Summer in the Invisible City (5 page)

When we show up for class the next day, Benji has scribbled a quote from the night's reading across the board.
“A photograph is a constructed object. What it shows the viewer is not necessarily the truth. It is, after all, nothing more than an arrangement of light and shadow.”

“What does this mean?” Benji asks, tapping his marker against the whiteboard.

Nobody raises their hand.

“It's from the reading,” Benji presses. “Did anyone understand the essay? What does it mean that a photograph doesn't necessarily show the truth?”

I raise my hand and Benji waves his marker at me. “Yes?”

“I took it to mean that a picture is a real thing. Like it's a piece of paper and it actually exists, but the image on it could be made up or not totally real,” I say.

The truth is, I thought about the essay all night. I read it twice and lay in bed wondering if all the things the writer said about the photos were true. It seemed to me like he was
saying that photography shows us the world but also lifts off and away from the world at the same time.

“Great, Sadie,” Benji says. “Nice explanation. Can anyone add to that?”

Izzy looks at me and rolls her eyes.

“What?” I whisper.

She mouths something back, but I can'
t understand her at all.

—

After we discuss the reading, we pin up our photographs from the street photography assignment. Today is our first real group critique. Everyone's pictures all together are so similar they practically blend. Other than me, everyone took pictures on the street. I took mine inside of a subway car on the ride back from Willa's last week.

At first, I had been afraid to pull out my camera on the subway. I didn't want some creepy old guy to start talking to me and asking me questions about the Leica. But, it was a quiet afternoon and I could tell no one in that car was going to bother me. So I took out the camera, and I even pulled out my light meter and my gray card, and took a whole roll of film between Eighty-Sixth Street and Astor Place.

The best picture from that roll, the one that I printed for today, ended up being this one I took of a little boy sleeping on his grandmother's lap, his cheek smeared sweetly against her thigh. I was surprised when I printed the photograph to see how good the lighting looked. I think of subway light as being really bad, but in my photograph, the light seemed
liquid. It pooled in the empty seat next to them and slid down the slick surface of the metal pole.

Benji singles out my picture right away.

“What do you guys see here?” he asks the class, pointing to mine. “Sean?”

“A boy on a train,” Sean grumbles. Sean fell asleep twice today already.

“I like the pole,” this girl Alexis says. “I like how shiny it is.”

“I like the kid's sneakers,” Cody with the long hair adds. “They look brand-new.”

Benji jumps in. “It seems like there's lots to look at in this picture. When there are so many things happening, how do you know what the picture is really about?”

“Maybe it's about a lot of things,” Alexis adds.

“Maybe it's about
light and shadow
,” Izzy says.

Benji lights up. “Yes!”

He looks at the photo, temporarily turning his back on us, and Izzy takes the opportunity to stick her tongue out at me. And then she laughs, which makes me laugh, too.

Benji hears us laughing and turns in our direction, locking eyes with me. “Is something funny, Sadie?”

My laughter stops abruptly, a car screeching to a halt. My face burns as I shake my head
no
, too shamed to speak.

“Good,” he says.

When he turns away again. Izzy rolls her eyes at his back, like
Benji is so uptight
. I try to smile in agreement, but I'm worried that Benji thinks I was laughing at him when really, all I think is that he's wonderful.

When I get home, my mom is sleeping on the couch in the front room.

I tried so hard to find interesting people to photograph for this assignment, but now, seeing my mom resting there with wide stripes of afternoon light lying across her body like tropical leaves, and her gold bangles slumped drowsily down her wrist, she's the most amazing subject in the world. I pull out my camera and take her picture.

She must hear me rustling because she wakes up.

“Hey, honey,” she says, rubbing her eyes with the backs of her hands. “Wow. I just touched bottom.”

“Guess what?” I say, putting down my camera to untie my shoes. “Benji loved my photo this week.”

“Who is Benji?” she asks, sitting up.

“Benji is my photo teacher. How could you forget that? I talk about him constantly.”

“Oh, right. Gosh, how did I forget that? I'm just really out of it today.” She sighs. “I need some tea. Maybe that will make me feel more grounded.”

Whenever my mom is stressed she gets super spacey. For some reason, it annoys me more than if she just snapped at me.

“I'll make it,” I grumble, heading to the kitchen.

