Eight Girls Taking Pictures (46 page)

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That night she quietly let herself back into the apartment. It was very late. She placed her camera bag on the floor, next to the front door and the little table that held the keys and mail and the occasional toy. In the darkness, she saw David, with his back to her, sitting and smoking in the chair pushed up to the dining room window, only now it faced the park.

“You forgot your cameras,” he said without turning around.

She crossed over to him, took the cigarette from his fingers, and placed it in an ashtray. She climbed into his lap, her arms around his neck as she kissed him on the mouth, a very long, deep kiss, before pulling back and nestling her head in the spot beneath his chin. His embrace tightened around her, and she felt how afraid he had been; all the worry and love and loss of the day was conveyed in the muscle tension of that embrace.

Jessie Berlin checked and rechecked her watch as she waited on the sidewalk, cursing her imagination (so easily accessed and advantageous when making art, so wretched when applied to other areas of her life). No one belongs to anyone in this scenario, she reminded herself, that was part of the deal. Emile had a way of getting her to agree to nearly every proposal, convincing her that what he wanted was also what she wanted. This manner of persuasion had the added benefit of making her believe that their mirrored desires were proof that they were meant for each other. It was only later when she felt forgotten, or taken for granted or that she could be any other girl to him, that she realized she didn’t want what Emile wanted—she only wanted Emile.

But everything became complicated when they decided to do this photography series called the BelleFemme Project, born out of a dinner party that went too late into the night with too much talk, too much wine, too much smoke. The women at the table turned strident (how she’d come to hate that word!) as the men argued in favor of the difference between the sexes, with the women countering that there was no provable difference and claiming this “difference” was just more rationalizing for men to do as they pleased.

The debate moved on to gender-influenced worldviews, making a philosophical stop at art and professionalism before arriving at infidelity; because all conversations, debates, and fights these days seemed to find their way to who was fucking whom and what it all meant. Really, thought Jessie, wasn’t it really all about who was left crying, and who felt guilty, and who was and was not sorry?

It seemed that if the 1960s had been about political and cultural idealism, then the early 1970s were shaping up to be about sex. And on the subject of fucking, where the fuck was Emile?

She yanked open an oversize satchel holding her Nikon, wallet,
house keys, a sterling silver brooch that she kept on hand in case she lost a button, a roll of Scotch tape in case her hem came loose, duct tape, three pens, a pad, film, a light meter, and the thing she was searching for: a lollipop. Suckers were her way of trying to quit smoking. Tearing the wrapper was slightly similar to ripping the cellophane off a package of cigarettes, and the thin, rolled white paper stick was, if she used her imagination, a distant cousin to a Marlboro. Maybe she should have waited until she and Emile were truly over before giving up the one legal thing that could calm her down when she felt this irritated and anxious.

She stepped off the curb as far as she dared during a pause in traffic, taking one final visual sweep of the well-traveled San Francisco street that fronted Cymbeline Kelley’s 1920s cottage, searching for Emile’s BMW. He had the Rolleiflex, the tripod, the strobes, the Polaroid, and the umbrellas. She was certain she’d told him 9:30.

When Jessie turned her attention back to the cottage, she noticed the front door standing wide open. A very small, rather old woman was staring out from the doorway, her eyes magnified by the lenses of her clear plastic eyeglass frames, which dominated her face. As Jessie waited on the street side of the gate, Cymbeline Kelley said in a surprisingly strong voice, “Oh, don’t make me come to you.”

“I thought I might be early,” said Jessie, knowing it was an unbelievable excuse for not coming to the door sooner.

The elderly woman’s cloud of white hair was partially secured by a wide blue scarf, her bangs grazing the top of the invisible-framed eyeglasses. Though the day was warm, Cymbeline seemed dressed for much cooler climes in her black, long-sleeved dress, belted at the waist and falling below her knees. As if in concession to the bright heat of the day, her legs were bare, her feet in short socks and leather sandals. She also had a length of fabric, imprinted with peace signs, wrapped multiple times around her wrist. Her activism was becoming well-known, as she was one of the first photographers to attend peace rallies, snapping away as she protested the war. In 1971, protesters were many, except in Cymbeline’s age-group, where they were nearly nonexistent. A sharp divide
had occurred in the country over this Southeast Asian war, and, more often than not, the fissure ran along generational lines.

When interviewed in the
San Francisco Chronicle,
Cymbeline Kelley said, “I’ve never understood why most people don’t become more liberal in their ideas, more open-minded, less judgmental as they age—what have you got to lose? Why not allow life to interest you? This is why there are more young people in my life than contemporaries. Well, that and, you know, death.”

“Okay,” said Cymbeline. Jessie knew when she was being humored.

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The cottage was architecturally and situationally incongruous for San Francisco. It was not vertical, or Victorian, or located in a quieter, more residential pocket of the city. Instead, it sat between the sprawling offices of a department store chain and a compact multiuse professional building that mostly rented to lawyers. It was also three miles from downtown; Jessie had walked from the Powell Street station, taking advantage of the balmy and beautiful summer day. The house had a garden, quite wild, though it seemed that its overgrowth was more a result of nature than of neglect. A concrete driveway ran the length of the left edge of the garden, ending at a wide gate belonging to a tall wooden fence.

The inside of the house was larger than it appeared from the outside, loft-like, with sun spilling in all around (with the exception of the side with an archway leading to the bedroom). Jessie briefly wondered how Cymbeline worked with the light that came through the many windows, since she was the founder, along with Angel Andrs and Morris Elliot, of a group called f/64, that believed in “natural” photography. No arty tricks that created “painterly” effects, no contrived lighting. Photography was its own art form, not some poor substitute for the real thing. Which was why Jessie was thinking about the light.

