The Effects Of Light Part 6

"What do you mean?" I ask. I'm tired. "I want to go to sleep."

"Okay, okay, in a minute. But think about it, Pru. Did you see those pictures in the gallery? They're for sale. Someone who doesn't know us can buy us and put us on the wall."

"I know." I can't think of anything else to say. "But it's just like snapshots, isn't it? Or-"

"No," she says, and the force of her voice shakes me. "It's nothing like snapshots. Snapshots are just for your family or your friends or the people who come to your birthday party. Ruth's pictures are for everybody."

So I sit up. I say, "Well, do you not want them up there? I mean, I bet you could talk to Ruth and she wouldn't put them on sale. Or if you didn't want her to show them, she wouldn't."

"No, it's nothing like that. The thing is-don't you think it's cool? It's cool to be up there like that. People look at us and imagine what we're thinking. We're like these mysteries."

"Like mystery books?" I don't get it.

"Not like mystery books, Pru. I mean like mysterious. People can see that we're thinking or talking, but they don't know what we're thinking or talking about." Then she stops and listens to hear if it's David's footsteps on the stairs or just the wind outside. Nothing moves while we listen. Finally she whispers, "But you're right about the book part. I mean, it's almost like our pictures are books that people want to read. It feels good. It feels like every time someone looks at one of those pictures, I can feel it in here." She touches her chest.

I lie back down. I can't think of anything to say. I've thought about it that way, but I've never heard it in words. And hearing it in words makes it seem scary to me. It makes Myla happy, but it starts to make me sad. Then Myla leaves me. I can hear her breathing trail her into sleep, and I don't catch her in time. When I touch her arm and say her name, she mumbles and turns on her side. I try to go to sleep, but her breathing keeps me awake. It turns into a chant in me with the last words Myla spoke: "Feel it in here, feel it in here, feel it in here." And then I am sleeping.

chapter nine.

what are you doing here?" Myla had no control over her voice. She was shocked; reality swerved. Samuel Blake, here at this house? She couldn't name her emotion.

Samuel smiled, small. "I'm here to see you."

"To see me."

"Yes."

"I don't know what that means." She tried to figure out what to say next. She wanted to sit down, to ask where Mark was, to sort out how Samuel Blake could possibly be here and what she was supposed to do with him, but sitting down would mean she was weak. She stepped onto the porch and let the screen door slam behind her. She crossed her arms, gathering herself. "What are you doing here?"

Samuel raked his fingers through his hair. "I know I upset you. I didn't know I'd upset you until I got your letter, and by then I could tell you were more than upset. I still didn't know why, though, and you didn't sign your letter, so . . ." He cleared his throat. "So I called Mark, and he'd just gotten your letter, and then he explained who you were." Myla tried to keep herself from noticing how nervous Samuel was. She looked at him, and he continued. "I know you think I was playing some kind of game with you, that I knew who you were. Rather, who you are. But I didn't. I had absolutely no idea you're Myla Rose Wolfe. And I want you to know that."

"Okay." She didn't know what else to say.

"Okay."

Then a surge of anger shot up through her as she remembered the last things she'd heard Samuel speak: words disparaging her father, words blaming Ruth's photographs for Pru's death. She felt her voice turn clipped, cold, as she reached for the door handle. "Well, you've seen me. So I guess that's it. You can leave."

"Could you hear me out?" Myla didn't move her hand from the door, but she didn't move away from Samuel either. "I flew all the way across the country. Surely that counts for something?"

"I didn't know there was a point system." Myla felt herself wanting to argue with Samuel, to engage with him, but she realized that the less she argued, the sooner he'd leave. That was what she wanted, wasn't it? She looked at him and said, "Okay."

"I can't believe it. I really can't." Myla watched Samuel's mouth spread into a slow smile. "You just-it's amazing that you're really Myla Rose Wolfe. It's so strange. In a good way, of course. So strange that I've looked at those photographs a hundred times and never even once recognized you. Maybe I intuited something-"

"Hold on." She felt herself growing strong. "Just because I'm in some photographs that you happen to think you know a lot about doesn't mean you know anything about me. I'm not who I was when you and I were involved. I'm not Kate Scott. You don't know me." She pulled the screen door open and placed one foot inside the house. "Please leave me alone."

