by Dani Shapiro
Please don’t look for me. You won’t find me.
Clara leans back in the swivel chair. So Ruth kept the note. It has been so long since Clara has allowed herself to think of that time. It’s never far from her, of course, tucked high up in her mind like a box on a shelf. She’s hoped, stupidly, naively, self-protectively, that somehow the box would stay there forever, wedged into its own dark corner. That it would not come crashing down, full of its impossible memories. It has been her life’s work, really, to distance herself from the past. She’s built layer upon layer of a new self on top of the old one.
But now the room goes blurry, her vision fading in and out of focus. Her hands are cold, clammy. The past is gaining on her, a predator, and the life she’s built for herself seems like a flimsy thing, a thin shell about to be cracked wide open.
The note has a small rip, which has been carefully Scotch-taped. Ruth wanted to preserve this. She has kept it where she could see it every day for fourteen years.
I can’t be here anymore, I just can’t. I love you, but I feel like I’m going crazy. I’ll be in touch when I can. Love always, Clara.
Love always. Something an eighteen-year-old girl would say and mean, even as she packed her belongings (jeans, sweatshirt, clean socks, change of underwear) in a knapsack and walked out the door of her childhood home. Clara can still feel the soft spring air on her face that morning as she stuck out her hand and hailed a taxi to Grand Central instead of boarding the crosstown bus to school. What was she thinking? Did she think at all? She had a destination but no real plan, her mind as blank as she could make it.
“How long are you going to be gone?” Robin had asked, when Clara called her at college the night before she left.
“I don’t know,” Clara answered. “Awhile, I guess.”
She could hear Robin’s breath over the phone. Steady, unruffled. Her mind going over the possibilities.
“I’m telling Mom,” Robin said.
“No, you’re not.”
“How can you do this? You’re throwing everything away. How can you leave school with only—”
“It doesn’t matter, Robin,” Clara said quietly. “I can’t care about that.”
They were silent for a while, the two sisters.
“You’re not coming back,” Robin said.
“That’s not true.”
“Oh, Clar.”
Two small syllables—but her sister’s voice carried inside it the knowledge of their shared family history.
Clara couldn’t have done it—she couldn’t possibly have left if she had known she was never coming back. She had five thousand dollars in traveler’s checks folded into her sneaker. This money—an inheritance from her father when she turned eighteen—seemed like enough to last her until she figured out her next move. And so she hailed a cab to Grand Central and bought a ticket to New Haven. She had a friend from Brearley who was a freshman at Yale. Clara had made arrangements to stay with the girl in her dorm room. She had thought no further than that.
Lost. All she knew was that when she reached inside herself, searching for something to hold on to, there was nothing to grasp. She was a walking, talking echo chamber. This wasn’t typical teenage stuff, adolescent angst. She had read the psychology books, crouched in the stacks of Shakespeare & Co. She knew all about adolescence and its discontents. This—this was something else. If she stayed, she might never find her way out.
I’ll be in touch. Such a lighthearted phrase. See you later, alligator. In a while, crocodile. Clara tries to bring that girl to the surface. She had tossed off the word love as if it had no real meaning. Love requires dailiness. Love requires care and feeding. Being a wife and mother has taught her nothing if not that. But what did she know? She was just a kid—the same age as that little Peony—a kid who thinks she’s a grown-up. That’s the danger of the age. Clara’s already aware of it, thinking of Samantha, at nine, just on the cusp.
She picks up the phone and dials home. Jonathan and Sam are probably eating dinner by now. Jonathan would have stopped at Little Notch on his way home and picked up a large pepperoni pizza and a six-pack of Coke. A far cry from the vegetable stir-fries and quinoa casseroles she usually puts on the table. Healthy food, enough sleep, cardiovascular exercise, yoga, meditation—she has spent the last nine years, ever since Sam was born, making sure that she does every possible thing right. As if maybe, just maybe, if she does everything right, she can keep the world from touching them.
