The Boy Who Granted Dreams

by Luca Di Fulvio

  Ruth didn’t move, looking down at her father’s hands holding the camera. She didn’t take it. The unexpected sweetness in her father’s voice was vibrating in her ears. It sounded something like her grandfather’s.

  “Once you’ve shot a picture,” her father went on, “you have to set the next shot by turning this little knob, like this … to the right.”

  Ruth didn’t move.

  Her father set the camera on her lap and stayed without speaking for an instant. “It’s true, what your mother said,” he began, in a different voice — tired, weak. “We’ve lost almost everything. We’re having to sell things we treasured. But it’s as if they could smell it, can you understand? They’re vultures. They offer me ridiculous prices because they know I can’t say no. I’ve had to put the house in Holmby Hills on the market, too …” and he stopped, as if he didn’t have the strength to go on.

  Ruth turned to look at him, in silence.

  Her father’s head was bowed, his shoulders slumped. He looked up at her. “Try to get well soon, darling," he said. And his voice had gone back to being sweet. “I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep you here,” and his head drooped again, automatically. He reached out his hand and stroked his daughter’s knee gently.

  Ruth looked at his hand. His knuckles were beginning to get knotty. Like her grandfather’s. And the first dark stains had appeared on the backs of his hands. Like her grandfather’s.

  “I’m so sorry …” said her father, getting up and walking towards the car.

  Ruth heard the noise of the car door closing. And the engine starting up. Shifting into gear. The tires crunching on the gravel. She didn’t look up. Her gaze was fixed on the caress whose warmth she could still feel on her knee.

  Then, not even knowing why she did it, she took the camera and looked through the viewfinder at the car taking her parents away. She pressed the trigger.

  Her first photograph.

  Later, when she had it developed, she saw the car and the gate in black and white. And the black and white writing on the sign: “Newhall Spirit Resort for Women,” the clinic for nervous illnesses where she was confined.

  She felt that she had gained a little morsel of peace.

  Mrs. Bailey was sixty years old and for more than ten of those years she had been a guest at the Newhall Spirit Resort for Women. She spent most of her time in a corner of the common room reserved for patients who weren’t classified as “troublesome.” Others, the “troublesome” ones, were closed up in padded cells, rarely or never to be seen. The “not troublesome” ones, like Mrs. Bailey and Ruth, responded well to pharmaceutical treatments — in reality, they were given anesthetics that were meant to have a sedative effect. The troublesome ones had been admitted for alcoholism, drugs, and schizophrenia; they were considered dangerous to themselves and others. They were given icy baths and kept in cells where the possibility of injury had been reduced to the minimum. This didn’t mean that the husky nurses, with the consent of the doctors, did not beat and otherwise maltreat them. Because violence, associated with forced abstinence, was really the only therapy offered. The only difference between the Newhall Spirit Resort for Women and the psychiatric hospitals where those who were both mentally ill and poor were doomed to languish consisted in the food, the blankets, the mattresses, the sheets — the external façade, meant to free the family members from any sense of guilt at dumping their own daughters, wives, mothers. And the most striking difference, naturally, was in the sum one had to pay for the treatment; that is, for turning a blind eye.

  Ruth had been classified as possibly suicidal and kept in isolation for a brief observation period. Once the doctors decided that she was not one of the troublesome ones and not a danger to others, she was assigned to a double room. The other bed was Mrs. Bailey’s. Mrs. Bailey had been diagnosed as a schizophrenic with mood swings between hebephrenia and catatonia. The dissociation of thought that characterized the first mingled with the disturbances of will and the behavioral disorganization of the second. At the beginning, Ruth had been afraid of Mrs. Bailey and her dark silence.

  From the first day that they’d shared a room, Ruth had noticed that Mrs. Bailey couldn’t abide shoes. As soon as she could she took them off. And once they were off, she would cross her big toe over the adjacent one. At that point her face relaxed and took on an expression of relaxed serenity.

  “Everyone needs to find the right balance,” Mrs. Bailey remarked after a week of mute cohabitation, without moving her gaze from a vague point in front of her, as if she had felt Ruth’s own gaze.

