The O'Briens

by Peter Behrens

His presence lingered. Houses required presence — ghosts, men, tea leaves, conversation. Otherwise any house was a trap, and a bungalow on a canal in Venice, California, was a box shrouded in white fog, the heaviness and stillness of atmosphere signifying nothing.

  ~

  Even in a Sunday crowd Elise O’Brien wasn’t difficult to spot: a small person, hatless, unmistakably pregnant, a camera slung around her neck. She was heading north on the boardwalk, but slowly; she looked to be about the same age as Iseult. She kept stepping out into the stream of people heading south, standing still and letting the crowd break around her while she peered into her viewfinder.

  Iseult could not imagine what she was making pictures of. The teeming throng recalled Broadway and warm afternoons on the West Side, from the slaughterhouses to the Kitchen. There was no composition that Iseult could recognize as such, no one remarkable or colourful, just the drifting, shifting, sunburnt, ice-cream-eating crowd. A few people stopped and spoke to Elise, but not many. Most of her subjects didn’t seem to notice her. And Elise kept moving on.

  Iseult tried stepping into the oncoming crowd. People became blurred bits of motion. Details registered discord-antly: straw hats, prams with squeaky wheels. Tongues licking ice cream.

  It made her dizzy.

  She followed Elise O’Brien for nearly an hour, entranced by her boldness and the mystery of what she was doing. On their afternoons in the Kitchen, Mother Power had opened Iseult’s eyes to the city, and she wondered if Elise too possessed keys to a wider world.

  ~

  Late that afternoon she found herself climbing three flights of stairs above the Chinese laundry. The staircase smelled of steam and hot linen. On the third-floor landing a sign on a door said:

  E C PHOTOGRAPHIC PARLOUR

  Iseult knocked.

  “Who the hell is it?” a woman’s voice demanded.

  “My name is Iseult Wilkins.”

  “Yeah? What do you want?”

  “I’m a friend of Joe O’Brien.”

  “Hang on a sec.”

  A moment later the door was flung open and Elise stood there. She wore a blue smock and seemed even smaller than she had on the boardwalk, and more pregnant. “So you’re Miss Wilkins. Grattan told me about you.”

  Iseult extended a white-gloved hand. “How do you do?”

  Elise O’Brien wiped her hand on her smock; they shook. “That was you tracking me on the boardwalk this morning.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have introduced myself.”

  “Nah. When I get going, I can’t stop to be polite. Especially when I’m shooting for myself, like I was today. Did you feel the energy out there? Isn’t it something? Lately I’ve been letting the postcards go to hell. Grattan doesn’t mind but Joe thinks I’m nuts, and I guess he’s right, because we sure could use the dough.

  “So, Iseult Wilkins, you want to come in? I was just going over today’s haul.”

  The studio was one large room. There was a chemical odour. Photographic prints were pegged out on a laundry line and tacked up along the walls. One end of the room was set up as living space, with a kitchen table and an icebox and books stacked on the floor on both sides of an unmade bed.

  Elise picked up a camera. “This is the camera that’s for sale, an FPK — stands for ‘Folding Pocket Kodak.’ It’s a 3¼ by 5½ image on 122 film. Zeiss Kodak anastigmatic lens. It’s a nice piece of equipment if you like the panorama format. Most of the body’s aluminum, but the sides are wood, so it has a bit of weight. If a camera’s too light you get the shakes. Here — see how it feels. Did Joe tell you a price?”

  Iseult accepted the camera. “He didn’t tell me you were selling anything.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Why are you selling it?” In its complexity and polish, the camera had an unexpected beauty.

  “We need the dough. I’m keeping my five-by-eight for studio work and I have my Wilkin-Welsh for the boardwalk. Studio work pays the bills, but I like getting outside, like today. The boardwalk is tough — all that light, all that chance and change — but if I’m paying attention something always reveals itself, just for a split second, and then I’ll get a crazy, cockeyed picture. It gets so the camera’s part of me out there, not something I’m holding. I’m actually a very shy person. Where I’m from — Brooklyn — I count as shy.”

  Elise was sitting on a broken-down sofa. A grey cat rubbed against her leg and she reached to stroke it but couldn’t bend over enough. She laughed. “I’m as big as a house. This big Irish baby.”

