Girl with a Camera

by Carolyn Meyer

  “Of course,” I said, gritting my teeth. My mother also disapproved of nicknames, but she never lectured my friends.

  Puffy-eyed Marian sat sullenly at the kitchen table, her head in her hands. Marian’s marriage had come to a bitter end, her mother announced.

  “I’ve done nothing but cry for the past week,” Marian said, and began to sob again.

  Women in my family hardly ever cried, at least not in front of other people. This seemed to be a family of theatrical weepers, and it made me uncomfortable.

  “Nobody loves me!” Marian wailed. “Not one single person! I have nothing to live for!”

  “Certainly you do, dear,” Mrs. Chapman said, patting Marian’s shoulder. “I, on the other hand, have nothing but woes!”

  Chappie had been standing close to me, his arm around my waist, but when Marian gazed tearfully at us, his arm dropped and he moved away. “I think the coffee is ready,” he said. It felt like a chilly breeze blowing between us.

  I retrieved four cups from the cupboard and poured cream into a pitcher with a broken handle. Chappie pulled out a chair for his mother at the table. I pulled out my own chair, helped myself to coffee, and reached for the cream pitcher.

  “Don’t use too much of it, Peggy,” Mrs. Chapman warned. “We don’t want to run out. I absolutely cannot drink coffee if it doesn’t have enough cream in it. I hope you have more, and plenty of ice for the icebox, too. If not, Everett can drive into the village and pick up a block. We’re going to need more groceries. I’ll make a list.”

  I made a show of adding only a few drops to my cup. Mrs. Chapman took the pitcher and turned her coffee nearly white. And just like that, I moved from disliking my new mother-in-law to detesting her.

  “Let me tell you what’s happened,” she said. “The neighbors have completely refurnished their house. Besides the loveseat and matching chairs, they’ve bought a mahogany dining room table and a china closet, an Oriental rug, and probably even more things I haven’t seen yet. Can you imagine how that makes me feel? Your father and I, existing in such dismal circumstances that I am denied the finer things of life?”

  Chappie shifted uneasily in his chair. “I’m sorry to hear that, Momma. But Poppa did buy you the davenport you wanted.”

  I stirred a spoonful of sugar into my coffee, wishing I could sneak something into Momma’s cup to put her into a deep coma. What a dreadful woman! And why did Chappie just sit there, taking it, looking like a whipped dog?

  “Yes, you’re sorry! I’m sure you’re very sorry indeed! And a cheap davenport it is, too—not at all what I had in mind.” Her voice rose shrilly. “But it is your duty as my son to come to our aid! Don’t we deserve better?”

  “Yes, Momma,” Chappie murmured.

  “I’m glad you understand that, Everett,” Mrs. Chapman said. “Now we’ll see if you’re as good as your word.”

  How could he put up with this? I felt completely helpless. It was awfully clear that Chappie was not going to tell her that it was not his responsibility. The walls of the cottage were so thin that, at night, we lay rigidly side by side, not touching, and listened to his mother’s stentorian snores and his sister’s muffled sobs in the next room. I wondered what it would take to get them to leave.

  On a Friday morning two weeks after we were married and five days after his mother and sister arrived to share our honeymoon, Chappie got up early and left the cottage without waking me. He had work to do in his laboratory, and I knew that he would not be back until late that night. He played in a dance band in Ann Arbor to earn extra money, and his Friday nights were always busy. After he’d gone, I was awakened by a loud thumping and sloshing in the kitchen. My dear mother-in-law was cleaning, and my first thought was to ignore it. My second thought was to climb out of bed, get dressed in a hurry, and volunteer to help.

  “Well, Peggy,” said Mrs. Chapman when I appeared in the doorway, “is it your usual habit to sleep away the best part of the day while others work?”

  And where was poor Marian, I wondered? Shouldn’t she be up and helping, too?

  But determined to ignore this opening shot, I greeted her cheerfully. “Good morning, Mother Chapman. What would you like me to do?”

  “Start by washing the windows,” she said. “A person can scarcely see through them.”

