Light of Day

by Jamie M. Saul

  “But you must have been devastated,” Avril said.

  “I was in absolute shock. And panic, after I got past the neck-wringing phase.”

  “And Danny?” Nan asked.

  “Shock and panic, too, not to mention concern about the aforementioned neck.”

  Nan laughed, and everyone else laughed. Everyone but Anne.

  “When Erin was five, she once poured an entire can of India ink into a portfolio of my drawings,” Brenda Susmann said. “I was this close to sending her to a convent. I never was satisfied with the work I replaced them with.”

  Avril had left the only draft of Hello and All That…in the backseat of a taxi and had to rewrite the entire piece from memory overnight.

  Three of Steve Morgan’s sculptures had been smashed to dust when the ceiling collapsed in his Walker Street studio five years ago.

  “You just have to make the best of it.”

  “The only thing you can do is move on.”

  “Actually,” Anne told them, “I think I’ve done a little of both. The extra time’s allowed me to make the new work a bit better, so I tell myself, and my mind is teeming with new projects. I’d like to think it was a blessing in disguise.”

  Jack believed her when she said it. Anne must have believed it, too.

  It was a clear, crisp September that year; the kind of weather that makes Manhattan look newly scrubbed, washed by sunlight, giving one faith in the restorative powers of time and distance. Anne was already thinking ahead to the next summer. “I want to go to Italy,” she told Jack, “and put France behind us.” She knew someone who rented out a small villa in Tuscany a few miles from Bolgheri. They would learn to speak Italian. Jack said he couldn’t imagine how they’d lived this long without it. Anne laughed. “That’s just what I was thinking.”

  Some days Anne spent with Danny, but most days she was at her drafting table and her easel. She was working in colored pencils and watercolors. She said she wanted to get back to media she truly loved. The gallery wasn’t thrilled with this, but Anne wasn’t interested in working in oils—Jack thought it might have been an accommodation Anne was making for Danny, and he wasn’t sure what to feel about it.

  Anne said it had nothing to do with the destroyed painting. But it had everything to do with the destroyed painting, and maybe she knew it all along, and Jack knew it all along.

  They were alone in the loft, sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee. It was a Saturday afternoon. Danny was visiting his friends on Tenth Street. Anne was telling Jack, “It’s not going to end, you know.” She gave her coffee a stir. “I thought what he’d done last summer was an isolated incident—” She shook her head. “That’s not what I mean, I don’t mean he’ll destroy another painting, that’s not what I’m talking about. But it’s a symptom of what I’m talking about.”

  “He won’t be two forever.”

  “No, Jack. I’m talking about something else.” She wasn’t crying but there were tears in her eyes. “It’s just going to go on and on. He’ll grow taller, get older, but it will always be something. He’ll always need me, that’s what I mean, and I find that overwhelming, and I don’t think I can be a mother and still do my work. It sounds terribly selfish, I know.” She reached across the table and clutched Jack’s hand. “I don’t mean that I can’t physically sit down and work, but he’ll always be Danny. He’ll always be—he’ll always be here. Even when he starts going to school, he’ll be here.” She rubbed the side of her face near the temple, took a deep breath. “I’m not making sense. I’m still not getting it right.”

  They walked over to the couch and sat next to each other. Jack put his arm around her, she leaned her head against his chin, reached for his hand and held it next to her cheek.

  She said, “It’s a feeling. A sensation, really. When he ruined the painting, I took care of him, made sure whatever bad feelings he had were attended to. God knows he had good reason to feel them.” She laughed cheerlessly. “I wanted to take care of him, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind. He’s Danny, after all. When we were standing outside and were all so close, I thought I’d get over it. I thought, it’s just something little boys do. But I’m still waiting to get over it, and I’m still waiting for him to do it again, or something like it, and I’m starting to resent him, as if he’s standing in my way and I have to choose between doing my art and being Danny’s mother.”

  All Jack could feel, or think, was how could they make it right? How could they make it better? Which is what he said to Anne.

  “I don’t know what we can do,” she answered. “But I know I’m incapable of being mother-slash-artist. There are mothers who can be both, I’m not one of them. God, Jack, everything I’m feeling is wrong.” She raised her head and looked at him. “I do love him, Jack. And I love you. So, as you so clearly put it, what shall we do to make it better?” She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater, pushed her hair away from her face. “Danny doesn’t deserve—he deserves a full-time mother.”

  “We’ll think of something. We’ll work it out.”

  Anne smiled. “I’m glad to hear you say that, because I’m feeling more than a bit incompetent at the moment. And terribly guilty and frightened.”

  “This has nothing to do with competence, and there’s nothing to feel guilty about or be afraid of.”

  “I don’t know. I feel so hemmed in.”

  “Would it help if you take a studio somewhere, so you won’t be working at home? Or we’ll move to a larger space. We always knew we’d need to do that sooner or later. It’s just sooner, that’s all.”

  “I’ve considered both, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Not exactly.” She looked at him and there was only sadness in her eyes. “That’s not what frightens me.”

