by Dani Shapiro
The mother—in this case overshadowing the artist—has taken what appears to be a conscious step back, in order to consider the effects of her work on her daughter, a prepubescent girl. Having interrupted her gaze in order to look inward, Dunne then reemerges with an even more powerful assertion of her work, as if her explorations have given her further license, both as an artist and as a mother—or perhaps a renewed acceptance that the two are indistinguishable.
What a load of nonsense. Nathan had to go away on a business trip, is all. Three days in London—and Ruth was suddenly free. Had she always known the day would come when she’d have Clara to herself again—that wild containment in her eye, that aliveness like none other?
“Wake up, sweetheart.” The voice, a whisper.
Clara slowly blinks her eyes open. She knows before she knows. This is how it has always been, since that very first day, six years earlier, when she put the lizard in her mouth. She wonders, sometimes, whether somehow she has asked for this, whether she has brought it upon herself—her mother’s attention. After all, Ruth has never tried to photograph Robin. Not even once.
“Let’s go, Clara.”
She stumbles out of bed, rubbing her face. What time is it? The glow of the orange digital clock reads 11:47. It’s almost midnight!
“Where are we going?”
“Quiet…. We don’t want to wake your sister.”
Robin. They can’t leave Robin alone in the apartment. Surely Ruth knows this. Surely she’s thought it through. The inside of Clara’s head is a jumble of words, like a game of Scrabble. Nothing is forming, nothing makes sense. As they creep by Robin’s door, which is cracked open, Clara catches a glimpse of her sleeping sister. Robin is lying on her stomach, her legs scrunched under her like a turtle tucked into its shell. Through the window, the light of the moon illuminates the long curve of her spine.
Clara wants nothing more than to climb into Robin’s bed and curl around her sister’s warmth. She can almost feel the slow beating of Robin’s heart, her sweet midnight breath.
“Mommy, please, let’s not—”
“Ssshhh.”
Together, they tiptoe down the rest of the hall to the foyer. Ruth has Clara’s denim jacket all ready to slip on over her cotton nightgown. The camera bag and tripod are by the front door.
Finally, Clara finds her voice.
“Mommy, we can’t leave Robin alone. What if she wakes up and can’t find us?”
The months of not being photographed has given her this bit of strength. She’s ten years old now, and she thinks she knows right from wrong.
Ruth stops gathering her equipment for a moment and turns to look at Clara.
“What kind of mother do you think I am?”
“I just—”
“Look in the living room,” Ruth says. “Go on, take a look.”
Clara peers around the corner into the living room. There, sleeping on the sofa under one of the extra blankets, is Ruth’s newest intern, a girl from Pratt.
“Okay?” Ruth whispers harshly. “Are you satisfied?”
Clara is silent. Strangely ashamed. She should have trusted her mother—she should have known better.
The elevator ride takes forever, descending an inch at a time. The wood-paneled interior, the small bench—it reminds Clara of a scene she saw in a recent movie, of a priest in a confessional. And even though she’s half-Jewish, even though she’s never so much as set foot in a church, she wishes—right now she wishes—that a panel would slide open in the elevator and a priest would be on the other side. Tell me, my child. Tell me what brings you here. A warm fatherly voice to whom she could spill everything inside her, washing herself clean.
They’re on the fifth floor before Clara speaks again.
“Where are you taking me?” Her voice is small.
“To the park.”
Isn’t it dangerous? The words ricochet, remain unsaid. They pass the fourth floor, then the third. Just put yourself in your mother’s hands. Whose thought is that? Who is speaking in Clara’s head? Give in to this, give in. You have no choice.
The doorman doesn’t react as they walk past him, onto the desolate street at this hour—as if a mother and her young daughter lugging heavy photographic equipment down Broadway at midnight is in the order of usual business. Clara tries to make eye contact with him as they leave. If anything happens to them, she wants him to remember. So that he can tell the police.
Ruth turns west on 78th Street.
“I thought we were going to the park,” Clara says.
