The Effects Of Light Part 14

Everyone's quiet then. No one knows who's going to speak next, and it surprises us all that it's Emma. "I really like the pictures," says Emma, "but even you guys fight about them. If I didn't know Pru, I'd want to understand her point of view." She looks up at Jane. "Sorry, Mom."

Jane looks down at her plate. "Steve?"

Steve shrugs. "I don't think it has to be a big deal. She's already in the public eye. An explanation might help things. Might help people let go."

Jane says, "We need to talk about this. We need to figure this out before anything is decided."

"Yes," says David, and I'm satisfied. At least he'll think about what I've asked.

Then Steve asks, "Pru, is there any dessert?"

"Yes," I tell him, "ice cream."

"Excellent," he says. "How about I help you clear?"

So we clear the dishes and leave the conversation behind. We scoop vanilla ice cream into bowls and stab a spoon into each. When we come back to the dining room, we talk about different things. They know what I want. I have to wait for them to tell me yes.

THE TIRES OF THE CAR crunched over broken gla.s.s as Myla edged into the parking lot of the Hillcrest Hotel. She was undeterred. Even four flat tires couldn't stop her now that she was burning with action. Talking to Mark only an hour before, it had seemed impossible to even imagine telling Samuel the wide expanse of her mind. But in the interim, somehow, she'd realized that she needed to let Samuel in on every truth she had. She'd walk barefoot over broken gla.s.s if that was what it took. He needed to know, and she needed to show him.

She hadn't actually stopped at the Hillcrest Hotel's front office to ask for his room number; she knew how she'd be treated. Rather, she'd simply picked up the phone at Jane and Steve's before driving over, and demanded the desk clerk give her her husband's room number, as she was sure dozens of wives had done before. It worked. One too many domestic battles fought on Hillcrest Hotel turf, probably, convincing the establishment it wasn't their job to lie to women.

As she pulled into the parking s.p.a.ce in front of Unit 18, she chuckled at Samuel's choice. How could he have known what everyone who lived in the neighborhood did: that the Hillcrest Hotel had begun a steady decline twenty-five years ago toward drugs and illicit s.e.x, and had never recovered? She remembered David recounting the tale of a job candidate up from California for the weekend. This man had been put up by the college in the Hillcrest, and on his first night in town was awakened by sirens and flashing lights, only to find that just outside his door, a mere twenty minutes earlier, someone had been stabbed to death. Perhaps it said something about the perilousness of academic life that when this man was ultimately offered the position at the college, he gladly took it.

But Myla wasn't afraid. If anything, the implication of danger emboldened her. She turned off the car and made out the flash of a television through the gauze curtain. Stepping out of the car and locking it, she imagined for a moment that the man working in the front office had given her the wrong room number, and that behind this door, instead of Samuel, there was just the kind of man Jane and Steve and Ruth and David would have described with dread in their voices: greasy, fat, and crude. As she strode to the door, she smiled at such a possibility. She felt it in her: such strength, such surety, such insistence, that she knew she'd bowl over any such man. Perhaps her actions would only alienate Samuel further. But the risk of alienation was her last chance.

She knocked. As she saw the dull light from the tele-vision flick off, and heard the rattle of the chain, she could feel her adrenaline pulsing. Evening light warmed her back and glanced onto Samuel's body as he opened the door. He squinted into the red, bright evening.

"May I come in?" asked Myla, her voice full of conviction. She was more Myla than she'd ever been.

Samuel's expression barely changed. He looked at her for a long time, apparently deciding, then stepped aside, directing her in. The hotel room was warm and small. With soft orange light filtering through the curtains, there was a coziness to the room that she was sure existed only for these twenty minutes every day. Her lungs met with ancient smoke, baked into the walls. Brown, rough wallpaper had peeled off in patches, and the furniture consisted of one bed draped in a greasy brown bedspread, a small bedside table, a fraying burgundy armchair, and a television. Samuel's suitcase remained unpacked in the corner.

Myla dropped her purse on the bed. She surveyed the room steadily, turning. She knew this might be mistaken for hesitancy or indecisiveness, but what she was actually feeling was calm. She was readying herself for what she had to do.

