Man comes up behind her and stares over her shoulder at the empty white calendar page.
“I’ll start on the perfume bottle spreads,” Lee says.
“No, I’ve got a better idea. It’s beautiful outside. No reason to work when there isn’t any. I’ll get the car out and we can drive to Chantilly, have a picnic.” As soon as he says the words Man’s entire demeanor changes, and within moments he has dug a picnic basket out of the closet, along with a pile of blankets and the traveling cocktail set.
While Man gets the car out of the garage, Lee fetches supplies, stocking the basket with bread and radishes and butter, cold pulled turkey and saucisson sec, their favorite little éclairs from the patisserie down the street. She nestles the food around an iced bottle of Sémillon and is on the front steps of the studio before Man gets back with the car, her coat buttoned to her neck, its rabbit fur collar soft against her cheeks. Man rounds the corner and she waves at him, but just then a young Western Union boy on a bicycle stops in front of the studio and runs up the steps to the door, an envelope clutched in his hand.
“For Man Ray?” Lee asks him.
The boy squints at the typed name. “No, for Monsieur Lee Miller.”
“That’s me.”
The boy’s eyebrows push together in confusion, but he holds out the telegram and receipt book so Lee can sign for it, and then rides away on his bicycle. Man is idling in front of the door, the growl of the car engine loud on the quiet street. Lee holds up her finger to Man and opens the telegram, already expecting the worst: someone dead or sick or maimed in some horrible accident. But instead,
LI-LI COMING TO PARIS OCT 1 ON THE SS ALGONQUIN FOR BUSINESS AND YOU STOP
ERIK AND JOHN SEND THEIR LOVE STOP
YOUR LOVING FATHER
Man honks the horn a few times in a row and Lee shoves the telegram in her bag and runs down to him, strapping the picnic basket onto the back of the car and then settling herself in the passenger seat. She pulls her beret lower over her ears.
“Anything important?” Man asks her.
“No, not really. I’ll tell you later.”
“Okay, then off we go!” Man shouts, his voice full of the joy of abandoned responsibility. As he drives he keeps up a steady stream of chatter. Lee is quiet. She has her handbag on her lap, the telegram inside it. Impersonal typeface, the message stilted, nothing like her father, but still it is enough to bring him back to her. Your loving father. For business and you. He will be here in less than a month, in their apartment, poking around the home that she and Man have made together. She has imagined how her new life might appear to him, but now the thought of him actually being here makes her uncomfortable. What will she tell him? How will her world look through his eyes?
Man continues north out of the city, and soon the road opens up into farmland, alternating fields of pasture and plantings, punctuated here and there with stands of beech trees, their leaves not yet turned to fall colors.
“This is wonderful,” Lee says, and rolls down her window a little so she can breathe the air, tinged with the smell of a distant controlled burn that smudges the sky with gray.
Lee is aware of how it could appear: she has moved from one man taking her photo to another. This new man is not her father, of course. Still, she cannot bear the idea of having her father see their apartment, where many of the pictures Man has taken of her hang.
In Chantilly, Lee and Man visit the château and spend a while in its gorgeous library. By early afternoon they are famished, so they drive farther onto the château grounds and park the car next to a stream with a view of a pretty little footbridge. The day is still, the water so placid it reflects the trees and clouds above it. Lee sets out the picnic blanket, cuts thick slabs of butter and presses them into rounds of bread, tops them with razor-thin radish slices, and shakes salt on top from paper pouches. Man eats with his eyes closed, blissfully, and they wash down the meal with the Sémillon, not cold anymore but still delicious.
“Sometimes I think about being a chef,” Lee says, popping a slice of Morbier in her mouth and loving the way the ashy rind tastes against the radish and the wine.
Man opens his eyes and looks at her. “I’ve never seen you cook anything.”
“I cook! Well, I would if I had any of the right things. Pans, a larder. I used to cook when I was growing up.”
“What did you make?”
“All sorts of things. I never used a recipe. Soups and stews—I’d just throw things in a pot until it tasted good.”
“And were you successful?”
“My father always thought so.” Lee remembers serving him at his desk, the walk down the hallway with the tureen clutched between two pot holders. She’d set it at his elbow and hover nearby until he put down his newspaper or pencil and took a bite, waiting for the moment when he’d look back at her and smile. Oh, how she used to adore her father.
“Maybe I’ll cook for you sometime,” Lee says to Man.
“Maybe. I like taking you out, though.”
“We’d save money,” she says, and then, after a pause, “He’s coming to visit—my father. That’s what the telegram this morning said.”
Man sits up and grabs the wine, refilling first her glass and then his own. “I didn’t even know you were in contact with him.”
“I’m not.” The last time Lee heard from Theodore was when she received his letter about his photos being published, which she didn’t answer. She mentions him now and then, but each time she does Man never seems interested. He has purposefully cut off contact with his own family, and doesn’t ever seem to regret it. It’s a philosophy he shares with many of the other members of his circle. Like them, he says he wants to be free of the tangled alliances of his past, because being free will help him focus on his art.
“Do you want to see him?”
Lee watches a bird poking around in the mud at the edge of the stream and ponders his question. “I’m honestly not sure. I’ve been angry at him for not contacting me, but I’m to blame for that too.”
“You just have to decide if being in touch with him will make you happy. And if it will, you should see him.”
Lee nods. After a while, she says, “When I was little, my father had this album—actually, lots of albums—and he kept records of everything I did. My first steps, my first visit from the doctor when I got a fever as a baby. All my school papers, and these silly little poems I wrote and gave to him. He was always so proud of me. And he took so many photos. Sometimes I think every memory I have of my childhood comes from looking at those pictures.”
“Did he make the albums for your brothers too?”
“I think so, but I was clearly his favorite. And I needed him more than they did.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because… because of what happened.”
“Of course. God, I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to be sorry. It’s just that I… I miss him. He was always there for me. He loved me.”
Man shifts on the hard ground and then winces as he stretches out his legs in front of him. “Well. Of course he loved you. That’s what parents do. But I only meant you don’t have to see him when he visits if you don’t want to. You’re a grown woman. You’re not beholden to him.”
Lee nods again. Part of her agrees with Man: just because Theodore has finally sent her a telegram doesn’t erase all the months that they haven’t been in contact. And he’s not even coming to see her, if she’s reading the message correctly: the trip is business and she’s just tacked on. But “loving father” keeps running through her mind; there was a whole childhood when those words were true.