by Dani Shapiro
“I’m protecting Sammy,” Clara answers.
“Are you sure?” Jonathan is acting as if he knows something Clara doesn’t. It’s infuriating.
“What are you getting at?”
“I don’t know, honey.” He rubs her feet. “I just think—maybe—there’s going to come a time when—”
“She’s four years old!”
“All the more reason to start introducing the whole idea now, so it won’t seem like such a big deal, as opposed to someday having to actually sit her down and—”
She jumps up. Needing, suddenly, to get away from Jonathan. He’s talking about things he doesn’t understand.
“I think you’re protecting yourself,” Jonathan says quietly.
Her rage feels childish, even to herself. Jonathan’s only trying to help. She knows that. But still—
“Let’s go,” she says. Changing directions, hoping he’ll follow suit. It’s a quiet Monday afternoon and there’s a lot of work to do in the shop. They catch up on paperwork on Mondays, usually, especially in summer when the shop is jammed with tourists during the rest of the week.
“Clara, really, I—”
“Please.”
Something in her face must stop him. He adores her—this much she knows—and he feels for her, as much as anyone can. But how long will it be okay with him, the slammed door inside of her? He doesn’t entirely realize that she has no intention of opening it ever.
“Okay.” He rises from the wicker sofa. “Let’s go.”
At the shop, Sammy sits cross-legged on the floor, playing with a small pile of gemstones, trying to string them onto thin strands of leather. Jonathan has been letting Sammy play with the loose stones in his inventory since she was old enough to hold them in her hands. Newspaper is spread out beneath her, covering any of the cracks in the wood floor through which a single tiny garnet or freshwater pearl might fall.
“Here are the invoices from Bali.” Jonathan hands Clara a pile of fax paper, curled at the ends. “We need to order more of that yellow gold—you know, the kind I’ve been using for the bracelets—”
“Fine.” Clara makes a note.
“Oh, and Marjorie Waller stopped in on Saturday—she was very interested in the black diamond necklace.”
“Really!”
Only a few of Jonathan’s pieces were priced in the thousands; he just couldn’t afford to make them. But once in a while he fell in love with a stone—a black diamond, this time, glistening like wet coal. The necklace had been in the front case, displayed on a white cloth mannequin, for months.
“We’ll see what happens.”
“Mommy, look!” Sam holds up the leather strand, strung from one end to the other with pearls.
“Pretty, sweetheart.”
“Actually, I also forgot to mention that I got a call from a buyer in New York—from a store called Fragments in SoHo.”
Jonathan doesn’t look up when he says this. He focuses instead on a repair he’s working on, a broken clasp.
“What do you mean? How did they—”
“I sent my slides.”
“When?”
“A while back.”
Marketing and promoting Jonathan’s work has been Clara’s job. She’s the one who sends out his slides to some of the higher-end craft stores around the country. Portland, Boston, Seattle, Minneapolis.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Finally, he looks up from the broken clasp.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I just did it on a whim.”
New York. SoHo. The words don’t belong in this room. This cozy little shop with the worn wood floors, the elegant glass cases, the leather chairs propped in the corners in case husbands want to read the paper while their wives browse. SoHo. Kubovy’s face floats before her, smiling his leonine smile. Clara, my beauty. Come, let me look at you.
She feels a sudden hollowness.
“Well, what did the buyer say?”
“She wants me to come down—to show her my stuff in person.”
“I wish you had said something.” Her voice is sharp, wounded.
“It didn’t seem important.”
“I don’t want you to go to New York.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
But then he takes her in. Trembling, as if she’s in actual physical danger.
“Okay,” he says. “I’m sure she can decide from the slides.”
THE FORSYTHIA outside the kitchen window has started to bloom. Crocuses are pushing their hardy little heads through the still-cold earth in the front yard. And the air has lost some of its harsh late-winter bite. Spring has come earlier than usual to Southwest Harbor. Some years, it doesn’t come at all. The endless winter rages on, fading away only when the summer people arrive, claiming the island as their own.
