by Liz Byrski
She strolled a few yards up the street to a wooden bench and sat down, glancing uncomfortably around her. The street was clear and she drew her camera from the leather shoulder bag, focused and rapidly took several shots of the house. She wondered why she felt so guilty, as though she had no right to be there on the street, and certainly no right to be photographing the Mendelsons’ home. The nervous anticipation that had driven her there had evaporated, leaving a strange and painful emptiness. She had expected to feel excited, fearful, but most of all connected. Instead she felt bereft. Her energy had deserted her and her limbs felt like lead weights. Perhaps it was the onset of flu. Her skin, which had been flushed with heat a few moments earlier, now prickled with the chill dampness of a cold sweat, and she shivered despite the warmth of the sun.
She dropped her head forward and sat for a while, hoping the feeling would pass, then she straightened up, took some deep breaths and tried to focus on the distant hills of Marin County across the bay. Tears ran down her face, and the light breeze that ruffled the waters of the bay seemed to cut into her flesh like ice. Why had she come here? What had she expected? A cable car lumbered noisily up the street, rattling past her on its way to the city centre. She stood up, her legs so unsteady she thought she might faint. A yellow cab was heading up the street and she hailed it, sinking with relief into the back seat.
‘Embarcadero – the BART station please,’ she said, and as the driver swung the cab into a U-turn she took a final look at the house.
‘I think our seats are just over there,’ Nancy said, striding ahead between less confident concertgoers down the shallow carpeted steps of the circle. Sally followed her and they picked their way along the front row, avoiding the feet of those already seated.
‘Great seats,’ Sally said. ‘So this is the Davie Concert Hall – those organ pipes are pretty spectacular.’
‘Nine thousand of them,’ Nancy said with some pride. ‘It’s a Ruffalin.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Ruffalin – it’s the name of the organ. Not that I know anything about organs, but I try to remember it because I feel I should know something about the main concert hall in my home town. Just don’t ask me any questions about it, though.’
‘That’s okay, I’m sufficiently impressed already.’
‘Good girl, you’re supposed to be. Have you been to the Sydney Opera House?’
Sally nodded. ‘A couple of times, when I lived in the eastern states.’ She rummaged in her bag. ‘Damn, I forgot my reading glasses – now I can’t see the program.’
‘It’s the Beethoven first, the fourth piano concerto,’ Nancy said. ‘Want my glasses for the program notes?’
Sally shook her head as the lights in the auditorium dimmed. ‘It’s okay, I’ll just sit back and enjoy it.’
To a gentle burst of applause the orchestra members filed on stage and settled down to tune their instruments. Then the conductor entered to a round of applause. As it died away he stretched a welcoming arm towards the wings and the pianist made his entry. A slight, wiry man with thinning hair and round steel-rimmed glasses, he bowed briefly to the audience and shook hands with the conductor and the leader. A hush fell over the audience as the conductor tapped his baton on the music stand and the first familiar notes filled the hall.
Sally sighed with the joy of anticipation, knowing that the music would temporarily free her from the anxiety that had settled on her since her visit to Hyde Street. She had thought that seeing the house where Lisa lived, walking the streets she walked, would take her closer to the act of making contact. But it had the opposite effect. The solid wealth of the house and the lifestyle it represented seemed like another world. She had imagined the Mendelsons as an ordinary middle-aged, middle-class couple in a pleasant, rather ordinary house, living the sort of life that she and her friends lived in Australia, maybe worrying about money, hoping they could afford to retire early. But theirs was obviously a very different lifestyle. She had caught the train to Berkeley and walked slowly back to the apartment, her legs still shaking, her head spinning. For years she had refused to think too much about Lisa. She had curbed her dreams, reined in her fantasies, and forced herself to concentrate on other things. Lisa had a family who loved her. That was all she knew, all she could bear to know. Why did she have to stir up the feelings again, revive the sense of loss, fuel once more the longing to know her daughter?
