The Yellow Braid (13 page)

They were sitting outside an ice cream shop
overlooking the marina, eating sundaes in spite of the changing
weather. Clouds had begun to gather during their hour ride from
home and now a light wind had kicked up, causing a slight
chill.

“Truth-telling is essential to poetry,” Caro
explained.

Beatrice said, “I don’t know about poetry,
but sometimes I think I’m being honest with myself about something,
and then I figure out later I wasn’t. Like Holden Caulfield
in
The
Catcher in the Rye
, he
never gets it.”

“It’s truthfulness as you know it. It’s
rare—and I think most always impossible—to identify. Sometimes
people tell lies just out of habit.”

Caro offered Beatrice a supportive smile of
her opinion, and then slid her tongue along her spoon, catching up
strawberry syrup with a slurp. The girls looked at each other and
rolled their eyes.

Their screwed-up faces reminded Caro of
Abby at their age, and she wondered if her daughter still made that
kind of face. The thought spun itself into a fragment for a
poem—
so far
the journey that creates lapses in the mind’s eye
. The words,
of one once loved,
came to mind. Her love for Abby wasn’t in
the past. Even what Zach and Marcie had done didn’t eradicate the
love that Caro had so freely, if not carelessly, given. And yet the
words had risen to bite her.

“What are you staring at?” Livia asked
Caro.

Caro pointed toward the horizon. “My
daughter, Abby, lives on the other side of the Atlantic in London.
All we’d have to do is fly in a straight line from here to there
and you could meet her. She would think you were wonderfully,
brilliant young women. She’d be so impressed she’d take you around
to all the famous places—Oxford, Buckingham, Westminster…”

“That’s not true. You’re making fun of us,”
Beatrice complained.

Livia punched her friend in the arm. “No,
she’s not. She’s constantly telling us we’re all those things.”

“It’s true. No fooling,” Caro confirmed.

“Wow,” Beatrice puffed up her chest.

“Surprise, everyone!”

Caro spun around to see Nina jogging toward
them. At the sound of her aunt’s voice, Livia grimaced.

Nina set her camera and shopping bags on the
seat next to her niece. “Hey, you.”

“I thought you were in New York City with
Tommy,” Caro said.

“When Beatrice’s mom said you’d come here I
had the best idea so I sent him alone.” Nina took matching
Westhampton Beach T-shirts out of a shopping bag and said to the
girls, “Aren’t these fun? I thought since you don’t have any
keepsake photos of each other, we can take some on the water
wearing these. What do you think, Beatrice?”

“Cool,” she said and took one of the shirts
Nina offered.

“Where are we supposed to change?” Livia
asked, her voice soured by her aunt’s intrusion.

“Use the bathroom inside,” Nina said. “I
think we should shoot along the pier. Rocks, this time, not sand.
Plus, the shacks on the far shore add an interesting backdrop.”

Livia swatted her T-shirt on the tabletop as
she got up. She approached the shop door and read loudly,
“‘Bathrooms are for customers only.’”

Nina sighed. “You
are
a customer and you’re only changing your top, for
God’s sake. They
intend
that sign
to prevent the general public from going in and out with dripping
bathing suits. Now get a move on.”

The girls came out of the shop in a few
minutes and walked with Caro and Nina to the pier. Twenty minutes
later, frustrated by her aunt’s poking and prodding, Livia
complained, “You’re making this into a formal shoot.”

Nina ignored Livia and said to Beatrice,
“Stay just like that,” as she moved Beatrice into profile on a
driftwood log so that she was gazing at Livia with her arm around
Livia’s shoulders and her hand in her friend’s lap. To her niece
she barked, “Stop squirming.”

“Did you hear what I said?” Livia shot
back.

Nina homed in on Beatrice. “Are you having
fun?”

“
A blast. No one
ever
takes my picture except my mom.”

“I’m cold,” Livia said.

Nina cupped Livia’s chin, squeezing it
meanly. “Did you hear that? Be cooperative.”

