by Elise Hooper
“Split up?”
“We can’t even sit down for a meal without ripping each other apart. Have you noticed how John flinches every time our voices rise? How can we keep going like this?”
“And what about the boys? I’m not failing those two.” His eyes sparked with anger, but a hint of resignation cracked in his voice. “I suppose you want to take ’em?”
“There’s an agency on Gough that will foster children out temporarily.”
Maynard stared at me, for once, speechless.
“I have to work. Fostering them out is the only way.”
“Foster them out? What does that even mean?”
“They’ll live with a family who can care for them while we cannot. It will get them out of the city. Keep them safe.” It came out as a whisper. Judging by Maynard’s shock, my expression must have revealed how terrified I felt.
“Jesus. For how long?”
“Until we can figure out how to live together again.”
“But, Dorrie, there’s no telling how long this downturn will last. This could be life now.”
Although I’d told myself I wouldn’t cry, tears started down my face. “There’s no other way. I’ve tried and tried to think of something.”
“Jesus.”
“Is that all you can say?”
“Well, what do you want me to say? How about I’m furious that I can’t keep my family together? That I can’t even earn a dime anymore?” He pushed over a pile of canvases that rested against his desk. A cloud of dust arose from the clatter. He dropped his head into one of his palms. “I’ve seen those kids at the Sisters of Mercy. They look like little ghosts,” he whispered.
I’d walked past the cold limestone façade of the nearby orphanage and seen it packed with children whose families were dead or unable to care for them. “I know. The boys cannot end up there,” I said, swallowing back the sick feeling that came over me when I thought about the place.
Maynard nodded.
We were both silent. My head ached. I hadn’t slept since I’d started thinking about separating. Each night I lay in bed, wide awake, trying to piece a plan together for how to get us through this, but Maynard was right. There was no telling what the future would bring. And while I hated the idea of giving up the boys with every ounce of my being, I couldn’t figure out another way to survive. I needed to keep them off the streets. Though Maynard was a lousy husband, he’d always been good with the boys. If only he could shore himself up, he could come back and we could resume our relationship as a family. That was my hope and I’d cling to it with everything I had.
Maynard interrupted my thoughts by jumping to his feet and pacing the small room, his hands waving through the air with each step. “What’s wrong with this country in which a man can’t take care of his own family?”
I didn’t know what to say.
TWO WEEKS LATER, Maynard and I drove the boys onto the ferry to Sausalito and then disembarked and headed through the Marin Headlands to the small town of San Anselmo. Down a winding road lined with redwoods, we drove, everyone silent. Maynard’s knuckles glowed white on the steering wheel. He hadn’t looked at me since the four of us had climbed into the car back in the city. From the backseat came the occasional sniffle. Each whimper broke my heart. My teeth dug into the sides of my mouth in an effort to keep my own tears at bay. Even with the coppery taste of blood, I kept my jaw tight.
“Mama, can we come home next weekend?” Dan asked.
I stretched my stiff face into a smile and turned to face the boys, trying to sound cheerful. “We will come to see you here next Sunday. We can go for a hike and enjoy a picnic.”
“But what about home?”
“There’s so much to explore here.” I talked about games we could play and tried to sound like I believed my enthusiastic babble. Maynard coughed to get my attention, and I turned to the window, inspecting the numbers on the cluster of mailboxes that came into view with the bend in the road. “Slow down, I think one of these might be it.” I checked the address on the letter we had received from the placement agency. Number 214 was the second mailbox on the left. “Turn here,” I said, pointing down a dirt driveway. A modest white shingled house sat at the end of the drive, surrounded by flower beds filled with lilies the color of butter. Blue-and-white-checked curtains hung in the front windows. An older man and woman stepped outside onto the small front porch to greet us.
Under the awkwardness of knowing we were being scrutinized, Maynard and I exited the car and opened the back doors to retrieve the boys. John came out willingly but hid behind Maynard, while Dan folded his thin little arms across his chest and stared straight ahead, ignoring my whispered entreaties to get out of the car.
