Black & White

by Dani Shapiro

  But wait—Clara pulls herself out of the quicksand of the past. What is Ruth doing out of bed?

  A small red-haired woman wearing the gray uniform of a hospital orderly approaches them. Not Ruth, of course not. Had Clara been hoping that her mother might have improved these last few days? That perhaps those pesky tumors had taken a look around, realized that they were in Ruth Dunne’s brain, and dissolved out of respect for her artistic genius?

  “Marcy, this is—” Peony begins.

  “I’m Ruth’s daughter,” Clara interrupts. “Clara.”

  “Yes, we spoke on the phone last night,” Marcy says.

  “Oh, of course.”

  The new home aide—sent to replace yesterday’s.

  “Well,” Clara says faintly. “How’s everything going so far?’

  “The nurse gave her some morphine—put her out cold,” says Marcy. “But she’s been agitated on and off—thrashing about. I told your sister I think we need to order a hospital bed.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The railings, hon. So she doesn’t fall out and break a hip.”

  “I’ll get on it,” Clara says. That is, if Robin hasn’t already checked it off her list.

  “Where’s the incinerator?” Marcy asks.

  “Out in the hallway, to the right.”

  Please, God—Clara doesn’t ever pray, but lately she’s found herself offering up these silent beseechments—let this one work out.

  Marcy heads into the outside corridor, carrying a white plastic trash bag stuffed with God-knows-what. Meanwhile, Peony straightens the edges of her folders, the stray photograph—the sliver of pale skin—disappearing from view.

  “I’d better get these back into the archives,” says Peony. “Until Ruth feels up to working on the book.”

  What book? The question screams through Clara’s head. But she doesn’t want to play her hand. Peony has no idea how little she actually knows.

  “I’d like to take a look at them,” she says coolly. Surprising herself.

  “Oh, yeah—of course.” Peony hands her the pile of folders. So easy—just like that. Who, after all, would argue with Clara’s right to see them? She tries not to tremble. There must be a dozen in all.

  Slowly, Clara walks down the hall to Ruth’s room. She turns the knob and opens the door soundlessly; she knows exactly how to keep it from creaking. Ruth is lying on her side, curled up in the fetal position. She appears not so much to be sleeping as to be in another, more altered state: out cold. Sedated, resting comfortably, agitated, thrashing: What does any of it mean? It seems the language of dying has its own code that Clara has yet to begin to crack.

  She stands by the bed, looking down at her mother. She can’t remember a time in their shared lives when she has ever been able to simply watch Ruth—with no static interference, nothing in the air between them. Now, she takes it all in: the bony still-beautiful face, the elegant profile, the shadow cast by her long lashes, a delicate blue-green vein throbbing along her temple. She is so human. Stripped, for the moment, of her gaze. Her eyes shut, lids fluttering as if, even now, with all the morphine in the world pumped into her system, she still can’t turn off the pictures in her mind.

  No chance she’s going to wake up—not from this stupor. Clara sinks into an armchair by the corner window, the pile of folders in her lap. Now that she has extracted them from Peony, she isn’t sure she has the nerve to look at them. For so many years, she’s avoided the possibility of stumbling across her mother’s work. No visits to museums. No gallery-hopping in any city she has ever visited. Once, on a trip to Portland with Jonathan and Sam, they were browsing through a Barnes & Noble when she caught a glimpse of a familiar image—it appeared to her like a fragment of a remembered dream—on the cover of a photography magazine misplaced among stacks of People and Newsweek. She quickly rounded the corner, her throat thick with panic. Let’s get out of here, she had said to Jonathan, pulling at him.

  Ruth’s breathing is labored—from illness, drugs, deep sleep, or a combination thereof, Clara isn’t sure. She listens to the uneven rhythm of her mother’s breath, willing herself to have whatever it takes—courage, hubris, a wild overestimation of what she can bear—to open the folder.

  The phone next to Ruth’s bed rings. Ruth stirs, flinging one arm up over her eyes as if shielding them from the sun. The sound is more of a purr, actually, fancy phones with intercom systems and caller ID being Ruth’s only concession to modern life. Clara understands her mother’s need to screen calls—she has the same need herself—and leans over to see KUBOVY WEISS spelled out on the small lit-up screen.

