Black & White

by Dani Shapiro

  “Did you talk to her about the help situation?”

  “She wasn’t in any shape to discuss it.”

  Robin turns to the Chinese food. She places the white paper cartons on the kitchen counter, lining them up according to size. Clara can see a small vein in her temple throbbing.

  “We should have ordered from Shun Lee,” Robin says.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Clara says.

  “Of course, it doesn’t matter. I’m just saying.”

  The kids voices rise and fall; Clara strains to hear Sammy. They’re in the living room. It seems that Clara and Robin’s old Monopoly board, amazingly still intact, is the great equalizer. The language of Boardwalk and Park Place, Short Line Railroad and Jail—No, I want to be the banker!—sliding them easily past any awkwardness.

  “Can I get you a drink?” Clara hears Ed ask Jonathan, as if Ruth’s apartment is his own. They’re with the kids in the living room, next to the liquor cabinet, which probably hasn’t been opened in years.

  “Excellent idea.” Jonathan’s voice, sounding forcefully cheerful. The bonhomie of men with nothing in common—just like the children—looking for a way to connect. Snatches of conversation drift into the kitchen, where Clara and Robin are setting out the plates and silverware, buffet-style. Are you a bourbon man? She has some Knob Creek in here. Clara expects they’ll be talking about sports next.

  “Robin.” Clara takes advantage of a moment alone with her sister. “We need to make some sort of schedule.”

  “Aren’t we using chopsticks?”

  “There aren’t enough.”

  “Be sure to put out a plate for Peony,” Robin says.

  “Of course,” says Clara. Peony’s entrenchment has gone a step further, from glorified assistant to member of the family.

  Did Robin not hear her?

  “A schedule,” Clara says again.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, maybe switching off nights staying with Mom—”

  “Not possible.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Robin crosses her arms, as if prepared to make a closing statement.

  “I have three children. And an incredibly demanding job.”

  “I didn’t realize this was a contest,” Clara says. She tries to keep her voice mild, her face expressionless.

  “Believe me, I’m not competing with you, Clara. I’m just stating the facts.”

  Despite the best efforts of cosmetic dermatology, small areas of Robin’s face show signs of stress: the ever-present throbbing in her temple, a small, almost imperceptible twitch below her left eye.

  “So you expect me to stay here every night with Sam and Jonathan?”

  “I don’t expect anything. I’m just telling you what my limits are.”

  “Then we need to find somebody,” Clara says. “I’m not going to be able to—” Her voice cracks. “I mean, there’s no way I can handle it.”

  There, she’s said it.

  “No way,” she repeats, for emphasis.

  “I can help.” Peony appears—as she always seems to—out of nowhere. She has floated into the kitchen on her little cat feet.

  “No!” Clara blurts out. “I mean, it’s not your job.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Peony,” says Robin. “But it’s not appropriate. Clara’s right. We need to get the agency to send someone.”

  “Mom’s not going to stand for it,” says Clara.

  “She’s not going to have a choice,” says Robin. She rolls her neck from side to side, trying to release tension. “Anyway, pretty soon it won’t matter. She won’t know the difference.”

  “That’s true.” Clara pauses. “How long before that happens, do you think?”

  “How can you talk about her like that?” Peony’s cheeks have turned bright red, the first time Clara has seen her betray any emotion whatsoever.

  “Excuse me?” Robin turns to her.

  “How can you talk about Ruth like she’s just some…I don’t know…some piece of garbage?”

  Robin and Clara stand shoulder to shoulder. Clara can feel a force field of heat around her sister’s body.

  “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that,” Robin says.

  “No, hold on a minute,” says Peony. “Do you both realize what an amazing—I mean, she’s a role model for a whole generation of—”

  “A role model,” Clara repeats.

  “Yes.” Peony seems to have grown two inches taller. She squares her shoulders, buoyed by the full force of her self-righteous indignation.

  “She was—she is—our mother,” says Robin. She’s speaking very softly now, as if to a young child.

  “That’s what I’m saying!” Peony cries out. “How can you not understand how lucky you are?”

