“As a matter of fact, I didn’t,” says Ruth, and I can see what Myla’s thinking.
“Yeah!” I say. “Let’s take pictures!”
Ruth looks at Emma. “I don’t know. Do you think you’d be up for it, Em?”
“Okay,” says Emma. I can see that she’s nervous but also excited. I hold her hand.
Myla steps close to us and puts her arm around our shoulders. “You can take pictures of the three sisters.”
We go to the backyard and stand underneath the big tree that makes tiny pink flowers. We start off with just pictures of Myla and me, and then Emma wants to be in the pictures so badly. So Ruth invites her in, and we laugh and get excited every time Ruth takes a picture. We’ve discovered that in the pictures we can pretend anything, and pretending Emma’s our sister is a great thing to imagine.
MYLA LEFT THE HOTEL AND pierced through the Portland day. She’d woken up angry, but she wasn’t sure why. Part of it was that Mark wasn’t answering. She’d tried at nine, after awakening from her night of dark dreams. She’d left three messages for him at his office and home, then had called back his answering machine, leaving another message that she was staying at the Hilton, mentioning her room number again. It wasn’t his fault. He obviously couldn’t talk to her, and she cursed herself for not being more honest with him when they were face-to-face.
In the back of her mind lurked the realization that Mark’s silence wasn’t the sole cause of her anger. Granted, she wanted to speak to him, but she’d walked away knowing he wouldn’t understand what she’d done, and that her explanation would be even more puzzling. She found herself sitting on a bench in the middle of the Park Blocks, in front of the art museum, trying to pinpoint the exact source of her frustration.
She was afraid. She was afraid of what was to come. Initially she’d been liberated, leaving Kate Scott behind, but now she missed Kate Scott’s ability to plan. Myla hadn’t any idea of what to do next. A part of her had believed that just by returning to Portland and breathing the air, she would get back in touch with what she’d been hungering for: an explanation of her past, a clear road to the future. This would come to her like a revelation, honed in the manner of her father’s beautifully polished mind. Hadn’t she believed that if only she could remember his way of thinking, she’d be able to put Samuel Blake into perspective? Shouldn’t the discovery of David’s notebook give her a clear task, one to help her reclaim his life at its most hopeful? Didn’t this notebook give her purpose in Portland, as well as a sensible reason for having left behind her other life?
But David’s notebook didn’t make any sense. This morning, as soon as Myla’s eyes opened, she’d felt for the notebook, hoping that with new light would come new perspective. And yet once again all she could see was words linked by lines. In place of those lines, she knew her father had a million brilliant ideas, but these connections were invisible to the naked eye. And yet they were the only link. They were the only thing left representing the workings of her father’s mind.
Myla looked above her, up at the trees. Today there was sun, and the newness of it in usually rainy Portland made her smile. She closed her eyes. She tried to be satisfied with just being alone and quiet, tried to quell the rush of her own mind. Letting her body relax, with the trees interwoven like locked lace above her, and the sun filtering onto her arms and face, she tried to summon a simple memory of her father. She couldn’t read his mind about the notebook, but she could remember the things he’d shared with her. What would he have said to her just at this moment? She closed her eyes and imagined him sitting beside her. Then she remembered him in her darkened bedroom, his hand holding hers, telling her about her mother helping her learn to read.
This was one of David’s favorite Myla stories, one he told her whenever she felt sad or unsure of herself. She made herself remember the clear way David had told it many times before.
When Myla was tiny, two years old, she’d wanted to read, just like her parents. So Sarah had said to David, “Why not?” She didn’t want to push Myla, but this was, after all, Myla’s initiative. Sarah took a red marker and sheets of paper and labeled the main objects in the house: chair, table, bed, window. That way, when Myla saw these things in her daily life, she also saw their names. Sarah felt this was an organic progression; if Myla wanted to learn to read words on her own, she could. In the evenings Sarah would gather Myla onto her lap and open up all sorts of books and read aloud, her fingers passing under the words as her voice touched each one.