  Mrs. Bailey was the first patient that Ruth photographed with her Leica.

  “May I take your picture?” she’d asked her that day.

  “Hens don’t ask permission to lay eggs,” said the woman.

  “What?”

  “And the fox doesn’t ask permission to eat them up.”

  “So it’s all right if I make the picture?”

  “And the farmer doesn’t ask the fox if he can set a trap.”

  Ruth raised the Leica and framed Mrs. Bailey, in profile.

  “That’s why I’m here,” the woman said, without looking away from the point in the air that held her fixed stare. “It was the trap …” And a tear slid down her wrinkled cheek.

  Ruth shot again and advanced the film.

  Mrs. Bailey turned to look at her.

  Ruth shot again. And when that roll was developed, Mrs. Bailey’s extraordinary and striking blue eyes gazed up from the paper. As on that day. But they didn’t frighten her. Ruth looked at them for a long time, and she thought she could understand who Mrs. Bailey was. Looking at her through the lens seemed to set up both a lesser and a greater distance. It let her investigate without being investigated herself. She could look without being observed. As if her Leica were an armor, a screen, a hiding place. As if the film were mediating her feelings, as if it were simplifying even the black and the white of the prints.

  Making things bearable. Acceptable.

  After Mrs. Bailey, her next subject was young Esther. Whenever Ruth focused on her, Esther would raise a hand to her narrow mouth and start biting her nails, worried; and then she’d ask, “Would you do one of my mother, too?” even though Ruth knew that Esther’s mother had died giving birth to her. Then there was Mrs. Lavender who only wanted to be photographed with her eyes shut. And Estelle Rochester, who always fussed about the background: She didn’t want her husband to see the crack in the wall behind her, because he was a builder and cared about walls. Or Charlene Summerset Villebonne who never noticed Ruth or anyone else. Or Daisy Thalberg, who asked her to count to three before taking the picture, because it was unbearable for her not to know when it was coming. She held her breath, never exhaling, in the grip of growing anxiety, until she heard the camera’s little click and could breathe again.

  “Hey, take my picture,” said a young doctor.

  “No,” said Ruth.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re smiling.”

  But Ruth’s favorite subject remained Mrs. Bailey.

  She had shot more than fifty photos of her in the three weeks they’d lived together. And she kept them all in the drawer of her night table, separate from photos of the other guests at the Newhall Spirit Resort for Women. Maybe because Mrs. Bailey was her roommate. Maybe because she liked her more than the others. Maybe because she was the only one to whom she spoke — at night, when the nurses had locked them in — about herself and Bill and Christmas, even if Mrs. Bailey never said anything and never gave any sign that she heard what Ruth was saying. Or, maybe, precisely because of that.

  “Show them to him,” said Mrs. Bailey one day.

  It was a Sunday. And it was the first Sunday Ruth’s parents hadn’t come to see her. Her father sent her a telegram. He had to meet with a possible buyer for the house in Holmby Hills.

  “Who?” asked Ruth mechanically, not really curious. By now she was used to Mrs. Bailey’s breaking her silence
with incongruous remarks.

  At that moment the door of their room opened and a man of about seventy came in. He was round and small, potato-nosed, with wild white eyebrows and tiny gray eyes, deep-set and bright.

  “Clarence,” said Mrs. Bailey, “look at Ruth’s photos.”

  The man’s face lit up in a joyous smile. “How are you, my darling? It’s such a pleasure to hear you talking,” he said enthusiastically, coming over to his wife and kissing her tenderly on the head. “I love you,” he murmured, so that Ruth wouldn’t hear him.

  But Mrs. Bailey was again closed up in her world, staring at the unseen thing in the air in front of her.

  “Dearest …” said the man. “My darling …”

  His smile faded away. He picked up a chair and moved it close to his wife’s. Carefully, without making a sound. He sat down and took her hand between both of his, stroking it gently. In silence.

  He stayed like that for an hour, then he stood up, kissed his wife again, and again murmured, “I love you.” At last he left, walking tiredly, closing the door quietly behind him without even a glance at Ruth.

