Learning to See

by Elise Hooper

  When we made it down to the party, Maynard elbowed our host. “Your girl up there has a brogue stiff enough to hang a flag on. How do you understand a thing that comes out of her mouth?”

  “I don’t. I leave it all to Betsy,” said Ben, looking bemused.

  “Ahhh, must be nice to be a captain of industry,” Maynard said. I flinched with embarrassment, but Ben chuckled and they drifted toward the large doorway to the next room. A group of men spilled out, guffawing at a joke someone had told. A few faces were recognizable. Albert Bender, Ralph Stackpole, and a few other artists I knew from the Monkey Block stood with martini glasses in hand. “Look who’s arrived: it’s Mr. San Francisco himself,” Bender exclaimed. Maynard grumbled a response, but his expression brightened when someone gave him a Scotch.

  I settled onto one of the damask couches in the drawing room to catch up with a few of the wives, some of whom were clients of mine. We all tugged out cigarette cases and lit up as we awaited the grand arrival of Rivera. People spoke to each other without listening, all eyes darting toward the foyer.

  An hour after the dinner was scheduled to start, Rivera had still not arrived. My stomach growled as I stubbed out what felt like my fifteenth cigarette in a silver ashtray of Betsy’s. A commotion at the door caused everyone to swivel their heads. In walked Rivera, but I couldn’t take my gaze off the delicate, tawny-skinned woman in a colorful floor-length Mexican-style skirt and blouse standing at his side. Three ropes of turquoise beads encircled the woman’s throat. Black braids, thick as Dan’s forearms, wrapped around her head, making her look like an exotic Mexican princess. Embroidered flowers encircled the hem of the skirt and danced around her bodice. While voices rose in excitement and introductions were made, we all crossed the foyer to the dining room. She moved in a way that was all too familiar to me. I watched her cross the marble floor, her long skirt pulling to the right with each step to reveal a slight limp.

  Though Rivera was huge, corpulent, really, and the shape of an anvil, he glided through the crowd with surprising grace on incongruously spindly legs. He reminded me of the wild cattle, shaggy and thick, we’d seen in Arizona years ago, creatures capable of crossing narrow plank bridges spanning irrigation streams with nary a stumble.

  Betsy, eager to get the dinner under way, seated everyone. Maynard and Rivera landed at the far end of the long table, but the painter’s wife sat only one seat away from me. I studied her as the first course of jellied tomato cream bouillon was served. She sat upright as if balancing a stack of books on her head and nodded politely along with the conversation. She picked at her crown roast of lamb but didn’t appear to eat much. Though she maintained a smile throughout the entire meal, I detected a sadness in the way she watched her husband out of the corner of her eye. After the final course of individual raspberry mousse cakes was served, we all stood. I inched over and introduced myself.

  “Ah, I’ve met your husband at his studio,” she said, her accent thick, her voice melodious and husky. “He showed me some of your photographs. Your portraits are beautiful.”

  “Thank you. How are you enjoying San Francisco?” The banality of my small talk horrified me, but I found myself tongue-tied by her exotic beauty.

  “I have not seen much yet. Like my husband, I am an artist and have been busy at work on my own painting.”

  I nodded, admiring her confidence. “Your skirt is extraordinary.”

  She looked down at the bright crimson fabric around her waist. A stripe of orange ran below the crimson and then a cream-colored panel constituted the final portion of the skirt. When she raised her face to me, she smiled. Her big doe-like eyes sparkled. “Thank you. It’s native Tehuana dress that the women of Oaxaca wear.” I must have looked blank because she added, “That’s a part of the country down in the south, on the Pacific side.”

  “The vivid colors . . .” Mesmerized, I leaned forward and touched her turquoise-colored blouse.

  She laughed. “How interesting that color attracts you since your work is black-and-white.”

  I made a face and nodded in agreement. “I’m always drawn to color.”

  “So this is the photographer,” a voice boomed from behind me. I turned to see Diego Rivera swaggering toward us. Up close, his teeth had gaps and were rather yellow, his nose bulbous. I couldn’t reconcile his ugliness next to the beauty of his wife. “Tell me,” he said, tilting his head to one side as he observed me. “Have you ever tried Mexican chocolate?”