When David told this story, Myla loved hearing the way he talked about her mother. She could hear how much her father had loved her mother. He’d smile as if Sarah were still alive. What Myla didn’t like about the story was the part about herself. Because yes, one day, with a new book open in front of her, she’d started reading aloud, following her mother’s finger as it skipped along the page. Sarah tried a different book to make sure Myla hadn’t just memorized the story, and was thrilled when she discovered that two-year-old Myla had started to read on her own. “Listen to you! You can read!” Sarah said proudly.
Here came the part that the older Myla hated hearing David recount. She didn’t like what she’d done next, for it sounded too precocious, too wise, too precious. According to David, little Myla had taken the book off her lap, hurled it across the room, and cried, “I don’t want to read! I don’t want to!” When asked why, she’d said, “You never told me that when you read, there’s only one story in every book.” Only one story in every book! When David related this anecdote, he wasn’t bragging about having a daughter who’d been able to read at the age of two. No, he treasured this memory because he was thrilled to have a child wise enough to recognize something so profound as the tyranny of the text. He told Myla she’d been right. Right to decide she wasn’t going to learn to read for another two years, because she’d known she wasn’t ready yet to lose the big picture.
Myla smiled to herself as she sat in the park. For the first time in all the hundreds of times she’d heard this story, she understood why her father had loved telling it. As a teenager, she’d rolled her eyes, embarrassed by his determination to prove how well he’d always understood her, based simply on this dumb story about her brattiness. But now she saw, and it lifted her mind. This perspective was one she and David shared. He too was not willing to lose the big picture. He too was angered by the rules of text and time. That’s why he loved art, because there were no words to boss him around, nothing to insist on a single meaning. There was image, there was form, and it spilled forth thought and spurred one toward new ideas.
Myla could feel her mind swelling with memory, and she knew if she were ever to understand her father or his notebook, or maybe even herself, she needed more. She needed to remember what it felt like to rise up over a page and see things in patterns. To let go of the direct line of argument, to embrace complication. To let her mind be more like her father’s. She looked up to the sun, glad for its warmth, and knew what she had to do. She wouldn’t be able to do it alone. No, she had to surround herself with what her father had chosen to surround himself. She had to ask for help. And she knew exactly where to start.
WE’RE OVER AT RUTH’S HOUSE and we’re coloring in the back room when we hear the doorbell ring. We think it might be David, done with his student conferences early, so Myla races me down the hallway toward the living room. I’m saying, “Not fair, not fair,” because it isn’t; she got a head start and I had to go all the way around the table before I could even start running. But then she freezes and puts her finger up to her mouth and tells me to be quiet. At first I don’t know what she’s doing and I think it’s funny, but then I hear the angry voice and I know it’s not a joke.
We tiptoe up to where we can peek in between the cracks in the door, and we watch them talking. We can’t see who it is because Ruth’s back is in the way, blocking the doorway. But then Ruth says, “I’d like it if you would come inside.”
Then she backs up, and we see that Jan
e’s there at the door. She’s really angry, angry like I’ve only seen her get once with Emma when she ran into the street after a soccer ball. I’m glad Jane doesn’t get angry at me like that; maybe there are some nice things about having a dead mother.
Then Jane comes inside but you can tell she doesn’t want to. “Where are the girls?” she asks, and Myla squeezes my hand hard so it’s like I lose all the blood in it.
“Do you want to see them?” asks Ruth, and I can tell she’s surprised.
Jane looks at her like she’s an idiot. “No. I just want to make sure they won’t hear us.”
Ruth yells over her shoulder, “Myla? Pru?” and we breathe as quiet as we can and are glad for the darkness of the hallway. After a minute, Ruth turns back. “They can’t hear a thing.”
Jane says, “Emma told me you took pictures of her the other day.”
Ruth says, “Yes, I did. I was over at the house and the girls—”
Jane says, “You had no right to do that.”
