Feast Your Eyes

by Myla Goldberg

  I didn’t see the MoMA show until Grete took Kaja and me there the week sixth grade ended, a few days before I left for Cleveland and my mother left for San Francisco. Lillian was supposed to come to the museum, too, but at the last minute she decided to get a headache. By that time I was so good at acting like that kind of thing didn’t matter, I almost convinced myself it didn’t.

  GRETE WASHINGTON: Lillian was wearing a blue dress I had not seen, quite charming and old-fashioned. I asked her where she found it, my friend who does not shop for clothes. I laughed when she explained this was her high school prom dress from fourteen years ago. I gave her a shawl I had made, and with this combination she looked almost fashionable.

  I had attended openings before, but only in galleries. To enter the MoMA in the evening, when it was closed, was exciting. The museum was crowded. Well-dressed men and women were speaking together like old friends, though Lillian and I did not know a single person. When Lillian began taking pictures, I thought this would be noticed, but in a room where everyone was trying to look important, someone like Lillian was easily overlooked. She was taking so many pictures that her film could not have lasted very long, but having her camera at her fingers was more important to her than having new film inside it.

  A woman grasped Lillian’s hand. She led us through several rooms, each more and more crowded, until we reached a man with glasses and a lush mustache. This was Mr. Tsaregorodcev. The room was so filled with people and photographs that it would have been difficult to find Lillian’s picture without Mr. Tsaregorodcev’s assistance. I knew the photo well, but seeing it in the museum felt like seeing it for the first time. For Lillian, too, I think, because finally, her camera was at rest.

  Numerous people wished to speak to her, though not for reasons she liked. When, in the middle of a disappointing conversation, a person complimented the shawl she was wearing, her face became bright. The artist is here, she told them, and pointed to me. Lillian knew I preferred to be called a weaver, but on that night I did not correct her.

  When the MoMA made its first exhibition of textiles two years later, Lillian said to me, You see, Grete, this is not a show of weavers at the Museum of Modern Weaving. This is a show of artists at the Museum of Modern Art. Yes, I told her, and that is why there are no shawls or rugs here. If some person did build a museum for shawls and rugs, this would create the problem of bare floors and cold shoulders.

  JOURNAL ENTRY, MAY 1967: I knew what I was hoping for but not what to expect. Mr. Tsaregorodcev had warned that people would be “very curious” about me, and true to his word, the whole evening was a series of conversations with those who wanted to schedule a “studio visit” (whatever they imagined, I’m sure it wasn’t the alcove off our living room), or to take me to lunch. Those who looked at Rope swing, looked just long enough to see that it wasn’t a nude portrait. People seemed more interested in staring at me, some of them saying “brave” or “courageous” as if awarding me a medal. In short, the evening was lousy with strangers wanting to see eight photographs that weren’t there. I managed not to lose my composure the way I had with Mr. Tsaregorodcev—but Squirrel, it wasn’t easy! Thank goodness for Grete, who spent the night at my side murmuring Swedish insults low enough for only me to hear, with a promise to translate them on the train ride home. Meanwhile, I stuck like glue to a spot where I could see my photograph and enjoy the card with my name and the words “Purchase of the Museum of Modern Art.”

  Sweetheart, you were so cold to me today that I suspect you wanted to attend the show after all; but think what would’ve happened if you had! You’ve been Jane so well for so long, it doesn’t occur to you that with me at MoMA, you could only ever be Samantha, your disguise turned from an enchanted coach back into a pumpkin. Would it help to explain this, or is it better not to revisit what belongs to the past? I’ve made my best guess, but I’ll never know.

