Feast Your Eyes

by Myla Goldberg

  I let go of Lil’s arm. My hand was trembling, and I was grinning like I had won the lottery. I’m not a religious man, but it is hard to overstate how predestined this felt, as if every choice in my life had been made in the service of this moment. Then Lil shook her head and smiled in her thoughtful, distant way. I can’t have more children, she said. Anticipation had heightened my senses to the point where I could distinguish tiny, almost invisible freckles on the skin near Lil’s mouth. She spoke with such certainty that I thought at first there was some medical reason, some condition she had inherited from her mother; but as she continued, I realized it was simply her opinion that one child was enough, which was absurd. I have a brother and a sister, I told her. You told me yourself that your parents tried to have more. I love Sam, I explained, but she is not our child. I want our child. I want Sam to have what I had and what you should have had. If you think about it, nobody chooses to have just one. Lil shrugged. I do, she said. Then she tilted her head to the side to look at me through one eye, the way she did when she was sizing up a photograph. It felt as cold and distant as the gaze of a reptile. I tried explaining again. I told her we could hire a nanny, that the advantage of a job promoting stupid but lucrative books was that it allowed for certain conveniences. And then I explained—because it seemed necessary—that if we hired a nanny, Lil could continue with her photography. Sam’s bedroom was large enough to share. I had deliberately given her the biggest one. Nothing would change, I said. Now, instead of looking at me like I was a curiosity, Lil looked at me like I was nuts. Everything would change, she said.

  52. Married couple, Brooklyn, 1960

  JOURNAL ENTRY, MAY 1960: Seeing as the only other dedicated photography spaces are Little Gallery and Aperçu, I suppose I’ve run a gauntlet of sorts. Ted Ipplinger is a photographer who works in advertising. If Karen Ipplinger does something besides manage the Picture Shop, she didn’t say. The gallery consists of an empty studio apartment on West Seventy-eighth, with a partition down the middle to increase wall space. They were interested in the new work, the Brooklyn photos Mr. Wythe had described. Would I mind coming uptown?

  The idea for the gallery—they explained as you turned the glossy pages of a magazine I’d brought to keep you busy—was that regular people would buy photos at affordable prices to decorate the walls of their homes and offices. In this way, photography would begin to gain wider appeal. They had come to Aperçu looking for someone to pair with Harvey Ostrund. Had I heard of Ostrund? I had not.

  Ted liked what I’d brought, but Karen wasn’t sure. The way they discussed it felt private. “Do you think it’s a good fit?” Karen whispered, to which Ted boomed, “It doesn’t matter. It’s powerful work. It demands our attention.” “Yes, but is it too demanding?” in that same breathless whisper. I hadn’t planned to photograph the two of them, but the light was too good and their strange conversation too compelling. I felt like a child hiding inside her parents’ bedroom late at night. Each time Karen whispered some new concern, Ted grew bolder and she more flushed, until he rose to his feet. “We’ll call it Ostrund and Preston: Two Photographers, Two Views,” he announced, one arm at his side, the other outstretched, his top shirt button straining. Karen nodded, her body limp, her resistance spent. It’s only now that I realize how much their performance depended on an audience. You were too deep into tearing magazine pages into stamp-sized pieces to notice. By the time they’d finished, the floor around you was a carpet of glossy confetti.

  Would it have mattered if I’d heard of Ostrund? Would I have then turned down these generous people whose two purchases were the only sales I made? The first half of Two Views was taken up by beautifully composed farm scenes—cows and calves, a duck surrounded by pussy willows—all by Harvey Ostrund, the Ansel Adams of animal photography. At the opening, I was flanked by Ken and his artist friend on one side and Grete and Paul, in a rare joint appearance, on the other. Watching reactions shift from Ostrund’s end of the gallery to mine was like watching the faces of dinner guests with plates of roast chicken being given a raw egg. Karen Ipplinger was right, of course. People want to come home to something soothing, not the difficult beauty of a stained dress or a chapped lip.

  On the day Two Views ended, Paul moved out. Grete arrived to help me take the show down in a borrowed convertible, her shirt so wet with tears that I thought she’d been caught in the rain.