  THE KUBOVY WEISS GALLERY—in the dead center of the 1980s—was on the Rolodex of every Wall Street investment banker and bond salesman looking for a creative way to spend whatever was left over of his year-end bonus after buying the Porsche and the house in the Hamptons. Clara sometimes wondered what would have happened to Ruth’s career if she had been working in a different place and time: Nebraska, say, in the 1950s, or Paris at the turn of the century. Would the strange, explosive confluence of subject matter, art form, and marketplace have come together some other way to turn Ruth into a star?

  No, of course not, and a silly game to play, though still she plays it: What if?

  What if there hadn’t been so much money floating around New York just as Ruth was immersed in the Clara Series?

  What if Kubovy hadn’t known exactly how to stoke the egos of young bankers: accompanying them to auctions, commending them on their good taste, inviting them to candlelit dinners at his SoHo loft that were then written up in Vanity Fair?

  And what if—speaking of Vanity Fair—Ruth hadn’t been quite so beautiful, quite so alluringly photogenic herself?

  If it is possible to pick a moment, a single moment when the balance tipped forever in the life and career of Ruth Dunne—another useless exercise—it might very well be the long-anticipated opening of Ruth’s new work at Kubovy Weiss.

  It’s a sultry night in early summer. Town cars and limos are lined up outside of Kubovy’s new space—he has moved a few blocks north to a huge loftlike gallery on West Broadway between Prince and Spring—and there are photographers, paparazzi types, lurking outside the glass doors, waiting to see who’ll show up. Rumor has it that Ruth Dunne has become a bit of a Hollywood darling, collected by studio heads and actors. Dennis Hopper owns at least three Dunnes, and Angelica Huston recently bought Clara with the Lizard at auction.

  Kubovy, of course, has milked Ruth’s year of vanishing for all it’s worth. Ruth’s newest photographs in the Clara Series have come, according to the press materials,

  out of a deepening sense of the fragility of motherhood. Witness the centerpiece of this series, Clara in the Shroud. The photograph—technically masterful—has an ominous, otherworldly glow, and the child is presumed to be dead. Is this a parental nightmare? A terrible fantasy? We are left to ponder multiple layers of meaning which have grown exponentially during Dunne’s time of pulling back and reflection.

  “Well, will you look at that.”

  Nathan whistles under his breath as they round the corner from Prince onto West Broadway and see the crowd already spilling from the doors of Kubovy Weiss. They are fashionably late for Ruth’s opening: A quick drink at Da Silvano spiraled into two drinks for Ruth and three for Nate. Ruth stumbles as her high heel catches in a grate, then rights herself. Clara and Robin exchange a look. At eleven and thirteen they are old enough to understand that their parents—who rarely drink—are already tipsy before they even get to the opening.

  “Kubovy said there might be a crowd,” says Ruth. Her tone is weary, but Clara knows she’s just pretending. “Maybe even some Hollywood people.”

  All day, Ruth has been humming under her breath, somethi
ng she only does when she’s in a state of excited anticipation. Ruth spent most of the afternoon figuring out what to wear. She pulled dresses, pants, silk blouses, and camisoles from her bedroom closet, trying on outfit after outfit. The faded blue jeans and black silk blouse she’s wearing now, the seemingly careless way her hair is gathered into a loose ponytail, the slash of berry-colored lipstick on her otherwise bare face—there is nothing accidental about the way Ruth looks tonight as they walk through the strobe of paparazzi flashbulbs.

  “Ruth, darling!”

  “Over here, my love!”

  “Clara! Clara, look over here!”

  One photographer—a guy in a T-shirt and tan vest—steps in front of Ruth and Clara, angling his body to be sure that Nathan and Robin are out of the picture.

  “Excuse me.” Nathan pushes him to the side.

  “Hey!”

  “Get away from my family,” Nathan says.

  The photographer keeps pressing.

  “Just one more,” he says. “Come on, Clara, let me see your face.”