"Myla-"

"Please sit down," she said, pointing to the armchair. Samuel shook his head as he walked to the chair and sat, watching her. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, trying to appear comfortable.

"We should talk," he said.

"I'm sick of talking," she said. "Give me five minutes. Afterward you can do all the talking you want." She knew her voice was steady, and that all he could do in the face of such steadiness was let her say her piece.

"At first I was angry about the notebook." Myla's heart was beating fast as she put her hands to her collar. Her words rolled out of her, clipped and clear. "I thought I was angry because of those stupid notes. But that's not really why I'm so mad. I've been angry at you ever since I heard you lecture. And it's not even because of what you said about my father or Ruth or my sister's death.

"Now I know why." She could see him hanging on her words, but she wanted to get them over with so she could do some real speaking. "I'm angry because you're being so conventional. I'm angry because I see so much more in you; I see the man lit up by my father's ideas, the man who flew across the country after a woman he knew he'd enraged, just so he could tell her he wanted to give her his help. The man who put his jacket over that poster in my bedroom before he made love to me. I know that wasn't just a suave thing you did to impress me. You believed you were doing something important when you hid her that evening.

"And yet you keep a notebook on me, and you don't even hide it well. I see it and I can't trust you anymore. It's so typical, such a dumb thing for us to break up over. And yet how am I supposed to react? The notebook makes me think you've been lying to me, that you have bad motives for having followed me here. But do you know what's so strange? What makes me even angrier is that you truly believe the best way to figure out who I am is to keep a log of my actions. Do you know how unimaginative that is? Think beyond that, Samuel. You really want to know me? You really want to know who I am?" She felt the smooth head of the top b.u.t.ton of her blouse. She slipped it from its b.u.t.tonhole and moved her hand down to the next b.u.t.ton. The cotton of the blouse was rough against her fingertips. Again she released a b.u.t.ton from its restraint. She undid the b.u.t.ton at her navel as Samuel shook his head.

"What the h.e.l.l are you-"

"I let you talk," said Myla. "You showed up on my front steps and insisted you could help me. So I listened. Now you let me do what I have to." She released the bottom b.u.t.ton and shrugged the blouse off her shoulders, tossing it on the bed behind her. She felt herself quicken with energy. Her hands found the top b.u.t.ton of her jeans, and she released her belly. There were deep red lines on it where it had been cinched and pulled by the heavy denim. She took a deep breath. She unzipped the jeans efficiently, pulling them down as she used her left foot to edge off her right sneaker. She pulled her jeans and her right sock off with her hands, then fiddled the left shoe off with her other set of toes. The thick s.h.a.g carpeting scratched the sole of her right foot. She wondered how many other women had stood half-dressed in this exact same spot. She removed her pants and the remaining sock, and left them crumpled where they lay.

Samuel held his head in his hands. He was speaking, incredulously, to himself: "I don't know what this is."

Myla expertly reached behind her, finding the clasp of her bra, releasing it. The cups moved off her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She used her right thumb to pull the bra away from her right shoulder, then let the other strap shimmy down her arm. She dropped the bra on the ground and hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her underpants, feeling the tug of the elastic around her hips. She pulled the underwear down her legs and off. She stepped out of it. She was naked.

"Look at me," she said.

Samuel shook his head, his eyes closed tight.

"Look at me," she said. "I want you to look at me, Samuel. You look at me, and I'll put my clothes back on. But I won't put them back on until you do." She waited. Her skin bristled with the air on it. Through the window, the light was duller now, less red. It was moving up the wall. She could see in it tiny motes of dust, the only movement in the room. They billowed and bucked as the air moved up her skin. Outside, a car backfired. Still Samuel didn't move. Myla softened her voice. "Just look at me. That's all I'm asking. Then I'll go away."

He shook his head. His eyes were closed as he lifted his face from his hands. His face looked smooth in the dim light. "I don't know why you're doing this," he said, and his voice was young and full of anguish.

"I'll tell you," she said.

Samuel opened his eyes. Guilt tripped across his face, but Myla fixed him in her stare. She could feel his gaze moving up and down her. At first it was harsh and full of judgment. His eyes hovered on her legs and then her torso, skipping over her pubic hair. Then he looked at her arms, first her right, then her left. When she closed her eyes, his gaze was so strong, she could feel it moving over her.