  KENNETH LOWELL: After our “conversation,” I spent a few weeks trying to catch Lil by surprise, hoping that if we got carried away, nature might take its course, but Lil never let things go beyond a certain point. When I started fantasizing about using force, I knew it was time to stop. Instead of staying home after putting Sam to bed, I started going out. In the years since we had arrived to the neighborhood, Brooklyn Heights had changed. People could now say “the Hicks Street scene” as something other than the punch line to a joke. I started spending time at a bar around the corner from a building where artists rented studio space. I would leave without telling Lil, drink a few highballs, and then come back to see if I’d been missed. Well, I had picked a lousy time to test Lil’s powers of observation, since she was working at all hours to prepare for the Picture Shop show.

  At the bar I met a cartoonist who drew for the Voice, and an abstract painter whose day job was creating steamy covers for pulp novels. The cartoonist told me that if I really wanted to stop wasting my time on Hollywood biographies and self-help manuals, he had a friend over at Gryphon I could talk to. A week later, I was having lunch with the Gryphon man, who said if I was willing to work for half my current pay, he would hire me in a heartbeat. I told him I would have to talk to my wife. I had not meant to use that word, and it was the only time in my five years with Lil that I did.

  I invited the cartoonist to Lil’s opening on what I thought was a lark, but when he came, I realized how much I had been counting on him showing up. He, Grete, Paul, and I made up Lil’s crowd. The rest had come to see Ostrund, who was apparently well established on the West Coast. It was an odd scene. Ostrund’s animal photos were so peaceful and composed, each one a perfect little still life, that they made Lil’s work seem almost random by comparison. Paul was the only dark-skinned person there. When he beat an early exit, Grete reluctantly followed, which left just myself and my drinking buddy on Lil’s side of the room. From his regular barstool the cartoonist always talked a blue streak, but that night at the gallery he was almost grave. I wondered if he wished he had gone back with Paul and Grete or maybe not come at all. Finally, I worked up the nerve to ask him what he thought of Lil’s work. Honestly? he said. I think your girlfriend’s a genius.

  If he had been unimpressed or even lukewarm, that might have given me the push I needed to go over to Gryphon, and to hell with Lil’s photography. Instead he said: your girlfriend’s a genius. When I got home, I threw the Gryphon man’s business card in the wastepaper basket.

  53. Ninth Street, Brooklyn, 1960

  This one feels flash-frozen: kids sitting on a mantelpiece that’s been yanked from some fireplace and left by the curb; two men carrying what looks like a steamer trunk across the street while a girl in a torn dress throws a ball at them like she means it. Any second, the men are going to start walking again, and the ball will finish its arc. Looking at this photograph makes me feel like I’ve stumbled into the middle of something unfolding. It makes me feel invisible.

  The first rule was quiet. No talking, no singing. Funny noises were definitely not okay; camouflage wasn’t camouflage if it attracted attention. If I saw something, I had to keep it to myself. A red motorcycle, a man tap-dancing on the sidewalk, a dog with a missing leg. “Mommy?” “Shh, Mommy’s working.” Talking when I’m outside still feels like interrupting.

  But there were advantages: my comprehensive education in city pigeon behaviors and plumage patterns; my ability to tell time by the sun’s reflection off a car; my discovery of Pippi Longstocking. Lillian always packed distractions—picture books, a plastic rabbit, a doll
with hair and with eyes that closed—but these only got me halfway there or back. I remember bringing Pippi along because it was my regular bedtime book and bedtime wasn’t enough. At five, I had to limp through each chapter six or seven times before I understood it, but even when only half the words made sense, the story seemed like a friend. Pippi did whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted. She didn’t go anyplace she didn’t want to go. My first copy got rained on. The second was left at a playground in Gowanus. Eventually, my third copy had only half a front cover and was partly held together with bubble gum. Pippi followed me to Cleveland and then to Los Angeles. After that I guess I didn’t need her anymore, because by the time I left California, the book was gone for good.

