She and the children never heard from Stephane after he left and less than two years after he moved back to Paris, he died in a motorcycle accident. His death didn’t change anything for her or the children, except the idea that the children had a father who might want to see them again someday. By the time he died, he was no longer with the Polish girl. She had left him for someone else and taken the baby with her, and his career had tanked after he went back to France. When the money and his prospects ran out, the Polish girl did too. He had left behind in the world four children he had done nothing for.
Maddie was alone in the world with three children. She worked harder than ever, and became one of the most sought-after fashion photographers in New York. The lean years were over for her then. She had a life and a successful career she loved. It allowed her to spend time with her children, except when she had to shoot on location. She had a housekeeper who took care of the children when she had to go away, but she was with them as much as she could be in her off hours.
Maddie managed to balance her life efficiently, and eventually broadened her work to include portraits of important people and celebrities. For her own satisfaction, once her children were in college, she expanded her scope further to include major newsworthy events and moving human portraits at the scenes of wars and natural disasters, showing old men and women, devastated young children, lovers in each other’s arms, some women holding dead children and others giving birth. She went to elections, riots, demonstrations, earthquakes. She took the high-risk assignments she wouldn’t when her children were younger, out of a sense of responsibility to them. She was in love with the human condition, sometimes at its worst, seen through the camera’s lens, whatever caught her eye, grabbed her heart, or fascinated her and the people who saw her photographs, and bought them.
In recent years she did less and less work in fashion, although she was still very much in demand. Thirty years into her career, she could pick and choose who and what she photographed now.
The firehouse was the perfect setting for her. Her clients loved coming there, exploring it, and listening to her talk about it. Maddie had a warm, modest, humble way of dealing with her subjects. It put them totally at ease and the photographs she took of them were extraordinary and looked straight into their souls.
Ben was very proud of her, although from a distance. Milagra paid little attention to her mother’s career, only her own, and Deanna always had some caustic comment to make or criticism to offer about her mother’s work. Maddie was used to it, and tried not to let it upset her, but sometimes it did anyway. Deanna knew just where to put the knife and when to turn it. At times, Maddie wondered if Deanna was jealous of her, even though that seemed unlikely since she was successful on her own. But Deanna had a fierce competitive streak with everyone. To Deanna, life was a race she had to win, no matter who she had to kill to do so. She’d had a sharp tongue all her life, and only her husband didn’t seem to mind it. He liked how ambitious she was and admired the results. She pushed him hard too, and her daughters.
Deanna dropped in at the firehouse occasionally, usually unannounced, at a convenient time for her, with total disregard for her mother’s schedule. She acted as though Maddie were a housewife taking photographs as a hobby, rather than one of the most important photographers in the business. There had even been two museum shows of her work, which only impressed Deanna briefly. Her husband, David, was more generous about his mother-in-law, and realized how talented and respected she was. But even he couldn’t curb Deanna and rarely tried to. Maddie had never been able to either, and she sympathized with David. Her oldest daughter was a force to be reckoned with, and she was just as harsh with her own children, although Maddie was sure she loved them. Deanna was very much her own person, and, at thirty-six, nothing was going to change her. And Maddie was too wise to try.
Although Maddie felt guilty whenever she thought it, in some ways it was a relief that Deanna didn’t make time to see her more often. Deanna was too busy and thought she was too important herself to spend time with her mother. Deanna had her father’s dark hair and good looks, although none of his irresistible Gallic charm, and none of her mother’s gentle softness, which made all her subjects fall in love with her.
Maddie was a kind, compassionate woman and it showed. She was strong, and had worked hard for her success, but she never imposed her own will on others. She had earned everything she had fair and square, while being an attentive, loving mother, and she was never demanding of her children’s time. They were all adults now, and she respected the fact that they had busy lives of their own. The reality was that, except for a few old friends she rarely saw and her work, Maddie was essentially alone, and she didn’t mind. Her photography filled her life and satisfied her. She used her time well. Work had occupied her every waking hour since her kids had grown up. And with the passage of time, and busy lives, she and many of her friends had drifted apart. Close friendships were difficult to maintain, working as hard as she did.
At fifty-eight, divorced for thirty-three years, there had been men in her life. A few of them had been important to her, for a time, but she had never married again. Marrying the men she’d fallen in love with had never seemed like the right thing for her children. Now they were grown up and gone. There hadn’t been a serious man in her life for years. Sometimes she missed the companionship, but she was busy and independent, and didn’t think she could make the necessary compromises to share her life with anyone now. She had gotten comfortable as she was, doing what she wanted, traveling as she wished, making all the decisions herself. She had no desire to give that up or even modify it. She knew she had been more accommodating when she was younger. Now it seemed like too high a price to pay for love, which might be fleeting anyway. Her own freedom appealed to her more.
Deanna had never liked the men in her mother’s life and openly said so, often to her mother’s consternation. She had always been difficult with the men Maddie loved. Deanna was deeply embarrassed by what she knew about her profligate, philandering father, and was relieved he hadn’t stuck around, although it was clear that her mother had loved him. But Deanna was suspicious of men as a result. Milagra always said that their father sounded romantic, which even Maddie didn’t agree with. He’d been selfish and narcissistic and let them all down when he abandoned them.
