Learning to See Page 13

  Beyond our new home was wide-open space, bare of any real trees beyond a few stunted cottonwood groves dotting the landscape. Now three and six, the boys found it to be heaven. A neighbor, a Mexican man missing a front tooth who barely spoke a lick of English, brought a small pony over to us. It hardly took a week before the boys were riding the creature around the property like two vaqueros.

  After several weeks, Maynard was able to leave bed. The first thing he did was head into town to outfit his new studio with supplies. He returned home later that afternoon describing the market square that consisted of a post office, two saloons, and a one-eyed, three-legged mutt who guarded the village’s one general store with impressive ferocity. For Maynard and the boys, our new home offered endless opportunity for adventure. For me, it was one chore after another, but as Dan and John came in for meals with high color on their faces and Maynard started to stand a little taller, I told myself it was all worth it. The children grew at an astonishing rate. It seemed they ate three times their body weight several times a day.

  Every morning when I was pumping water at the well in front of the casita, a car drove by with a solitary figure inside, the same time every morning, seven days a week. Never once did he glance over at me in curiosity. One morning, as I placed a bowl of scrambled eggs on the table for breakfast, I mentioned him to Maynard.

  “Oh, that’s Paul Strand.”

  Hmmm, another photographer from New York. Years earlier, I’d seen a show of Strand’s at Stieglitz’s gallery in Manhattan but never met him in person.

  “He’s got a studio down the street from me. Pretty uppity, never talks to anyone.”

  I pulled a pan sizzling with frying bacon off the cookstove and forked a few strips onto each boy’s plate. It felt like all I did was prepare meals. Wiping my greasy hands on a dish towel and watching them eat, my chest tightened. I tried to imagine what it would be like to walk out the door, drive to a studio, and work for the day, without making any food for anyone, fetching water, sweeping, or laundering clothes. I turned to the tub for washing dishes and tried to push any thoughts of photography from my mind. But that night, as I finished putting the plates away on the shelf, I found myself gazing out the window and studying the skeletal outline of a bare cottonwood in the dusky twilight. I could practically feel the heft of a camera in my hands, the smoothness of its metal against my fingers, and the pressure on my brow as I looked into the viewfinder. As I stood thinking, John came to me and nudged his head into my hip. A handful of small golden leaves gleamed on his head like a crown. My hand lingered on his shoulder while I admired the contrast of gold in his dark hair. Then I brushed them away. “Are you ready for bed?”

  I took his muffled snufflings as affirmation and squatted down to cup his chin with my hand. “Did you polish your teeth?”

  “Dan says it will wash away the taste of your apple pie if I do.”

  “That may be the case, but you must clean them anyway.”

  His face crumpled in disappointment so I took one of his hands in my own. Tiny dark arcs of dirt appeared above the pink of his nailbeds, remnants from a long day of outside play. “Come now, time to get ready for bed.” Despite dragging his feet, he followed me. After I had tucked him into his cot, I returned to the window and looked out into the darkness. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could last without my camera.

  WINTER NEARED, ITS winds howling along the flats surrounding our chilly adobe. Money was running low. Maynard and I agreed it was best to return to San Francisco. My portrait business could pay our bills. I knew Maynard and the boys were disappointed to leave, but I could scarcely wait to have the steering wheel in my hands and head back. At the outskirts of the city, ominous signs greeted us. The boys huddled close to the windows, looking at rows of ramshackle hovels and lean-tos constructed from wooden boards, tarps, strips of canvas, shingles, abandoned signs, and sections of fencing. Anything that could be salvaged and used as a building material lined the edge of the highway. Occasional stumps of stovepipes spewed black plumes of smoke into the air above the huts.

  “Please, darlings, don’t press your noses against the glass. You’ll leave tracks all over it when you do that,” I said.

  “But, Mama, look at all those people camping. I’ve never seen tents like those before,” said Dan.

