within a matter of weeks that I hadn’t gone off alone, of course. So-and-so heard that Jamie Sloane and the Tours girl had been seen kissing in public in the Metropolitan Museum, right in front of the medieval hall, and this was reported to another so-and-so, and in the roundabout way of gossip the story made its way to my mother’s door.
She got my address from Jamie’s father and wrote saying only, “Best you don’t come back to Poughkeepsie, Nora. That bridge is burned, and there’s been too much talk.”
“Don’t worry, Nora,” Jamie said. “I’ll take care of you. I’ll always take care of you.”
I worked in a typing pool, tenth floor in a Midtown building, fifteen minutes for lunch, and in my free afternoon I went to the perfume counter at Macy’s and pretended I was going to purchase a bottle. Billet Douxhad become my new favorite, a scent of carnation with hints of moss, reminding me of afternoons in the garden with Daddy.
I was happy. I was in love, and newly free. Quite honestly, living in sin suited me just fine for the time being. But there was always a sense of horizon in my life with Jamie, a need to be elsewhere.
Jamie received a couple of invitations to art gallery openings by sheer perseverance. He discovered which afternoon of the month the invitations were mailed out and then sauntered into the gallery, charming the girls who worked there, showing enough knowledge of cameras and darkrooms, light and shadow, to be acknowledged as a fledgling artist.
One afternoon he even met the great Alfred Stieglitz, who by then was bald and gray and as fierce looking as an eagle. Stieglitz had opened “the Intimate Room” art gallery downtown, and was putting up regular shows of new American art, works by people like his beautiful wife, Georgia O’Keeffe, and the photographer Paul Strand. Jamie wanted his photographs to hang at one of those exhibits.
I went with him the day he brought his portfolio to Stieglitz, sat at that great wooden desk and waited, barely breathing, as Stieglitz leafed through Jamie’s photographs, pausing at some, peering closely once in a while, but finally folding the portfolio, placing it on the desk between himself and Jamie, and saying, “Perhaps next year, young man.”
We went back to our little apartment, not speaking, and Jamie rolled into a ball and stayed that way for a day.
Jamie couldn’t get his photographs accepted by one of the uptown or downtown galleries, couldn’t find a patron or collectors interested in his photographs, not even the nudes.
The nudes were of me, since he couldn’t afford a model. Gradually, persistently, he had worn down my shy reluctance. I had developed a technique of pretending my body was there, but I wasn’t. My arms and legs and breasts became alien objects. I could look at the contact sheet and see shadows and light, black and white and gray, not myself. I never wore perfume when I posed for Jamie. I needed to be as colorless and scentless as the photos.
“There are good galleries in London,” Jamie said one afternoon when he was photographing my hands. He had blocked off the top half of me with a black board, so that my hands looked very white and fragile, almost corpselike and disembodied. “New York is nowhere,” he said. “London is the place to be.”
We had burned bridges at our backs, but the whole world lay in front of us. When you are that young, all movement is forward. And so in 1928, we took a steamer to London, third-class, and danced our way across the Atlantic.
We became part of that great reverse migration, from America across the ocean, west to east, heading back to places our ancestors had left a hundred years before; not for any purpose more serious than to play, to see what there was to see, and to achieve what there was to achieve. Great-grandfather Thouars fled to save his life. I made the return trip for him.
Jamie and I stayed in London for three months, moving regularly to less expensive
She got my address from Jamie’s father and wrote saying only, “Best you don’t come back to Poughkeepsie, Nora. That bridge is burned, and there’s been too much talk.”
“Don’t worry, Nora,” Jamie said. “I’ll take care of you. I’ll always take care of you.”
I worked in a typing pool, tenth floor in a Midtown building, fifteen minutes for lunch, and in my free afternoon I went to the perfume counter at Macy’s and pretended I was going to purchase a bottle. Billet Douxhad become my new favorite, a scent of carnation with hints of moss, reminding me of afternoons in the garden with Daddy.
I was happy. I was in love, and newly free. Quite honestly, living in sin suited me just fine for the time being. But there was always a sense of horizon in my life with Jamie, a need to be elsewhere.
Jamie received a couple of invitations to art gallery openings by sheer perseverance. He discovered which afternoon of the month the invitations were mailed out and then sauntered into the gallery, charming the girls who worked there, showing enough knowledge of cameras and darkrooms, light and shadow, to be acknowledged as a fledgling artist.
One afternoon he even met the great Alfred Stieglitz, who by then was bald and gray and as fierce looking as an eagle. Stieglitz had opened “the Intimate Room” art gallery downtown, and was putting up regular shows of new American art, works by people like his beautiful wife, Georgia O’Keeffe, and the photographer Paul Strand. Jamie wanted his photographs to hang at one of those exhibits.
I went with him the day he brought his portfolio to Stieglitz, sat at that great wooden desk and waited, barely breathing, as Stieglitz leafed through Jamie’s photographs, pausing at some, peering closely once in a while, but finally folding the portfolio, placing it on the desk between himself and Jamie, and saying, “Perhaps next year, young man.”
We went back to our little apartment, not speaking, and Jamie rolled into a ball and stayed that way for a day.
Jamie couldn’t get his photographs accepted by one of the uptown or downtown galleries, couldn’t find a patron or collectors interested in his photographs, not even the nudes.
The nudes were of me, since he couldn’t afford a model. Gradually, persistently, he had worn down my shy reluctance. I had developed a technique of pretending my body was there, but I wasn’t. My arms and legs and breasts became alien objects. I could look at the contact sheet and see shadows and light, black and white and gray, not myself. I never wore perfume when I posed for Jamie. I needed to be as colorless and scentless as the photos.
“There are good galleries in London,” Jamie said one afternoon when he was photographing my hands. He had blocked off the top half of me with a black board, so that my hands looked very white and fragile, almost corpselike and disembodied. “New York is nowhere,” he said. “London is the place to be.”
We had burned bridges at our backs, but the whole world lay in front of us. When you are that young, all movement is forward. And so in 1928, we took a steamer to London, third-class, and danced our way across the Atlantic.
We became part of that great reverse migration, from America across the ocean, west to east, heading back to places our ancestors had left a hundred years before; not for any purpose more serious than to play, to see what there was to see, and to achieve what there was to achieve. Great-grandfather Thouars fled to save his life. I made the return trip for him.
Jamie and I stayed in London for three months, moving regularly to less expensive
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