Mia spent all afternoon there, until it was time for her shift at the bar. Pauline and Mal pressed her to stay for dinner, until she finally admitted she had to go to work. “Then next week,” Pauline suggested, “when you have a day off.” Over the following months she would visit Pauline and Mal often, talking photography with Pauline, watching her at work in her studio, listening to Pauline think aloud about whatever she was working on at the time. “I’ve been reading about ancient Egypt,” Pauline might begin, flipping a book open. “Tell me what you think of this.” At their dinner table Mia tried foods she’d never tasted: artichokes, olives, Brie. Mal, she learned, was a poet, had published several collections of poems. “But no one cares about poetry,” Mal said with a rueful laugh. She lent Mia books by the stack: Elizabeth Bishop, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich.
By the time winter came, Mia would bring her newest photographs to show Pauline nearly every week, and they would talk them over, Pauline pressing her to articulate what she’d done and why. Before, Mia had taken photographs by feel, relying on instinct to tell her what was right and what was wrong. Pauline challenged her to be intentional, to plan her work, to make a statement in each photograph, no matter how straightforward the photo might seem. “Nothing is an accident,” Pauline would say, again and again. It was her favorite mantra, Mia had learned, in both photography and in real life. In Pauline and Mal’s house, nothing was simple. In her parents’ house, things had been good or bad, right or wrong, useful or wasteful. There had been nothing in between. Here, she found, everything had nuance; everything had an unrevealed side or unexplored depths. Everything was worth looking at more closely.
After these sessions, Pauline and Mal would always press Mia to stay for dinner. They knew, by now, about the three jobs, and Mal would urge extra servings on her, would send her home with Tupperware full of leftovers, which she would return on the next visit. They would, in fact, have encouraged her to stay the night, to settle into one of their guest rooms and stay for good, if either of them could have thought of a way to suggest it.
Because Mia was proud: this was quite obvious. Although she accepted their hospitality gratefully, after that first visit she made a point of never arriving empty-handed. She brought them little things she had made: bunches of leaves gathered in Central Park and bound with a ribbon into a ruddy bouquet; a thumb-size basket woven from grass; once, a little sketch of the two of them she’d drawn in ink, even a handful of pure-white pebbles after Pauline mentioned she’d begun a new project with stones. It was clear to both Pauline and Mal that these gifts eased Mia’s guilt over all they offered her—their food, their knowledge, their affection—and that otherwise Mia’s pride would prevent her from coming back.
And they very much wanted her to come back. By Christmastime it had become clear to all of them—Pauline, Mal, and Mia’s other teachers and fellow classmates—that Mia was immensely talented.
“You’re going to be famous, you know that, right?” Warren said to his sister one evening. She had come home for Christmas, and true to his word, he’d come to pick her up at the bus station in the little tan VW Rabbit he’d bought that fall. Now, four days after Christmas, he was bringing her back. Without discussing it they had agreed to take the long route, along the winding back roads, in order to stretch out these last few minutes together. Warren was now a junior in high school, and it seemed to Mia that he’d grown in the time she was away: not taller, but that something about him had deepened. His voice had lowered and he’d begun to grow into his hands and fingers and feet, which for the past few years had been too large for him, like a puppy’s paws. In the fading afternoon light the stubble on his throat looked like only a shadow, but she knew it for what it was.
“We’ll see” was all she said. Then: “And you? What are you going to be when you grow up?” In kindergarten, when the teacher had asked this question, Warren had answered with his plans for that afternoon—the afternoon being as far into the future as his five-year-old mind could imagine. Since then, “What are you going to be when you grow up” had been their way of asking about plans for the day, and even now, Mia teased him, Warren never seemed to be able to look more than a week or two ahead.
“Tommy Flaherty and I are going hunting Friday,” he said now. “Getting in one more trip before school starts.” Mia made a face. She had never approved of hunting, though everyone in their neighborhood had a deer head or two somewhere in their houses.
“I’ll call you when I get back,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek. She was struck again by how he’d grown, how he seemed leaner and stronger and more solid than she’d remembered. She wondered if there was a girl in his life. What would he look like the next time she came home, she thought—and when would that be? Summer, perhaps, unless she got a job to save up for next year. There was so much to do. Already, in the few months since she’d come to New York, her work had developed: from her time with Pauline, from studying the work of her classmates, even from the long hours she put in at her many jobs and the constant rotation of strangers she encountered there. It had become smarter and more deliberate, more technically advanced and adventurous, riskier and edgier, and everyone—including Mia herself, and Warren, waving to her through the passenger window before leaning over to crank it closed—was certain she would go far. Nothing was going to distract her from her work, she promised herself. The work was the only thing that mattered. She would not allow herself to think about anything else.
She was so focused on her work that, on the afternoon in March when the man with the briefcase began staring at her, she did not notice right away. It was midafternoon when she got on at Houston Street, heading up to her job near Columbia, and the 1 was quiet, with only a handful of passengers. Mia was thinking about her project for Pauline—Document a transformation over time—when she felt the sudden prickle on her skin that meant she was being watched. Mia was used to stares—this was New York, after all—and like all women she had learned to ignore them, as well as the catcalls that sometimes accompanied them. But this man she couldn’t quite read. He seemed respectable enough: neat striped suit, dark hair, briefcase between his feet. Wall Street, she guessed. The look in his eyes wasn’t lust, or even playfulness. It was something else—a strange mix of recognition and hunger—and it unsettled her. After three stops, when the man had not stopped staring, she bundled up her things and stepped off at Columbus Circle.