Learning to See

by Elise Hooper

  I gave him my address and we stepped out onto Powell Street, my hand in his. While in my studio, I had been confident and in control, but as soon as we passed the shuttered clock repair store at the end of the block, I felt awkward and slow. He said nothing about my limp and seemed happy to lope along, swinging his arms to and fro, appraising the surrounding darkened storefronts from top to bottom. Letting out a low whistle and grasping my shoulder while nodding his chin upward, he said, “Look at that.” Above, a full moon, luminous as a pearl, hung over the edge of the buildings’ roofline, huge and low. “Rare sight in the city. Usually I’ve got to be out in wide-open country with big sky to catch a moonrise like that.”

  “Full moons bring out all shades of crazy,” I said, quoting Mother without thinking.

  He looked over at me with a quizzical expression. “What does a girl like you know about crazy?”

  “My mother was a social worker in New York when I was a girl. I often accompanied her on rounds during the evenings. Full moons reliably brought out tragedies of all shapes and sizes—fistfights, drunken accidents, sometimes even murder and suicide.”

  “Jesus, and you saw these things?”

  “No, not firsthand, but my mother would have to go see the families of the bereaved and abandoned.”

  “She worked, huh? How modern. Bet that’s where you get your spitfire, from her.”

  I lowered my eyes to the sidewalk. I’d made it sound frightening and reckless, me trekking through the Bowery with Mother, but really, my younger brother, Martin, and I had been forced to tag along because who else was going to watch over us at night while she worked? Once Father left, she had to work; first as a librarian, and then as a social worker. And although the social work hadn’t been suitable for children, it fascinated me. I’d wanted to see people, all sorts of people, and how they really lived. This interest was the same thing that propelled me to skip classes during my high school years to wander through the city’s Lower East Side. I never feared the drunks zigzagging along the filthy sidewalks, the slatternly women lurking in doorways, the big eyes peering through dingy, lower windowpanes of crowded tenement buildings. I shook my head, thinking of my customers all tied up in strings of pricey pearls. My life was so different now. That girl who had wandered the Lower East Side almost felt lost to me. Perhaps it was for the best.

  After a minute or so of walking in silence, Maynard cleared his throat and asked, “Where do you like to eat around here?”

  “I’ve discovered a few good spots on Grant over in Chinatown. You ever go there?”

  “Nah, if I can’t pronounce the joint’s name, I’m not trying it.”

  “You’re missing out. There are some wonderful places, cheap and delicious.”

  “No chance I’m eatin’ frog legs.”

  “Oh, dry up, we don’t eat frog legs,” I said, shaking my head at his teasing. “Where do you go?”

  “I’ve always been a regular at Coppa’s, but he has to keep shutting down, thanks to our boys in blue, so I’m in the market for a new spot. I’m more of a North Beach type of fella, though, not Chinatown, although the siren call of the Barbary Coast sometimes lures me in.” He waggled his eyebrows for comic effect.

  A cable car clattered by defying all sense of gravity as its boxy frame rose up the hill. When we turned the corner onto Clay Street, a cold, damp wind hit us straight on, making Maynard nudge closer to me.

  “Do you live on your own?” he asked.

  “I will soon. I’ve been living with a friend of mine from back home, but she’s getting married in a couple of weeks.” Just saying the words aloud made my stomach flip. I was going to miss Fronsie terribly.

  “What are you doing tomorrow evening?” he asked.

  “My, my, look at you planning ahead.” I laughed, turning to study his profile. The long straight nose, high cheekbones, hooded eyes.

  “I had no idea you were such a hostess. Figure I better snag an appointment in the narrow gaps in your schedule.”

  “Well, unfortunately, I’m tied up. It’s my roommate’s engagement party.”

  “How ’bout I go with you?”

  His question, delivered effortlessly, took me a moment to register. I stopped walking, certain I’d misheard him. “You want to go to Fronsie’s party with me?”

  “I do.” He narrowed his eyes in challenge. “That is, if you don’t have a fella lined up already.”

