Excerpt
I pictured God feeling a little bored one morning and sifting through his files until he found my name. Oh yeah, that little jock, Annie Bolles. That flibbertigibbet who never sits still. Let’s toss a thunderbolt her way and see how she handles it. I knew there was something amiss when my legs disappeared. I was on my third lap around the Central Park Reservoir on one of those autumn mornings when the mist sighed from the surface and the gulls rose up through it like ghost birds. First, there was a tingling sensation in my toes, intensifying with each step until it felt as if my running shoes had been hot-wired. I tried to run it off, assuming it had to be some kind of weird cramp or shin splints. But within another quarter mile, the current had crept up to the knees, microwaving my muscles. And then my legs just pureed. I kind of collapsed against the chain-link fence until Armando, one of the regulars, came along and helped me hobble to Fifth Avenue and put me in a cab. It was my last great run.
MS—multiple sclerosis. For a while that was how I thought of myself. “Anna Marie Bolles, MS,” as if it were some kind of advanced degree that followed my name everywhere. But as it turned out, getting MS was not the most significant event of my life.
That was five years ago, and I’d put in a lot of adjustment time before the Saturday afternoon I wheeled myself into the American Institute of Photography. During those periods when I was completely immobilized, I often surrounded myself with art books. Leafing through them gave me the pleasant illusion that I was strolling through a museum. Anyway, photos had always interested me. I can hear my mother snorting at that statement. What doesn’t interest you, babe? Iguana shit? My mother has a mouth on her, but what’s more irritating is that she tends to be right ninety percent of the time. So, more accurately, photography is one of many enthusiasms of mine.
This particular exhibit at the A.I.P. was called “Our Own Backyard,” and it featured local amateurs. It was a summer afternoon, really steamy, and I hadn’t done anything more than brush my hair back into a ponytail, a decision I lived to regret. The uptown bus wasn’t air conditioned, but at least it had a functioning handicapped exit. As I wheeled across Ninety-fourth Street and glimpsed the runners loping around the reservoir, I had to admit to a twinge. I saw him as soon as I got inside the gallery. Anybody would have noticed that striking face, but it was more than that. I found out later that he’d recently been on the cover of Crain’s magazine, which is sold from wheelchair-eye-level at my neighborhood newsstand. But I wonder now if the jolt of recognition went a lot deeper. He was leaning oh-so-casually against the doorway, pretending to look at the photographs, but I knew he was faking. One of the advantages of this chair is that after people give me that first uneasy glance, I seem to become semi-invisible and I can stare at everybody to my heart’s content. I figured he’d dropped by to check out the women. There was a stunning Italian specimen in a yellow sundress. In fact, most of the visitors appeared to be foreigners. Any New Yorker with sense and a subway token would have been at the beach on a day like this.
I started looking at the pictures, taking my time—also something I never used to have the patience for. Most of them were fairly clichéd. I, too, love that old lady in the park with pigeons perched on her head, but I think it may be time to give it a rest. I moved along, and then I stopped. I stared. I set my brake because I knew I wasn’t going anywhere for a while. It was a bridge, but photographed from underneath so you could see the gridwork. It loomed upward in a pattern of delicate intricacy that contrasted starkly with the steel’s violent power. The span thrust out over the river and then simply disappeared into a cloud bank. The image drew me totally inside the frame. I found myself shivering, imagining the cold breath of the fog, wondering if someone was cloaked there, readying himself for a final plunge over the edge. I don’t even know how long I sat there gazing. But sometimes if I remain in the same position for too long, I begin to ache. Finally, I noticed that the backs of my legs had started to throb, and when I shifted in my chair, the man I’d seen when I first came in was standing beside me. God knows how long he’d been there.
“You seem interested in this photograph,” he said.
“Very,” I answered. I was rattled, disoriented, as if he’d shaken me awake from a disturbing dream.
“I wonder why.” It wasn’t a casual question—he really wanted to know. I took a closer look at him. He was about six feet tall, a little stooped and on the slim side, in a navy polo shirt and faded jeans. His hair was dark blond with sun streaks in it, and of the straight fine texture I always, after seeing too many Merchant-Ivory movies, think of as belonging to English aristocrats. He had blue eyes set deep into the bony planes of his face. He hadn’t shaved. I glanced at the picture again, pretending to consider it, but I was trying to make out the name on the placard: Joseph D. Malone.
