by Whitney Otto
“And you like to see where the day takes you.”
“And you?”
Daisy got up, smoothed her summer skirt. “I’ll be here until I’m not.”
The girls collected their things to head back to the hotel.
Miri asked for her key and waited for her friend to ask for hers. When she didn’t, Miri said, “Aren’t you going to your room?”
“I don’t stay here.”
“But . . . I saw you . . .”
“Oh. Mon petit chou.”
When Miri said nothing, Daisy continued, “It’s a French endearment. He’s my little French endearment who likes meeting me here.”
“And at the Pantheon,” said Miri, “about a week or so ago? The day before we met.”
“Maybe,” said Daisy. “It’s possible.”
Miri remembered the day in Trastevere and the handsome boy. And the day Daisy stood her up. She admired the American girl’s unapologetic romantic life, which lacked the coyness and artifice of popular girls back home.
The girl smiled. “I think you got some good pictures today. You’ll have to let me know how they turned out.”
“Wait,” said Miri as Daisy headed for the door. “I don’t know your last name.”
The girl turned slightly to face her, still moving a little. “You first.”
“Miriam Marx.”
“Like the brothers.”
“Well, you know, without the horn and double entendres.”
Daisy said, “You’ll think it’s invented.”
“Is it?”
“Let’s just say my very educated mother had a sense of humor.” The girl now stood perfectly still. “Miller.”
“Oh, God, Daisy Miller? Let’s hope your mother didn’t have the gift of prophecy as well,” said Miri, laughing.
“Isn’t it a kick in the pants? Years from now you can tell your friends that you went to the Colosseum with an American girl named Daisy Miller who had Roman fever, and no one will believe you.”
• • •
Miri, unlike Daisy with her trust fund and time on her hands, was a working girl. She’d told the truth about the magazine assignment in Jerusalem but neglected to mention that her leisurely trip home had a purpose other than recreation and his name was David Rose.
She’d met David at an impromptu exhibition of student work held in a New York gallery of no importance to the larger art world. Every month, a group of students of various ages, who shared a largely unloved brownstone in the Village, cleared all the furnishings out of the high-ceilinged living room–parlor–dining room, slapped a fresh coat of white paint on the walls, and hung an art show. Someone played cello at the opening. Or a kind of jazz drum solo with brushes. No normal adult would be able, even as part of a group, to pull together any sort of art show this often, but they were young and enthused and had it down to a science. The art was usually the work of someone who would never be great, with the occasional appearance of work that would one day be great; work with a glimmer, a spark, a line, a color, a form that could give the game away, but for that you must have the other half of the art equation, which is a discerning audience. One cannot be its best without the other.
These art shows were as much rent parties (asking for donations at the door) as they were exhibitions. The spirit of the enterprise (along with music, the cello eventually giving way to records; alcohol being accompanied by reefer) often had the effect of people meeting and believing themselves, even if just for one night, “in love.”
It was in this art-scented atmosphere that Miri met David Rose, an aspiring filmmaker. Mutual love of movies drew them together, prompting them to speak in the shorthand of the film-besotted. It was kismet that David should meet someone with a mother who had distinguished herself in wardrobe design and was on speaking terms with almost everyone (especially the stars whom she measured and draped and knew intimately), and who saw the world as a story. It was kismet that Miri would meet a young man who loved movies and filmed stories as much as she and saw in her a kindred spirit who, by the end of their first night together, wanted to make movies with her.
Meeting one’s mate, Miri thought, was really a problem when one really liked traveling alone.
Their courtshipfriendshipcourtshipfriendship was exactly that: a thing that bounced from one sort of attachment to another then back again. Sometimes it was work that took over and pushed love aside, taking up all available space in each of their lives. It didn’t always happen in perfect symmetry; sometimes Miri was more caught up in work than David, and sometimes it went the other way. Often it made Miri happy to have both David and work, not to mention a man who understood her work. Other times, she was happier to have him as a friend, the romantic momentum stalled. Sometimes there was someone else. After all, she was twenty-seven when they met, and she had been on her own for a decade. During those years she had had the occasional encounter without anything blossoming into something more profound, everyone parting amicably. When she thought of what she loved, it was her work. People, too, but also her work, as if it was another lover she barely had enough time for.
Then came the Jerusalem assignment. Then came her decision to stop in Rome and Paris, just to make sure that she still liked traveling alone as much as she always had.
There had been no sustaining drama during the two years of their life of courtshipfriendshipcourtshipfriendship, and what Miri wanted to know was if there was sustaining love.
The day she left Israel, there, in her hotel mailbox, was a sterling silver charm bracelet of four sterling silver cameras, each with a tiny hinged back where one would load the camera, and a note that said,
Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
You really are beautiful! Pearls,
harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins!
She recognized the opening lines from the Frank O’Hara poem “Today,” which David would recite to her—not the entire poem, which was only two verses—sticking only to the opening, which struck him as silly and joyous and because, as he said, he thought her beautiful.
The other lines he would recite to her were
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me that understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.