  “How did you know your husband was about to be here?” Ruth asked as soon as they were alone.

  Mrs. Bailey didn’t reply.

  The following week, Mrs. Bailey told her, “Because I always hear him. Even before I met him, I could hear him.”

  It was Sunday. Ruth’s father had sent another telegram announcing that they wouldn’t be able to come that week, either. Ruth, as she’d done the Sunday before, stayed in her room with Mrs. Bailey, without going out to the patio.

  “Hear who?” asked Ruth.

  And Clarence Bailey came into the room.

  “Look at Ruth’s photos, Clarence,” Mrs. Bailey said. And then for the first time since he’d been coming to visit, the man looked away from his wife and turned towards Ruth.

  “Help her, Clarence,” said Mrs. Bailey.

  As she was returning home after four months at the Newhall Spirit Resort for Women, Ruth felt both lost and excited. Her parents were in the front seat; her father driving, her mother looking out the passenger window, apparently intent on observing the passing landscape. Ruth was in the back seat. The car didn’t have the odor of leather and cleanliness that had always been in her family’s cars ever since Ruth was a baby. But Ruth didn’t care. It was the car in her first photo. And in front of her was her father, the man who had spoken gently to her, in a voice like her grandfather’s, the man who had caressed her knee and who was going to take care of her. Her father. Her new father. Because this is what Ruth had thought about every day since that visit had changed her life inside the clinic. She had a new father. Who would embrace her, keep her warm, protect her.

  “Prepare yourself,” her mother said suddenly, breaking the silence. She turned and looked at her daughter. “There’ve been some big changes at home.” She went back to looking out the window, for a moment. “And all thanks to your father …”

  “Sarah, don’t start again,” her father said tiredly, not taking his eyes off the road.

  “… and his flair for business,” the woman went on unperturbed.

  “She’s just gotten out of that place …”

  “The madhouse for rich people,” said Mrs. Isaacson coolly, looking back at her daughter.

  Ruth lowered her gaze, clutching the packet of photographs more tightly.

  “And you may as well know that we aren’t rich people, not anymore, and we have you to thank for that …”

  “Sarah … I’m begging you …”

  “Look me in the eyes, Ruthie,” her mother went on.

  Ruth looked up. She would have liked to hide behind her Leica.

  “If anything like that happens again," said her mother, staring at her, “we won’t be able to afford sending you back to that place, as your father calls it …”

  She wanted to put the Leica between them. But she would never want to make a picture of her mother.

  “Quit it, Sarah!” shouted Mr. Isaacson. He struck the steering wheel with his fist.

  There was no strength left in that cry, Ruth thought. No longer any echo of grandfather Saul’s power in the voice of her father.

  “I want your daughter to face reality,” her mother went on, looking at her husband with scorn, “even if you don’t have the courage to do it.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to her, Ruth,” her father interrupted, trying to meet her gaze in the rearview mirror.

  Ruth saw her father’s eyes, weak as ever, without her grandfather’s brightness.

  “Don’t mind her, sweetheart …”

  And not the same warmth, either.

  “I’m about to start on a pretty interesting p-project,” he began, and then stopped, stammering; avoiding her eyes. “I’m producing a film,” he said at last, softly.

  Ruth’s mother looked at him and burst into a cruel laugh.

  “Shut up, Sarah.”

  “Go on tell her, Mr. Big Producer Man,” and she laughed again. “Tell your little girl. Tell her what kind of film you’re producing.”

  “Sarah, shut your mouth!”

  Mrs. Isaacson scrutinized her husband in silence, for a long time. Then she turned and looked out the window. “Your father is going to invest the little money we have left in a …” she began, in a flat cold voice.

  “Sarah!” her father shouted, and he braked violently. The car skidded to the side of the road and stopped.

  Ruth’s mother’s head hit the windshield. Ruth was flung forward. Her face struck against the front seat and her photos scattered across the floor.

  “I won’t let you do this,” said Isaacson, pointing a trembling finger at his wife.

