never.”
“I just hope they don’t have a dog,” Jamie said.
We tiptoed like the Katzenjammer Kids up to one of their pranks, arms in front of us, feeling our way through the darkness into the back garden. There were no lights on inside the house, but it was warm enough that the windows were open. I hoped the new owners weren’t light sleepers. “No doghouse,” Jamie whispered.
The roses were in bloom. I had almost forgotten the nose-tingling clove and nutmeg scents of Souvenir de Malmaison, Tuscany, and Parsons’ Pink, all the old roses my father had kept. They were still there in his garden, hundreds of blooms each glowing like a pink full moon in the dark night.
The peony was still there, too, its delicate green stems bent under the weight of the dead blossoms. I knelt and felt for the stone, and when I lifted it, how light it felt compared with its weight during my childhood when I had been small! The tin box was still there as well. I cradled it to my chest, careful not to rattle the money inside. We tiptoed back out of the garden, and I felt less like a Katzenjammer Kid than Eve leaving Eden.
We counted the money later, in the van’s backseat. Almost a hundred dollars. “Thank you, Daddy,” I said.
• • •
I bought a cardboard suitcase to keep in my locker at the employees’ lounge. Skirt by skirt, blouse by blouse, I moved my clothes out of the closet in the shared bedroom and into that suitcase.
We took the train into New York on a breezy autumn day. Jamie photographed me leaning out the window, holding on to my hat and smiling straight into the camera. The train hissed and steamed, rumbled and clanged, and it wasn’t just a physical movement butone that involved my entire being. Jamie and I were going forward, into our own story. It was 1927, and I was twenty years old.
Five years, I told myself. In five years, I will be Jamie’s wife. So what if the honeymoon came first?
Elizabeth, now known as Lee Miller, was also in New York, taking dancing lessons, studying stage design (a skill she’d use effectively later in her photographs), and being photographed by Steichen and Genthe and the other greats. I had seen displayed all over Manhattan a Vogue cover with her face on it. I had stood in front of a drugstore magazine rack admiring the sophisticated gown she wore, the upswept hair, trying to see the little girl who had climbed to the top of the tallest tree. She was there, in the eyes.
I bought a copy to show Jamie and he propped it up on our table, stopping several times a day to admire it.
“See what you can achieve with a little daring?” he said. “A girl from Poughkeepsie on the cover of Vogue . Think we’ll maybe run into her?”
“Not unless we’re invited to a party at the Whitney or the opera.”
“Anything is possible,” Jamie insisted.
Jamie earned some money by chasing ambulances and photographing accidents, crime scenes, dance contests, and baby beauty pageants for the glossies. His father, understanding that the Tastes-So-Good Bakery did not really require three sons to oversee it, sent him a little money every month, the allowance he would have had in Poughkeepsie.
I knew that Daddy Sloane was being understanding, playing the boys-will-be-boys card with his youngest son. Daddy Sloane thought I was Jamie’s wild oats.
The Tastes-So-Good Bakery was doing better than ever,expanding and hiring more employees since Mr. Sloane had bought stocks on margin. I think even my mother bought a few shares in a mining company, that year. Everyone was investing, buying stocks with unsecured loans.
So Mr. Sloane turned a blind eye to his son’s peccadilloes—me—and in the letters he sent I could read the hope father and son shared: fame as Jamie—no, as James Sloane, photographer. Baking was a living, but photography . . . well, that was the future. That was art and maybe fame, and nothing was too good for the baby of the family, the youngest son.
Momma knew
“I just hope they don’t have a dog,” Jamie said.
We tiptoed like the Katzenjammer Kids up to one of their pranks, arms in front of us, feeling our way through the darkness into the back garden. There were no lights on inside the house, but it was warm enough that the windows were open. I hoped the new owners weren’t light sleepers. “No doghouse,” Jamie whispered.
The roses were in bloom. I had almost forgotten the nose-tingling clove and nutmeg scents of Souvenir de Malmaison, Tuscany, and Parsons’ Pink, all the old roses my father had kept. They were still there in his garden, hundreds of blooms each glowing like a pink full moon in the dark night.
The peony was still there, too, its delicate green stems bent under the weight of the dead blossoms. I knelt and felt for the stone, and when I lifted it, how light it felt compared with its weight during my childhood when I had been small! The tin box was still there as well. I cradled it to my chest, careful not to rattle the money inside. We tiptoed back out of the garden, and I felt less like a Katzenjammer Kid than Eve leaving Eden.
We counted the money later, in the van’s backseat. Almost a hundred dollars. “Thank you, Daddy,” I said.
• • •
I bought a cardboard suitcase to keep in my locker at the employees’ lounge. Skirt by skirt, blouse by blouse, I moved my clothes out of the closet in the shared bedroom and into that suitcase.
We took the train into New York on a breezy autumn day. Jamie photographed me leaning out the window, holding on to my hat and smiling straight into the camera. The train hissed and steamed, rumbled and clanged, and it wasn’t just a physical movement butone that involved my entire being. Jamie and I were going forward, into our own story. It was 1927, and I was twenty years old.
Five years, I told myself. In five years, I will be Jamie’s wife. So what if the honeymoon came first?
Elizabeth, now known as Lee Miller, was also in New York, taking dancing lessons, studying stage design (a skill she’d use effectively later in her photographs), and being photographed by Steichen and Genthe and the other greats. I had seen displayed all over Manhattan a Vogue cover with her face on it. I had stood in front of a drugstore magazine rack admiring the sophisticated gown she wore, the upswept hair, trying to see the little girl who had climbed to the top of the tallest tree. She was there, in the eyes.
I bought a copy to show Jamie and he propped it up on our table, stopping several times a day to admire it.
“See what you can achieve with a little daring?” he said. “A girl from Poughkeepsie on the cover of Vogue . Think we’ll maybe run into her?”
“Not unless we’re invited to a party at the Whitney or the opera.”
“Anything is possible,” Jamie insisted.
Jamie earned some money by chasing ambulances and photographing accidents, crime scenes, dance contests, and baby beauty pageants for the glossies. His father, understanding that the Tastes-So-Good Bakery did not really require three sons to oversee it, sent him a little money every month, the allowance he would have had in Poughkeepsie.
I knew that Daddy Sloane was being understanding, playing the boys-will-be-boys card with his youngest son. Daddy Sloane thought I was Jamie’s wild oats.
The Tastes-So-Good Bakery was doing better than ever,expanding and hiring more employees since Mr. Sloane had bought stocks on margin. I think even my mother bought a few shares in a mining company, that year. Everyone was investing, buying stocks with unsecured loans.
So Mr. Sloane turned a blind eye to his son’s peccadilloes—me—and in the letters he sent I could read the hope father and son shared: fame as Jamie—no, as James Sloane, photographer. Baking was a living, but photography . . . well, that was the future. That was art and maybe fame, and nothing was too good for the baby of the family, the youngest son.
Momma knew
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