In truth, aside from her colleagues at the college, she had few friends left. It didn’t really bother her. Everything was different out here in the country. For one thing, you couldn’t always depend on the Internet. You had to be able to let go of technology. You had to know what to do with time on your hands.
She woke earlier than usual that morning and, leaving Rye to sleep, put on whatever she could find lying around, his old flannel shirt over a T-shirt and leggings. The field was calling to her through the window. She hurried downstairs and found her boots by the back door and her old shearling coat. Her boots were cold, crusted with mud. The dogs rushed to the door; they were ready to go out.
They went up into the pasture. She could feel the cold sunlight on her face. The dogs ran ahead. She loved this field, this land. The air smelled of woodsmoke, and she could see her neighbor’s cows up yonder, the few old barns in the distance, broken, leaning. There were wagon trails, demarcated by crumbling walls of stones under ancient trees, their branches strung like canopies of lace.
When they lived in the city, in the tiny apartment on Leroy Street, her sense of space had been finite, contained, and she, too, had been contained. She’d had a limited capacity for disorder. When they’d first moved up here, the wide openness had intimidated her. Confidence to wander was an acquired skill. She might encounter a lone fox or a quintet of deer, aloof as her neighbors in the city had been. Once you lived in the country, you couldn’t go back. You were drunk on space. Free in your body as you moved across the land.
She was known for her garden, the dahlias she pulled from the ground every November and nurtured through the cold months in the cellar. Now it was winter, but in the spring she would crawl on her hands and knees into the brambles, pulling and twisting, choreographing flowers like dancers on a stage.
She worked in isolation. The room was dark, even in bright daylight. She would sit at her desk and watch the trees, and the trees, she knew, watched her, peering through the window, indifferent as nuns. From an early age she’d had an ear for language. Words were her life, her music. Her precision as a translator had earned her a reputation. Occasionally, rarely, she published a poem of her own, but they were generally impersonal contemplations of nature, and in truth she was more comfortable translating the work of others than conveying her own particular perspective, although she told herself that one day she would. One day, perhaps when she felt freer, or less afraid of revealing something that could have a deleterious effect on her marriage, their daughter—those private thoughts were not accessible to her yet.
Her husband was rather famous. His photographs hung in museums and galleries around the world. He was especially known for his portraits. He’d been called a visionary, which, of course, was no small thing. In the few photographs that existed of Rye in the media, he was portrayed as a mythical icon, distinguished by his graying hair and light blue eyes, wearing the usual blue work shirt, old khaki trousers, white tennis shoes, and the thin twine bracelet Yana had made him, sitting in a black leather Eames chair, smoking—this was before he quit. Apart from the mythology, he was actually a very shy man, surprisingly cautious and even conservative when it came to more localized adventures, like going to the supermarket—he often stayed in the car. Simone had always sensed that, for Rye, it was hard to be home, and yet, when he wasn’t shooting, he didn’t want to be anywhere else. As proud as she was of her husband, she saw him as a man who hid behind his success; his ego, healthy as it was, sustained his luminous enterprise. He wore his cameras draped on his shoulders, around his neck, like artillery. Ironically, while his pictures conveyed an intimacy with his subjects, in his private life he was distant and enigmatic, the sort of person who might have worked in intelligence, who even under strenuous torture would never reveal his secrets.
He was a realist. In his work, he captured life as it was. Of course, in the name of art, he exploited his subjects—it was an inevitable outcome—although he would argue otherwise. In the beginning, she accused him of being careless, taking advantage of people for his own benefit, but Rye argued that he was only an objective observer; improving the lives of his subjects was not his responsibility. She had decided that he needed to believe this in order to work, in order to contain the visceral reality of his subjects’ lives. And yet, while his photographs displayed a keen perception, his insight into his personal life was lacking—of course, for all of the years that she’d known him, she’d kept these thoughts to herself.
In fact, their work was not all that different. They were similar people, visual people. They made images, he with pictures, she with words. Beauty was important to them. They savored time. Moments. They utilized the same materials, light and darkness, texture, pathos. They conjured scenes. The empty street, a single waiting car. A fleeting emotion pulling the edges of a woman’s face. The worn soles of a husband’s shoes. The farmer’s hands. Purple carrots in the wooden trough. Children running, laughing, crying.
From the start she’d found his pictures troubling—and yet so compelling. Their powerful effects came later, not unlike the dizzying revelations of dreams. He refused to be put into any category and bristled when people called him a celebrity photographer. I photograph famous people like anyone else, he’d argue. Some of his competitors accused him of having it easy, of being connected, but connections were like gossip, they guaranteed nothing. It all came down to the work, and Rye worked. Harder than anyone she knew. He shook off his background, his pedigree, like tight clothes. They lived a solitary life. Socially they were outcasts. Much of her time was spent alone, working, cleaning, tending the dogs. She walked the great fields behind the house. At night, when Rye was away, she wandered from room to room, a little afraid, shivering in her long nightdress, her feet bare. She knew where to look for the moon. When she let out the dogs, she stood on the cold porch, listening to the night, the language of the country, the animals, the insects, the distant train, then the edge of quiet that came at last, like the final sentence of a novel. When he was home, she cooked elaborate meals. They’d dine in candlelight, the dogs sleeping at their feet. They made love cautiously, a well-rehearsed dance. It was still moving, still satisfying. And yet—
She will soon be fifty. A certain corruption has frayed the seams of her heart. The news frightens her, the government, the widespread complacency. She doesn’t know how to think about the future. If the planet can heal, if the species can continue.
