The Age of Light

by Whitney Scharer

  At the studio, when she finally goes back, there is ringing and ringing. At first Lee can’t figure out what it is. Some sort of alarm, a drill? When she realizes it’s the telephone she runs to get it, her voice breathless when she says hello. On the other end of the line is Madame Pecci-Blunt, her voice imperious. Will Man Ray still be coming the next day so she can show him the solarium where the party will be held? Lee fumbles, blurts out that actually, it is she who will be coming, as Man has been called away unexpectedly.

  “Ah, you are the assistant?” Madame Pecci-Blunt says.

  “Partner.”

  “Yes, all right. The one Jean told me about. He said you were talented. But I need you both. I need Man Ray. Everyone knows him. This party has to be exquisite. It has to be the party of the year, the absolute pinnacle of the season. I don’t want just white cake! White plates!” Her voice oozes money, sophistication, her French a waterfall of tinkling vowels.

  There is a pause. Lee remembers Jean’s advice, to just let the client talk until it’s clear what she wants. “It’s not about the food, or the plates,” Lee finally says, encouragingly.

  “Ah, you are right! These ideas—they are the ideas a child would have. That is why I’m hiring you both. All I know is that the Bal is about magic, transporting the guests to another place entirely. Like a dream.”

  “A dream in white. I had some ideas, actually,” Lee says. She begins to describe them and then interrupts herself. “Mimi—do you mind if I call you Mimi?”

  “Not at all.”

  The woman’s agreement emboldens Lee further, so she continues, her words coming out in a rush as she explains the idea she had when she was talking to Antonio: projected images, words on the floor, on people’s bodies.

  “That is good,” Mimi says. “Quite, quite good.” Before long, they have figured out a plan so grand Lee is just as convinced as the woman that it will be the party of the century. The only problem is that Lee doesn’t really know how to do any of it. For that she needs Man, and his equipment. She tells Mimi that he will be back in a few days.

  When Madame Pecci-Blunt asks her to clarify the fee, Lee quotes the number she and Man agreed on, a number that feels so high, so outrageous, she half expects the woman to hang up the phone right then. The number is more than the Wheelers offered Man for his next film, more than three months’ rent on the little whitewashed studio on Rue Victor Considérant. But the woman accepts the number without a question, and they agree to meet the next day to go over the details. Lee finds herself wondering if she should have asked for more.

  The next afternoon Lee goes to the Pecci-Blunt mansion in the Trocadéro, where the Bal will be held. She brings her notebook, a measuring tape, and a small portfolio of her work, which Mimi doesn’t ask to see. Instead, they walk around the property as if they are old friends. The grounds are astounding; Lee has never seen such wealth up close. In the gardens, everything is laid out tidily and squared off at right angles as if it’s part of a prep school geometry lesson. Each topiary snipped with precision, the winter cabbages and hardy mums arranged in neat formations. Not a petal out of place. Along the paths, pebble mosaics of angular fish leap at forty-five-degree angles out of symmetrical ponds.

  It’s all so perfect that as she walks Lee feels the urge to kick out at something, to gash a hole in a box hedge and cover the ground with shredded leaves. Instead, she smiles, accepts Mimi’s offer of tea, which is served in a sitting room whose ceiling is painted sky blue. Delicate porcelain cups, translucently thin at the edges, are filled with cambric liquid made weaker with too much cream. Espresso, the mud and stink of it, is what Lee wants now, but it would be too much for this refined woman’s palate. Lee perches on the edge of a satin-covered settee and lifts her teacup with shaking hands.

  After tea, Mimi takes her out a side door to a giant solarium, in which a tiled swimming pool is surrounded by blooming flowers. The air is heavy with the scent of lilies. Lee is enchanted: a winter idyll, here in the center of Paris.

  “This is perfect,” says Lee. “We can set up gauze curtains along the perimeter, and project the film on the curtains, and into the water.”

