

  “Right. When I’m here”—I pause and look at the waves pushing onto the shore—“I don’t have to run a kingdom. I can . . . relax.”

  Somehow my feeble explanation satisfies him. Or maybe he sees through my charade. Children are good at that. Either way, he looks out to sea and says hesitantly, “Mom and Dad will be here soon, won’t they?”

  I nod, dropping my hand into my pocket, and hold the letter between my fingers. It no longer crackles. It seems to be loosening, becoming a part of me. The salt air is softening the paper. Maybe it holds the answer, the way to bridge the gap between Dan and me. “Yes, in a bit. Have you missed them?”

  He wrinkles his nose. “No, being here is my favorite place in the world.” Gratitude floods me and I reach for his shoulder to squeeze, but he wriggles from under my touch. “Why do you and Dad have so many disagreements?”

  I take a deep breath. “Well, I suppose we disagree on some choices we’ve both made. Sometimes we hurt each other, but we’re learning to move beyond the past.”

  His eyebrows, frosted white with dried saltwater, rise as he studies me with a dubious expression. “Like what kind of choices?”

  I pull back and forth at the camera strap around my neck while considering his question. Where do I start with my answer?

  Chapter 15

  September 1925

  San Francisco, California

  I don’t have a single photo of me with Dan as a baby. Not a single one. In many, Maynard holds him, but there are none of the two of us together. Imogen photographed me once around this time. In the photo, I’m smiling mischievously and looking out of the frame as if laughing at a joke, but I’m alone. My eyes crinkle with a smile that spreads to every corner of my face, so my happiness must have been real, but I don’t remember feeling that way when Dan was an infant. All I remember is bone-crushing exhaustion. I spent my days caring for him while cramming in studio appointments, cooking meals, scrubbing the grit and cobwebs out of our cramped little cottage, washing endless piles of clothing and house linens, wringing them dry, and putting them away, only to begin the whole routine again the following day.

  Somehow the portraits I took during that era of my life show none of this. Elegant young women finger strings of pearls as they stare off into the middle distance while leaning against blank walls; well-clad fathers sit next to sons, ambition practically crackling off the paper; proud mothers preen over their plump, well-scrubbed children. A dreamy, soft focus gave all my subjects a look of perfection and peace. I edited flaws. Everyone’s best angle showed. The monochromatic palette removed any dissonance between colors that didn’t match. Everyone looked lovely and whole, present and thoughtful. My portraits satisfied my clients, and of course, that pleased me, yet an undertow of unease pulled at me.

  One afternoon while rummaging through my dresser for a clean bandanna to cover my hair, a green velvet pouch caught between my fingers. I lifted it from the drawer and peeked inside to find my old silver bangle from my trip to Arizona with Maynard after we married and wriggled it onto my wrist. I remembered his expression of glee as he handed me the gift and placed it around my freckled wrist. Its heft felt satisfying, substantial. But then I thought of the Tuba City Indian School. It all came back. The empty faces. The wailing of the newly arrived boy. My feeling of helplessness. I shuddered, pulling the bangle off my wrist, and returned it to the pouch, pushing it to the rear of the drawer.

  I backed away from my dresser, but could still feel the bangle’s presence and all of the emotions it dredged up. Almost six years had passed since our trip to Tuba City Indian School. Was I the same woman who had fled that awful place? I had become so busy, too desperate to keep up with work, to think about what I was doing, to think about where I was going with my life. I took pride in making my clients satisfied, but I was running myself ragged. Why? What did all of my hours of toil add up to? Did my work matter? If I quit, sure, my clients would miss me for a bit, but they could find someone else who could make them look beautiful and intelligent. What was I running from? From the kitchen, Dan squalled. I went to him, unable to think past his cries.

  ONE AFTERNOON, I stood at the worktable in my studio when the sound of giggling startled me. Fronsie leaned against the open doorway, her arm around Ah-yee. Clad in a pale blue suit-styled jacket and skirt, she smiled and winked. “Yoo-hoo, remember lil’ old me? Jack’s mother has taken the girls for the day so I thought I’d pop by for a visit. Ah-yee says you have a break in your schedule, so I’m going to drag you out for a bite to eat while she watches Dan. You’re working too much.”