"This is me," said Myla. "This is my body. This is where I've lived. You want to know me? Know this. Know this scar, here on my knee, where I fell off my bike when I was ten, racing Pru to the end of the block. Know this mole, here on my hip, that didn't appear until I was nineteen. And here"-she leaned forward-"these freckles on my shoulders? I've had those as long as I can remember." She turned in Samuel's gaze. She bent to touch the back of her left ankle. "I did this to myself the first time I shaved. I was fourteen. I pressed too hard with the razor. And these"-she pressed her thumbs into the two silver-dollar-sized indentations at the base of her back-"are my sacerdotal dimples. Inherited from my mother, who had them too. I remember her kissing them when I got out of the bathtub, as she gathered me on her lap." She turned back around. She stretched her arms into the air, making them as straight as she could. "My elbows don't straighten out. See? This is as flat as my arm gets. Not a hundred and eighty degrees. More like one-sixty. These are my father's arms." She reached down and grabbed her stomach. "And this is my belly. I've always loved its roundness. It's the way I'm made."

The light was gone. Now the room was almost completely dark, but Myla could see Samuel's eyes flashing every time he blinked. He was still watching her. "This is where I be, Samuel. This is what I have. I came into this world like this, and I'm going to leave it like this. And by G.o.d, I'm alive in it. It's mine. And here's what matters: when I stand like this, inhabiting my own skin, I'm not doing anything to you. It's not about you at all. You can call that conviction whatever you want: radical politics, naivete, but I call it my human right. My flesh is all the birthright I have. It was all I had of me when I was Kate Scott. And I get to tell you its meaning. No, that's not conventional. But it's what I believe. h.e.l.l, it's one of the few things I know."

Her arms were at her sides, and she kept them there. She wouldn't use her hands to gesture. She wouldn't modulate her voice. She'd speak to him with all she had, with the truth of her body. "It comes down to this. The people who vilify Ruth's photographs, who blame them, don't understand the fundamental point that in those photographs, Pru and I got to be in our selves. I know you disagree with Ruth's photographs. But the self that's in them is the self I want you to know. I just realized that. The self in those photographs is the honest, real me. It's who I am. I don't know how to know you if you don't understand that person."

The room was silent and dark. Though her insides were shimmering, beating, thrumming, whirring, Myla's outside did not move. Then a shiver slid up her spine, and still she waited. "I want to know you that way too," said Samuel finally. "I don't know what else to say. I want to. But what if I don't know how?"

There was no way to answer that question. It hung in the s.p.a.ce between them, filling the dark room. The temperature of the room was just right on Myla's body. She knew she'd promised Samuel she'd put her clothes back on, but cloth on her skin was the last thing she wanted to feel. It was dark enough that she knew he could make out only the outline of her white flesh. She shifted her weight. She waited for him to speak. She waited and she waited. Words kept pushing up to the surface of her mind, but she insisted on keeping them down. No, it was not her place to talk anymore. She had said everything she knew.

"I've never seen anything like this before," said Samuel, breaking through the thick night. His voice was lower than she expected.

"I've never done anything like this before."

Myla heard Samuel stand. His chair creaked a response to his movement. "I kept the notebook because I have a friend in publishing. He convinced me I could help you by shaping your story, with your help, into a book. The book would be a set of interviews. You'd speak for yourself. In exchange, I'd get money, and a ticket out of the academic world, which I've been wanting out of almost as long as I've been in it. I thought things would be easy. But I knew, the second I saw you on the front steps, that I wouldn't know the right way to put forth such a proposition. So I kept the book a secret, not because I wanted to lie to you but because I thought it was a good idea, a real way I could help you, and I knew you weren't ready to hear it. And yes, I wrote in the notebook. But don't worry. I'm off that project now. Maybe someday we can talk about the possibility of a book. I still think it would be a good idea, for your sake. But I stopped taking notes-"

"No more talking," she said. She was sick of having to explain everything in words. "Not about this, at least. We both kept big truths from each other. I couldn't tell you why I've been so angry, and you couldn't tell me one of the real reasons you came. If we want a chance at this, we can't lie like that. Not again."