  I glanced over at Maynard glowering at the road, the brim of his cowboy hat pulled low. We neared a wizened man sitting by the shoulder of the highway on an overturned pail. He stared at the passing motorcars. Behind him, a cloth covering the opening of a nearby culvert fluttered in the wind, the only sign of movement. This was not the same place we had left.

  Chapter 18

  The city was quiet. It took me a while to figure it out but then I realized the motorcar traffic had lessened. Unable to afford gasoline, people walked everywhere. And the constant building projects that once choked the city’s streets had dwindled. Gone was the sound of hammers and saws, and now idle men peppered the streets, arms folded, leaning against the walls of buildings watching people pass. Younger boys clustered at street corners, offering newspapers, shoeshines, rags, sometimes boiled peanuts. I always tried to drop a nickel into one of the chipped mugs they clutched in their grubby hands but waved off whatever they were peddling. I wanted nothing in return, just a little peace of mind that maybe they’d find something to eat that day.

  One of the first things I did when we got back to the city was join Imogen for a Camera Club meeting. With Maynard struggling to find any sort of paying work, I needed to keep a handle on my business. The Camera Club’s numbers appeared to have thinned, but people still turned out. Some members had stopped driving in from surrounding areas, but Willard and several others still took the ferry across from Oakland. I missed Connie Kanaga; she had left for New York City a few months prior.

  Unsurprisingly, word in the crowd was that there was little work to be had. I came away from the meeting feeling low and guilty. I was in better shape than most. I still had clients, but how much longer would that last? Imogen and I remained quiet on the way home, each immersed in our worries.

  We entered my kitchen and found Roi, Maynard, and both Imogen’s and my boys gathered around a cutting board with a block of sharp cheddar in the center of the kitchen table. A tin of crackers lay on its side. Several apple cores, brown and lank, were tossed next to the sink alongside a stack of dirty plates.

  “Hmmm, what’s been happening here?” asked Imogen, taking in the two empty wine bottles between Maynard’s and Roi’s elbows. “Everyone was pleased to welcome Dorothea back into the fold.”

  “Oh yes, everyone’s always happy to see Dorothea,” Maynard slurred. “Why, there’s been a line of her clients out the front door since we got home. Hardest worker in town. I wager if she was a man, she’d be a captain of industry by now, lording over us all. It’s a shame all of that ambition is wasted in a woman.”

  I closed my eyes, my lungs constricting. So, this was how he was going to be tonight. I swallowed and looked to Roi and Imogen. Roi appeared to be fishing his finger about in his glass for a piece of cork or something, but Imogen glowered at Maynard.

  “But such is her lot in life that she’s married to you instead,” she said. “It’s lucky there are still people around here with money to spend, right?”

  “I’m tired of ’em all feathering their nests off our work.”

  “Sounds like you’re oversimplifying things a bit.”

  “Right.” Maynard thumped his glass down and a splash of wine sloshed over the side, spreading onto the table like a bloodstain. “All my clients have flown the coop. Bunch of rich assholes.”

  “Stop it,” I told him, glancing at the boys and grabbing a dish towel to clean up the mess. “No one likes it when you get going on this.”

  “I’m just sayin’ what everyone’s thinking.”

  “Quit feeling sorry for yourself,” I said.

  “Oh, you’re a fine one, aren’t you?” Maynard looked at me, eyes piercing ove
r the rim of his glass. “Cold as Christian charity.”

  “The way I see it, you can either sit around and feel sorry for yourself or get to work. When times get tough, some people head down to Coppa’s to drown their sorrows, while real men get to work. I’ve always thought of you as a real man, Maynard.”

  “Your wife is right,” Imogen said. “You’re enough of a poker player to know you’ve got to play the hand you’re dealt, no complaints.”

  “Imogen, mind your own potatoes,” Roi snapped.

  She sniffed and clapped her hands, urging the boys to rise. As she bent over to pull a sweater over Padraic’s small shoulders, Maynard slouched in his seat and dropped his head on his arms crossed on the table. The spark that had always lit him up from within appeared to have guttered. On her way out the door, Imogen took my hand and squeezed it before I led Dan and John away for bed.