1959, New York City, Central Park West
Miri Marx was positioned at her dining room window, her Leica in hand, the camera trained on the Sheep Meadow of Central Park, across the street from her apartment. At fifteen stories up, Miri could shoot straight across, capturing the panorama of park and city skyline; or she could concentrate on the immediate view below, a section of street and sidewalk. On this day, it was the panorama of sky, structures, trees, and field.
It was a spring afternoon, with rain clouds gathering and bouncing light above and below, reminding her of the English countryside. The fullness of the leafy trees contrasted with the clean, angular geometry of city buildings crowding behind. The expanse of the empty meadow spread out in front of the buildings and the greenery. Miri waited for the sun to shift ever so slightly before making three exposures.
Two months after Miri’s return from Rome she and David Rose quietly married, then spent their honeymoon in England, driving around the country, laughing more than she thought she could laugh, each in love with the other, and writing their first movie. It was the story of a nine-year-old boy who gets into a fight with some other boys on the street. As he miraculously pins one of them, the pinned boy blurts out that the first boy’s father has a girlfriend. The boy is shocked and disbelieving, except he realizes that he doesn’t really know his father’s life outside of their home.
The next day, Saturday, he follows his father all over New York City—jewelry store, flower shop, barbershop, ending up at the Plaza—beginning to believe that his father does have a girlfriend, only to discover his father rendezvousing with the boy’s mother. “Oh, my God, we’re
already planning our escape from our own children,” joked David.
In England they had traveled on a budget, staying in guesthouses, eating plowman’s lunches in pubs, sometimes driving through the night to save on lodging. Though the landscape was gorgeous and the long walks they took led them from one picturesque place to another (evocative Hardy country, the Cobb at Lyme Regis, the lush Lake District, the ugly duckling beauty of the Brontës’ moors), the mark of the war could still be found. Not just in London but in Coventry, where they stayed one night, marked by new construction, the consequence of Luftwaffe bombings that had destroyed the historical city center.
Mostly, Miri loved her walks with David and the way the sky could go from cloudy to sunny to golden to purpleblue. It was the same quality of light and weather that she was looking at on this day in New York.
Miri and David’s movie about the nine-year-old boy garnered praise and awards at home and in Europe, inspiring young directors like Truffaut, influencing the New Wave, showing how a smaller story over the course of ninety minutes could be transformed into a love letter to a city. Miri believed her life to be so ideal it seemed one more Hollywood confection.
As Miri gazed out her window, she saw four teenagers, dressed up as if they were on a double date. She leaned out a little, her knee on the chair pushed up to the sill, framing the shot as the teens stopped to awkwardly light cigarettes, so desperate for adulthood and sophistication; she had just focused, when—
“Mommy?” Their almost-four-year old, Teddy, who had been occupied with a set of colored blocks, stood next to her. She climbed onto the chair that Miri used to steady her camera, the high back acting as a guard. Miri could see that the four teens were no longer in the position she wanted, too far apart to be captured in a single frame and carrying too little tension individually, these kids who wanted to be anything but kids. Miri looked down at Teddy, who told her that she was hungry. With one final glance out the window, she gently set her camera down next to her other camera, a Contax, and the rolls of film she always kept on the unused end of the dining room table, before lacing her fingers through Teddy’s dark curls. She picked up her daughter’s soft little hand and kissed her perfect fingers.
Their first daughter was born in 1955 while David was in Venice for a showing of their film. The baby arrived a month early, otherwise David never would’ve gone. Unlike many fathers-to-be, he wanted to be with his wife. Though Miri was happy about the baby, she was worried that having one would change everything; that is, she couldn’t quite picture how she would take care of the baby, the apartment, and still work. And for someone who had taken pictures since she herself was a child, and been working and on her own since age seventeen, Miri simply couldn’t imagine not working. Not taking pictures. Additionally, she and David had a second film lined up just before Miri discovered she was pregnant. David assured her that a baby was only a change in their lives and nothing more.
But she hadn’t counted on being as tired as she was (or having a first child at thirty-four years old), nor could she have known how much she would love being with Teddy. She loved her company, her smell, her toothless smile and smooth little feet without feeling particularly maternal or, at least, what she imagined maternal was meant to feel like.
Elizabeth came along in 1957.
Between Teddy and Elizabeth, David began his second movie, coming home or calling (depending on the length of the shoot) to check in with Miri and keep her informed as if she were there, since they had developed the story together. Miri knew that he missed working with her; their shared professional life added a dimension to their attachment. He wanted her there, but she couldn’t be there because someone had to be here.
And this was her paradox: She wanted to be in two places at once, to be two people at the same time. If she could split herself, one Miri would be happy spending all day with her toddling children with no thought about doing anything else. They would play with toys on the floor, or she would enthusiastically read to them. Nap when they napped. Eat when they ate. Her other self would be making movies with David. Or possibly taking pictures on her own, with no lingering regret about not having children, or not being home with her children. She wondered if she felt this constant, low-grade conflict because she’d had a childless life, a profession prior to motherhood, only to discover too late that you cannot replace one life with the other, and now she often lived in a place of suspension where she loved two things too much.
