The Rest of Us: A Novel (11 page)

“If you had one of those digital cameras, we could see if they were any good right now,” Sue was saying. “My daughter has one.”

I turned back to her. “Film is much better quality. That’s why I use it.”

“She’s right,” Harold said. “Those electronic pictures are junk. There are grainy spots on the ones Mimi sends.”

“I explained that to you six times! It’s where she had to get it developed that once. At the CVS.”

“All her pictures look like that, not just the batch from Thanksgiving.”

As I loaded the black-and-white film, I was conscious of Rhinehart standing up, moving around. All at once, he was behind me, and still looking down at the camera, I leaned back slightly, my shoulders resting against his chest. I told him what I planned on shooting, and we whispered conspiratorially, low enough so Harold and Sue couldn’t hear. He had his hand on my upper arm, radiating energy, and when he removed it, it felt as if it had left a mark.

I was wired from being so close to him, and went into the bedroom to get another light and to calm down. There I found Chechna. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her small, bent back half-facing me. A bottle of beer was on the night table. On her lap was my purse, and she was digging through it. My lipstick, eyeshadow, and keys were out on the bedspread. My face burning, I went back into the living room and whispered to Rhinehart, “Chechna’s picking through my
bag
!”

He seemed amused. “Just let her be. She’ll put everything back. It’s worse when you interrupt. She accuses you of spying.”

“But why is she doing that? Does she not trust me?”

Mentally I was running through the contents, birth control, no, incriminating slips of paper? I probably had a bank statement. Would she be able to make sense of the numbers?

“Don’t worry about it. She does it to everyone.”

Harold and Sue were still standing by the mantel as I readjusted the lights and folded up the reflector. I was proud of being able to light better than the majority of photographers and lighting assistants working, thanks to Marty. It had been to the benefit of Sue and Harold, whom I’d given a much softer look.

“I’ll be old by the time we finish this,” Harold said. “You’ll have nothing to take a picture of.” I’d accidentally been shining the strobe in his eyes, and he blinked like a cornered raccoon.

Sue said, “When I was modeling I would have to stand for hours. Even when it was cold or what. I didn’t make a peep.”

I took the camera off the tripod. “Okay, let me just get a few more shots. These are for my portfolio.” I wanted to take a full-length picture of Harold half-dressed, next to the Russian plates. I directed him to rest his hand on the back of a chair, a heavy Ethan Allen knockoff that was pulled up alongside Chechna’s dining table. He was surprisingly pliant, and when I directed him to gaze out the window, I got a man lost in familiar surroundings. Excited, I asked him to think of a memory he had of himself when he was in his thirties. He began describing Christmases when his daughter was young, and I was able to see a low-ceilinged living room almost identical to this one, a tree completely covered in tinsel, a gray carpet turned nicotine beige from all the cigarettes smoked there. Harold was in plaid pants, his thick brown hair brushed back from his skull. Now he was standing here, an old man remembering, and it was as if I were fusing his memory with my own vision. It came flooding in on me, this odd, familiar sensation, and I couldn’t believe there was ever a time when I wasn’t creating, or that I had thought for years that it wasn’t worth doing.

As soon as that door opened, it shut again, and Chechna came back into the room, saying, “Why’re you sitting in my good chair?”

“This crazy girl is taking pictures of Harold,” Sue said. “She says she doesn’t want me in them. Can you believe that?”

Chechna was twisting her wedding ring. “It’s already half past four. I didn’t expect everyone to stay so late. I only have enough dinner for one person.”

Rhinehart said, “Tatie’s just wrapping up.”

I took a few more shots of the apartment and then, reluctantly, went back to the bedroom to retrieve my purse. It looked as if it had never been touched. I thumbed through the cash.

At the door, Chechna got emotional, hugging Rhinehart forcefully. She reached up and held his face in her hands. Tears came into her eyes, “If this is the last time I see you . . .”

“Don’t say that, Chechna. You’re healthier than I am.”

“Promise me to take good care of yourself. We don’t know how much time is left us. And after I’m gone you will have no one. No wife now, no one. All alone.”

