The kitchen is cold, and someone else’s dishes fill the sink. Lee can’t stand the squalor, so she takes her cup and goes back to her room, and as she starts up the stairs Madame Masson calls to her from her office to tell her she has mail.
Mail! A letter from her dearest friend, Tanja, and another envelope, smaller and slimmer, on which Lee is surprised to see her father’s handwriting. She hasn’t heard from him since the telegram about the Kotex ad. But here is his handwriting on the creamy envelope, his script as tall and angular as he is. Lee carries the letters upstairs and climbs back into bed.
She is curious about what her father has to say, but starts with Tanja’s letter, several pages thick and written in wobbly handwriting, as if it has been dashed off on a train. Tanja has been traveling through Europe for almost as long as Lee has been in Paris, accompanied by a chaperone named Mrs. Basingthwaite. Her letters read like excerpts from an Anita Loos novel, full of non sequiturs and gossip.
Last week I took this perfectly harrowing car ride through southern Spain with a man I met in Seville. We went to Ronda (I can’t remember, have you been there? It’s beautiful—that bridge!) but the man drove like we were racing on a backcountry road and not practically clinging by our fingernails to the side of a mountain. And he had this pair of what I thought were opera glasses that he kept on his lap the entire time, which I thought strange, because what was he going to do? Bird-watch on the motorway? But then he unscrewed one of the lenses and took a giant swig! That was when I thought Mrs. Basingthwaite might not be so ding-a-ling after all and I should interview my companions a little more thoroughly before I went on transcontinental driving trips with them.
Lee laughs and then starts coughing, and has to put down the letter for a bit while she searches for a handkerchief. She can almost imagine her friend sitting in bed with her, strands of her dark brown hair shoved messily behind her ears and a big smile on her face.
Lee has been more circumspect lately in her own letters. The last one she sent to Tanja, just a week or so ago, started out with a description of Lee’s new life, but as she wrote, a story about the strange aristocratic woman who lives on her hotel floor morphed into a story about a photo shoot Man did of an actual aristocrat, and then became a description of Man’s photos of Duchamp, and then a story about Man’s work habits, and before long she had filled four pages and mentioned his name seventeen times. So she had ripped up the letter and started over, a more restrained missive in which she explained a new technique she had learned for studio work and mentioned Man only once, to say that he was an excellent teacher. At the end of Tanja’s letter, she brings it up.
I’m glad for you. I’m glad this is working out. When you left New York I didn’t think it was a good idea. You had such a wonderful life there, and I had this vision of you moving to Paris and being alone and penniless in an alley with an opium addiction. I’m sure that sounds a little extreme, but I was worried about you. But from all you’ve written, this sounds like the right choice. You’re doing what you’ve always wanted to do, and I’m glad you’ve found a place where you can learn from someone as talented as Man Ray sounds.
Lee finishes her tea and then slices open her father’s letter. A single page, front and back, beginning with pleasantries. The annual Poughkeepsie tree lighting was particularly well attended, and her brother Erik has been promoted to technical adviser at Carrier, where he is now in charge of an entire division. Lee flips the page over and continues reading.
Your brothers and I went to the cemetery last month, and they both commented on how hard it was to visit your mother without you there. I said a few extra words to let Ellen know you were thinking of her even though you are far away.
We think of you often and hope you are doing well. I tell everyone that soon we’ll be seeing your photos in all the magazines as you said we would. When you have a publication, be sure to write to me and let me know, so that I don’t miss it. Speaking of publications, a small journal put out by the Poughkeepsie Architectural Society just ran a few of my prints—some recent shots I took of the lovely new Deco building on Cannon Street. I’m hoping the work leads to further commissions and I enclose copies so that you can see my work.
Lee wipes her running nose with her handkerchief. She feels vaguely guilty about missing the visit to her mother’s grave, but mainly because it must have made her father sad. Lee and her mother were never close, and by the time Lee started modeling, Ellen was actively jealous of her daughter’s beauty and success.
But it is not the lines about Ellen that nag at Lee; it is the part of the letter where her father writes that he is now a published photographer. She reads through that section again, but doesn’t look at the pictures, which are still tucked inside the envelope. Her father, published before she is. How like him to wait to write her until he has something to say about himself. And he doesn’t ask her a single question, just assumes she hasn’t had her work published, twists the knife by reminding her that everyone back home is waiting around for her to be successful. She is a disappointment to him, she thinks, and the flare of envious anger she felt when she read his words turns to frustration.
Lee thinks back over the past months, how she’s delayed and delayed using Man’s darkroom. What is she waiting for? Being his assistant has become a sort of habit, her own work something that lives on undeveloped rolls of film. How silly. I will travel at the prow of myself, Lee thinks, and gets back out of bed and goes into the hallway, where she dials the number to Man’s studio and stands impatiently, waiting to be connected. Finally he answers.
“I wanted to thank you for stopping by with the drink last night,” Lee says, her voice hoarse and scratchy.
“It’s nothing. How are you feeling?”
“Not well, but I’m sure I’ll be better soon,” she says, and then, after clearing her throat, “I have a question for you. When I get back, if there is a light day where we don’t have too many appointments, I have some film I’d like to develop, if it’s no trouble.” She hates how obsequious she sounds and wills herself to stop.
“I believe I already told you that you could use the darkroom whenever you’d like.”
Is his tone interested or patronizing? Lee cannot tell, so she forges ahead. “Yes, I suppose you did. I just have a few rolls. I think I know what to do—I won’t need your help.”
“Have you done it before?”
“My father showed me how a few times—”
“But you haven’t done it by yourself?”
“No, not by myself.”
“Ah.” Even through the phone his voice sounds smug. “Are these pictures important?”
Lee thinks back to what she shot, walking through the city the other day. “To me.”
“I think I should develop them for you, and then you can print them.”
“How am I going to learn if you do it for me?”
There is silence on the line, and then, “You’re right,” he says. “Let me help you the first time. Teach a man to fish and all that.”
“Thank you.” Lee swallows hard, which makes her cough, and she holds the phone away from her mouth. When she puts it back to her ear, she hears Man asking if she needs anything.