Free Picture Palace by Paul Theroux

“uproar.” In New York he knew some folks (“good scouts”—Papa’s highest praise) called the Seltzers who, being publishers, knew everyone. They gave parties where, so Papa said, you might meet people like Scott Fitzgerald and Bunny Wilson and ones even more famous than they at the time, whose names might ring some bells now but don’t open any doors, such as Franklin P. Adams. When I told my father I was going to New York he said, “Then you must stay with the Seltzers,” and I was too naive to guess that what he really wanted was for them to keep an eye on me. I was seventeen, still a passionate virgin, had never been to the city and did not know what to drink. Beer made me throw up, and I hated the smell of my parents’ whisky lips when they kissed me, as they did at my bedtime. My usual tipple was a glass of expensive burgundy mixed with ginger ale, but even that gave me cramps and dizziness and made me want to lie down. Orlando used to say, “You’re a cheap date, Maude.”
    But I was no one’s date, least of all Orlando’s, and he was the reason I went to New York. We had spent the summer of 1923 together on the Cape, which had thrown me into confusion. All that winter and spring I had been there with my mother and Phoebe, studying with Miss Dromgoole, the Anglo-Irish tutor Papa had hired to prepare Phoebe and me for the girls’ school in Switzerland. Orlando was at boarding school—Andover—and I had not seen him for months. When he wasn’t around, which was more than half the year, I could believe that I was imagining it, that feeling of having a sleek animal in me gnawing my guts so hard I couldn’t breathe. In June I felt the creature tear around inside me. The three of us swam, Ollie beat us at croquet, we bicycled over to Hyannisport to help Papa with his boat; and I wanted to tell him about this hungering thing within me. But instead of telling him, I pretended I was angry—to provoke his sympathy, so that he would put his arm around me and ask me what was eating me. Yet I knew I could not tell him the real reason, because that would have been to obligate him with our secret. The next move had to be his.
    It was a tormenting summer. The Cape heat had needles of chill in it, the whine of the grasshoppers fiddling in the sun was like the sharp teeth of the wakened thing in me chewing at my resolve; and at night the bullfrogs and crickets insisted I stay awake. Twice I went to Orlando’s room, but I hesitated at his door and listened to his sleepy snorts. And I saw it all ending, slipping from focus, the family traipsing off in different directions, the order broken up, our faith dispersed. I had been with them too long to think that it would ever be better for me elsewhere. I knew that I was happy and I wanted it to last. Papa and Mama spoke of going on a cruise or to their friend Carney’s in Florida; Orlando was already talking about Harvard, Phoebe of Switzerland. I hated hearing people making plans that did not include me. I felt sure that if I wouldn’t be happy neither would they, and we could save ourselves by sticking together. One of the consolations of selfishness is that you actually believe you’re doing other people a favor.
    â€œHow’s my photographer?” Orlando said.
    I didn’t dare say.
    â€œLet’s see some pictures,” said Papa.
    I wouldn’t show him.
    Phoebe said, “Do me in my new dress, Maude.”
    I thought: Not on your life, sister.
    Mama, seeing me unhappy, bought me a folding camera.
    But my picture-taking was too much of a reminder of my remoteness for me to pursue it with them, and I didn’t want them to think that I could content myself so easily that way. I would not photograph them. It was then, out of pure spite, that I did my first pictures of the blind: the child holding the bat, blind old Mrs. Conklin the chain smoker, who, clawing at her scalp,