  A curtain of hair has fallen over Clara’s eyes, and she likes it that way. She won’t push it to the side. She’s just going to stay like this all night, hiding inside a cave of her own making. She can feel Robin next to her: rigid, angry, a little bit frightened. Clara can always tell what’s going on with Robin. I’m sorry, she wants to say. But she can’t apologize, she knows she can’t. It’s not my fault. But she can’t say that either. She’s not even sure if it’s true. So instead, she turns and whispers in her sister’s ear.

  “It’s okay. Don’t be scared.”

  But then Nathan shoves the photographer harder this time, and the guy staggers back a couple of steps, banging himself on the steel gallery door.

  “I could sue you for that, you motherfucker,” the photographer shouts.

  Nate smiles his best attorney smile.

  “Go ahead,” he says.

  “Stop it, Nate,” Ruth says through clenched teeth. “I know this is hard, but please—”

  “There you are!” Kubovy comes outside, a plastic cup of white wine in one hand and a price list for the show in the other. He pays no attention to the photographer, as if scuffles with the paparazzi are a regularly occurring event outside his gallery.

  “Kubovy, what’s going on?” Ruth asks, as Kubovy ushers them through the crush of the people by the front door.

  “Isn’t it obvious? You’re huge,” Kubovy says to her.

  He hands the price list to Nate.

  “Here, take a look at this,” Kubovy says. “Your wife—I’m not even sure I can explain it. People are going insane for this work.”

  Nathan holds the list at arm’s length, squinting. Lately his eyesight has been getting worse. His face registers nothing: not surprise, not excitement.

  “What?” Ruth asks impatiently. “What does it say, Nate?”

  All around them, Clara notices, people are watching them in that way very particular to New Yorkers who find themselves around celebrity. I’m not really noticing you. Their eyes slide past with only a flicker of recognition. I’m not impressed.

  “Kubovy has raised your prices.” Nate gives the list to Ruth.

  Ruth inhales sharply as she stares at the laminated paper. Clara can see all the red dots indicating another sold-out show.

  “What did you do, Kubovy?”

  “It’s simply what the market will bear, my dear.” Kubovy pauses. He pulls off his glasses and wipes them with a handkerchief. “You now have a wait list more than fifty people long.”

  Nathan moves away from them all, walking over to the wide expanse of wall where Clara in the Shroud hangs by itself. He’s seen it, of course. He saw it in Ruth’s studio that day, months earlier. But that was a small image on a contact sheet. Nothing like this—blown up, almost life-sized.

  His back is curved like an old man’s as he looks at the photograph, lit and displayed to perfection. In just three years, he will slump over his desk with little more than a sigh. He will die instantly—never knew what hit him. But for now he examines the photograph, which has sold out its printing at $60,000: the darkness of the park, the articulation of the dead leaves even within that darkness—and the ghostly paleness of the girl in the cocoon. Is she a corpse? Is she a moth in a chrysalis, waiting to turn into a butterfly?

  Nathan runs a hand through his thinning hair. Then he looks back at Clara, who has been watching him. She knows—even at the age of eleven, she knows—what he wants from her, what he can never dare ask. He wants her to know that he stayed for her. That had he left, he would have been embroiled in a custody battle so public and so ugly that it might have destroyed both of them. He has made a choice: these scars, not those.

  I understand. She tries to tell him with everything she has. I forgive you. It radiates from her every pore, from her skin, the backs of her eyes.

  Chapter Ten

  NOT A PROBLEM. I’ll take her to the park. That’s what Peony had said. You guys go ahead. Still, Clara wasn’t sure. Sammy? Do you want to come with us? But Sam was thrilled—beyond thrilled—to stay with Peony. The object of her little girl’s crush.

  Certainly, it wasn’t unprecedented. Ruth’s interns had often doubled as babysitters for Clara and Robin throughout their childhood, an endless parade of them. Every fall, as the academic schedules of Parsons, Pratt, the School of Visual Arts, the New School, and Columbia got under way, an eighteen-year-old intern would be deposited on the doorstep of Ruth Dunne’s studio like an infant swaddled in a blanket.

  Nina, Aimee, Lois, Mathilde, April, Beth. They spent hours playing endless games of Sorry! and Candy Land with Clara and Robin. They took them to the very same playground in Central Park where Peony is now—right now, as Clara and Jonathan walk the streets of SoHo—hanging out with Sam.

