When I got to her bedroom, she wasn’t exactly pampering herself—but she certainly was trying to warm herself. She was staring out from under an enormous mound of blankets, coats, and stuffed toy animals. Her face was pale, and she seemed to be shivering, but she managed to look fairly cheerful. I sat on the edge of the bed and touched her brow. My hand withdrew involuntarily, and I began to feel a little frightened. Her forehead wasn’t cold in the way it would have been if she had come into the house after playing in the snow on a January day. Instead, her chill seemed to come from somewhere inside her body.
I wondered whether I should take her to a doctor. The problem with that was that I didn’t know of any doctors. There was a pediatrician who had given Joanne checkups a couple of times, but he didn’t have office hours on Saturdays—and, like virtually every other doctor in the city, he didn’t make house calls.
Joanne was stirring, and her eyes were open. I asked: “Don’t you feel good, sweetie?”
“I feel good, Daddy. It’s only the cold.”
“I’m not cold. Nanny Joy’s not cold. It’s a nice warm spring day.”
“The people are cold. They’re always cold.”
“What people?”
“The people in the pictures.”
“Those people aren’t real, Joanne. You shouldn’t think about them so much. They might make you sick.”
“No. They’re very, very good, Daddy. They wouldn’t be bad to me.”
“How do you know that?”
“Sara told me.”
“Sara Coleridge?”
Joanne nodded, smiled, and shivered. What the hell was I supposed to do? I wanted her to be happy, but I didn’t want her to be crazy. Why couldn’t life be simple and sensible? Sara was bringing a new kind of pleasure to me and Joanne, but maybe the price was too high. Even if the doctor had been available, I would have hesitated to take Joanne to him because I was afraid of what he might say about her fantasies.
I put my hand on Joanne’s forehead again and tried not to make the association that is easiest to make when dealing with the presence of a cold body. “Is there anything I can do for you, sweetie?”
“You could tell me a story, Daddy.”
“Are you sure you feel well enough for that?” I meant that Joanne would need a fair amount of strength to go through our usual storytelling routine, because she always ended up doing all the work. I don’t have a lot of imagination—which is as it should be for a photographer—but Joanne had a lot even for an almost-five-year-old. My stories consisted of a gray warp of questions around which Joanne would weave oddly colored narratives.
“What should my story be about?”
“About Colnee and her mommy and daddy.”
“And what should they be doing?”
“They should be lost in the snow. There should be snow all around, and they should have no food.”
“Where is the Indian?”
“He shouldn’t be there yet.”
“And what happens?”
“Colnee should get sick, and the snow on her face should stop melting. And her daddy should cry.” Joanne paused, and her head began to move from side to side. “And the angel . . .”
“You didn’t say anything about an angel.”
“. . . and the angel . . . sayeth . . .”
“Sayeth?”
“. . . and the angel sayeth . . . except ye.”
Joanne’s head stopped moving, and she closed her eyes. The tension I had felt in her body disappeared. I wondered whether she had fainted. I would have wondered something much more disturbing, except that some warmth seemed to be returning to her forehead. And I realized that the dampness I felt beneath my hand was being produced by Joanne’s skin and not mine. I reached beneath the blankets with my free hand and found her wrist. Her pulse seemed fast, but it was even and strong. I moved my hand to her chest, which was warm under her slightly sweat-dampened pajama top. I removed everything from the top of the bed except one blanket. Joanne was sleeping soundly. I kissed her parted lips and left the bedroom.
I had had enough strong emotions in enough bedrooms for one day. I headed for the kitchen, because Nanny Joy would probably be there and because it’s a room that inspires moderation in me. I would have stopped by the kitchen in any case, because it was sending out the aroma of fried onions—which is the only thing besides shoe polish that I would go out of my way to sniff. I arrived as Joy was adding chopped green peppers to the skillet in which the onions were frying. “You’re destroying its purity,” I said.
“That’s my specialty. How’s Joanne?”
