IT’S MY THIRTEENTH BIRTHDAY, but it’s hard to feel very excited about it. Myla is packing up so she can fly to college, and she and David are frustrated at each other about everything. They celebrate my birthday, of course, but there’s no time for it. I’m old enough to understand. Jane has promised she’ll make a cake, but that won’t be until Friday.
So I’m up in my room reading, when someone knocks on my bedroom door. I say, “Come in,” and it’s Ruth. She’s holding a wrapped box, and she says she hopes she’s not disturbing me.
I tell her to come sit down next to me. Ruth can tell I’m curious about my gift, so she places it in my lap and says, “Happy birthday to the artist.”
Usually I take my time with wrapping paper, slitting the tape with my fingernail so the paper can go back into the wrapping-paper drawer. But I don’t care this time. I rip the package apart, pulling off the ribbon and letting it fall on the floor.
And it’s exactly what I wanted. A set of oil paints. Not acrylics, or watercolor, or any other paint that isn’t real. Oil paints are what real artists use. I can’t believe it. I read the names to myself, memorizing them: Green-Blue Shade, Prussian Blue, Hansa Yellow, Cadmium Red, Midnight Black, and Flake White.
Ruth says, “I hope you like them,” and I hug her hard and fast around the neck.
“These are amazing,” I say. “Thank you thank you thank you.” I can’t sit still because I’m so excited. So I get up and hop around.
Ruth says, “There are some canvases downstairs in my car to get you started. And we can always buy you more.”
I hug her again. She laughs and says, “I haven’t seen you this excited in a long time.”
I say, “That’s because this is real. I get to paint now. I can paint from the time Myla leaves until school starts.”
Ruth says, “I know it’s hard with Myla going to college.”
I don’t want to think about it, but I know what she means. I sit down again and look at the paints.
Ruth says, “Myla’s nearly an adult. But these paints are for you. You’re a teenager.” I look at her. I can tell she’s trying to tell me something.
She goes on. “You’re growing up.” She pauses for a few seconds, then says, “Let’s talk about the pictures sometime.”
I don’t understand. I tell her.
“Well,” she says, “you’re older now. You’ll be starting high school next fall. There might be some pictures you don’t want . . . out there anymore.”
“What do you mean?” I ask. I never expected to hear anything like this from her.
“I mean we just need to think. We need to have a conversation. Not now, not on your birthday”—she smiles—“but someday soon. After Myla goes.”
“Okay,” I say. “If you want.” If Ruth doesn’t believe in the pictures, I don’t know what to believe. But I steer myself to a better part of my mind, the part that wants to use my new oils.
After Ruth leaves, I look at the paints one by one and imagine myself inside the colors. They’re rich, and a part of me wishes I could eat them. I look at them until Myla comes to get me for dinner. A week later, she’s gone.
chapter eighteen
myla came downstairs to the smell of sautéing onions. “Smells delicious!” she called from the living room, but there was no response. She set down her magazine and walked into the kitchen. Samuel was there, but he was standing at the sink, gazing out the window. The onions were burning. Myla turned off the heat and moved the pan off the burner, scraping wildly at the brown glue stuck to the bottom of the pan. It wasn’t until the smoke alarm started its high-pitched squeal that Samuel startled out of his reverie.
“Now, that’s what I call lost in thought,” Myla said after climbing on a chair and pulling apart the smoke alarm. “Where exactly were you?”
Samuel smiled, a kind of laziness on his face. “Thinking about your father’s book.”
“Ah,” said Myla, a feeling of satisfaction creeping into her.
“I’ve been thinking about what he says about moments and how they argue against linear time.” He shrugged his hands into his pockets and turned back to look out the window. “Take the moment when I decided to come here. To follow you. I was standing in Mark’s apartment, in the middle of his living room. He was talking a mile a minute, piecing everything together, and I looked down at my feet. It was something about the way my right tennis shoe looked. I saw it and I knew. I was going to buy a plane ticket and come here. There was no element of reason in my decision. I knew that no matter what happened between us, there’d always be a before and an after. I would be changed forever. I am changed forever.”
