Girl with a Camera Read online

  Sara Jane Cassidy and Tubby Luf were both home from college. We’d hardly seen each other since the summer after our high school graduation, and except for exchanging a few letters when we first left, we’d somehow lost touch. But, eager to demonstrate our new sophistication as college girls, we made a date for lunch at the Queen City Hotel, the most elegant eating place in Plainfield.

  Mother thought this was pure foolishness. “Why don’t you just invite your friends to come here? I could fix some hot soup, and I have a jar of the sour cherries I put up last summer that would make a nice pie.”

  I made excuses. “The girls have their hearts set on the Queen City.”

  Tubby had learned to drive and would pick us up in her father’s Model T Ford. More foolishness, Mother declared; we could easily have taken the streetcar to Plainfield. It was the last straw, then, when I appeared wearing a smartly tailored burgundy dress with a matching jacket, another outfit financed by the Mungers. “Silk stockings!” Mother exclaimed when she saw me. “In this weather? Have you lost all your common sense?”

  Tubby and Sara Jane pulled up, honking the horn. All three of us were dressed to the nines in our best flapper dresses with skirts up to the knees, and Sara Jane even sported a raccoon coat. Tubby was studying at the women’s college at Rutgers, and Sara Jane was at Bucknell out in Pennsylvania. She could hardly wait to tell us she was considering getting pinned to a fraternity boy she’d met in the drama club.

  We ordered expensive oysters and roast beef, and Sara Jane regaled us with the virtues of her new flame. “He plays the leading man in most of the Cap and Dagger productions,” she said. “If I wear his pin, then it’s like being engaged to be engaged.”

  “He sounds wonderful,” I said, “but do you really want to settle down with just one boy at this point? Isn’t it more fun to go out with lots of boys?”

  My friends looked at me quizzically. “Is that what you’re doing, Peg? Going out with lots of boys?”

  “Well, yes,” I admitted. “They all want to take me out, and I hardly ever say no, at least not the first time.”

  “Aren’t you afraid you’ll get a reputation?” Tubby asked with a worried look.

  “For what? Being a good dancer? No, I’m not worried—I’m eighteen, and I haven’t even been kissed yet!”

  The girls gaped at me. “I think you’re setting some kind of a record, Peg,” Sara Jane said.

  “I’ll drink to that,” Tubby said, raising her water glass. Laughing, she proposed a toast to my unkissed state coming to an end in the new year, to Sara Jane getting pinned to the fraternity boy, and to her own fond hope that the interesting boy who sat next to her in Medieval Literature would notice her and ask her out.

  We, who had always been such studious linsey-woolsies, hardly mentioned our college classes, although I did tell them about my fascination with photography. Mother would have frowned and told us how disappointed she was that three of the smartest girls in our graduating class had all become superficial. But for that one afternoon together, we didn’t care.

  Ruth and I were in the bedroom we had shared as children, lying in our separate beds. “Ruth?” I whispered into the darkness. “Are you still awake?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ruth, have you ever been kissed?” When she didn’t answer, I hurried on, “You don’t have to answer that. It’s none of my business. But I haven’t, not yet, and I’m wondering if you could give me some sisterly advice—how I ought to feel about a boy before I let him kiss me.”

  Silence from the other bed. I wondered if I should apologize for asking such a personal question.

  “Yes,” Ruth replied at last, “I have been kissed, by a man I loved very much, and I didn’t have to stop and wonder if it was the right thing. I didn’t care if it was or if it wasn’t.” I heard her start to cry.

  “Ruth?” I sat up, straining to see in the darkness. “Ruth, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I don’t mind telling you about it. I fell in love, and he was crazy about me. He asked me to marry him, and I accepted. This was last summer—you were in Connecticut. But Mother refused to allow it.”

  I climbed out of my bed and crossed over to her bed. “Why haven’t I heard about any of this until now?” I asked.