Ben was sorry he had never known his father, whatever his flaws were. He had suffered from not having a father when he was young, although Maddie had been a responsible, caring single parent. But with two sisters and a single mother, he longed to have a man around as he was growing up. He was always sorry when Maddie’s romances ended, and usually blamed his outspoken, ornery sister for it, which wasn’t entirely wrong. Deanna astutely said that if their mother had loved the men enough, she would have married them, but she hadn’t, of her own accord.
There was only one man that Maddie really regretted losing, but she knew it would never have worked. Their lives were just too different, and marrying him would have made too much of an impact on her children and changed their lives too radically. She thought of him sometimes and wondered what had happened to him. They had stopped communicating years before, and he was only a tender memory now. She was too busy and fulfilled by her work to spend her time mourning the past. Maddie was always engaged in the present and looking forward to the next project or assignment, and she didn’t look back. She had few regrets in her life and was satisfied with the way things had worked out. As adults, all three of her children seemed relatively happy, which was enough for her. Once they grew up, not having to worry about them left her completely free to pursue her work. She was busier than ever and flew around the world photographing subjects that interested her. She could pick and choose now, and had for years. She was always excited when she took an assignment in California, which gave her an excuse to see her son and daughter there, if they were willing, without having to wait for them to suggest an opportune time, since th
ere never was one for either of her children on the West Coast.
It often struck her as unfortunate and the irony of fate that the two children who liked her the most lived so far away. And the one who disapproved of her and didn’t enjoy her company was the only one in New York. It was the luck of the draw but she made the best of it, and she loved living in New York. She wouldn’t have liked living in San Francisco, and even less the wild, dreary isolation of Mendocino. She loved the people and the pace in New York, the wide variety of cultural options, and having her studio in the city.
She would have felt like a poacher encroaching on Ben’s life, or Milagra’s, and she knew her daughter-in-law wouldn’t have liked it either. Laura’s mother was the perfect suburban, country club wife, and Laura had always been ill at ease with her famous mother-in-law. Ben never thought of his mother in that light. She was just his mother. But he knew Laura was fully aware of how important Maddie was and it made her feel as though, by comparison, she fell short in some way. Laura’s greatest accomplishment had been marrying Ben, with his very considerable success, and she was content to share in his glory, rather than create her own.
Maddie had never planned her own success. She had discovered her talent, and developed it, through need and force of circumstance, trying to support her children. It had turned out well for her and developed into a life of freedom and creativity that she thoroughly enjoyed. She had earned every ounce of her success. It was precisely that freedom and individuality that irked her oldest daughter so much. Even Deanna’s disapproval and criticism didn’t daunt her. Maddie was always unabashedly herself.
There was still a remarkable natural beauty to her, and an unstudied sexiness she was totally unaware of, with her hair piled on her head to get it out of her way, and a pen or pencil stuck through it, until she removed it to write something down and her long blond hair tumbled down her back. The men who had loved her had been drawn to her modesty and simplicity. Deanna’s strict, uptight, meticulous, and measured style was chic, but much less attractive than her mother’s ease and warmth. One of Maddie’s men had said about Deanna even as a teenager, “I always feel like she’s going to spank me,” which had made Maddie laugh. Her daughter made her feel that way sometimes too. Deanna set the bar high for herself and everyone else. Maddie was much more likely to be their partner in crime, and was always nurturing. It had drawn men to her like bees to honey for a long time, although she had never taken undue advantage of it. There was an innate femininity to her, no matter what she did or wore. She had been beautiful at every age, with a luminous softness, and she was still very striking, although she insisted that she was past all that now. Fifty-eight was far from old, particularly the way she looked, although Deanna wouldn’t have agreed.
Deanna only called her mother when she wanted something, when she had a mission of some kind, never just to chat for the pleasure of it. Ben didn’t call her often either, but he enjoyed their conversations when he did. He meant to call her more often, but something always distracted him and got in the way. No one made him laugh like his mother, and she was genuinely interested in his life, and proud of what he had accomplished. She consoled him in his losses and celebrated his victories. Deanna felt that Maddie had been an inadequate mother, but Ben never agreed with her. Although Deanna had done well as a designer, she had resented her mother’s career, while Ben admired it. Deanna was far less attentive to her own children than Maddie had been to hers. Maddie could do no right in Deanna’s eyes, no wrong in Ben’s, and Milagra had distanced herself from all of them to live in the fantasy world she created in her books.
There was no man in Maddie’s life now. She said it gave her more time to concentrate on her assignments, and she didn’t seem to miss having a partner. She insisted to her assistant, Penny, that it was too late for love, and she was good-humored about it. Penny was sure she would meet someone if she was more open to it, but clearly she wasn’t. Maddie insisted she was too old to find a man now.
It upset Penny too, on Maddie’s behalf, that her children paid so little attention to her. Penny thought they should call her more often just to see how she was. It never seemed to occur to them, judging by how infrequently they called. She was fine now, but what if one day, she wasn’t? Then what would they do? Maddie never let herself think about it. There was plenty of time for that.
