Little Fires Everywhere Read online

  When her shift was over, she changed in the little closet of an employee bathroom, rolling her work uniform and apron into a tight cylinder before tucking it in her knapsack, so they would not wrinkle. She did not own an iron and this way, if she was careful, she could wear the same uniform for a week or more before she had to brave the Laundromat. Then, in jeans and a T-shirt, she headed to class.

  From her father she had learned to change the oil in a car, to wire a socket, to chisel, to saw—which meant she wielded her tools expertly: she knew how far you could flex a piece of wire or a sheet of metal before it broke, how to make clean lines and soft bulges and curves, how to coax a copper pipe into angles and bends. From her mother she had learned how to handle cloth—from drapey gauze to thick canvas—and how to make it behave, what its limits were, how much you could stretch it and how much it could hold. How to clean a tool, properly, so that no trace of what had touched it remained. Now, in class, when they were asked to make a chair from metal, she already knew how to weld and make things strong; when they were told to work with cloth, she knew—with a quick squeeze of the fabric—how to transform corduroy and linen into a tree, six feet tall, that even her teacher would admire. She knew how thin you needed to make paint so that it would flow and how thick you could make it so that it would clump on the canvas like clay, something to be sculpted. In figure drawing, when the model unbelted her robe and let it puddle at her feet, she alone wasted no time blushing but began, immediately, to sketch the model’s long limbs and the curve of her breast: at the hospital, helping her mother, she had seen too many bodies to be shy about anything.

  At three o’clock, after her classes ended, she went to work again. Twice a week she had shifts at the Dick Blick, selling art supplies to her fellow students, or restocking the back room. She talked art with the older students, and they told her what they were working on, why they preferred knife to brush or acrylic to oil, or Fujicolor to Kodachrome. In the back room, her boss—who had a daughter about Mia’s age and thus had a soft spot for this girl, working multiple jobs to pay her rent—allowed her to keep the pencils and pastels that had snapped in transit, the paint tubes that had leaked, the brushes and canvases that had been dinged or come unstapled. Anything that could no longer be sold Mia took home and repaired, restretching the canvases or mending them on the back with tape, sanding the splintered handle of a brush, sharpening two half pencils to use in place of a whole. In this way she was able to acquire a good portion of her supplies for free.

  Three evenings a week, Mia boarded the 1 and rode to 116th Street, where she put on a different uniform and waited tables at a bar near Columbia. The undergrads she served tended to be either haughty and obnoxious or leering and obnoxious, more so as the night wore on, but they tipped her, and at the end of a good night she might have thirty or forty dollars in her apron. She ate the last bites of their burgers and their forgotten fries and the stubs of their pickles for dinner and folded all the cash into her jeans pocket.

  She scraped her way through the first year with some money saved even after her rent was paid. Now and then, when she called home—for she did call home, she and her parents all insisted there was no ill will between them; they asked politely how school was doing and showed, or at least feigned, interest in her answers—Warren asked if it was worth it. He had always been the happy-go-lucky one, ready to take things as they came; she had been the driven one, the ambitious one, the planner.

  “It’s worth it,” she assured him. And she would tell him about her classes, what paintings she’d studied that week, and her favorite, the real reason she woke at four thirty every morning and stayed up late every night: photography.

  When she spoke of Pauline Hawthorne, her tone was half the adoration of a schoolgirl for a crush, half the adoration of a devotee for a saint. It had not been clear, at first, that it would turn out that way. On the first day of photography class, the students had sat upright at their desks, each with a 35mm camera and two notebooks—as specified by the supplies list—in hand. When class began, Pauline strode to the back of the room, flicked off the lights, and, without introducing herself, clicked on the slide projector. A Man Ray photograph burst onto the screen before them: a voluptuous woman, her back transformed into a cello by two painted f-holes. Complete silence filled the room. After five minutes, Pauline twitched her thumb, and the cello woman was replaced by an Ansel Adams landscape, Mount McKinley glowering over a lake of pure white. No one said anything. Another click: a Dorothea Lange portrait of a Dust Bowl woman, her dark hair in a deep part, the merest hint of a smile lifting the corners of her lips. For the entire two hours of the class this continued, a survey of photographs they all recognized but which—as Pauline must have realized—they had never spent much time looking at. Mia, from her reading at the library, recognized them all, but found that after she’d stared at them for long enough, they took on new contours, like faces of people she loved.

  After the two hours had passed, Pauline clicked the slide projector off and the class sat blinking in the sudden brightness. “Next class, bring the photo you’re proudest of,” she said, and left the room. They were the first and only words she’d said.