  Ruth was blowing her nose. “Because Mother didn’t want you or anyone else to know about my indiscretion. That’s what she called it—an indiscretion.”

  “But why? Why the big secret?”

  “Dennis’s mother is Irish but his father is Chinese and he owns a laundry in Lowell, north of Boston. It was the only way he could make a living after he came to this country. Dennis works in a Chinese restaurant in Boston. That’s where I met him. We got acquainted. Then we began to meet secretly.”

  I reached for her hand and squeezed it. “Tell me what happened,” I whispered.

  “Oh, Peg, I was so much in love! When he asked me to marry him, I said yes without a second’s hesitation. But there is a lot of discrimination against the Chinese. I don’t know why I ever thought Mother would allow it, but one day I gathered all my courage and made the trip down from Boston to tell her I wanted to bring a friend to meet her. I didn’t tell her how serious I was about him. She asked his full name, and I couldn’t lie. She’d know the minute she saw him. She said, ‘Ruth, if you don’t break this off immediately, I will disown you. I will not speak to you again.’”

  “Mother said that? But she married a Jew!”

  “She did, but she kept it a secret, didn’t she? Not a word until after Father died! If she doesn’t want us telling people we’re half Jewish, what do you imagine she’d say if one of her daughters married a Chinaman?”

  “And you did what she told you? You broke off with him?” I bristled, although frankly I was as shocked as Mother must have been.

  “I knew what my life would be like if I didn’t. Uncle Lazar would probably object too, and since he’s helping with my tuition, I’d have to drop out of college. Everyone I know would turn their backs on me. Maybe even you, Peg!”

  “I wouldn’t have turned my back, Ruth. I would have wanted you to be happy.”

  Ruth shook her head and choked back a sob. “I had to let him go.”

  “Oh, dear Ruth,” I sighed. “How hard it must have been for you! But someone more suitable will come along, and you’ll fall in love again.”

  “No,” Ruth said. “I’ve never been attractive to men. Except for Dennis, they don’t look at me twice. Please don’t say anything to Mother. I promised I wouldn’t tell you, but I think you ought to know.”

  I leaned down and stroked Ruth’s wet cheek, and then I crept back to my own bed and lay listening to her quiet weeping. My sister had been kissed, and now her heart was broken. I ached for her. How could Mother have been so cruel, just because the man was Chinese?

  But something else troubled me: Chinese were disliked, and Jews were disliked, too. Would people react the way Mother did to Dennis when they found out I was Jewish? Mother and Father had kept it a secret for years, so obviously they’d been ashamed of it. Was it just as bad if you were only half? How hard was it going to be to keep that a secret? And would I be able to do it?

  11

  Chappie—1923

  WHEN I LEFT FOR ANN ARBOR AFTER NEW YEAR’S, Roger clung to my hand, begging me to come back soon. “It’s lonesome here without you,” he said. “And Mother’s always mad at me.”

  “It’s not you she’s mad at,” I assured him. “It’s because she’s lonesome, too. I’ll come as often as I can.” I wasn’t sure, though, that I could keep my word.

  A few days after I returned to campus, I was on my way into the cafeteria on the West Quad for lunch. I had just stepped into the revolving door when I noticed a tall, handsome man on his way out. He noticed me, too.

  “How do you do,” he said, smiling, and I replied, “How do you do,” and smiled back.

  We were so busy smiling that the door kept r
evolving, and neither of us exited.

  “Glad to meet you,” said the dark-eyed stranger, who was indeed quite tall, at least six feet, with the shoulders of a football player, and quite handsome.

  “Likewise,” I said, and the door revolved again.

  I could have made my escape then, had my usual bowl of soup, and gone on with my life. But I did not. He gave the door another firm push, and we went around still another time, both of us laughing.

  “We must meet again,” he said. “How about this evening?”

  “I have a paper due tomorrow,” I answered. “Maybe another time.”