“Oh, come on, Jane, it was four or five pictures. The girls wanted to play with the camera—”
“I may not be a photographer, Ruth, but I know that the camera is not a toy. It’s an incredible invasion of privacy. You’re lucky we know you, that we aren’t the kind of people who’ll press charges—”
“Whoa,” says Ruth. “Press charges? I took a couple of pictures of your daughter. I had no idea you wouldn’t like that. In the future, I’ll make sure she doesn’t wander in front of the camera, but other than that—”
“Listen to me carefully,” says Jane, talking slow now, like this is the angriest moment she has. “I’ll say this once. You can take pictures of whatever you like. It’s a free country. David lets you use his daughters—”
“Use his daughters?!”
“—in any kind of pictures you want to take, but Steve and I, that’s right, both of us, disagree with the kind of pictures you’re taking.”
“Ohhhhhhh,” says Ruth, like she’s just figured something out and it’s satisfying. “That’s what this is about.”
“Let me finish,” says Jane, and her voice is getting angrier with every word. “Those girls have been isolated enough as it is. A dead mother, a workaholic for a father, no real routine. And then their extraordinary intelligence—”
Ruth almost laughs. “You make their precocity sound like a disease.”
“Certainly not,” says Jane. “The girls are extraordinarily gifted, and that’s wonderful. But it separates them. It makes them different. The last thing they need is something else excluding them from their peers.”
Ruth says, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Then think, Ruth. Pictures of them? And naked pictures at that?”
“That’s what this is about? David showed you some of the pictures? Well, sure, some of the photographs are nude. But there are tons of them that aren’t. Besides, that’s how the girls live. They have no idea that people like you think they should cover up every time—”
“You know nothing about people like me,” says Jane. “And that’s not the point. The point is that before you take a picture, you have to think about it. Before you take a photograph of anything, use your brain. Emma’s too little to know what she wants, and if you ask my opinion, so are Myla and Pru, but it’s been made clear to me that’s none of my damn business.”
Before I know it, Myla is letting go of my hand and walking into the bright room. I want her to come back, but not because I’m afraid they’ll know we were hiding. I want her to come back because I’m scared without her. I don’t like how anger makes Ruth and Jane different, and I don’t like that their anger is all because of us.
They turn and see Myla and she speaks to Jane. “We are old enough. Eleven and six. Old enough to make decisions for ourselves. And even if we weren’t, it doesn’t matter what you think, because you aren’t our mother.” Then Myla calls my name and makes me come out and stand beside her. “Right, Pru?” she asks, but I’m too scared to say anything with all of them looking at me.
Then Ruth says, “Go back to the other room. I don’t want you here for this.”
But Myla says, “No.” She says, “You know what, Ruth? You can’t tell us what to do either. You aren’t our mother either.” And I can tell Myla’s angry, I can feel it making her arm strong and tight against me, and she looks like a grown-up the way she’s trying to scare Jane and Ruth.
Jane sighs then. She turns and walks out of the house, fast, without even saying goodbye. Ruth walks to the door, watches Jane get in her car and drive off, then closes the door to the outside and turns the lock. She walks right past us, like we aren’t even there. We can hear her walking into her bedroom and the door slamming shut behind her.
Myla puts her arm around me, and we stand like that for a long time, listening.
proof
this image is of one girl only: the older one, as you have come to recognize her. She stands waist-deep in a lake. Trees rise behind her, on the far side of the water. In the distance, a pine forest stretches out, and nearer, split trunks are the sharp remnants of a lightning strike.
The girl holds her arms out, palms spread down, fingers splayed like the legs of water bugs. It looks as if her hands are resting on the top of the lake, arched upon the meniscus. Water traces its way around her hips and belly and the very beginnings of her pubic hair.