  I CONTINUED TO work but my appointments became fewer and fewer. Whole days passed without any portrait sessions, so I filled the time with developing and filing negatives. When I did book a client, I struggled with occupying the boys. For a while, Fronsie helped me by having them play at her house with her daughters. Then one day she announced they were leaving for New Jersey to be closer to her family. Jack’s parents had both died the previous year. The Wall Street crash had been too much strain on his father and he had dropped dead of a heart attack one afternoon in his office. Jack’s mother had followed soon after. No one spoke of what exactly happened to her, but I gathered from Fronsie that several bottles of pills had been involved. It wasn’t an unusual story. Times were tough and grim endings were all too easy to spot in the Chronicle’s obituaries. The prospect of Fron’s departure devastated me.

  I went to visit the day before they left and Fron offered me a seat on a packing crate while handing me a teacup filled with something that was not tea.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “I’m using up the last of our sherry. Come on now, you’re joining me for one today. Otherwise I don’t think I can get through this.” She threw her drink back and then blew out her cheeks. “I can’t believe I’m leaving.”

  “I hate to see you go. You’ve always been my proof that happy endings exist,” I said before taking a measured sip of my drink, my eyes watering as my throat burned.

  “Not sure how much of a happy ending this is,” said Fronsie, frowning. “And besides, don’t let yourself think you don’t deserve happiness.”

  I nodded, raising the gilt rim of the Limoges teacup to my lips to hide my frown. People did not always get what they deserved. My right foot was proof of that. Those young faces at Tuba City Indian School also came to mind. And what about all of the men out of work whom I passed every day lining Sacramento Street? Surely there were plenty not getting what they deserved.

  Fron interrupted my thoughts. “How’s work?”

  “We’re certainly not buttering our bacon these days. I seem to have about one appointment for every three that I used to book.” While we never went to bed with empty stomachs, our kitchen cupboards were closer to empty than I cared to admit. For dinner, I often fried slices of stale bread soaked in bacon grease, condensed milk, and an egg or two. My income barely covered the rent on our house and two studios. I’d been toying with the idea of newspaper work, but what would I do with the boys? At seven and four, they were too young to be left alone, and school only absorbed a fraction of Dan’s day. Without any family around, who could watch them? I couldn’t afford to pay anyone. I picked up Fronsie’s carton of cigs and tapped one out to light.

  “What about Maynard?”

  “He was denied the mural commission on the Coit Tower project. There are rumors of some other commissions, but I don’t even remember the last painting he sold.”

  Fronsie let out a low whistle and lit a cigarette. We both watched the smoke drift toward the ceiling in lazy spirals. “Is he being difficult?”

  I nodded. Ever since we had returned from Taos, we fought, fought, fought. About everything. Money, disciplining the boys, his late nights, my clients—but our arguments always circled back to money. I was scraping by; he was making nothing and resented me for supporting us.

  To make the situation even worse, he was pickling himself every night in North Beach’s gin joints. The rare times he was home, the boys watched him. The way he climbed the stairs, sometimes stumbling, how he lifted a glass to his mouth, sometimes spilling. I knew how to watch people too. It was the same way I watched Grandmutter after she’d gotten into her bottle of brandy.

  Fronsie tapped her fingers on the crate to get my attention. “Listen, you’ve got to look out for you and the boys now.”

  I shook my head past the fuzzy sherry haze enveloping me. “What do you mean?”

  She shrugged, pouring another drink, and kept her eyes on the cup. “I’m worried about you. He almost killed you on that drive to Taos.”

  I sighed, remembering the letter I’d written to Fronsie after we’d arrived in New Mexico. My complaints about the car accident had been fresh and full of indignation. Sure, Maynard could be boorish, but was he really dangerous? Even at his lowest moments, he’d never raised a hand to me or the boys and that was more than many wives could say. And what was I supposed to do? Leave him? Where would that land us? I’d had front-row seats to divorces during my parents’ split and Mother’s tenure as a social worker. I knew how it worked. On what grounds could I sue for divorce? I had no evidence of anything that would hold up in court and no judge would ever grant the children to me. And if that wasn’t enough to discourage me from doing anything rash, I knew firsthand how the stigma of having divorced parents felt; I refused to put that on my boys.