Sam’s school is on spring break. Some of the families of Southwest go to Florida this time of year: Disney World, Fort Lauderdale, Key Biscayne. Others try to get in some late-season skiing. Many of the families travel together, rent houses to save money—but no one ever asks the Brodeurs. It isn’t that people don’t like Jonathan and Clara, quite the contrary. But they do feel—the moms and dads of Sammy’s friends—that the Brodeurs are a bit…remote. Hard to get a handle on. They don’t quite fit in.
Clara’s on the phone, trying to arrange a play date for Sammy, when the call-waiting beeps. Without thinking—without, for once, checking the caller ID—she asks Jenny Fuhrman’s mother to hold and answers the phone.
“Hi, it’s me.” Robin’s voice on the other end.
Clara leans against the counter, her legs suddenly rubbery. She had been shelling peas. These last couple of weeks she has found she has to constantly be doing something with her hands. Chopping vegetables. Letting down the hems of Sam’s jeans. Even crocheting—something she swore she would never do.
“Hi,” she says faintly.
Robin’s on her cell phone, somewhere on the street. Clara can hear the metallic sigh of a bus stopping at the curb, the sound of taxis honking, the high-pitched beep of a truck backing up. New York City traffic. Why is Robin calling? In the silence, Clara feels her body growing ice cold. Is it possible that Ruth—no. It can’t be. It’s too soon. Isn’t it? But what’s this? Her mind is racing, thoughts impossible to decipher as they zoom by, like one of those crawls at the bottom of the television screen gone completely berserk. Please don’t be dead. That’s all Clara can make out. Please don’t be—
“Robin?” Her voice thin with tension.
Still, Robin says nothing. Is this some kind of game? Clara hears a siren through the phone.
“Rob?”
“I—I can’t. Clara, it’s just too—”
The words are coming out in gulps. Robin is sobbing, Clara finally realizes. Sobbing. On the street. In broad daylight.
“What happened?” Clara asks. “Is Ruth—”
“No,” Robin manages to say. “No. That’s not—hello? Clara? Clara? Oh, fuck. I’ve lost you.”
Clara slowly replaces the receiver on its hook. Please don’t be dead. It was the only clear thought she had. What did it mean? Why did she care? She hadn’t planned on ever seeing Ruth again. She was finished with her mother. The slate of her life once more wiped clean. There was only this mess with Sammy to deal with. Sammy, who had been asking a few more questions with each passing day.
How old is my grandmother?
Why is she dying?
Has she ever asked about me?
And then, finally: Why can’t I meet her?
She stands frozen, waiting for the phone to ring again.
“Mom?” Sam has padded into the kitchen in her bare feet. “Was that Jenny’s mom calling?”
Shit. Jenny Fuhrman’s mom. Clara had completely forgotten about her.
“Sorry, sweetheart, let me just try her now.”
Clara picks up the phone, manages to dial with her shaky fingers.
“Hi, it’s Clara Brodeur—so sorry about that! Any
way, I was hoping maybe the girls could—”
Beep. Call waiting again.
“So do you think—okay, perfect. We’ll see Jenny here at three.”
Beep.
Clara lets it ring in her ear until it stops. Sammy peers into the refrigerator, then pulls out some turkey wrapped in wax paper. Blood rushes to Clara’s head—a swift sudden vertigo—and she sits down at the kitchen table. Flips through the ever-present pile of catalogs, trying to calm herself down. She has lived her life, all these years, without her mother in it—but with the knowledge, always the knowledge, that Ruth existed elsewhere. Hundreds of miles south, an airplane flight, a long car ride away. Had she somehow counted on that? On Ruth’s sheer existence?
“Mom?”
The spinning room slows to a stop.
“I want to see a picture,” Sam says in a small voice.
“I’m sorry, sweetie?”
“A picture,” Sam says. “Of Grandma.”
