Girl with a Camera Read online

  “Doesn’t it seem likely that Chappie will not turn away when you share your deepest secret with him? And that perhaps your self-doubt has clouded your ability to make decisions about what is important in your life?”

  I didn’t see how revealing my secret would solve the other problems, but I agreed to tell Chappie.

  The next day we went for a long walk in the countryside. The day was bright and clear, and the leaves that had changed color weeks earlier had drifted down around us. Chappie watched me warily, as though he expected me to begin sobbing for no apparent reason, as I often had in the past weeks.

  I gathered my courage and grabbed his hand. “Chappie, I have something to tell you,” I said, struggling to keep my voice steady. “There is a secret in my family, something I think you should know. My father was a Jew, and so I’m half Jewish. I’ve been afraid to tell you, because I didn’t want your feelings for me to change.”

  Lately Chappie had seemed afraid even to touch me, fearing that might set off another storm of tears. But now he turned to face me. “Peggy, my darling girl! How could you ever believe that something like that would make me feel any differently about you? For one thing, being Jewish isn’t a cause for shame. For another, I love you so deeply that nothing you tell me will ever change that.” He kissed me passionately, and I returned his kisses with more fervor than I had felt in months.

  But even then, as autumn faded and the unforgiving Michigan winter closed in, my uneasiness did not disappear. Confessing hadn’t cured me. I worried about money, and so did Chappie, who earned extra income playing in local dance bands. Even with help from Uncle Lazar and the Mungers, my budget was painfully tight. I moved out of the residence hall and into a cheap boarding house. When the snows melted and spring came, Chappie and I set up a show in the library of pictures we’d taken around campus in the different seasons, hoping to make money. We sold them all, for as much as a dollar-fifty apiece, and took orders for more.

  We were talking again about marriage. I was still uncertain. If I could find time to finish the nature book I’d started in summer and it sold well, maybe I’d be asked to create other books. I knew my photographs were good, and I wanted to explore every possibility. If I settled into the conventional kind of marriage Chappie expected and the only kind I knew, how would I ever become recognized—famous, even—for my talent?

  I told him I thought we should wait three years. But we were passionately in love, and we both wondered how we could possibly wait that long.

  Chappie was offered a teaching position at Purdue University in Indiana, far from Ann Arbor. Of course he accepted, but now it was clear I would have to make up my mind. Go with Chappie to Indiana, or stay in Michigan and finish my degree? Marry now, marry later, or not marry at all?

  The more I wavered, the more Chappie’s impatience grew. He wanted me with him all the time, and when I tried to go off and do things on my own, he became unreasonable and possessive. He pouted like a child if I so much as spoke to another man, so jealous that he wept. And sometimes he shouted at me, “Why can’t you be like other girls and just want to get married? What’s so hard about that?”

  When I told him the truth—“Because I’m afraid of losing who I am and what I want to do with my life”—he replied caustically, “Maybe you should talk to that psychiatrist again.”

  But none of this diminished our intense physical longing for each other. By the end of the term, with the prospect of a long, hot summer ahead, we could hardly stand to be apart. And so I made my decision. We would get married, and we would do it now.

  14

  Love and Marriage—1924

  WE PICKED THE DATE FOR OUR WEDDING: FRIDAY, the thirteenth of June. We would fly in the face of superstition, thumb our noses at the notion of bad luck! The thirteenth was also the day before my twentieth birthday.

  It would be very small, with only a handful of people—our parents and three girls from my boarding house who had become my friends.

  Braced for Mother’s disapproval, I called to tell her our plans.

  “Oh, Margaret, you’re so young!” she sighed. “I did so hope you’d complete your education first.”

  “I’m going to get my degree,” I assured her. “Chappie promises that I can. We’re both hoping you’ll come to our wedding.”

  “Well, I know how much you love him,” she said, “and you do have my approval. But I simply do not have the means to travel all the way to Michigan. Train tickets for your brother and me are more than I can afford …”

  “It’s all right, Mother,” I said. “We’ll send you pictures.”

  That conversation was easier than I’d expected.

  Chappie thought we should make a quick trip to Detroit.