  The leather-wrapped camera was cool and weighty in Iseult’s hands. She admired the polished steel and brass. The lens slid out on bellows of red leather. A rubber bulb snapped the shutter. She could remember walking along Textile Street in New Hampshire and hearing — feeling — the restless beat of the power looms. Her family’s wealth had been founded on that mill, but she’d been brought up to fear and despise machinery.

  “I met Grattan out on the boardwalk. See, over there.” Elise pointed to a wall where dozens of photographic prints were tacked up haphazardly. The photographs had all been taken on the boardwalk. None were posed, and all of the subjects seemed preoccupied with other things. It took Iseult a while to find Grattan. He was wearing a straw hat, a blazer, and white trousers. His pale eyes showed wildly against his sunburnt face.

  “Sometimes I walk up and down that goddamn boardwalk all morning and don’t see a thing. Then there’s a certain person comes along. Maybe on a bicycle. Maybe eating ice cream. Maybe happy, maybe not. But something about them gets me and then I’m all nerves, shaking. Sometimes when things are really moving I get so anxious I just have to fire the camera, let fly a picture, just to release the energy. I like your dress, Miss Wilkins. It’s nice. Très chic.”

  Iseult looked over her shoulder. Elise was peering down into the viewfinder of a large box camera pointed at her.

  “Thank you.”

  “Maybe I’m only out on the boardwalk on account of it suits my personality. Have you been to see the Incubatorium babies, Miss Wilkins?”

  “Yes.”

  “I used to feel like one of them before Grattan came along. It’s awful. I’d pay my quarter and sometimes the kid I was watching the day before wouldn’t be there anymore, and not because it suddenly got better. You want the FPK, Miss Wilkins? It’s yours for seven dollars. Including a glass back and a bunch of 122 film stock.”

  “Will you teach me how to use it?”

  ~

  The 122 film came out of its box rolled up on a little wooden spool, and over the next few days Iseult shot roll after roll. Lessons had to be on the boardwalk because Elise was uninterested in any other venue. In the afternoons Elise began teaching her to use the techniques and chemicals of the darkroom. Iseult wrinkled her nose at the flat, putrid smells, but watching her first images swim up out of their chemical bath was thrilling.

  On Friday afternoon her head was full of fumes after hours of developing and printing. It was time to go home, but she decided she would walk out to the pier to watch the sunset first and let the ocean air blow the chemical smell out of her nostrils. She asked Elise if she wanted to come along but Elise shook her head.

  “Nah, I’m gonna keep working. After this kid is born I’m not going to be able to do this, am I. I got to shoot, I got to print. If you go by the office, tell Grattan to bring something home for supper.”

  She met Grattan and Joe O’Brien outside the real estate office just as Grattan was locking up for the day. She hadn’t seen them all week. Joe O’Brien looked grumpy, and she sensed some tension between the brothers. She delivered Elise’s message.

  “I’ll pick up some chowder and crackers,” Grattan said. “Do you want to join us, Joe?”

  “No thanks. If you are heading for the pier, I’ll go with you, if I may,” Joe O’Brien said to Iseult.

  He offered her his arm and they walked out on the pier. The sun was a red ball and the air smelled briny, as sharp as ammonia. It wa
s chilly, and the Japanese fisherman had bundled themselves up in blankets. Joe O’Brien was silent and seemed preoccupied.

  “A penny for your thoughts, Mr. O’Brien.”

  “Oh, I’m worrying about my brother. Nothing new.”

  “Why must you worry about him?”

  “He’s my brother, Miss Wilkins; it comes with the territory. Anyway, he’s got nobody else to worry about him. Elise doesn’t worry nearly enough, if you ask me, not for a woman with a baby on the way and a husband who hasn’t made ten dollars all month.”

  They watched the red sun sink below the horizon. When it was gone, the air immediately seemed colder. She shivered.

  “I’ll walk you home,” Joe O’Brien said.

  “What about Mexico, Mr. O’Brien? When do you leave?”

  “You don’t see it, do you?” He sounded impatient, almost angry.

  “See what?”

  “You are the reason I’m still here, Miss Wilkins.”

