The Woman in the Photograph (15 page)

At breakfast, Man let himself in with his key. Tanja was in the bath and Lee was having toast when she heard the lock turn. She looked up at him and said nothing.

“I'm sorry about last night.” His rough voice made a play at tenderness; his angular face was hangdog and sad. “When you didn't come back, I just got madder and madder. I was worried about you.”

“Worried like Jack the Ripper,” she said with a snort. “I don't like seeing my throat slit, Man.”

He came to the table and stood behind her, massaging her shoulders, running his fingers through her hair. “I don't know what came over me yesterday.” He bent down and grazed her neck with his lips. “I could never hurt you, Lee. You know that.”

She believed him—although he had a temper, he wasn't a violent man—but was still nettled about his vicious words and the murdered portrait, the bloody warning about his work. She was tempted to ask if he might still reconsider forfeiting ownership of the photo she'd redone, then sighed. It was too early in the morning for a theoretical discussion—Did pushing the button make him the artist?—or worse, another nasty row.

Still behind her, talking into her neck, he continued. “Maybe
it had something to do with your other photo. Lee, that bell jar shot is amazing. Your best work yet.” He cleared his throat gruffly. “It was so damn clever, so accomplished; well, it almost made me jealous.”

She turned around to look him in the face. He looked honest and apologetic. Humbled. It was the greatest compliment he'd ever given her. She bit her lip, moved. Lee stood up and brought Man into a tight embrace; his body went slack with relief.

Tanja came out of the bathroom bundled in a large robe, a turban teetering on her head. “Good morning.” She waved at the two of them, unaware of the trouble of the night before. “Is there any coffee left?” she asked, poking her nose in the pot.

The three of them took their usual places around the small table, crowded, as ever, with coffee bowls, marmalade spoons, crusts, and fruit peels. Surrounded by ordinary things, the high emotions from the night before quickly fell away.

“I met someone I really like yesterday,” Tanja began shyly, glancing at both of them. “An American named Henry. Just my luck, though. In a week he's off to Syria, on an archaeological dig.”

Lee did not mention her own encounter, but teased her friend instead. “You'd better watch out for that one. Archeologists are usually mummy's boys.”

Man joined Tanja to boo and hiss, then patted her on the back. “That's great.”

“Of course it is,” said Lee. “You can have an unforgettable week here in Paris, then, for the next few months, receive love letters from exotic places. What could be better?”

“We're having lunch together today,” Tanja said. “And dinner.”

“In other words, I won't be seeing you for a while. I would
like to meet him sometime. See if he's worthy.”

Tanja smiled stupidly, then hid her face in her coffee cup, pretending she had a sip left.

“I've got a bit of news,” said Man, offering cigarettes around the table.

“Don't tell me you've met someone, too?” Lee asked.

Man chuckled, clearly delighted at the hint of jealousy. “Nooo.” He slowly made the round with his lighter, before continuing. “Countess Anna-Letizia Pecci-Blunt—she's the niece of Pope Leo XIII, but don't hold it against her—is having a costume ball at her house here in town. She's calling it le Bal Blanc; everything has to be white, from the décor to the guests' outfits. She wants me to create some sort of attraction.” Man looked directly at her, then flicked his eyes away. “I thought maybe you'd like to help, Lee.”

“So now you're Prince Charming?” She cocked an eyebrow, then clapped him on the back. “Hell yes, take me to the ball.”

All morning, side by side on the small sofa, they discussed the logistics of such an event.

“When is it, exactly?” asked Lee, pencil in hand. She had her pretty leather appointment book on her knee. Bought for sittings, it was still primarily filled with social events.

“Mid-May. The seventeenth, I believe.”

“My father will be here the following Saturday.” She smiled at the page.

“I'd forgotten all about that,” Man murmured. He lit a cigarette.

“It's just a week. He'll be staying at that hotel near the Observatoire.”
Lee snickered at his boyish fidgeting. “What, are you worried he won't approve of you? That he'll think you're too old and ugly for his little princess?”

Man shot her a look of panic, which made her burst out laughing.

“I'm sure he'll love you. You actually have a lot in common.” She gave him a quick kiss. “Now, tell me, where is this ball again?”

“At their place, the Hôtel de Cassini,” he said, moving quickly back to comfortable ground, his own turf. “It's not far from here, off the rue de Babylone. But if you walk past, all you see is a dismal gray wall. I guess they don't want us plebeians pocketing a nice view of their palace free of charge.”

“That must be it.”

The son of working-class immigrants, Man's entrée into French high society had come as a professional, their photographer. Lee knew that, now, even though he was famous and well-respected, he felt ill at ease around nobles—those moneyed eccentrics who enjoyed mixing with the avant-garde—and tried never to sound unduly impressed by them.

“It'll be held outside, in the gardens,” he continued. “They're constructing a stage for the band and a dance floor over the swimming pool. Since everything is going to be white, my idea is to use the scene—the people themselves—as a screen. I'm going to project movies on them from upstairs.”

“That's brilliant.” Lee clapped her hands. “Talk about a traveling picture show. What movies are you going to use?”

“Well, I thought I'd use my own.” He couldn't hide the pride in his voice. “You've never seen them, have you? I'd like to start off with
l'Étoile de mer
—”

“The starfish?”
Her face went pale, her mouth, dry.

Man didn't notice. “That's right. It's based on a poem by my friend Robert Desnos. In the film, he and Kiki play a couple who find a starfish in a jar, trapped like a disembodied hand—”

He kept talking, but Lee wasn't listening. Upon hearing the word “starfish,” in her mind, she was seven years old and back in Brooklyn, New York.