  “I want you to meet Momma,” he said. “She’ll be upset if she hasn’t had a chance to get to know you before we’re married.”

  This was just before final examinations—not a good time to be making a trip, even one of less than fifty miles, in an auto as chronically unreliable as Chappie’s ancient Dodge. Nevertheless, we were going. “We’ll stay for lunch and then drive straight back to Ann Arbor,” Chappie promised.

  Late on a hot and humid Saturday morning we arrived at an unremarkable house in a neighborhood of ordinary houses with neat front yards. This was where Chappie and his sister, Marian, had grown up. I was wearing one of my Munger-sponsored dresses, and it clung uncomfortably to my perspiring body.

  “What have you told them about me?” I asked.

  “That you are the love of my life, the most beautiful girl in the world and also the smartest, and that I’m marrying you in two weeks minus one day.” He grabbed my hand and we hurried up the steps.

  Chappie’s father, Everett Chapman Sr., a slight, bald man with pale blue eyes and a thin smile, opened the door. “Glad to meet you,” he said and offered a weak handshake. “Come in, come in.”

  We stepped into a narrow hall crowded with dark, brooding pictures in ornate frames, and Mrs. Chapman made her entrance. Tall and elegant, almost regal, with onyx eyes and a porcelain complexion, his mother wore her handsome silver hair in a crown of braids. It was clear where Chappie got his good looks. He introduced me. “Momma, this is Margaret.”

  “So,” she said, looking me over coolly, “you’re the girl who has stolen my son.”

  How should I have responded to such a greeting? I glanced at Chappie, hoping—expecting—that he would smooth things over, but he didn’t say a word.

  “How was your drive over?” inquired Mr. Chapman, and he and Chappie got into a conversation about problems with the old Dodge.

  Mrs. Chapman interrupted to say that their vehicle was ready for the scrap heap but they couldn’t possibly afford to replace it, and marched off toward the kitchen.

  I offered to help, but she glared at me and replied shortly, “No thank you, Miss White.”

  When Mrs. Chapman announced that luncheon was ready, we went into a dining room darkened by heavy drapery. I poked at the tomato aspic and watched the lemon sherbet melt in my dish while the Chapmans complained that their next-door neighbors had just ordered new furniture, the people across the street were letting the weeds take over their front lawn, and someone else’s dog barked at all hours.

  “We certainly could use your financial help, Everett,” his mother said, adding pointedly, “but apparently you’ve made other plans.”

  I, of course, was responsible for the “other plans.” I tried hard to find something to like about Chappie’s mother, but so far was finding it impossible. I thought Chappie would say something to make her see that we were truly in love and that nothing would interfere with our plans, but again he remained silent, and that bothered me.

  “I’m sure you made a wonderful impression,” Chappie said when we were finally on our way back to Ann Arbor. Was he blind, or was he lying? Mrs. Chapman had disliked me on sight, and Mr. Chapman’s opinion, if he had one, didn’t matter.

  For the next two weeks Chappie’s mother
pressed her campaign to make him feel guilty. “Momma says I’m thinking of no one but myself,” he confessed. “She says that my first responsibility is to them, and Poppa seems to agree. They assume I’ll be able to support them, now that I’ve taken a job at Purdue.”

  “They expect you to support them? Your father is unable to work?”

  “He works as a salesman, but he doesn’t earn enough money to give Momma the things she feels she deserves.”

  “But you’re just starting out! You have no money! We can barely support ourselves, let alone your parents. Do they understand that?”

  Chappie shrugged. “I don’t believe they want to understand it. They’ve told me I’m being very selfish.” His mother’s campaign was succeeding.

  “They’ll get over it,” I said, trying to make him feel better. “They’re just not ready to see their boy get married.”

  Neither of us had any idea how to plan a wedding. Luckily for us, Chappie had a close friend, Arthur Moore, a professor of electrical engineering only a few years older than him. Arthur’s wife, Jo, loved the idea of having the wedding ceremony in their house.

  “Don’t you worry, Peggy,” she said. “We’ll figure everything out. You’ll have a wedding you’ll remember for the rest of your lives.”