“She’s all right, I think. She’s warm now, and asleep.”
“I was worried.”
“You would have been more than that if you had heard what she was saying before she fell asleep.”
“Talking like someone out of the Bible?”
“You know about that? And about angels and Indians?” I got a fork and maneuvered a few onions out of the skillet, trying to look unconcerned.
“I heard some of that, too.”
I nibbled the onions and looked at Joy’s back as she cooked. I wondered if she was going to express an opinion, but she just kept puttering.
“It’s been a strange day,” I said.
“We’ve had a few of those lately.”
“Since I fell in love with Sara.”
Joy turned to face me. “It’ll work out, Jonathan.”
“But what about Joanne?”
“It’ll work out.”
Good, handsome Joy. I appreciated her efforts to console me, but I couldn’t think of any reasons why I should share her optimism. But it was time I stopped thinking about Sara and Joanne. I asked Joy what she thought of Bill Freedman.
“He’s nobody I would trust.”
“You seemed to like him.”
“I spent quite a few years seeming to like men I didn’t trust, Jonathan. Bill was like old times.”
“He’s always been good to me.”
“He’s been good to himself. You’ve made money for him. You can count on him to get a good price for your stuff, but don’t ever get to where you have to ask him to put up bail for you.”
I wished that my opinions of people could have been as certain as Joy’s. I wasn’t sure how accurate her opinions were, but that didn’t seem to be too important. Life is just easier to get through on a day-by-day basis if you form quick, definite opinions about people. I know a little more about good and bad now than I did then, but I still have trouble fitting people into those categories. It’s easier than it used to be for me to decide whom I like and dislike, but as Mae West said in another connection, goodness has nothing to do with it.
Nanny Joy was a case in point. There was never a time when I wasn’t fond of her, although the time came when our ideas about right and wrong didn’t exactly coincide.
But on that spring Saturday, when I was awash in portraits, partying, sex, and illness, Joy was my gyroscope. She kept me stable enough so that I could get myself into the darkroom and spend a few quiet hours getting some meticulously finished prints of what the camera had seen that morning. The cast of characters had become familiar to me: the vague images of the two men, the woman, and the infant; the more substantial and—in this sequence—intensely dramatic and attractive figures of Joanne and Sara. The photographs were not only singular and disturbing, but remarkably beautiful. It was hard to tell what was going on in the pictures, but there was a quality of violent and dangerous action in them that I had never before seen in anything done in a studio.
My pictures usually had a domestic quality. My subjects were sometimes devoted to debauchery, but I soothed them with a little Vermeerish light, and they took on the personalities of seventeenth-century Dutch embroiderers and harpsichord
students. But there was nothing domestic about the spectral portraits. And it wasn’t just the presence of the exotic, see-through figures. The whole quality of the light in the photographs was forbidding; it wasn’t diffused spring sunshine but the harsh, snow-reflected light of January in a northern latitude.
And there was a new element in four of the photographs—an element that seemed at first like a formless, nearly transparent overlay. It was as if the wing of a dragonfly had been held in front of the camera. The thought of wings stayed with me as I examined the four peculiar prints, and as I stood back from them the apparently formless overlays took on a barely discernible pattern: the pattern of wings. But they weren’t at all like the wings of an insect, or quite like the wings of a bird. They were the elaborate kind of wings that Flemish Renaissance painters attached to angels in scenes of the Annunciation or the Nativity.
Joanne, in her chilly delirium, had talked about an angel. So now the cast of spectral characters was complete. The thing that was nowhere near complete was an explanation of their significance. But I wasn’t feeling up to searching for significance. I had run out of energy and curiosity.