"You disagreed with what I said about your family and the photographs, didn't you? In my lecture? That's why you're so angry at me."

"I'm not anything at you. I'm not talking about this anymore."

"Wait, Myla." His voice hooked her, suddenly sure of itself. He'd said her name. She waited. The house before her was dark, cool. And behind her, where Samuel stood, it was bright. She turned her head and listened. "You think I said horrible things about your family. You don't even know what to do with the things I said. And what I said was even more confusing because we were really falling for each other. I mean, at least I was falling for you. I really was. I don't care what your name is or what it was."

Myla turned her body so she could see Samuel's face. She leaned against the door frame, propping open the screen door with her foot. She was tired. "What does it matter? That was a week ago. I had a different name. I had a different life."

"Maybe it doesn't all have to disappear."

"It didn't disappear, Samuel. I left it. I left you. Remember?"

"Because of what I said."

"Okay, yes. You insulted my dead father, accusing him of parental irresponsibility and who knows what else. For all I know, you truly believe that Ruth Handel was a p.o.r.nographer and that she and my father were trafficking dirty pictures of his daughters. h.e.l.l, you probably think my coming all the way across the country simply proves your point: I was a traumatized girl who's become a traumatized woman. And you probably think you're going to save me. Well, I don't need a prince. I just need time."

"Would it help if I apologized?"

"It wouldn't even help if you took it back. Because I know it's what you believe. You were honest in your cla.s.sroom. You believe what you said. And I can't be with someone who thinks . . ." Myla straightened her shoulders and looked Samuel squarely in the eye. She planned to break him. "The thought of being with you sickens me."

"That's why I'm here," Samuel said.

"What?" Myla was shocked to see Samuel looking so triumphant. "You're here because you sicken me? That's the most pathetic-"

"Not that," he said. "Jesus, Myla, I have a backbone. No, no, just listen. I'll tell you why I'm here. Please? Just give me one minute of your time, and then I'll leave you alone." She nodded for him to continue. "You've more or less been in hiding for your entire adult life, right?" he asked.

"I haven't been in hiding-"

"Whatever you want to call it. No one's known who you really are."

"Okay. Yeah. So?"

He nodded. "And now you've disappeared in a very dramatic way from a very respected college. Mark's going to have to tell the authorities everything he knows, if only because the college turned your departure into a missing-persons case. And then, pretty soon, the press'll get wind of it-remember that piece in Vanity Fair?-and someone will figure out where you're living, and some a.s.shole with a tape recorder will find you. And then you'll have to answer for your family. I know it's not fair, but it's bound to happen. And I'm going to help you."

"Help me?" Myla was stunned, mainly because she realized Samuel had a good point. She'd planned Kate Scott's life down to the last detail, except she hadn't been discreet about her disappearance. She'd simply left, and he was right: if there was anyone interested in finding the current whereabouts of Myla Rose Wolfe, it would be easy.

Samuel continued, "The people who'll buy an article about the Ruth Handel case won't buy it because they're bad or just ignorant. They'll buy it because they're concerned; a little girl died, as far as they know, because of naked pictures. And they want to know how her sister's faring. And when it's put that way, I think you'd realize why someone like me would be curious. Why someone like me might wonder just exactly how a man could still be a good father and allow naked pictures of his children to be taken."

Myla groaned. She tightened her grip on the door and said, "Leave, Samuel."

Jane came up from inside the house and placed her hand on Myla's shoulder, making her jump. "Is everything all right?" Jane asked, trying to sound intimidating.

"Yes. We're fine. This is Samuel. Sorry for the noise, Jane. We're just figuring something out. But Samuel's leaving in a minute, aren't you?"

"Nice to officially meet you," said Samuel, reaching inside the screen door for Jane's hand.

"You flew all the way from New York just to see Myla?" Jane asked, repeating what he'd already told her.

"Yeah," said Samuel.

"Wow," said Jane, arching one eyebrow at Myla as she went back inside the house.

