Self-Portrait with Boy, page 26
Fiona called and told me I had to print more work immediately. What else do you have? she asked. The buzz is unreal!
I said, I have things. I have stuff, I think. I can get you prints as soon as tomorrow.
I want big ones though. Can you do big ones? People love the size.
Can you give me an advance?
Oh, Lu. Sure. Sure. I can give you an advance.
Thank you, Fiona.
You’re welcome. Oh—Lu? Listen, if anyone wants you to talk about it you know what to do, right?
What do I do?
No comment.
That’s it, no comment?
No comment. No comment. Your new catchphrase is No comment. Talk about your approach to the work by all means. Talk about your process. Give them the spiel about the art market that you gave me once. But when it comes to the probing questions, the personal questions, the questionable questions, just say No comment.
* * *
Small articles ran in all the newspapers and art publications. A headline in the New York Post read Art World Riled Up—as if we hadn’t all seen that coming a mile away. I received a hundred phone calls and tried my best to sound sophisticated when they asked about my work. When they asked about Max Schubert-Fine I responded dutifully, No comment. Rereading those interviews today I feel I come off at once arrogant and naive. Like a person in ill-fitting clothes who saunters into a party thinking she looks great.
And suddenly I had friends—or if not friends at least acquaintances who knew me by reputation. Over the next few months my life transformed from haunted solitude to the whirlwind of society. I was put on the guest lists of other galleries and invited to openings all over the city. I was asked to speak on a panel at a radical high school on the ethics of street photography though I knew very little about the subject. I was asked to guest curate a show at SVA though I knew next to nothing about the work of my peers and nothing at all about curating. I was invited to dinners at the homes of people I barely knew where I made stilted confused conversation and was laughed at as an oddity. It thinks it’s people.
At a rooftop party I ran into Philip Philips. He had on pale purple lipstick and a mesh tank top. He spied me from across a table of drinks. Lu Rile. Well I’ll be.
I said hello. I asked him how he was doing. I asked where he was living.
Oh, he said, I’m crashing with a friend. Seen Katie lately?
We haven’t spoken, I said stiffly.
Of course you haven’t. Philip laughed. Oh, Lu. Poor Lu. Listen, honey. I respect you and everything? But you’re a cunt.
At an opening at the Whitney I ran into Bob Maynard. He was there with a friend, a man with a mustache whose name I don’t recall. Bob told me he’d read about Self-Portrait with Boy in Art in America. The mustache told me I had cojones.
I said, What’s cojones?
He laughed and turned to Bob. Who is this kid?
I asked Maynard about his buyout. He told me about his negotiation with Pinnacle Partners but petered off in the middle of the story, distracted by a tall tanned man with a mane of white hair by the drinks table. Speak of the devil, he said.
Devil indeed, the mustache muttered.
Hey! Bob called. Wayne Salt!
The man heard him, gave him a vague nod, and wandered over. His left pant leg was rolled up in a neat cuff to expose a prettily polished wooden leg. With his right arm he leaned on a cane, the staff of which seemed to be made of beveled glass. He held out his left hand to shake Maynard’s. I hate events like this, he said. I’m only here to see what I can buy and get the fuck out. His voice had a hard, mean edge. I could easily imagine him in a boardroom, surrounded by other white-haired men, laughing about money.
Bob Maynard held out his hand to shake. Bob Maynard, he said. Remember me? You gave me twenty thousand dollars.
Wayne turned to shake hands with the mustache. Frankly, he said, I give a lot of money to a lot of people.
Two twenty-two River Street.
Ah, DUMBO. Love DUMBO. It’s my newest conquest. Mark my words, twenty years from now the whole skyline will be glass and steel.
It became clear no one was about to introduce me. Lu Rile, I said, holding out my hand.
Salt turned to me with an amused expression and shook.
Lu still lives over on River Street, said Maynard.
Hey, another thorn in my side. How much do you want? Ten million? Twenty?
Five hundred thousand, I said.
Salt laughed, revealing a row of impeccably straight white teeth. Honestly, he said when he’d recovered, it never ceases to amaze me that people actually live in these shitholes. These buildings weren’t made to be lived in. They’re literally toxic. I had one woman, mother of two, in a warehouse in Williamsburg. Real pain in my ass to be honest with you. She wanted to sue me because her youngest kid was retarded. I said you think it’s my fault the kid’s been picking at the paint and sticking his fingers in his mouth? You think it’s my problem he’s slow? I’ve been trying to get you to move out for years.
Some people can’t afford anything else, I said.
Some people, huh? Let me ask you something. What do you do?
I’m a photographer.
She’s everyone’s favorite new enfant terrible, said the mustache.
Cute, said Salt, sizing me up.
Rather loudly I said: We were just discussing a picture I took at 222 River Street. It’s currently up in the group show at Cherrystone Clay.
Love Cherrystone Clay. Chuck Cherrystone’s an old friend. Our sons play tennis together.
Then you must know my photograph.
Maynard raised his eyebrows.
Salt looked pointedly at Maynard, then at me. Refresh my memory.
Self-Portrait with Boy.
I don’t recall.