  Outside, a truck rumbled down Crosby Street. Much later, Anne told Jack she remembered that. She remembered the sound of the truck because she waited for it to pass before she said what she said, and she remembered it because of what would happen afterward, not immediately afterward, but what happened to them from that time forward. She would always remember the rumbling outside and the soft smell of toast from the kitchen, and Jack’s breath sweet with coffee. She’d remember the line of shadows across the yellow walls, the flutter of the blue curtains over the windows and the feel of the couch under her toes. But what she remembered most was how sad she felt, how flat inside, when she said, “What frightens me is the idea of being without the both of you. Of not being us any longer.”

  “I don’t think it will come to that,” he answered, and Anne smiled at him.

  “Let’s see how you feel a month from now.”

  XVIII

  It was six months before Danny’s third birthday when Anne told Jack, “I’ve applied to Yaddo. If they accept me, I’ll be away for two months this winter.”

  “Is two months enough time?”

  “It will have to be for now. If I can manage one of these every year, it should keep things in balance, overall.” She waited a moment. “Do you think with Madeline to help you—”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  “It may all be a bit premature, anyway. They haven’t said yes yet.”

  That winter, Anne took her brushes and watercolors, her pencils, paper and warm clothes and left for Yaddo and the Saratoga winter. Danny was very upset to see her leave. He wanted to know why Anne couldn’t paint in the loft, like she always did.

  She told him, “I have to do this in this very special place.”

  Danny stood by the door next to Anne’s valises and cried, “I want to go with you.”

  Anne kissed his little face and said, “We’ll all go away together in the summer. Right now Mummy has work to do.”

  Summer was too far off for Danny to conceive. “Take me with you,” he begged.

  “I can’t. But I promise to hurry home when I’m done and bring you a surprise.”

  “I don’t want a surprise. I want you to stay.” Danny cried harder, a fury of tears
and howls, as though he knew as well as Anne her reasons for leaving.

  Anne knelt down and kissed him again and hugged him. She told him, “Mummy loves you very much,” then stood up, kissed Jack on the mouth, walked inside the elevator and waved good-bye, the door closing across her face.

  “I’ll be good,” Danny said softly. “I’ll be good,” while he stood at the window until Anne got into the taxi. He stared at the empty sidewalk below until Jack picked him up and carried him away.

  “You’re not going to look out the window all day, are you?”

  Danny didn’t answer.

  “I thought we’d take a walk to Little Italy, get some gelato and cookies. I have a feeling we might even have an adventure.”

  “What kind of adventure?” Danny said peevishly.

  “You never know. That’s what makes them adventures.”

  “Can I have chocolate gelato?”

  “That’s the only way to start an adventure.”

  “And cookies with jelly in the middle?”

  “You want to negotiate or get going?”

  When it was too cold to go out, or too raw, they’d sit on the couch, eat pizza or milk and cookies, and watch videos of old black-and-white films, broad comedies, Abbott and Costello, the Ritz Brothers, which Danny seemed to like, and lots of the Fleischer brothers’ cartoons, not just Betty Boop but Koko the Clown, Popeye and Superman. They were the same cartoons Jack had watched when he was Danny’s age. Sometimes Danny would sit in his little blue chair with the small table in front of him and eat his food. Jack would sit close to him on the floor. There weren’t any tantrums. The days of throwing cups and plates were well past.

  “New tapes, Daddy?”

  “Old tapes. That’s what you asked for. Remember?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Granpa used to show me these cartoons when I was a little boy.”

  “You were a little boy?”

  “That’s right. And I used to watch these cartoons. And after you were born, Granpa—”

  “Granpa was a little boy?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you were a little boy?”

  “Right.”

  “When Granpa was a little boy?”

  “No. When I was a little boy, Granpa was grown up. He was my father, just like I’m your father. And after you were born, Granpa and I decided to transfer these cartoons to videotape. That means he saved them so you could watch them one day.”

  “Granpa is your daddy?”

  “That’s right. I tell you the same story every time we watch these.”

  “Oh yeah.” Danny pondered this briefly and went back to watching Popeye. “Daddy?” he said a minute or two later.

  “Yes?”

  “I just wanted to say ‘Daddy.’”

  Anne was always around them. There were pictures of her on the walls, on the desk and on the table next to Danny’s bed. Pillows she’d designed were on the couch, curtains she’d made framed the windows. They could see her clothes in the closet and her shoes, they could smell her perfume in the bathroom. There was even a video of her reading stories for Danny. She called every few nights.

  “You see,” Jack told Danny, “Mummy is with us, even when she’s away.”

  On Wednesday afternoons, Madeline would drop Danny off at Jack’s parents’ place, Jack would meet him when classes were over, early enough for the four of them to eat supper together. They sat in the library in the Park Avenue apartment, where the stark winter light stood outside the window and the fire in the fireplace shed orange light through the room. Where Jack’s mother, two years away from the cancer diagnosis, sat with the elegance of a Modigliani woman and his father, robust and strong, lifted Danny toward the high ceiling, carried him on his shoulders. Where they sipped cocktails and Danny sat on his grandmother’s lap, until he got bored and played on the floor, or stared at the adults and listened to their talk.

