Black & White (12 page)

“What question is that?”

Is Ruth messing with Clara’s head? She is capable of many things, but has never been capable of guile. With Ruth, what you see is what you get—so what’s this? She seems to be wavering in and out of focus. Sharp, then blurry, then sharp again.

“The photographs. They’re all here—every single one of them, as far as I can tell. All your photographs of me, even ones I never knew about.”

“Of course.” Ruth struggles up on one elbow. “For the book.”

“What book?” Clara’s voice is raised. She hears a shuffling outside the doorway. Is Peony standing there? Or Marcy? Or some other person from the phalanx of Ruth’s helpers?

“Kubovy is helping me put it together,” Ruth says. “I’ve wanted to do it for years, and now—”

“Jesus Christ,” says Clara. It dawns on her in an overwhelming rush, a shock so profound that it actually feels electrical. Her spine is on fire. She understands now. It has taken longer than it should have—but now she understands.

She thumbs through the folders resting on her lap. She feels reckless. Nothing she discovers could possibly make things worse. She opens one that appears to be slightly smaller than the rest and finds a mock-up of a book jacket inside. There she is, close-up, closer up than she has ever been before. It’s one of the images she’s never seen. How old is she, perhaps seven? It is summer—she can tell by the waviness of her hair—and she is lying on a braided rug, her hair spread all around her. Clara remembers the rug; it smelled of lemons and dog hair and was soft from a thousand washings. How can she remember the rug but not the photograph?

A black paper sash runs across the middle of the mock-up. CLARA. Just her name, nothing more—each letter cut out from the black paper. The design is brilliant; she sees this even now. The sash can be removed so that only the image of the little girl remains. And the name
CLARA
itself—her own name!—is an absence rather than a presence. Cut out. Each letter an empty hole in the blackness.

“What do you think of it?” asks Ruth.

“You can’t do this,” says Clara.

“What do you mean? It’s already—”

“I won’t let you do this,” Clara says, more forcefully.

Ruth has managed to sit up now and has shoved two pillows behind her. She looks at Clara indulgently, as if she were an adorable but misguided child.

“Oh, Clara,” she begins, “it’s my work. It’s not about you—it was never about you.”

“That’s bullshit! Of course it’s about me—it
is
me!”

“You’ve refused to understand this,” says Ruth. “Light, shadow, texture—the pictures are scenes, compositions—”

“You stole me away from myself!” Clara digs her nails into the soft flesh of her palm, willing herself to stop—but there is no stopping. Not at this point.

Ruth doesn’t react. She just takes it all in, wishing—Clara is certain—that she had a camera in her hand. Even now, she is framing her subject: her grown daughter, face contorted by outrage, sitting in the old wing chair with a pile of photographs on her lap.

“I’m sorry,” Ruth says, sounding anything but. “I wish you weren’t still so worked up about all this. It’s ancient history. How can it possibly matter?”

Clara is crying now. For such a long time—all her adult life, really—it has been difficult for her to muster tears. She has moved past her feelings as if they were scenery seen from a moving car. Anger, sadness, regret, loneliness—she kept going, and her painful thoughts remained stationary, like dusty signs on a road. But all Ruth has to do is…to be Ruth. Ever since first arriving in New York, Clara has felt tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. She has sprung a slow leak.

“It matters,” she says. “How can you not understand that it matters? I’ve been trying—” She breaks off, gulping for air.

“Oh, Clara, please, you must—”

“You stop.” Clara finds her breath. “You stop this right now.”

Ruth shakes her head.

The phone rings again.
KUBOVY WEISS
. Ruth reaches for the receiver but doesn’t have the strength. She collapses back against her pillows, breathless even from that small effort.

“Could you answer that for me, Clara?”

“Why the fuck would I do that?”

“Clara!”

There’s that feeling again—unfamiliar, both terrifying and liberating. If Clara had to describe it, she would say it is a complete lack of caution. The sudden improbable removal—as if surgically excised—of a key aspect of her careful, guarded nature.

“Fine,” she says. Her body is coiled, tense, like an animal ready to spring. She grabs the ringing phone.

“Hello, Kubovy.”

A split second of silence on the other end.

“Is that Clara?”

“Yes, Kubovy. It’s Clara.”

“How are you, my beauty?”

“I’ve been better.” And then, in a rush of words—“Kubovy, this book you’re doing with my mother. Please think—think about what you’re doing.”

Another pause, slightly longer than the last. Even as a little girl, Clara imagined Kubovy’s mind as a calculator. Always computing, adding or subtracting, finding a way to make the equation work to his advantage.

“I can’t accept it.” Clara fills the silence. “It’s too much.”

“What are you saying?” Kubovy asks.

She waits him out.

“Clara, Clara,” he finally says. He has chosen his tack, adopting the weary, admonishing tone that Ruth already tried on her. “There’s another way to look at this, you know.”

“Oh, really? And what is that?”

“You’ve had a remarkable life. An
interesting
life. And part of the reason for that remarkable, interesting life is—”

“My life hasn’t been so goddamned interesting,” Clara interrupts.

Ruth shifts her weight on the bed, sinks lower into her pillows.

“Well. I can’t speak to your current life in…where is it again—”

“Maine,” Clara bites off.

“Ah, yes. I would agree. Perhaps not so fascinating. But your childhood, my dear—you were a star!”