  It probably should have embarrassed me to admit I’d planned to go alone, but the bustle of the last few months had left me too busy to concern myself with appearances. My thoughts scattered. I simply stared at him. I’d never met anyone so forward, so bold. An expression of amusement settled upon his face as he saw my confusion.

  “I suppose so,” I murmured slowly.

  “Well, if that’s not an enthusiastic invitation, what is?” He stopped to give me a small bow, laughter dancing in his eyes. “Fine, I accept.” He pulled me close again to continue walking. “But the thing is, if this is an engagement party, I need a present. Do you have a few minutes? Let’s run down to my studio and pick out a painting.”

  “But . . .” I spluttered, still puzzling over how he wrangled an invitation out of me so easily, “I’m already bringing her a crystal vase from Gump’s. I’m happy to add your name to the card.”

  He snorted. “I’ve never given anyone anything from Gump’s in my life and don’t plan to start now.”

  “What’s wrong with Gump’s?”

  “Everything’s wrong with it. Let’s give your New Jersey girl a taste of the real West.”

  I was prepared to say that a painting was too much, too generous, but in the reflection of the moon and streetlights, hurt flinched in his eyes and I changed tack. “Your work is beautiful. If anything, it should be saved as a wedding present.”

  A sly grin slid across his face. “So now you can’t get enough of me and I’m invited to the wedding? Miss Lange, you’re one smooth operator.”

  Flustered, I opened my mouth but nothing came out. He laughed.

  “All right, all right, I can see you’re overcome with excitement. Let’s get you home. I’ll pick out a painting on my own.”

  We resumed course to my apartment, tucked close together. Excitement tingled at my fingertips as I gave him the details for the following evening. When we arrived at the door to my building, he studied the brick exterior. Dark windows faced out at us blankly. With my heart in my throat, I stepped forward, unlocked the building’s entry gate, and pushed it open, my hip propping the door. I turned to him, but he glanced up and down the block and again at my building before smiling in a surprisingly sad, forlorn way. “Kid, I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow evening. I’ll be here at seven. And remember: no vases.”

  I nodded, leaning forward slightly, lowering my lashes, ready for whatever came next, scarcely able to breathe. But nothing happened. He turned and sauntered toward downtown. Confounded, I watched as he retreated into the darkness. He raised a hand without looking back and kept moving. Stepping into the dark recess of the vestibule, I let the door close with a heavy thud, taking satisfaction in the sharp sound disturbing the silence of the street.

  I sunk onto the second step of the stairwell, glaring at my right foot. Why had I allowed myself to get my hopes up? Moments earlier my stomach had been aflutter with excitement. Now it simply hurt. I lowered my head and pushed my palm into my brow. Maynard Dixon was older, established, and distinguished in his handsome, rangy looks and forthright manner. Everyone knew him. He was a real artist, a painter who commanded attention. And what was I? How could I have possibly thought that he possessed anything more than a passing curiosity in me? I was a fool.

  It made sense why Fronsie had found such a becoming bridegroom. Somehow she glowed with respectability. She knew which fork went with which course. She knew how to keep moths away from precious garments. She knew the exact phrasing of what to write on a consolation card. But I’d never received this type of instruction from my moth
er, never had that type of family. When Fron had met Imogen’s boys, she hadn’t missed a beat and sat down to play jacks with them, whereas I barely could remember their names. It was easy to picture her with a family of her own, yet all of that felt beyond my reach. I massaged my temples.

  A memory of Father flashed through me. In my mind’s eye, he ambled down the sidewalk away from our house, hands in his pockets, kicking at clumps of dry leaves as if playing with a ball, never glancing back once. If he had, he would have seen my twelve-year-old face pressed to the window, breath fogging the glass. That had been the last time I’d ever seen him. How could he have just left like that?

  Years before he took off, he had hoisted me onto his shoulders one evening to watch a performance of A Midsummer’s Night Dream in the park down the street from our house. During the scene when Hermia and Helena squabble, as his body heaved with laughter, I’d wobbled upon his shoulders but hadn’t felt unsafe. Not for a moment. He’d held my shins close to his chest, his hands warm and big, his grip secure but gentle. How was I supposed to reconcile this memory at the park with the fact that he left several years later without any warning? Without even looking back? Had it been my sickness that drove him away? He’d been a handsome man, vigorous and charming, playing tennis with friends every week and doling out Tootsie Rolls to the neighborhood children. Had he been ashamed at the way my leg never recovered? Whenever Mother nagged at me to walk straighter to hide that limp, he’d pressed his lips together sternly and turned away. I must have embarrassed him.