Nina shot a dozen pictures. After reviewing
them, she groaned in dissatisfaction. With the camera suspended by
a wide strap around her neck, she fiddled with their positions
until at last she breathed out a confident, “Yes” and made one last
set of adjustments.

The girls sat side by side, facing forward
except for their heads, which Nina tilted so that their temples
touched. She placed Beatrice’s right hand on Livia’s thigh and
Livia’s left hand on Beatrice’s thigh. Their opposite hands hung
parallel to their bodies.

“Perfect,” Nina breathed, capturing what
appeared to be a human study in light and dark: Livia’s goldenness
contrasted with Beatrice’s coffee coloring; Livia’s delicacy
compared to Beatrice’s coarseness; Livia’s sullenness versus
Beatrice’s lightness.

As a writer, Caro often
saw
her poetic images in her mind
before she gave them form on paper. Like performance art, they were
organic manifestations of the work.

As much as Livia loathed the camera, her
body responded favorably, seeming to seek out the lens, tracking it
with elegant but subtle movements. Even the small gestures—the
lowering of her eyes, a barely perceptible movement of her lips, a
forward bend in the shoulders—bore an unconscious coquetry.

Caro wrapped her arms around herself, a
defense against the dropping temperature of the salty air that sank
into her bones. Once before, Caro had felt chilled to her inner
depths, scuba diving in a quarry known for its whirlpools of icy
water that ran in from the Allegheny Mountains and could freeze a
human in seconds.

Caro had relied on expert aquatic navigation
to negotiate her way around the whirlpools and find the safety of
shore. Nonetheless, afterwards she felt that somehow she had
tricked Mother Nature in spite of her skill because the odds were
that she should not have made it out without incident.

That afternoon in Sag Harbor, with Livia
the singular subject of her focus, Caro was ill-equipped to stave
off the dangers of nature and she knew that sooner or later she
would drown in the whirlpools of her own desires—although she
doubted those waters would be cold.

Time to plant tears, says the
almanac. The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove and the child
draws another inscrutable house.
~
Elizabeth Bishop

Sometimes Caro envisioned Nina and Tommy’s
reactions should they discover her feelings toward their niece. She
imagined Nina screaming, ‘
pervert,’
and Tommy raising his hand to slap her. During those times,
Caro felt the sweat slither down her back before she was able to
erase the images from her mind.

Caro and Livia were in the sunroom, their
favorite place of study. Caro had turned off her cell phone and had
drawn the drapes and shutters. Tommy was at the salon and Nina was
in East Hampton for
Premier Living Magazine,
shooting a spread on Martha Stewart.

Livia read from Elizabeth Bishop’s
The Collected
Prose
. She loved the
story called “The Country Mouse,” an autobiographical sketch of the
events following Bishop’s father’s death and her mother’s being
committed to an insane asylum. Reading the rags-to-riches tale,
Livia cried at the part where the five-year-old Elizabeth is taken
from the nurturing Nova Scotia home of her maternal grandparents to
board the train that takes her to Boston to live under the
supervision of her father’s austere, wealthy parents.

Caro chose the collection thinking that
Livia would probably react emotionally. Bishop’s plight was so
comparable to Livia’s own situation, left (as it were) on her
aunt’s doorstep to spend the summer. Caro hoped that reading about
Bishop’s pain would help Livia find expression for her own
hurt.

Livia read aloud from the story, “‘I had
been brought back unconsulted and against my wishes to the house my
father had been born in, to be saved from a life of poverty and
provincialism, bare feet, suet puddings, unsanitary school slates,
perhaps even the inverted Rest of my mother’s family.’ What are
the
inverted
Rest
?” she asked
Caro.

“
Reading, writing, and arithmetic without
the
w
in writing or the
a
in arithmetic.”

“Do you think she still would’ve been a
famous poet if she had stayed in Nova Scotia with the poor
family?”

“It’s hard to know, isn’t it? There are many
writers who never had a day of formal education. Ernest Hemingway
is a famous example. From high school he went to work as a reporter
for a Kansas City newspaper and then served in the ambulance corps
as soon as the World War broke out.”

Livia put her book down. “Mom already has my
college picked out for me.”

