Spider Web (10 page)

He opened his eyes as I slowed down to take the turnoff to Pismo.

“Destination?” I asked.

“Harry’s Bar,” he replied, blinking his eyes.

That was a surprise. “Hmmm . . .”

He turned to look at me, one thick white eyebrow lifted. “What’s that mean?”

“Bit of a rough-and-tumble place.” I gave him a half smile. “Or so I’ve been told.”

He chuckled and tugged at his ear. “Actually, we’re meeting in front of the bar. He was going to be downtown anyway and said it would be easier if we followed him to his house. He said we’d know him by his unique vehicle.”

“What’s that mean?”

He shifted in the seat, pulled at his seat belt cross strap. “His name is Pete Kaplan. That’s I all know.”

Mr. Kaplan’s vehicle was indeed easy to spot. When we pulled right in front of Harry’s, the street quiet on this cold and foggy Tuesday morning, the old ’60s Volkswagen bus looked like something right out of a history book. It was a faded blue, green or gray—hard to distinguish—and was covered with hand-painted Day-Glo orange and yellow daisies and crooked peace symbols.

The man who opened the driver’s door when we pulled up also looked like someone from another era. He pulled off a navy knit cap showing a full head of curly, shoulder-length gray hair. With his silver-streaked beard, faded blue jeans and red and black tie-dyed T-shirt, Pete Kaplan could have played the part of the draft card–burning hippie in a Vietnam-era movie.

“Mr. Lyons?” he called, walking over to our car. His voice was as rich and smooth as the thrum of an oboe.

“Yes,” Isaac said, unfolding himself from the Subaru’s passenger seat. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Kaplan.”

The man smiled, revealing perfect white teeth that were either a lucky genetic break or totally fake. I briefly wondered if this guy, who appeared to be in his late fifties or early sixties, was one of those rich kids who lived off Mom or Dad’s money while living the free and “independent” life of a vagabond. Remembering what Gabe had gone through last night, I also wondered if this man had spent the Vietnam War in Canada or in a fancy college, saved from the draft by his parents’ connections.

“The pleasure is mine,” the man said. “Please call me Pete.”

“I’m Isaac, and this is my granddaughter, Benni. She is also my assistant.”

“Hello,” the man said, giving me an easy smile.

We all shook hands, and then I leaned against the Subaru, waiting for further instructions from Isaac. I’d assisted him often on his shoots and learned my job was to stand quietly to the side, fetching equipment when he requested it. When he took photographs of people, he never just jumped into the session. He always talked to them first, looking for—he told me once—their core, the essence that made them unique.

“Some hide it better than others,” he’d told me once. “That doesn’t make them more interesting, just more difficult to find. People often mistake brooding or silence for depth. The truth is we are all deep. All humans have sorrows and joys, beauty and ugliness, gut-wrenching memories that both enrich and shame them. My job is to show their humanity honestly, without artifice. Sometimes that means showing not only who the person is, but who they aren’t.”

That was why I loved going out in the field with Isaac. I always learned something about photography and about life.

After a few moments of conversation with Pete Kaplan, Isaac came back over to me.

“We’re going to follow him to his house. He said you could do his interview next week. I explained to him about your schedule this week.”

“Thanks,” I said. “This week is definitely a killer.”

When we arrived at Mr. Kaplan’s house, I realized that I had not been far off. He obviously wasn’t hurting for money. It was a beautifully restored California Mission–style bungalow perched on a cliff overlooking the ocean. Even I could tell it was worth a lot of money. His living room boasted a huge picture window, its view of the sea like a constantly changing painting. His overstuffed leather sofa and chairs felt expensive and buttery soft. He served us cappuccinos from a fancy brass and silver Espresso machine in the kitchen. The freshly ground coffee beans scented the airy room with a sweet, nutty smell. The plain white walls of his living room were bare except for a large oil painting over the natural stone fireplace of a rustic cabin nestled among sand dunes.

After sitting down across from us, he started to tell us his story.

“The summer before my senior year in high school . . .”

I interrupted. “Excuse me, but is it okay if I take some notes?” I pulled a steno pad out of my backpack. “That way you won’t have to repeat yourself next week.”