  After he left, my family rarely sat down for meals together. Mother had long workdays in the city. Grandmutter found complaints in the way that Martin and I talked too loudly together, left our toys dangerously underfoot, never did well in school. Any sense of security evaporated. One day I’d had legs that worked perfectly; the next day, I didn’t. One day I’d had a father; the next day, I didn’t. Was this how life was to work for me?

  But then I remembered how Maynard pulled me close to dance; his whistling as we walked up Nob Hill; his insistence that he take me to tomorrow’s party. If I told Fronsie about his abrupt departure, she would have told me I was overthinking it. In her mind, all of his teasing and gentle gestures would have outweighed our awkward parting. And really, his behavior at the end had been gentlemanly. He had done nothing unseemly. I nodded to myself. I had to stop worrying that everything could be taken away. I needed to believe in this man.

  Chapter 9

  Three days later from a position across the street, I watched the entrance to the building housing Maynard’s studio and gathered my nerve. His behavior during the evening of Fronsie’s engagement party, two nights earlier, had left me baffled. It had been a dizzying ride of an encounter with him that swung from shared jokes and heady embraces to stony goodbyes. What was happening? I stared at the towering fortress of concrete in front of me, contemplating what to say to him.

  As soon as Maynard had arrived at our apartment to escort Fronsie and me to the Pacific Heights home of her soon-to-be in-laws, he barely paused to let us get a word in edgewise, so quick was his conversation. While Fron curiously eyed the large rectangular package wrapped in brown paper tucked under his arm, he carried on about a description of recent shenanigans at the Bohemian Club. Our audience for his storytelling increased once we arrived at the party. We were soon surrounded by an assortment of guests. Bay Rum, brilliantine, and lily-of-the-valley powder rose with the heat from everyone’s bodies. Dressed to the nines in evening jackets and pastel silk drop-waist chemise dresses edged in seed pearls, the group leaned in, eager for his next anecdote.

  Our host, Mrs. Stockton, Fron’s future mother-in-law, normally an austere-faced society matron, transformed into a giddy debutante when Maynard stood next to her. Looking out the huge bay windows running along one wall of the house’s dining room, we admired the view of the Marina District below us, and fainter in the distance, the Marin Headlands.

  “I should set up a canvas here and do some painting—what a view,” said Maynard.

  “Mr. Dixon, you’re more than welcome to use our home for your art anytime.” She eyed his black Stetson as if it were a dash of whipped cream on top of a dessert she was considering spiriting away to the pantry to gobble down in secret. “Perhaps you have a new collection in mind?”

  “That’s kind of you but I’m not a city fella. There’s not an ounce of San Francisco blood running through these veins. My family’s a bunch of ol’ Confederates from Virginia. My grandfather decided to light out for the West after fighting for the Rebs and settled in what’s called the Alabama Colony, outside of Fresno in the San Joaquin Valley. That wide-open landscape marks all my work.”

  “So, your family was in ranching?” Mrs. Stockton asked. Judging by the glow in her cheeks, no doubt acres and acres of green, fertile farmland flooded her imagination.

  “Ha, wouldn’t that be grand? My father served as an attorney but never seemed to have much work.” Maynard paused and gave her a sly wink. “You know most disputes out that way tend to get settled with six-shooters. Yet somehow he managed to meet a lovely young gal on a trip into the city here and sweet talked her into marrying him.”

  “My, my, how adventurous.”

  “Indeed, my mother was a force to be reckoned with.”

  “And what did she think of Fresno?”

  “Not much, but she was determined to bring some culture out to the hinterlands.” He paused to smile as a nostalgic expression, almost dreamy, flitted across his face. “When I think back to my childhood, I hear her voice. She read to me all the time. Ivanhoe, A Tale of Two Cities, Robinson Crusoe—that was the stuff of my boyhood. You see, I had bad lungs—asthma. Pardon my French, but I was the poor little sonofabitch stuck inside hangin’ onto his mama’s apron strings. No vaquero work for me. Instead I lost myself in the world of books.”

