Man usually doesn’t come in until eleven, so each morning Lee has a few hours by herself. She loves this time spent putting his house in order, loves having a list of things to tell him each day when he arrives. He usually shows up in one of three moods: distracted, his fingers covered in charcoal or smeared with oils from a morning spent painting; harried, when he knows an important client is coming in the afternoon and is anticipating a day spent doing work he does not enjoy; or gloomy, when there has been a lull in the stream of sittings or he has had to pay a bill he’s forgotten about. Lee navigates all the moods with the same blend of professionalism and detachment, and Man matches her professionalism with his own, treating her with a courtesy she never knew when she was modeling.
In the afternoons, she assists him in the studio or in the darkroom, and these are by far her favorite hours of the day. Man insists he is a terrible teacher and that she’ll learn nothing from him, but on the contrary, Lee finds him informative and patient. He’s warm, surprisingly open with all the tricks he’s learned. He tells her that photography is more like science than like art, that they are chemists doing experiments in a lab, and it does seem that way to her, as much about the technical work in the darkroom as it is about the original artistic vision.
Man doesn’t print every day, or even every week, but when he does, Lee sets up the darkroom for him, donning rubber gloves and a rubber apron to mix the developer, stop, and fix baths. She places wooden tongs in the trays, uses a turkey baster to blow air off the enlarger, makes sure the safelight is working. She takes older prints off the clothesline and brings them into the studio, placing them carefully in one of the large flat file drawers with onionskin layers between them. As bad as Man appears to be at managing money, he is equally good at printing, and there are hardly ever any prints that have to be thrown away. Rarely, a first effort is too dark, or the contrast too low, but these prints he saves and uses in other projects, cut into ribbons and glued to a wood backing, or simply turned over so the reverse sides can be repurposed for sketching.
Sometimes the pictures are so beautiful Lee pauses in her work just to stare at them. Like the portrait of the dancer Helen Tamiris, whom Man shot dressed in a loose kimono, lying on the ground with her hair teased into a giant black cloud around her milk-white face. It is good, good work, and it is an honor just to be holding it, to know that she will one day develop prints in the same darkroom where it was made.
Lee has not yet broached the topic of her own photography with Man, even though Man mentioned it when he hired her. Above all she wants to keep things professional. But in her travels through the ledger book—and, though she doesn’t want to admit she’s this sort of person, in her early morning snooping through his desk drawers—she knows that Berenice Abbott, one of the former assistants, developed her own prints in Man’s studio, with Man’s blessing, and is now making a name for herself back in New York. Lee figures that there is time, that she is learning by observation, just as a scientist would do. Plus, there is not much to develop. Lee has three rolls of undeveloped film in her stocking drawer, but the last thing she wants is to use Man’s supplies on pictures that any tourist might have taken.
Now, Lee stands in the studio and listens to the rise and fall of Man’s and Bobby’s voices in the office, their bursts of laughter. Her work is in the office too, so Lee doesn’t know where to go or what to do. The situation and the visiting man remind her of the dinner parties her parents used to throw, the way she was shunted into a corner until it was time for her to help mix drinks. When she was young she looked precious, Lee supposes, all dolled up in Chantilly lace, with starched white bows stuck on her head like giant moths. But as she got older, it became discomfiting, the way the men leered at her when she brought them their cocktails, damp cigars clenched in their tight smiles.
Lee is still standing in the studio when the door from the office opens. The two men are in midconversation. “Sam’s working for Lisowski now—did you hear? He made a pile off that property in Flushing,” Bobby says.
“Yes, he wrote to me about it. Said the job doesn’t give him much time for his writing.”
“Minnie’s glad he has some paychecks to send home, I’m sure.”
Man scrunches his eyebrows together. “My mother is glad when any of us gets a real job and stops dithering around with art.”
Bobby chuckles. “That’s true. She told me to ask you when you were going to give all this up and move back home.”
“She never gives up. Making you her messenger.” Man laughs, but there is anger in it. He picks up a stool, walks to the center of the room, and gestures for Bobby to sit. Once Bobby’s bulk is settled, his heavy legs spread in front of him, one ankle crossed over the other in his charcoal-gray spats, he makes a self-conscious face, squinting his eyes in a look of what he must think is confidence or concentration.
“You don’t need much,” Man is saying. “You look good like that, just a simple, powerful shot.”
“Are you sure? This is for GE. We’re not on Forty-Third Street anymore, Manny.”
“Thank God for that.” They both laugh again. Man turns to the camera, and Lee, standing near the door to the darkroom, clears her throat.
“Can I do anything?”
Both men look over. Bobby says, “I could go for one of those little stick sandwiches with the butter and ham.”
“Ah yes, some food would be good. Do you mind, Miss Miller?” Man says, and even though she does mind, she tells him that she doesn’t.
It is hot outside and the café is a few blocks away. Lee buys three jambon-beurre and eats hers on the street, like a gypsy. When she gets back to the studio, they have already finished the session. The door to the parlor is closed and the sweet stench of pipe tobacco seeps from the threshold. Lee plops the sandwiches on a tray and raps hard on the parlor door. More laughter and talking before Man opens it. She hands him the tray with a blank look on her face that she hopes subtly expresses her annoyance.
Man takes the sandwiches and turns away, then pauses and turns back to her. On his face is an expression she hasn’t yet seen there, a sudden awareness mixed with gratitude. “Miss Miller,” he says, “what did I do before you?”
“Got your own sandwiches, I imagine,” Lee says, and feels his eyes on her as she walks away.
LONDON,
1940
During the Blitz, bunked down with Roland in Hampstead, Lee wakes more than once to find her bed brown with menstrual blood. Something about the surprise of waking to the scream of the air-raid sirens sets her body off, starts her cramping. In the morning when the blackout lifts she rinses out the sheets in the sink, but stains remain, light copper blotches.