Feast Your Eyes

by Myla Goldberg

  I’m finally working again, which means I’ve been well enough for long enough to get up each morning without first wondering if I’ll be able to get out of bed. To mindlessly dress, eat breakfast, and ride the bus downtown are daily miracles I hope you’ll never appreciate. According to the numbers, I know that in the next six months I may get sick again, but the numbers only come to mind every other week when I go downtown for my blood test and booster shot. It’s much nicer to measure my health by Jane, who can look me in the eye again because she’s no longer afraid of what she’ll see.

  Jane is so used to taking care of herself that most days I feel more like her roommate than her mother, so I was surprised when she asked my permission to be in the school play. Of course you can be in the play, I said. Did you think I’d say otherwise? No, she told me, but she liked having me there to ask.

  The end of the summer after my junior year, Lillian rented the top floor of a house on a street my grandparents thought was too dangerous and didn’t like to visit. Next door was Mrs. Bauer, an ancient white lady who, as far as I could tell, never went past her front porch; and downstairs from us were the Osbournes, a black family with a baby and three kids in elementary school. Sandra, Shirley, and Lionel Jr. were always well dressed, their shirts and dresses ironed, their hair perfect, following their mother in a careful line each morning as she walked them to school, Lionel Jr. pulling a stuffed dog behind him on a string. The week we moved in, Mrs. Osbourne came to our door with a sweet-potato pie. My mother returned the tin clean, with the photo of Lionel Jr. After that, those kids weren’t shy with us anymore. Our side of the neighborhood was shabbier than my grandparents’, but birds built nests in the tree outside my window, and I could smoke. The traffic from I-490 was far enough away to sound like the ocean, and the houses that mysteriously burned down after their owners moved to the suburbs were mostly on the other side of the highway.

  A few weeks after we moved, a postcard was waiting for me on Grandma’s end table when Lillian and I came for Sunday dinner. On the front was an announcement for a Chambers Brothers show, and on the back was: Dear Jane, Guess what? We’re moving to Liberia! Wish me luck. I’ll miss you. Peace, Kaja. According to my grandparents’ Compton’s Pictured Encyclopedia, Liberia was “an independent Negro republic on the west coast of Africa.” I tried to convince myself that the postcard was a good sign; if Kaja wrote once, she’d write again. She’d have to: the postcard didn’t include a Liberian address.

  When Lillian started going to the coffeehouse in her spare time, I half wondered if I was going to wake up one morning to Sam serving me chamomile in my own kitchen, but that kind of thinking wasn’t very serious. Any time that Lillian was spending with Sam in the dark wasn’t happening in a bedroom. I’d liked Sam and his café when they’d been personal discoveries, but learning that I’d been named for the guy was enough to make me steer clear until my mother’s show there my senior year.

  Avoiding the café would have been harder without the school play. Sister Theresa’s drama class was filled with girls who’d been putting in their time, slowly rising up the ranks from Bystander to Girl 1, waiting for their shot at meatier roles as upperclassmen. I wouldn’t have bothered to audition if Sister Theresa hadn’t told me to. Tammy Lyons—who was semi-famous for having landed Aunt Ev in The Miracle Worker when she was just a sophomore—informed me not to expect anything more from Our Town than People of the Town or, at most, Constable Warren. When I got Emily Webb, Tammy said that Sister Theresa was only taking pity on the new kid, but by senior year, when I beat Tammy out for Abigail in The Crucible, she admitted that I deserved it. Being onstage felt like nothing I’d felt before. Once I’d digested a part—not just memorized the words but absorbed them so I didn’t have to think about what to say any more than I had to think about how to breathe—being inside the play was like being inside a chrysalis that broke open for the first time every time the curtain went up. I felt a clarity that didn’t exist for me anywhere else. I gave myself up to the role, and the rest disappeared—the stage, the audience, the world beyond the play—life fully concentrated and contained in each moment flowing inevitably into the next. When the curtain came down on my final performance of my final year and Tammy whispered, Now what?, I knew I was going to California.