  “Chocolate?”

  “Yes, Mexican chocolate,” he repeated. He reached out his hand to take mine in his. “It’s the best. Spicy and dark. You must come to my studio and try some. Sometimes we melt it and drink it. Tomorrow, you must come. Once you’ve tried it, you will not even know how to describe the flavor. It’s like . . . well, when have you ever felt an ecstasy you wished could last forever?”

  I felt my face go hot. He grinned.

  “Yes, this is why you must try it.” With my hand still in his, he started walking and I followed him several steps. “And bring me your photographs, please.”

  “You would like to see my work?”

  “Yes, when you come tomorrow.” He laughed as he spoke, amused at my confusion, but he reached out to smooth down my hair along the side of my head, his palm lingering on the back of my neck. He drew me closer.

  I smiled, noting the dark hair that appeared at his throat above where his cream-colored linen shirt was buttoned. His cheeks, dark and soft, reminded me of clay and the impulse to touch his face came over me. Next to elegant Frida, it was impossible not to feel plain, but under Rivera’s admiring gaze, I knew my green eyes sparkled, my figure enticed. I felt beguiling. Was this Rivera’s magic? That his ugliness made women feel beautiful? Emboldened, I said, “Perhaps we can make a trade. A few of my photos for a few of your sketches. Some souvenirs.”

  “I like this idea, yes.” Still holding my hand, his smile appeared incandescent.

  Frida came toward us, a curious glint in her eye, and she slipped my other hand in hers, stretching me between the two of them. “Tomorrow,” she purred. “I shall give you one of my long skirts. A gift. We’re about the same height. Let’s see what a little color does for you.”

  Almost breathless, I thanked her, slipping my hands from their grasps, and turned to find Betsy behind me, the familiarity of her a welcome refuge from the giddiness brought over me by Diego and Frida. “Dorothea,” she said, “I just sent word upstairs for the nanny to bring down your boys.”

  We began our goodbyes. The nanny appeared, John asleep in her arms, Dan by her side rubbing his eyes. Maynard bent over to scoop up Dan but straightened quickly, rubbing at his nose. “What the hell? He smells like a Portuguese whorehouse!” As if a wasps’ nest had been thrown onto the foyer’s marble floor, everyone stepped back in shock, no doubt wondering what exactly Maynard did with his time when he wasn’t painting.

  The nanny hurried to say, “I tried to clean him up best I could, but when he used the toilet, he got into a bottle of scent . . .” Her explanation tapered off in the silence that had overcome the room.

  Urgent choking erupted from someone. Everyone turned to look for the sound, and there stood Frida, coughing and laughing, tears streaming down her face as she shook her head and raised a hand to her forehead in mock surrender. “Señor Dixon,” she managed to say between fits of laughter, “you have the most wicked sense of humor.”

  Her heavily accented pronunciation of wicked and the way she was now leaning on Rivera to hold her up started a ripple of laughter through the crowd. Maynard shook his head in amusement as he picked up Dan. I slid John into my arms. We took our leave of the party. On my way past Frida, I looked at her and gave a small nod. She returned the gesture so subtly that no one noticed our exchange, but a bond had been forged.

  The next day when I went to visit the Riveras in the Monkey Block, Frida handed me a bundle wrapped in white tissue paper. “Open this before you try any of Diego’s chocolate.”


  I opened the paper to find a long turquoise skirt decorated with embroidered flowers at the bottom. The blouse was a pale yellow with delicate pin tucks along the bodice. I let the skirt unfold and fall to the ground and held it in front of the trousers I was wearing. Frida studied me and nodded. “I thought perhaps a darker color might feel more natural. You like the length?”

  Overcome by the beauty of the garments, I said, “They’re glorious.”

  Without taking her eyes from my face, she asked, “You cover up your leg too?”

  “Yes, polio. I was seven.”

  “I was also seven. My right foot was damaged as well.”

  We were silent in the face of such coincidence, but then she went on to tell me of a horrible trolley car accident that had left her severely injured several years earlier. Plagued by pain that confined her to bed for long stretches of time, she began to paint. Eventually doctors discovered three of her vertebrae had never healed and insisted she wear a back brace. Raising her blouse, she gave me a glimpse of the leather bands and iron bars wrapped around her waist.