He turned his smile to her. “And it’s funny, because people talk about moments: the moment they fell in love with someone, the moment they looked at their baby and knew they’d never be the same. Those moments are about change. My dad always tells this story about my stepmother—about how when he saw her, he just knew he’d spend the rest of his life with her. I always thought it was bullshit. I didn’t think something like that could happen in a moment. But now I see. It doesn’t matter if it actually happened in a moment’s time. What matters is that my father has that moment to look back at, to point to. It’s his. He can live it a million times, can’t he?”
Myla nodded. She put her hand on Samuel’s arm and pulled him to her. He continued speaking. “And it makes me wonder. Everyone who looks at Ruth’s photographs has noticed that at a certain point you simply stopped appearing in them. Was that your choice? And if it was, at what moment did you decide you wouldn’t be in them anymore?”
Myla let go of him. She was stunned by the accuracy of his question. She moved backward and found a chair to catch her. She knew exactly the moment she’d describe. At first she could hardly speak, because the feelings were so immediate. Then she began to tell Samuel about the trip to New York when she was fifteen and Pru was ten. She described the cold whip of air on her face, the thrill of women running down sidewalks in high heels as the sky spilled snow, the unfamiliarity of tiny white dogs trotting by in winter coats. She described the soaring feeling of belonging to this sophistication, knowing photographs of her would be hanging in a New York gallery on West Fifty-seventh Street.
And then, on the appointed night, they sped down Park Avenue in a limousine, swirling white air eddying around them. It seemed that everyone in the city was going to the gallery too, and she imagined people recognizing them through the window, remembering that she was now Rose, that Pru was now May, that people would hand them glasses of punch, curious about their lives, then tell them how extraordinarily beautiful they were. It was an easy thing to do this. It swelled Myla’s heart, like she was helping people who needed hope.
They got to the gallery. Tumbling out of the limo, Myla noticed someone passing out gallery announcements. The picture was of Pru on the far side of Elk Lake. People were collecting the announcement in their hands, but as soon as she saw which picture had been chosen, Myla’s brain could catch only glimpses of other people’s words. She was suddenly too cold and wanted to push her way inside, where she wouldn’t hear their talking. She looked back over her shoulder. Pru was smiling shyly, quietly. Pru wouldn’t say anything. Pru wouldn’t point out, “That’s me!” And Myla was angry. At Pru. Pru didn’t know how to do this. She did.
Myla shuddered now, remembering her plan to get inside before Pru did. She’d plant herself beside an image and try to look the same as it. That night she’d counted her pictures and counted Pru’s pictures and compared.
Myla continued talking to Samuel. “I thought I stopped taking pictures with Ruth for one reason, but I know now that it was really another. The reason I told myself was that Ruth didn’t seem interested in taking pictures of me anymore. I mean, actually, that was probably true. I was in high school by this point, and Pru was still a kid, and she was probably in a much better mood most of the time. I told myself that I could see how much more Ruth loved Pru than me, simply by looking at the photogra
phs she took of her, and how many more of them there were. And I hated the jealousy I felt for Pru. I knew she was only a little girl, and I wanted to protect her from my feelings of envy.”
Samuel was sitting in another chair, across from her. The aroma of burned onions still hung in the air. Myla went on, “But what was really going on was both harder and easier: I grew up. I was a teenager. I wanted to go to the mall and hang out with boys and gossip and go to dances. I wanted to live. By the time I was sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, the last thing I wanted to do was make high art with my baby sister and a middle-aged woman, to live my life by someone else’s moments, by someone else’s vision of what my life was like, even if that someone was wonderful Ruth.”
And so she told him about the last shoot she ever did with Ruth. She was fifteen. They’d gone to the stream, attracted by the eddy of light and cool and water. Pru had leaned down, looking at something in the water, and that had galvanized Ruth, compelling her to take out the camera and start shooting. Myla had felt the dread begin, had felt the pull to make Ruth want to see her. She didn’t know whether she should cooperate or sulk. She’d chosen the former. There was always the possibility Ruth would want to shoot her.