  107. Exhibition announcement, “Life Divided, Photographs by Lillian Preston, Sam’s Café, March 17, 1973,” with reproductions of Untitled [Child playing hopscotch] and Untitled [Leukemic woman putting on lipstick]

  SAM DECKER: I’d never wanted company in the darkroom before. Even back in high school, I’d show up at weird hours just to have things to myself, but one day when Lilly brought the key back, the invitation just popped out. I must have asked on instinct, since it sure wasn’t something I’d planned, but when it comes to photography, my instincts have always been good. Everything I’ve always liked about my solitude—the quiet, the focus, the order—got stronger with Lilly there. My eye got sharper. Nights with Lilly, I was my best working self.

  JOURNAL ENTRY, MARCH 1973: Choosing images meant sorting through the Brooklyn prints. Though it felt too silly to say out loud, I was curious to see if the photos might have gotten sick along with me, in some intangible way, so I began with the prints we’d made before I started feeling ill. Seeing all those pictures reminded me how much fun we’d had. I could tell you were a natural the first time we came out of the darkroom and you were astonished that three hours had come and gone. Right away you saw the magic in freezing a passing moment—a playing girl, a crowded sidewalk—to reveal its truths. But for me, the bigger magic was getting to have you and photography at the same time.

  It’s hard to explain what it’s like in the darkroom with Sam. It’s not the same as being there with you or with Deb. When Sam and I are working, the quality of the silence between us is electric. At any given moment, I can sense what he’s doing; it feeds my own work in ways that are difficult to describe. I quit my pills years ago, but sometimes the two of us stay up all night developing prints, powered only by each other’s company—until Sam’s clock rings for him to catch the sunrise, and I rush off to be home in time for breakfast with you.

  Sam’s idea to alternate hospital photos with street shots was so much better than giving a wall to each, I was embarrassed that I hadn’t thought of it myself. Combining them this way erases the separation that the outside world imposes between sick and well. But Squirrel, it feels so odd showing portraits of your grandparents when I have none of you! Of all the photos I’ve taken with my mental camera, moments captured and then stored in my memory, the one I love most is from last spring in the backstage dressing room long after the final curtain call: you are still in your Emily costume, your Emily makeup half removed, your eyes ablaze, your face caught between the world you’re leaving and the world you are returning to.

  I could tell you were disappointed that none of the prints we made were in the show. You wouldn’t admit it, wouldn’t even acknowledge the question when I pulled you aside to ask. Since you wouldn’t let me explain then, I’ll explain now: one day those beautiful images will be seen, but when I discovered that my silly idea about sick photos was correct, this show fell into place. I hadn’t noticed I’d stopped writing titles until I looked through the work all at once. My titles only ever supply a general description (a strong image shouldn’t need more than that), but when I was sick, even that became a burden.

  Selfishly, I’m glad you were there, disappointed or not. Without you to guide your grandparents, I’m sure they would have stayed at that wobbly table in their best church clothes, nervously sipping tea from one of Sam’s chipped mugs while darting shy glances at the walls. It was so strange and lovely to see them holding hands as they moved between photographs, these two private people who rarely touch at home and never in public. Thank you.

  I know that their willingness to come to the café should have been enough, but I was hoping for more than a polite “nice” from behind their Sunday-church smiles. And
so, Squirrel, I suppose this show disappointed you and me both. What I want from your grandparents is as childish and unrealistic as a girl wishing her cat were a pony, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting it anyway.

  You’re cleverer than I was, or maybe you just love your grandparents too much to hurt them the way I did at your age, when I boarded an eastbound bus. Holy Mount is perhaps the one college in Los Angeles they would approve of; but you must have known that, because it was your idea and your plan, presented to them in your politest voice at Sunday dinner. Just because you knew they were the ones you needed to convince, don’t be fooled into thinking any of this is easy for me! Being left behind feels very different from leaving.

  Holy Mount was the only college in Los Angeles that the St. Margaret’s guidance counselor had a catalog for. Besides, my GPA was too erratic to get me into a school anyone had heard of, or to make me scholarship material, so it was a part-time job and what Lillian called “our nest egg,” which I assumed was money my grandparents had given her to help us out, though when I thanked them, they swore there was nothing to thank them for.