She walks over to the kitchen table, then sits down, hugging her knees to her chest. Her hair spills over her face, and she brushes it away.
“I don’t—” Clara begins, then stops. Grandma. Sam has already decided on a name for Ruth. Not Nana. Not Grammy. Clara doesn’t have the heart to tell Sam that Ruth isn’t really the grandma type.
She tries again. “Honey, I don’t really have—”
No more lies. The remnants of her past—the few things she has been unable to part with—are stuffed into a shoe box in the bottom drawer of her dresser, behind the long underwear and dozens of pairs of winter socks.
“Okay,” Clara says. Feeling Sam’s eyes on her, intent, darting all around her face. Reading her. “Okay.” She walks out of the kitchen and up the flight of stairs, past the framed family photos hanging along the landing. How many times has she looked at these photographs of herself, Jonathan, and Sam—on Hunter’s Beach, skating on Echo Lake, at picnics and barbecues—and thought There they are, that’s my whole family, like an artist painting over an unsuccessful canvas, covering the awkward, pained brushstrokes that came before?
Sam is behind her on the stairs, not letting Clara out of her sight. She follows her mother into the bedroom. Clara opens the dresser, feels through the bottom drawer for the shoe box. It’s from a store in New York—Harry’s Shoes on Broadway—the same box she took with her fourteen years earlier. She pulls it out and opens the lid, sifting through papers and letters, her birth certificate. Baby pictures of her and Robin. A snapshot of Nathan, a rolled-up diploma in his hand, standing on the steps of Low Library at Columbia. And then finally—the one photograph of Ruth that she kept—a photograph that Clara took herself on a sticky summer morning twenty-five years ago.
Mommy, I want to take your picture!
No, darling. Please—no.
Why not? You look so pretty. Please let me?
They were upstate, in Hillsdale, and had just finished shooting Clara and the Popsicle, the sugary purple juice dripping down Clara’s bare chest. Flies swirled around her in the summer heat. Laughing, Ruth lowered the tripod so that Clara could see into the lens.
Okay, sweetheart. Just this once. I’ll sit right here on these steps.
Ruth showed her how to turn the lens to bring everything into crisp focus.
Be careful!
Clara looked through the lens at her beautiful young mother, sitting in her frayed jeans and tank top on the splintery steps of their country house. Ruth’s hair hung in a long braid over one shoulder and she was completely unadorned, not a ring, not a bobby pin. Just plain Ruth. Clara pressed her finger on the button and heard the shutter click, just as Ruth had done thousands of times. Click. Click. Click.
Okay, that’s enough.
Ruth, laughing. An anxious, trilling sound.
Just a few more, Mommy?
No, Clara.
Please?
No!
A sharp, almost frightened note entered her mother’s voice.
That’s quite enough.
“Here’s your grandmother.” Clara hands Sammy the photograph, which is curled around the edges. The only one of its kind. Probably worth a fortune: the camera turned, for once, on Ruth Dunne. Sam holds it gingerly, as if it might disintegrate, and stares for a good long minute at the image of her grandmother. The lean legs in the faded jeans, the skinny arms, the high cheekbones and huge eyes. Clara’s waiting. She knows what Sam is going to say.
“She looks exactly like you, Mommy.” Sammy puts the photo back in the box and smiles, her first real smile in many days. “She looks exactly like both of us.”
Clara reaches for Sammy and wraps her in her arms. Rocks her the way she hasn’t since she was a little girl. Back and forth, a silent lullaby. Tears are streaming down Clara’s face. Seeing this—her daughter looking at the photograph of her mother, her daughter and mother together at least in this way—has unleashed something she doesn’t understand. Please don’t be dead. There is only one reason. Only one thing left to do.
“Sammy?” She holds Sam’s small chin, turns it so her child is looking right at her. “Sammy, do you want to go to New York?”
