by Dani Shapiro
That is, if anyone shows up. A rumble of thunder. Lightning flashes across the sky like a strobe. Clara loves these Checker cabs, with their rounded hoods and roomy insides where you can sit across from someone while you bounce along. And she loves to be able to look at her father, who has put on his downtown best for the occasion—black jeans and a black sweater—the freshly ironed crease along the center of his jeans legs the only giveaway that he’s really an uptown lawyer.
“Of course it’s going to matter, Nate!” Ruth looks like she’s going to cry. She never wears makeup, but tonight her face is painted. A slash of red across her mouth. Eyes lined with charcoal, lashes thick and dark. Clara wants to wipe her mother’s face with a damp tissue, the way Ruth does when she has a runny nose. She doesn’t like all that color on her mother’s lips. It makes her look hard. Like a stranger.
Clara had watched Ruth as she got ready for the evening. Her mother looked almost like a little girl in her fuzzy slippers and panties, squinting at herself in the harsh light of the bathroom mirror. Ruth smiled unnaturally at her own reflection, then let out a deep sigh.
“This is supposed to be fun.” Ruth turned to Clara.
“What is, Mommy?”
“The opening,” Ruth said, dusting powder over her cheeks. “The party.”
“Parties are fun,” Clara said. She wasn’t sure what her mother meant. All she knew is that Ruth looked tense. All bottled up.
“The work is the best part,” Ruth said, crouching down so she could look at Clara directly. “The stuff we do together. The rest—I’d just as soon skip it.”
The taxi stops at a traffic light in Times Square. Dozens of small storefronts covered with iron gates, a blur of seedy, flickering neon. A car alarm is going at full tilt, a series of syncopated staccato blasts. A tall woman in a short skirt steps gingerly over a puddle in her high-heeled boots.
“Daddy, look—is that a man?” asks Robin, pointing to the tall woman.
Nathan peers out the window, through the pelting rain. “Seems to be, sweetheart.”
“Why is she dressed like that?”
“Some adults like to play dress-up.”
“But why?”
“Oh, please don’t start with the whys,” Ruth says under her breath, so softly that only Clara can hear it.
“Why, Daddy?”
Clara knows this bothers her mother—the way Robin never stops asking questions, the way these questions are always directed at their father. Clara wishes she could tell her mother that Robin never asks her anything because Ruth never answers. But even at four, she knows the way things have lined up in the Dunne family: Ruth has Clara. Nate has Robin. A perfect mathematical balance.
“Look, Daddy—that sign says S-H-O-, that spells shop!” Robin pipes up again. She looks at the pink flashing lights that precede it. “S-E-X. What does that spell, Daddy?”
Nathan and Ruth exchange a parental look: amused, shoulders shrugging. As if to say, What do we do now? But Robin’s already on to the next thing, her mind fixed on what’s right in front of her, like a small animal foraging for scraps.
“Will there be food at this party?” Clara wants to know.
“Wine and cheese,” says Ruth.
“What about juice?”
“I’m sure Kubovy has thought of that,” says Ruth.
“He does seem to think of everything,” says Nate.
The rain has slowed to a drizzle by the time the taxi stops on the corner of Broome and West Broadway. It’s a few minutes before six—Ruth doesn’t yet know about being fashionably late to her own openings. A few people are already gathered outside Kubovy Weiss. Thursday nights are reserved for these downtown openings; the galleries on the strip of West Broadway between Broome and Houston are lit up, doors propped open. Small groups move in the darkness from one well-lit space to the next. A man in jeans and a motorcycle jacket is walking alone, drinking from a plastic cup.
“Look, Mommy, there’s your name!” Robin says. She elbows Clara. “And yours too!”
Sure enough, painted in large bold type, across the glass front of the gallery, are the words RUTH DUNNE: THE CLARA SERIES. Clara spots Kubovy. He’s standing just inside the entrance. He sees their taxi and dashes outside, holding a huge black umbrella.
“Here you are,” he says excitedly. Ruth climbs out, and Kubovy looks at her from head to toe, taking in the floaty black ensemble, the crimson lips. “Magnificent,” he says, kissing her on both cheeks. “Nathan—welcome,” he adds, shaking Clara’s father’s hand. “Glad you could make it.”