He stepped toward her. His face was growing more distinct with every step, and Myla, now tired, now able to relax, was glad to see his kind eyes, his soft, good lips, his gentle hands. She was hungry for him. She thought he was going to touch her. But no. His hands found the bottom of his T-shirt and pulled it off and over his head. "I want you to know me too," he said, and then he started to undress.

DAVID AND RUTH ARE HANGING out downstairs, and they ask me to come down and talk to them. Their voices are serious, and I know it's about my proposal. When I go down to the living room, they're both sitting, and Ruth has her hands folded in her lap. She seems nervous. I've never seen her like this before.

David starts first. "I want you to know that regardless of what I have to say about this, Ruth and Jane and Steve and I all admire your incredible bravery in bringing this concern of yours to our attention. Each of us thinks it's wonderful that you trust us enough to tell us what you want to do."

"Good," I say. I want him to go on.

"And it's a hard thing for me to know how to handle. As you know, I believe that a parent's responsibility is to help guide his children into learning how to make their own decisions. That's why you and Myla started out in Ruth's pictures in the first place, because you wanted to be in them. And that's why I've tried to protect you from people who say harmful things about them. People like Jane have disagreed with me on this point, but it's the kind of parent I've decided to be."

"Okay," I say. I want him to tell me if I can do the interview or not.

"This is a tough decision for me to make. You brought up your mother, and I know you think she'd like for you to speak on behalf of those pictures. To tell you the truth, I've been battling myself about that. Sarah loved you more than she loved herself. She wanted you girls to be strong and brave, and I've tried to carry on that legacy in your upbringing. But she would, and I do, have your safety in mind. And so-I know this is going to be disappointing-I'm going to have to say no."

I open my mouth to say no back, but Ruth starts talking before I can even make a sound. "Pru, please listen to your father. He's right. There are people out there who are very angry about these pictures. Our best way to answer them is to let the pictures speak for themselves."

I shake my head. I want to make them understand. I want to tell them that saying no to me just proves they don't want me to have an opinion, but my head is so full of all sorts of thoughts that I can't come up with something right to say. My eyes start stinging, and I try not to cry, but I can't help it. I feel like they've taken something important away from me, and I know there's nothing I can do about it. I say, "But I need to. It's important."

David comes and sits next to me, and I let him hug me. "We know it is. We know. We love that you want to talk about this. And we want you to. Someday. Just not now, not when some people are so angry. Not when you're still a child."

"But that's the point," I say. "I am a child! I am a child in those pictures, and that's who should be talking about them."

"I understand," he says. "Believe it or not, I agree with you. But I'm also your father. And it's my duty to protect you. And this is what I can do to keep you safe."

I shake my head, and I push his arm off my shoulder. I want to stand up and shout at him, tell him and Ruth I hate them, that I'm the one in charge of myself, but Ruth comes and sits in front of me on the floor, and in her hand is a three-ring binder. She opens it, and I can see that every page is a different photocopied article. She puts it on my lap and says, "We thought you weren't old enough to read this stuff. But we were wrong. You want to know why we don't want you to give an interview? Here's why."

The book is heavy on my lap. I flip through the articles, and they start around the time of Ruth's first show, here in Portland. Some are just reviews of her show. But then when it gets to her New York show, there are some pictures of me, and parts of my body are blocked out with big black boxes. It's really scary to see my body like that. There are headlines about p.o.r.nography and a description of a protest where some people were arrested for throwing eggs at the gallery owner. There's a picture of a man yelling and his hand is in a fist and he has a sign that says "Protect our children from filth." I can guess that he's talking about our pictures, but only after I think for a minute. It makes me dizzy to see all these words written about us, and all these pictures, and they all seem so angry, my body X'd out, and people shouting.

After a while, I'm done looking. I don't exactly agree with David and Ruth's answer, but I can see more of their side. I want to be mad at them for not showing me these articles before, but they seem so serious and sorry and so interested in hearing my side that I know they were trying their best. I tell them I'm tired, and that's the truth. I want to go to my room and be alone, not because I want to sleep, but because with all the words whirling through my mind, I need to sit still and think. They understand. They tell me I can ask them anything. But for now I don't have any questions. Just thoughts.