Her mother had fallen ill and decided Lee—or Elizabeth, as she was called then—would be better off staying with family friends, the Nilssons, until she recuperated. In the city, little Elizabeth felt like she was on holiday: the affectionate couple took her to Coney Island, bought her doughnuts, gave her crumbs for park pigeons, and let her loose in Abraham & Straus's toy department. Mr. and Mrs. Nilsson and her brother, “Uncle Bob,” were so attentive—more so, even, than her own mother—that she wasn't homesick at all.

Early one morning, the young couple had gone to Manhattan on business, leaving her in the care of Uncle Bob, who lived upstairs. When Elizabeth woke up, he was watching her from the rocking chair in the corner of her room.

“Good morning, sleepyhead.” He picked her up out of her cot and balanced her on his hip. “Let's have some fun today.” He carried the little girl up to his rooms. “I'm going to show you my treasures. You know, I've been a sailor most of my life and, like Sinbad, I've sailed the seven seas.”

Already wide awake, Elizabeth smiled in excitement, eager to hear his adventures. In his apartment, he plopped her down on his unmade bed, the tussled blankets of a restless sleeper. He pulled a wooden box out from under it and sat down next to
her. Jiggling his eyebrows, he cracked it open just an inch and peeked inside.

“I want to see,” Elizabeth cried.

“Of course you do,” he said, taking the lid off. He first picked up a silver medallion on a long chain and handed it to her. “Can you read?”

“Yes,” she said with an arrogant toss of her hair. She squinted down at the pendant and slowly made out, “Saint Christopher protect us.”

“Good for you. Ol' Saint Chris is the patron saint of travelers. Good luck for sailors.”

Next he brought out a sand dollar and a smudgy tuppence coin. “Put out your hands,” he said, then placed one in each of her open palms. “Now, which one do you think is worth more?”

“Can you really use this one as money?” she asked, pointing to the sand dollar with her chin, her hands still outstretched.

“No, but you should,” he said, taking them back and putting them aside.

Then he produced a dried starfish. Its slim, craggy legs were poetically askew; it looked like an underwater dancer who, once in the sun, had stopped midstep.

“Have you ever pretended to be a starfish?” he asked. “See if you can stretch yourself into a star.”

She lay back on the bed, put her arms out straight and opened her legs as wide as she could.

“Very good.” He laughed, tickling her belly. “Except starfish don't wear nightgowns.”

He reached over and yanked the loose cotton nightshirt
over her head. Elizabeth, suddenly nervous, covered herself with one of the blankets.

“I'm going to play starfish, too,” he said. Staring down at her with a playful smile, he unbuttoned his shirt, then took off his trousers. Elizabeth had seen her brothers naked—swimming in the creek or getting out of their baths—but Uncle Bob's body, muscular and hairy, frightened her. When he slid off his underwear, his sex was standing straight out.

He grabbed the blankets away and hovered over her. “Come on, sweetie. Remember what the starfish looks like. It keeps its legs opened wide.”

“No,” she whispered.

She didn't understand what he wanted, but knew to be afraid. This was no longer fun, this wasn't a game. She tried to curl into a ball, to disappear, but he forced her down and spread her legs apart. “Make a star,” he grunted, rubbing himself up and down her small frame. She was already sobbing when he pushed himself inside her. Elizabeth screamed; he immediately came. As he plopped down, spent, Mrs. Nilsson burst in the room. She screamed, too.

Lee almost never thought back on that day; so long ago, it seemed almost impossible, a nightmare in which Saint Christopher broke a delicate starfish in two. Afterward, in a furor of guilt, anger, and confusion, Mrs. Nilsson packed her bags—the new teddy bear from the department store somehow forgotten—and returned Elizabeth, freshly bathed but still dribbling blood, to Poughkeepsie on the afternoon train. When her parents came to the station to fetch her, they were oddly quiet and kept a respectful distance. But even that was hazy now. What
was far more real to Lee—the memories that scarred deep—was the treatment she then endured for gonorrhea.

Because of the horrible shame—a small child with a sailor's disease—Elizabeth's mother, Florence, refused to take her to the doctor, but treated her at home. Several times a week for the next year, her mother, a former nurse, administered the cure. In the immaculate white bathroom, Florence would bring out the odious instruments—the glass catheter, the douche can, the black rubber tubing—and, pursing her lips, jab her daughter between the legs, sending burning chemicals into her undeveloped womb. Then she prodded her cervix with cotton swabs to remove any lingering pus. Elizabeth howled and cried, but her frowning mother remained clinical, bent on completing the task. When it was finished, Florence did not hug or console her daughter. As the little girl limped out of the bathroom to the wide-eyed stares of her brothers, her mother, in thick rubber gloves, began scrubbing wherever Elizabeth had touched with dichloride of mercury. The seven-year-old understood that her body was filthy. Even her touch was infectious.

Later on that year, when the physical cure was complete, Lee's parents sent her to a Freudian psychiatrist. He made sure little Elizabeth understood that love and sex were two entirely separate things, a lesson she learned well. Since adolescence, random sexual encounters had satisfied a yearning inside her: to enjoy lust with no strings, to wield her power and beauty, to feel her lover's burning vulnerability, to be someone else.

“Lee?” Man asked, tapping her on the knee. “Well, what do you think?”

With his touch, her reverie broke. She got up to get a glass of water. “I don't know, Man,” she said from the sink. “That film
sounds sort of dark to me.”

He came up from behind and put his arms around her. She fell into him, on the verge of tears. “You silly goose,” he whispered in her ear. “It's because Kiki's in the film, isn't it?”

She swallowed hard. “I guess that's it.”

“Well, that puts me in a pickle, sweetheart. She's in all my best work.” He paused for a moment. “Hey, I've got an idea. A few years ago, I found some hand-tinted film at the flea market. What do you think of that? Projecting color film on the all-white guests?”