Airborne nude on the right, falling boy on the left. Vivid blue sky. It’s hanging on the east wall of the gallery.
Oh, right, right. Though I don’t recall a boy—
We all went silent.
It was Steve Schubert’s kid, Maynard said darkly.
Steve Schubert. Steve Schubert. Why do I know that name?
You bought one of his paintings, I said.
Salt snapped his fingers, brightening again. Right! Interesting piece. Totally overpriced. Ever since The Cherrystone Gallery became Cherrystone Clay they’ve inflated all their prices. That gal Fiona: She’s got an eye, but she overvalues the work. I had to talk her down.
We were interrupted by another white-haired man in a beautiful blue suit. He touched Wayne Salt on the elbow and Salt turned away from us, sucked into another conversation.
Smooth, Maynard said to me. It should have been a compliment, but he said it with contempt.
I looked at him with confusion.
Stay classy, Lu, Maynard said by way of good-bye, and the two of them turned to go.
There were still so many things I didn’t understand.
It was a heady time. After an opening at ICP I ended up at a party at the home of a young collector, the heir to a small fortune in weapons manufacturing. He lived in a sprawling loft in the deserted unruly Meatpacking District. His massive windows were left open to the spring chill. Beyond them lay the wide shadowy Hudson. Beyond the Hudson lay New Jersey. There was champagne and cocaine and velvet and silk. I found myself engaged in a fatuous conversation about the Democratic candidates for president. I argued hard for something or other, forgot what I was arguing about, and realized that neither myself nor any of my companions had any actual information. Someone brought up that drawling, swaggering guy from Arkansas. Whoever it was seemed sure this guy could beat Bush.
Beat bush, one of the men said, laughing, and slapped the crotch of a good-looking woman beside him. Beat bush!
I wax, she replied haughtily.
He laughed harder.
I was feeling uncomfortable, wondering as I often did in such situations how I’d ended up there, and what I was doing there, and whether I should go home—that thing in the corner—when I caught a glimpse of a sunlight scarf in the crowd.
I left the political conversation without excusing myself and followed the scarf through a crowd of men lighting cigarettes, past a pair of redheads kissing, through a dense and aggressive argument about the nature of consciousness. I lost sight of it near the kitchen, where five or six people were sprawled on the floor eating handfuls of chocolate sheet cake out of a paper box. Did you see a woman in a gold scarf? I asked, and they looked up at me like feral children, mouths smeared with mud. Something glinted in the corner of my eye and I looked away toward the line for the bathroom. A cluster of skinny Cure types who’d been smoking a joint caught sight of the cake and made their way toward the kitchen, revealing behind them the gold scarf. There, third in line, was my old friend from the Cloisters. We locked eyes and smiled and the party fell away like a veil, leaving just the two of us.
You again, she said after a moment.
Lu Rile, I said.
She reached out her hand, palm facing the floor like royalty. Franke Angenent.
I took her hand. It was larger than mine, long fingers, no rings, short nails. Is that . . . I foundered. French?
Dutch, she said.
The line for the bathroom had somehow cleared and made way for her. She shrugged at me and released my hand. Before going in she said: Don’t move. I’ll be quick.
When she reemerged she seemed to have a plan. Let’s take a walk, she said. The cigarette smoke is making me dizzy.
We left without saying good-bye to our host. It didn’t matter. We took the freight elevator downstairs, watching door after door rise past the ceiling. At the lobby we hauled open the gate and left the building. We walked together to the west edge of Manhattan by the loading docks and elevated train tracks. Her scarf seemed to glow.
I said, Do you mind if I take a picture of you? Right here under the streetlight?
She laughed a little and shrugged. Do I mind? No I don’t mind.
Picture a woman like a column lit from above, standing in a pool of light. Her scarf and dress are wrapped around her long body in dramatic folds. Most of her face is obscured in the shadow cast by her cloud of hair. But you can just make out a smirk on her mouth, the glint of an eye. You can see from the way she stands upright and mocking that she knows what you’re up to.
I released the shutter and let the Pentax down from my eye. She said, I know who you are, you know.
Who am I?
She found that funny. I mean I read the newspaper, she said.
We crossed the West Side Highway quickly, dodging traffic. A chain-link fence separated us from the Hudson. We walked slowly a foot apart but I could feel a pull between us, a certain magnetism. To our left the river sparkled darkly under a foggy sky. To the right cars flew past on the Hudson River Parkway, illuminating us in the sweep of their headlights, then leaving us dark again.
You were friends with them, she said. Weren’t you?
Yes, I said. With her. Close friends.
And now?
She won’t speak to me.
Quite a sacrifice, she said.
A man slept in a pile of blankets next to the fence. We gave him a wide berth.
How do you feel now? she said. With all the hubbub?
I feel, I began—and then stopped. How do I feel? I don’t know exactly. I don’t regret it. I feel like I had to do it. I feel like it was the only thing I could do. There was really no such thing as a right choice. I made a choice and I followed through on that choice and I mean it did what I wanted it to do. It bought me these fifteen minutes. The fifteen minutes I needed to gain traction, to move forward again. I was stuck for so long.
You are how old? she said.
Twenty-seven, I said.