  The woman touched her forehead, at the roots of her hair. She looked at her finger; it was stained with blood. “Get used to us, darling,” she said to her daughter in a voice that was cold and controlled, looking at her in the rearview mirror that she’d moved to look at the little cut that had opened in her creamy skin. “This is the atmosphere you’re going to be living in. Your father’s forgotten whose son he is, where he comes from, who we are.”

  Philip Isaacson leaned his head on the steering wheel. “Sarah, I’m begging you,” he said. He sounded as if he might weep.

  His wife didn’t look at him. She pressed an immaculate handkerchief against the cut, with an elegant gesture. “Your father’s making a film just for men, Ruth.”

  “I beg you, Sarah. Don’t …”

  Ruth bent down and began to gather up the photographs. She didn’t want to hear, she repeated to herself. She didn’t want to hear.

  “A film full of prostitutes. For depraved men to watch.”

  “Sarah, why must you …?”

  “So from now on we’ll be spending time with prostitutes and depraved persons …”

  “That’s enough. Sarah.”

  Ruth kept picking up her photos, sorting through them. Mrs. Bailey’s face. The faces of Estelle Rochester, Charlene Summerset Villebonne, and Daisy Thalberg. Young Esther, Clarisse, and Dianne and Cynthia. Don’t talk, Mamma, she thought. Be quiet.

  Mrs. Isaacson opened her purse and took out a metal flask, shining and slender.

  “Not in front of her, Sarah, please.”

  She unscrewed the cap, soaked her handkerchief and rubbed it over the little wound on her forehead. Then she took a generous swallow.

  Then Ruth recognized the unfamiliar smell in the car, so unlike the others they’d owned.

  “Not in front of her,” repeated Ruth’s father.

  Mrs. Isaacson screwed the cap back on and put the flask back in her handbag. “And he’ll manage to ruin even this squalid little enterprise,” she said with a kind of smirk. She applied lipstick, fluffed her hair. “Take us home now, loser,” she said to her husband.

  For a moment Isaacson didn’t move. Then he changed gears and stepped on the gas obediently. With his gaze on the road.

  Ruth finished arranging her photos and held them to h
er breast.

  “You’ve got talent,” Clarence Bailey had told Ruth that Sunday, after he’d looked at all the pictures. “I know what I’m talking about. You’ve got talent. You can see into people’s souls.” He picked up one of the photographs of his wife, and his bright little eyes grew moist. “May I have this one?” he asked her. “This is … how she always used to be.” And before leaving, Clarence Bailey wrote his address on the back of one of her photos of his wife, and he told her, “I’ll help you. Come find me if … when …”

  “She didn’t fall into the trap,” said Mrs. Bailey. “She’ll get out. Help her, Clarence.”

  “I will help her, dear love,” said Mr. Bailey, and then, as he did every Sunday, he left, softly closing the door on the room where his wife had been imprisoned for ten years.

  In the car no one spoke again. Ruth was thinking about that Sunday two months ago, still holding the photos against her.

  When they came to the imposing gate of the house in Holmby Hills, Ruth looked at one of the photos. Mrs. Bailey’s eyes looked at her expressionlessly. She turned it over. Mr. Bailey’s handwriting was small and precise. Wonderful Photos — 1305 Venice Boulevard, fourth floor.

  Ruth’s father stopped the car. He climbed out, opened the gate, and came back into the car.

  “I’ve got a job,” Ruth said. “I’m not going back to school and I won’t be staying here with you.”

  Neither parent turned to look at her. Her mother stayed unmoving, elegant and composed as always. Her father gripped the steering wheel. Ruth could see that his knuckles were white.

  “Let’s go,” said her mother.

  Mr. Isaacson put the car in gear.

  40

  Manhattan, 1927

  “You can ease yo’ mind. Next March ten, when I honors the memory of Harriet Tubman, I ain’t gon’ spit on something that belong to you,” laughed Cyril, brandishing an old newspaper at Christmas.

  “Because I’m such a great assistant repair man and thanks to me you don’t have to go up to the studios anymore,” Christmas smiled.