by Dani Shapiro
“Oh yes it did,” another friend chimes in. “My mother told me. It’s in the newspaper.”
At the three-o’clock bell, the girls of Brearley depart for their various after-school activities. The West Siders and downtowners board their yellow buses once again; the nannies or mothers—sometimes the nannies and mothers—pick up the young ones and take them to piano lessons, golf lessons, aikido, karate, jujitsu. The limos and town cars arrive, and drivers hold doors open for girls who scramble inside, disappearing behind dark tinted windows.
And Clara—she is supposed to be getting on the school bus, as she does every day. She should be climbing the three steep steps and moving to her usual spot in the back, her knapsack bumping against the sides of the seats. But she can’t face the bus, not today. She looks up at the windows, the faces of her classmates looking down at her. If she gets on the bus, she’ll be trapped with their questions—questions she can’t answer. Instead, she waits until she’s pretty sure no one is looking and slips away, walking down the street just behind a small group of mothers and some first-grade children she doesn’t know. Do you want to get some ice cream, Molly? Taylor, do you want to come with us? The mothers have long burnished hair and are carrying identical purses—the size of doctor’s bags, fastened with small gold locks.
When they reach Second Avenue, Clara peels off. No one looks twice at a fourth-grade girl in a Brearley uniform walking down the avenue. Some parents let their kids walk home alone, though usually in groups. Clara knows where she’s going: the newsstand on the corner of 81st and Second. Inside, past the gum and Life Savers, the Tic Tacs and candy buttons, there is a long wall of every kind of magazine. And under the magazines, piled on the floor, the newspapers.
She picks up the New York Times and begins to leaf through, newsprint already smudging her sweaty hands. Which section would it be in? Certainly not the front. Metro? The Arts? She can’t find it, and the guy behind the counter—the one with the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth—is watching her. She almost loses her nerve, then spots it—in the upper right-hand corner of the front page of the New York Post: FOTO FRENZY! And then, in smaller type: FAMOUS FOTOG GETS BLASTED FOR KIDDIE PORN. Porn. Clara doesn’t know what the word means, but it sounds ugly to her. Like something spit out—a curse.
“You look, you buy,” says the dangling-cigarette man.
Clara digs all the way to the bottom of her knapsack and finds a quarter and a dime. She can’t bring herself to look at the man, who seems to be leering at her, like he knows some joke she doesn’t. She walks out of the newsstand and heads west. She’s never done anything like this before; she’s going to be in big trouble. Robin must be wondering what happened to her. She crosses Third Avenue, then Lexington, Park, Madison. The Post is folded and tucked into her knapsack, between her notebook and her American history homework. She’s waiting for a place where she can sit quietly and read the newspaper; she really needs to focus. Nobody’s going to tell her what’s going on—she knows that much. She’s on her own.
Three-thirty in Central Park. She feels suddenly small. Too small to be here in this vastness alone. She isn’t supposed to be in the park by herself, but what’s one more broken rule? A Rollerblader balancing a boom box on his shoulder whizzes past her—too close. Packs of moms speed-walk toward Fifth Avenue, pushing the baby joggers that have become all the rage. Somewhere, someone is playing a trumpet.
Clara locates a bench out in the open and sits down next to an elderly couple feeding the pigeons out of a brown paper bag. She pulls the Post from her knapsack and opens it to page four. The paper rustles in the warm breeze, part of it almost flying away. She straightens it out. She’s afraid to look—but she does. She looks. And there she is, staring back at herself. A gray, grainy newsprint version of Clara, Hanging, Ruth’s most recent work. Her own arms reaching up, muscles straining. Her legs flopping as she dangles from a thick rope swing—except, wait a minute. A black strip, the size of a piece of tape, blocks out her private parts. And another bisects her flat childlike chest. Her chest! She rubs at the paper. Maybe something is stuck to the page? Slowly—everything is a little blurry, hard to read—she makes out the beginning of the article below the picture:
Is it art? Or child abuse? These are the questions dogging famous lenswoman Ruth Dunne. Last night, at the trendy Kubovy Weiss Gallery, a group of women calling themselves Clara’s Angels took matters into their own hands, splattering several quarts of paint over Dunne’s latest artwork—if you can call it that, which Clara’s anonymous angels sure don’t. Clara, Dunne’s daughter—
Clara closes her eyes, tries to go inside of herself. She doesn’t understand everything, but she knows enough to be frightened. Angels. She doesn’t want angels. She doesn’t want to be someone who needs angels, strangers who think they can help her.