  After dinner, while Danny slept on the bed in the guest room down the hall, Jack’s mother leaned back in her chair and told Jack he looked lonely. “Is everything all right between you and Anne?”

  “Everything’s all right.”

  “There something you’re not telling us,” she said.

  “There’s a lot I don’t tell you. But Anne and I are fine.”

  “Saratoga’s a long way to go just to get her work done.”

  “What do you really want to know?”

  “I don’t want to know anything. I see trouble.”

  “There’s no trouble.”

  “There’s no trouble,” she repeated flatly. “And Anne goes away for two months.” She puffed on her cigarette a couple of times, looked over at Jack’s father and then at Jack.

  Jack said, “Lots of artists go away to get their work done.”

  “You two aren’t having marital problems?”

  “What magazines have you been reading?”

  “Don’t have such a smart mouth.”

  “Stop worrying.”

  “I’ll worry.”

  “Martha,” his father said, “Anne went away to get her work done, plain and simple. Leave Jackie alone. You’re being intrusive.”

  “I’m his mother. I’m supposed to be intrusive.”

  One Friday night, at a dinner party at Avril Stone’s apartment over on Sixty-fifth Street, it seemed everyone knew someone who’d been to Yaddo or MacDowell or some other artists’ colony. No one thought it unusual that Anne had gone away.

  “Remember Nadine Mauer?” Avril asked Jack. “The writer who used to live over on Leroy Street. Moved to Santa Fe about a year after you and Anne moved into your loft. She went to Yaddo. Wound up writing that incredible novel.”

  Evan Lopez said, “Well, not everyone’s got work on their mind when they’re there.”

  “What are you talking about?” Avril asked.

  “Lenny and Carla.”

  “Lenny and Carla Russell?”

  “She met some sculptor, while she was at Yaddo. Great hands. They had an affair.”

  “Who would want to schtup Carla Russell?” Steve Morgan said. “Anne, I could under—You think Jack’s worried about Anne fooling around up there?”

  “Of course not,” Evan insisted. “No. Jack. We’re just gossiping, you don’t think we’re—”

  “Why don’t we change the subject,” Avril suggested.

  On the cab ride home that night, Jack wasn’t worried about Anne having an affair. But he was worried, and what worried him was more complex than jealousy. He was worried because he didn’t know what to expect when Anne came home, what would change and what would remain the same. When she called, he listened for any hints in her voice. But there weren’t any hints. He would worry while he watched Danny playing with his friends, or running around in the park, or sitting on the floor with his toys talking to himself, a little man going about his business, going through the machinations of growing, emerging gradually, each day, into himself; and Jack would feel as though there were a bubble expanding within him, filling with love and something more than love, and he would look at Danny and feel the bubble expand until it became unbearable, until he wanted to scream and laugh and fall apart inside. And it worried him to be experiencing Danny without Anne, without translating to her what that experience was and those feelings, without having Anne’s interpretation of them. It made him feel an estrangement from her that he’d never experienced before. It made him feel untethered and insecure. And he was worried because Anne was too far away from Danny.

  He wanted to tell Anne all about this when she called, but he didn’t. He didn’t tell her that something incomprehensible was happening in their home, that a process was occurring slowly, that all the things that made and would make Danny more of himself were about to happen and had happened already, right in front of them, and must not be missed. That Danny was becoming himself, and it was enough to make him snatch Danny off the floor, or grab him as he ran past and hold him so close they could feel each other’s heartb
eat, hold him until he thought they would both burst, and his eyes would tear up, holding his little boy.

  But Jack didn’t tell Anne any of this, because she had not gone away just to be reminded of what she’d left at the loft on Crosby Street. He didn’t tell her because it would only have confused her, distracted her.

  He didn’t tell her that it worried him to know that if there were no Danny, if he’d never been born, and it was still only the two of them, Anne would not have needed to go to Yaddo, and there wouldn’t be this feeling of estrangement.

  Jack didn’t tell Anne that what was happening was both in their past and their future. All he did, all he could do, was wait for her to come home and see for herself.

  But coming home wasn’t on Anne’s mind, she would tell Jack later. She would tell him about waking in the morning and doing nothing but listen to herself think, as though her entire person had been submerged in cognition and the execution of thought; and there were times when she’d reach an entirely thoughtless process, her mind empty of everything but what she was doing in the moment, when she was aware of only the pencil between her fingers, feeling the lines she drew growing out of her arm into her hand, feeling the tension of her mind and imagination. Some mornings, she would do quick sketches, or spend two or three days working on slow, elaborate studies. She drew whatever came to mind. She’d started working in oils again, expanding her palette. Where winter had turned the spare trees black against the stark white ground, she saw the full color spectrum in the crystalline flow across the frozen ground. In the bare and dark branches she saw the colors of the season and she gave face and body to them.