“Absolutely,” he replied. “That summer I was seventeen I lived with my grandmother. My parents were having troubles that summer, and they didn’t know what to do with me. Grandma Jack was my dad’s mother. Her name was Jacqueline Martha Kaplan. She’d been a combat nurse in World War II and was as tough as they come. That’s where she acquired the nickname Jack. She and my mother never got along. Grandma Jack’s bohemian lifestyle rankled Mother. The one thing they had in common was they both loved me. Those three months living here in Pismo and going out on rounds with Grandma Jack changed my life. Grandma Jack treated me like an adult, listened to my opinions. She taught me that I had a right, a duty, actually, to follow my heart, to live the life I wanted to live, not the one planned for me by my mother and father.”

He stood up and went to the picture window, stared out at the ocean. Next to me, Isaac quietly picked up his camera and snapped a couple of photos. Pete Kaplan didn’t even turn around. His rich voice seemed to fill the corners of the airy room.

“I went to Harvard, like my father. I became a doctor like my father. Both decisions made my parents happy. But against their wishes, I chose psychiatry rather than Father’s specialty, heart surgery. And I made a life outside of the hospital walls, outside of the privileged society I grew up in.”

I glanced over at Isaac, surprised. Pete Kaplan was a psychiatrist? He certainly didn’t look like one, though I’m not sure what I thought a psychiatrist looked like, since I didn’t remember ever meeting one. Isaac’s gaze didn’t move from Dr. Kaplan.

Dr. Kaplan turned to look at us, the lines around his eyes softening in memory. “I was drafted in 1968, and despite my mother’s demands that my dad ‘fix it,’ I chose to serve my country, even though I personally didn’t agree with the war. I felt like I had something to offer the other young men who’d either been sent there without choice or went in voluntarily, not understanding what was truly going to happen to them. I arrived in-country two days before the Tet Offensive. Grandma Jack died of a stroke while I was patching up emotionally broken soldiers so they could be sent out to be broken again.” He shook his head, his lips a straight line.

“Grandma Jack’s best friend found her in her bed here in this house, just like she’d gone to sleep. Father died shortly after she did, ironically, of a heart attack. Mother moved back East to live with her sister in Boston.” He rubbed his hands up and down his thighs, as if drying them. “She’s still there, healthy and cranky as ever at eighty-nine.” He gave a small chuckle. “Still tells me every time we talk that I’ve thrown away a perfectly good Harvard education.”

He glanced over at the stone fireplace. A dark brown earthenware jar painted with daffodils sat in the center of the pale wooden mantel. “Father’s buried in San Celina in the Catholic cemetery, and Grandma Jack is partly here.” He pointed at the jar. “And partly out in the dunes she loved so much. That’s why I retired here. After ’Nam, I practiced medicine in San Francisco, volunteering at the VA one weekend a month. When my wife died—we didn’t have any children—I came here. Grandma Jack left this house to me in her will. I came because this is the first place I ever thought of as home.”

I listened to his story, fascinated and feeling embarrassed that I’d misjudged him so completely.

Isaac took three rolls of thirty-six shots, some of them outside in Dr. Kaplan’s driveway, next to his hippie van, some with the ocean in the background. Then he switched to his new digital camera, and I watched his method change. He would take a shot, look at the screen, and then take another shot.

When Dr. Kaplan opened his garage door at Isaac’s request, it revealed another vehicle, a more practical gray four-door Honda. Even I could see the juxtaposition of the image.

He patted the hood of the car. “I still volunteer at the VA hospital in San Francisco. I love my van, but it’s getting too old to make the trip. My Honda is as dependable as the sunrise.”

While Isaac photographed Dr. Kaplan, I faded into the background and let him work. I walked across the street to a small neighborhood park with an incredible view of the ocean. The concrete bench was cold enough to chill the back of my thighs through my jeans. The sun started inching out from behind the cloud cover, causing diamond-bright sparks on the ocean. The water seemed to turn from gray to blue before my eyes. I knew that Isaac preferred taking photos in the diffuse light of a cloudy day, so he was probably rushing, trying to find the image he sought before the sun burst out from behind a cloud.