  As she says it, Lee can see it, more clearly than she has ever seen anything: couples in white tuxedos and ivory dresses, dancing at the edge of the pool, white-clad waiters weaving their way through the crowd. She sees the way the curtains will billow from the breeze let in through an open window, the images—her images—trembling as if they are alive. And as she and Mimi work out the logistics, Lee fills with such impatience it blots out all her other feelings—her guilt, her anger at Man, her loneliness—and leaves her with one imperative: to get to work. When Mimi smiles with pleasure at Lee’s suggestions, neither of them mentions Man at all.

  Over the next few days Lee exists in a sort of fever dream, her only focus to create the films she’ll show at the party. She teaches herself to use Man’s cine camera, which thank God he has not sold, and fills an entire notebook with sketches and ideas. Each afternoon, like a diver emerging from a pool for air, she comes to the surface of the world again, and goes out into the streets for supplies, which she charges to an account Madame Pecci-Blunt has given her. She comes back to the studio with rolls of 16mm film, canvas, materials she can use to experiment as her ideas change and grow.

  First she makes a list of a hundred or so words and phrases, both in English and in French, words that will surprise and titillate when they are projected on guests’ bodies. RACONTEUR, COQUILLAGE, FALSEHOOD, DREAMER, CHUCHOTER, PERMISSIVE, LACKADAISICAL—the words come in a flood and she scribbles them all down, paints them on the canvas she has purchased, and then films them. She pictures the words crawling across the wealthy guests’ skin and clothing—GAUCHE, SEREIN, AWESTRUCK, FLNEUR, JOURNEYING—and as more words come to her mind she paints and films those too.

  One evening Lee starts painting a story on a drop cloth, or maybe it’s a poem, words and phrases that start to have a narrative. As she paints she realizes the words are a love story, they are Man and Antonio, they are a coded apology that only she and Man will understand. The words give her an idea, and she rifles through some pictures Man took of her months ago, and places them next to the phrases. As she works she suddenly wants Man to be there, for him to come to the party and see what she has done, the words she’s written for him, the story she is making, the best way she can think of to tell him she regrets what she has done.

  The more Lee works, the more she finds she is sorry. The more she misses Man. The way their eyes met in the darkroom, the looks they gave each other when something turned out well. The dance they executed around each other in their shared small space. Working alone is not the same. On a rainy afternoon she almost phones the Wheelers, but can’t think what she would say.

  One evening, after working for countless hours, Lee stops and looks around with bleary eyes. The studio is a disaster. Spent tubes of black paint litter the floor. The air smells of linseed and spilled wine and what might be Lee’s feet. The ends of her fingernails are permanently blackened, the cuticles dry with turpentine. But the films are done. There are four of them: one of disconnected words, one of strangely juxtaposed images that she knows owe much to Man’s Surrealist films, one of the words and images she thinks of as her love poem, and one of her hands in hundreds of poses—she hopes that when these are displayed on people’s bodies it will look as if someone is touching them. Lee opens another bottle of wine and watches all four films, projected on the back wall of the studio, as she drinks straight from the bottle, the wine going down her throat in what feels like one uninterrupted swallow. When the last film slips loose of the reel at the end, Lee sits in the sudden hot bright light of the projector, listening to the tock tock tock tock as the film goes around the reel, and she feels overwhelmingly, drunkenly proud.

  The next day, Lee goes back to the apartment for the first time in eight days. She needs clean clothes; she needs a bath. The mail slot is full of correspondence. Bills to be paid,
friends to respond to. And as Lee goes through the stack she sees how many letters are addressed to her, all of them in Man’s crabbed hand. There are fifteen of them: he has written her almost two letters a day. She gathers them up and once she has stripped off her dress and lain down on their bed she opens them and reads them as they must have been written, almost in one stream of consciousness.

  Away from you I realize even more how much I need you—we are like twins of each other or mirror images—without you I’m less than half of myself—I’ve hardly eaten since I left you, food has no taste, my mouth is dry and water doesn’t help it—and this trip becomes what I should have known it to be: a penance, an exile, a drying out, the only way I can get over the liquor that is you.

  In some of the letters he seems angry; in others he is plaintive. He must have spent hours on them. Lee envisions him at some desk at the Wheelers’, looking out at the sea but not seeing it.