“Young lady?”
She looks around, startled. The old man on the bench is watching her with the unbridled curiosity endemic to either the very young or the very old.
“Yes?” He looks harmless enough, but still she moves a few inches farther away. Nothing feels safe to her. Not the park, not the skateboarders and Rollerbladers zipping by, not this old couple in wool sweaters, warming their wrinkled faces in the afternoon sun.
“Would you like to feed the birds?” He takes the brown paper bag from his wife’s lap, offering it to Clara with a shaky hand.
Clara bolts from the bench, pages of the newspaper scattering all around her. The breeze picks them up—she cannot catch them all.
“I’m sorry!” she cries.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” says the old man. He looks stricken. “Here, let me help you—”
“No!” She grabs the page with the photo—she doesn’t want anyone to see it, ever—and begins to run through the park. She isn’t even sure she’s heading in the right direction—she’s completely without a compass—so she just points herself at the towers looming above the tops of the trees in the distance.
It doesn’t take long for Clara to realize she is lost. She’s in the middle of Central Park, in the middle of Manhattan—her city!—but she has no idea how to get home. Home. She doesn’t even want be there, but what are her options? The bridges and ravines all look vaguely alike. The boat pond is familiar—she has been there dozens of times, but never by herself. She doesn’t know where it is in relation to anything else. And she doesn’t want to stop anybody to ask for help. Who can she trust? Disoriented, she just keeps spinning like a top, running, then walking this way and that, until finally the park spits her out at the corner of 72nd and Central Park West.
She knows where she is now. Her breath slows down. The dark façade of the Dakota rises like a castle before her. A group of Japanese tourists crowds at the entrance, snapping pictures. It’s been two years since John Lennon was shot, and paper-wrapped bouquets of flowers still lean against the sides of the iron gates. Someone has spray-painted LET IT BE in neon orange on the sidewalk. A uniformed doorman stands over the graffiti with a hose.
It is nearly six o’clock—more than two hours after she would have been expected—when Clara gets to her own front door. The brass knob is heavy and cool in her hand. She turns it slowly, as quietly as possible. She doesn’t need her key, and she doesn’t have to knock. The door is—as it always was in those years—unlatched. She lowers her knapsack to the floor without a sound. Maybe she can manage to get to her room without anyone noticing. She doesn’t want to see anybody. What can be said?
She’s going to be in huge trouble, probably. She wishes she could undo her life—her past, her family, her very existence—like a knot. Working it, little by little, until the whole thing comes unraveled. Until there’s nothing left but a floppy bit of string. This whole thing is her fault. If she hadn’t been born, then Ruth would never have wanted to photograph her. And if Ruth had never photographed her, neither of their names would be in the newspaper. And there would be no group of women calling themselves Clara’s Angels.
“I don’t care about your stupid rules and regulations!” Ruth’s voice, loud and insistent.
Clara stops in her tracks. Who’s Ruth talking to? Maybe—is it possible?—Ruth doesn’t even realize she hasn’t come home until now. She creeps a few steps into the foyer and peeks into the living room. Her mother is pacing back and forth, talking into a cordless phone.
“I know it’s only been a few hours, but this is a missing child! What don’t you understand about that?”
“I’m here,” Clara calls out softly.
“Let me talk to your supervisor.” Ruth hasn’t heard or seen her. “Nathan? Nathan, will you please get on the goddamned phone and deal with these people?”
It is then that Clara notices her father. He is slumped on the sofa, his head buried in his hands. He’s never home from the office this early. She feels suddenly sick to her stomach.