If Allan were here, he would want to know everything about what Benji said. He's probably even read the essay that Benji assigned over the weekend.

—

I put a pot of water on the stove and lean against the refrigerator. The kitchen window is propped open with a
stained cookbook and soft, humid air seeps in from outside.

Every day, the days are getting longer. Summer is opening up like a flower. Soon, Allan is going to be here and then everything is going to finally be the way it's supposed to.

Allan lived in the city for a year when I was in fourth grade. I had barely ever seen him before then and, at first, when he told my mom he wanted to see me, I said no because I was so scared.

That was back when I used to take Saturday morning ballet class from my mom's friend. I always felt like a real ballerina warming up in that room, the out-of-tune piano banging out music as we stretched. Something would stir inside of me when I clutched the worn wood of the ballet bar, the wet sleety city outside all cold and hard and ugly, and everything inside hot and kneaded and beautiful.

Even though I was afraid to meet him, my mom said it was important that I did. So one Saturday morning, we ate breakfast with him before ballet and then they took me to class together. Allan was strange and unfamiliar. He didn't look anything like the button-nosed boys in my class who everyone thought were cute. But he had a kind of authority that not even my teachers had. It was hard to make him smile, but because of that, when he did, it mattered more.

We did that for a few weeks, and then Allan volunteered
to take me to class alone. Soon after that, he decided he wanted to use my voice-over for a film he was working on so I started going back to his studio with him after class for weekly recording sessions. He gave me this French philosophy book to read, and I didn't speak French so I just spat out the words as best I could, and made up
a lot.
No matter what I did, though, Allan loved it. He told me I was doing a great job all the time. He gave me coffee and doughnuts, two things I was never allowed to have at home. I think if I'd asked him for a glass of wine, he would have said yes.

My favorite part, though, was riding the subway together after class. I loved sitting side by side on the yellow and orange bucket seats of the train. In everyone else's eyes, to all those strangers on the train, we were a normal father and daughter. Feeling normal felt extraordinary to me.

“Is Daddy coming today?” I asked my mom on the way to my Spring Ballet Recital that March. The sky was a mixture of rain and sleet. The two of us huddled together under her umbrella as we shuffled up 125th Street toward the subway.

“Since when is he Daddy?” she asked, squeezing my hand through her gloves. “Oh, forget it, let's take a cab.”

My mom yanked me with her into the street. I had to jump over a puddle to not drench my shoes. Rain sloshed in the gutter. She stuck out her arm until a yellow cab swerved over to us. “Get in.”

“Is he coming?” I asked again, once we were inside the cab.

“I'm pretty sure he is,” she said.

I smiled, satisfied. I wondered if Allan would bring me
flowers. Not that it was that kind of recital; it was just in the classroom. But he might not know that some parents brought flowers.

“
Sadie?
”

I looked at my mom. Behind her, icy sludge slid across the cab's window.

“Don't call him Daddy, okay?”

“Why not?” I ask.

“
I just don
't think it'
s appropriate.
”

“What'
s appropriate?
”

She sighed and then, with a forced patience in her voice, asked, “What does the word appropriate mean or what is appropriate in this situation?”

I wasn't sure what I was asking either, so I just shrugged and turned back to my own window. I touched my bun to make sure it was still perfectly in place.

“Do you want to go to the New Museum right now and just get it over with?” Izzy asks as we pack up our bags at the end of class on Friday. Benji is making us go see art over the weekend and write about it for homework. Teachers always make us go to museums when they run out of ideas.

“I was supposed to go over to Willa's,” I say, biting my lip. “Lemme ask her and see if she wants to come.”

I text Willa and she writes back:

ur teacher is making you go to a museum? What is this, fifth grade?

I write:

I kno rite

She writes:

I'm just gonna stay home and be boring. Have fun tho.

When Izzy and I step outside, storm clouds are blooming overhead, carving out dark shapes in the summer sky.

During the school year, Izzy and I were secret darkroom friends who never spoke outside of the photo lab. We always
stayed long after the first bell to print. We didn't talk those afternoons, we just listened to Tom Waits and The Cure and watched our pictures emerge in the chemical baths, using the tongs to gently rock the photos against the plastic walls of the tubs. Sometimes we stayed past the late bell at four thirty, until the lab supervisor came in to dump the developer and lock the doors at six. In the winter, when you go outside at six o'clock it's already dark. Icy air freezes all the traces of chemicals in your hair.

