Learning to See

by Elise Hooper

  Chapter 4

  The following day I met Fronsie during her lunch break so we could stroll over to Marsh’s to see about a job for me. We paused on the sidewalk to check my reflection in a store’s window. Rows of straw boaters, bowlers, and wool fedoras floated beyond my face as I surveyed my appearance. I frowned.

  “Here, let me help.” Fron angled my chin toward her and grazed my lips with a small metal cylinder.

  I pulled back. “What are you doing?”

  She grinned and winked. “Look at this,” she said, showing me the cylinder and sliding her index finger up and down the side of it to push a small nub of what appeared to be dark red lip rouge into view. “It’s called a lip-stick. Fancy, do you think?”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Too fancy for me.”

  She sighed theatrically and pouted, tucking the cylinder back into her purse. “Fine, but at least let me do this,” she said, reaching forward to pinch my cheeks.

  “Ouch.”

  “You have great cheekbones.”

  “They’re not cheekbones. I think it’s baby fat. My face is too round.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You’re a knockout.”

  We faced each other for a moment without saying anything before she nodded at me. I took a deep breath and turned toward the store. We entered to see a display of steamer trunks of varying sizes piled upon one another. Racks of film and frames lined the wall at the rear of the store. Behind the back counter stood a man with a dour expression and thinning, dark hair plastered over the pale dome of his head. A weak chin and severe underbite accentuated his long nose. He reminded me of the large rats I’d seen back at the wharves in Hoboken, boldly scuttling across the shipping pallets in broad daylight.

  I walked over to the counter. “Excuse me, but are you hiring?”

  He appraised me up and down, pausing on my trousered legs. “Looks like you might be cut out for a different type of place. Perhaps a hardware shop?” He reached into a bin of envelopes and flipped through them in search of something. When I didn’t move, he added, “Do you know anything about photography?”

  I stepped close to the counter and rested my palm on it decisively. “In New York, I worked in the studio of Arnold Genthe.”

  “Huh, the same Genthe who used to run a portrait studio here on Nob Hill?”

  I nodded, making sure to keep my face unexpressive, aware that looking eager would give this man too much power. “I know how to develop from negatives, make prints, retouch, and mount.”

  “What’s your name?”

  I hesitated, struck by unexpected inspiration. “Lange. Dorothea Lange.” Behind me, Fronsie shifted but I kept my eyes locked on the man, hoping she would stay silent. She did.

  “Well, we’re busy here and my last girl just quit. Pay’s ten dollars a week.”

  I’d made fifteen a week for Genthe and twelve at Kazanjian’s but couldn’t let this opportunity slip by. I needed it. Swallowing back the tinge of pride that made me want to negotiate, I nodded. “Shall I come tomorrow?”

  He bobbed his chin at me. “You’re a feisty little thing, aren’t ya?”

  “I’m new in town, just trying to get settled.”

  “All on your own?”

  “No, I’m here with a friend.” I pointed to Fronsie, who was wandering around the racks of frames. “We were on a trip around the world, but have decided to stay.” I said this, eager to show off our independence, but as he looked back and forth between us with a sly grin, I got the feeling I shouldn’t have revealed so much.

  “Doors open at nine. Come fifteen minutes early through the employee door in the back. You’ll see it off the alley. Tell ’em Dwayne Keeler hired you and your name’s on the list.”

  I nodded. Walking away, I felt his gaze crawling over me. I slowed my pace, holding my head high, but his voice called out again.

  “Hey, what’s with the limp? You gimpy? We’re busy here, everyone’s gotta pull their own weight.”

  I stopped, silently cursing my foot, and hesitated before looking back over my shoulder at him. “I dropped a suitcase on my toe yesterday.”

  He cocked his head but nodded before giving a slow lick to his index finger, watching me as he did so. The gesture prompted the hairs on the back of my neck to rise, but I said nothing more. I nodded to Fronsie, and we retraced our steps through the store and exited without saying a word. It wasn’t until we reached the end of the block that I said, “So, now we both have jobs.”