  “I won’t take no for an answer,” he said. “This door keeps turning until you agree to meet me tonight at the Seal.”

  The Seal was the university seal embedded at the Diag, where two diagonal paths crossed on the quadrangle between the main buildings. It was a traditional meeting place. “Yes!” I cried. “The answer is yes!”

  The door stopped turning, and we stepped out. “On official forms I’m Everett Chapman, but everyone except my mother calls me Chappie. And you’ve just agreed to meet me at eight tonight. Your name, please?”

  “Margaret White on official forms, but everyone except my mother calls me Peg. Eight o’clock at the Seal, Peg to meet Chappie,” I said and hurried away.

  I finished my project in the zoology lab, and, stomach rumbling—I’d forgotten about lunch—sat through a discussion of Paradise Lost in an English class on the works of John Milton. Then, pelted with biting crystals of snow and blasted by a relentless arctic wind, I rushed back to my room to drop off my books before heading out again into the frigid Michigan winter.

  Chappie and I reached the Seal almost at the same time. He grabbed my arm and, our heads lowered against the wind, we hurried along snowy sidewalks leading away from the campus. “I know you were expecting to go to the Royal Cafe,” Chappie said, “because that’s where everybody goes. But everybody knows you there and I want you all to myself.”

  That caught my attention. I want you all to myself.

  At a rundown diner, Chappie picked a booth next to a steamy window. Without asking what I’d like, he ordered melted cheese sandwiches for both of us.

  “My favorite,” he explained.

  Melted cheese happened to be mine, too, although by then I was so hungry I could have chewed the leg on the table. I ate while Chappie talked.

  Everett Chapman was a senior studying electrical engineering, and he was twenty-two. He specialized in electric welding, about which I knew nothing but was now eager to learn. He had a whimsical sense of humor, but underneath the easy manner I sensed a person who worked hard and took life seriously. I may have taken my first step toward falling in love with him in that dingy diner over a melted cheese sandwich.

  We made it back to the dorm before my 10:30 curfew that night, and I did not have to wait for his first kiss. It was everything I had longed for—his arms around me, his lips on mine, his breath on my cheek.

  We had so much in common! If we went to a movie, we talked about it afterward and almost always agreed on whether it was a good movie or not. We saw plays put on by the drama department: The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, and Volpone by Ben Johnson, about a lecherous old miser who pretends to be fatally ill. We went dancing every chance we got, and I learned to dance the Charleston to songs like “Ballin’ the Jack” and “The Sheik of Araby.”

  We read to each other. Milton:

  The mind is its own place, and in itself

  Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.

  And Robert Frost:

  Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

  I took the one less traveled by,

  And that has made all the difference.

  “I feel as though Frost wrote that for me,” I told Chappie. “I’m taking the road less traveled.” He said he knew exactly what I meant.

  When spring came, we went for long walks in the woods, searching for snakes.

  Most wonderful of all was discovering that Chappie was also a photographer. He took highly technical pictures—fascinating photographs of wedge-shaped steel particles fusing under high heat. His developing and printing skills were much better than mine, and we began to work together in the darkroom. Then we started going out with our cameras and taking photographs together.

  When Chappie was accepted into the graduate school in engineering and offered a teaching job, we celebrated by staying up all night to watch the sunrise. Chappie owned a dilapidated old automobile. The only reliable thing about it was the regularity with which it broke down, but mostly it got us where we wanted to go. We parked and climbed onto the hood to wait, and when the first bright rays shot above the purple horizon, we cheered.

  I found in Chappie everything I had ever hoped for: a mix of my father’s virtues of dedication and hard work, combined with a boyish kind of playfulness. He bought a kazoo and serenaded me. He hid silly notes around the darkroom for me to find. And when we went dancing, he would suddenly break into a tap routine.