“Well, Mr. Malone, I hope you’ve got a good shrink,” I said.
His eyes opened a little wider, then he grinned. “That bad?”
“Or good.”
“I’ve met you before, haven’t I?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.” He had a look on his face that matched my own unnerving zap when I first saw him: Where in the hell do I know her from?
“I think it’s brave of you to hang around while people look at your work,” I went on.
“I’ve never had a photo exhibited so I was curious. But I’m not sure I’d do it again.”
“Are all your pictures so tragic?”
“I didn’t think this one was.” He stared at it. “I wasn’t in the best state of mind when I shot it, actually.”
No kidding, I thought. “What about that one?” I pointed to the next photo by someone named Smith, a bicycle leaning against a bodega.
“You first,” he said. I got the feeling he was testing me.
“It’s an interesting idea, but not very well executed. It’s too flat.”
“I think we’d better get some coffee.” Not waiting for a response, he took hold of my chair as if it were the most natural gesture and starting shoving me to the exit. Maybe he just figured since I was disabled, I wouldn’t have anything pressing to do. I didn’t know whether to be angry or embarrassed at my reaction, which was all too passive-female circa 1950. Not only that, I was revoltingly grateful that I’d pulled on my pale blue tank top because I knew it made my eyes seem almost navy. I looked up at Joseph Malone and got that compressed wheelchair view from below the chin. There was a little dent under the stubble. When I felt like reaching up and touching it, alarms went off in my head. Which I ignored.
“Who’s got easy wheelchair access around here?” he asked when we hit the wall of heat outside.
“Jackson Hole’s fine,” I answered. I knew I could rely on the air conditioning there, and I was going to need it soon. I don’t do so well when it gets over eighty degrees.
It’s tough to have a conversation while you’re under sail, so to speak, so I just sat there in silence wondering if maybe this guy had a kinky preference for the handicapped. I’d heard about such things on the MS website, but so far it had never happened to me. In the old days, men were always hitting on me, and to my surprise, I hadn’t missed it at all, at least not up to now. There’s a certain relief in not feeling like bait.
On the corner of Madison, a woman ran up in shorts and a bra and jogged in place, waiting with us for the traffic signal to change. “Hi, Joe,” she said. Her eyes were far too full of him to take any notice of me. “Where were you last night? I thought you’d be at Michael’s.”
“Working late,” Joe said as the light clicked to green. He didn’t watch as she ran off toward the park, tossing her hair, but I did. She had great definition.
It took some maneuvering to get me through the narrow doorway into the restaurant. They seated us against the window where I wouldn’t trip anybody up. Joe faced the interior of the room and I had a dazzling view of the street. Ordinarily I can’t drag my attention away from the New York parade passing by outside, but now I had to force myself to keep from gawking at Joe Malone’s face. Close up, his eyes held prisms of gold that lent them an unusual aqua tint. His eyebrows and lashes were dark, much darker than his hair. The effect served to further outline the extraordinary eyes. I felt like asking him about Michael’s where he was supposed to be last night, but I kept silent while we ordered. He asked for one of those huge, politically incorrect burgers. I just wanted an iced tea. My stomach was doing flip-flops as it was. Since I got sick, most people start out with, “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?” It amazes me sometimes. Cab drivers, strangers on the street. One time a lady in the park sent her child over to do her dirty work. “What’s wrong with you, lady? Did you have an accident or what?” So I was surprised when Joe said, “You’re a perceptive critic. Are you a photographer?”
I laughed. “If you’re partial to snapshots of people’s feet with acres of lawn. I’m just an art junkie. Any kind of art.” “Maybe that’s where we’ve seen one another, in a museum or a gallery.”
An African-American woman passed by outside, swung around and tapped on the window beside Joe’s head. He turned and gave her a wave. There was an elegance about the gesture. His profile revealed a bump about mid-nose. It wasn’t one of those little porcine noses either, more like a real Roman schnozz. “You know a lot of women,” I remarked.
“It’s just New York,” he said, as if that explained it. “You know, you really brought me up short. I always thought of that bridge shot as a comforting image.”
“Well, it just shows what a good photographer you are. That the other feelings percolated up as well.”
“Or what a sensitive eye you have,” he said.
I was inordinately pleased, but I was dying to ask him about the unhappy time he’d referred to back in the gallery. Maybe he’d been breaking up with a girlfriend or getting a divorce. I looked at his finger. No ring. “So do you work in the art world?” I asked.