  “Is that when you started drawing and painting?”

  He nodded. “I also write poetry, but never much liked going to school, so by ’bout sixteen years old, I was off on my own, determined to devote my life to writing and painting the Old West.” As the eyes of everyone widened in awe, I marveled at his ability to enthrall men and women alike. Maynard Dixon certainly knew how to make an asthmatic childhood sound romantic. What a card.

  He turned to Fronsie. “What do you say, Miss Ahlstrom, would you like to open up what we brought for you?” At his use of we, everyone’s gaze slid over me, interest and envy shining in their eyes. I moved closer to his side, savoring the attention.

  When Fronsie lifted the painting from its wrapping, a canvas showing an expansive sky over a jagged line of purple mountains, there was a sharp intake of breath as everyone in the room leaned in to admire his work.

  “Say, you outdid yourself, Mr. Dixon,” Fron said, her smile as wide as I’d ever seen it. She threw her arms around him, thanking him enthusiastically, and although Maynard brushed off her compliments, his grin widened and his face flushed slightly. “Now come on, everyone, let’s celebrate!” she said.

  Furniture and rugs had been cleared out of the Stockton’s drawing room ahead of time. A six-man band assembled around the grand piano, where couples started dancing to “Tiger Drag.” I peered into the mass of bodies: whirling, swinging, and shimmying, arms and legs flailing, occasional slivers of skin gleaming in the darkness. A bare shoulder, forearm, a splay of fingers. Maynard stood beside me. When he draped his arm around me, all thoughts of the dancers vanished. I could feel heat across every inch of his arm running along my bare shoulders. It wasn’t until the piano player started a new song, slower this time, that he pulled me into a corner. As the vocalist sang out “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” I settled into his arms. I could sense people smiling and whispering as they watched us. With my eyes closed, my cheek resting against his shoulder, his fingers rubbed circles on my lower back, each so electrifying, sparks flashed throughout my body. We stayed close together even when the next song started, faster and louder, until bodies bumped
into us and we were forced to separate, smiling at each other, giddy in the darkness.

  Later, the three of us, Maynard, Fronsie, and I, took a cab home. As our driver barreled down Sacramento Street toward the dip of Van Ness and then flew up Nob Hill, we laughed and sang silly nonsense songs. The energy of the party still coursed through our bloodstreams like the effervescence of champagne. We unloaded outside of our apartment, and Maynard walked us to the door after paying the driver. “Ladies, it’s been an honor to escort you two beauties to tonight’s gala. Fronsie, your fella Jack is one damned lucky man. The lads of this city will suffer a great blow when you become Mrs. Stockton.” He bent over at the waist to give an elaborate bow while brandishing his cowboy hat toward us. “But now I must bid you both adios.”

  “What? Don’t you want to come up for a nightcap?” Fron protested. “Our rooming house matron is deaf and won’t hear a thing. Why do you think we picked this place?”

  “Sorry, kiddo, not tonight,” he said. Stepping away from us on the sidewalk, he called out:

  I love the rugged contour of your strength

  That points the sky with pinnacles of steel;

  Your jaunty men make confident with health,—

  Their care-free swagger and their careless jokes;

  The laughing pretty girls upon your streets,

  Keen-eyed and heedless of the dusty winds.

  We watched as he finished his lines, turned, and sauntered away, whistling.

  “So, he really is a poet,” Fron murmured. “Well, I wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye to him yet, and I certainly can’t imagine that you were either.” She hiccupped and looked at me queerly for a moment before shrugging and humming as she entered the building ahead of me. When we reached our rooms, she threw herself onto a small chair in the living room. “Boy, that Maynard, he really charmed the pants off everyone.”

  I looked away, unclipping my earrings, bracing myself against the question I knew was coming—but now, why in the world isn’t he up here charming the pants off you?—but after a brief silence, she uncoiled the long string of pearls from around her neck. “Who knew my in-laws could throw such a bender?”