In all of this, the lake around her is still. Not a trace of wind. Not a ripple. Not even from her breathing. Her eyes are closed. It is as if someone has placed her from above.
chapter seven
myla knew she should probably call first, but she was ready to act. She found her way to their house so easily. She just drove up Malden, and when she pulled up in front of the large bungalow with the sagging porch, she wasn’t surprised that no one was home, for it was the middle of the afternoon. She parked her car on the street, strode up the walkway, and sat down on the front steps to wait.
Myla knew exactly the last time she’d been here. It had been the night before she went for good. She was eighteen and angry, and she’d had something to drink, but instead of the alcohol quelling her rage, it had compressed it, made it a bullet ready to burst from her. Her illogic had led her to believe that there was no one to blame except the two people who were left. She’d come back here to this house to pick up her things so she could pack her car.
Emma, thank goodness, had been at a slumber party, since Jane and Steve had been trying to keep their daughter’s life as normal as they could. The couple came home after Myla had already packed, surprising her on the front porch as she was leaving, bags in hand. She’d denied their entreaties for her to come inside. She’d pointed her finger at both of them and said, “Don’t you dare come near me. Don’t you dare.” They’d begged her to come in. She’d stayed outside and continued on. “You know whose fault this is? It’s yours. All of yours. You were the fucking adults.”
Myla’s words from that night rang in her ears, turned them red against her skull. She could still taste a trace of that raw rage, even though she knew things were infinitely more complicated than that. But perhaps the core feeling was true. Righteous. So many people—strangers around the country, reading their local paper and watching the news—would have agreed with her at the time. Blame was everywhere, blanketing everything.
Now Myla pushed that past away. She clasped the notebook in her bag and moved her feet back and forth between the step beneath her and the step below that. An orange cat came around the stairway and purred against her, nudging its head under her hand until she consented to pat him. It was a new cat, but just its presence served as an anchor, tethering their old house to domesticity. They’d always had at least one cat, and she traced in her mind the lineage of the three she’d known in her years here. She introduced herself to the fourth.
A few cars passed, but none was theirs, none even looked like a car she knew they might own. They’d owned a station wagon when she knew them. Then a gus
t of wind made her shiver, and she suddenly wondered what she was doing here. What was she hoping to accomplish? She almost stood to leave, and then a blue station wagon pulled into the driveway. The window reflected light at such an angle that Myla couldn’t make out who was driving. She panicked for a moment. Maybe she’d become unrecognizable. Maybe they’d moved.
The door slammed, and she heard the back opening, heard bags being piled out. Then the slam again, and steps on the sidewalk. It was a woman. It was Jane. Myla stood, then sat again, then half-stood, so that when Jane came around the corner, Myla realized she must look like some ridiculous dancer caught in midmove. She saw Jane look up to her face, take her in, realize who she was. Myla didn’t know what to expect, but Jane dropped her groceries and sang, “Myla Myla Myla,” almost like a chant. Myla hadn’t known it would make her cry to see Jane like this, to walk to her and hug her, to remember the soft way her long hair—now graying—teased her arm. “Myla Myla Myla,” Jane kept saying. “Myla Myla Myla.”
Then they broke apart, slowly, softly. Myla picked up the groceries from either side of Jane, and Jane asked, without even trying to wipe the tears from her cheeks, “Where on earth did you come from?”
Myla had to admit it made her happy to see her very existence create joy in the heart of someone else’s day. But she also played it cool: “I’m in town for a little bit.”
“My God. Look at you!” Jane clapped her hands. “Steve will be overjoyed. It’s . . . it’s astonishing to see you. You’re all right, right? You’re all here?” Myla felt Jane’s eyes surveying her, the concerned eyes of a mother.
Myla nodded. “Ten fingers, ten toes. Still got ’em.”
Jane reached out and touched her arm. “Let’s go inside.” Jane unlocked the door and Myla walked into the living room. It was smelling the past to enter here—the deep ash of the fireplace, the ancient earthiness of the carpeting. Had she been blindfolded, she would have known exactly where she was, simply from the taste of the air. Dust clung to the sun coming in the windows. Things were slow; it was like being underwater.
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