I left the darkroom and went into the kitchen, where the aroma of onions and green peppers had been joined by a lot of other, less bold aromas. There was a large pot on the stove. I spent a couple of minutes examining the contents of the pot and stirring a thick soup. I couldn’t identify all the items that came burbling to the surface, but there were definitely signs of sausage, chicken, okra, speckled beans, turnip, and tomatoes. As I put the lid back on the pot Joy came into the kitchen. She was wearing an outfit she often featured when she went out on Saturday nights. It was an ensemble that really upset me. If you didn’t look closely, it seemed to be what a poor lady would wear to a church meeting: navy-blue, basket-weave, inverted-pot hat (with decorative veil); a satin floral-print dress with a lot of lavender in it (mid-calf hemline, and button-up front, with matching cloth-covered buttons); medium-heeled navy-and-white shoes. What was upsetting was that the dress was translucent, and if you looked carefully you could see that Joy was wearing skimpy lemon-yellow lingerie that wasn’t exactly right for church meetings. I knew it wasn’t my business, but I truly wanted to know where Joy went when she wore that outfit. Her usual clothes were the sort of things casual young women wore—mostly jeans and sweaters or shirts.
“Going out?” I asked.
“Yes. . . . Joanne’s awake, but she doesn’t feel like getting up. I think she’s okay, though.”
“I’ll take care of her.”
“Did the pictures come out all right?”
“Better than all right. I think there’s an angel in some of them—I mean, aside from Joanne and Sara.”
“That’s better than a devil.”
I was encouraged by Joy’s thought, until I had a thought of my own: “Satan’s an angel—a fallen angel,” I said.
Joy, as usual, had an answer: “Satan wouldn’t want his picture taken. He’d be like the murderers being brought into police headquarters. He’d have a newspaper over his face.”
Instead of answering, I frowned.
“You worry too damn much, Mr. B. Most people would be pleased to have a visit from an angel. Why don’t you spend the rest of the day fooling around and smiling? That’s what I’m going to do. I’ll be back about midnight.”
Joy turned to go. She hadn’t exactly consoled me. There’s nothing that puts me in a bad mood faster than having someone tell me that I’m in a bad mood. As Joy reached the kitchen door she dropped her gloves (white; I forgot to mention this finishing touch of her ensemble). As she leaned over to pick them up, her yellow bikini-type panties showed distinctly through her dress. Fooling around and smiling, indeed.
Then I began to feel guilty. Why should I begrudge Joy her pleasures? Probably it was because I was uncertain about my own pleasures. I didn’t know when I’d see Sara again. Why didn’t she have a telephone? Why didn’t she call me?
I began to realize how much my life had changed. If I was hoping the phone would ring, I wasn’t the Jonathan Brewster I had been before. And why wasn’t I in Joanne’s bedroom giving her whatever comfort I could? The answer was simple enough, I supposed. Sara had become more important to me than my daughter. I was a little frightened by that thought, and I left the kitchen and headed for Joanne’s room. But before I got there, it occurred to me that I should drop a note to Sara. I went to my own room and scribbled out a few not too coherent words of love and gratitude, addressed the envelope, and quickly left the apartment. I ran to the mailbox at the corner of the street. According to the schedule on the box, the letter wouldn’t be collected until the next morning. I knew that collections were made more often at mailboxes at busier intersections, and I suspected that if I went a few blocks more to Houston Street, I would find a box that would get the letter to the post office that same night.
I began to walk quickly toward Houston Street, and then I remembered that Joanne was alone and I hadn’t told her I was going out. If she needed me and found I wasn’t there, she might panic. I had never left her alone before. I went back to the mailbox I had just left and started to put the letter in. But then I hesitated. Mail delivery was getting to be erratic. I wanted Sara to know that I was thinking of her, and an extra five minutes of my time now might make a day’s difference in the delivery of the letter. I pulled my hand back and began to jog toward Houston Street, wondering what had become of my well-practiced patience.
I found the mailbox I was looking for within two minutes, and I was back in the apartment in another ten minutes. As I jogged home I began to imagine disasters that might have taken place while I was away. I saw Joanne in the kitchen, accidentally spilling scalding soup over herself or setting her clothes on fire. I saw her wandering through the apartment, or even going out into the street, calling for me.