“We are going to the park. Riverside Park.”
Could she say no? You have no choice. That voice again in her head.
“I’m scared,” she says.
Ruth stops right there in the middle of 78th Street. She leans her tripod against a building, then crouches down so that she’s looking up at Clara.
“Would I ever let anything happen to you?”
Clara remembers her shame from just a few minutes earlier. Ruth is a good mother. Ruth loves her—so much, as Ruth would say, so much, her thin arms crushing her into a breathless hug.
“No,” Clara says quietly. She shakes her head for emphasis. “I know that.”
“Okay, then. I’m glad that’s settled.” Ruth straightens up. “Because now we have work to do.”
The park looms before them, black and empty save for the street-lights, their bluish-white halos shining in the misty air like luminous planets. A man in a windbreaker walks a small dog along the edge of the park, his shoulders hunched against the darkness, a small plastic bag in his hand. Clara looks up at the windows of the tall stately buildings along Riverside Drive, searching for signs of life. A white flicker of a television screen. The glow of a bedside lamp, a dining-room chandelier, the end of a very late dinner party. If people peered out their windows, would they see Ruth and Clara, two small figures entering the park? Would they see Ruth move swiftly to the location she has already chosen, just inside the stone walls, where the gnarly roots of an old tree have emerged from the ground?
“Right here, Clara,” Ruth says, pointing to the mound of earth between the roots. “This is the spot.”
Ruth is breathless from carrying all that equipment—no assistants tonight—and rests for a moment on her tripod as if she’s an old woman and it’s a cane.
“What do you want me to do?” Clara asks. She can hear the strain in her own voice. Can’t her mother hear it too?
“I brought something,” Ruth says, pulling a thin white blanket from her tote bag. “Here. Wrap yourself in this.”
Clara does as her mother asks. She wraps the blanket around her shoulders.
“No, darling. Take off the jacket and your nightgown—”
That old feeling descends upon her. The numb floating—not altogether unpleasant, really. She can leave the shell of her body behind like those cicadas she’s seen littering the ground in Hillsdale. She can shrug out of her skin, the same way she now shrugs out of her denim jacket. She then—quickly, quickly, before she can form a thought about it—pulls her nightgown over her head. The June breeze hits her ribs, the soft flesh of her buttocks.
“Like this.” Ruth wraps the blanket around and around her. Mummifying her.
“I can’t move!”
“Let me help you.”
Ruth cradles Clara in her arms, then lowers her to the ground. The moist spring earth is cool and damp. Clara can feel it, even through the layers of the blanket.
Ruth takes a couple of steps back, frames the image with her hands.
“Beautiful,” she says quietly.
She works quickly now, setting up her tripod on a flat patch of grass. She knows exactly what time the moon will be at its fullest, setting in the western sky. There are no pole lights tonight, no generator running power through thick electrical wires. Just this: the enormous, yellow moon, bathing the park in its glow.
Clara tries to breathe. The blanket is tight—too tight. She concentrates on the moon, watch
ing thin clouds drift across its face. When she was a little girl, she always used to be able to find the man in the moon. Now she doesn’t see him, no matter how she tries.
“Mommy, I feel bugs in my hair!”
She’s not just saying it, she really does feel something creepy and crawly, moving up the back of her neck. Her arms are trapped inside the cocoon of the blanket, so she can’t even reach up and swat whatever it is away.
“You’re just imagining it.” Ruth fiddles with the lens of her camera. “Don’t move, Clara. I have to take these pictures very, very slowly, so it’s important that you—”
“I’m not imagining it!”
This wasn’t Hillsdale either. This was the city—the place where huge rats darted across Broadway at dusk, where cockroaches scattered when she opened the kitchen cabinets late at night. Clara’s heart starts to pound against the wall of her chest.
“Mommy!”
“Okay!” Ruth is trying not to look mad. She strides over to where Clara lies and crouches down, combing her long fingers through Clara’s hair. She rubs the back of Clara’s neck, her touch more efficient than warm.