She is a professor, revered for her expertise and intelligence, her bewitching optimism. Her students flock to her, for she is the warrior from the real world, protecting their ideas, their fragile ambitions. She is a visiting lecturer, which means they are getting away with paying her less. They are getting away with not paying health insurance. And they don’t have to deal with her, not really. She comes, she teaches, meets with students, and leaves. It is amazing to think that, even with her stellar education, the PhD, the honors and awards, she is, in truth, a glorified temp. No matter. There are positive aspects to the arrangement. She can be less committed, less anxious. And there are no administrative responsibilities.
Twice a week she drives to the college, to her classroom in a house built by Shakers. She and her students sit around a large oak table on stiff ladder-back chairs. She is one of the older professors and dresses accordingly in long skirts and handmade sweaters in the colors of the earth and sky, clothes that drape on her thin frame, and her lucky half boots and a scarf woven by her daughter and presented to her as a gift on her last birthday. She has stopped coloring her hair. Her eyes are clear and gray.
She doesn’t let them have their phones. They are kept in a basket for the length of the class. At first, when she’d decided on this rule, they were fidgety, their fingers so accustomed to fiddling with their devices, the small screens, the tiny buttons, their ears pitched to intermittent pings and chimes. They were distracted, anxious that perhaps they were missing some essential message. They stared at her blankly, with the glazed eyes of addicts,
not listening. Now they are better at it, more engaged. Even so, when the class ends, they scramble to retrieve their phones, relief in their eyes, the color returning to their cheeks, each of them a little weary after the forty-two minutes she has asked of them, the strain of thinking.
She meets the new hire for lunch. His name is Caspar Ahmadi. He is a little younger than her, a man from Iran, with smallish, elegant shoulders and eyes that can be described only as pretty, the lashes thick and glossy, the lids sleepy, almost lavender. His hands are lovely and square. His wife, he tells her, is an oncologist. They are renting a house near the middle school. It’s been an adjustment, he says, but does not elaborate. There is something attractive about his mouth, the uncertainty of his smile. As he speaks, she wonders what it would be like to lie next to him naked. She wonders what he dreams about. She imagines the ghosts of his dead parents standing over him while he sleeps.
You have to love books if you are going to write. This is what she tells her students. She has too many books for one house, and they seem to be occupying every surface. She loves her poetry collection most. The care demonstrated with every book, the slender binding, the ecru pages, the elegant font designed by someone from another time. The words are all that matter. They lead you through the dark wood of the poem. The words wait in her house, and the house waits, and the house has been waiting for hundreds of years. Waiting for what, she does not know. Only that it is coming sooner than anyone thinks.
It was the denouement of their marriage; she could feel the slow descent.
He seemed preoccupied, muddled. Peering into the screen of his phone, transfixed by the cryptic dispatches of strangers. He was sitting at the kitchen table, wearing the old gray sweater she’d knitted for him twenty years ago. She can still remember the fresh, taut wool under her fingertips, the wooden needles she’d bought in Hudson when they’d first moved up here.
What are you looking for?
What?
You keep checking your phone.
I have a meeting tomorrow with one of my editors. I’m waiting to see where he wants to meet.
Which one?
Someone at Esquire. He’s new.
It all sounded a little odd to her. Rye didn’t shoot much for them. They had limited funds. But you never could tell. She had learned to stay out of his work.
But still. She always knew. It was some voice out in cyberspace worming its way into his consciousness. She could read his body. Noncommittal. Shunning her. Like: I’m not really here with you. Don’t expect anything from me.
There were always excuses, the work, the travel, and she forgave him—
In spite of herself, she forgave him.
Because his work was everything to him.
She couldn’t intrude on it.
It was an unspoken condition of their marriage.
And because deep down she knew, as all spouses know such things, that he loved his work, his freedom, more than he loved her.
She’d accepted her role, she supposed. She was his wife, his conservator. She maintained the order of his days.
She unpacked his bags, started the wash. Gathered his oxford shirts for the cleaner. Tossed out receipts in Japanese, scraps of paper scrawled with notes. It was love that ran through her fingers as she folded his trousers and T-shirts. She took special care with his things, stacking his mail, his books. Wiping the dust from his desk. It was women’s work, yes, but it didn’t diminish her. Her care, her tenderness, her watchful insight was what she gave to him.
And yet, she felt this loss, for what, she did not know.
She watched him like a detective. She was critical, suspicious.
She hated herself like this.