My jog became a sprint, and my body began to protest the unaccustomed strain. My conscience was protesting even more strongly. Was I going to sacrifice my daughter’s safety because of my love for Sara? I had thought there was no need to make such a choice; that I could love them equally. But maybe it wasn’t that simple. Maybe this was just the first of many such choices I would have to make. Dilemmas, unlike mysteries, didn’t appeal to me.
When I got to my building, I didn’t have much strength left. The elevator car was up on the sixth floor, and I didn’t want to wait for it to come down. I started to run up the stairs, but before I got to the first landing, I had slowed to a walk. There was no moisture in my mouth, but there was a lot of it on my forehead. The lights on the stairway seemed to have dimmed. I was strongly aware of being in my midthirties, and I wondered whether I would ever see my late thirties.
I was doubly relieved when I got to the door of my apartment: first, because it meant the end of my climb; and second, because I didn’t see any smoke seeping out around the frame. Inside the apartment there was a silence that at first reassured me and then alarmed me; was it a lifeless silence? But there turned out to be life in Joanne’s room, although it was not exactly boisterous life.
As she so often did when she was apparently sleeping soundly, Joanne opened her eyes when I entered the room. “Was I asleep?” she asked me.
“I think so, sweetie.” I knelt beside the bed and took Joanne in my arms, along with the bedclothes.
She didn’t seem overjoyed. “You’re all sweaty, Daddy.”
“Am I sweaty, sweetie?” Joanne offered a feeble giggle in exchange for my feeble attempt at wit. “I’m sweaty because I love you so much.”
Joanne pulled free of the covers and put her arms around my neck. “I love you, Daddy. But now I’m hungry.”
“You stay right here, and we’ll get full in the tummy and have a nice time.” I went into the kitchen and loaded a tray with bread and bowls of soup, and we had dinner in bed.
After dinner I
suggested we adjourn to the Anything Goes Room, but neither of us had the energy or inclination for strenuous silliness. We lay on the bed and talked about baby animals for a while and then tried to get some idea of how long it would be before we would have another Christmas. Joanne finally decided that there was no reasonable way to tell. Numbers—whether number of days or months or seasons—didn’t really mean anything when applied to yearnings and emotions. I understood her perfectly. It might be two or three days until I could see Sara again, but it was my needs and not the calendar that decided what that wait would feel like.
Joanne finally came up with the idea that maybe we could sleep long enough so that when we woke up it would be Christmas. We gave it a try, but I only made it until about midnight, when I got up and took the dishes into the kitchen and rinsed them. Then I took a large glass of whiskey into the bathroom, filled the tub with uncomfortably warm water, and sipped and soaked until the water was tepid and I was ready to try the Christmas marathon again.
The next day—Sunday—was comfortably routine for Nanny Joy and Joanne. But the routine wasn’t so comfortable for me. I thought of Sara continuously, but in a less abstract, more disturbing way than I ever had before. What I mean, I suppose, is that I thought a lot about her body, and several times I found myself exhibiting definite signs of excitement. If it hadn’t been for that physical excitement, I would have gone to Sara’s apartment. But as my needs become more understandable, I became more careful about trying to fulfill them. I spent the day mounting my spectral portraits and getting them packed up for delivery to Harry, so that he could start showing them to wealthy and influential people. I wondered what an objective, sensible person would think of them—and whether that kind of person would want to buy any of them. That really wasn’t my business, though; it was Harry’s business. He would find more than enough of the particular—or unparticular—kind of people who would find life more significant with one or two ghostly portraits on the wall. I wasn’t overjoyed with the thought that because of my selfish ambitions a lot of strangers would be living with images of Sara and Joanne, and for a while I thought of canceling the whole project. But I decided that it would also be selfish to hoard the pictures for myself. In the end, as usual, the kind of selfishness that pays the rent won out, and the next morning I delivered the photographs to Harry Bordeaux.
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