  She would bake a nice cake, she promised. Her garden was in full bloom, so I could have roses for my bouquet. That was another stroke of good luck, because Chappie and I had barely two nickels to rub together.

  What was I going to wear? I had the clothes that the Mungers had financed for me, but I didn’t own anything that qualified as a wedding dress, and I didn’t think it was proper to take advantage of the Mungers’ generosity to spend money on something so frivolous. I asked for Jo’s advice.

  “I was in a wedding party just last year,” Jo said, “and I wore a blue dress that I think would look very pretty on you. We’re about the same size.”

  So that issue was settled.

  But Chappie had definite ideas for my wedding ring. “I’ll make it for you myself,” Chappie said. This was a side of him I’d never seen, and I thought it was a terribly romantic idea.

  With only a few days to go until the wedding, we made the rounds of jewelry shops in search of a gold nugget that he would transform into my ring. But every jeweler we visited tried to persuade us to buy a ring instead.

  We decided to try just one more place, a tiny hole-in-the-wall. The wizened old owner disappeared into his back room and returned with a tray of gold teeth and other odds and ends. He watched suspiciously as we poked through the collection until three nuggets caught our eye. Each was a slightly different color—yellow, white, and reddish gold.

  “There they are,” Chappie announced, lining up the nuggets on a ragged scrap of velvet. “Perfect.”

  The shopkeeper weighed the three nuggets. Chappie paid for them and dropped them into his shirt pocket. “I’ll begin work tonight.”

  The day before the wedding Chappie telephoned me at my boarding house. “The ring is ready,” he said, and I could hear the excitement in his voice. “Let’s make sure it fits.”

  Chappie had fashioned the nuggets into a lovely circlet. The ring lay gleaming on the anvil, and as I reached for it, Chappie said, “No, wait—let me give it a few more taps, to make sure it’s perfectly round.”

  He tapped it once with a tiny hammer, and the ring broke into two pieces. I began to cry, and Chappie held me, murmuring, “Don’t worry, Peg. I’ll make it over again, and it will be stronger than ever.”

  “But it won’t be ready for the ceremony tomorrow!”

  “It’s not a catastrophe, Peg,” Chappie said, stroking my hair. “We’ll use some other ring, and it will be all right.”

  That evening Chappie’s parents arrived in Ann Arbor, and Mrs. Chapman announced their plans to have dinner with their son. I was not invited. Chappie made no objection, and again I swallowed my anger—at him as well as his mother. But I was glad not to be around Mrs. Chapman more than I absolutely had to.

  My friends from Betsy’s—Alice, Helen, and Middie—invited me to my last dinner as a single girl. They had chipped in to buy me a gift, a white nightgown adorned with yards of lace and satin ribbon.

  “You won’t have it on for long,” Helen said, laughing. “But it’s nice to have it, to make your official appearance as a bride on your wedding night.”

  I knew little about weddings, and the more I heard, the more I wondered if it wouldn’t be better if Chappie and I sneaked off to a justice of the peace. Then I wouldn’t have to endure his mother the next day. She had already informed Chappie that she wished me to call her “Mother Chapman.” I thought “Duchess of Detroit” suited her much better.

  “What about a honeymoon?” Middie asked. “Or is that a secret?”

  “We’re going to the Chapman family cottage on a lake.” That had been Mother Chapman’s idea. Chappie insisted that I’d love the place, and we didn’t have the money to go anywhere else.

  “Oh, Peggy, it sounds so romantic!” Alice sighed. “Just think, tomorrow night this time, you’ll be Mrs. Everett Chapman, and you’ll be on your honeymoon!”

  Jo Moore had arranged flowers and greenery in front of the fireplace where we would exchange our vows at eleven o’clock. I wore Jo’s blue crepe dress with a flounced skirt. She loaned me elbow-length white gloves and a pair of shoes and made me a gift of a pair of silk stockings. And she took the wedding ring off her own finger and handed it to Chappie, whispering, “Remember to give it back to me after the ceremony!”