  A poetic symmetry or a gross abuse of young talent, depending on how you look at it.

  “I don’t know,” Jonathan says. They’re standing in front of Fragments, the jewelry boutique in SoHo that had been so interested in his work five years earlier. “It’s been a long time.”

  “It can’t hurt to go in and ask,” Clara says.

  “You’re supposed to make an appointment for this sort of thing.”

  “I know. But you brought your stuff.”

  “Who knows if the same buyer is even there?”

  She looks at him. Trying to let him know—it’s too hard for her to say it—how aware she is that she’s held him back. She’s kept herself invisible, yes. And along with herself, she has slowly erased Jonathan from the landscape. He shouldn’t be selling his work only out of a small seasonal shop in Maine. His jewelry should be here, in the heart of the active world.

  “Let’s go,” she says. Opening the door.

  Inside the boutique, there are two horseshoe-shaped glass cases filled with every well-known jewelry designer: Mallory Marks, Cathy Waterman, Renee Lewis, Malcolm Betts. Delicate platinum-and-diamond bracelets of woven leaves and vines. Tougher hammered-gold rings with unusual stones—pink sapphires, yellow diamonds. Beautiful mesh necklaces, light as gossamer.

  Jonathan’s work belongs here—she’s always known it. His pieces have an angularity and elegance, and at the same time somehow feel rough and alive. Of the earth that made them. JONATHAN BRODEUR. Next to these established names. Out there. Visible. Two blocks from the gallery that turned Ruth Dunne into a star.

  “Can I help you?” A skinny guy with sculpted jet-black hair that stands straight up from his head.

  “I was wondering if Julie Becker is in,” Jonathan asks.

  “She’s here. Do you have an appointment?”

  “No, but we spoke a while back and—”

  “She’s very busy.”

  The guy stares at Jonathan for a moment. Assessing. What does he see? The wild gray hair. The shirt—one of Jonathan’s nicest ones—from the Eddie Bauer catalog. His bright blue eyes—confident, easygoing. Clara knows he must be nervous inside, but he doesn’t show it. />
  “Let me see what I can do,” the guy says. “What’s your name?”

  “Jonathan Brodeur.”

  He disappears behind a closed door in the back of the boutique. Jonathan lets out a sigh. Is he angry at Clara? He must feel something about all the lost years—well, not really lost, but still he put his ambitions on hold. He lowered his sights. Portland, Maine. A small crafts place in the Back Bay. Shops in university towns: Madison, Ann Arbor. But he stayed away from the big leagues for Clara. He decided—it must have been a conscious decision—that the risk to her wasn’t worth it.

  She rests her head on his shoulder as he looks at some necklaces hanging in a case against the wall. Feathers on leather strands. The less expensive stuff.

  “Jonathan?”

  An attractive woman in a floaty black ensemble—do all New York women wear black?—walks over, hand outstretched.

  “You finally made it!”

  “Hi there, Julie.” Jonathan shakes her hand. “This is my wife, Clara.”

  “Did you bring samples?” Julie gets right to business.

  “I did,” Jonathan says. Opening his knapsack. Pulling out one silk pouch after another. “I did indeed.”

  Julie takes the pouches to a table in back and opens them onto a black velvet board. The freshwater pearl earrings with dangling teardrops of angel skin coral. The hammered-gold bracelet, slices of watermelon tourmalines imbedded into each link. The brown diamond necklace, tiny stones strung together on an oxidized chain.

  She puts on a pair of tortoiseshell glasses that had been hanging around her neck. She lifts up the brown diamond necklace, cupping it in her hand, weighing it. Examining it.

  Jonathan is watching, trying to read her. His face is pinker than usual.

  She holds the pearl earrings up to the light. Nods. What does nodding mean? Jonathan gives Clara a quick, nervous look.

  Julie studies each piece slowly and doesn’t speak until she’s finished.

  “Great stuff,” she finally says. “Really great.”

  “Thanks.” Jonathan inhales sharply. Trying not to show his relief.