  “That looks terribly uncomfortable,” I said.

  “And yet still he loves me,” she mused, nodding her chin toward Diego moving around in the adjacent room. “Through all of this.”

  For the duration of her stay in San Francisco, Frida and I continued to spend time together. News that Diego had begun a very public affair with Helen Wills Moody, the tennis champion, raced through our social circles, but we never spoke of it. Frida started painting in my studio, some days arriving pale and stiff-faced. She blamed back pain, but it could have been heartbreak too. Citing her health as the reason, she stopped going to social events and art shows. We worked in companionable silence for hours together, focused, comfortable, and productive. Sometimes Maynard dropped in to pace back and forth in front of the velvet couch. He would slow his steps near my opened appointment book, his gaze flinty as it traveled the list of clients booked for the week. Once when he left after mumbling something about an errand, Frida said, “He’s envious you still have work.”

  “But business is slow. I had to let my assistant go.”

  She shrugged. “Still, men like to be the providers.”

  I knew she was right. What would keep Maynard from getting restless? When Frida and Diego pulled up stakes and returned to Mexico several weeks later, I decided our family needed a change of scenery too. I knew just the place.

  Chapter 17

  I found a used Model T listed in the newspaper and bought it from a fellow in greasy coveralls on Valencia Street. Since I’d never learned to drive, Fronsie accompanied me to provide some pointers. She sat in the passenger seat, arms folded tightly across her chest, a worried expression pinching her pretty face.

  “Good heavens, don’t you have any faith in me?” I asked.

  “How in the world do you two plan to get to Taos in this rig?”

  “We’re smart, we’ll figure it out.”

  Fronsie’s skeptical expression told me exactly what she thought about our intelligence, but I brushed off her doubts. Four days later, Maynard, the boys, and I headed south on 101 bound for Taos, a town Maynard had long spoken about visiting. He’d been offered studio space by his friend Mabel Dodge Luhan, the wealthy heiress, and we took her up on the offer. A couple of hours south of the city in the Santa Cruz Mountains, I discovered that Maynard, who insisted on driving, possessed an unfortunate tendency to look out his window, inspecting the landscape, instead of keeping his eyes on the road. After taking a bend a little too casually, the rear tires spat gravel. I could contain myself no longer. “God help us! Maynard, let me drive so you can take in the scenery all you want.”

  “Dammit, woman, stop talking.”

  I glanced back at the boys, both dozing, and spoke through gritted teeth. “If we end up in a ditch . . .”

  “If I hit a ditch, I’m sending your side into it hardest.”

  I pursed my lips together and looked away, annoyed with his dark humor, but even more annoyed with myself for getting him started. I must have nodded off because the next thing I knew the automobile was tumbling, bumping downhill. A squealing sound filled the air. My head struck against the window. Stars danced across my vision. The sound of the boys shrieking rang in my ears. We jolted to a stop. Thrown against the dashboard, I heard a muffled sound of crying. “John? Dan?” I pushed myself upright, dizzy and dazed. “John? Dan?” I called again, louder.

  Though my forehead throbbed, panic filled me with determination. I crawled over my seat and into the back. Dan’s little red shirt lay crumpled below me so I reached down and peeled him off the floor of the motorcar, my heart in my throat. Underneath him lay John, motionless. Fear choked the breath out of me. I pulled their faces toward me and inspected them closely, running my hands up and down their limbs. Both whimpered as they pushed their little heads into my shoulders. I let out a ragged breath. “Are you all right? Does anything hurt?” They both continued to weep, but I found nothing amiss as I patted them down. Saying a silent prayer of thanks, I rocked back and forth with them and peered into the front seat.

  “Dorrie? Dorothea . . .” Maynard moaned.

  “Hush, don’t scare the boys,” I whispered to him, leaning forward to see what had happened. He was still seated in front of the steering wheel, yet his wrist dangled at an unnatural angle. “Hold on, let me settle these two and I’ll come around to check on you.” While Maynard continued to groan, I wiped the tears from the boys’ faces, pulled two butterscotch candies from my pocket, and handed one to each before going around to the front of the car to open Maynard’s door. It appeared we had run off the road, dodged a copse of trees, and skidded down a short embankment. Remarkably, the car appeared undamaged. I opened the driver’s side door and peered in to assess Maynard.