She had tried several times to compose a letter to Estelle Mendelson but each time she failed to progress beyond the first line. How could she explain herself? What would the Mendelsons think of her turning up after so many years? She felt small, powerless and frightened, as though her identity had evaporated. The Mendelsons had assumed huge and frightening proportions in her imagination. She missed everything about home, even her interfering sister, even Harry’s stifling dependency, but most of all she missed Grace’s fierce, frenetic energy, Robin’s reliably calm and thoughtful presence, and Isabel’s comforting warmth and understanding. She desperately wanted to run away and go home.
There’s a great view from the balcony,’ Nancy said as the lights came up for the first intermission. ‘Want to take a look?’ They walked together along the wide corridor to where the glass-enclosed balcony revealed a spectacular view of the San Francisco City Hall.
‘So what do you think of our symphony orchestra?’ asked Nancy, fanning herself with the program. ‘We’re rather proud of it.’
Sally smiled. ‘It’s magnificent. The pianist especially, he’s superb. Who is he? He looks just like Woody Allen.’
‘Doesn’t he just,’ Nancy grinned. ‘The music writers always refer to it – New York has Woody, San Francisco has Oliver Mendelson.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Oliver Mendelson, the pianist, that’s his name. New York has Woody Allen, San Francisco has Oliver Mendelson. I think that’s the bell, shall we go back? Sally, are you okay? You look awfully pale.’
‘But, honey, what I don’t understand is why it’s any different that the Mendelsons are celebrities, as you put it.’ Nancy walked across to where Sally was sitting on the settee and handed her a large brandy. ‘Drink it all, you need it.’
Sally took the glass with suspicion. ‘I don’t usually drink alcohol.’
‘You do tonight. It’s medicine.’
Sally caught her breath as the fumes drifted up from the glass, and she sipped the brandy tentatively. It was better than she expected, smooth and warming. ‘It makes them more remote; inaccessible, somehow.’
‘But they’re not inaccessible. You’ve walked right up to the house. Their number is listed in the directory just like anyone else’s. They’re the same people who adopted your baby all those years ago, just the same as if they’d been hard up and living on welfare in West Oakland. Sure, they’re quite well known in San Francisco, particularly Oliver. He does have a bit of an international following. She gave up the opera years ago. They don’t jet set around the world. Whatever it is, Sally, it’s in your head.’
Sally stared at the brandy in the glass and then out across the vast expanse of twinkling lights and moonlit water that separated them from the city of San Francisco.
‘Whenever I’ve thought about trying to get in touch with Lisa’s parents I felt like I did when I left the hospital after she was born – a failure. Small, worthless and powerless to change anything, and so ashamed of what I’d done. It’s as though I become that teenager again. The Mendelsons being important, successful people makes it worse.’
Nancy shrugged. ‘Y’know, if you’d talked about this years ago I think you might have got rid of some of those feelings by now. I’m just so amazed that you never told your friends in Australia.’
‘I hid it for so long it seemed set in concrete. It was years before I made the sort of friends I could have told and by that time the secrecy had become a way of life. I’m almost as shaken by the fact that I’ve told you about Lisa as I was by discovering that I’d been sitting for an hour watc
hing Oliver Mendelson play the piano. I used to feel that telling the truth would change everything. But I’ve told you and the sky hasn’t fallen in.’
‘And you think the sky would have fallen in or you’d have been struck by lightning if you’d told your three best friends?’
Sally smiled ruefully. ‘Sounds stupid now, doesn’t it? Part of me knew they wouldn’t think any less of me, but I couldn’t make myself really feel that.’
‘Well,’ Nancy began, pausing to savour the brandy. ‘Will you tell them now?’
‘You’ll think this is stupid but I still don’t know. You see, in a way it feels okay to tell you because you’re separate from the rest of my life. If you’re shocked I can run away back home and still feel safe. Same as if Lisa and the Mendelsons reject me – no one else need ever know. I can go back home to Australia and keep my secret. Go on pretending that learning photography was the only reason I came to California.’