  Kubovy. Well, she won’t be answering that call. In an almost reflexive gesture, more of a tic than something carefully considered, Clara opens the first folder. There, as she suspected, is the first image ever taken of her, the one that started the whole ball rolling: Clara with the Lizard. The wet shiny hair, the sliver of forehead—how had she known? The bit she had seen peeking from the top of Peony’s folder could have been from any one of dozens of photos of her. Her hair was often slicked back off her face, her forehead smooth and pale as milk glass. But she did know—she did—because those images have always been more vivid and immediate to Clara than anything she might actually be seeing. Each one a vast bottomless whirlpool into which everything surrounding it is sucked in and drowned.

  But wait. There are more photographs in these folders than Clara had originally thought. Each folder contains several photographs, separated by thin, archival tissue. Clara in the Fountain. The Accident. Clara and the Popsicle. As she studies the images, she crosses her legs tightly, pressing them together, cutting off her circulation. Pins and needles. Half of her is numb.

  Interspersed among the familiar photographs are a few she’s never seen before. Each is encased in vellum; a yellow Post-it is attached to the vellum on which is written, in Ruth’s shaky hand, never shown or published. Clara, curled up on the sofa in the living room in Hillsdale, a patchwork quilt crumpled on the floor next to her. Clara, standing framed by a doorway—she must be eight or nine—her hip bones as fragile as bird’s wings. She doesn’t remember these pictures being taken. Not a glimmer, not a flash. It is as if these moments never happened—but here they are. She was there.

  She skips the middle batch for the moment and flips all the way to the last folder, the final series of images. She has a hunch, a quick flood of feeling—terrible, foreboding, but also impossible to stop now that she has begun. She is shaking—the paper itself is shaking—as she opens to the final picture, Naked at Fourteen.

  Naked. Ruth had used the word purposefully when she titled the photograph. Not nude—an artist’s word—but naked. Stark and absolute. No bullshit about it. As if to say, Let’s call this what it is.

  Her own eyes stare back at her, angry, vulnerable, accusatory. How could you? Her pubescent body, breasts already forming above the rib cage, a shadow darkening between her legs. Arms crossed defiantly, hips cocked to one side. Clara reaches back—she grasps at the past—but it is like she is in a free fall, clutching at the air. There is nothing to hold. No memory. Only this.

  “What time is it?” A hoarse voice—Ruth’s voice—nearly makes Clara jump out of her chair. Her mother has rolled over and is now lying on her side, facing Clara. How long has she been watching her?

  “Tell me about these,” Clara says quietly.

  “Sorry, dear?”

  Clara holds up a few of the photographs.

  “Careful with those—my God, Clara, your fingerprints!”

  Ruth’s all there, all right. Plenty of compos in her mentis. Over the past few days, Clara has wondered if her mother has started to mentally lose it—but no. Clara is overtaken by a violent, intense desire to rip the pictures in two, all of them, one by one—as Ruth lies there, a prisoner on her bed. She wants to do it—but she is paralyzed. She feels as if she’s floating, hovering above herself and Ruth. Are the photographs hers to destroy? Her mother’s days in the darkroom
are over. Each of these prints are the last ones in Ruth Dunne’s possession. The last that will ever be made.

  “Why are you looking at these, Mother? Why has Peony taken them out of the archives?” Clara asks. She sits on her hands—literally sits on them—to stop them from shaking, to stop herself from doing something she can never take back.

  Ruth flinches slightly. Mother. Clara has spoken with such disdain, such sarcasm, after these weeks of increasing kindness and sympathy. The old feelings rush back—nothing has changed between them.

  “Would you mind calling Peony, darling? I need some help—”

  “That’s no longer Peony’s job, remember?”

  Ruth’s nose wrinkles.

  “But these women from the agency are so…I don’t know…I can hardly carry on a conversation with them,” she says.