  KENNETH LOWELL: By now, I was getting cockeyed at the bar until one or two a.m. and coming to work hungover on a regular basis. Since Lillian did not seem to notice, I had counted on no one else noticing, either, but there I was mistaken. It seemed Mr. Hardham expected us to use the morning to dispatch our more demanding responsibilities in advance of our regular souse at the day’s lunch meeting, after which we were supposed to be clearheaded enough to manage the afternoon’s litany of telephone calls. My artist pals’ drinking regimens were purely recreational and did not extend to three-martini lunches. Also, they could sleep in.

  No matter what time I stumbled home, Lil was in the darkroom. One night, instead of going to bed, I lurched over to that inviolable door and heard a man murmuring on the other side. The sound of that voice made me instantly sober, or at least I thought it had, but were that the case, I suppose I would not have slammed my arm into the door. Lil shrieked, and I heard something clatter to the floor. Only then did it occur to me to try turning the knob. As the unlocked door swung open, the man continued to speak, unfazed by my sudden appearance. In the dim red light I saw Lil’s terror-stricken face, an overturned tray of developer, and the radio, its dial covered to mask the glow.

  In retrospect, I’m thankful that by the time Hardham and Young finally gave me the ax, Gryphon House was still looking for a publicity director. Had that not been the case, I would not have met Catherine. I would not have been the father of Kate and Harrison. And when I think of not having been part of Levin’s Facing North or Tillary’s The Last Lunge, I am left feeling almost as empty as when imagining a life without my wife and children.

  JOURNAL ENTRY, SEPTEMBER 1960: I’m the only one who benefits from Grete’s broken situation, because now you’re always keen for our morning excursions. Grete and Kaja’s new apartment is an hour’s walk away, ninety minutes if we scenically detour through Fort Greene. Knowing Kaja is waiting at our trip’s end makes you willing to venture into all kinds of weather. Needless to say, it’s a rotten trade.

  Twice a month, Grete drops Kaja with Paul in Harlem. “He explains that we cannot be together right now,” she told me. “He tells me that he must be part of the community. But really, this is quite funny, because when the Harlem newspaper first hired him, I suggested that we move there, and he said no. You see, it is much more convenient to keep your white wife on one side of the East River and your black girlfriend on the other.” She said this while you and Kaja were stacking empty cereal boxes at the other end of the room, and I wanted to rush to Kaja and cover her ears. I don’t think Grete did it deliberately: I just think she was too angry and too lonely to care what Kaja heard. This made me question my own resolve. Will my frustration get the better of me? Will Ken’s? If anyone’s character is to be assassinated, it will be mine. Not because Ken is less well behaved but because my faults are more glaring.

  54. Hotel Bossert, Brooklyn, 1961

  Daughter or wife? If it weren’t the front entrance or such a swank hotel, she might be his mistress (she’s young enough), but whoever she is, she clearly knows where her fur-trimmed coat comes from. They’re not actually touching, but the way she’s positioned behind his arm, it’s like he’s holding an invisible leash in his kidskin gloves. Knowing what I know now, I’m guessing Lillian saw a small piece of herself in this couple. Regardless, it’s one of the last photos she took in Brooklyn Heights.

  Having gone almost thirty years without speaking to Kenneth Lowell, a telephone interview should have been no big deal; or perhaps those three decades were exactly what justified my shaking hands as I dialed. As with Deb, I knew he wouldn’t recognize me unless I outed myself, which I didn’t think I wanted to do until the moment I did it. He and I agreed to meet for lunch, since we were both in New York. When we saw each other, we traded restaurant-appropriate versions of our lives and talked the way normal people meeting for lunch might talk. Someone could have taken him for my kindly uncle.

  Since being made to leave him at age five, I had spent lots of time with the idea of Kenneth, but lunching with my father prototype didn’t wreck me the way I’d expected it to. Sitting across a table from Kenneth Lowell was like peeking behind the palace curtain of my own personal Emerald City, except instead of a humbug, I saw a happy older guy with a wife and two grown children, neither of whom was me.