  She dipped her head soberly, confirming my uneasiness that my position at Marsh’s felt uncertain, my new supervisor untrustworthy. “Why did you say your last name was Lange?”

  I sighed and looked down the slope of Market Street toward the Bay, glimmering in the distance. Our move to California offered a fresh start, a new life. Here, my father didn’t abandon me. Instead I was abandoning him. The only way to free myself from those memories was to keep moving forward. “It’s my mother’s maiden name. No more Nutzhorn. I’ll never be known as Dorothea Nutzhorn again.”

  Chapter 5

  It didn’t take long for me to figure out where I stood with Dwayne Keeler.

  But first, I delighted in the metallic smell of developer and fixer that wafted toward me when I approached the photography counter on my first day at Marsh’s. During my trip westward with Fron, I had imagined photographs of the scenery we passed. When we got on a train in New Orleans, I framed the beautiful women preening on the French Quarter’s cast-iron balconies; the slash of Texas’s endless brown horizon; the jagged lines of New Mexico’s red mesas; the crosses of the saguaro cacti in Arizona—I imagined composing all of these images from the airless stifle of a second-class train compartment. But now at Marsh’s, surrounded by film and other photography supplies, I ran my index finger along the handmade Japanese photo paper, testing the texture and comparing the surfaces. I studied the images that customers turned in, relishing in the unexpected scenes that appeared within stacks of photographs.

  In the darkroom, I learned about my new home by inspecting the ghostly images of the city that darkened into sharp lines and inky shadows as they floated in developer. I felt omniscient. I could see everyone and everything. From the blank fog of white photography paper, images of the city’s beaches and parks emerged, yet the landscapes were often devoid of people. In San Francisco there was the sense of space, rugged terrain, and open land not yet hemmed in with people, even though paradoxically another common theme of these photos was development. Judging by the number of ribbon-cutting ceremonies I sifted through, the city had been growing and building since earthquake and fire had leveled it a little over a decade earlier. I was also astounded by the number of automobiles that appeared in photos. Roadsters, sedans, coupes, and phaetons—the drying line in the darkroom almost resembled a Ford catalog. It seemed everyone in California spent their leisure time driving, and when they weren’t driving, they were posing for pictures in front of their automobiles.

  Yet the magic of the darkroom became something worrisome whenever Dwayne Keeler hovered nearby. For the first few days we worked side by side unspeaking, but his silence carried a weight, a warning. In the dark, I felt him watching me as I pushed photo paper into the developer to let it ripple in the gentle waves. When I’d pull the paper out, each drip echoing in the pan became an ominous sound, like the steady rhythm of a ticking clock, and although I wasn’t sure what the countdown was for, I sensed Keeler biding his time for something.

  I didn’t have long to wait.

  On my fifth day at Marsh’s, I was in the darkroom enlarging a print. I bent over to find a new carton of photographic paper underneath the worktable. When I straightened, Keeler lunged behind me, unyielding, in a way that forced me to slither upward between him and the tight space of the counter. He pressed into my back and whispered, “You’re still limping. There was no suitcase accident. You a cripple?”

  It was his use of the word cripple that made me freeze, squeeze my eyes shut, and stay silent. It brought all e
arlier humiliations roaring back: Mother’s insistence that I hide my foot; tight expressions on my neighbors’ faces whenever I appeared on the sidewalk; the whispers of my classmates. Back home I had been evidence of contagion. Since then I’d masked my limp, but San Francisco’s hills were taking some getting used to. The climb to the new rooms I shared with Fron at the top of a four-story walk-up made me weary. I’d become less careful than usual. My gut sank as I realized there was an insistent hardness pushing against my backside. I steeled myself. I was trapped and Keeler knew it.