  Somewhere Arthur Moore found a minister to perform the ceremony. The man was dreadful, loudly prompting us through every line of our vows as though we were deaf. He had scarcely finished blaring the opening lines, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in the sight of God,” when I heard a moaning sob behind me. Mrs. Chapman was weeping as though her son had just died. To her, I suppose, it must have seemed like it. She keened so noisily that the minister raised the volume another notch to shout over her.

  We stumbled through our vows, the minister pronounced us man and wife, and Chappie planted a dutiful kiss on my cheek. Arthur was the first to offer hearty congratulations, and Jo rushed off to ladle cups of strawberry punch and pass around egg salad sandwiches and then to coach us as we cut the cake. Mrs. Chapman continued to honk into her handkerchief, and Chappie’s father hovered nearby lest she keel over in a dead faint. I secretly hoped she would.

  We got away as soon as we could. I changed out of Jo’s blue dress and into my everyday clothes, and Middie and Alice and Helen tossed handfuls of rice at us as we jumped into the Dodge. My friends had lettered JUST MARRIED on the rear window and tied a couple of tin cans to the bumper.

  Nobody remembered to take pictures.

  15

  Honeymoon—1924

  BEFORE OUR HONEYMOON COULD BEGIN, CHAPPIE and I drove to the darkroom to print the photographs of the campus we’d shown in the library and for which we had a backlog of orders. That night, Friday the thirteenth, we slept in Chappie’s rented room. Exhausted, I forgot all about my white bridal nightgown.

  Saturday, my twentieth birthday, we were up early and back in the darkroom. We had been hired to take photographs at commencement exercises at the university on Sunday, and for the next few days we spent practically every minute in the darkroom, developing and printing. We had been married for a week before we were able to leave on our honeymoon.

  The Chapmans’ cottage was on one of the lakes seventeen miles north of Ann Arbor. The Dodge died twice along the unpaved road before we arrived. Late afternoon sunlight filtered through the tall trees surrounding the cottage and reflected on the water. Sailboats drifted around little islands dotted with green trees and white rocks. The cottage itself was dark and dank. We threw open the windows, knocked down cobwebs, and cleaned mouse droppings off the scarred oak table. We found sheets and moth-eaten blankets in a musty cupboard and made up the rickety bed with a tired mattress that sagged in the middl
e. I was never much good at housekeeping, but I rose to the occasion at least this once.

  By evening the cabin was habitable. Chappie lit the kerosene lamp and fired up the wood stove. Jo Moore had packed a hamper with supplies she thought we’d need and Arthur had delivered it to Chappie’s boarding house before we left—neither of us would have thought to pick up groceries—and I scrambled some eggs and brewed a pot of coffee. We were alone, in love, eager to start our married life together.

  But we weren’t alone for long.

  After two blissful nights and one lazy day spent paddling a leaky canoe along the shore and swimming in the still-frigid waters, we were startled to hear an auto crunching down the gravel path. “Yoohoo!” caroled the familiar voice of Mrs. Chapman.

  “It’s your mother,” I said, peering out the window. “And she’s not alone. There’s a girl with her. Can we pretend we’re not here?”

  The girl was Marian, Chappie’s sister. I had heard a little about her but had not met her.

  “We decided we could do with a short vacation,” Mrs. Chapman announced brightly. “Marian has been having such a difficult time, and as long as you’re here, we thought we’d join you for a nice family visit. Everett, dear, go bring our luggage from the car.”

  There was no explanation of Marian’s “difficult time,” but Everett Dear did as Momma ordered. I realized from the amount of their luggage that this was not going to be an overnight visit. Soon our uninvited guests were settled into the bedroom next to ours, and the Duchess of Detroit was waiting to be served.

  “Marian and I would love some coffee, Margaret. Or is it Peg? Or Peggy? Or Maggie?” She cocked her head to one side. “You seem like a Maggie to me.”

  “You may call me whatever you like, Mother Chapman,” I said evenly, trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “Chappie calls me Peggy.”

  “All right, then, Peggy,” she said, as though the name had an unpleasant taste. “But please don’t call my son ‘Chappie.’ I named him Everett, and that is what I wish to hear him called.”