  KENNETH LOWELL: I knew something was brewing because when I stepped out of Sam’s bedroom that night, Lil was waiting for me, but I figured it had to do with photography or Sam. I was hot to get to the bar, since my pal had landed a contract for a collection of his Voice strips, and we were going to celebrate. After the word “pregnant,” I was so jazzed that I did not hear what Lil said next. I know I started talking, because Lil had to place her hand on my mouth to get me to stop.

  When she told me that she didn’t want the baby, I made her repeat it. I suppose I thought if she said it enough times, she would come to her senses and say something else.

  I remember getting very angry, very quickly. It was a miracle Sam did not wake up. I told Lil she was perverse for not wanting our child. I called her sick, and cruel, and selfish; I said that if she chose to have the abortion, I never wanted to see her again. We both cried after that, then were very tender with each other. I remember thinking if only I had taken a stronger stance sooner, Sam might have become a big sister years before.

  The next morning, Lil kissed me as I left for work. By the time I arrived home, they were gone.

  Park Slope, 1961–63

  * * *

  55. Candy store, Brooklyn, 1961

  The title’s helpful, especially if you’re not great at reading reverse lettering off the inside of a storefront window that’s partially blocked by slouching twelve- and thirteen-year-olds. The Italian couple who ran this place kept the candy and magazines in the back so the future greasers of South Brooklyn could hang out in front without being tempted to steal anything. I doubt these kids scared Lillian the way they scared me, since she wasn’t half their size, but I knew as soon as I saw this store that it would never belong to me. It belonged to those kids the same way the streets belonged to their older brothers, who walked down Seventh Avenue with matching jackets and matching hair. When our own careers in delinquency began, Kaja and I opted for Atlantic Avenue, even though it was a half-hour walk.

  We moved to Park Slope when I was almost six. I remember waking up on the floor beside Kaja’s bed and realizing I had peed the sleeping bag, then standing in the bathtub trying to rinse the pee out without making too much noise. I remember Grete bringing me from the bathroom to the kitchen and feeding me pancakes with raspberry jam, even though it was still dark outside. Being angry falls into the much larger category of things I do not remember, but the version in Lillian’s journal makes sense. With Kenneth out of the picture, I needed to stick by my mother, or where would I end up? Leaning against a candy store wall looking like I ate kindergartners for breakfast, that’s where.

  JOURNAL ENTRY, MARCH 1961: When I said we were spending the night at Kaja’s, you were thrilled. Since it was your first sleepover, you didn’t think to wonder why I was sleeping over, too. I waited until morning to tell you the rest. I was so nervous that I wrote down what I was going to say. Ken and I needed to live apart, I told you, because we wanted diffe
rent things. “Like what?” you asked. “Children,” I said. “Ken wants more children, but I don’t. I just want you.”

  You smiled and said, “That’s okay. Daddy already asked me, and I said you could.” “When did he do that?” I wanted to know. “A long time ago,” you said, and smiled even more. As I tried to explain about having only so much energy and attention and not wanting to divide it any more than I already did, somehow it came out that Ken was not your father. You became very still. “But I always call him Daddy,” you said. “Why did he let me call him that if he isn’t?” This wasn’t a question I was ready for: I’d been too busy thinking of how to put things so that you’d know the separation wasn’t your fault.

  I said, “Ken loves you so much that to him you are his daughter.” But this wouldn’t do, and your face grew pale. You looked at your small suitcase and the stuffed monkey sitting on your lap. “Are we ever going back?” you asked. I shook my head, and your stillness became unnerving. All I could do was watch you, waiting to see what would happen next.

  You were like a storm cloud bursting. You pounded your fists into the sofa and kicked and thrashed, and after you fell onto the floor, you didn’t stop. When I tried to console you, you pushed me away. “Why didn’t you tell me?” you raged, your kicks landing on the floor, the furniture, my shins. From the corner of my eye, I saw Grete and Kaja standing frozen in the doorway. Each time I reached out, you fought. Your fury was like nothing I’d ever seen. Only after you thrashed in such a way that your head hit the table did you let me hold you. “He lied!” you sobbed as you clutched at me, burrowing into my chest. “He’s not my real daddy, and we are never going back.” Your anger tore at you like it was breaking you in half. The only thing that felt worse than being so unprepared was my guilty relief that your rage had shifted away from me.