I thought about what the doctor said about this being the first place he felt was home. It made me think of what I considered home—the Ramsey Ranch, of course. The Harper Ranch, where I was a newlywed . . . yes, that too. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have bothered me so much to see a stranger wandering through the old ranch house. I thought about the house where Gabe and I had lived. We’d bought it less than five years ago. The first few months we were married we’d lived in the tiny Spanish house I’d rented in one of San Celina’s older neighborhoods. I loved our present house with its built-in bookcases and Mission-style banister and fireplace. But did it really feel like home? I’d never say it out loud, but no. It was where Gabe and I lived. It was our house. But it wasn’t my home. Not yet.

“Ready to go?” Isaac said behind me.

I looked up at him. Any fatigue he’d felt on the drive over had been banished the minute he picked up a camera. Something about taking photographs energized him, seemed to make him more vibrant, like a three-way lightbulb turned on high.

I’d mentioned that once to him, after we’d spent a day driving around the county while he took photographs of old adobes and cemeteries. Nothing excited Isaac more than a bunch of cracked, lichen-covered headstones.

He’d laughed and said, “There are many cultures who believe that when you take a photo of someone you steal a part of their soul. I do believe something special passes between the photographer and their subject. It’s why during the time I spend with a person when I’m photographing them, it sometimes feels as if we have a relationship. And we do for that short amount of time. A good photographer can make you feel like you are the most interesting, important person in the world.”

“And then you leave.”

He’d nodded. “Yes, that can sometimes make a person feel abandoned. I’ve felt it myself.”

I took down Dr. Kaplan’s phone number and said I’d call him next week to set up an appointment to finish our interview. Then we loaded the equipment into the car.

“Where to now?” I asked Isaac.

“To the dunes. I want to test this digital camera on landscapes.”

“Sounds good to me, Pops.”

We spent the rest of the afternoon traipsing around the Oceano Dunes and the shoreline. While he took photos of birds and the few crazy people driving their dune buggies on this chilly Tuesday afternoon, I played around with the little Nikon he’d loaned me and took surreptitious photos of him. I’d packed us a lunch of Swiss cheese, Granny Smith apples, a loaf of San Celina’s famous sourdough bread and Isaac’s favorite drink, a combination of cranberry juice and sparkling lemonade. Though we did need to work on the book, this day had also been about Isaac taking a break from the intense Ramsey Ranch household. Though he’d been married five times before, he’d actually never lived with any of his wives. He had traveled the world, living out of suitcases and hotel rooms.

“The Ramsey Ranch is the only home I’ve known since I was a child,” he said to me while photographing the shifting sands of the dunes, capturing subtle shadows and forms that I would be surprised to see in his final photographs. He told me something once that I’ve never forgotten because it occurred to me that it could apply to anything on earth—photographs, people, places, experiences, stories.

“What’s not in the photograph,” he’d said, “what you
don’t
see, is often just as important as what you do see.”

We ended up back in Pismo Beach, where he took photos of the Cowgirl Café for his anniversary gift to Dove. Right after dusk, we headed back to the Subaru. An icy wind had started to blow off the ocean, freezing our fingers and noses.

On the drive back to San Celina, with the car’s heater turned to high, we were lulled into a comfortable silence. It was after six thirty and dark by the time we arrived at the folk art museum. The parking lot was empty except for my little purple truck and D-Daddy’s green Ford F150 pickup.

“You go on home,” I told Isaac. “I’ll check with D-Daddy and see if anything needs my attention. I know you’re itching to develop that film.”

“Guilty as charged,” he said, rubbing his hands together, looking about ten years old. “I think it’s the sisters’ book group tonight, so I’ll steal myself a chicken salad sandwich or two and hide out in the washhouse.”

Isaac had taken over the old washhouse where Dove’s washer and dryer had resided before the addition of a laundry room to the main house. With plumbing already installed, he and Daddy converted it without much trouble into a perfect little darkroom. Isaac worked almost exclusively in black and white photography and rarely let anyone else develop his photographs. He believed that the artistry of a photograph lay not only in composition but also in the developing.

I gave him a fierce hug. “It was a perfect day, Pops. Thanks for letting me tag along.”

“Thank you for being such a wonderful companion.”

I unlocked the museum’s front door and disabled the alarm. It was dark in the lobby except for the yellow moon-shaped night-light. After checking to make sure everything was in its place, I relocked and armed the alarm and headed around the building to the studios. My hand reached for the door when it flew open and D-Daddy’s scowling face startled me.