I met Casey a year after my father died. He was photographing the posthumous unveiling of my father’s installation Light/Break #47 in the garden at the WAM. I was there as the family representative to flip the switch, so to speak. As with many ceremonies after my father’s death, I stood in while my mother stayed away. She had barely left Ojai since that day. I gave up my Watson Fellowship and Paris to become the de facto family mourner in an endless series of tributes and memorials.
Casey, the cute photographer trying to make a name for himself, was funny and solicitous, one of the few people at the time who made me feel normal, not like a cross between a helpless victim and a national symbol of grief. The courtship was three months. I was twenty-two and he was thirty-one, but I’d aged a decade in a single day, so it felt like we were at the same place in life. We married at Pasadena City Hall like my parents. I thought it was a tribute to them. My mother was suspicious.
After that, we settled into our lives as young marrieds. It was like I skipped the whole postcollegiate period of indecision and signed up for the full adult package: marriage, mortgage, couple friends with kids. Polly made it back to Paris, but the city slipped away for me. I wasn’t the same person who had made all those plans over chilled Beaujolais or won the Watson.
When I was offered a job at the museum, I took it. It was a safe, easy career move that saved me from my grief. Casey focused on building his portfolio. I stepped right into my mother’s shoes, managing his career like she had managed my father’s.
No doubt, I was a lure for Casey’s clientele, the only daughter of icon Henry Blakely and model-muse-manager Suzi Clements. The young, tragic Joan Bright Blakely.
The wine-soaked dinners we’d hosted for magazine editors at our house. The vacations in Santa Fe to drum up business. The constant socializing with his ad agency clients. Events where my parents’ names invariably came up. Your father did lighting for rock shows before his art career, right? Yes. That paid the bills for a lot of years. David Bowie, Elton John, Kiss, Aerosmith, the Stones. Is your mother still modeling for Ralph Lauren? They are old friends, but my mother doesn’t really get out much anymore. And she certainly doesn’t model. What was the name of your father’s studio, where everyone who was anyone hung out? The Motel because it had been an actual motel. Ever supportive, I answered their questions and told delightful anecdotes about my childhood memories of swimming in David Hockney’s pool.
During our brief courtship, Casey had impressed me with his maturity, as if he truly understood his place in the world. Maybe it’s because, up until that point, my romantic life had been limited to relationships involving boys who enjoyed beer, boys who enjoyed other boys but hadn’t come to terms with that reality, like cute Paul, and the one chef in Maine. Casey seemed different, an artist with vision and a philosophy of life, well, at least a philosophy of his life, which is more than what most Amherst boys had. We’d sit on the porch of his run-down bungalow, drinking wine, not beer, and he’d explain that his work was temporal, limited, not art, but commerce. Photography was at its best when it captured a moment, but it failed at capturing a feeling. Leave that to the painters and sculptors and conceptual artists like my father. He’d take the paychecks and the precision of photography. His role was to translate an image, not an interpretation, and he was fine with that. I was undone by his self-awareness. I thought our life together would involve a million such discussions, a vibrant intellectual life as seductive as our sex life.
But it turns out, that was the only theory Casey had: one well-articulated position about photography. Other than that, he had nothing, like he never thought about the big picture at all. If I mentioned literature, he’d shrug it off, claiming that he “saw more clearly through a lens” than a book. Forget politics, economics, and religion. For a guy, he didn’t even have a strong stance on indie music or steroids in sports. Other than an interest in food and a good eye for design, he bowed out of taking a position on anything that might involve conflict in the future. Mr. Neutral.
I guess that’s what my mother meant when she let it slip that Casey lacked passion.
At parties, he’d trot out his one grand idea, expounding on image versus interpretation and the women would swoon, the men would nod, and the charade would go on. It got so that I had to leave the room when I heard him start his monologue. Is that why he slept with Marissa and, now I was pretty sure, countless others—because I was onto him?
My presence in the marriage was all for the benefit of Casey Harper, photographer, like a party trick in the flesh. I brought the kind of cachet that his safe Saint Louis upbringing couldn’t match. And for almost the whole time, he’d had a second family—a warm, busy, happy family—tucked away less than five miles from our house.
I thought Casey was brave and strong. Turns out he was chickenshit.
“Miss Joan? Are you okay?”
It was Javier, the head maintenance guy at the museum. He was pretty much the go-to guy for anything that was nonart related at the museum, from watering systems to excessive air-conditioning. We had a special bond because he loved my brownies and I constantly needed his help at my house, a midcentury architectural gem that was starting to show its age. During my childhood, my father had done everything in terms of home maintenance, a holdover from growing up in a small motel, from fixing toilets to changing light bulbs. I never appreciated my father’s handiness around the house until the first time a pipe burst, and Casey panicked like a shipwrecked stowaway, more concerned about his photography gear than stopping the flow of water into the living room. His preppy upbringing in Saint Louis included lacrosse and crew but not chores. In retrospect, it should have been a red flag.
Fortunately for me, I discovered that Javier had a guy for everything. His brother ran a painting crew, his cousin did drywall, and his uncle’s truck actually said “Senor Fix-It” on the side. Javier would know what to do. “I saw your husband leave and he wasn’t happy.”
After the long day, the scene with Casey, and a second glass of wine, I had no doubt my make-up was all over my face, along with a few stress tears. But the timing was perfect. “Javier, do you know a locksmith?”
“Yeah, I got a cousin in Montebello who does that.”
“Can I get his number? I need the locks changed.”
Chapter 2
The cool morning light flooded into my living room, illuminating the vast Sam Francis canvas on the dove-gray wall. Every morning since I can remember, I’ve looked at that painting, but it never looked more beautiful than on that sad, quiet Sunday morning after Casey’s announcement. Sam had been a dear friend of my father’s, and the painting was gift on the day of my birth. On the back of the canvas, the artist had scrawled, “For Joan Bright.” The empty white space in the middle, the brilliant use of colors on the edges of the canvas. My father used to say, “It’s your universe, Joanie. All brightness. Fill it up.”