Across from the archway was a perfectly proportioned, slate-colored marble fireplace, accented in white. The twin columns on either side of the firebox were beautiful nymphs, their slender arms holding the
marble mantel aloft. Facing the fireplace was a kind of lovely, well-used deep green sofa that looked like it belonged in a hotel lobby; next to the sofa was a midnight blue velvet chaise longue, also a little worse for wear, and a much less lived-in matching midnight blue velvet armchair. In the midst of the seating arrangement was a low midcentury coffee table, all polished atomic-age angles in blond wood.

A dining room table held a collection of photographic objects—camera, film canisters, used film, negatives and contact sheets, a shoulder bag, a light meter. Spanning most of the shared rear wall of the dining area and kitchen were a pair of glass doors allowing access to the outside. Not only was it possible to see into the back garden from the front door but one could walk a straight, unobstructed path door to door as well.

Jessie’s first impression when she entered the modest home was that it felt more like someone was staying here indefinitely than actually living here; maybe because the personal touches were few and gave the impression of a traveler in a rented room who had chanced across a souvenir or two, displaying them in her temporary lodgings.

Her second impression was that this someone lived alone.

Cymbeline’s Rolleiflex 3.5E, the leather case undone, the viewfinder snapped open with the magnifying glass flipped up was next to a white bisque rose and a palm-size, hand-painted metal zebra, and a pile of loose change.

In the main room, a box of light-sensitive paper and a bottle of fixer sat outside a closed door beside the archway, which Jessie assumed to lead to the darkroom. Only a person who doesn’t have to consider another person’s comfort would be so unconcerned with her work materials lying around; only a traveler would (most likely) treasure the wonderful little zebra.

Jessie examined the four pictures in the room. They struck her as particular and a bit cryptic; then again, there wasn’t too much wall space, so maybe the choices weren’t coded at all, just a recognition of limited space. There was a framed rectangle of black wool stitched with worn, early-twentieth-century silver milagros from Spain, and two paintings: one of a gray barn that Jessie believed to be a minor
O’Keeffe. Cymbeline had met Georgia O’Keeffe, and this little picture was a gift. Later, after Cymbeline had shown her tightly cropped flower photos, O’Keeffe had made some close-cropped flower pictures of her own.

The second painting had a background of pale blue with a grid pattern that looked applied with graphite pencil. The nearly uniform lines resembled men’s suit fabric, or a visual meditation. Jessie instantly recognized the picture as being by a reclusive woman painter named Daisy Miller, who called her work Abstract Expressionism even though others called it Minimalist. Cymbeline said, “I have the most unexpected affection for her work.”

Jessie approached the fourth picture on the living room wall. It was a photograph of a beautiful, young, naked woman with multicolored artificial flowers in her hair, a stuffed songbird in a golden cage hung so close to the top of the picture that it was almost out of the frame. The woman sat at a sewing machine, running through yards of billowing tulle in lavender, pale blue, and pale pink, though it didn’t look as though she was actually making anything to wear.

“It’s called
Machine Worker in Summer, 1937.
Madame Amadora. British,” said Cymbeline, standing near Jessie. “Not my style at all—quite the opposite, with all that garish color and artifice. Fake flowers. Fake bird. Fake industry.”

“Who is she again?” Jessie moved closer to study the print, which was fairly large, the colors as dreamy as a watercolor.

“Madame Amadora. Amadora Allesbury. Her best work was between the wars—her color work; it’s what she’s most known for”—Cymbeline gave a small laugh—“except here, of course, where no one knows her at all, which is how I could buy this print. She did advertising work, too, but then who can run a studio without doing advertising? Or portraits,” she added, “one can only do certain portraits for pay. But then you already know that.”

The importance of the aging photographer and the awkwardness of the acknowledgment that Cymbeline was Jessie’s assignment left scant room for Jessie to say what she had wanted to say ever since she arrived,
which was that she may never have fallen for photography if it hadn’t been for Cymbeline Kelley. Now it seemed too late, too pandering.

“But I’ll tell you where we’re alike,” said Cymbeline, and for a moment she thought Cymbeline meant she and Jessie. “Madame Amadora and I were both suffragettes—you can see where she stands on women’s issues in her work. In this picture, for example.” Cymbeline stepped closer to the picture, closer to Jessie, who was almost hulking next to the diminutive photographer. She waited for Cymbeline to continue, but, instead, after studying the picture, the older woman smiled to herself.

Whatever made Cymbeline smile, or however this Madame Amadora, with her fake this and fake that, was anything like the woman who had cofounded a photographic society based on absolute naturalism, Jessie couldn’t quite grasp. What Cymbeline saw that indicated “women’s suffrage,” Jessie’s youth, and the radicalism of this current, second wave of feminism blinded her to the political underpinnings of the picture. She peered more closely at the photograph of the beautiful naked woman at her sewing machine wrestling with all that cool, pastel tulle.

Cymbeline sighed. “One thing one misses in one’s contemporaries is humor.”

A young man, his dark hair falling over his forehead and skimming the collar of his shirt, came in from the back garden carrying a metal strainer of strawberries and asparagus, leaving one glass door open and opening the other. The fragrant breeze moved lightly about the kitchen that ran along the back wall of the main room.

“Sam Tsukiyama, Jessie Berlin; Jessie, Sam,” said Cymbeline.

Jessie held out her hand to him.

Sam wiped his hands on his jeans before taking her hand. “May I say how very cool it is to meet you.”

Cymbeline said, “Sam is my lifeline.”

“As if she needs anyone,” he said to Jessie.

“It’s true. But only with the heavy lifting. And the printing. The shows. The appointments. The correspondence. The garden. The cooking.”