  “Honest, I wasn’t trying to kill you. I’m sorry I said that earlier,” he moaned through clenched teeth.

  “I know, I know.” I pulled him forward and inspected his face. A goose egg, shiny and purple, already bulged by his left temple. When I tried to ease his sleeve up to look at his arm, he scrunched his eyes closed and growled. “Hold on, your wrist doesn’t look right,” I said.

  He let out a string of oaths. I glanced back at the boys, but they were sucking away at their candies and sorting tubes of oil paint that had scattered over the backseat from Maynard’s paint box.

  I bit my lip. “Well, what do you want me to do? I can drive us out of here, but we should find a doctor in San Jose.”

  He cursed some more. “Nah, I don’t want to pay for a damn doctor. Just splint it.”

  I stared at him. Who did he take me for—Florence Nightingale? I noticed he was still talking through clenched teeth, color drained from his face. “What’s wrong with your mouth?” I asked.

  “My jaw is killing me. It took a wallop as we went down the embankment.”

  I debated returning to San Francisco as I looked around the wreckage of our belongings strewn throughout the car. A long wooden spoon had landed on the floor of the backseat. I reached for it and then pulled the belt off the jacket I was wearing. With the spoon and belt in one hand, I bent over to feel around under the driver’s seat. Sure enough, my fingers came upon a smooth cool glass surface. I gave Maynard a long look and pulled out a bottle of whiskey, still remarkably in one piece.

  He took it from my outstretched hand with a sheepish expression but didn’t hesitate to lift it to his lips for a few good long slugs. I let him drink—he was going to need all of the fortification he could get. After he’d drained half the bottle, I took a deep breath and seized his arm, pushing it against the handle of the wooden spoon, straightening it as best I could as I wrapped it with my jacket belt. As he yelled, I inspected my makeshift splint. It would have to do the trick.

  “Oh, stop your grumbling,” I admonished, pushing him along the front seat to the passenger’s side. He closed his eyes. His head lolled against the side of the car while I put the lid back on the bottle, now signif
icantly emptier, and tucked it back underneath the driver’s seat. Before settling behind the wheel, I circled the automobile. The wheels looked fine. Only one headlight was cracked.

  Taking a deep breath, I climbed into the driver’s seat to assess the three pedals on the floor of the car. I turned to check on the boys. Both looked back at me wide-eyed, but I gave them a wink. “Come on, I can do this,” I muttered, concentrating on the steps Fronsie had demonstrated back in San Francisco. Once I had the hand brake lever in neutral, I pushed the clutch into a low gear and the car began rolling forward. I pushed down on the throttle and gave a holler. We made a slow curve, gaining momentum, before I jerked the wheel back toward the hill and we clambered up the embankment, the engine revving with a worrying groan. As the car stopped shaking once we hit the asphalt of the road, I exhaled.

  The boys cheered.

  Maynard snored.

  “Victory!” I crowed, though I kept my eyes firmly directed to the road ahead.

  I DROVE FOR four more days, Maynard sauced the entire time. By the time we arrived in Taos, the whole lower half of his face had swelled and a purplish bruise resembling a storm cloud from one of his paintings enveloped the left side of his face. Mabel Dodge Luhan set us up with a small adobe casita on the outskirts of Rancho de Taos, a picturesque village about four miles south of the main city of Taos. The town’s doctor visited us and pronounced Maynard’s wrist and jaw broken. My irritation over his injuries was offset by the doctor’s compliments on my improvised splinting, but any satisfaction over my nursing skills vanished when I realized what a demanding patient Maynard would prove to be. Dirty jokes, endless cold compresses and glasses of water, and games of poker became the order of each day.

  Along with playing nurse, it fell to me to settle us into our new home. The stark lines of the stucco exterior, the bundles of red chilies dangling from the walls, the crimson, green, and gold wool blanket hanging off the side of the adobe—it all charmed me, but the reality of our primitive conditions soon wore thin. Without any running water or electricity, my days became filled with maintaining a cooking fire, sweeping the dirt-packed floors, and hauling water from the outside well by the front door.