  He shifted his head so he was breathing rapidly into my ear, a hot, damp breath that made me shudder with revulsion, but fighting every instinct, I stayed immobile and stared straight into the darkness, my knees clenched together. My trousers couldn’t be yanked up easily like a skirt, but nausea burned in my throat. His hands groped around the front of my pants while he rubbed against me. Finally, when I sensed him weakening, I pushed back from the counter, sent him stumbling, and dashed toward the door.

  Outside of the darkroom, I gasped and reeled past the counter toward where the suitcases stood, gleaming in rows like soldiers at attention. I leaned my palm against the solidity of a heavy steamer trunk to steady my legs. The brightness outside the store beckoned me. I could walk outside and never see Dwayne Keeler again. But then I took a deep breath. Though I could still feel his hardness and his pathetic contortions against my back, I was still in one piece. I rolled my head side to side, feeling the tendons of my neck and shoulders stretch. I made a decision. There’s no chance I’m letting him run me out of here.

  “Excuse me, you all right?” A man appeared and he studied me, eyebrows arched in concern. “You’re white as a sheet.” I blinked and nodded, shrinking back. “Sure you’re okay?”

  He wore a worried expression but nodded in an attempt to cue me into agreeing with him. His kindness brought me back to solid again. My shoulders loosened and my voice sounded normal when I said, “I’m . . . fine, thank you for asking.”

  “Good, because I’m not the fellow you want in a crisis. I get scared at ghost stories and faint at the sight of blood.”

  I surprised myself by laughing weakly.

  “My wife is definitely the one we want around here if there’s a crisis. She can set broken arms, make up a plaster for hornet stings, and stitch up a wound. She’s much more helpful than I am.”

  “Is she a nurse?”

  “God no, she’s a photographer. In fact I’m here to pick up an order for her. My name’s Roi Partridge.”

  Talking business brought everything back into focus. We walked to the counter, where I pulled a file box toward me to find his order. Sure enough, there was a manila envelope with his name. I held it in front of me, peeking inside to confirm the contents. “Right, I remember these. Your wife’s photos are top-notch.”

  “Oh, are they?” He folded his arms across his chest, amused. “What’s so good about them?”

  “Well, I like the informality of how her subjects are posed.” Since Keeler still hadn’t emerged from the back, I opened the envelope and a handful of photos tumbled out onto the counter. I studied an image of two seated young boys, both wearing alert, amused expressions as they looked into the camera. Light from an adjacent window poured across the two bodies, creating a rectangle of illumination underneath their legs and arms. The lighting was beautiful, and his wife captured the spontaneity of their expressions and postures so naturally. I was charmed by the way neither boy seemed aware of the photographer, how they appeared engrossed in their own discoveries. Everything that happened moments ago in the darkroom faded away when I looked at the photos.

  “Any mother would love to have these. Are these boys the reason your wife’s so good with crisis?”

  “Yep.” Roi chuckled. His bushy light brown hair threaded with gray made him look disheveled and playful. “You’re not the usual gum chewer they keep around here, huh?”

  “Nope, guess not.”

  “You take an unusual interest in the work.”

  I swept the photos back into a pile to push into the envelope. In the time we had been chatting, a sense of daring had replaced how rattled I’d felt after fleeing the darkroom. It was time to focus on what came next. “I’m a photographer too. Just arrived from New York.” Saying the words aloud made me feel like a new woman. I pushed myself off from the counter and stood a little straighter.

  “New York City?”

  I nodded.

  “That so? What makes a bright young thing like you decide to head west to parts unknown?”

  “I needed a change of scenery.”

  With that, he threw back his head and laughed, long and deep, before saying, “Don’t we all?”

  I introduced myself as Dorothea Lange, and he explained that he did lithography work for an ad agency over on Sansome Street and was creating some billboards for Marsh’s. As Roi told me this, Keeler came out of the darkroom. My expression must have darkened because Roi looked at him carefully, as if studying a glass plate negative for cracks.

  “Keeler, you finally have someone here who actually knows about photography.”

  My boss nodded, feigning disinterest as he pored through customer photos, but from the way he glued himself to the counter just a few feet away from us, he was listening to our every word.