  “Dorrie, you know, you could come with us.” Fronsie leaned toward me, nodding as she spoke, the force of her idea making her voice faster. “You could leave him. We could all drive back home together. You’d have your mother to help with the boys. Think of how much better it could be.” Her eyes widened and she reached for my hands. “Think of it!”

  Oh, how I longed to say yes. For a moment, all I wanted to do was nod my head and let Fronsie and Jack sweep me and the boys back to New Jersey. But then the cold metallic truth of it all clanged through me: I couldn’t retreat to all that I’d been wanting to escape for almost as long as I could remember. I couldn’t leave Maynard. I refused to have my boys grow up without a father. I pulled Fronsie close and rested my chin on her shoulder. Breathing in the tang of rosemary that clung to her hair, I wept for all that we were losing by separating. My dearest friend. Fron had been my home ever since arriving in California. Even twenty years after that first conversation outside of Wadleigh High School for Girls, our friendship still amazed me. How could I move forward without her?

  Chapter 19

  I walked to the bank heavy with dread. When the cashier showed me the receipt with our paltry balance, the numbers blurred before my eyes. I took the slip of paper and hurried past the marble columns at the entry, pulling my coat close against the cold rain spitting outside from the low gray sky. I stepped down the wet, slick stone steps carefully to the sidewalk. The last thing I needed was to slip and break my leg or hip and be unable to work. How would we eat then? Maynard had just gotten an ad job to make some posters but it would only cover his rent at the Monkey Block. What about the rent on our house that was due in two weeks? I pressed my fingers to my temples and stopped under the awning of a small grocery. My stomach growled at the rows of canned food in the window. I pulled a pencil out of my bag to tally up my client appointments scheduled for the rest of the month. Would there be enough work? A sharp tug at my sleeve made me look down. A young boy’s face peered up at me.

  “Hey, lady, want a paper? Lindbergh just paid a fifty-thousand-dollar ransom but his baby’s still missing!”

  I stared at him uncomprehendingly. Long dark eyelashes framed his brown eyes. Those eyelashes would have been a mother’s pride and joy. But where was this kid’s mother? His clothes hung on him, dirty and rag
ged. Holes gaped at the toes of his cracked brown leather boots. My breath caught in my chest and my heart battered against my ribs. Despite the cold, sweat beaded on my forehead. “Where do you live?” I managed to ask.

  He took a step away from me. “You want a paper or not?”

  “Here.” I thrust two quarters toward him. “Take these to your mother.”

  His gaze locked on my fingers holding the coins. Without saying anything, he swiped the money and ran. The drab color of his ragged clothes made him disappear into the gloom of the city block within moments. I walked toward the Monkey Block, worrying a stray piece of yarn from my sweater with chapped fingers. Dan and John would not end up like that.

  IN MAYNARD’S STUDIO, I showed him the numbers. I’d been arranging and rearranging them on the pencil-smudged bank receipt, trying to see something promising, but there was no escaping the truth: we were flat broke. “I can’t figure out how we can keep going like this.”

  The wood of Maynard’s desk chair creaked as he dropped onto it. He raised his hand to his mouth and doubled over in a hacking, barking cough that sounded painful. When he was done, he looked at me. Pouches of violet-colored skin hung under his eyes. He rubbed his cracked lips together. “What do you suggest?” he croaked.

  My legs quivered as I sat down on a stool across from him. I didn’t want to say what I’d been rehearsing in my head for the last few days since visiting Fronsie, but I didn’t see any other way out of this. I took a deep breath. “We need to separate for a bit. Get rid of the house. Live in our studios. We need to figure out how to make this marriage work.” As the words left my mouth, there was no turning back. I folded my arms across my chest to keep my hands from shaking.