Samuel spoke fluidly now, rapidly, looking Myla straight in the eye. "You said in your letter that I had to climb out of the ivory tower and look at how others live. You called me a weak scholar, saying I knew nothing of what I spoke. And maybe you're right. Maybe I've made my own version of a story out of a slim number of events. But I'm everyone out there. I'm the person you need to think about. If your father really was a good man, and if you really believe those photographs are not only innocent but important in their own right, then you're going to have to convince me of it. Because if you don't convince me, someone else, someone from the media, will be knocking on your door next week, and they sure as h.e.l.l won't care if they tear you limb from limb. They won't have held you while you slept, they won't give a d.a.m.n if it breaks your heart. Rest a.s.sured, they'll drag your father's name through the mud, and they'll dishonor your sister's memory. And I can't let that happen. For one simple reason: because I like you. I'm here to see you, and I'm here to help."

The world was spinning again. Myla needed a gla.s.s of water. "I can't do this," she said. She stepped inside and let the screen door go, separating her from Samuel. As she turned and strode into the darkness, retreating into the cool, she heard the door yawn closed, then the clip of the latch behind her. Her eyes adjusted, and she saw Jane standing in front of her.

"So you're going to let him leave?" Jane's voice was low, whispering.

"What am I supposed to do? I didn't ask him to come. I don't know what he wants."

"He wants to help you, Myla. He wants to talk to you."

"But what if I don't want his help? I never asked for it. I don't need him, Jane." Myla felt herself hovering on the brink of a decision, but she didn't know how to make it: either trust him, believe he wanted to help her, and let him stay, or listen to those things he'd said in his lecture hall and ask him to leave because of them.

Jane put her hands on both of Myla's shoulders. She said, "It's not my practice to nose into other people's business. But Emma would do something. Emma would tell me I have to do something." Jane walked around Myla to the screen door and pushed it open. Myla heard Jane's footsteps on the porch and then the low mumble of talking. Myla listened as an indiscernible conversation pa.s.sed, and after a minute-a long, long minute-Jane pulled the door open again. She walked to Myla and placed her hand on the small of her back.

"He's staying for dinner. I told him it's up to you what happens next, but this is my house, and I want to be hospitable. A man who's flown across the country deserves at least one meal before turning around again." She leaned in to Myla. "I'm making lemonade. Go talk to him. I told him you don't want to talk about anything serious. But he's sitting on the porch swing. He just wants to know you're okay."

Jane headed toward the kitchen, leaving Myla alone in the living room. Myla knew Jane was right: no matter what Samuel's beliefs, it took a lot of something to fly across the country after a woman you barely knew. She turned around, squinting into the light of the day. And then she went toward it. Toward Samuel.

EVERYBODY HAS AN OPINION about the pictures. Ruth makes them. Jane hates them. Emma wants to be in them. Myla uses them to show off. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone but me.

And David too. I like to be in the pictures, and I know David likes that. So one afternoon when Myla's over at someone's house, and there's no babysitter, and David has a cold, I decide to ask him. But I don't ask him what he thinks. I ask him why Jane gets so mad.

David's sitting on the green couch in the sunlight with a box of Kleenex and a pile of student papers. I keep refilling his gla.s.s of orange juice that's crusty around the top. I just ask him. I say, "Why does Jane hate the pictures so much?"

David looks surprised, moves the papers off his lap. "What makes you say that, Prudence?" He uses my whole name when he's being serious.

He and I both know that Jane hates the pictures. What I don't know is why. What I also don't know is this other thing. So I ask him another question. "Does Jane hate Ruth?"

That makes him stand up and go across the room and pull a big heavy book off the bottom shelf. He dusts it with his sleeve. This is one thing I love about David. He is always answering questions about one thing with examples from something else. Sure enough, he opens up the book, sits beside me, and spreads it across our laps so it smushes my legs.

"Look at this," he says.

I look.

"What do you see?" he asks.

It's a picture. A photograph. An old brown photograph. And even though I know it's the ocean and the sky, it doesn't really look like the ocean and the sky. Black rocks are at the bottom, black clouds are at the top, the water and the air are in the middle.