  I feel old. I probably shouldn’t admit this to you, as one of the things I worry about most is that you will tire of being with me. But I do. My bones ache. My knees creak when I stand up from the floor. My head aches. I feel your beautiful fingers at my temples, rubbing the pain away. But then I think: no wonder she does not love me as I love her, if what I imagine is myself sick and needing to be taken care of. And you—you are so free. You only half realize it, I think, how much potential you have inside you, all the things you have left to do.

  It is not until she reaches the tenth letter that he mentions the night she left and what she’s done, and the letter trembles as she reads it.

  I know you were with another man the night before I left Paris. I’m not sure how I know, but I do. I could feel it, while you were gone. Could feel what you were doing. I saw the man’s hands touching you, I saw him making love to you as only I am supposed to do. It made me sadder than I have ever felt in my life.

  And then in the last letter, he gets angry, the slant of his penmanship more pronounced, his pen gouging into the paper.

  You have never let me in. You know this, don’t you? For all our time together I have been knocking against the door of your skull and you have only opened it one crack. I have had to view you through a peephole. I know why—I understand how hard it is for you, that what happened to you when you were young is still with you—but I thought I could break through that old, old pain, clean it up like a spill. But you! You don’t even know that I am knocking. Don’t even know that we could have been more than we were if only you had opened up to me. You didn’t let me be all the things I wanted to be for you.

  By the time she gets through all the letters, Lee is hollowed out. Exhausted. In the margins of the last letter Man has written Elizabeth Lee Elizabeth Elizabeth Elizabeth Elizabeth Lee Elizabeth Elizabeth Elizabeth. Her name a hundred times over. While she thinks, she traces her finger along the letters.

  It is true, what Man has written. That she hasn’t known how to let him in. Or perhaps she didn’t want to. All along she has thought maybe he hasn’t noticed. Lee doesn’t have other love affairs to compare to this one, not real ones, so there was always the chance that what they had together was enough. But it wasn’t. She has tried to move past the memories, to erase them, but instead they have become indelible, a scribbled darkness over what used to be light. She is so ashamed at her weakness, at how events from two decades ago have left such a permanent mark on her. If only she could have done as the analyst requested, as her father requested, and forgotten. And now, here, another erasure, another thing lost—or maybe it’s something she never had in the first place.

  Lee fills with such powerful self-loathing she has to lie back on the bed and close her eyes. Everything suddenly seems absurd—her own aspirations as an artist, her relationship with Man. Her love poem film: the thought of it is embarrassing. As if a few words projected on a screen could be a true representation of love. All of it is nothing. She puts an arm over her eyes and feels hot tears slip out from under it.

  Lee gets under the covers and huddles in a little ball, Man’s letters spread around her, until finally sleep comes and saves her for a while.

  When the sun comes up it wakes Lee from a fitful night. She is still surrounded by Man’s letters and all the other mail. She lies there, staring up at the ceiling, watching the shadows the curtains cast on the wall. She picks up one of Man’s pages and reads a few lines. She already knows what it says; the words are burned on her brain like a photograph. As she sets down the letter, she notices a big envelope at the bottom of the pile, with the Art Deco monogram on it that the Philadelphia Camera Society uses on all its correspondence. It’s addressed to Man, of course, and is thick and heavy. Good news is always thick and heavy. She knows she shouldn’t open it, but then it occurs to her that if he has been accepted for the exhibition—or even better, if he has won one of the big prizes, the grand prix, even—it would be a good reason for her to call him at the Wheelers.

  So she opens it, slipping her finger under the thick glued flap and peeling it open as carefully as she can. Inside, there is a letter and a big exhibit booklet. It has to be good news.

  December 20, 1930

  Dear Mr. Ray,

  We are pleased to inform you that the Jury of Selection has awarded your triptych, “The Bell Jar Series,” the Patterson-Shrein Award for Portraiture. The triptych will appear in the exhibition on March 1, 1931. The jury members were deeply impressed by the compositions, and especially by the new technique one of the photos employs, described in your accompanying artist statement as solarization. Furthermore, your photos have been chosen by Mr. Joseph Merrill Patterson and Mrs. Richard T. L. Shrein to receive a five-hundred-dollar ($500) prize and a place in the Philadelphia Camera Society’s distinguished permanent collection.