An hour later, there's a knock on my door, and I think it's David or Ruth. I don't want to answer it, but they know I'm in here, so I say, "Come in."

It's Myla. She peeks her head around the door, and at first I think she's coming to boss me around or tell me how much smarter she is, but when I see her face, I realize she's going to be nice. "You okay?" she asks.

I nod. She comes in and closes the door behind her.

"They showed you?" she asks.

"Yeah," I say. "You've seen them?"

"I found an article on my own," she says. "A while ago. Remember when I brought up that New York Times review?" I nod. "I asked David about it, and he was kind of forced to tell me."

I don't have the energy to be mad at Myla for keeping all this a secret from me. Especially since she's being so nice. Then she smiles and says, "They're in such a tizzy downstairs. Debating our emotional development and wondering if they've scarred us for life or something." She flops down on the floor and lies on her back. I lie down next to her. "That's what I mean when I say our family is weird."

That makes me laugh, and Myla says, "The pictures are really important to you right now. I understand that. But look at me. I did those pictures for years, and now I don't anymore. And I know you think it's because I hate Ruth or something, but it's not. I just . . . you know. I want to move on."

She props herself up on her elbow and uses her other hand to play with my braid. I know what she means about the pictures, but it's always seemed to me that the pictures are so full of us moving, growing up, that they can't hold us back at all.

Myla looks up at the ceiling, so I do too, tracing the cracks across it. After a long time, she says, "You know that story David told us once about Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh? About how they lived in the country together?"

"No."

"You know, about how they gave each other an a.s.signment to paint the same thing, and then one of them made one kind of picture and the other made another kind. You remember. We used to talk about it all the time. I think we might have even been so lame as to play an actual game called Paul and Vincent in Arles."

I remember, and laughing about it makes me lie back down. "Yeah," I say, "we were lame. Huge huge dorks."

"So anyway. You know how David told us that the story got a little sad at the end-"

"If this is about van Gogh's ear, I already know about that."

"I know you know he cut off his ear. But did you know when he did it? Listen, Pru, it's weird. So he wants to have this thing called the Yellow House or something, this place in Arles where he and Paul can start an artists' community. It takes all of this convincing to get Paul to come down there, 'cause he's kind of this jerk who doesn't care about Vincent and doesn't even like his work that much. Did you know Vincent van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime?" Myla looks at me. She smiles and says, "You don't have to tell me I sound like David, because I know I do. But just listen.

"So Vincent is desperate to get Paul to come down, and even paints all these paintings to decorate their bedrooms, the house, and so on. Paul finally comes, and he says all these mean things about the paintings, and Vincent listens because he has, like, no self-confidence. Paul agrees to stay. They do all this work together, and Vincent is really the happiest he's ever been. Paul is only there for, like, nine weeks or something, because Vincent starts to drive him crazy. And then one night he tells Vincent he's leaving, and that makes Vincent storm out, and he goes to a local prost.i.tute and cuts off his ear and gives it to her. That night. Then Paul and Vincent's brother, Theo, arrange to have Vincent inst.i.tutionalized. He shoots himself a year and a half later."

She's serious. Her voice is quiet, like this is the most important thing she's ever said. "The point is, Pru, David didn't always tell us everything that was happening, or that would happen. The end of that story is sad. He told it happy. When I first found out how the story really ended, I was p.i.s.sed. At David. I felt like he'd lied to us. And then I thought about it. I realized he hadn't lied to us; he'd just left out the bad parts. So that we'd enjoy the story. And maybe that's not such a bad thing. Maybe that's how he loves us."

We watch the ceiling. We watch the ceiling and think.

proof the younger girl is old now, old enough to have b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She's standing in an orchard. The trees are curled like fists up and down the hills behind her. She's standing alone. If you get close, you can see the goose b.u.mps on her body, her hair tossed to the side by a gust. Her nipples are hard. But there's no blanket in sight.

Her body is standing still against the wind. One might think she looks afraid, that she's wild or crazy for standing out alone in an orchard on a day like this.