“Is that better?” she asks.
Clara nods. It is better. She takes a deep breath, tries to relax. She needs to find that floating, suspended feeling again. To lose herself entirely. Someday—when she is a grown woman with a little girl of her own—she will realize that she has never forgotten a single one of these moments. They are what remains of her childhood, a worn deck of cards that she can shuffle through, again and again. Here—under her mother’s lens—is where she is certain she exists. See? In the sharp outline of her pale body in the white blanket, set against the bed of leaves, the rough, knotted roots? This night happened.
“Keep completely still. Close your eyes, Clara.”
The shutter clicks. Something is tickling the inside of Clara’s nose, and she blows hard, trying to get rid of it.
“You moved!”
Clara opens her eyes.
“But you were finished taking the picture!”
“No, I wasn’t. I have to do this at an incredibly slow speed. Each shot takes four or five seconds, because of the light.” Ruth shakes her head, as if irritated at having to explain. “Let’s try again.”
She walks over to Clara, moves her legs a bit to the side. She musses up Clara’s long dark hair, then places a few strands across her cheek.
“There, that’s better. A bit askew.”
“What’s askew?”
“Never mind.”
Clara closes her eyes again. She tries every trick she knows to stay still. She counts backward from one hundred, slowly, inserting Mississippi between each number. She hears the shutter click once, twice. The sound of her mother turning the ring around the camera’s wide, fat lens.
“Now turn your head the other way, sweetie,” her mother says. “Perfect—now stay just like that.”
Seventy-four, Mississippi. She’s having a hard time floating away—weighed down by the blanket, the way that her arms are pressed to her sides and her legs are stuck together. Seventy-three, Mississippi. How long can she do this before she explodes? That’s what her body feels like—something ticking. A time bomb. Her blood is raging, her heart thrumming like a small, frightened animal’s. Seventy-two, Mississippi. She can’t do this for another second—she just can’t.
Her eyes fly open. Her mother is towering over the tripod, a shadowy figure lit from behind by the moon. Mommy, she starts to say. But then the moon starts spinning in the sky—the whole park fragmented, like the inside of a kaleidoscope—and Clara begins writhing, trying to free herself from the blanket.
“Clara!”
“Get this thing off of me!” Clara screams.
“Okay, sweetie, okay—calm down—”
“I can’t calm down!”
She’s screaming and screaming now. Lights turn on in the apartments just across Riverside Drive, the outlines of people peering out their windows.
Ruth unwraps the blanket, her hands shaking.
“Jesus, Clara, stop. Somebody’s going to call the police—”
“I don’t care!”
Maybe Clara’s Angels will come. She’s never met any of them, these strangers who have decided she needs defending. Maybe one of them will swoop down from the night sky, gossamer wings flapping madly, hoping to save her.
“Here, put this on. Quick.” Ruth pulls Clara’s nightgown over her head.
For the first time in her life, Clara senses her mother’s fear. Ruth’s whole face is tight, her eyebrows knitted together. She hands Clara her denim jacket, then closes up the camera bag. Her hands are still trembling.
“My God, Clara, you didn’t have to—you could have just—”
Clara is beyond hearing her. The screams have died down, but now she can’t stop crying. Ruth hoists all her equipment onto one shoulder, then holds Clara’s hand, half dragging her away from the park.
In the distance, a siren. The flashing red and blue lights of a police car racing down 78th Street. Ruth grips Clara’s hand more tightly. The car stops at the corner, just as they’re crossing Riverside, and a young cop rolls down his window.
“Excuse me, ma’am?”
“Yes, officer?”
Never has Clara heard her mother sound quite so obedient.
“There was a report of some screaming—a child screaming?”
The officer looks at Clara, her long hair matted to her wet cheeks.
“Is everything okay, ma’am?”
“Absolutely,” Ruth says. “Thank you.”
The officer is still staring at Clara. He’s not sure whether to stay or go. Is the red-faced girl in front of him the one who was screaming? Is he missing something? Or is there a terrible thing happening—right now—deep inside Riverside Park?