And she did. They’d taken some good pictures that day; Myla could feel it from the tingle of the work. Ruth had said so. But then Ruth hadn’t printed any of the photographs with only Myla in them. There’d been that one photograph that Ruth had printed of the two of them on the riverbed, but Myla had resented being relegated to photographs with Pru in them too. Ruth had printed pictures from that day of Pru alone, but none of Myla standing by herself.
Looking back on it now, Myla told Samuel, there’d been something she hadn’t known, something she’d overheard David tell Helaine the night they’d broken up. Myla had believed Ruth didn’t think she was pretty enough anymore, but that hadn’t been it. Ruth had looked at the negatives, at Myla’s new body, at the look on her face, and felt the photographs were too sultry to print. It had been her call to make. She’d risked Myla’s hating her. And all Myla had known was that to feel invisible was to be rejected, and to be visible was to be accepted.
So Myla had made a decision, mainly to show Ruth what she was missing. No more photographs. She’d just say no. And she wanted the first “no” to be dramatic. She wanted to see Ruth’s face dissolve, then rework, to stammer out an “Oh, that’s fine.” Because Myla knew it wasn’t fine. Myla knew that Ruth needed her.
But then Ruth called a few days later and said something like “Let’s take pictures this weekend,” and it wasn’t even a question, that’s what prompted Myla to do it. She responded, “No, thanks.” Just as easy as that.
Ruth said, “Okay. Are you feeling all right, kiddo?”
“Don’t call me kiddo.”
“Well, someone’s grumpy.”
“I’m not grumpy, I just don’t want to do it, okay?”
“Great. What’re your plans?”
“None of your business.”
“Charming, Myla. Can you put your sister on?”
Myla held the phone against her heart and yelled Pru’s name. Pru took it upstairs, and Myla wished she could sneak up there without Pru’s hearing. But the outcome was obvious. The next morning Pru was sitting on the stairs with her backpack on by the time Myla ambled down into the world.
“We’re going to a pond,” said Pru.
Suddenly Myla wanted to be going too, and she considered running upstairs and grabbing a bag. She knew she had time, that they’d wait. But then the familiar three honks came from the road, and Pru stood up, walked to the door, and jerked it closed behind her. She didn’t say goodbye.
By the time Myla finished talking, she was nearly crying. She sat quietly for a long while. And then she said, “You know, that’s one reason I got so mad about the photographs after Pru’s death. Not because the pictures aren’t great, but because they’re the only way the world remembers my baby sister. And they’re just pictures. Just moments. Pru was in those moments, but she was so much bigger than they are.” Myla stood up. “Come with me,” she said, and walked into the living room.
Samuel followed.
“You want to see my sweet little Pru? Emma showed me this the other day. She told me I can make a copy of it.” Myla and Samuel sat down on the couch. She opened a leather album and turned the pages until she reached the right one. She held the album out to him. He looked. There stood a little girl, about five years old, playing a recorder in front of the very couch on which he was now sitting. On the couch was a row of stuffed animals with books propped open in front of them. A hand-painted sign said “SCHOOL.” The little girl’s hair was frazzled, her eyes wide open, her cheeks puffed out. She looked silly and fun—like any other five-year-old.
“Jane took this,” Myla said. “I’m showing you this because I want you to know that Pru had more moments than the ones she’s famous for.” Myla took the book back. “And maybe she too would have grown to love the mall and hanging out with friends. Maybe she would have decided that taking pictures with Ruth didn’t interest her anymore. Maybe she would have taken some pictures of her own. She just didn’t get the chance to find any of that out.”
I START WALKING HOME FROM school right at three so I can get home in time to still have light in my studio. It’s not really a studio, it’s Myla’s room, but the light in there is nice in the afternoon, and David has set up one of his old easels for me. Every night since Myla left in September, I’ve worked in there until dark. I’m working on my fifth painting. The funny thing is, I don’t have a hard time thinking about what to paint, I have a hard time narrowing down my ideas.