  “They’re here to help you, not to provide intellectual stimulation.” Clara finally snaps. “Stop avoiding my question.”

  “What question is that?”

  Is Ruth messing with Clara’s head? She is capable of many things, but has never been capable of guile. With Ruth, what you see is what you get—so what’s this? She seems to be wavering in and out of focus. Sharp, then blurry, then sharp again.

  “The photographs. They’re all here—every single one of them, as far as I can tell. All your photographs of me, even ones I never knew about.”

  “Of course.” Ruth struggles up on one elbow. “For the book.”

  “What book?” Clara’s voice is raised. She hears a shuffling outside the doorway. Is Peony standing there? Or Marcy? Or some other person from the phalanx of Ruth’s helpers?

  “Kubovy is helping me put it together,” Ruth says. “I’ve wanted to do it for years, and now—”

  “Jesus Christ,” says Clara. It dawns on her in an overwhelming rush, a shock so profound that it actually feels electrical. Her spine is on fire. She understands now. It has taken longer than it should have—but now she understands.

  She thumbs through the folders resting on her lap. She feels reckless. Nothing she discovers could possibly make things worse. She opens one that appears to be slightly smaller than the rest and finds a mock-up of a book jacket inside. There she is, close-up, closer up than she has ever been before. It’s one of the images she’s never seen. How old is she, perhaps seven? It is summer—she can tell by the waviness of her hair—and she is lying on a braided rug, her hair spread all around her. Clara remembers the rug; it smelled of lemons and dog hair and was soft from a thousand washings. How can she remember the rug but not the photograph?

  A black paper sash runs across the middle of the mock-up. CLARA. Just her name, nothing more—each letter cut out from the black paper. The design is brilliant; she sees this even now. The sash can be removed so that only the image of the little girl remains. And the name CLARA itself—her own name!—is an absence rather than a presence. Cut out. Each letter an empty hole in the blackness.

  “What do you think of it?” asks Ruth.

  “You can’t do this,” says Clara.

  “What do you mean? It’s already—”

  “I won’t let you do this,” Clara says, more forcefully.

  Ruth has managed to sit up now and has shoved two pillows behind her. She looks at Clara indulgently, as if she were an adorable but misguided child.

  “Oh, Clara,” she begins, “it’s my work. It’s not about you—it was never about you.”

  “That’s bullshit! Of course it’s about me—it is me!”

  “You’ve refused to understand this,” says Ruth. “Light, shadow, texture—the pictures are scenes, compositions—”

  “You stole me away from myself!” Clara digs her nails into the soft flesh of her palm, willing herself to stop—but there is no stopping. Not at this point.

  Ruth doesn’t react. She just takes it all in, wishing—Clara is certain—that she had a camera in her hand. Even now, she is framing her subject: her grown daughter, face contorted by outrage, sitting in the old wing chair with a pile of photographs on her lap.

  “I’m sorry,” Ruth says, sounding anything but. “I wish you weren’t still so worked up about all this. It’s ancient history. How can it possibly matter?”

  Clara is crying now. For such a long time—all her adult life, really—it has been difficult for her to muster tears. She has moved past her feelings as if they were scenery seen from a moving car. Anger, sadness, regret, loneliness—she kept going, and her painful thoughts remained stationary, like dusty signs on a road. But all Ruth has to do is…to be Ruth. Ever since first arriving in New York, Clara has felt tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. She has sprung a slow leak.

  “It matters,” she says. “How can you not understand that it matters? I’ve been trying—” She breaks off, gulping for air.

  “Oh, Clara, please, you must—”

  “You stop.” Clara finds her breath. “You stop this right now.”

  Ruth shakes her head.

  The phone rings again. KUBOVY WEISS. Ruth reaches for the receiver but doesn’t have the strength. She collapses back against her pillows, breathless even from that small effort.

  “Could you answer that for me, Clara?”

  “Why the fuck would I do that?”

  “Clara!”

  There’s that feeling again—unfamiliar, both terrifying and liberating. If Clara had to describe it, she would say it is a complete lack of caution. The sudden improbable removal—as if surgically excised—of a key aspect of her careful, guarded nature.