She can picture them sitting at the kitchen table. Sam’s long skinny legs are stretched out on Jonathan’s lap. The pizza box lies soggy and open. The television is on, in the background. The dead of winter is Jonathan’s slow time of year. His days are filled with overseas phone calls and faxes, doing the least favorite part of his job, ordering the materials he needs from Indonesia in time to make jewelry to sell in his shop to the summer crowd.
Clara walks over to one of the arched windows and pulls up the blackout shade. She wishes she had one of those video phones, so Jonathan could see what she sees. The cars zooming in both directions on Broadway below. The street never—not at any hour—empty. All of it unfurling like a silent film.
“Hello?”
It’s Sammy. Clara still can’t get used to the idea that her daughter is old enough to answer the phone. Since Sam’s birth, the years have tumbled, one into the next.
“Sweetheart!”
“Mommy—when are you coming home?”
Sam cuts right to the chase. Clara told her so little before she left. Rushing to get her to school. Lugging her knapsack, art projects, a plastic container filled with cookies for the bake sale. No time to talk, really. Something about a quick last-minute trip to New York, as if such a thing were normal. No big deal.
“Well, I don’t know, exactly.”
The words come out before Clara even realizes what she’s saying. What’s this? The plan—at least the plan in her head—was to be here for as little time as possible. Assess the situation and get the hell out. But now she’s here, in Ruth’s apartment.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Sam’s voice quavers.
“I—”
“Why are you in New York?” Sammy asks.
Clara needs to change the subject. She can’t tell Sammy what she’s doing in New York—it’s impossible. She has never figured out how to explain her history to her daughter, so she simply hasn’t. Which isn’t a lie, exactly. More like a sin of omission.
When Sam was a much littler girl, three or four, she used to ask Clara pointed questions from the backseat of the car as they drove the winding roads of Mount Desert.
Mommy, do you have brothers or sisters?
One sister.
Just one?
Yup.
Does your sister have kids?
She does, sweetheart. You have three first cousins in New York City.
I want to meet them!
Someday, Clara had said, wondering when that day would ever be. Hating herself for robbing Sam of the pleasure of first cousins. But how could she involve her family with Robin’s and leave Ruth out of it?
Where’s your mommy? Sam inevitably asked. Clara’s hands tightened against the steering wheel. How could she do the right thing when she wasn’t sure what the right thing was? She always figured there would be a moment—appearing clearly defined, outlined like an apparition—in which she would know, absolutely, that it was time to tell Sam about her grandmother.
She’s gone, sweetie, Clara would answer.
Gone—that has certainly been true. Down on Broadway, a man stands in the center island, one hand on his chest, belting out an aria from Don Giovanni. Wow. That guy. He had been a fixture down around Carnegie Hall when Clara was a kid. He had a beautiful, professionally trained voice, and he sang on street corners, an open empty violin case at his feet.
“How was your swim meet?”
“I placed second.”
“That’s great, honey!”
“No.
First would be great.”
Clara can hear Sam squirming, the kitchen chair creaking. She’s probably wearing the holey old gray sweats she puts on after swimming, her dark wet hair woven into a sloppy braid. She’s skinnier than Clara ever was, but, other than that, Sam looks exactly like Clara did at nine. Last summer, Clara and Sam were at Jumpin’ Java on Main Street, where the summer people go for their cold drinks, and an older gentleman in a windbreaker had stopped and stared at Sammy. Clara knew—even before he spoke, she knew. My dear, you’re the spitting image of that girl in Ruth Dunne’s early photographs. The daughter. What was her name? The man’s crinkly blue eyes swept over the two of them, not really registering Clara. She had always been on guard for the day when someone would make the connection: a wealthy collector, a summer resident of the island. Clara had known it could happen. She pushed herself off her stool and grabbed Sammy’s hand. Come on, honey. We’ve got to go.
“Mom, why are you in New York?” Sammy’s not letting go of this one.
“I have some work to do.”
“What do you mean?”
A reasonable question, since Clara doesn’t really have work of her own. She helps Jonathan with a small amount of local advertising and marketing and makes sure the shop runs smoothly. Even a nine-year-old is going to detect the bullshit.