  By the time Mr. Wythe found me that night, I was so unhappy that seeing him was actually a relief. Ever since the show at Aperçu, I’ve felt that my work fell short of his standards, but in an evening filled with new discomforts, this familiar one was welcome. Ten years had left Mr. Wythe unchanged except for a single streak of silver hair that curled against his forehead like elegant jewelry. “Congratulations, my dear, and condolences,” he said in the same tired way he said everything. “You didn’t set out to take the world by storm, and now you must contend with the best and worst of it.” He liked Rope swing very much and wanted to discuss my work, but only after I’d talked to everyone else. Aperçu had closed, but he now had a gallery on Grove Street, the only one in the city devoted to photography since the Ipplingers had closed Picture Shop and moved to L.A. “Right now you can show your work with anyone,” he said, “so you must visit the other galleries before you choose mine.” He wanted me to come to him knowing my next show deserved a space dedicated to the form, represented by a gallery that knew photography and not just what was “hot.”

  I didn’t know I was shaking my head until Mr. Wythe stopped talking. Was something wrong? No, I told him, unless he honestly thought he could tell me who I should or shouldn’t talk to about my pictures. I wasn’t going to waste time with strangers if I could show my work with him—but only if I alone chose the images to exhibit at his gallery, and only if those select images could be viewed or purchased. My new work had to succeed or fail on its own merits: nothing more, nothing less.

  We were still surrounded by voices, but as Mr. Wythe stared at me, I didn’t hear them. “You’re carrying a heavy burden,” he finally said. “You want to be taken seriously, but you’re afraid of being taken advantage of. I showed your work before because I saw its strength, and that’s why I want to show it now.”

  Squirrel, you know how shy I am, but when I realized what he was saying, I hugged him like a friend. The rest of the evening was easier to endure, knowing that my new work had a new home.

  91. Downey Street, San Francisco, 1967

  Of all the pictures Lillian took when she visited Deb in San Francisco—featuring the city, the hippies, Deb and her four-month-old son—this is the only one she included in The Box. Logic would dictate that the barefoot boy sitting against the fire hydrant and weaving a yarn God’s-eye around two broken twigs belongs to the bearded flute player beside him, but it being the Summer of Love, all bets are off. Though my mother arrived too late for the Be-In or the music festival, during the four days she spent in the Haight before needing to start the three-day bus trip back east, Deb showed her a good time. The letter that reached me in Ohio was written in green ink on the back of a poster for a band called the Purple Clam Bake and described sunny weather, spontaneous concerts, painted people in the park, late-night picnics, and the developmental milestones of Yuma, the weirdest boy name I’d ever heard.

  That was a strange summer. With the Supreme Court case over and my name out of the news, the Quakers had informed my mother that my free ride to Prospect Friends was over. Come September, I’d be back in public school for seventh grade at JHS 23. Lillian was surprised by how well I took the news, but that was only because I had a foolproof plan to stay hitched to the Quaker wagon. At this juncture in my young narcissistic life, I had no reason to believe my grandparents would deny me anything, and—considering the house they lived in—they were obviously rich. I figured I’d spend the first five weeks of my summer visit talking up Prospect Friends and then, in the last week, explain how I’d be able to keep attending only if they covered tuition, thus securing my happy Quaker future.

  When I landed, my grandparents were waiting at the gate for me like usual, but Grandpa had more gray hair than before, and he didn’t pick me up when he hugged me. We were halfway to the car before I noticed it was Grandma carrying my suitcase. Then Grandpa got in the passenger seat instead of behind the wheel, and Grandma explained in her sunniest voice that Grandpa needed to take things easier than he used to but was otherwise perfectly fine.

  Because of his heart Grandpa didn’t smoke a p
ipe anymore, but even worse, Grandma’s cooking wasn’t as good. When Grandpa complained about his meal tasting bland, Grandma told him that was “salt talk” and that he needed to train his taste buds to appreciate the natural flavors of food. One heart attack was quite enough, she said in a voice I’d never heard her use with him but which got him eating his steamed fish as effectively as it stopped me from sneaking extra cookies from the jar beside the kitchen pantry.

  Each night I said one good thing about Prospect Friends at dinner. While Grandma washed up, I went off with Grandpa, who was as crazy for knock-knock jokes and model planes as ever. I put the final phase of my master plan into action four days before my plane trip home. I don’t know exactly what I’d been expecting when I popped the question over dessert, but total silence wasn’t it. Finally Grandpa asked, in a voice that made Grandma look up from her apple crumble, if my mother had put me up to this, but when I explained that she didn’t know, that asking them to pay for school had been my idea, he seemed to calm down.