  “Fine,” she says. Her body is coiled, tense, like an animal ready to spring. She grabs the ringing phone.

  “Hello, Kubovy.”

  A split second of silence on the other end.

  “Is that Clara?”

  “Yes, Kubovy. It’s Clara.”

  “How are you, my beauty?”

  “I’ve been better.” And then, in a rush of words—“Kubovy, this book you’re doing with my mother. Please think—think about what you’re doing.”

  Another pause, slightly longer than the last. Even as a little girl, Clara imagined Kubovy’s mind as a calculator. Always computing, adding or subtracting, finding a way to make the equation work to his advantage.

  “I can’t accept it.” Clara fills the silence. “It’s too much.”

  “What are you saying?” Kubovy asks.

  She waits him out.

  “Clara, Clara,” he finally says. He has chosen his tack, adopting the weary, admonishing tone that Ruth already tried on her. “There’s another way to look at this, you know.”

  “Oh, really? And what is that?”

  “You’ve had a remarkable life. An interesting life. And part of the reason for that remarkable, interesting life is—”

  “My life hasn’t been so goddamned interesting,” Clara interrupts.

  Ruth shifts her weight on the bed, sinks lower into her pillows.

  “Well. I can’t speak to your current life in…where is it again—”

  “Maine,” Clara bites off.

  “Ah, yes. I would agree. Perhaps not so fascinating. But your childhood, my dear—you were a star!”

  Clara closes her eyes. Squeezes them tight so there is nothing but darkness. No images of flashbulbs popping outside the Kubovy Weiss Gallery. No frank stares, no sideways inquisitive glances from strangers on the street. None of that—but still, it all seeps in around the edges. Poison finding its mark.

  “I just wanted to be a kid.” Clara’s voice drops to a whisper. She can’t seem to stop crying. The images blur beneath her lids.

  “And you would have wanted your mother to be…what…baking cookies?”

  “You don’t get it.”

  “No, my dear, it’s you who don’t get it. You’ve been in such a privileged position. It’s sad that you can’t see it for yourself.”

  “Stop it, Kubovy. You don’t know me anymore. You don’t know anything about me.” She is breathless, unaccustomed to saying what she thinks. “Don
’t you dare treat me like a child.”

  “But you are acting like one.”

  Clara slams down the phone. She has momentarily forgotten about Ruth. Ruth stares up at her from the bed, seemingly unfazed by her behavior—or maybe she really is stoned on morphine.

  “I really do need that woman—what’s-her-name—to come in here,” says Ruth. “I’m sure she’s trying to give us some privacy, but—”

  “I’ll go get her.” Clara jumps to her feet. Glad to get away for a moment. Afraid of what she might say next.

  The phone rings again. Ruth doesn’t even try to reach for it. It rings and rings. Clara pictures Kubovy on the other end, pacing the floor of his gallery, cursing her under his breath in his native Turkish.

  “Clara.” There is an unfamiliar tone in Ruth’s voice. “I really don’t want to hurt you.” She seems almost to be pleading.

  Clara stops, one hand on the doorknob. She waits for more. She waits for her mother to say she’s made a mistake. That she understands. That she’ll leave ancient history where it belongs, locked up in the dusty archives of the past.

  “Did you hear what I said, Clara?” Ruth’s voice is weakening. “The last thing I want to do is hurt you—”

  “Then don’t,” Clara says. And walks out of the room.

  “RAIN!” Ruth looks out the fogged-up window of the Checker cab. “Why does it have to be pouring on this night—of all nights?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Clara’s father soothes her. He’s sitting on a folding metal jump seat, facing Ruth, Clara, and Robin. He reaches over and pats Ruth on her knee. Clara recognizes the expression on his face, though she’s used to seeing it directed at her or Robin. Pride. Nathan Dunne is proud of his young, beautiful wife who is about to have her first gallery show. He hasn’t seen any of the photographs; Ruth has kept them under wraps. She wants him to be surprised—to see her work hung on a gallery wall for the first time, the way the rest of the world will see it.