  I found a bucket and filled it at the pump in the sink. After doing a couple of windows, a dozen small panes in each, I’d fix myself some breakfast. Then I’d ask Mrs. Chapman to join me for a cup of coffee. Maybe I could begin to make some kind of peace if her boy wasn’t there to be her audience. If she got to know me, she might realize that I was a likable person.

  I was wiping a glass pane with a chamois when Mrs. Chapman paused in her furious scrubbing and called out from the kitchen, “Tell me, Peggy, what did your mother think when you announced your plans to marry?”

  I rinsed the chamois in the bucket and moved on to the next pane before I answered. “She was worried at first because she thought we were too young. She agrees that it’s important for me to finish my courses and graduate. But when she realized how much in love we are, she changed her mind and gave her approval. She’s happy for us.”

  “Really? I’m certainly glad someone is happy! Your mother has gained a son, and I’ve lost a son. I do congratulate you, but I never want to see you again.”

  Had I heard her correctly? I never want to see you again. Nobody would dare say such a cruel thing to another person! Angry and shaken, I clutched the damp chamois, unsure what to do next. Scarcely able to think—certainly not clearly—I slipped out the front door of the cottage, closing it quietly behind me. I had to find Chappie and tell him exactly what had happened. Surely my husband would finally stand up to his mother and make things right!

  I made my way up the gravel path to the road and started walking. I knew it was seventeen miles to Ann Arbor, but I didn’t think about the distance. The morning was still pleasantly cool. After about a mile, my head cleared and I realized that I had left without my purse. I had also neglected to eat any breakfast.

  There was no turning back. I never want to see you again.

  I kept walking. The sun rose higher, the patches of shade shrank, and I was growing hungrier. Occasionally an automobile rumbled by on the dusty road, and the driver glanced at me curiously. I thought of sticking out my thumb and asking for a ride, but I was too embarrassed. There would be questions, and I didn’t want to answer them.

  I plodded on, plagued by blackflies and gnats. The sun blazed directly overhead. My feet were blistering. I came to a filling station and stopped for a drink of water. “Hot enough for ya?” the attendant inquired, eyeing me, and I nodded. I might have asked for help, but pride would not let me. I rested for a while and then continued my journey.

  In mid-afternoon I reached the outskirts of Ann Arbor. The streetcar line ended here, and if I’d had a nickel in my pocket I might have ridden the last couple of miles into town. The sun was still high when I stumbled up the street to Arthur and Jo Moore’s home. I knew that I looked a fright, but I was past caring. I knocked on the door and got no answer. Exhausted, I sank into a chair on their front porch to wait. Hours passed—I had no idea how many. I had not eaten all day, and I was dizzy with hunger, but I had nowhere else to go. Sunset came. Lights began to flicker on in houses up and down the street, but there was no sign of the Moores.

  At last a pair of headlamps swung into the driveway, and I levered myself up from the chair where I’d been dozing. Arthur saw me first and leaped out of the car. “Peggy!” he cried. “What on earth?”

  I threw myself into Jo’s arms, sobbing. “Oh, you poor dear!” she murmured, and turned to Arthur. “Let’s get her inside. We can ask questions later.”

  The two half-carried me into the house, washed my face as though I were a small child, gave me water and then weak tea, and decided that a soft-boiled egg and toast would be just the thing. While I ate, I described my conversation with Mrs. Chapman. “‘I never want
to see you again.’ She actually said that.”

  I saw the look the Moores exchanged—they had witnessed her behavior at the wedding. Now they had a hurried conference: Chappie would be playing for another couple of hours before heading back to the lake. Arthur would find him and bring him to their home.

  “Meanwhile, dear child, you must rest,” Jo said firmly. “Shall I fix you another egg? How about a whole wheat muffin with some marmalade?”

  I was asleep in the Moores’ guest room when Chappie arrived sometime after midnight. Drowsily I reached up to draw him close, but after some tearful kisses and before I had a chance to tell him what his mother had said to me, he pulled away. “I can’t stay here, Peg. I have to drive to the cottage. Momma will be so worried if I don’t. We’ll have plenty of time to talk tomorrow.”