“Hey, can I talk to Daddy?”
There’s silence for a moment. Sammy’s chewing.
“He’s not here.”
“What do you mean, he’s not there? Who’s with you?”
“Elizabeth. We made nachos.”
Elizabeth is the daughter of the next-door neighbors. Sixteen years old. An honors student. You couldn’t ask for a more competent babysitter. But where is Jonathan?
“Daddy said he’d be home late.”
Goddammit, Jonathan. Clara’s skin feels too tightly stretched over her bones. Why tonight, of all nights? She’s never been away from Sam before. Did she really have to spell things out?
Below, she can see two men arguing over a parking space on the east side of Broadway. One guy has climbed out of his car and is standing in the empty space, his arms crossed. Staking his territory. The other guy, in a sleek little sport car, has parked his car at an angle into the street, hazards flashing. He has one foot out the door. Middle-aged men acting like high school boys. Clara moves away from the window, once again lowering the blackout shade. She has been gripping the phone so tightly her hand aches.
“I’ll be home as soon as I can. I promise. Tell Dad to call me when he gets home, okay?”
She blows a kiss, then hangs up the phone. She turns off the desk lamp, plunging the studio into darkness. She closes her eyes and imagines she is somewhere else, anywhere but here. She summons Flying Mountain at the mouth of Somes Sound—one of her favorite spots on the island—and tries, mentally, to put herself there. The view stretching wide over the great harbor. The Cranberry Islands in the distance. Next, she pictures her own house. Her small backyard. The dozens of bulbs she planted in the fall, waiting, sleeping beneath the snow-covered ground. Nothing is working. It’s the silence, she realizes. It pierces every thought, every willful daydream. It is the dead silence of her mother’s studio, a place where the rest of the world simply does not exist.
A CRITIC once wrote that Ruth Dunne’s work was a “hedge against memory.” The phrase had wounded Ruth. They don’t understand, she said at the time. Why do they write about things they don’t understand? As a little girl, Clara thought she knew what the critic meant: Ruth’s photographs were like a privet hedge—rising tall and green and dense, standing between her and her own memory. She struggled to remember things. At night, lying in bed, she would try to pry the branches apart, to glimpse a single moment, a sight, a sound. But it was impossible. So, instead, she kept a portfolio of Ruth’s work by her bedside. Sometimes, when she couldn’t fall asleep, she would rest the heavy portfolio on her chest and study the images of herself, searching for clues as to who she really was.
The first image is almost a memory. Clara is three. She is naked, splashing in the warm water of her bath, deep inside the claw-footed tub on the top floor of their first house in the country. The house is an early Victorian with a big front porch, the rooms painted in pastel sherbet-colored shades by its previous owners. It’s late afternoon, and the sun is hitting the old glass windowpanes, a liquid orange light setting the room aglow. Plastic toys float all around her: a sailboat, a rubber duck, a foot-long green lizard. Clara’s hair is long and wavy. It has never been cut. When she holds her breath and goes underwater, she keeps her eyes open and watches her hair move across her face like seaweed on the surface of the ocean.
Robin is sitting on the bathroom floor, flipping slowly through the pages of Green Eggs and Ham. She’s five years old and can already read. She’s asking questions in her high little-girl’s voice: Why is the train underwater? Why is that guy purple? Wait a minute, he can’t fly! Clara can tell that the questions are driving her mother crazy. Ruth’s forehead is knotted, her mouth turned tightly down as she kneels on the bath mat, soaping Clara’s back.
“It’s a story, Robin,” Ruth says. “Can’t you just accept that it’s a story? You’re such a literalist.”
“What does ‘literalist’ mean, Mommy?”
Ruth sighs. Robin is not a believer in make-believe. She wants an answer for everything. Robin knows that Santa can’t possibly squeeze down the chimney, he’s too old and fat. And she knows that the tooth fairy is just an invention. Fairies don’t really exist. Her daughters are opposite in nearly every possible way. Robin is olive-skinned and tough, with short Buster Brown hair, and has frown lines at the age of five. And Clara—Clara is a frail little firefly, a head-in-the-clouds dreamer, with long Botticelli waves and amber eyes that seem to accept whatever they see.