Nate’s eyes flicker away. Clara can see that Kubovy makes him uncomfortable. Glad you could make it? Welcoming him to his own wife’s art opening? But Nate rises to the occasion, summons his lawyerly self, forces a smile.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he says.
Kubovy has already moved ahead of them, shepherding Ruth inside under his big umbrella, even though the rain has all but stopped.
“Gary Indiana’s on the confirmed guest list,” Clara hears him say. “And Ingrid Sischy’s supposed to come—I think she’ll show up, but you never know.”
Ruth’s hand covers her mouth as she walks in the door. Many years from now, Clara will wonder how her mother did it: how she stepped over the threshold of the Kubovy Weiss Gallery that rainy Thursday evening, bringing with her all her terrors, her insecurities and fears. What was going through her mind? Did she understand what was at stake? It was not the possibility of failure. Failure wouldn’t have changed her life. Nor, even, would a modest success. If her first solo show had come and gone the way so many first shows do, with perhaps nothing more than a two-line notice in the New York magazine listings, a brief mention in The Village Voice, Ruth would have just kept going, kept making her pictures—she might even have moved on to another subject. No, it was the slim but very real chance that RUTH DUNNE: THE CLARA SERIES would become an overnight sensation, as envisioned and orchestrated by Kubovy Weiss. That Ruth would go from art student anonymity to the beginnings of fame.
“Young ladies.” Kubovy takes Clara and Robin over to a table covered by a white cloth. “Have either of you ever had a Shirley Temple?”
Robin and Clara both shake their heads no.
“A perfect drink,” says Kubovy, handing them each a red concoction in a plastic cup. Then, over their heads, he notices someone walk in the door. “Please excuse me.”
Robin nudges her. “Look,” she whispers. She’s pointing to one of the photographs, but Clara is afraid to follow her sister’s finger. She takes a sip of her drink—sickly sweet—and fishes out a maraschino cherry. In her peripheral vision, she sees herself looming, huge images hanging on each of the white walls, illuminated by tiny powerful spotlights.
“You’re naked,” Robin whispers.
“I know,” Clara whispers back.
Where is her father? Where is her mother? She looks around the enormous space and sees Ruth, who is now surrounded by a small crowd: a man holding a spiral-bound notebook, a woman with frizzy red hair and platform shoes, an older gentleman in a suit, and a few people dressed identically in faded jeans and leather jackets.
One of them turns and notices Clara and Robin, standing near the bar. Ruth believes in letting the girls pick out their own clothing. For tonight, Robin has chosen sensible wide-wale corduroy pants and a forest-green sweatshirt she got last summer in Colorado. Clara is wearing a pink skirt and purple top; she picked it out because she thought it looked like something in Barbie’s wardrobe.
“That’s her,” the frizzy red-haired woman says, sotto voce. “That’s Clara.”
Ruth is deep in conversation with the older man in the suit. Her head is tilted forward, and she’s nodding intently. Kubovy brings over a small elegant woman with severe dark bangs.
“Ruth, this is Roselee Goldberg, from The Kitchen,” he says.
Clara’s ears, stereophonic, take in sound from all four corners of the gallery. She isn’t looking, she’s only listening.
And the bits she hears, over and over again, contain her own name. Clara. That’s the girl. Dunne’s daughter. No, darling—the younger daughter. Clara. What about the other one? No, just Clara. Her muse…
Blood pounds in Clara’s ears. She’s so small—only up to the waists of these people. The crowd is growing, visitors spilling in from the street. The floor is dotted with water splattered from shoes and dripping umbrellas. She reaches for Robin’s hand. Small, damp, quivering slightly, Robin’s fingers wrap around her own.
I’m scared, Robin, Clara wants to say. But the words are trapped somewhere between her heart and her mouth, stuck; nothing escapes. I don’t like this. Can she articulate the thought, even to herself? The room is blurry, the images thankfully receding into dim memories of themselves. Robin tries to pull her hand away—she needs both hands to drink her Shirley Temple—but Clara holds on tight.