"The ocean," I tell him.

"And how do you know it's the ocean?" David asks.

"Because," I say.

"Does it look like the ocean?" he asks me.

"Not really," I say.

"Why not?"

It's all so obvious, and I wonder what this has to do with Jane. "Because."

"Let me help you think about this," David says. "You see the ocean because you know it's the ocean. You know it's supposed to be the ocean because you see a boat there, in the middle. But what if you didn't know about boats? What if you'd never seen the ocean before? What you'd see-what it looks like-is a wall of water and air.

"This photograph is called The Great Wave, and a French photographer named Gustave Le Gray took it in 1856. What we know is that the ocean stretches far out. But that's what we know with our brains, from experience. If we forget our brains, we see a wall. Our eyes see a wall because our eyes are dumb, with no experience of their own."

I hear what he's saying, and I stare hard at the picture. It's a new kind of idea, because you just think, "The ocean's the ocean." So I stare at it and try to see a wall. But my experience keeps me from seeing it. I can only see it stretching out. And then, just in a flash, I see what he means. It is a wall. And then it's gone.

After I try to see the wall again, I start to get bored. I wonder what this has to do with Jane hating Ruth. And almost as if he reads my mind, David says, "Trust me. I'm talking about Jane here and how she sees the pictures of you and Myla. Because, Prudence, we learn how to see. Our brains teach our eyes how to see the world. First we learn how to see the world, and then we learn how to see pictures of the world. Representations. And we get so smart and so fast and so good at it that we don't even realize we have opinions about what we're seeing that have nothing to do with what we actually see.

"When I look at this picture, I can see both a wall and a stretch of sea. And when Jane looks at a picture of you, she sees a wonderful, beautiful, sweet, seven-year-old girl whom she loves. But she can also imagine the way a stranger might see the picture. And she tries to imagine what a stranger might think. So she doesn't hate the picture. She doesn't hate Ruth. She may not even hate the stranger. But she's scared."

I ask him, "Then why aren't we scared?"

"The answer is simple. The pictures are good and beautiful. They are pictures of you and Myla living your lives, growing up. And the taking of the photographs has become an important part of who you are, of part of that growing up. I wouldn't take that away from you for a million dollars, unless you didn't want to be a part of them anymore."

He stops talking for a minute. "Just having you be in the photographs has helped you learn that you're in charge of your own bodies. That you are in charge of your own minds. Jane loves you so much that she wants to protect you. I love you so much that I want to protect you, and I think letting you form opinions from your own experience is the best way to do that. So we disagree. But to tell you the truth, I like that Jane loves you so much. I like that Jane makes us think about all this. I bet you do too."

I nod. He's right, I do like that about Jane. I think about it then, for a long time. David lets me think. His answer isn't an answer so much as another bunch of questions. David's opinion about the pictures is to let me form my own opinion. He closes the book and kisses the top of my head. I have to think about it. He knows I do. So I get him a fresh gla.s.s of orange juice so he can correct his papers, and I go out to ride my bike.

CONVERSING WITH SAMUEL went better than Myla had antic.i.p.ated. Once she sat down beside him on the porch swing, talking was easy. Perhaps it was the comfort of watching Jane's back as she weeded in the front yard, close enough for rea.s.surance and far enough for privacy. Or perhaps it was Samuel's mention of Mark's name, which dredged up in Myla a deep missing that made her feel honest, that relaxed her into the giving of herself. "Mark's fine," said Samuel. "He's just worried about you." Conversation drifted to innocuous subjects-the coming baseball season, recently published fiction, movies they'd seen-and Myla realized that she did know some of Samuel, even if she didn't know, or didn't want to know, all of him.

When Steve got home that evening, Jane stopped her weeding, walking to the side of the house, obviously giving him some kind of explanation and instruction to be discreet. Jane's sudden stride brought Myla and Samuel out of the hollow of their conversation. Around them, they saw the evening light low and red, and Myla realized she was hungry. Time had flown. Then Steve walked around the corner of the house, up the front steps, and right over to Samuel. He stuck out his hand and chuckled. "Myla's told us absolutely nothing about you."