  “Go, then,” I told him and turned my face to the wall.

  He came back at noon, bringing our clothes and the news that his mother and Marian were returning to Detroit. I had slept most of the morning and taken a long, hot bath, and I was sitting on the Moores’ back terrace in Jo’s dressing gown. My filthy clothes had been washed and hung out to dry. Arthur and Jo had been discreet in their questions, but Chappie wanted an explanation.

  “Peggy, what happened?” he asked, pulling up a chair beside me. “Momma said that you became hysterical over some trivial thing and ran off. She said she couldn’t imagine what would have caused you to do that. She thought you’d just gone down to the lake to get control of yourself.”

  I stared at Chappie for a moment and then looked away. If I told him the truth, repeated the cruel words his mother had flung at me, would he even believe me? I doubted it. Better, then, to say nothing. “Yes,” I said quietly. “Of course. She was right.”

  “Darling,” Chappie said sympathetically, his hand on my knee, “I wonder if it might be a good idea for you to have another talk with Dr. Stansfield. He was so helpful to you—”

  I cut him off before he could say any more. “You think I’m crazy! Your mother has convinced you that there’s something wrong with me! Well, I can assure you there is not.” I brushed his hand away and stood up, tightening the sash on the dressing gown. “Your mother has made it perfectly clear that she dislikes me and that she disapproves of our marriage. Yes, I behaved irrationally! I should have remembered to take my purse—that was my main mistake. I do apologize for the trouble I’ve caused Arthur and Jo and you, because I know you were worried. I doubt that your mother gave my absence a second thought.” I started toward the door. “I’m going to dress. Then let’s go home.”

  Home was Chappie’s boarding house. His room was too small for both of us, so I had taken a room down the hall. It was awkward, but it was supposed to be temporary. In a few weeks we’d be moving to Indiana. We’d have a regular home of our own, I would be in my fourth year of college, and Mrs. Chapman would be out of our lives.

  Except she wasn’t. It didn’t matter that she was three hundred miles away in Detroit.

  The flow of letters grew from a stream to a flood, and the story never changed: everything was wrong in her life, and it was all Chappie’s fault. She was a damsel in distress, he was supposed to be her knight in shining armor, and he’d failed her. She could never be happy, she told him. It would be better if she didn’t love him so much. Someday he would understand what he had done to her, but by then it would be too late!

  Mr. Chapman made things even worse, warning Chappie that if he didn’t write to his mother at least once a week, he would have to accept responsibility for whatever became of her. His father predicted it would be dire.

  The Chapmans made sure I understood that I was at the root of all this misery.

  16

  Starting Over—1925

  BY THE END OF 1924—WE HAD BEEN MARRIED ONLY six months—I was often thinking how much better my life would be if I weren’t Mrs. Margaret Chapman. Even the name upset me. I had been Margaret White all my life, and I had wanted my name to become famous. My own name—not my husband’s. I felt as if I were losing my identity. And my marriage seemed to be falling apart.

  I scarcely knew who I was anymore. I had not worked on my children’s book about insects for months. I had taken all of Professor Ruthven’s courses, and without him to guide and inspire me, my interest shifted from herpetology to paleontology, from snakes to fossils. It was a drastic change, and it meant that in my fourth year of college, instead of being a senior at Purdue, I had to start over as a freshman and take a different set of required courses. The girls in my classes were close to my age, but we had nothing in common. They chattered about their dates, the dances and parties to which they’d been invited, and the clothes they planned to wear, just as I had only a couple of years earlier. When I told them I was married, the wife of a faculty member, they shied away. The other faculty wives were no better match—I was decades younger than any of them, sometimes even younger than their own daughters.

  At a dinner for faculty and their wives, I was seated next to a gray-haired matron who assumed that I, too, must be a professor’s daughter. She asked what I was studying, and I told her.

  “A scientist in the making!” she enthused. “How nice. Well, I enjoy doing needlepoint,” she said and described the cushions she’d worked to raise money for a charity. “What are your hobbies, dear? Besides collecting rocks, or whatever it is paleontologists do?” she asked.