In a trembling, thin voice, he said loudly enough that all could hear, “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Daniel Rhodes Dixon, please don’t make this any harder. You’re going to have loads of good adventures here, I can tell.” My own feigned cheerfulness sickened me.
Dan bent over and buried his face into his knees. Maynard nudged me aside, leaned over, and spoke low. “Son, get out of the car right now.”
With exaggerated slowness, Dan, his lower lip jutting out, climbed from the car and stood beside it.
“Well, good morning,” said Mr. Tinley as he and his wife joined us to make introductions.
“I’ve already baked a pie using apples from our orchard. We can have it later with our supper,” said the older woman, smiling. “Our boys loved apple pie when they were young,” she added to Maynard and me.
In her letter, Mrs. Tinley had explained she was looking forward to having boys again in the house since theirs had grown up and left. I studied the sturdy-looking couple. He smelled of peppermint oil and wore a neatly pressed light blue buttoned-down shirt and dark brown pants with suspenders. Metal-rimmed spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose, giving him a curious, scholarly air. Next to him, his wife wore a pale pink cotton striped dress. Her graying hair was gathered into a low bun and her broad face looked grandmotherly and comforting. At Mrs. Tinley’s invitation, we all walked to the porch and took seats while she poured glasses of lemonade from a sweating pitcher. When Mr. Tinley offered to show Maynard and the boys around the barn, she beckoned me into the house. Inside, the kitchen glowed with tidiness. She showed me the bedroom the boys would share. Two Jenny Lind twin beds lined the walls with a braided rug lying between them. I pictured the boys sleeping in there, their small limbs twisted in surrender under the light blue bedspreads, and must have looked stricken, because she patted my shoulder.
“Now, now, I’m sure this is difficult for you, but we’ll take good care of them.”
Unable to reply, I nodded, turned away, and went down the stairs to await Maynard and the boys on the porch.
I barely even remember saying our goodbyes, but I can picture the boys watching us drive off. John cried out. Whatever he said was lost in the rumble of our motorcar, because Maynard didn’t stop. Unlike me, he never looked back. As their little figures faded in the distance, a throbbing began in my temples. I remembered my own father sauntering down the front walk of our house in Hoboken before he vanished forever. This is not the same thing, I told myself. He had left and broken my heart. Digging my right fingernails into my left palm, I gritted my teeth. Unlike him, I had no other choice.
THAT NIGHT I dreamed of running. Two perfect feet led me down a dirt path toward the beach. When I reached the sand, its warmth traveled up through me and I felt my pace quicken. I ran and ran. I awoke alone in my studio and let myself cry since no one could hear my tears.
Chapter 20
Alone in my studio, the days stretched before me with few client names penciled into my appointment book. Without the boys and Maynard, I felt adrift and unmoored. I needed to stay focused on work and hoped my routines would save me. On the bulletin board, where I tacked my best recent portraits, thoughtful and dreamy faces gazed past me. Over the years, I’d created a roster of clients who res
pected craft and appreciated beauty. These were good people. Yet something was missing. I had reached a point where these portraits weren’t enough. It wasn’t just an issue of money—although I needed that too—I needed to find something more substantial. Something to lose myself in. I needed work that would consume me, distract me from everything I had lost.
I stood in front of the window. Fog blanketed the city, low and heavy. Without quite knowing what I planned to do, I pulled on my navy wool peacoat and shoved some scrap newspaper down my sleeves to steel myself against the cold. I grabbed my Graflex and walked downstairs to the curb below my window. From the Bay, a damp, bracing wind screamed up the street, blasting me as I clumped along the sidewalk. My eyes teared and I shivered, feeling stripped but alert. A gnarled hand reached out from the shadow of a doorway, clutching a tin cup. I dropped a nickel in and kept walking. Block after block, more and more of these men appeared though they tried to be invisible. They squatted alongside stairwells, leaned against the sides of buildings, and slept, curled up on the sidewalk, silent as a forest.