The first time Izzy and I really spoke outside the darkroom was on the first day of class earlier this summer, when Benji paired the two of us up for an icebreaker assignment. We had to photograph each other and do interviews.

The picture Izzy took of me ended up being not very good. She thought it would be interesting to photograph me alone in a classroom. It was a good idea in theory, but in reality, the room looked washed out and I looked like I was posing, but I'm not supposed to be posing, so it's awkward.

My picture of Izzy turned out really well. I had her lean against this metal door in the hallway by the girls' bathroom in the back of our school. I chose that spot because the light back there is amazing. It's one of those spots where, if you go there in the middle of the day, everything—even the thick swarms of dust in the air—is illuminated. Light bounces off the adjacent white wall and makes the whole space glow. In the photo, the light seems to emanate from Izzy herself.

The funny thing is, nobody ever uses that bathroom because it smells and the sink is permanently stained. But in the photo, lots of things got erased. Photography is powerful that
way. If you want it to be, it can be the best liar in the world.

When I interviewed Izzy, I learned that she dyed her hair for the first time in fourth grade, and that she let her cousin pierce her ears. I learned that her mother is a fashion designer from Algeria and her father is an architect. Her favorite food is dumplings and her favorite movie is
Heathers
. Also, I learned that, like me, Izzy wants to go to art school next year.

Izzy learned that I'm an only child and that my mother once danced ballet at Lincoln Center. Also, that's when she learned that my father is an artist.

Now, walking down the street with her, I'm aware this is the first time we've been alone together outside of photo.

“So, you and Phaedra are best friends?” I ask.

“Basically,” Izzy says. “I mean, I have a lot of best friends. Most of my best friends graduated already.”

“Oh really?” I ask. “Like who?”

“I was really close with a lot of people two years ahead of us,” she says. “Like Madison Mills and that whole group. Reeny and Wyatt and Noah and all them. I wish that our grade was like that. There's no one exciting in our grade.”

Noah. Would I go up in Izzy's esteem if I told her what happened with us? Or down?

“Anyway, to answer your question, yes, Phaedra is probably my best friend in the city,” Izzy continues before I get the chance. “I'm really close with her whole family, too. I went with them to Italy during winter break last year. It was amazing.”

“That sounds amazing,” I say. “Phaedra is so mysterious.”

“Pssshhh.” Izzy scoffs. “Everyone treats her like she's made
of porcelain or something. But she's totally not. She's actually really regular.”

“She is?” I ask.

“I know it can be hard to tell because she's kind of reserved or whatever,”
Izzy explains.
“People always think she's a snob or something, but she's actually just shy.”

What I want to say is
Why in the world would Phaedra Bishop have any reason to be shy?
But instead, I say, “That makes sense.”

“But I also made some really good friends at RISD last summer,” she says. “I did their precollege program and I became friends with all these amazing kids who live in Boston and all over. I think those people are kind of my real best friends.”

“Their summer program looked fun,” I say, faking a casual, indifferent tone. The truth is, I had wanted to do the RISD precollege summer so badly, but it was seven thousand dollars and my mom said no way. We had one of our biggest fights ever over it.

“Oh you should have done it! It would have been so fun to be together,” Izzy chirps.

A hot wind curls down the street and the first thick drops of rain splatter on the pavement.

“Yay!” Izzy cries. And then she throws her arms around my neck, hurtling herself onto me in an almost football-player tackle and I laugh.

—

Izzy and I duck into a deli to buy umbrellas. Izzy grabs one of those super energy drinks out of the fridge and places it in front of the cashier.

“This is very bad for you. This poison,” the old man behind the counter says, in a thick, foreign accent.

“I know, it's horrible,” she says, batting her dark lashes at him.

He smiles. He likes her. After he gives her change, he tells her she looks like his sister who still lives in his home country. She asks him where he's from and he says, “Turkey. Where are you from?” and she says, “Nowhere. Just here.” And he says, “New York. Best city in the world.” And she says, “Yeah yeah yeah whatever.” And he laughs.

—

Even with our umbrellas, Izzy and I are sopping wet when we stumble into the New Museum lobby twenty minutes later. Inside the museum is dry, quiet, and antiseptic white. The exact opposite of the storm that churns outdoors.