Nancy swallowed her brandy and stood up. ‘It’s not stupid. You took a big step coming here, visiting the street, looking at the house, and now telling me. It took courage to do that. The rest will come in time.’ She patted Sally’s hand and got to her feet, smiling down at her. ‘I think you need something to eat and I certainly do – we have to soak up the brandy. Stay there and I’ll make us a sandwich.’
‘I’m sorry about the second half of the concert,’ Sally said. ‘I really appreciate you bringing me home.’
‘Hey, what’s half a concert between friends? Besides, I love a good story and yours is the best I’ve heard in a long time.’
Sally raised her eyebrows. ‘You’re not shocked?’
Nancy stood, her hand on the fridge door, her short cropped silver hair gleaming under the kitchen spotlights. She threw her head back with a noisy laugh. ‘Sally, are you shocked if I tell you I had an abortion in the fifties? I got pregnant, but I took the other solution. So … are you shocked?’
Sally grinned. ‘Of course not, just surprised.’
‘Well, then, where’s the difference? It’s the story of so many women, but you seem to feel you have to be alone with it. It’s like you’re stuck in the sixties, thinking everyone would react like your mom and pop would’ve done if you’d run home from London and told them you were pregnant. And, Sally, honey, how do you know you were right about that? Maybe you figured that all wrong and they would’ve stood by you. So much of this is in your head, where it’s been locked up all these years. Anyhow – end of lecture. What d’you want in your sandwich? I’ve got cheese, cheese or cheese.’
‘I’ll have cheese, please,’ said Sally. ‘The middle one!’
‘Good girl. We’ll have that sense of humour back real soon. Have some more brandy.’
‘In her work during the war Lee Miller was aiming for the same journalistic standards she admired in Ed Morrow,’ said the lecturer, flashing another image onto the screen. ‘This is the body of a German soldier she photographed at Cologne in 1945.’ The students gazed in uneasy silence, unnerved by the power and intensity of the image and the feelings it produced. ‘Miller believed that Morrow assembled his stories entirely differently from anyone else and never tried to fool anyone. In her reports and photographs she was emulating Morrow, aiming for his honesty and acuity.’ The projector was switched off and the lights of the lecture theatre flickered back to life. Sally pressed her hands against her eyes and blinked as the lecturer nodded in acknowledgement of the smattering of applause.
‘She was some woman, that Lee Miller,’ said Steve, leaning across to her. ‘She did what she wanted to do and damn the conventions.’ He was packing up his notebook, zipping the side pocket on his bag. ‘You walking back my way, Sally?’
She nodded and stood up. ‘Yes, it’s too good a day for the bus.’
Following the crush of students leaving the hall they walked side by side out into the clear afternoon sunlight, down the broad steps and along the path that lead them through the famous Sather Gate off the campus and onto the street.
‘How’re you finding it here? Feel at home yet?’ Steve asked. ‘Not too homesick for Australia?’ He was the only other mature student in the photojournalism course. He had begun life as a music teacher but had drifted into journalism and was now attempting to add a photographic dimension to his work. Sally liked his gentle, easygoing manner and quirky sense of humour.
‘Not for Australia,’ she said. ‘I miss my friends but I suppose that’s only natural. I love it here, it’s a beautiful place, and I’m really enjoying the course.’
‘Good – just wondered because you’re looking a bit down in the mouth today.’
She smiled. ‘A bit of family stuff on my mind,’ she said. ‘Do you have family here, Steve?’
He shook his head. ‘My ex is in Vermont with her new husband. My daughter’s working in London, and my son is a sound engineer with a band, spends a lot of his time on the road, crashes at my place when he’s passing through San Francisco and beats the hell out of my computer and my piano.’
‘I don’t suppose you know a pianist called Oliver Mendelson?’ she asked.