  They walked in silence, her arm in his. She was thrilled by what he’d said. Up Windward, past the Chinese laundry and the photographic parlour where Elise and Grattan were probably eating dinner, if Grattan had brought home chowder. Elise hated to cook, and they had only one little gas ring.

  It was dark and cold along the Grand Canal and the Linnie. They finally arrived at the cottage and stopped on the path. She hesitated, then gently withdrew her arm from his.

  “Good night, Miss Wilkins.”

  “Thank you for bringing me home.”

  “I’ll wait here until you’re inside.”

  “Will I see you again?”

  He waited a moment before answering. “If you’d like to.”

  “I would. Yes.”

  “Then you shall.”

  He waited out on the canal path while she unlocked her front door. She wasn’t going to ask him in. The cottage was a mess and she still had no furniture except a gorgeous new bed, and she could hardly show him her bed. Besides, she needed to be alone with what he’d said. She didn’t want him saying anything more for now.

  “Miss Wilkins?”

  She turned to look at him.

  “All this business is pretty damned awkward, isn’t it.”

  “Yes, it is. Good night, Mr. O’Brien.”

  Acrid scent of the sea, of rank grasses and cold sand.

  “Good night, Miss Wilkins.”

  ~

  Elise said that the best thing about coming to California was everything you could leave behind. “Everyone should move to California once in their life. Think if you’d stayed in Cow Hampshire, Iseult. Think how tied down you’d feel.”

  “It was sometimes hard to breathe there,” Iseult admitted. She had not told Elise what Joe said on the pier.

  “I got no use for people myself,” Elise said. “People make such a big fuss about their families, and I just don’t get it. Me, I come from a family of rats. Papa Rat, Momma Rat, Bubbie Rat, and all the baby Rats of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I’m done with all that clawing and nibbling. Myself alone feels nice to me.”

  “What about your husband? And the baby?”

  Elise did not respond.

  “You care about Grattan, don’t you?”

  “Sure I do.” Elise’s small face suddenly looked older. “I’ve put myself in a cage, Iseult. You think I don’t see it? The world is not set up for a woman to stay free. Maybe I should’ve held on to the life I had, not let go so easy.”

  Iseult glanced at her.

  “Aw, sheesh,” Elise said. “Poor little me, huh? Let’s get out there and shoot some film.”

  ~

  Venice Land Company

  Windward Avenue

  Venice, Calif.

  20th February

  Dear Miss Wilkins,

  There will be a surf riding demonstration Sunday afternoon next, between the piers. Would you care to see it from the beach? I shall call for you at one o’clock, unless I hear otherwise.

  Best regards.

  J. O’Brien

  P.S. Bring a bathing costume, if you care to, and we might try the Plunge.

  Searching for her bathing costume, Iseult finally found it in one of the trunks she hadn’t bothered to unpack yet. She had trouble getting to sleep and woke early on Sunday morning, made coffee, loaded film, and polished the lens of her camera. She kept looking at the Leavenworth clock. It was quite possible he would forget his invitation, she decided. He might have left for Mexico already. Was it possible? Could he have? He was deep in his life already and she was stopped on the surface of her own.

  She started cleaning her house, unnecessarily and somewhat frantically. By noon she was exhausted. When she opened the windows in the bedroom, the air outside was warm and pleasant and smelled of the sea. Falling down upon her bed, she drifted into a dream that she was riding a train. Not in one of the coaches but on the black locomotive, boilers seething, drive wheels pounding. She woke with a pillow clenched between her legs and caught a glimpse of something outside her window. Racing to look, she saw Joe O’Brien circling her house on a snarling, sputtering red motorcycle with a sidecar, bouncing over dirt and dry yellow grass, raising a tail of dust. Seeing her, he braked to a stop. He wore goggles and a big grin. He reached down and cut the motor; there was abrupt silence and the sweet tang of gasoline.

  “What do you think?” he cried. “Isn’t she a beauty?”

  ~

  He parked the motorcycle in front of the big red-brick bathhouse on Rose Avenue. “We’ll watch the surf riders first, then come back here for a plunge. The tank is heated salt water.”