Original, never seen anything quite—Sold-out show, have you heard? Subversive in their own way—quite brilliant really. Conversation swirls around her, words she doesn’t understand. High pointy heels, platform boots, fat veiny ankles. The hems of black skirts. Bellies straining over belt buckles. Someone bumps into her, nearly spilling her pink-red drink all over her special outfit.
Excuse me, young lady—oh, it’s you! It’s the girl in the pictures!
Finally—through the sea of legs—Clara sees her father. He’s the only man standing alone in this room full of cliques and packs. At the sight of him, her gaze clears. He is in front of a single photograph, his back to the crowd. She looks—for the first time this evening, she looks directly at what’s hanging on the wall.
Blown up so that it actually appears life-sized, most of the foreground of the picture is taken up with a bed. Soft ivory sheets, the kind that look as if they’ve been washed a thousand times and dried on a country laundry line. Sheets that smell like lavender and freshly cut grass. A striped Navajo blanket, pushed to the edge of the mattress by the little girl at the center of the bed, who is lying on her stomach, her legs splayed carelessly open. Her head is turned to the side, eyes closed, as if in sleep. Next to the little girl—this is the first but hardly the last time in her life that Clara will think of herself as that girl, as someone entirely other than who she is—is a big stain, spread out from beneath her bare buttocks.
A shiny white plaque is affixed to the wall to the right of the photograph. Robin, still holding Clara’s hand, walks over to the plaque and squints at the small lettering.
“The A-C-C-I-D-E-N-T,” she spells out. “What does that mean, Daddy? What’s that word?”
“Accident,” Nate says hoarsely.
Clara remembers—it’s a little hazy now, since Ruth took this picture more than a year ago, when she was only three—the way she had peed in her bed during the night, when they were staying at the house upstate. The way Ruth, when she saw the stain on the sheets, the room bathed in sunlight, Clara lying there—I’m sorry, Mommy!—didn’t get mad like some other mothers might. She didn’t even strip the bed. Instead, she waited until nighttime and set up the shot, pole lights and silver reflector in place. Like that, sweetheart. Pretend you’re really sleeping. Pretend you’re dreaming about something wonderful. Move your chin down a bit, Clara. Open your legs.
“Quite something, isn’t it?” Kubovy appears at Nathan’s side. “To my mind, it’s the most—”
“We’re leaving,” Nathan says, very quietly.
“Excuse me?” Kubovy takes a half step back.
“You heard me,” says Nathan. “I’m taking my girls—” He glances over at Clara and Robin, then leans closer to Kubovy. “How could you encourage this?” His voice is shaking with rage. “What were you thinking?”
Clara isn’t sure why her father is so angry, but she knows it must have something to do with her. She looks over to her mother. Ruth hasn’t moved from her spot in the center of the gallery. She’s surrounded by a new group of people. Someone brings her a glass of white wine and then clinks the plastic rim. A murmured swell of congratulations.
“Nathan, calm down,” says Kubovy. Beads of perspiration appear, like droplets of condensation, on his high shiny forehead. “I don’t think you understand.”
“I understand perfectly,” says Nathan. He bundles Clara and Robin under his arm. His black cashmere sweater is soft against Clara’s cheek. “And I’m taking them out of here—right now.”
“Nathan, please don’t make a scene. If you take Clara, people will—”
“Do you think,” Nathan says slowly, “that I give a flying fuck what these people will say?”
It is perhaps the only time in Clara’s life when she will ever see Kubovy unprepared. He had anticipated the excitement, the critics, the art world press. He had even allowed himself to imagine a sold-out show. But he had not taken into account the way a father might view the images of his little girl, blown-up, life-sized, naked—more than naked: exposed. No, he hadn’t given a second thought to Nathan, the uptight, uptown lawyer husband. The one who, Kubovy was certain, would be no more than a footnote in the ultimate biography of Ruth Dunne.
“Ready, girls?” Nathan crouches down and hugs them both.
Clara finally lets go of Robin’s hand.
“Daddy”—she starts to cry—“I want to go home.”