“What’s your name?” the officer asks.
It takes a few seconds for Clara to realize.
“Me?” She points to her chest.
“Yes, you.”
“Clara.” Less than a whisper.
“Clara, are you all right?”
She can feel a pulse beating in her mother’s hand. She thinks—in quick succession—of her father in London, her sleeping sister at home, Clara’s Angels hovering above her like wispy clouds in the darkness. Does she even think it? I could ruin everything.
“Yes,” she says more strongly. “I’m fine.”
“Okay then,” the officer says. His window glides up, cutting him off from them as he engages his siren again—the sound makes Ruth jump—screeches around the corner, and up toward the park’s entrance.
EACH DAY, as the dawn light filters through the east-facing windows over Broadway, Clara has a moment—a split second—of wondering: Where am I? A curiosity that quickly turns into a vague but unmistakable nausea. She hasn’t felt sick to her stomach with such regularity since she was pregnant with Sam.
She shifts on the sofa and opens her eyes. Sunlit beams of dust hang in the air, as if from a movie projector. A thin film covers everything. The coffee table, the piles of art books, the ornate black fireplace mantel—all are slightly gray. She looks across the living room at Jonathan and Sam, sprawled on the futons they bought at Laytner’s Linens the day they got to New York. The only way we’re sleeping here, Clara had said at the time, is if we’re sleeping together. And so together they’ve slept, for three nights running now. Ever since Rochelle, the hospice nurse, made it perfectly clear that Ruth could not—under any circumstances—be left alone.
“She’ll try to get out of bed herself,” Rochelle had said. “She won’t follow instructions.”
“And so?” Robin had asked Rochelle. “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” Squinting into her BlackBerry. Multitasking.
“The worst thing that could happen? Okay. Well, she could fall. Break a rib. Break a hip. Be lying on the floor all night, with no way of—”
“All right,” Clara quickly interrupted. “We’ll call the agency. Ask t
hem to send someone over for the evening shift.”
“Mom’s not going to go for that,” Robin said flatly. “No way.”
“Well, what do you think we should do?”
Robin looked up from her BlackBerry.
“I don’t know, Clara. Here’s a radical idea—why don’t you decide?”
“Hey,” Jonathan said. “Is that really necessary? Everyone’s a little tense here. Can’t we just—”
“Sorry,” Robin said. “But honestly, I’ve had it.”
She pushed back into her chair, then rummaged through her purse.
“Where’s my goddamned lipstick?” she asked. Her head was bent forward, her mouth tight. She looked as if she might cry.
Maybe Peony can—the words lodged themselves in Clara’s throught. No. That’s not right.
“We’ll stay,” Clara said quietly.
Jonathan and Sammy both looked at her.
“Really?” Jonathan asked, hesitant. “Honey, are you sure you want to?”
Clara looked at him, the wall behind her eyes crumbling into nothing.
“There’s no choice,” she said. Finally—it was oddly liberating—no choice.
Sam stirs on her futon. An arm thrown over her eyes, blocking the light. She’s been sleeping soundly every one of the three nights they’ve been here. Sleeping better, eating better. She is—Clara has to admit—a happier child. A weight lifted. A heaviness, an emptiness, gone. Clara hadn’t understood this; she still doesn’t entirely understand it. How could Sam have felt the absence of something she hadn’t even known existed? How could a secret have gathered so much power over the years, rolling into every corner of their lives, gaining strength and velocity with each passing day? And worst of all, how could Clara not have seen it?
“Good morning.” Jonathan sits up, rubbing a hand over his face. He’s wearing his one pair of striped pajamas; Clara’s not used to seeing him like this. At home he sleeps in the nude.
“Hey.” She stands and stretches.
Sam’s still out cold.
He comes over to her and pulls her close. She can feel his heart beating. He smells different, away from the materials of his work. Guest bath soap, Ruth’s old shampoo, the lemony scent of laundry detergent.