I wouldn’t have expected Rhinehart to tell Chechna of his split with Laura. She seemed a woman to keep things from. There was something slightly manipulative about this scene, but Rhinehart was deeply affected. “I’ll call you the minute I get back to the city,” he said.

•  •  •

The express train sped down the tracks, tossing us in our seats. Alone together again, we were both quiet, shy. Rhinehart was staring out the window. When he began talking, it was about the carpet runner in Chechna’s hallway, a blue one with red markings like upside-down pinecones. I hadn’t noticed it. It came from one of the Pullman cars, he said, when Chechna was working on the trains after she first immigrated.

“Did they give the rug to her after they took the train out of service?”

“No, no. The railroad barely paid them. She stole it, most likely. The employees took everything—pillowcases, sheets. They bartered with the kitchen staff, who were smuggling out the food. For a week, I ate figs traded for a bunch of towels.” He smiled, but he looked tired as he pressed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

I said, “You’ve started looking for your family? Do you think the woman you got in touch with is your cousin?”

“I think she may be. She said she had letters from my mother to hers. I would give anything to see them! I don’t have anything written from my mother. I think she was embarrassed of her English spelling.”

I asked him to tell me about his mother again and then leaned my head back against the seat, as if settling in. He looked over at me and smiled. “You’ve always been an encouraging listener.”

“She was pretty, wasn’t she?”

“Very pretty. Dark hair, a slight figure. Very affectionate. At times she could be abrupt with people, but with me she wasn’t like that. She babied me, called me her ‘little prince’—Rudolf isn’t a Ukranian name, you know. She’d heard it somewhere and liked it, thought it sounded foreign and regal. I played the part when we were out, holding her arm and opening the door and negotiating everything with the store clerks. The neighbors used to compliment her on my politeness and maturity. It pleased her.”

“Did she like books, too? Did she read to you?”

“Not so much. But she told stories, usually set in Ukraine. I think she may have been inventing as she went along, she paused a lot. I wish she had written them down. It would be nice to have something in her own hand.”

I knew what he meant. I had saved all the letters and cards my father had written me, even those from elementary school, notes jotted down on a napkin wishing me luck on a test or to remind me of something to ask the teacher. It was the most exhilarating thing about school lunch period, which seemed a confusing block of unstructured time at a long table with the smell of food garbage and the complexity of playground dynamics. To open up the lunchbox and see the napkin signed off “Dad”—it was like he had appeared next to me.

“Your mother died of lung cancer, didn’t she?” I asked.

“That’s where they think it started. She’d had breathing problems before. She covered them up with whistling. It took me years before I figured that out. I used to sing along with her, not knowing anything
was wrong. Chechna’s right, I was a soft-headed boy.” He sighed. “My mother didn’t get a doctor until she was in a tremendous amount of pain. By then it had spread everywhere.”

We were pulling into Woodside station, the sky an uncommitted color edged by streetlights. I remembered Rhinehart telling me about his mother’s death. The day she became too sick to stand and lay in the bed, raving and running a high fever. How he stood nearby, pale and nervous, covering her with blankets, which she kept ripping off. There were neighbors there, drinking coffee in the kitchen, and he was worried they would come in and see her trying to pull off her nightgown.

I was holding his hand. The feel of it, the wide, warm fingers, was familiar. Almost instinctively, absentmindedly, he began circling the joint of my thumb.

“It was a hard adjustment living with Chechna. She wasn’t accustomed to children and thought I should be more independent than I was. She worked long hours, and I was alone a lot. I got myself ready for school. I was always afraid of oversleeping. On the day I had my trumpet recital, I was so excited I slept in my suit, on top of my sheets, like a vampire. So I wouldn’t have to waste any time getting ready in the morning, in case I was late.

“On Sundays, though, we’d take the bus together out to that crowded cemetery visible from the Queens-Midtown Expressway. It’s where my mother’s buried. We’d spend the day out there, bring a picnic lunch and a blanket.” I felt him beginning to pull away from the story, describing Russian Easter, when the priest went around blessing the graves, and how he’d try and leave a piece of candy for his mother. He laughed, but it sounded hollow. “I was so sad during that time. It’s hard to believe you can be that sad and still get through it.” He squeezed my hand and then released it. “I’m sorry, Tatie. Too much past. It’s seeing Chechna again that’s brought it up. You’d think after a number of years you’d forget these things. Maybe it’s just the nature of pain to stay put, lodged somewhere deep inside.”