“Where?”

“Vassar. She started but never finished
because she married Dad. Anyway, I want to go to NYU like Aunt
Nina. She took me in May during their film festival. We sat in
Washington Square watching the mimes juggling and musicians
strumming their banjos and guitars. There was a clown on stilts and
I threw coins in a performer’s hat after he played “Annie” on his
harmonica for me.” Livia ended her story with a small sigh, her
eyes shining with the memory of it.

The doorbell rang and Caro’s frustration
came out in an expletive under her breath. It was Tommy.

“What’s up?”

He peered into the interior past Caro, and
seeing Livia on the floor motioned for Caro to step outside. He
produced a negative between his thumb and index finger. “Do you
know about this?”

Caro held the negative up to the light. It
was of Livia and Beatrice. Beatrice wore a tank top and jean shorts
and knelt in back of Livia, who sat back on her heels, her head
leaning against Beatrice’s chest. Livia wore a white, ruffled
cotton skirt and a garland of white flowers. Beatrice’s hands
rested on the flowers that covered Livia’s breasts.

Caro shook her head. “I’ve never seen this
one.”

Tommy plucked the negative from her. “Do you
know where she is?” he asked. He was glaring; he seemed to mean
Nina.

“In East Hampton on a Martha Stewart
interview—”

“That’s strange.” Tommy’s voice smacked of
sarcasm. “I got a call from the editor of the magazine, yelling
because the replacement Nina arranged for never showed and Stewart
is furious at being stood up.”

“She never meant to do the shoot?” Caro
asked.

“Would seem not. She’s not answering her
cell. Do you have any idea where she might’ve gone?”

“No,” Caro said, but she suspected Nina had
gone to New York to meet with John Straub, the director of the
National Center for Photography, regarding the exhibition.

Tommy slackened his shoulders in an effort
to compose himself. “I would be worried that something happened to
her had I not found this on the floor outside her darkroom.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Do you mind keeping Livia overnight? I’m
assuming Nina will get home at some point and I don’t want Livia
hearing us argue over her. She’s at the center of what’s between me
and Nina. By the same token, it’s not about her at all.”

“Not to worry. I’d love to have her,” Caro
said.

Tommy followed Caro back inside. “Hey you,
you feel like camping here tonight? Your aunt and I are going out
and won’t be home until late.”

“Fine with me,” Livia said, and sidled up to
Caro. “We’ll have a movie marathon?”

“Anything,” Caro replied and meant it from a
place in her heart no one before had touched.

Hands off! I do not molest what
I photograph, I do not meddle and I do not arrange.
~
Dorothea Lange

Nina’s olive skin coloring and black garments
were a vivid contrast to the chalk white and glass walls in the
exhibition hall. She stood rigid, an outward show of the nervous
tension that rocked her stomach as she watched the maintenance crew
hang her collection: eighteen fourteen-by-twenty-inch photographs
suspended on a partition hanging by chain links from the high,
domed ceiling. In an area that favored overly large works, the
modest dimensions, coupled with the intimate subject matter,
provided their own drama.

Before today, she’d been so sure of her
work, so trusting about her success. Now, seen against the backdrop
of the other exhibitors, her confidence drained, and for the first
time Nina really pondered how she’d cope with failure.

John Straub came up behind her. “It’s
nerve-wracking I know,” he said. “It helps to keep in mind that you
got this far. It’s trite to say, but that in itself is impressive,”
he added with an encouraging smile.

“Thank you,” Nina said. “Is it also trite to
say that I have a lot at stake?”

“I have heard that once or twice. In your
case, your work is good and it’s controversial. Should be a winning
combo. Critics love controversy because it gives them a heap of
journalistic fodder.”

After John left, Nina remained staring up at
a black and white representation of Livia kneeling inside a
hand-drawn circle on the smooth sand of an outgoing tide. Her hair
clung to her shoulders and upper arms in knotty, wet strips, like
seaweed. Her eyes reflected the recession of the shadowy swells as
she pointed to a place on the horizon beyond the boundary she’d
inscribed in the sand.