  I kept waiting for someone to point out that Holy Mount meant my being two thousand miles away whenever my mother’s cancer came back. My grandparents couldn’t have discussed that any more than they could have let me order a hamburger instead of fried clams in the bad old chemo days. I knew that Lillian would never keep me from doing whatever I wanted to do. If anyone was going to bring up those two thousand miles, it would have to be me, and I didn’t feel like it. My mother had found a typing job. She was taking pictures and working in the darkroom the way she used to. There was always the chance she’d beaten the odds and wouldn’t get sick again, or at least not for a long time. I still think heading out west was the right decision. When the time came to be there for my mother, the problem wasn’t the distance between California and Ohio: the problem was me.

  108. Father’s feet, Cleveland, 1974

  The last time I saw him alive, I saw him in his recliner, his feet covered in blankets, so I never knew. Here, the ankles are gone, swallowed by swelling, the toes tiny in comparison. He didn’t want me to see that. He wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see that, yet he took off the blankets for my mother and let her frame those feet the way another photographer would frame a face. He did it because she asked, and because she was his daughter.

  Meanwhile, I was in the land of lemon and orange trees, and people grocery shopping in flip-flops, and finger-sized lizards sunning themselves on curbs. A woman in a halter top and hot pants roller skating down the sidewalk wasn’t noticed any more than a man reading a newspaper. It all felt like freedom, like Los Angeles was busy being itself and didn’t care what anybody else thought.

  Holy Mount had the trees and the basking anoles, but it also had a dress code and course requirements and a dishwashing job after lunch and dinner in the dining hall six days a week. Almost every other student was local, or at least from California, and had a car. My second week there, I bought a secondhand bike. It was lime green with a shopping basket and a banana seat, and riding it reminded me of summers in Cleveland before Grandpa’s heart gave out.

  Most of the girls in my dorm wore ironed blouses and demure earrings and talked about wanting to get a good husband and a good education, like that was something radical. When I complained about spraying spaghetti off plates Monday through Saturday, they joked I could always “go to Clyde,” which one of them finally explained was the art school a mile away that hired live models for its life-drawing classes but required posing “in the buff.” When I asked if any of them had done it, they looked at me like I was asking if they’d screwed the pope.

  The life drawing classes at Clyde School of Art occupied a room that was all dark wood and vaulted ceiling and mullioned window, with fifteen easels arranged in a wide circle. I had to stand still for thirty minutes at a time, while thirteen men and two women drew me from every angle. I went back and forth between feeling like an animal being inspected and feeling like a bowl of fruit. I wasn’t crazy about either, not to mention that holding a pose got uncomfortable fast, but it definitely beat washing dishes. Plus, since my body was my instrument, wasn’t this the acting equivalent of a musician logging scales? As a model, I had to be in complete control of my arms, my legs, my face; I had to banish my insecurities; I had to empty myself out and become a living lesson in contour and form. Also, I was good at it. In a previous life, in a previous body, I’d done a version of this before.

  LETTER TO DEBORAH BRODSKY, APRIL 1974: It was as if he was keeping up appearances for Jane’s sake, because as soon as she left for school, he went downhill fast. Mother stuck to their usual routines as if nothing untoward were happening, but she couldn’t keep the fear from her eyes. By Jane’s Easter visit, Father’s feet were too swollen for shoes and he could hardly eat, but his face relaxed whenever she spoke. “Do you still want to be an actress?” he asked. When she nodded, he grinned. “I know better than to get in the way of a Preston girl who knows what she wants,” he said, “but for your mother’s and grandmother’s sakes, I wish California wasn’t so far.” “What about you, Grandpa?” Jane teased. “Oh, I don’t count myself,” he said. “When you’re in the next room, it’s too far for me.” Their love for each other is astonishingly uncomplicated. I know how hard that simplicity is on Jane. I know it comes from only showing her grandfather the parts of her he can find easy to love, but I’m jealous anyway. It’s hard to describe how she changes. A drawing inward, a slight dimming of her light. She’s been doing it for so long I’m not sure she notices anymore, but I’ll never get used to watching part of her go away and feeling torn between sadness and awe that she does it so often or so well.