  Though we imagine it will not be possible for you to attend the exhibit in person, if by happenstance you find yourself in the Philadelphia area in March, we would be delighted to host you at a small reception for the prize recipients. Otherwise, we enclose the exhibit guide, and thank you again for submitting your outstanding work.

  Our kind regards & etc.,

  Dr. George C. Poundstone, Vice President

  On Behalf of the Officers of the Philadelphia Camera Society

  Lee picks up the exhibit guide and flips through the pages. A few pages in she finds her bell jar series, with Man’s name beneath it. In his short artist statement, Man has defined solarization and written, “I discovered this process by chance last year, and refined it over a series of months.” Nowhere is there a mention of Lee’s name.

  It must have been weeks ago when Man mailed off these photographs, which means that for weeks he’s known that he has betrayed her, and yet said nothing. What could he have been thinking? The photos are good—she and Man both know that—but of course he has photos that are just as good as or better than these. Photos that are his alone. Could it be that he has forgotten that these are Lee’s?

  As she lies there, things he’s said over the past few months come back to her. “You’re not not me,” he said, and at the time she didn’t know what he meant. The sentence was nonsensical. But now she sees. If that is how Man views her, then perhaps he views her work the same way. His property.

  Her father, then Condé Nast and Edward Steichen, and now Man. All of them using her for their own purposes, taking what they need with no regard for what’s left for her when they are done.

  In the winters in Poughkeepsie the windows in her childhood home got so cold they frosted over, and in the mornings Lee would get out of bed and scrape her fingernails through the frost flowers, screeching them up and down over the frozen glass until she could see through to the snow beyond. Her eyes feel like that now, scraped and freezing, as if she is seeing clearly for the very first time.

  By the time she swings her legs over the side of the bed a few minutes later, she has a plan. Gets a piece of notepaper and dashes off a telegram she will send to Man that afternoon. Bal Blanc on Jan 6. Want you to be there. Need your help.
Your Lee.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  As they are setting up the projectors, Man tells her about the Wheelers’ new seaside cottage outside Cannes.

  “What makes it so lovely,” he says, “is that it’s genuinely simple. There’s no pretense. Arthur washed the floors in an ebony wax, and left all the windows bare, so you feel the countryside even when you’re indoors. The first day I was there we picnicked under a beautiful spreading oak at the edge of the property, and Rose served cold roast duck and pickled quail’s eggs and a nice Chablis. That was it. It was delicious.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” Lee says. She pays little attention to what he is saying and moves determinedly around the solarium, tying white sheets around the bases of the projectors’ stands, then taking a few steps back to survey her work. Guests are supposed to start arriving in two hours, and there is much to be done. Plus, Mimi tells her that everything needs to be ready early, because some of her guests will disregard the time printed on their invitation and show up when they feel like it. Lee has never been good at getting things done early—or really, even getting them done on time—but tonight she’ll do it if it kills her.

  Man doesn’t share her urgency. He seems calm. Ever since he returned to Paris two nights ago, he has acted as if everything between them is back to normal. When he arrived, he found her in the studio, unable to stop editing the films and still surrounded by the mess she created while she was working. There was so much clutter everywhere that Man tripped as he made his way across the room to her, and without meaning to, Lee moved forward to catch him as he almost fell, and they ended up with their arms around each other. Man’s relief at seeing her was palpable. He laughed at her mess and kissed her the same way he often kissed her, the way that used to send a hot bolt from her lips to her groin, and she parted her lips and pushed her tongue against his in the way she remembered doing when she wanted him. And he—foolish man—did not seem to notice any difference in her reaction to him, did not notice how vacant she was, how her mind stayed on her work while her lips kissed him. And that night in bed, Man was tender with her, held her in his arms and stroked her hair and cheeks and shoulders and seemed content just to be next to her.