  My face turned bright red when he asked how much the school cost. I wasn’t actually sure. In my fantasy version, I asked, they agreed, and that was that, because when you’re rich, price is no object. But in the real version, I asked and then noticed the worn linoleum of the kitchen floor and the towel that Grandma kept beneath the refrigerator to catch the drips. After a quiet that made me want to crawl under the table, Grandpa said how glad he was that I’d asked about school because it meant I knew they’d do anything for me they could. He supposed it must be confusing, coming from a place like Brooklyn, where people didn’t have houses and cars, to a place like Cleveland, where they did. He’d worked steady all his life, which had left him and Grandma plenty comfortable and certainly better off than some, but they weren’t like the folks in Shaker Heights with their private schools and country clubs and fancy vacations. Why, he wouldn’t be surprised if the Shaker Heights folks flew on airplanes a few times a year! As for him and Grandma, they’d never flown themselves, but it was a treat for them to send me that plane ticket every year so that I could. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what he said. My memory would probably be clearer if he’d been angry. Instead he was kind and a little wistful, and the sound of all that understanding fogged my brain. If I’m being honest, which is something I try to do now, the embarrassment of learning that my plane ticket was their yearly luxury wasn’t the worst thing. In the universe that revolved around my twelve-year-old self, the worst thing was my realization that I’d be attending JHS 23 after all.

  LETTER TO DEBORAH BRODSKY, AUGUST 1967: Somehow it didn’t surprise me that San Francisco was like one big Tuesday potluck. I felt giddy, walking down a street of people dressing and behaving as they pleased, unworried about being judged. I think I’d always feel like a tourist there, even if I stayed four months instead of four days, but it was a pleasure to be there with two people who belong so wholly to that place as you and Yuma. What a beautiful name for a beautiful boy.

  Now that I’m back home and August has arrived, I still don’t know what to show with Mr. Wythe. I want to balance old work and new, but I’m not sure what that balance is. Once upon a time, I trusted my instincts; but now, every time I look over a contact sheet or appraise a print, I feel the eyes of the world appraising it with me. I wish I were eighteen again. Unlike other women who yearn for their younger selves, it’s not that woman’s body I’m after: it’s her state of mind!

  92. Seventh Avenue, Brooklyn, 1967

  Lillian prided herself on grabbing pictures of people who didn’t know she was there, so I’m surprised she included this one in The Box. Two of these three people are looking straight at her: one half of the teenage couple making out in the doorway at the left-hand edge, and the beefy girl standing sentry in the middle of the sidewalk, eyeballing the camera like it’s a bug and she’s a shoe. I almost wonder if my mother was trying to prepare herself for adolescent rage, armed with nothing but a camera for the storm she knew was coming.

  After three years of folk songs, hands-on learning, and Quaker meetings, nothing short of electroshock therapy could have prepared me for public junior high. My first day of school, I arrived in the two-tone oxfords and matching purse I’d picked out with Grandma at Higbee’s. I knew the outfit was a stupid idea. At JHS 23, new shoes meant hand-me-downs with soles that were still good, and the only people with matching purses were the hookers on Prospect Park West. But ever since my summer shopping trip, I’d been looking forward to walking into seventh grade wearing the shoe-purse combo, and I wasn’t about to let the minor detail of a different school spoil that plan. By lunch, I’d lost track of how many times my feet had been stomped, turning the white part of the oxfords a blackish gray, plus my purse had become the property of a girl named Lina who had sharp nails and a dead tooth. I divided my time between looking out classroom windows while wishing myself back to Kaja at Prospect Friends and testing different versions of cool in the bathroom mirror, trying for a face tough enough to keep away the girl members of the Stone Foxes without scaring off everyone else. It only took me a couple weeks to realize the best way to do that was to start smoking.