But you see it. She is brave. You see it. She does this because it matters to her. Making this art is the thing that has made her know, more than anything else, who she is. The cold is worth that. It will be enough to hold this day in her hand. The picture will mean she's been here.

chapter sixteen.

they drove in one car, and it was a tight squeeze with their five bodies and the three plants. But it seemed right to come together, now that the rain, falling consistently all morning, had finally stopped. Even Steve had made it clear that though this wasn't his favorite activity, it was the right thing to do. And with everyone together at last, feeling good about one another, Myla wanted to share her excitement at what she was reading in David's book. An outcome of the "Hillcrest Hotel Episode, "

as she and Samuel were calling it, was that Samuel had begun to read the book. Myla had needed to offer this gesture of trust; Samuel needed to accept it.

Myla had worried Steve would be hurt that she hadn't shared the book with him and Jane immediately, but they were simply thrilled that the ma.n.u.script had surfaced. "You've got a great anonymous benefactor working on your side," Steve said. "Do you think we could get them to recover some long-lost treasure belonging to my family? Money? Jewelry?" He a.s.sured her that he would read David's book in his own good time, relishing every word from his old friend.

Everyone wanted to hear about the book's content, and Myla found herself recounting David's take on the great Italian poet Dante. "You know," she said, "we all regard Dante's Inferno as a beautiful poem, and it is. But it also shows the terror everyone in the Middle Ages felt about their two lives: their Life and their Afterlife. They believed that if you did good or bad things in your Life, some external force would mete out compensation or punishment in your Afterlife. The oh-so-good earned heaven; most people drew purgatory. And for the worst rule breakers, it was h.e.l.l.

"That belief in linear time, in cause and effect, kept you honest. It kept you from stealing your neighbor's pig or horse or wife, because if you did those things, you knew you'd be roasting with Satan."

"Basic Sunday-school stuff," said Steve, eager for her to get to the point.

"Sure," said Myla. "But listen to what comes next. Because David believes that with the growth of science and the exalting of human reason, the belief in G.o.d faded. Divine law was replaced by human logic. All sorts of things were invented, proving how great the human mind could be. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, all these discoveries and inventions seemed like miracles. G.o.d's miracles. The only problem was that things grew ugly. You know the Industrial Revolution? How we always see it as progress? Well, it literally looked like h.e.l.l. Like depictions of h.e.l.l from the Middle Ages. Dark furnaces, billowing smoke, starving, misshapen children."

"I never thought of that before," said Steve.

"Like the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch," offered Samuel.

"Exactly," said Myla. "And when h.e.l.l came to earth, it was as if time had contracted. Now the span of a man's existence didn't just stretch from before his birth to after his death to some grand judgment day. No, what David claims is that man's existence became concentrated into the simple span of his material life on earth. And all that behavior you got punished for? Well, you didn't have to wait until after you died. You began to punish yourself while you were still alive."

"Sounds like Freud to me," exclaimed Steve.

"You win the jackpot," said Samuel. "David claims that the medieval Church provided the template for psychoa.n.a.lysis."

"Imagine that," said Steve. They sat in silence as Jane pulled off the highway. "G.o.d, I miss him."

As she opened her car door, Myla realized that the cemetery was in a place she remembered as rural. All that had changed. From up here on the hill, the light-rail tracks were traceable, weaving in and out of strip malls and parking lots, where there'd once been woods and hillsides.

David had picked this cemetery when Sarah died. Myla remembered nothing of the actual burial, only that she'd found out somehow that her mother's body would now lie underground, intact, and this revelation had simultaneously fascinated and repulsed her five-year-old brain. Pru and David's cremated remains had subsequently been buried here as well. Myla was sure that if David had been in his right mind, he would have wanted Pru to be let free and loose somewhere, like in the ocean, but in his grief, he'd done exactly what the funeral director had suggested, and buried her ashes in a wooden box in the ground. It had fueled Myla's anger into hyperdrive.

But Myla pushed away these resentments and looked up, noticing the clouds moving swiftly across the sky. Steve leaned against the car. He'd agreed to come up here, but he wasn't interested in going to the actual graves. "Nothing there for me," he said. "But you go on, Myles." Myla was glad for his reluctance. Emma and Jane and Samuel seemed so well equipped for being here. It was a comfort to know visiting cemeteries wasn't commonplace for Steve either.