Last year
First there was Doris, and several years after that, Helen.
By which I mean to say that I came across Doris first. I learned a lot about her and I thought I understood her pretty well. As usual, there were some missing pieces but the story struck me as more or less complete. It seemed like material I could work with, although from some angle that wasn’t yet obvious.
But one day in a cluttered and dusty antique store just off La Cienega in downtown L.A., me killing time before a studio pitch that was almost certainly fated to go nowhere, I stumble upon a framed sepia photograph, eight by ten, of two women reclining together on a large iron-frame bed.
They are bathed in light from several directions, meaning that the odd scene was lit by a professional photographer. Who hired a photographer to capture this moment, in this semi-artful sort of way, and why?
The woman on the left is half-sitting, propped up on her left elbow. Doris, unmistakably. The other woman—I don’t know her—is lying on her side, her head resting on the topmost of a pile of pillows and her hands tucked up under her chin.
They are serenely beautiful. Dressed in chaste white cotton nightgowns, the two women stare directly at the camera, both looking just a little bit amused. To my eye, the scene is posed and has little off-key notes, like, if they’re just waking up or just turning in, why is the unknown woman so carefully made up? Am I imagining that hint of muzziness in their eyes or are they in fact just a little bit drunk? And why in the world has Doris worn those heavy lace-up shoes to bed?
I turn the picture over. A shoddy frame job. Four rusted brads imprison a scuffed piece of thick brown cardboard backing. For decades, silently, this cardboard has been working its way out past these brads. The struggle has resulted in four rusty channels, one along each side of the frame. I ask if I can remove the cardboard to see the back of the print.
“No prob,” agrees the middle-aged man behind the counter amiably. He’s surely the owner. “Twenty bucks.” The price of the framed print.
He puts my twenty in the cash drawer. Reaching in deeper, he feels around for something. There: he pulls out a pair of needle-nose pliers and hands them to me. A nice gesture—maybe he’s a little bit curious, too. I waggle the brads gently, one by one, until they surrender their grip and ease out onto the countertop. The cardboard, finally liberated after—what? a century?—pops upward and away, exposing the back of the print. I see a photographer’s stamp in slightly smudged black ink:
Please credit:
Edwin Bower Hesser
Photography
34 West 58th Street
New York, New York
Nothing else. No other names, no date. No hint as to what Doris is doing there or who this other woman is.