‘Oliver Mendelson? Gee, Sally, he’s way out of my league. He’s a San Francisco tourist attraction, and he’s pretty big on the international concert circuit. I’m just a dilettante music teacher with delusions about the fourth estate. Why?’
‘Oh, nothing, just wondered. I heard him play at the Davie Hall last week. D’you know anything about him, about his family?’
Steve shook his head and ran his hand through his thinning fair hair. ‘Can’t say I do, although, come to think of it, I believe his wife used to be an opera singer. No idea if they have children.’ He laughed and nudged Sally’s arm. ‘If you’re that interested, why not go ask him. We have to do this Cartier-Bresson style portrait. Take your camera along and get some pictures of the maestro – do a Lee Miller on him.’ They paused together at the corner of the street. ‘Catch you later in the week, Sally,’ Steve said, and he ducked off down the side street towards his home.
Sally walked on, turning into Telegraph Avenue where the sidewalks were crowded with shoppers browsing the tightly packed curbside stalls. An army greatcoat hanging on a dress rail packed with old clothes caught her eye, reminding her of the last photograph of the lecture. Stopping briefly to buy a bottle of water she wondered how it was that a woman like Lee Miller had so much courage and confidence. She wished she had grown up knowing the stories of women like that, women who seemed fearless, who grabbed life by the throat and shook it, the ones who ignored the rules.
Along the sidewalk some young men were playing chess, their boards perched on top of the tall plastic garbage bins. As Sally drew closer a lean dark man with heavy dreadlocks threw his arms up in exasperation, deliberately toppling the board and pieces to the ground.
‘Hey man, cut that out!’ yelled his opponent, pushing him in the chest. Sally stopped in her tracks, feeling a chill of fear at the prospect of the conflict but reaching instinctively for her camera. The man with the dreadlocks straightened up and lunged at his opponent, who reached out to grab the matted hair with both hands. Sally moved closer. Bending forward and focusing rapidly, she took a dozen or more shots as the two men fell to the ground grappling among the rickety trestles of a flower stall and sending several buckets of dahlias and carnations crashing to the gutter. She finished the roll of film and moved back out of the way as a cruising police car drew alongside. Slipping the camera back into her bag she watched the two officers drag the chess players to their feet and then walked on, turning into the comparative quiet of a side street.
A couple of months ago she knew she would have ducked away as quickly as possible, but having the camera had made it different. Her first thought had been to get the pictures, not to get out of the way and pretend it wasn’t happening. She felt strangely different, pleased with herself about something she knew she could not explain to anyone else. Photography made you see things in a different way, she thought, heading up the steep h
ill back to the apartment. It actually made you look closely, look in rather than look away. The eye of the photographer demanded the courage to step into the moment and capture it.
She opened her front door, dropped her bag on the armchair, threw open the window and turned to stare at the telephone. Then, taking a huge breath, she picked it up and for the first time she dialled the number she knew by heart. It rang four times and she was anticipating an answering service when the phone was picked up and a man’s voice said, ‘Hello.’
Sally paused, a hairsbreadth from slamming down the receiver in a panic.
‘Hello?’ he said again, and she thought she would faint with terror.
‘I wonder … I … could I speak to Estelle Mendelson, please?’
‘I’m sorry, Estelle’s not here right now. This is Oliver Mendelson. Can I help you?’
SEVEN
‘It’s very simple,’ said Robin. ‘Just a little weatherboard place on a bit of land that sticks out above the beach. Apparently it’s about a kilometre from the town site and the town’s tiny.’ She handed Grace a sheet of paper with a photocopied picture of the house and a brief description.
‘Sounds frightful,’ said Grace pursing her lips and looking with dismay at the half-filled packing cases spread across Robin’s lounge. ‘You, too, are out of your mind. Of course you were right to give Jim the ultimatum, but giving up work and moving out of here – don’t you think you’re cramming too much change into your life all at once?’