Clara closes her eyes. Squeezes them tight so there is nothing but darkness. No images of flashbulbs popping outside the Kubovy Weiss Gallery. No frank stares, no sideways inquisitive glances from strangers on the street. None of that—but still, it all seeps in around the edges. Poison finding its mark.

“I just wanted to be a kid.” Clara’s voice drops to a whisper. She can’t seem to stop crying. The images blur beneath her lids.

“And you would have wanted your mother to be…what…baking cookies?”

“You don’t get it.”

“No, my dear, it’s you who don’t get it. You’ve been in such a privileged position. It’s sad that you can’t see it for yourself.”

“Stop it, Kubovy. You don’t know me anymore. You don’t know anything about me.” She is breathless, unaccustomed to saying what she thinks. “Don’t you dare treat me like a child.”

“But you are acting like one.”

Clara slams down the phone. She has momentarily forgotten about Ruth. Ruth stares up at her from the bed, seemingly unfazed by her behavior—or maybe she really is stoned on morphine.

“I really do need that woman—what’s-her-name—to come in here,” says Ruth. “I’m sure she’s trying to give us some privacy, but—”

“I’ll go get her.” Clara jumps to her feet. Glad to get away for a moment. Afraid of what she might say next.

The phone rings again. Ruth doesn’t even try to reach for it. It rings and rings. Clara pictures Kubovy on the other end, pacing the floor of his gallery, cursing her under his breath in his native Turkish.

“Clara.” There is an unfamiliar tone in Ruth’s voice. “I really don’t want to hurt you.” She seems almost to be pleading.

Clara stops, one hand on the doorknob. She waits for more. She waits for her mother to say she’s made a mistake. That she understands. That she’ll leave ancient history where it belongs, locked up in the dusty archives of the past.

“Did you hear what I said, Clara?” Ruth’s voice is weakening. “The last thing I want to do is hurt you—”

“Then don’t,” Clara says. And walks out of the room.

“R
AIN!”
Ruth looks out the fogged-up window of the Checker cab. “Why does it have to be pouring on this night—of all nights?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Clara’s father soothes her. He’s sitting on a folding metal jump seat, facing Ruth, Clara, and Robin. He reaches over and pats Ruth on her knee. Clara recognizes the expression on his face, though she’s used to seeing it directed at her or Robin. Pride. Nathan Dunne is proud of his young, beautiful wife who is about to have her first gallery show. He hasn’t seen any of the photographs; Ruth has kept them under wraps. She wants him to be surprised—to see her work hung on a gallery wall for the first time, the way the rest of the world will see it.

That is, if anyone shows up. A rumble of thunder. Lightning flashes across the sky like a strobe. Clara loves these Checker cabs, with their rounded hoods and roomy insides where you can sit across from someone while you bounce along. And she loves to be able to look at her father, who has put on his downtown best for the occasion—black jeans and a black sweater—the freshly ironed crease along the center of his jeans legs the only giveaway that he’s really an uptown lawyer.

“Of course it’s going to matter, Nate!” Ruth looks like she’s going to cry. She never wears makeup, but tonight her face is painted. A slash of red across her mouth. Eyes lined with charcoal, lashes thick and dark. Clara wants to wipe her mother’s face with a damp tissue, the way Ruth does when she has a runny nose. She doesn’t like all that color on her mother’s lips. It makes her look hard. Like a stranger.

Clara had watched Ruth as she got ready for the evening. Her mother looked almost like a little girl in her fuzzy slippers and panties, squinting at herself in the harsh light of the bathroom mirror. Ruth smiled unnaturally at her own reflection, then let out a deep sigh.

“This is supposed to be fun.” Ruth turned to Clara.

“What is, Mommy?”

“The opening,” Ruth said, dusting powder over her cheeks. “The party.”

“Parties are fun,” Clara said. She wasn’t sure what her mother meant. All she knew is that Ruth looked tense. All bottled up.

“The work is the best part,” Ruth said, crouching down so she could look at Clara directly. “The stuff we do together. The rest—I’d just as soon skip it.”

The taxi stops at a traffic light in Times Square. Dozens of small storefronts covered with iron gates, a blur of seedy, flickering neon. A car alarm is going at full tilt, a series of syncopated staccato blasts. A tall woman in a short skirt steps gingerly over a puddle in her high-heeled boots.

“Daddy, look—is that a man?” asks Robin, pointing to the tall woman.

Nathan peers out the window, through the pelting rain. “Seems to be, sweetheart.”

“Why is she dressed like that?”

“Some adults like to play dress-up.”

“But why?”

“Oh, please don’t start with the whys,” Ruth says under her breath, so softly that only Clara can hear it.

“Why, Daddy?”

Clara knows this bothers her mother—the way Robin never stops asking questions, the way these questions are always directed at their father. Clara wishes she could tell her mother that Robin never asks her anything because Ruth never answers. But even at four, she knows the way things have lined up in the Dunne family: Ruth has Clara. Nate has Robin. A perfect mathematical balance.

“Look, Daddy—that sign says
S-H-O-
, that spells shop!” Robin pipes up again. She looks at the pink flashing lights that precede it. “
S-E-X.
What does that spell, Daddy?”

Nathan and Ruth exchange a parental look: amused, shoulders shrugging. As if to say,
What do we do now?
But Robin’s already on to the next thing, her mind fixed on what’s right in front of her, like a small animal foraging for scraps.

“Will there be food at this party?” Clara wants to know.

“Wine and cheese,” says Ruth.

“What about juice?”

“I’m sure Kubovy has thought of that,” says Ruth.