At dinner, he seemed distracted. The meal she’d made, his favorite. He ate purposely, like an inmate. He complained about the work, the younger editors who had different ideas. People thought differently now. Their sense of timing, their tolerance, their patience. People saw differently too.
It was no longer the viewer’s gaze that found his pictures, but a flash of judgmental eyes. Moreover, he couldn’t surprise the viewer as easily, simply because there was too much visual stimulation to compete with. Thus, the medium had changed. And there was no going back.
He was overwhelmed by it all, he told her. It wasn’t fun anymore. His adventurous spirit gone.
He was too young to retire, plus they had compelling expenses, Yana’s rent in Santa Monica, which they helped her with, and her car insurance, and basically whatever she needed; she was only an intern making minimum wage—this after four years at Berkeley with a 3.8. Additionally, there was the upkeep on the house, the barn, the land, the taxes, the new furnace they’d installed to be more energy efficient, the new refrigerator, since the old one had gone kaput, and all the things they’d acquired—the photographs he collected, the art, the jewelry he gave to her, guiltily, perhaps trying to make up for rarely being home, for not loving her enough. Or the gifts from his travels—woven scarfs, leather boots, everything exquisite, handcrafted, her taste—she was particular. He had earned her, she had taught him, they had grown together, and now, finally—after all—they had grown apart. It could happen in a marriage, she knew this. And it had happened to them.
Sometimes she would stand at the window, looking out through the wavy glass, and it was enough. The green fields of summer, the yellow leaves of autumn, then, for months, nothing but snow and white sky. She loved the hill down to the creek, the orchard with its wormy, deer-eaten apples, warped, fragrant.
Her life was a gift.
She was translating a new book by the Israeli poet Maya Ronn. The poems gave her courage. They argued for change, peace, resilience, love. In the end, she wrote, that’s all we have. Love.
Unlike a lot of the American women she knew, Israeli women didn’t question their worth. They fought, they protected their country, they relied on intelligence; they didn’t distinguish themselves from men. They seldom questioned their own abilities. They believed they could do anything.
In comparison, Simone felt like her own neurosis was American Made.
For a year, during college, she’d attended Tel Aviv University. She’d learned Hebrew by reading the poems in the Old Testament. She was most proud of the fact that she’d memorized the bus system and mastered her bargaining skills at the shuk. When she went to the wall to pray, whispering into its ancient cracks, up close like a lover, her fingertips tracing the yellow stone, she somehow knew God was there. There was no doubting it. There were times during the long months without Rye when she thought of making aliyah, but, alas, she had not been willing to leave her own country behind. One day, perhaps. Yes. One day.
That night—their last night together. He’d made a fire and they shared a bottle of wine. At one point, the screen of his phone brightened with a notification and she asked him what it was.
Nothing, he said.
Why don’t you turn it off? You just got home. You have a life, you know. You need your own time.
With disdain, he tossed his phone onto the coffee table.
Thank you, she said, feeling like his mother, not wanting to feel like that. It’s important for us to be together. To really be together, you know. When you’re home.
He nodded but didn’t look at her.
They’re intrusive.
What?
The phones. I feel like they’re spying on us.
I get it, Simone. And I agree. But you have to remember the business I’m in. We can’t function anymore without texts. That’s what people want. Nobody wants to talk anymore.
She nodded. I know. But—
But what?
I feel like your work is coming between us.
That’s ridiculous.
You’re always looking at your screen.
You know that’s not true.
I’m just telling you how I feel.
He shook his head. I’m sorry.
What time are you leaving?
Early.
I was hoping we could—
He frowned. I’m beat, Simone.
She nodded. Okay.
He rose and started up the stairs. Just as he reached the top, she heard the chime of a text.
She went up a little later. He was already asleep. The bedroom windows were blue-black. Outside, there was nothing, only darkness. She stood in the shower under the rushing stream, the sound of so much water filling her ears.
Before the sun rises, he is up, getting dressed. She watches him in the half dark as he pulls on his shirt, his trousers, standing at the window, looking out. The trees are bare, they move in the wind, and the glass trembles slightly. She can hear the birds calling to one another.
She closes her eyes, drifting. The smell of coffee nudges her awake. She pushes off the covers and rises, naked, from the bed. The tiles in the bathroom are cold. She washes her face with cold water and the black soap, like tar, he brought her from Africa, and runs a brush through her hair. She considers her changing reflection, the new lines on her face. Her history. You can see her wisdom now, fierce like Athena, but no, not so fierce. Not fierce enough.
Outside, the dogs are barking. She pulls on sweatpants, an old sweatshirt, and hurries downstairs. He’s sitting at the table, drinking coffee. Even at this hour, ragged with sleep, he is still hers. You are mine, she thinks, and I am yours. She wants to take him back to bed, to wrap his arms around her, but he is already thinking of the day ahead. He is thinking of the special winter light, the wind, the possibility of snow.
Good morning, she says.
He only glances at her, drains his cup, rises from the table, and sets it in the sink.
He pulls on his coat. I should get going, he says.
When will you be home?
I don’t know. I’ll call you.
The Vanishing Point Page 6