But an even better thing has happened in my studio than just the paintings. An even better present than the oil paints. I have to keep this present a secret. I know I should give it back, that it isn’t really mine.
I was moving some of Myla’s things into her closet when I noticed there was an old box way back in the corner that I’d never seen before. I pulled its flaps open, but the box was heavy and wouldn’t move, so I had to take out Myla’s shoes and pull and push the box to get it out into the room. It was dusty and full of books. Old books. Books that looked like all the other ones downstairs, all the other ones filling up the bookshelves.
I was about to call out David’s name so he could come take the box away when I noticed a blue book at the top of the pile. I pulled it out and looked at it and read the title. It was amazing. It was like the book was written for me. It was called The Craftsman’s Handbook, but that isn’t even its real name. It’s called Il libro dell’arte, and it was written by a man who lived in the fifteenth century in Florence. It’s a how-to book for medieval artists. For painters. It teaches all sorts of things, like how to make a drapery in fresco, how to paint wounds, how to make a mordant out of garlic, and how to distemper inside walls with green. I don’t even know what half the words mean, but I knew immediately that I liked it.
And then I opened to the inside front cover and saw my mother’s name written there. In dark blue handwriting. So this was her book. It was almost as if she’d left it for me, as if the book had been waiting for my studio to be set up. I knew why my mother had it. She was a poet, and she needed to play with words. And so she had this book, with all these words that feel amazing when you say them. And now I’m learning how to paint from it. And there was a piece of paper in there that she’d written on too, and her handwriting was so neat and so beautiful that I knew immediately I wouldn’t tell anyone what I’d found, not even Emma, not even Myla when she calls.
I’m almost done reading the book. You’d think it would be hard to understand, but it isn’t hard at all. It’s about making paint come alive. It’s about me. I’ve decided I’m going to make a blue velvet case for it, and I’ll keep it hidden in my drawer. I don’t want anyone to know about it. I want it to be a secret between my mother and me.
So I don’t even notice the man. I’m thinking about getting home—I’m almost there—I’m
thinking about finishing the book tonight, when all of a sudden I look up and there’s a man standing in front of me. He’s just there on the corner where no one usually is in our neighborhood at this time of day. I walk past him and then I hear his voice. He’s asking me a question and part of me wants to keep walking but I don’t. I listen to the other part that wants to pay attention, to be polite. So I say, “Excuse me?”
He says, “Can you tell me where I can find— Hey, wait a minute, aren’t you one of the Wolfe girls? From Ruth Handel’s pictures?”
I don’t know what to say. I realize I don’t know him. He’s too old to be a student. Not dressed right to be a professor. He’s just a man. But I nod. I forget that it’s strange he knows my last name.
He says, “Poor child.”
“What did you say?”
He smiles and says, “Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried. I’m going home.” But already it’s too late. I turn to walk away, and then there’s something over my mouth that makes my legs wobble and my hands loosen from the straps of my backpack.
Right before I go to sleep, I hear his mouth against my ear saying, “Sorry sorry sorry.” I feel like I want to tell him something, but I can’t remember what it is. That must be when he carries me to the car.
IT WAS MIDNIGHT, AND MYLA couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t even lie down. Light from the streetlamp whitened the far wall and fell in a stripe across Samuel’s still body. He’d drifted off easily, peacefully, and now lay serenely on his back, his face the image of rest. Myla stood with her back to the window and gazed down at him.
She’d counted on reading David’s book, on being lulled by the rhythms of his voice, carried by the sweep of his logic. Everything about him felt familiar and safe. And now here she stood, David’s unfinished manuscript a series of stacks strewn across the dresser top. She had no desire to pick it up. She knew she didn’t want the reading to be over; that was part of the reluctance. The thrill of hearing her father’s voice, fresh with authority, would be over too soon.
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