What's Mine and Yours(42)
Nelson took in the view of the blue rooftops, the maze of sand-colored buildings. It was spectacular, more impressive than the faraway spire of the Eiffel Tower, the green corridor of the Champs-élysées, all the sites that were reproduced on postcards for tourists. The city had changed so little since he’d studied abroad. He’d been a boy then, scrappy, in love with Noelle. He was in love with her still. He was just fucking someone else.
“Read this.” Jemima handed over her phone. “It’s the first scene of the play. It won’t take you long.”
Her cheeks were still flushed, and Nelson had a vision of how she’d looked, flat against the mattress, facedown. He had moved in and out of her slowly, the way she liked, although it had been hard to pace himself. It was worth the effort to watch her pant and squirm. He could please her consistently, deeply. And she was a shouter, which he loved. He had memorized her gasps and moans, replayed them for himself later. He had done a terrible job of containing what they had.
Nelson leaned against the iron railing and scrolled through. “Oh God,” he said.
“I know, it’s hardly Shakespeare.”
Nelson read aloud. “The thing about endless war is that there is never a victor but always carnage.”
“That’s sort of true.”
“It’s melodramatic and didactic.”
“You’ve got to see the theater where the show’s going up. Maybe that will convince you.”
“This is supposed to be my day off. I’ve hardly had a chance to be a tourist.”
“You’ll have plenty of time once you agree to stay on.”
“You know, my wife used to be a theater director.”
“I thought she was a housewife.”
“You thought wrong.”
Jemima put up her hands. “Easy there. I’ve got the utmost respect for housewives. My mom stayed home with me for years.” She tapped her ash over the edge. “You know, you never talk about your parents. You bring up your wife sometimes, as if you don’t want me to forget, but she calls so much, how could I? But you being married—that’s not very interesting. Your bio doesn’t even mention where you grew up. All your portraits of the South but no mention of how you know it. Whether you lived there, or visited grandparents over the summer. If your ancestors were slaves.”
“Of course they were slaves.”
“It’s like you want people to believe you came out of the ether. You think it’s mysterious, but that’s not what people want. They need a good origin story.”
“The better questions are the ones about my art and not about me.”
“It’s not just the art that’s for sale, you know.”
Jemima got up on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. Her lips were warm from the cigarette. “So you want to see this theater or not?”
Nelson had started taking photographs on his road trips with Noelle. Neither of them wanted to go home for breaks, so they’d rent a car and drive. They went to Savannah, Charleston, the Smoky Mountains, once as far as Florida. Nelson took pictures of men at roadside fruit stands, orange groves and swamps, the high grass that presaged their arrival at some gray-water beach.
He used an old point-and-shoot to take self-portraits in motel bathrooms and close-ups of Noelle, nineteen, pimply, and beautiful, underneath bristly, stained sheets. He liked the way a photograph could preserve the secret life of a person, a place. It was as if the world were offering itself continually if you would only look.
He scraped together enough money from his campus jobs to pay the studio fee for a photography class. He won grants, got funding from the dean. He studied abroad in Paris one summer, Brazil the next. With his photographs, he was spared backhanded compliments from his classmates and teachers—there was no denying he was good. It was a consolation to be a natural.
His first show after college drew a decent crowd, mostly Noelle’s theater friends. He hadn’t set out to create a series from his travels; he had just photographed older black men whose faces he found beautiful. He got a nice review and sold very little. Their lives went on unchanged. He worked production on film shoots, took dinky family photos on the weekends. He and Noelle filled the gaps in their paychecks with stints as bartenders, baristas, which made them feel noble, as if they were paying their dues. That phase lasted only a few years. Eventually, Noelle became director at a reputable company; Nelson got magazine work, started showing at galleries more.
Soon they had plenty for dinner and cocktails and plays, long weekends to the Caribbean, where they snorkeled and drank on the beach, ate fried fish with their hands. They were solidly middle-class but felt rich, and it was more than just the luxuries. Their little life was peaceable. They worked; they came home; they saw friends. They cooked vegetables, drank oat milk, took vitamins. They went for night walks in the neighborhood and felt safe. They weren’t sick or broke, dead or dying. They had no addictions they could name. Their framed degrees hung in the foyer. They were better off than Nelson had ever known two people could be.
Sometimes, when he was running, Nelson would be struck with the terrible presentiment that something bad had happened to Noelle. He didn’t experience it as a fear but as fact, a catastrophe he could sense, preternaturally, in his bones. She’d been hit by a bus, attacked by a stray dog, caught in a shootout and bled out when a well-meaning bystander couldn’t stop the wound. He’d run hard and fast in the direction of home, find her on the couch, glasses on, reading a play. He’d kneel before her, put his head in her lap, say nothing of what he’d seen.