  I knew by the way he held me that Chappie longed for the closeness. But he was always a gentleman. I never had to stop his hands from roaming into dangerous territory. Eventually, to keep our passion in check, I told him we had to stop the ardent kisses. He agreed. There would be just one goodnight kiss, we decided, and not the long, lingering kind I yearned for but was afraid to allow. It wasn’t easy, because we were always together.

  Then, in May, Chappie told me he loved me. He belonged to me, he said, heart and soul. He had never been so sure of anything in his life. My own feelings were not so clear. I cared deeply for Chappie, but did that mean I was in love? I was only eighteen. I didn’t feel ready to give myself completely to anyone. If I did, what would that mean for my dream of becoming a famous photographer and accomplishing great things?

  When I tried to explain this to Chappie, he became upset. “Peggy,” he declared, “I’m mad about you. I never believed I could love anyone as I love you. And I know how you feel. I know that you want to experience more of life before you settle down. It’s important for you to finish your studies, and I must begin my career. I promise I’ll wait for you for at least two years—even three, if it comes to that! And then you must promise you’ll be mine for the rest of our lives!”

  For the rest of our lives?

  The world was spinning too fast. I felt confused. One minute I was happy, and the next I plunged into despair. Chappie complained that he couldn’t concentrate. “Finals are coming up, and I have to focus on my studies, but all I can think about is you.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to his pressure. And there was no one I could talk to. All the girls I knew had their sights set on marriage. Not one seemed to have any ambitions of her own.

  Toward the end of May my mother visited Ann Arbor for the first time. Naturally I wanted her to meet Chappie. He was anxious to meet her, too, he said, “But without you there, Peg. I want your mother to get to know me on my own, so she can ask me whatever she wants.”

  The two of them went for a walk and were gone for about an hour. I waited nervously in the parlor at Betsy’s while girls gathered around the piano and sang. After Chappie left, Mother and I went to have our supper in the cafeteria. I showed her the revolving door where Chappie and I first met. “It was the funniest thing! He kept me going around and around until I agreed to have a date with him.”

  Mother smiled indulgently. “And it seems you’ve been going around and around ever since.”

  I felt myself blush. “Yes, I guess I have.”

  “Chappie and I had a long talk,” she said when we were halfway through our meal. “I can see that he’s serious about you.” She pushed a lima bean through the mashed potatoes. “He made an excellent impression on me. He assured me that he has led a clean life and has the greatest respect for you.” She eyed me, waiting for my reaction.

  I looked away. “Yes, it’s true. We’re very careful not to let things get out of hand.”


  “It’s important to control your ardor before marriage,” she said. “It’s not easy. I suppose every couple goes through the same struggle. Your father and I did, and it was worth it. We were pure when we married.”

  The awkward conversation ended, and we didn’t talk about Chappie again.

  After she went home to New Jersey, I had a letter from her. “I can tell, just by hearing your voice,” she wrote, “that you’re in love with this delightful young man.”

  I read my mother’s letter several times and decided to stop questioning myself. She was right—I was in love with Chappie. But I was also determined to realize my ambitions. Maybe I wouldn’t be going into the wilds as part of a team of scientists, yet surely I could find a way to become a successful photographer. Surely I could have both a career and marriage. It didn’t have to be either/ or, did it?

  Chappie and I would be separated for the summer—he’d be staying with his parents in Detroit where he had a summer job playing percussion in a dance band, and I was going back to Camp Agaming in Connecticut to earn money for the next term. The time apart would be good for us. I’d have a chance to think about how Chappie fit into my future plans.

  Before the end of the semester, Professor Ruthven called me into his office again. He was my faculty advisor, and I assumed we’d be discussing the courses I’d take in the fall. “You’ve done very well in my courses again this semester, Miss White,” he began. “And I’ve been thinking about you a great deal. What are your plans for the summer?”

  I told him about Camp Agaming, adding, “I hope to do something different this year. I’d like to teach nature studies to the children. It would be less demanding than the photography classes I taught last year.”