Dear Suzannah . . .
It could not be a colder, drearier day here in Rouen. Of course, I am thinking of the Christmas we spent together in Mexico in that tiny fishing town. What was it called? We drove all night through the Sonoran Desert, a terrible idea, and stayed in that hotel with no hot water. Remember that wild processional that came down the street with the pi?ata Baby Jesus and the traveling manger starring goats, cows, chickens and Mother Mary in sequins? You, me, cerveza, fish tacos, stars, sun, beach, saltwater skin, poinsettias, sunsets. Merry Christmas to you.
Are you still sad? I’m sure you are.
I spent all of December working with a semi-talented band who is trying to re-create the magic of their first album but they’ve lost touch with the pain and poverty and heartbreak that made their songs mean something before they were famous. Success has separated them from humanity. They have it all, they want for nothing, they have nothing to give but strings of words that are meaningless and will certainly be a gold album because of a clever hook or two. I guess if you string together enough clichés, meaning emerges. But I don’t know. Is that what happened to us?
That never happened to Henry. Always moving forward with human hands, bright eyes.
I’ve decided that this is my last letter to you. I can only guess that you are coping with Henry’s death through silence and contemplation and caring for your beautiful daughter, Joan of California. I will respect that. Please know that you may reach out to me at any time and that the gift I have for you—and it is a gift—is yours whenever you are ready to receive it. In the meantime, I will keep it, safely and reverently.
If the gilded light should fade
When you hear good men have strayed
Here’s memory that tells me so
Here’s golden hair that falls below
I’ll touch the line of her chin
Like steel & glass from within
Sweet Maid.
The letter was signed with the blackbird I had come to expect.
Was this a draft of one that he sent to my mother? Or never sent? This letter was new to me, not part of the packet that Kiandra had scanned in Pasadena and then sent to me. For whatever reason, Beckman had kept a copy, then stashed it in the notebook.
Then I opened what turned out to be a magazine clipping. It was a two-page spread from Paris Match, the French version of Us Weekly but slightly more substantive because it was French, after all. My mother had a subscription for years sent to our Pasadena home. She told me it was a great way for me to practice my French, but I know she paged through the magazine as often as I did. That subscription really fueled her Kate Moss animosity.
But these pages were from an issue dated February 1980, long before my high school French days. According to the caption, the photo spread was taken at an after-party for an Yves Saint Laurent show. The usual YSL suspects were pictured, like his muses Betty Catroux and Loulou de La Falaise, but on the second page was a photo of my mother and Peter Beckman. Clearly, the two were together, a couple. My mother was wearing some sort of safari-inspired getup with belts and buckles and epaulets, draped in bangles, rings, and beads, finished off with an animal-print silk scarf tied over her blond hair. She was leaning up against a tall, clean-shaven Beckman, who’d obviously been styled for the evening, in a paisley shirt and velvet jeans. Beckman was smoking, my mother had a drink in her hand, and they were both beautiful. The cheekbones on the two of them. So, so beautiful.
I looked at the date on the clipping again: February 1980. According to the “Love at First Sight” myth I’d been told all my life, that was five months after my parents met that night at the Motel, four months after my parents were married, and two months before Bright & Dark happened. I was a Paris honeymoon baby, maybe already in my mother’s belly. But in this photo, my mother looked like she belonged to Beckman, completely. I was stunned.
Had Beckman meant for me to find the envelope?
The last time I saw my father, he was in the barn of the house we were renting in Maine, wearing his trademark white coveralls, drinking coffee, and shouting instructions over the music, a Grateful Dead bootleg. The barn, his summer studio, was meant for quarter horses, but he’d turned it into a workshop with welding equipment, cutting tables, circular saws, lathes, and all the raw materials to create Light/Break #46, a sort of psychedelic Stonehenge made from steel and illuminated with mirrors and stained glass prisms. Now that the commission was complete and celebrated with a Labor Day cocktail party and unveiling at sunset with two hundred guests and the banker who paid for it, it was time to pack up and head home. My father was supervising his assistants, Tom and Zane, on what he wanted to shipped back to California, what could be donated to a local trade school, and what could be trashed. Whenever he had finished installing a commission, he was lighthearted, effervescent; the intensity of the creative process gave way to a kind of larger-than-life spirit you could see in his laughing and joking, even singing. I guess it was joy.
I was headed to Boston on the airport shuttle, flying out of Logan that night for LAX. My work for the summer was done, too. I had packed the notebooks as instructed for my father to take with him. My notes were on my new laptop, a graduation gift, ready to be part of the package handed to the museum when needed.
In a few weeks, I’d be in Istanbul, kicking off a year of study and travel, working on my own interests and leaving my family far behind. At least, that was the plan in early September 2001. I gave Tom and Zane a hug and told them I’d see them back in Pasadena. They wished me luck and safe travels.
Then my father gave me a squeeze, tighter than usual. That joy again. “Thanks for everything, Joanie. We had fun, didn’t we? Love you.”
“Love you, too, Dad.” One last hug and then I gave a little wave as I exited the barn. “Bye.” And I never saw him again.
I’ve thought a million times about that day in the barn, why I even went down there to say goodbye. There were a lot of comings and goings in my family, and we weren’t particularly sentimental about farewells. I could have left a Post-it on the fridge, but it had been a long, wonderful summer in Maine, and I felt compelled to acknowledge the end of our time there. Even though the shuttle was waiting, I ran down the path through the blueberry bushes to the barn to say goodbye. I’ve been grateful every day since that I did. Thanks for everything, Joanie. We had fun, didn’t we?
“Joan?” It was a whisper from Nate, entering the library after a quiet knock. “It’s late, nearly midnight. You missed dinner. Come to bed.” He stood behind me and rubbed my shoulders. “Are you okay?”
I wasn’t. “I may not be Henry Blakely’s daughter.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Me neither.”
“You like him.” I was sitting on the side of the bed, trying to put on my nightgown with arms that weighed about a thousand pounds. Nate sat in the chair by the fire. I’d filled him in on my discoveries, the highlights and the lowlights. I couldn’t manage to communicate the dread in the pit of my stomach, so I asked about his dinner with Beckman instead. Nate told me they talked about music, of course, and Nate’s work, which Nate said Beckman grasped quickly. But not about me or the Panthéon Sketches or Paris because, as Nate said, that wouldn’t be fair to me.