“‘Literalist’ means,” Ruth begins slowly, each word seeming like an effort, “someone who thinks that everything has to make sense.” Her hands move smoothly over Clara’s buttocks, efficiently soaping her private parts. But then something changes. The moment freezes, and Clara would swear, when she thought of it years later, that she could hear a shutter snap. Clara has put the foot-long green lizard in her mouth as she leans back in the tub, her hair floating all around her like a halo.
“Wait.” Ruth’s voice catches. “Hold on.” She stands quickly, backing out of the room, still looking at Clara in the tub. “Robin, watch your sister.”
“But what am I supposed to do?” Robin calls. “Mommy—I can’t swim!” But Ruth has already run down the two creaky flights of stairs to the kitchen, where her camera bag is by the back door. Then her feet pound back up the stairs, two at a time, and into the bathroom. She snaps a lens into her Polaroid, crouches down.
Clara takes the lizard out of her mouth.
“Honey, could you put that back in there—the lizard? Keep doing what you were doing before.”
“Why, Mommy?” The lizard has the chemical-sweet taste of plastic. Besides, the bathwater is getting cold.
“Just for a second, Clara.” Ruth is poised, one knee on the bathroom tile, the other ready to pivot. She pushes her long hair behind her ears and squints through the lens.
“Mommy, why does he try the green eggs and ham?” asks Robin. “And anyway, why is the ham green?”
“Quiet, Robin. Mommy’s concentrating.”
“But I just need to know—”
“Hush!” Ruth’s voice is sharp.
Clara leans back in the water, trying to remember what she had been doing at the moment Ruth ran down to get her camera. She allows her head to lean back, her hair to float again. The leaves from the huge white birch in the backyard are pressed against the bathroom window, and they look to Clara like hundreds of birds fluttering outside. Her whole pale body—long, for a three-year-old—is stretched out in the small claw-footed tub. She puts the lizard back in her mouth and tries to keep from shivering.
Her ears are underwater, so she doesn’t hear the click and
whir of her mother’s camera. Ruth takes five or six shots in the fading afternoon light. Clara watches her mother’s face as she snaps a frame, then lowers the camera.
“Honey, put one foot up on the side of the tub—exactly, like that.” Ruth adjusts slightly, then snaps again. Ruth is not dreamy. The gauzy layer of absentmindedness that usually surrounds her has been replaced by a quiet and complete attention.
“Mommy, why won’t you talk to me?” Robin asks. She has moved out of the way, out of the line of the camera’s vision. Her back is up against the tile wall. “I’m just asking you a simple question.”
“Okay,” Ruth says as she clicks the lens cover back in place. She helps Clara out of the tub. Clara’s lips are blue, her teeth chattering. She doesn’t like the way her mouth feels. She needs to brush her teeth.
Ruth turns wearily to Robin. “What was the question again, sweetie?”
“You never listen!” Robin slaps the wall as hard as she can. The tips of her ears and her nose are bright pink. But she doesn’t cry. In their entire shared childhood, Clara will never see her sister cry.
The photographs of Clara snapped that summer afternoon are merely studies for the work that will eventually become Clara with the Lizard. The following morning, their father takes Robin hunting for bugs in the swamp behind their house. They set off in their matching baseball caps and backpacks, magnifying glasses hanging around their necks, long socks and sneakers protecting their pale ankles from ticks. The bug hunting was Ruth’s idea—though Nathan has no idea why she has suddenly taken an interest in entomology. They’ll be gone for at least a couple of hours.
She doesn’t ask Clara to come upstairs to the bathroom until she has set up the shot. Yesterday’s Polaroids are taped to the bathroom mirror. The morning light through the flimsy lace curtains on the bathroom window has been blocked by several layers of black construction paper, masking-taped to the tile walls. Ruth’s lights have been set up, along with a circular silver reflector. She has run the water in the tub hot enough so that Clara will not get cold too quickly.