  She pulled off the goggles he’d made her wear and retrieved her straw hat. Climbing out of a sidecar was nearly as difficult as climbing in. She felt tight and uneasy. It wasn’t her clothes — the blue skirt and fresh white blouse would do, though she was uneasy about her bathing costume. Maybe it was the wild sun and the hot, strumming wind. She was unattached, weightless, dizzy.

  “All set?” He wore a bathing costume under his seersucker jacket and cotton trousers. All his clothes were new. He picked up the picnic basket, offered his arm, and they started down Windward towards the hard blue line of the sea. On the beach between Fraser and Ocean Park hundreds of people had gathered to watch the surf riding. Joe O’Brien rented a striped umbrella and a couple of beach chairs and they watched the riders — three Hawaiians and three white boys — start out, kneeling on big polished planks and paddling ferociously. With their black costumes, dark skin, and sleek hair, they looked like seals. One board was caught by an incoming wave and flipped, but the others kept paddling, dashing their boards over the waves. Out beyond the surf break the riders straddled their boards and floated up and down on the swells, facing out to sea, waiting.

  There was no point in breaking out her little camera. The lens would make nothing of the scene: the distance too great, the figures too small. A good pair of binoculars would have been useful.

  A rider stood up on his board. Shading his eyes, he stared out to sea. Then he knelt and quickly swung his board around until it aimed at the beach.

  “Here it is,” said Joe. “What they’re waiting for.”

  She could see the swell rising, green and blue, behind the riders. The hump of water was moving fast. They were paddling furiously to keep ahead of it. One, two, three riders were pulled up over the crest, but the two others had caught the wave and were riding on the edge of it, standing on their boards, balanced and calm. She’d never seen anyone capture the force of nature so neatly. She felt a tremble of excitement and suddenly knew she had to transpose her life into another key — harsher, riskier. It wasn’t enough to be alone. Watching the surf riders moving in perfect equipoise through tumult and complex disorder, she felt space opening up within her chest, lungs expanding, the power to breathe deeply and well.

  ~

  In the ladies’ dressing room she gave a dime to an attendant with peach-coloured hair and was handed a key to a stall. She entered one and started to undress, hanging he
r clothes on the hooks provided. Standing naked in her small cube of space, she looked down at her white flesh and nipples prickling in the cold — or maybe it was excitement, fear. She could hear showers hissing somewhere, women’s laughter, a baby screeching.

  Her costume was black flannel in two pieces: drawers that reached her knees, with a skirt attached, and an unbecoming blouse. Her breasts felt exposed and heavy. Her mother had always said that her legs were good. Long and strong.

  As a girl she’d been a dipper, not a swimmer. Secluded female dips at Squam Lake just after dawn, with aunts and female cousins.

  What would he see? She was afraid, but she knew she had to go out there.

  She found him sitting at the edge of the giant swimming tank, waiting for her. Hundreds of people were dousing and plunging, and the enormous room echoed with splashing, screams, and laughter. He was wearing his costume.

  Man’s body like a tree trunk, she thought. Solid. Humming. Energy within.

  “Shall we take the plunge?” he said.

  “I suppose we’d better.”

  They descended the tiled steps together. She slipped into the warm, briny water first and started swimming, nipples prickling again, wet wool pulling at her skin. He caught up and they swam the length of the tank side by side, only their heads above water. Men with droopy moustaches and girls with ringlets plastered wet splashed and shouted. Her silent swim with Joe O’Brien through that uproar felt as intimate as she had ever been with anyone. She felt naked and warm, without fear.

  ~

  When he brought her home on the motorcycle, her hair was still damp and she could taste salt on her lips. It was late afternoon and the light was cooling. She hadn’t changed because she hadn’t wanted to shower with strangers, so she wore his seersucker jacket over her bathing costume, the rest of her clothes and her shoes in a bundle. He wore his bathing costume with trousers and tennis shoes. She thought of asking him in for tea, but she knew she needed to be alone after the wild scattering the beach and the surf and their swim had given her. Still, she didn’t want to let him go.

  “May I take your photograph?” She hadn’t opened the camera all afternoon but she wanted to capture him before he left. Something important was at stake. The last time she had felt so alone with a man was in the schoolhouse cellar with Patrick Dubois. “On your machine, I think. That would make a splendid photograph.”