Jane arrived behind him, shaking her head. "Pay no attention to anything he says." Myla was surprised to catch a glimmer of flirtation in Jane's exasperation.

"Well, Samuel, is it? The sooner Samuel learns that I'm constantly putting my foot in my mouth, the better off he'll be. Everyone thinks I'm an idiot." Steve chuckled again. "Isn't that right, Jane?"

Jane tossed her hair over her shoulder, creating her own wind tunnel. "I've often been impressed by the depths of idiocy you're capable of reaching." Myla saw the force of their love, something she'd never much considered. Steve stepped forward and grabbed Jane's hand, danced her around the front porch. They were alone in that dancing s.p.a.ce together, wonderful to watch, until Steve got winded and leaned against the door frame.

"Not as spry as I used to be." He pointed to Samuel's suitcase, sitting in the middle of the front walk. "You better bring that inside or everyone'll think Jane's finally leaving me." He wheezed, then pulled the squeaky screen door open. "Well, aren't you all coming inside? It's nearly dark. And I'm hungry."

Soon Myla found herself in the kitchen with Jane, preparing dinner as the men sat in the living room, drinking beer and watching a basketball game. Myla had met a lot of academic women disgusted by such gender division, and she'd always publicly agreed with them, acknowledging that all their careers existed only because their mothers had fought for liberation from ap.r.o.n strings. She'd openly criticized girls her own age who'd given up promising careers for families. But during each of these conversations, she'd had to keep a secret to herself: despite all the political, moral, economic reasons to deplore "women's work," she loved it. She loved being in that kitchen with Jane, being ordered around by a recipe-savvy woman. The onions sizzled with lightning intensity. Myla watched Jane's dexterity with the wooden spoon, ached to be able to arrange a plate so beautifully. She remembered past moments with Jane, moments when it was just Jane's body she'd watch, when Jane would let go of words and simply move. Now that Myla was herself a woman, she realized she still longed for this ease.

She remembered witnessing this quality in Ruth too, in the moment just before Ruth would crouch behind the camera, gathering the dark-cloth to her shoulders. Her eyes would look different. She'd use words, but they weren't conversation, they were words from another part of her body, words to service her eyes: "Shift left. Eyes here. Blink. Now." It had seemed such an easy way to be, such a comfortable solution. Myla wondered if she'd lost all capacity to practice such grace.

That night they ate well and sat at the table long after they'd finished devouring everything on it. Steve and Samuel seemed to have hit it off famously. It helped Myla to watch the younger man befriend her father's closest friend. Myla imagined her father with such a man, imagined how David would have handled Samuel's sudden appearance. She forced herself to believe that he would have been as jovial as this other father figure, but had to admit to herself that David, always caught up in his mind, probably would have been oblivious. He'd demonstrated none of the formalities of manliness that Steve had. It was good to consider David this way, realistically, without the tragedy of life washing over all her memories. And remembering her father like this made the reality of his notebook all the more compelling. She wanted to know what Steve had figured out.

As they contemplated dessert, Steve leaned back in his chair and undid the top b.u.t.ton of his pants. Myla saw her chance, saw the possibility to ask. But she knew she'd have to divulge the few truths she had about her father's notebook to Samuel, to a man who only days before had defamed her father to a roomful of people. She looked at Samuel as he leaned his elbows on the table, asking Jane about her curriculum, and realized that telling him about David's notebook was a chance she'd have to take if she were going to get to know Steve's mind right now. At this moment, waiting any longer for a private audience with him seemed excruciating. Besides, Samuel had been on his best behavior all afternoon. So Myla led the conversation in her own direction, hooking in the details of Marcus Berger and the mysterious envelope, catching Samuel's eye, willing him through her honesty to understand that her father, a brilliant scholar, was to be taken seriously. "And that leads us to Steve, who's been looking at the notebook and interpreting-"

Steve grunted. "I was afraid of this."

"Have you looked at it yet?" Myla asked.

"Of course I've looked at it," he said, a wave of darkness pa.s.sing across his face.