girl in the hat

(photo by sissychrissy)

For her first walk up the hill to Mae’s house, Drew doesn’t even need to put on shoes but she does, anyway, for the sake of appearance.

Mae’s assistant Holly meets her at the door and hands Drew a key and a clipboard. Holly is a nondescript woman of about fifty wearing amorphous black clothing, dull hair in a bob, and a deadpan expression. Drew pockets the key and signs her name and hands the clipboard back to Holly, who flips to the next page and reads aloud: “First, you should notice the artwork, all commissioned by Mae. You’ll find all the most avant-garde artists represented on these walls.”

Drew pauses by a pastel of an uncharacteristically svelte blonde. “But de Kooning didn’t really do this?” Holly’s eye rolls her way. “I didn’t mean to sound snotty, I’m just curious.”

“I just said I’m just a personal assistant. I don’t claim to be an art expert.” She taps her clipboard with the pen. ”I’m just reading you the words I have written in my notes. If you have any questions at the end, you’re welcome to ask her yourself. Follow me, please.”

Holly ambles slowly down the hall giving Drew plenty of time to recognize Mae’s likeness in each portrait they pass. There’s Mae with limpid eyes and dramatic drapery; one with a suit, a bowler and a moustache; here she is cubist, there pointilist, collage, or cartoon. If Drew opened the right door, would she find an emaciated artist chained to an easel?

They turn left into a large room. A white leather sectional frames a white lacquer coffee table in front of a carved stone mantel beneath an enormous interpretation of a Frida Kahlo ex voto; Mae sitting naked on a chair beside her brunette twin dressed in a white lace wedding dress. The Maes look towards the fourth wall with the same cryptic expression. They are attached by an umbilicus that stems from one naked navel and snaking across the floor and up the other’s white skirt.

While Drew gawks, Holly drums her fingertips on the clipboard lying flat across her lap. Finally, Drew pulls her eyes away to focus on the items lined up on the coffee table.

“So, these are the things you’ll need to get started. First, a list of phone numbers. You are welcome to use the phone here to conduct your interviews or you can send an itemized bill later. Please be sensitive to time zones when you call; an interruption of sleep is no way to start a conversation.”

“Of course,” says Drew. The paper lists the names, numbers, and parenthetical occupations of approximately twenty people. Drew scans the last column (yoga instructor, doctor, actor, director, agent, actor, friend, vocal trainer, actor, masseuse, nutritionist, photographer…) and asks, “What about family members? I don’t see any listed here.”

Holly’s face is as stiff as new leather. “As I said, you’re welcome to ask Mae any questions you have when you see her. Now, here are two photo albums for your perusal—one with old photos and one more recent. Of course, these are not to leave the premises.”

“Of course.” Drew opens a cheap-looking vinyl album to a snapshot of a kinky-haired girl on a pink plastic float in a pool. It could be Arizona or California or Florida or Mexico; it could be anywhere. The kid in the photo holds a can of coke in one chunky hand like it’s a product she is presenting. The can and the lips pulling back from the glittering braces are slightly blurred.

“Is this Mae?” she asks. Holly doesn’t answer. Of course it is.

There is something so poignant about the face of a child, of seeing a face that is still open before accumulating layers of shell, especially when that child grows into a face that becomes universally recognizable. Here’s Mae at one of those awkward stages where the body, struggling to accomodate the emerging personality, warps and bulges like a loaf rising in the oven. The girl’s face offers itself completely without pretense, unconscious of what she looks like-of the immodest strap slipping off her shoulder and the pioneering pimple at the center of her chin, oblivious to her feelings about what the can of soda represents or the way the pink plastic raft presses into her flesh or the fact that this moment might be preserved in a photograph in a book forever as evidence of her relationship to the photographer or to the people who will look at this photograph some day, what they all will think, oblivious to the idea that she will ever have anything to hide.

“Wow. I can’t believe it.” Drew is overwhelmed with the desire to tuck the photo into her pocket. “She looks just like all the girls I used to know.”

