Black & White (35 page)

“First of all, just because they’re lawyers doesn’t mean that you should dismiss them out of hand,” Nathan says. “And anyway, that’s not what—”

Ruth stops kneading the dough. She slaps her hands against her apron, releasing a small cloud of flour.

“How do you think it feels,” she says slowly, “to be asked if I’m still doing that photography thing. Like what I do is some sort of hobby that I might have moved on from. Like—I don’t know—needlepoint.”

“That’s not what they mean, Ruth. They just don’t know what to say to you. They’re not used to talking to artists.”

“Well, it makes me feel bad. All they care about is money—and since my work isn’t in some big gallery and they’ve never heard of me, they just dismiss me. You should see their eyes glaze over.”

Ruth’s barrette has come undone. Her hair falls across her face, and she swipes it away.

“Listen, this is silly,” says Nate. He walks over to Ruth and rubs her shoulders from behind. “I invited a new client for lunch. I know it’s last-minute, but this is someone I think you’ll really like.”

“No lawyers?” Ruth asks hopefully.

“No lawyers.”

Robin comes into the kitchen now, dragging a Raggedy Ann doll behind her on the floor.

“Hello, darling,” Ruth exclaims. “You were playing so quietly by yourself, I almost forgot you!”

She’s kidding, of course. Of course she’s kidding, but Clara sees a little cloud drift across her five-year-old sister’s face, then disappear.

“Come, girls. You can be my helpers,” Ruth says. She hoists them both up on the kitchen counter and gives each child a small piece of dough to work with. She begins chopping apples, her movements quick, careless.

“Do you want me to do that for you?” Nathan asks. He’s afraid she’ll slice her finger open.

“No, I’m fine,” Ruth says. “So tell me, who is this fabulous client? I hope he likes strudel.”

Nathan’s client arrives an hour late for lunch. He is flustered, pacing back and forth on the front porch, his long hair—jet-black, not yet gray—windblown from the ride upstate in his convertible. He’s wearing jeans and a navy blue blazer. A bright-red cashmere muffler is wrapped around his neck, obscuring the bottom part of his face.

“These country roads,” he says by way of introducing himself, when Ruth opens the door. He hands her a bottle of wine. “My apologies.”

“Not at all,” Ruth says. She’s slightly mystified by this man on her porch. Nathan hasn’t told her much about him. “Please, come in.”

Robin and Clara are watching television in the family room when Ruth brings the stranger through.

“Girls, please say hello to Mr….” She trails off. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”

“Weiss,” he says. “Kubovy Weiss.” He crouches down so he’s at eye level with the girls. “But you can call me Kubovy.”

“You made it!” Nathan comes bounding in from out back. He has bits of dried leaves and twigs on his fisherman’s sweater; he must have been hauling in firewood.

“Nathan.” Kubovy straightens up, offering his hand. “Thanks for having me.”

Clara keeps looking at the man with the long hair and the funny name. He’s different from the people her father usually brings home, and it isn’t just the hair either. He looks like a drawing in one of her picture books. A Maurice Sendak animal, all curls and angles and watchful eyes.

“So you are the photographer,” Kubovy says to Ruth.

“Yes,” Ruth answers faintly. Her forehead knots with anticipation as she waits for the usual questions.
Where have I seen your pictures? Can you make a living at that?

“I’d love to see your work,” Kubovy says.

“Oh.” Ruth’s hands fly up, a reflex. “I don’t really—”

“Kubovy is an art dealer,” Nathan says.

Something comes over Ruth. Her pupils widen, her nerves bristle with attention. She is suddenly more alive than before.

“Really,” she says. Her voice gives nothing away. She is cool, oh so cool. “Do you have a gallery?”

“Yes, in SoHo,” says Kubovy. “On Prince Street, though we’re about to move into a larger space on West Broadway.”

Nathan hums a little tune under his breath as he uncorks a bottle of wine. He walks into the kitchen and emerges with a platter of cheese and a small bowl of olives.

“Please.” He gestures to the sofa. “Make yourself comfortable.”

Kubovy sinks into the deep food-stained pillows. He struggles to sit upright as Nathan hands him a glass of wine.

“My husband tells me you’re his client?” Ruth asks. She’s still trying to make sense of all this. The thoughts practically gallop across her face.

“Our firm is handling a dispute between Kubovy and one of his former partners,” Nathan says.

“Mommy?” Clara looks up from
Sesame Street.

“Yes, sweetie?”

“I’m hungry.”

“We’ll have lunch soon, Clara.”

“Clara. What a beautiful name,” says Kubovy. Then he turns to Ruth. “So. I am serious, you know. I hope you will show me your work.”

“Maybe after lunch,” Ruth begins. “I don’t know what I have here. Most of my work is in the city.”

“Whatever you like.” Kubovy shrugs.

“Contemporary photography is Kubovy’s specialty,” says Nate.

Ruth nods, as if unsurprised. It must be a lot of work, acting as if none of this matters to her.

“Please, my dear,” Kubovy says. He sounds much older than he is—he is perhaps in his mid-thirties. “Don’t be nervous. I don’t bite.”

“I’m not nervous!” Ruth says.

Kubovy does a slow-motion blink. “Of course not,” he says. “My mistake.”

After lunch—after the charcuterie, the crumbling Asiago, the thick slices of saucisson and hunks of fresh baguettes, after the wine—Ruth slips upstairs and comes down a few minutes later carrying a large black portfolio.