EVERY NIGHT SINCE she’s been in New York, Clara has crept into Robin’s apartment, careful not to disturb the equilibrium of family life. The boys doing their homework at the kitchen table. Elliot already asleep in her pink ruffled room. Ed closed off in their bedroom, watching basketball on a muted flat-screen television. And Robin—perched on the edge of a delicate antique chair behind her gleaming desk in the corner of the living room. The only sound in the whole apartment is the rapid clicking of her computer keys.
But tonight Clara makes no attempt to be quiet. Into the pristine, expensive silence of Robin’s apartment she flies, hair a mess, face red and sweaty from a fast walk through the city. She smells the sharp scent of her own body as she shrugs out of her down jacket, not bothering—for once—to hang it up. She needs a shower, though as priorities go it isn’t at the top of her list.
Robin looks up from her usual spot in the corner, her fingers frozen in midair above her computer like a pianist’s. She’s been to the hairdresser today; soft bangs sweep across her forehead, making her look years younger. A cup of tea—her favorite, Serenity Blend—rests on a coaster. Serenity tea, private yoga, alpaca throws neatly folded on ottomans and draped across the backs of armchairs—as if all this will keep Robin safe. As if the perfect paint chip, the best staff, the right schools, the lovely clothes will keep the past at bay. You’re wasting your fucking time! Clara nearly screams. She imagines—the image just slams into her mind—a wrecking ball demolishing the whole thing.
“What’s the matter?” Robin asks quickly.
Clara’s heart is racing. It’s been racing all day, galloping like a runaway horse. She’s told herself to calm down—she’s tried to calm down—but she can’t seem to catch her breath.
“Did you know?” she manages to ask. She doesn’t move from the spot in the foyer where she dropped her jacket. She’s afraid to walk all the way in. She’s been sucked in far enough—back into the vortex of their shared history.
“Did I know what?” Robin swivels around and watches Clara carefully as if…what? Is she afraid Clara is going to throw something perhaps? Break a precious piece of Murano glass?
“Mom’s book,” Clara says.
“What are you talking about?”
“All the photographs from the Clara Series—”
Her breath catches. Saying it out loud—saying it to Robin, of all people—makes the book even more real, somehow. All day long, she has walked miles around the city, trying to push it away. She left Ruth’s apartment and walked through the park to the East River, where she stood across from the entrance of Brearley and watched the girls and their mothers come and go. Had she ever simply been one of them, in her navy blue jumper? Or had
she always been different? She walked down the streets of the Upper East Side, past newsstands and shops, her childhood haunts. She ate lunch at the soda fountain in the pharmacy on Lexington, summoning the past. Trying to force herself back into it, if only to see if she could survive the journey.
“Calm down, Clara. Take a couple of deep—”
“I can’t.”
“Let’s have a look.” Robin faces her computer screen once again. “Come over here.”
Clara approaches her sister. So Robin hadn’t known. There was some small grace in that, at least. She stands behind Robin and peers into the small screen of her computer as Robin types RUTH DUNNE and CLARA into Google. A few seconds later, a list appears. There are more than seventy thousand entries. Robin begins to scroll down: first, the online biographies of Ruth, then a series of home pages from Ruth’s galleries—Paris, Madrid, Berlin, London—and then academic papers. Hundreds of them. Art students from all over the place, writing their dissertations about the role of Clara in the work of Ruth Dunne.
“Unbelievable,” says Robin. “I haven’t done this in years.”
Clara’s never been able to bring herself to look at any of this stuff. These perfect strangers who have their opinions—people who have spent years of their lives thinking about Clara and Ruth—studying the photographs as if they might find answers there.
Robin clicks randomly on one, written by a graduate student in women’s studies at Berkeley. The child acts as both metaphor and provocateur in Dunne’s early work. Clara skims the page, restless, jumpy. These images, at first, might be misunderstood as pornographic. But in fact, at its subversive best, Dunne’s work speaks to the profound and collaborative nature of mothering itself.
“I don’t know how you stand this,” Robin says.
“I don’t,” says Clara. “I don’t stand it.”
“There’s nothing here about a book,” Robin says, after a few more dizzying minutes of scrolling down. Robin’s about to close the laptop when Clara remembers the name of Ruth’s German publisher, Steiffel. It floats into her consciousness like a detail from a dream. It sounds huge and looming—a tower, a steeple.