I found myself in the area near the waterfront known as the White Angel Jungle. Here, the suppertime crowd awaited entry to the nearby soup kitchen set up in a junk lot. Longshoremen, railroad men, carpenters, lumberjacks, truck drivers—all out of work and hungry. The line of men unspooled down the block. They hunched in dark coats and flannel shirts with broken-brimmed caps pulled low.
I edged closer to them, examining their expressions, expecting to be told to go away, but no one even noticed me. They murmured to each other, heads close together. Most gazed right through me, dispirited, sunk deep within their thoughts. I raised my camera hesitantly, lifting the range finder to my brow. I focused and then peered through the viewfinder and snapped a frame. The click of the shutter sounded like a gunshot to my ears. I raised my head, looking around, but still, no one even glanced at me. I’d been holding my breath, but exhaled and took more photos of men crouching on their heels, studying the sidewalk as if there were a message emblazoned upon it about what to do next. By the time the White Angel soup kitchen opened and the men filed inside, I’d used an entire film pack.
Despite the misery surrounding me, my heart galloped. Pacing the nearby streets had taken my mind off the cold. Every time I snapped a shot, exhilaration filled me. There was something about being invisible and seeing everyone and everything that made me feel more alive than ever. When I used all of the film I’d brought, I hurried back to my studio to develop the images. My fingers had swollen from the damp cold and my right foot now throbbed, but I barely registered the discomfort. In my darkroom, I thawed and developed the film.
One image in particular caught my attention. In the developer pan, a mass of men in charcoal-colored wool coats, fedoras, and caps took form. Back at the White Angel Jungle, I had climbed onto the back rim of a parked truck to get a few shots looking down upon the vagrants. The angle had given me the most depth. I’d focused on one man facing toward my camera. He leaned against a rickety wooden barricade, clasping his tin cup between his hands, deep in thought. His head bowed enough so his eyes weren’t visible, but the gray stubble of his beard showed the grim set of his jaw. The light captured his beat-up fedora missing its band, and the whiteness of his hands. Something about how his shoulders bunched toward his ears, the resignation in his hands, the dejected tilt of his chin—his posture said everything about helplessness and grief. After I rinsed all of the images and clipped them on my drying line, I took the photo of the man down and pinned it to the board with my most successful portraits. This photo was trying to tell me something.
THE NEXT DAY Imogen dropped by. Earlier in the morning, I’d visited a client’s house in Pacific Heights for a portrait sitting. The photographs still hung drying on the line. Imogen walked along the images, nodding her head in approval, but it wasn’t until she saw my photo of the man in the White Angel breadline that she cocked her head in interest.
“What’s this?”
“A candid I took yesterday.”
“Where?”
“Down by the Embarcadero. The White Angel Jungle.”
“You went down there all on your own?”
“Well, I didn’t have any appointments and thought I’d get outside of my studio to see what was happening.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“I have no idea. But there’s something about being out there, photographing real people, struggling people. I don’t know, but someone needs to witness what’s happening.” I’d been wrestling with this idea since my trip to the waterfront. Could there be power in seeing people and then recording what I saw? My camera could document everything. Unlike what a writer or a painter chooses to include in their compositions, my camera recorded all of the details objectively. Or was it truly objective if I was the one controlling it? Maybe it was as close to truth as I could hope for. And truth was what was needed. The grief on the streets outside of my studio door felt real; it needed to be seen and felt by more people, people who were in a position to do something to help. I still wasn’t sure what would come from these images, but I needed to have faith that my ideas would take shape as I continued to experiment.
Imogen pulled out her portfolio to withdraw several portraits. “Ansel’s criticizing the lighting in my recent work. I know he’s taking a dig at my matte-surfaced platinum paper. I’m so tired of that know-it-all greenhorn.”
I held up a print of a woman, in which Imogen had both a close-up of the woman’s face and an image of her standing with her arms out. The double image gave a dreamy quality to the portrait. But who cared about such a refinement of technique while the world was going to hell in a handbasket? There was no immediacy or urgency in her work. It felt like a luxury. “I see what you’re doing. It’s”—I cast around for something—“interesting.”
Imogen pulled her lips together at my response, before stepping back and looking me up and down. “You look thin.”