  I didn’t protest as she pulled me out of the studio and down the street to a café, where we enjoyed a civilized hour of catching up over coffee and pastries. When the bill came, she smiled and swiped it from the waiter’s hands. “I still have a few minutes of freedom. Let’s go see Maynard. It’s been ages since I’ve seen him.” Off we went to the Monkey Block.

  When we sashayed into his studio, he dropped his brushes and slapped his knee in delight. “Holy cats, aren’t I the lucky bastard? Mrs. Stockton! To what do I owe this honor?” While she embraced him and demanded a showing of his latest work, I wandered from wall to wall soaking in his paintings of big stretches of Sonoran Desert, hot with golden hues and burning reds, the compositions often sweeping and a bit savage. Over the last couple of years, Maynard had left for several more sketching trips throughout the Southwest—Utah, New Mexico, Arizona. Each time he came home brimming with ideas that prompted him to disappear to the Monkey Block. And here it was, all that he had been creating: big skies you wanted to fall into. Some bold cerulean blue, some paler with pearly dawn lighting. Dark blues and rich purples lurked in the shadows of mesas. The paintings made goose bumps prickle my flesh. I exhaled and shook my head in admiration. This was nature down to its most basic lines and telling colors. Maynard’s genius radiated from every canvas.

  Fronsie accepted a light from Maynard, inhaled, and exhaled with a contented sigh in front of one of his larger canvases. “I could just sit here all day staring at these.”

  “Let’s hope you’re not alone. I’m heading east at the end of the month to tour with this collection. I need some big sales.”

  I tucked my arm around Fronsie’s and beamed with pride. “The critics in Los Angeles love it all. Bender’s been getting flooded with inquiries from Chicago and New York.”

  “I can see why. Aren’t you two just the cat’s meow?” Fronsie exclaimed, pulling Maynard to the other side of her so the three of us stared at a canvas filled with Utah’s boxy mesas. “And to think I’m in the company of two of San Francisco’s most successful artists.”

  I glanced at Maynard as he turned to tease Fronsie about buying one of his pieces. Was I an artist? I wouldn’t have classified my portraits as art, but they were certainly doing well. I had a craft that my clients appreciated. So, Fron was right, wasn’t she? I reached for her cig and took a long drag. I needed to stop overthinking everything. Maynard’s work would sell like hotcakes on the East Coast. It sure seemed like we had the world by the tail.

  AFTER SPENDING A month in New York, Maynard traveled home and came straight to my studio from the train station, his clothes wrinkled, fa
ce sullen. Sidling over to my appointment book, he picked up Dan and stood at Ah-yee’s desk, tracing a finger down the long row of clients I had booked for the week. Tightness settled around his eyes when I asked him about the trip.

  “I forgot how miserable the East Coast is,” he grumbled. “Macbeth Galleries only sold a couple of my paintings. They’re a bunch of goddamn lemmings back there. It’s all Nancy-boy designers with only an eye on Stieglitz and all of his isms. Cubism, expressionism, surrealism, modernism . . . it’s bullshit. No one wants anything different. I’m done with that dog-and-pony show.”

  My back tensed, but I kept my voice steady. “Did you get to see Consie?”

  Maynard’s frown deepened. “Yes, she’s happy where she is with Lillian’s family nearby and wants nothing to do with me.”

  This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. “Well,” I said, forcing a bright note into my voice, “Bender came by the other day to ask when you’d be back. The Biltmore’s interested in a commission. Some murals, I think.”

  He nodded, somewhat mollified, but his frustration didn’t dissipate. He started disappearing for hours without explanation. When he did come home, he was distracted and short with me. I told myself this moodiness was just a phase. A dark period. All artists went through it.

  One evening he came home insisting I accompany him to a party in Oakland at Willard Van Dyke’s studio. “All you do is work,” he grumbled as I handed him a plate of stew. He stuffed a forkful of roasted carrots into his mouth.

  Wounded, I stepped back, tucking my hair under the scarf I wore around my head. Several evenings ago, the cloying scent of Shalimar had drifted over our bed after he came home late, disheveled and drunk, his eyes blurry from the smoke at Coppa’s. His teeth had been stained a dingy grayish-purple hue from red wine. I never wore Shalimar. I’d wrinkled my nose but said nothing though the memory niggled at me like a painful hangnail. Perhaps he was right. It seemed I needed to cut loose and keep him company before he found somebody else who would.