It was hard not to feel resentment that men weren’t forced into these choices. Some days she felt that she would spend all her time trying to forget her life before children because she loved them too much to be reminded of the heat of Rome in the summer and a beautiful girl who turned heads as she walked down an Italian strada.
So she told herself that she’d never had coffee in the piazza outside the Pantheon, never watched the changing light within; there was never a confection of a fountain where tossed coins could tell her future. The art of forgetting, she believed, could be learned.
Some days it shamed her to want to be anywhere but home making jelly sandwiches and reading the same books that she had read a thousand times and using nap time to pick up the house, only to find herself drawn to the dining room window overlooking the park. She would watch the pedestrians and the sky, the trees, and the way the countless windows lit up, wondering what was going on behind them. Up to that spring afternoon, Miri had taken the occasional picture of people below on the sidewalk, or a horse-drawn carriage; an event in the meadow, lazily leaving her cameras and film on the dining room table.
She loved Teddy and Elizabeth, and her marriage to David—she adored him and he was good to her; they were both products of their time and nothing more. But the fact was that she couldn’t square the force of her love, the sheer monumental quality of it, with her nostalgia for her former life. She was a puzzle of miscut pieces.
A postcard from Daisy Miller: I have the most marvelous all-over tan, courtesy of Mykonos, Santorini, Thassos, and Chios. Have you ever been to Corfu? Did you know the people are named for the love child of Poseidon and some nymph he abducted? Hope all is well. Kisses.
Miri placed the postcard of the unbelievable blue of the sea in her desk drawer.
1961, New York City, Central Park West
Sometimes when she sat, chin in hand, gazing out the window at the park, the expanse of the meadow empty or crowded, depending on the weather and the season, Miri was joined by Teddy or Elizabeth, six years old and four years old, respectively. It occasionally troubled Miri to see them in imitation of herself, her wistful expression as she took in the world outside her window. It wasn’t always easy being a woman of forty with young children. She realized it was both good to have had a life before having children (which, in all truth, was simply a different sort of life) and hard to have had a life before children. Like a variety of phantom limb syndrome, you would wake some mornings not quite rested for having two small kids, and in your sleepy state believe yourself to have the unplanned day spreading before you, only to hear the voice of your four-year-old daughter.
Elizabeth looked out the window, then called her mother over to show her something: The Central Park horses were all done up with pastel-colored streamers, their manes and tails brushed, or braided. The drivers were in jewel-toned velvets and silks. “Mommy,” Elizabeth said, “you need your camera.”
This wasn’t the first time that Elizabeth or Teddy had called Miri to the window to see something, along with the insistence to bring her camera. In no time at all, taking daily pictures from her window became as integrated into Miri’s home life as making the beds, doing the laundry, or cooking dinner.
She went so far as to set perimeters for her pictures: two cameras, three lenses, no filters.
She still missed some shots because Elizabeth was in the bath, or Teddy had fallen down, or someone wanted something from a high shelf, or a squabble had to be mediated. But at some point, her day began to revolve around life outside t
he window as she recorded dawn, and dusk, day and night. Winter, spring, summer, and fall. And every imaginable event, from weddings to picnics, to concerts, to sunbathing, to lovers’ trysts and lovers’ quarrels. Protests and parades. And the ever-changing skyline of New York City.
Much later in her life she would write of the window pictures:
My situation was ideal, I suppose (although I don’t remember thinking of it quite that way at the time). My children, of course, were also there on a twenty-four-hour-a-day basis, so they got photographed, too, just like the view. 6:00 a.m.: mist/feedings . . . 2:00 p.m.: view/playpen time . . . 5:00 p.m.: dusk scene/baths . . . 10:00 p.m.: night shot/baby asleep.
Now that I think about it, I don’t see how anyone but a housewife could have got all this done.
In retrospect, it seems one of the main things I did was wait.
Another postcard from Daisy: Cairo is shockingly great. Beirut is romantica. Fez is like a dream—not a dream, but like a dream—a distinction I know you understand. Kisses.
Miri placed the postcard of the casbah in her desk drawer, then went to change the sheets on the beds.
1963, New York City, Central Park West
The women’s magazine that had originally published Miri Marx’s portrait of Daisy Miller, titled An American Girl in Italy, 1951, as she walked the gauntlet of men in Rome, decided to run it again, as part of a travel piece. Many women readers remembered it from the first time it ran, when it had been part of Miri’s photo essay about a girl happily traveling alone. The mail that poured in to the magazine in 1951 expressed a pleasure in seeing this daydream of a lazy day in Rome as a beautiful, unfettered girl followed her heart’s desire; they particularly liked the picture of Daisy strolling down the Roman street with all male eyes upon her.
But everything had changed in the wake of The Feminine Mystique and civil rights and the publicly expressed discontent of women.
So when the photo ran a second time in a spread on women photographers, young women took exception. “Look at her face,” they cried, “and tell us that she isn’t feeling fear! The men are menacing!”