  “I enjoy taking photographs.” How bland that sounded!

  What had once been my passion was now reduced to little more than a hobby. Had this really happened to me? I felt sick just saying it: I enjoy taking photographs.

  The woman nodded approvingly. She was the advisor to a campus sorority, she said, and her girls were looking for someone to take pictures for a book they were putting together. “Portraits of the girls, informal pictures of life in the sorority house, that sort of thing. I’d be pleased to recommend you for the job, Peggy.”

  “That sort of thing” was not the kind of photography I loved to do; there was no artistry in it, no imagination required. But it was an opportunity to use my camera and earn a little money of my own. I leaped at the offer and spent hours taking pictures. It turned out to be a disaster. I didn’t have enough experience in photographing people, and I misjudged the available light. I overexposed every single shot, and the pictures were worthless. I was horribly embarrassed and didn’t get any more assignments. This failure was a crushing disappointment for me, but it didn’t bother Chappie.

  “It’s my job to support you, Peg,” he said sternly. “You should not be spending your time trying to earn money. Your job is to keep house.”

  To keep house! That remark chilled me, but I did not argue with him. We were arguing more and more, and to challenge him would have done no good.

  We had been married just a year when Chappie accepted a job with a company in Cleveland. We were moving again, and I was pleased. I could see my mother and Roger occasionally. Maybe the change would be good for both Chappie and me. Our marriage was in trouble, I knew that, but I hoped we could make a fresh start.

  We rented a sunny little apartment on the top floor of an old house where I could set up a darkroom in the bathroom. I found a job teaching children at the Museum of Natural History. Then I signed up for evening classes in education at Western Reserve University. I thought my chances of finding steady employment as a teacher were probably good.

  Cleveland was a much more interesting and energetic city than the sleepy Indiana town where Purdue was located. I explored the city with my camera. It was only when I was peering through the cracked lens of my secondhand Ica Reflex that I felt truly alive again. I wandered along the docks on Lake Erie and poked into the shops along Broadway, thinking I might put together a photographic essay of the city. But there were too many other demands on my time and energy, and I didn’t follow through on my idea.

  Housework bored me. Dirty dishes piled up in the bathtub—the kitchen sink was too small. Dirty laundry overflowe
d the hamper, and the cupboard went bare. I had to face Chappie’s wrath when he came home and shouted that the place was no better than a pigpen, and it was my fault. Worse than his shouting was his complete silence. Sometimes he would not speak for days. It was as if I didn’t exist. I could hardly believe this was the Chappie I had fallen in love with. What had happened to him? And what was happening to me?

  On my good days, when I was determined to prove that I was a capable wife, I cleaned and washed and ironed and prepared elaborate meals, trying to please my husband. On his good days, Chappie was sweet and loving. But often he sulked. Once he told me that he thought he hated me, although he wouldn’t say why. Another time he bellowed, “Why would anyone choose to be married? I’m done with it! Finished!”

  Later, when he was calm, he said he was sorry, he would try to be more patient, we must give our marriage another chance. I agreed. This was how it went, seesawing up and down, through a second year.

  I began to quietly put aside a little money, imagining what my life might be like as a single woman. At the end of two years it was clear to me, as it must have been to Chappie that nothing was going to change, that our marriage was over.

  In the summer of 1926, soon after my twenty-second birthday, I applied to Cornell University in upstate New York, and was accepted. I’d heard that Cornell had a good zoology department, and with my courses in herpetology and a brief detour into paleontology behind me, I would be able to graduate in a year. I’d also heard that there were waterfalls on the Cornell campus—Cascadilla Falls, Triphammer Falls, Forest Falls. Such picturesque names!

  When I’d told Chappie that I wanted to leave—leave Cleveland, leave him—he’d reluctantly agreed. “Maybe it’s for the best, Peg,” he said. Then he changed his mind and begged me to stay. He wept; I wavered. His tears turned to angry shouts and blame.