“These aren’t my most recent—” she says. The color in her cheeks is high: two bright pink spots. “I mean—”

“That’s fine,” Kubovy murmurs. “Let’s have a look.”

He brushes away the bits of cheese and bread crumbs, then spreads the portfolio open on the dining-room table.

From the kitchen, the sound of running water, clanking dishes. The hum of domestic life. Nate has absented himself from this process, taking the girls with him.
Here, Robin. Stack these dishes. Clara, honey, could you hand me that towel, the one over there, hanging by the stove?

Ruth stands behind Kubovy, looking over his shoulder as he slowly flips through the pages of her portolio. There are fifteen photographs in all, sheathed in plastic. His manner—relaxed until now—is focused, fastidious.

“Those are landscapes,” she says, and shakes her head. “Obviously.”

Kubovy doesn’t respond. He’s not making this easy for her. No comments as he takes in each photograph. No sign of what he’s thinking. He pauses over one image, a photograph of the local garbage dump: the rusted gates, the pickup trucks, the huge vat of empty bottles glistening in the silvery light.

He closes the portfolio, placing his thick square hands on top of it. Ruth sits down next to him at the table. She isn’t going to give him the satisfaction of asking,
Well? What do you think?
She stares at him, waiting for a verdict.

“Interesting.” He purses his lips, blowing out air. “Not quite there yet—but interesting. Quite beautiful.”

She waits for more, but no more is coming.

“What’s not there?” Ruth asks.

“My dear, that’s what you need to figure out.” Kubovy pauses, fishing for a cigarette. He lights up, then flicks his ash onto a salad plate. “I’ll tell you what: Figure that out and come see me in a year.”

“H
I
, H
ILARY.”
Robin greets the saleswoman on the fifth floor of Barneys by name. “My sister here is looking for something simple and black.”

“Any designer in particular?” the saleswoman asks, turning to Clara. Sizing her up. She’s certainly happy to see Robin, who must be one of her better customers.

“I don’t know,” Clara says. She looks around the floor at the spare well-placed racks on which dozens of shapeless garments—mostly black—hang. She’s never heard of half these designers. Costume National. Rick Owen. Junya Watanabe. She feels she’s been living under a rock—or at least in the pages of the L. L. Bean catalog.

Sammy has already found a bag she likes in the Prada department. She carries it over to Clara.

“Look, Mom. Isn’t this cute?”

Clara takes it from Sammy and looks at the price tag. Thirteen hundred dollars for a few stitched-together pieces of leather.

“Robin, this is insane,” Clara says.

“Well, it’s Prada.”

“No, I mean being here. It’s too weird.”

“You need something to wear. You can’t go in blue jeans—which, as best as I can tell, is all you own.”

“I’ll just borrow—”

“I’m a size two,” interrupts Robin.

“No, I was going to say—” Clara starts, then stops. What
was
she going to say, that she’d wear something of Ruth’s?

“Is it for a special occasion?” The saleswoman—Hilary—returns with an armload of black. Skirts and sweaters, blouses, dresses.

“Our mother’s funeral,” Robin says.

“Oh!” Hilary looks from one to the other, as if wondering for a moment if Robin is joking. Then realizing.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, ushering Clara into a large windowed dressing room.

Couldn’t Robin have lied? Did Hilary with the crimson lips and powdered face really need to know their family’s business? Clara strips down to her bra and panties. She averts her gaze from the three-way mirror. The last thing she wants to do is look at herself from any angle—much less every angle—well lit and naked.

She pulls a black sweater over her head, but she can tell before she even gets it all the way on that it doesn’t fit. Then she climbs into a pencil skirt, tugging it up over her hips, which have become curvier since giving birth to Sam. She gives herself a quick glance in the mirror: awful, like a sausage stuffed into its casing. She keeps going. Layers of black chiffon (inappropriate), a black wool thing that wraps around and around her body (bizarre), until finally she slips into a black short-sleeved dress and zips it up the back.

On the other side of the dressing room curtain, she can hear Robin and Sam discussing the finer points of shopping.
My favorite color is pink,
Sammy says.
What’s yours?
Clara strains to listen. Pathetic, that she doesn’t know her sister’s favorite color.
Gray,
Robin says.

Clara forces herself to meet her own eyes in the mirror, and when she does, her knees almost give way beneath her. How long has it been since she’s seen herself in anything other than jeans and a sweatshirt? The dress fits her perfectly. She looks—she has tried so hard not to, but she looks—elegant and beautiful. Her skin is pale, stark against the darkness of the dress, and for a moment she has the eerie sensation that her mother is in the mirror, gazing calmly back at her.

Suddenly dizzy, she sits down on the plush little ottoman and crosses her legs.
Focus.
Whose voice is she hearing? Ruth’s—or her own?

“Clara?” Robin’s voice sounds far away.

The dressing room might as well be a space capsule. She has been catapulted into orbit, snipped loose from earth’s gravitational pull.

“Clara?”

She’s dead.
Clara’s mouth forms around the words. She reaches back, pulls her hair out of its usual ponytail, and shakes it loose. She keeps staring into the mirror.
Dead. My mother is dead and gone.
She imagines Ruth’s body, lying in its casket at Frank Campbell’s.

“Mom?”

There’s Sammy—real as can be—parting the curtains of the dressing room. Eyes like saucers.

“Oh my God, Mom—you look so pretty.”

And then Robin, just behind her.

“Well, well. Look who cleans up nicely.”