Penny was all she needed, to help her with her work. She set up all Maddie’s appointments, kept her life in order, and organized her travel plans. Maddie had freelance photography assistants who came in to assist her during the shoots. They all considered it an honor to work for her. They learned so much from watching her, and from her clear, precise instructions and explanations. She had taught a photography class at NYU for two semesters, and loved it, but said she no longer had time to do that and her own work. She had loved being with the young people and teaching them what she knew, and was generous with her advice and encouragement, helping them grow, not crushing them with an inflated ego as so many professors in the arts did. She had nothing to prove. She had done it all and had a string of awards to her credit.
Penny had started working for her six months after Maddie had bought the firehouse, and had helped Maddie keep things on track when she renovated it. She loved everything about her job and Maddie, except having to deal with Deanna when she called. Deanna always wanted something from her mother, and was rude and dismissive to anyone in her path. Penny could easily guess that she must be a monster to work for, and hated the hostile, condescending way Deanna treated her mother. Penny was impressed by how little Maddie complained about her, only when she was excessively exasperated or upset by something cutting Deanna had just said to her, which happened often. Most of the time, Maddie said nothing and told Penny it was just Deanna’s style, which didn’t mitigate it for Penny. She thought Deanna would have benefitted from a good slap in her life at some point, which, knowing Maddie, had never happened.
Penny was forty-two, had never married, was crazy about her white Persian cat, and after a string of bad boyfriends, she had given up on men for the last few years. She worked hard for Maddie and loved her job. She hated leaving on Friday nights to go home to her own dull weekends, puttering around her apartment and doing laundry, waiting to come back to work on Mondays. Maddie was the excitement and inspiration in her life. Penny had a big, noisy Irish family in Boston and kept in close touch with her siblings and nephews and nieces. But on most weekends she stayed home in case Maddie needed her, even though Maddie almost never called on weekends and respected Penny’s time off. She loved living in Maddie’s shadow and enjoyed making life better for her.
Maddie kept encouraging Penny to try to meet a new man, even on the internet if she had to, but Penny was terrified of internet dating, and had had bad luck with it the few times she’d tried. She was one of those diamonds in the rough that few people had seen the value of, except Maddie, who recognized her for the gem she was. She was unfailingly loyal to Maddie as a result.
“Anything I can do for you before I go?” Penny asked her on a rainy Friday night before she left to take the subway to an unchic part of Brooklyn. She had lived there since she’d come to New York. Penny had red hair and green eyes and a nice face. She was about twenty-five pounds overweight, which she kept meaning to do something about, and said she would, but never did. She had no motivation to do so, and sitting at home in front of the TV all weekend, watching her favorite reality shows and eating ice cream, didn’t help. As hard as she was willing to work for Maddie, she did very little for herself.
“I’m fine,” Maddie assured her with a smile. She’d been going over contact sheets all day from her last shoot and marking what she wanted to send to the retoucher. She had a keen eye and did just enough, but never too much. She didn’t want her subjects to look like they’d had a face-lift for the shoot, or to show them at their most unflattering either. She liked them to look real but beautiful, and she
balanced it perfectly. Her subjects were always pleased with the final result. She was very undemanding of Penny about anything other than work. She never called her at home, except in a real emergency. Otherwise she waited until business hours to ask for what she needed. She did all her own personal errands. She never sent Penny to the dry cleaner, the drug store, or out to do menial tasks. She did those herself, and never felt too important to do so.
“What are you doing this weekend?” Penny asked her, handing Maddie a cup of tea that she hadn’t requested but appreciated. Maddie thanked her with a smile.
“I’m going to reorganize some closets. I promised myself I would. I’m running out of room, and I’ve got so much tucked away that I can’t fit anything else in. Time to do some weeding out and spring cleaning, and the weather is so lousy, I’m not going out tonight. It’s supposed to rain again tomorrow and Sunday too.” Maddie loved puttering around the house. It was early May, but they’d had the wettest spring in New York history, and rain had been predicted for the weekend.
“Don’t do any heavy lifting,” Penny warned her. “I can help you with it on Monday.” Although during the week, they were both usually so buried in work, there was no time for closets. Maddie loved doing projects on the weekends. She was always busy with something.
“It’s just a lot of small junk in there. I’m not even sure what there is, which is why I want to go through it. I’m turning into a pack rat,” she said with an embarrassed grin, and Penny laughed.
“You don’t need to tell me that,” Penny answered, smiling. Maddie saved every shred of correspondence, no matter how far back, and almost every photograph she’d ever taken. They had extensive archives in storage.
“I’m going to try to throw some of it out this time,” Maddie said firmly. “I promise.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Penny said as she put her coat on and left with a wave a few minutes later. She walked through the studio and let herself out through the side door. She wondered if Maddie got lonely on the weekends. She had her work to keep her occupied, but Penny thought she should be seeing her grandchildren, and knew she hardly ever did. Penny’s own mother saw her grandchildren constantly. They were in and out of her house, and she was always cooking for them.
Lost and Found Page 2