  Father went into the hospital two days after Jane flew back to California. He died five days after that. He was only fifty-nine, but being sick for so long had made him seem much older. On my last visit, I held his hand and told him for the second time in my life that I loved him. His eyes were closed, but he squeezed my fingers. I was afraid I wouldn’t cry at the funeral because the hospital had felt so final, but when I saw all those people at the church, the tears I thought I’d used up came right back. I’d been expecting a small service, since Father’s world had shrunk so much in the past five years, but along with everyone from church, there were his coworkers from the insurance office and his pals from the model-airplane club. People I’d never seen before came up to me like they’d known me all my life. He was so proud, they told me, that I’d worked for a Wall Street firm in the Big Apple. He was so proud, they said, when I bounced back from my illness. Thank you, I told them, thinking of the film in the camera I was holding in my hand, a camera that went unmentioned. Exposed film is all I have of him now. My father has been reduced to imprints of light.

  When Mother told me that Father had asked God to take him instead of me, and that my remission helped him to find peace, the way she said it made me stop what I was doing. I asked what she thought about that. “A compassionate God wouldn’t make that kind of bargain with a good man, and your father was a good man,” she said. She didn’t sound sad or angry, just matter-of-fact. This startled me. When Father was alive, it had been easy, or perhaps just convenient, to underestimate her.

  I want Mother to have plenty of time to settle into her new life before I think about leaving Cleveland, but the second page of your letter gave me my first real smile since Father’s death. Deb, whenever I’ve pictured myself old (something I’ve only recently started doing again), I’ve pictured you nearby. Think of all the darkroom chats, the long walks for poetry and photographs! But there’s no reason to wait until we’re old. I haven’t seen Yuma since he was a baby. From Arizona, Jane in California is just a bus ride away.

  As for teaching, a fellow from the Art Institute has invited me to teach in the photography department here. But really, the timing couldn’t be better, because this will allow me to come to you and the Desert School with a year of experience under my belt and not
just as your friend.

  SAM DECKER: I told Lilly I had nothing to do with the guy from the Art Institute, but she kept thanking me anyhow. The only people I know are my customers; I don’t bother with anyone else. Sometimes some dope will buttonhole me when I’m out shooting, but no one’s got any business talking to me then.

  Lilly was plenty nervous, so she decided to practice her lectures on me. Back in Korea, I’d tried making a voice for her in my head whenever I read the letters she sent, but it always ended up sounding like Meemaw. Some of what Lilly was saying now brought back pieces of her old letters. Even then she’d been trying to turn her ideas about photography into something solid. “The palm of the light” is one phrase I remember, as in you’ve got to put yourself in the palm of the light’s hand. When I read that back in Korea, it felt like Lilly was putting words to something that had been inside my own head for a long time, knocking around waiting for a name.

  109. Portrait of her absence (closed bedroom door with packed suitcase), Cleveland, 1974

  LETTER TO DEBORAH BRODSKY, DECEMBER 1974: I wish I could say Christmas went well, but Jane was distant and distracted the minute she stepped off the plane. Poor Mother thought it meant she hadn’t given Jane a warm enough welcome, but all it really means is that Jane has turned into a selfish drip. With Father gone, she doesn’t hide her smoking, and while I used to worry about how much of herself she kept hidden, now she seems to be going out of her way to make her grandmother as uncomfortable as possible—or, worse, she isn’t thinking of her grandmother at all. Jane waited until she arrived to announce that she’d become a vegetarian, which meant she wouldn’t eat most of what Mother had cooked. I’ve been working steadily since the café show; I was looking forward to asking her into the darkroom with me like old times, until Mother offered to take her shopping and she giggled. “That’s okay, Dot,” she said, as if her grandmother had made a joke. I realized that this Jane was not someone I wanted to share a darkroom with.