“I’m here!” Clara calls again, hiding half of herself behind the door frame.
A clatter, as Ruth drops the phone on the coffee table.
“Oh, thank God!”
Nathan gets to the foyer a few steps ahead of Ruth. His face is so pale it appears to be almost blue above his starched white shirt. He has sweat stains beneath his armpits. He says nothing, not a word. He simply crouches down and folds Clara into his wide, concave chest. She feels his ribs, the long muscles of his arms, the pounding of his heart. His whole body is freezing cold.
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” Clara whispers.
Behind her, she hears Robin coming down the hall from their bedroom, the soft squeak of her sneakers.
“No, I’m sorry,” Nathan says. His hands are trembling. He strokes her hair, which has come loose from its ponytail.
“What were you thinking?” Ruth looms over them. Clara looks up at her mother. A vein has popped out in her forehead, and she is panting, out of breath. “How could you—don’t you realize—”
“Shut up, Ruth.”
Robin and Clara both stare at their father.
“Excuse me, Nathan, but—”
“Just shut up, Ruth.”
Nathan’s voice is completely calm, as if telling his wife to shut up is part of the regular course of their household business. He has not let go of Clara. He is still stroking her hair, his arms wrapped around her. Rocking her back and forth like she’s a baby.
“I went to school, looking for you,” Nathan says to Clara. His voice catches. “Honey, you never, ever should have—”
“I know, Daddy.”
“I looked everywhere. I thought maybe you had stayed inside, that you were scared by that reporter—”
“I was scared, Daddy. That’s why”—her words are coming out in big staccato gulps—“that’s why I—”
“Sweetheart, you have to promise me—no matter what happens, you must never, ever—”
“I promise.”
“Ever again.” He has tears in his eyes.
“I promise.”
Nathan glances up at Ruth, who is still standing there. Muted. Silenced. For the first time in their family life, it is as if she does not exist.
“And I’m going to make a promise to you, Clara,” Nathan says.
“What?”
“The photographs will stop.”
“What do you mean, Daddy?”
“Exactly that. There will be no more photographs.”
Everything slows down. Inside of her, opposites collide. Joy and terror. Wholeness and emptiness. Hope and impossibility. She can hardly contain it all. She doesn’t have any idea what she’s feeling, except that she may explode.
“Nathan!” Ruth finds her voice. “We’re not going to let a bunch of crazies—or the New York Post—dictate how we live our lives! Think about what you’re saying. Don’t say something you’ll—”
Nathan doesn’t even glance at his wife. He flicks a hand at her, shooing her away like she’s a flea.
“Oh, I won’t regret this, Ruth,” he says. “There are many things I’m sure I’ll regret—but not this.”
SAMMY in New York City. Sammy, standing in front of the Apthorp, gazing up at its grand arched entrance like a tourist. It’s about as likely a sight as Sammy in a space suit, walking on the moon. An hour-long flight from Bangor—sixty airborne minutes and a bumpy cab ride from LaGuardia—it seems impossible but true. They are here.
“This is where you grew up?”
Clara watches as her daughter stares into the courtyard. The iron gates, the gray stone fountains. The doorman in his navy blue uniform, who nods at Clara in recognition. An older woman with an angular face, her white hair cut into a severe bob, strides through the gates. She sweeps past them without a glance. Sammy watches her as she walks to the corner and hails a cab.
“Yes, right up there.” Clara points. “On the top floor.”
Sam looks up at the building and squints, as if trying to make out her mother as a little girl. Clara in her Brearley jumper. Clara sleeping in her room. To Sam, it must look like her mother grew up in a castle. Clara can feel it happening: the longing, the desire. Her own childhood, recast in Sam’s fantasies as something shiny and sophisticated. Something to envy. Sam turns to Clara, eyes full of wonder. So this—this—is where her mother comes from.
Jonathan is holding Clara’s hand, Sam’s pink plastic Hello Kitty suitcase and their duffel bag by their feet. Waiting—for what? Clara’s not quite ready to go inside. There’s something still left to say, the one thing that hasn’t been said because Sam hasn’t known to ask.