At twenty-seven, how stuck could you have been?
I said, What else could I have done? I took this photograph and it expressed everything, everything. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever done. If I had kept it to myself I would never, I could never—
She said, I think I see. You had to do what scared you most. To begin to become yourself.
Yes, I said. I stopped walking and turned to face her. Yes, that’s it exactly.
No matter the cost.
Yes, I said.
She looked at me with a strange expression. There was pity in her eyes but affection—amusement, even—in her mouth. After a moment she turned again to continue walking and I continued beside her.
So that’s how you felt you ought to proceed. But how about now, after it’s all done, after all the press and your lost friend and the—what’s the phrase? The tempest in the teapot. How about now?
I said: I feel some pride. I feel like I have finally accomplished something. But now that I’ve done it it doesn’t seem like what I wanted at all. Like all this time I’ve been hiking up this very steep mountain and I’ve finally gotten to the top—but now that I’m here I can see that in fact I’ve been stuck in the foothills. The mountain itself is still up ahead.
The mountain is endless, she said. There is no top. It rises all the way up.
Right, I said. Or maybe it isn’t a mountain at all. Like maybe I thought I was hiking but now it turns out I was swimming all along. Or taking a spaceship to Mars.
You’ve been making a different sort of journey, she suggested.
Yes, I said. And I feel so deflated. I thought I was on this path—and yes I’ve made progress—but now looking around I can see other ways I might have gotten here, better ways. You don’t hike to Mars. You don’t swim up a mountain. I can see other ways now that weren’t quite so . . . dangerous. Or quite so . . . sad. I feel . . . I feel really sad. I loved her, you know?
My own words shocked me. I stopped walking and listened to myself. I loved her, I said again. A lump rose in my throat.
She stopped too, and turned toward me. Did she love you?
It was difficult to speak. Somehow I managed: I don’t think so.
The passing car headlights threw Franke’s handsome face into quick relief. The deep crevices below her cheekbones, large nose, full lips, pale eyes, long lashes, all of her was illuminated at once and then it was gone again, disappeared into darkness. The effect was dizzying. The way she listened to me was dizzying. I closed my eyes. I felt her dry lips on my lips. I raised a panicked hand to her shoulder. I felt her hand on the small of my back. I touched her neck. She tasted like apples and rosemary. I didn’t want it to stop.
We dodged the traffic again and she hailed a cab going uptown. When it screeched to the curb she grasped my hand and we fell in together laughing. I had never fallen into a cab with another person laughing. I had never grasped another person’s hand that way. We took the cab all the way to the Upper West Side, where she rented a tiny room in a cramped apartment. We rode the elevator up laughing silently as thieves and she slid her key into the lock in a pantomime of caution.
What can I say beyond: It was beautiful? What can I say beyond: Delicious. I could tell you about the rows of books on her shelf, the stacks of books by her bed, how she used stacks of books as stands for more books. I could tell you about the way she laughed and put her hands over her face. I could tell you about the cartoons of sea creatures and plants on her sheets; I could tell you I felt at once completely exposed and completely safe—but I won’t. To say so would be to ruin it. And besides, to this story, none of that matters.
But I will tell you this. She was right. I had begun to become myself.
Franke and I spent a heady glorious couple of weeks together. It was May and the sky itself seemed to have woken up again. Over fourteen days we didn’t spend even one twenty-four-hour stretch apart. We took long walks up and down the West Side in the fresh wind and stony sunshine. To Riverside Park, where the tulips had pushed out of the dry earth and bloomed, where she’d read while I wandered, taking pictures, or dozed with my head on her thigh under an elm tree. To Saint John the Divine, where we sat together in the cavernous church and leaned our heads against the back of the pew and marveled at the sound and smell and feel of its space. She was writing her dissertation on pre-Christian Netherlandish folklore—specifically moss maidens, which she said were a little bit ghost, a little bit wood nymph. I asked her, Do you believe in them? Do people believe in them, I mean? and she laughed and said: It’s not really like that. Belief or disbelief. That is not really what legends are for.
In the mornings when she’d leave to teach or go to the library, or whatever she had to do to piece together her life of the mind, I’d linger at the cluttered dining table with the professor of Slavic poetry who owned the apartment, reading the paper and talking politics over coffee and toast with black currant jam. He was a kind, crabby man who suffered from bad acid reflux and had no patience for corruption. Reading the paper with him was terrifically entertaining. When I had to go to teach at Kings County Academy or get a new roll of film or—god—change my clothes, she’d squeeze my hand and kiss me on the cheek and say, See you soon, Egeltje.
Little hedgehog. Because once over dinner she told me about the fox and the hedgehog and when I’d asked which one I was she’d said, Hedgehog! so quickly and with such conviction that I’d been a little offended. We’d argued about it, playfully enough. I said I could be a fox because as a photographer I had to be open to seeing and understanding a wide variety of things. The decaying carapace of a horseshoe crab had to be as important and meaningful as a boy falling to his death. She said, No no, it is not about what you see; it is about how you see it. And you see everything through the camera. You are a little hedgehog. Egeltje. You have just the one point of view, just the one lens.