  “I’ve got an appointment in Mr. Marsh’s office upstairs to show him some mock-ups of the billboards so I should get going, but I’m going to tell him what a fine hire you’ve made, how Miss Lange here is a real professional.” At this compliment, I couldn’t help but smile at Roi. He continued, “And, Miss Lange, you need to come to dinner to meet my wife. How about this Thursday evening—”

  I accepted before he finished speaking.

  After Roi sauntered off with a cheerful goodbye, I looked over to see Keeler’s face puckered in annoyance, but he said nothing. He kept his distance from me, but I knew it was just a matter of time before the old lecher pulled some other funny business. I needed to get out of that place. Fast.

  THREE EVENINGS LATER I slid off the black leather seat of Roi Partridge’s Model T and stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of his bungalow in Oakland. Before opening the latch on the front gate, I undid the buttons on my cream-colored wool cardigan. On the ferry boat, about halfway across the Bay, it had become about twenty degrees warmer. We had emerged from the tendrils of low fog, and San Francisco vanished behind its cloudy layers like something from a fairy tale.

  I walked up the front pathway and a shadow appeared behind the screen door. “You must be Dorothea Lange,” a woman’s voice said.

  I laughed. “The one and only.”

  She stepped outside, studying me as I walked up the stairs. “I’m Imogen Cunningham.” It hadn’t occurred to me that she would not have the same last name as her husband; I looked at her anew. She appeared to be about ten years older than me. Though she was plain as a penny and rather long faced, her gray eyes were sharp and bright, taking in every detail of me as I crossed the threshold into the house. Three naked toddlers crawled into the room and swarmed upon her, anchoring her to the spot by the door. I tucked my right foot behind my left, hoping to avoid close scrutiny. “These are our three sons. Gryffyd, Rondal, and Padraic. Lucky me, I have early crawlers.”

  I laughed. “Can you tell all them apart?”

  “Barely. But see here, Gryffyd is almost three.” She nodded to the boy worming his way across the plank floor as he stalked a spider crawling along in front of him. Deep in concentration, the boy held a small glass aloft over the poor creature. The two babies leaned against their mother’s legs watching their brother, and she gestured at them. “This pair, Rondal and Padraic, will be one in the fall. All right, off of me now. Everyone outside.”

  Roi scooped up the babies, a tangle of glowing suntanned arms and legs, and headed toward a screen door at the back of the room.

  “We can eat in the backyard, but the food’s still in here. Come and help me carry it outside.”

>   I followed her into the kitchen and picked up a milk-glass bowl filled with chicken salad. She led me out back, where we placed the dishes onto a round table set under an arbor of wisteria. Conical bunches of the lavender-colored flowers hung overhead, filling the air with their sweet fragrance. Though it was cooler out of the sun, I took off my cardigan and placed it on the back of a folding chair as I sat. This family charmed me. The idea of a husband and wife, both artists, seemed very bohemian.

  She sat down across from me. “I’m glad to meet a new photographer in the area. Roi said you practically leapt across the counter with enthusiasm when he met you.”

  “I liked your photos, that’s for sure. I’m not one for posing and draping, but it’s not easy to get such natural shots of children at that age.”

  “Not unless you stick them in starched Sunday finery and bribe them with sweets. Then, sometimes, you might have a chance.”

  “Sometimes.”

  Across the yard, Roi played with the three boys on the grass.

  Imogen served me a helping of chicken salad. “So, how did you get into photography?”

  I looked away, self-conscious about my informal training. On the drive to the house after picking me up at the ferry terminal, Roi had told me all about his wife’s background. She had studied at the University of Washington to better understand the chemistry behind photography, then traveled to Germany to study on an art scholarship from her sorority before returning to Seattle to open a photography studio. Before marrying Roi, she’d already had her work featured in several shows. Imogen was the real thing: an artist. How could I explain my own patchy background? How could I make skipping classes in high school to wander from Central Park down to the Bowery to watch people sound impressive?