“I’ve been busy.” I sighed, dropping onto a stool to rub a hand across my eyes.
“I just came from Maynard’s. He looks awful too.”
Leave it to Imogen not to mince words.
“What are you two doing?” she asked.
My cheeks stung as though she had slapped me across the face. “If you’ve come here to make me feel bad, don’t bother. Don’t you think I feel badly enough on my own?” My heart began to thump like mad. It was all easy enough for her to criticize. Roi had a steady teaching job, her boys had gotten old enough to watch after themselves, but what in God’s name was I supposed to do? Every time I passed the little lads down by the ferry terminal trying to sell cigars, I felt a cold sweat break over me as I pictured Dan and John left to fend for themselves. My time with them on the weekends made me hungry to see them more, but paying work was harder and harder to secure. “Someone in this family needs to make money. I’ve done what I had to.”
Imogen frowned. “It just breaks my heart.”
“Well, thank you for stopping by to let me know how heartbreaking my life is for you.”
She must have seen the fury spinning in my eyes. She lowered her voice. “Listen, I’m sorry. I’m not your enemy, Dorothea. I came here to talk about art, but clearly you’re in no mood for this. Use your anger. Get out of here. Go find more photos like that one,” she said, pointing at the man in the breadline. “That’s the best work I’ve seen from anyone in ages.”
“Oh my God.” I choked out a strangled sound, half laugh, half sob, and leaned in to hug her. “You’re right.” I grabbed my jacket and the Graflex and hurried past her toward the door.
I HOPPED ON the first streetcar to stop and headed west toward the flats of the avenues. A salty smell of the ocean and a cold iron dampness crept into me. Near Land’s End, I exited the streetcar. The sky darkened and occasional raindrops splattered against my face. Knotty branches of cypress trees cut across the path as I pushed my way toward the ocean, closer to the steady crash of rollers hitting the
beach below. I didn’t know why I was drawn to the ocean, except that almost thirteen years ago I’d been stranded on this shore, broke, and far away from all that I knew. But Fron and I adapted and built new lives. Now I was lost again. Had the time come to adapt and rebuild once more?
Raindrops the size of dogwood blossoms hit me, cold water stung my back through my jacket. All at once, the sky opened, the rain fell in torrents. I held on to a young cypress and pulled myself under its branches, but they provided little shelter. Thrusting my camera between my back and the trunk of the tree and holding it in place by the small of my back, I raised my arms and hands to protect my face as rain lashed down upon me. My skin puckered and rose in surprised goose pimples. I held on to that cypress with all I had. The tempo of drumming rain intensified. Rain became hail. Balls of ice the size of small buttons pelted my scalp and shoulders. Hail shifted back to rain. The ground below my feet churned with water. A deafening roar filled the air. The earth trembled below, shaking and rattling me. And then, as quickly as the storm started, it ended. The rain stopped. Clouds scuttled past. Plastered to the tree, I wiped water from my face and looked around. What had just happened?
About ten yards ahead, the path broke off into jagged nothingness. I reached behind me to pull my camera from its hiding place. It was completely dry. I inched closer to where the path broke off and peered over the edge. The cliff had collapsed and slid down to the ocean below. My legs started shaking. If I had made it a few steps farther, I would have been standing on the spot that had dropped into the chopping waters of the Pacific. Stripped of everything but the fact that I was alive, I looked around with wonder.
Why hide in my studio when I could see what was happening in the world firsthand? I had to take some risks. I had to answer the itch inside me that demanded scratching. I wasn’t Imogen; playing with technique didn’t absorb me. I wasn’t Ed Weston; abstracting plants and seashells wasn’t my forte. I wasn’t Ansel; landscapes didn’t speak to me. I was a photographer of people—men, women, and children who worked, suffered, rested, and loved. Now I understood what that photo of the man in the White Angel breadline was trying to tell me. I lived for the moment when time slowed, when I could capture an expression or gesture that communicated everything. I needed more of those moments. If I was going to give up my family, every second needed to count. The sacrifice had to be worth something bigger than me.