Chapter Seven
ON CLARA’S SECOND DAY of fourth grade, she gets off the bus a few steps after Robin, who dashes into school without waiting for her. Robin’s been doing this more and more lately—making sure there’s distance between herself and Clara, making absolutely certain that everyone knows her mother doesn’t take pictures of her. The woman who approaches Clara as she gets off the school bus has a round sweet face and short gray hair. Clara’s always been told not to talk to strangers, but this woman looks like she might be someone she knows.
“Clara?” The woman smiles. She’s holding a book bag from the Metropolitan Museum, and she has a couple of pens tucked into the breast pocket of her shirt. “Can I speak with you for a moment?”
The controlled chaos of drop-off at Brearley. The small yellow school buses from the West Side and downtown, idling curbside. The Upper East Side moms who have walked the few blocks to school with their girls, now standing in clusters. The girls themselves, their long shiny hair pulled neatly back in headbands and ponytails. Clara’s friends from the bus scatter. The first bell is in five minutes. She clutches her favorite notebook to her chest—spiral-bound, covered with decals of flowers, her name written in the top right-hand corner: Clara Dunne, Fourth Grade.
“I was wondering,” the gray-haired woman begins, “if I could just ask you a couple of—”
“I have to go,” says Clara. She feels suddenly scared—not scared like the woman is going to hurt her or try to kidnap her or anything. Scared like she just wants to get away before another word escapes the woman’s sweetly smiling lips.
“Wow, your mom’s pictures are causing lots of excitement, aren’t they?” the woman continues, trying a different tack.
“What are you talking about?” Clara asks. She inches her body away from the woman, moving toward the school’s entrance. “Who are you?”
“Beth Klinger,” she says. She digs into her shirt pocket and hands Clara a business card. NEW YORK POST is printed in big bold type above her name. “We’re doing a story on what happened at the gallery yesterday—”
Blood pounds in Clara’s ears. What happened at the gallery? Why is this woman at her school? Why does she want to talk to her? She takes a few steps back—she isn’t sure what to do—and bangs right into one of the mothers of a girl in the next grade up.
“Clara! Are you all right?”
Clara is afraid if she speaks she’ll start to cry. She hands the mother the business card, all crumpled from her fist. The mother scans it, then quickly looks up at the gray-haired woman, who is still standing at the curb.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” The mother says loudly. Clara doesn’t understand what’s going on. The noise in her head is deafening. She holds her notebook even closer, as if it might shield her.
“She’s just a little girl!” The mother moves toward the woman.
“Get out of here—before I call the police!”
The police? Clara lets out a small whimper. Everyone is looking at her. And everyone seems to know something she doesn’t know. She’s about to miss the first bell.
“Come on, honey.” The mother leads Clara into school, glancing backward to make sure the reporter isn’t following them inside.
That afternoon, the phone calls don’t let up. The headmistress calls Ruth. Ruth calls Nate. Nate has one of the partners in his law firm make a threatening call to the New York Post. Ruth calls Kubovy. Kubovy calls the Daily News—without telling Ruth, of course—and places a blind item about the questionable reporting practices of a certain rival newspaper. The Brearley mother calls a half dozen of her Brearley mother friends. Bound to happen. The murmurs swell. Lovely child. Who knows what’s going to become of her? The eighth-graders talk to the seventh-graders, who tell the sixth-graders, and so on down the line.
“So I heard someone threw a bucket of paint on your mother’s pictures of you,” one of Clara’s friends says at recess, “and wrote some bad words and stuff.”
Was that it, what the gray-haired lady had been talking about? Clara looks around the playground for Robin and spots her on the far side, with her back turned. She’s talking to some older girls. Is Robin avoiding her?
“That didn’t happen,” Clara says. She reaches her arms up and grabs the monkey bars. She wants to kick her friend. She feels, all of a sudden, like someone has just thrown paint all over her. Black, cold, dripping down her face, suffocating her. The playground hangs over the East River, separated only by a wire mesh fence. Clara wants to climb up and over the fence—to dive into the polluted water and let the current carry her away.