  For about a year, Kaja and I had been filching the occasional midnight cigarette from her mom, puffing once or twice before letting it burn down, but at JHS 23 that kind of dilettante behavior got called out right away. Sucking down a whole cig didn’t stay a hardship for long, though it did mean wanting one more often. This started cutting in to my pocket money, which required fishing for coins behind the sofa cushions or inside Lillian’s purse. Conveniently, my mother was spending every moment outside her job worrying about the Biggest Show of Her Career, the one in which she would Show the World the Photographer She Really Was and not the one Nina Had Made Her Out to Be, so she was oblivious to my new habit and the disappearing coins.

  As soon as Kaja learned I’d graduated from the occasional sleepover smoke, she upped her game. Grete instantly caught on, but since she was a dedicated smoker whose whole deal was total honesty and openness, she was okay with our smoking as long as we did it with her. As far as I was concerned, this made Grete the best mom ever. Kaja said her mom’s perceived coolness was a front: Grete was just desperate to win her favor now that she was spending every weekend with her dad.

  Meanwhile, Lillian was so darkroom-obsessed that if she noticed I was spending all my time at Grete and Kaja’s, she was either too relieved or too preoccupied to mention it. This lopsided arrangement worked fine until Kaja started hanging out with Jenny Dufresne, who had replaced me as Kaja’s desk partner at Prospect Friends. Kaja and I had always made fun of Jenny for wearing monogrammed sweaters. Now Kaja informed me that Jenny had soul because she was adopted, and that I needed to stop coming over so much on weekday afternoons. However, eating beans from a can while Lillian worked in the darkroom was about as appealing as hanging around after school to see if the Stone Foxes would demand to fight or initiate me, so I kept showing up at Kaja’s.

  One day Kaja stormed off with Jenny after an argument with me, and Grete came home to find me burning holes in Kaja’s favorite shirt with a cigarette. Grete called Lillian, who came over after work so we could all “talk.” This didn’t go so well. In addition to my anger-management problems, I’d done nothing to discourage Grete’s belief that Lillian knew about me and cigarettes, an assumption brought to an abrupt end by my mother’s appearance at Grete’s door.

  LETTER TO DEBORAH BRODSKY, NOVEMBER 1967: I waited until we were home to ask Jane how long she’d been smoking. She rolled her eyes and said, “Gee, Mom, I just started,” with such scorn that I’d have crawled under a rock from embarrassment if I weren’t so angry. “Is this how you treat people now?” I asked. Her shoulder twitched in the barest shrug. “Is this how I treat you?” I asked next, which twisted her face into something almost unrecognizable. “You don’t treat me like anything,” she yelled.

  When she told me she was moving to Cleveland, I know I didn’t help matters by laughing, but really, it
was the last thing I expected. To me, Cleveland was so obviously a cage that I couldn’t imagine Jane wanting to climb into it. What did her grandparents think of this idea? I asked, at first skeptical and then astounded when she said they’d promised to send her a plane ticket.

  Deb, I was so furious calling my parents’ number that it took me three tries. As my shaking finger turned the dial, I wavered between equal certainty that Jane was fibbing and that she was telling the truth. My voice was a model of composure as I asked Mother if Jane’s claim was correct. I didn’t realize how much I’d been counting on my daughter being a liar until I learned that she wasn’t. Mother explained they had made Jane this offer four summers ago. No, she didn’t expect I would have known about it: I needed to remember what had been happening then and how worried they’d been. They wouldn’t have sent Jane a plane ticket without asking me first. When Jane had called earlier, they’d simply said they were willing to have her—but if Jane was so unhappy and if her school was so unsuitable, perhaps it made sense for her to spend the year with them? That was when my temper erupted and I became my father’s daughter. Jane had never heard me, even at my worst moments, use the voice that told Mother if she thought they could so much as begin to discuss such a plan without me, they had even less respect for me than I’d thought. Jane would not be coming. Not only that, they had lost the privilege of being in contact with either of us. By the time I hung up the phone, Jane had locked herself inside the bedroom. I knew it would have been pointless trying to talk to her, and to be honest, I didn’t want to. I divided the night between developer, stop bath, and fixer until I was tired enough to fall onto the couch in a dead, dreamless sleep.