Drew did steal one photograph the last time she went home to visit her father. She discovered an old cardboard box in the garage, unfolded the flaps to find a chewed-up old wool coat with a white fur collar and her mother’s birth certificate and high school diploma. The bottom of the box was lined with photographs stuck together like the scales of a fish, all the photographs that disappeared with her mother. She peeled one from the pile and was jolted by the sudden surge of memories. Her mother didn’t like to pose; she said it ruined the moment. She also avoided smiling because she said it was a lie. But in this photo she had agreed to pose beside Drew on her tenth birthday. She offers the cake toward the camera; ten candles spread a glow across her face and she gazes down at the frosting with an expression like a prayer, caught in the moment of making a wish perhaps, while Drew leans over her left shoulder like a blurred gargoyle with dark, hungry eyes. Drew couldn’t as her father if she could keep the photo without bringing up the forbidden topic. It was easier to just slide it in her pocket, smuggle it back to Los Angeles and tape it up on her mirror in her apartment.

Aside from class portraits, there are few photographs of Drew as a child and only one or two are candid. Her father preferred to take pictures of places of interest with people included as a secondary and perhaps superfluous feature of the composition. There’s one of her posed like a statue at Woodrowe Shores of Lake Huron and one at Niagra Falls when she was six and a couple shots of her as a stick figure in the foreground under the Blue Water Bridge. Drew loved having her portrait taken: she’d stand tall with her hands on her hips or in her pockets and an earnest expression but was always disappointed with the result. She somehow always failed to assert a life-sized personality against the panorama and was invariably dwarfed by the background.

Holly bends for a cursory glance at the picture of the girl in the swimsuit. “That reminds me—you are welcome to use the pool if you want, but obviously there will be no lifeguard on duty so you will have to do so at your own risk. The security cameras and mikes will record your cries for help but they will not be able to intervene with assistance. You will need to sign a release.” Holly points to a huge cabinet with an opaque white glass front. “You are encouraged to browse through the DVD library to see what there is. It is arranged chronologically and should be left that way. Same with these letters,” and she indicates a manila folder on the glossy white coffee table.

Drew aligns the stacks along the edge of the table and brushes her fingertips fondly over the papers. When she was working on her dissertation she used to walk down the stacks of the library with her arms outstretched so she could run her fingers over the spines of the old books, imagining that the oil from her hand somehow revived them.

Holly’s eyebrow twitches. “She says you’re a smart girl so I won’t insult your intelligence with a lecture but I will warn you not to twist it all into something ugly.”

“Do you mean don’t make a mess of her things or don’t make her look bad?”

“The latter, of course.”

“I’m not that kind of person. I’m her friend.”

“Fine, then.”

The tour continues through several rooms with tall ceilings and sparse modern furniture. The place feels like a museum. There are no little piles of personal belongings, no unfluffed pillows, no noticeable odors, and no bookshelves. They only pass two doors they don’t open: Holly explains that one is her own office and the other is Mae’s personal space. When Drew asks how long she’s known Mae, Holly answers without blinking. “I’ve been here from the start just to organize the schedule and make arrangements. But you won’t need to interview me because I really don’t know anything. It’s strictly business between us.” The tour ends in the kitchen where Holly shows her the refrigerator filled with bottled water, a bowl of lemons, and a cupboard full of microwaveable popcorn.

Holly is about to shake Drew’s hand when Drew asks, “Do you have children, Holly?”

“No. Do you?”

Drew laughs. “Do I look like I have children?”

“About as much as I do.”

“I guess that’s fair.”

“If I ever did it would be an adult by now, not a child, and long gone. And none of your business.” Holly stands straight with the clipboard over her chest. “We’ll get along fine if you listen carefully to what I say. I tell all the reporters and the paparazzi that I’m a personal assistant, but really, it’s nothing personal. Like I said before, you won’t need to include me in your research. You are welcome in any unlocked room as long as you leave everything as you find it since it’s not my job to clean up after you. ”

And with that, Holly excuses herself; there’s work to be done.

(photo by solo yo2 on flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/42581424@N08/)