The show we came to see is a painting exhibition on Level 3. As we wander up through the galleries, we pass strange sculptures and text pieces, and a silent film projected in a big darkroom. I don't understand what I'm seeing, but I like how each object in the museum is meant to be meaningful. In the real world, things that are important and things that are unimportant are all shuffled together, but here, everything is worth looking at and considering and the rest is erased.

Izzy sets the pace, deciding when we move from one room to the next. She looks like she belongs here, the way she doesn't second-guess how much time she spends in front of any one artwork before moving on.

Finally, we reach the painting exhibition that we came
here to see. The paintings are much smaller in person than they looked on the Internet. Each one is a still life of flowers. They are painted really simply; a child could have made them. Still, the combination of pinks and lavenders is mesmerizing. No matter how bright their colors are, all the flowers look sort of sad.

There is one that shows a single red rose in front of a bright blue background, and the rose's shadow looks kind of like a lollipop. It reminds me of a birthday card I made for my mom when I was little that she had framed. I wonder what happened to it. It hung on the wall at our old apartment, but I haven't seen it since we moved. It's probably in one of the boxes we put in storage in a warehouse somewhere deep in Queens. It's strange, how just looking at a painting of a rose can make me think about my old apartment, and things I've lost, and dark rooms in large faraway buildings.

“What's
your dad
's art like?” Izzy asks as we ride the wide elevator back down to the first floor after we're done seeing the show.

“It's . . . hard to explain,” I say. “He's having an exhibit in New York this summer. You can come with me to the opening if you want.”

“Omigod, really? Yeah, I'
ll come
,” she says. She leans against the wall and inspects me from across the elevator, smiling. I wish I knew what she was seeing.

—

In the bathroom before we leave, Izzy refreshes the makeup that the rain washed off, putting on sky-blue eye shadow.

“Pretty color,” I say to Izzy. “It's so blue.”

“You like?” she asks. “I've been really into it lately. It's so out it's in, you know? I think the key to being fashionable is just to do the opposite of whatever the magazines tell you to do. Want to try some?”

Izzy hands me the case, and I lean in toward the mirror and paint the eye shadow onto my lids, just like Izzy did.

“What are you doing after this?” I ask Izzy.

“Don't know,” she shrugs. “Phaedra's meeting me here now.”

“Phaedra is coming here?” I repeat.

“Yeah,” Izzy says. “She's actually being really annoying about plans. She keeps flaking on me and then she does this thing where she's, like, ‘where are you?' She acts like I've been being hard to reach, but I'm totally not.”

“Oh, really?” I say. “That's annoying. Are you gonna say something?”

“Say something?” Izzy laughs. “Yeah, right. That's just how friends are. The more you love them, the more mad they make you.”

“I guess so.” I want to ask her more but she's engrossed in her reflection again.

Izzy gives her hair a final tussle and then turns to me and smiles. “Ready?”

—

Outside, the rain has momentarily stopped. Phaedra is leaning against the wall. She's perfectly dry, as if she brought her own mild weather with her.

Izzy gives Phaedra a hug. “Were you waiting long?”

“Just got here,” Phaedra replies. To me she says, “
Hi,
Sadie.
”

This is the first time Phaedra has ever said my name.

“Hey,” I reply, trying to sound normal. “We just saw this painting exhibit, it was really good. You should see it.”

“Oh really?” Phaedra says. She smiles, which lets me know I said the right thing.

“It was great,” Izzy agrees. “Anyway, did you hear from Paul?”

Then, Izzy and Phaedra start texting and making plans for tonight on their phones. They speak to each other in the code people use when they're friends, saying things like
“last time”
and
“the other guy”
and
“the one whose sister went to my camp.
”

“What are you guys doing after this?” I ask.

Izzy looks up. “Meeting up with some people.”

I want to ask who and if I am invited, but then Phaedra steps into the street to flag down a taxi and one careens over to the side of the road and screeches to a halt.

“Bye, girl,” Izzy says. “See you Monday.”

And then they're gone, tumbling into the cab and laughing and going who knows where. I stand there for a moment on the curb, stunned to be left behind.

Izzy and Phaedra are good friends and they probably had these plans for a long time. Still, I wish I was going with them. I wish it so badly that it's as if I can feel the ground burn beneath my feet.