“Sam, before we go upstairs,” she begins.
“What?” Sammy asks. She looks nervous, like maybe Clara’s going to change her mind.
“I want to tell you something.”
“Are you going to tell me that Grandma is already dead?”
Sammy looks straight ahead into the courtyard as she says this, her voice breaking. God almighty. Is this what she’s been thinking?
“Oh, Sammy—how could you even—of course not! I would never!”
Sam shrugs. A perfect nine-year-old pretense at not caring.
“I just thought maybe—”
“No. Your grandmother is not dead,” Clara says. “But I want to prepare you. She looks very thin—very sick—and she pretty much can’t get out of bed.”
“That’s okay,” Sam says. “I’ve seen people like that on TV before.”
“Well, it may feel a little different in real life. And another thing. Your grandmother…” Clara pauses. Is this really necessary? She’s gone back and forth about it. Of course it’s necessary. She can no longer choose what to tell or not tell, doling out small nontoxic bits of information like goody bags at a kid’s birthday party.
“Remember I told you she’s an artist—that she spent her life taking pictures?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I think you need to understand that she’s pretty well known.”
“What do you mean? Who knows her?”
“She’s famous,” Jonathan interjects. “She’s a famous photographer.”
Sam is chewing on her lower lip, a sure sign of stress. When she was a little kid, sometimes she bit her lips until they bled.
“How long has she been famous?”
“Pretty much forever,” Clara says.
“When you were a little kid?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
Clara pulls her hand away from Jonathan’s. She is quickly irrationally furious. She hears the wonder in Sam’s voice, the beginning of excitement. Why did Jonathan have to use the word famous? Why couldn’t he have downplayed it at least a little bit? Famous. What does that mean to a nine-year-old girl? Britney Spears is famous. That peroxide-blond rich girl—the one whose tanned sliver of a midriff is always on view—Paris Hilton? She’s famous, though for what, Clara isn’t exactly sure. Sammy’s probably imagining hordes of screaming fans surrounding the Apthorp. Ruth! Ruth! We just want your autograph!
“Why is she famous?” Sammy asks. She seems to almost taste
the word, to savor it in her mouth like a delicious treat.
“Because of some pictures,” Clara says.
She begins to walk into the courtyard, ushering Sam inside.
“What kind of pictures?”
Enough. Enough questions.
“What kind of pictures, Mom?”
“Honey, one thing at a time. We’ll talk about it later, I promise.”
They walk across the cobblestones and into the elevator. This time the ride takes almost as long as it used to in the old days: The widow of the celebrated Broadway composer—Clara can’t for the life of her remember his name—gets off on 7, the doors open and close for no reason on 10, and then a couple of teenage girls, customized iPod cases attached to their vintage leather belts, get off on 11. Sammy can’t stop staring at the teenagers. Heads bobbing, turquoise necklaces swaying back and forth as they listen to their music, oblivious to the three Brodeurs scrunched into a corner to make room for them.
“Do they live here?” Sammy asks, once the girls get off the elevator.
“I have no idea,” Clara answers faintly. The doors close, and she feels suddenly, crushingly claustrophobic.
“But it’s the middle of the day,” Sam says. “Shouldn’t they be in school or something?”
“I don’t know,” Jonathan says. He’s tense, Clara realizes. She leans against him, trying to breathe.
When they finally emerge—the long corridor stretching before them—Clara gives Sam the once-over. The shiny dark hair spilling in waves down her back. The pink corduroys, the perfect little white T-shirt, the neckline embroidered with flowers. As much as possible, she tries not to think of Sam’s impossible beauty—the knowing eyes, the finely honed cheekbones so startling in a nine-year-old. But that’s the first thing Ruth will see, of course. A thought lurches across Clara’s mind before she can block it out: Perhaps Ruth will be unconscious. Perhaps in a coma. She feels her spirits lift for a moment, before she realizes what she’s wishing for. Evil, terrible.