I repressed the desire to put my arms around him, imagining the
great, confused outpouring it would turn into, tender, consoling, inappropriate. I wanted to comfort him, to climb on top of him.

“Let’s talk about you,” he said. “What have you been doing these past months?”

I told him about my move to Brooklyn. The new series I was working on of people in their environments, which, after the visit to Chechna’s, felt like it was taking shape. “Of course, it’s mostly just an idea at this point. I’ll need to see if I can bring it all together.” For some reason, as comfortable as I’d felt, I hadn’t talked much about myself.

He was listening intently. “Why don’t you come upstate with me on Tuesday? If you can get the morning off. I’m going to see a genealogist—he works out of his home. It should be a fascinating environment to photograph. I’ll ask him, but I’m sure it would be fine.”

•  •  •

At Penn Station, Rhinehart insisted on helping me carry my things onto the subway platform, since I had turned down the offer of a cab. I felt the pressing need to sum up the afternoon, everything that I’d felt pass between us, and it came out in a stuttered rush. He nodded, as if he understood. But even after I stopped talking, he was looking at me, expectantly, as if there were more that was supposed to happen. “I’ll see you on Tuesday then,” he said for the second time. The train arrived with its blast of warm air and squealing, and I hugged him spontaneously. He embraced me and held on, as if like me, he had been wanting to do that all day.

B
efore picking me up in Brooklyn, a significant detour, Rhinehart had stopped to get sandwiches from one deli and knishes from another—he must have left his house at 6 a.m. to make that happen. I loaded three camera bags into the car, which impressed him. I’d gone to Adorama the day before to rent two different lenses that I wanted to try out—a high-end portrait and a 45mm wide-angle. Riding up the tiny elevator with four guys, weary photo assistants returning the gear from a commercial shoot, I remembered my days assisting, before I started working for Marty, and realized that I had actually made progress in all the years I’d been living in the city.

I was wearing a light floral skirt and tights, a little cool for the weather, but I was enjoying the sight of my knees, exposed after a dry and difficult winter. Rhinehart looked at them, too, and then pretended to be concerned with a rattling noise coming from the passenger door, making me smile into the window. It felt as if he and I weren’t merely headed out of town, but to a country I’d never been. I often got this feeling around him, an ebullient bubble in my chest that made me want to laugh or run around.

He clicked on the radio, and we listened to faint jazz as we nosed our way out of the Bronx. His phone was ringing, and he excused himself as he answered it. I listened while pretending not to. It started with an article he was doing and turned into a discussion about a prize jury he was on. The schedule of meetings. I used to follow all these details. Although I wouldn’t have admitted it back then, his
connections had probably contributed to the intensity of my desire for him, and also, in my lesser moments, made me feel twice as insecure. He was asking who else was on the panel. I recognized the name of a famous film director. I hadn’t realized Rhinehart was still leading a life with these sorts of high-profile obligations. When we were at Chechna’s, he’d seemed to have nothing but time.

The phone rang again, and he shut it off. I smiled at him but his eyes were back on the road, all business. He was explaining that the genealogist he’d chosen had come recommended by his friend, a Boston neurologist who’d found Vichy survivor relatives in France and even a tenuous link to the Louis XVI throne.

We were passing the heavy brown co-ops that reminded me of 1970s TV shows like
Welcome Back, Kotter,
when I confessed that I found genealogy boring.

“Boring!” Rhinehart said, as if I’d proclaimed I didn’t like music.

I flipped through the book he’d brought along, as he reached over and tapped the pages, explaining the different mapping systems, and why he favored the drop-line pedigree chart, which was neatly labeled with shorthand annotations: GC for grandchild, CA for common ancestor, reminding me of the chess moves printed in the newspaper and how they seemed to suck all the life out of the game so that I no longer wanted to play. In one diagram, a stick figure labeled “Me” was at the bottom, the massive triangular weight of his entire family history sprung from the top of his head, which, I explained to Rhinehart, seemed to accurately illustrate the egotism I had always associated with this undertaking.