  The next class, after much thought, Mia had brought one of the photos she’d taken with her large-format camera. Introduction to Photography focused on handheld cameras, but Pauline had said the photo you’re proudest of, and this was hers: a shot of her brother playing street hockey in their backyard, their house and the rest of their neighborhood spread out behind him like miniatures. She had climbed all the way to the top of the hill behind their house to take it. On entering, they found index cards with each student’s name pinned up on the walls around the classroom, with clips fastened below them. At two minutes past the hour, Pauline entered—again, without introducing herself—and the class gathered beside each photo in turn, Pauline commenting on the composition or the technique of the picture, students timidly answering her questions about point of view or tone. Some were carefully constructed scenes; one or two had attempted something artistic: a silhouette of a girl backlit by an enormous movie screen; a close-up of a tangled telephone cord wrapped around a receiver.

  Mia and the rest of her classmates had braced themselves against Pauline’s questioning. After that first class, they’d been sure she was one of the dragons, as the harsher teachers were known: the ones who delighted in making their students uncomfortable, who thought the best way to push students out of their comfort zones was to bulldoze them into rubble during critiques. But Pauline, it turned out, was no dragon. Despite her no-nonsense air, she found something in each photograph to highlight and praise. It was why—despite being well established—she chose to teach the beginning students. “Look at how the little sister is laughing here,” she said, tapping one of the family portraits. “She’s the only one not looking at the camera—which gives you a sense that there’s something outside the frame. Is she a rebel? Or does this hint at the whole family’s spirit?” Or: “Notice how the skyscraper here looks like it’s about to pierce the moon. That’s a thoughtful choice of perspective.” Even her criticisms—which were as common as her praise—were not what Mia had expected. “Water is hard,” she said simply, when someone pointed out that a photo of a waterfall was badly blurred. “Let’s suppose this was done on purpose. What effect does it have?”

  Mia’s photograph had been last, and when the class gathered before it, Pauline had paused for a moment, as if taken aback. She had studied it carefully, for two minutes, three, five, and in the silence the class grew uneasy. “Who’s Mia Wright?” she asked finally, and Mia stepped forward. Everyone else took a half step back, as if whatever lightning were about to strike might hit them, too. Then Pauline began to ask questions. Why did you have this line run from right to left? Why did you shift the camera this way? Why did you focus on the hockey stick, and not the net? Mia answered as best she could: she had wanted to capture how small the house and the l
awn were in comparison to the hills behind it; she had wanted to show the texture of the grass and the way the blades crushed under her brother’s shoes. But at a certain point, as Pauline’s questions became more technical, she had become flustered and inarticulate. The line had just looked right that way. The shift had just looked right that way. The depth of field had just looked right that way. At last, just as the class session ended, Pauline stepped away with a nod.

  “Bring your cameras next time,” she said. “We’ll start to take some photos.” She picked up her bag and left the room, leaving Mia unsure if she’d just passed or failed utterly.

  Over the next few classes Pauline treated Mia just like any other student. They learned to wind film into the camera, how to compose a photo, how to calculate the proper aperture and width. All of this Mia knew already, from Mr. Wilkinson’s tutelage and her own experimentations over the years. As Pauline explained it, however, her intuitive feelings about how to shape her shots became more conscious. She learned to articulate her reasons for choosing a specific f-stop, to not only find the settings that made it look right but to explain why it looked right that specific way. Two weeks into the semester, as the class began making their first prints, Pauline stopped by Mia’s station in the darkroom. In the glare of the red light she looked as if she had been carved from a giant ruby.

  “How long have you been working with the view camera?” she asked, and when Mia told her, she said, “Would you like to show me some more of your photos?”

  The following Saturday, Mia found herself in the lobby of Pauline’s apartment, an envelope of photos clutched in her hand. The building had a doorman, and Mia, having never encountered one before, was so awestruck she did not listen when he told her which floor, and resorted to pressing each button in the elevator in turn and checking the names on each door before ducking back inside and pressing the next. When she at last came out on the sixth floor, she found Pauline standing in the open doorway.

  “There you are,” she said. “The doorman called up to say you were here ten minutes ago. I was starting to wonder.” She was barefoot but otherwise looked exactly the same as she did in class: a black T-shirt and a long black skirt and long beaded earrings that jingled like chimes as she walked. Mia, blushing, followed her into a large, white-walled, sunlit room where everything seemed to glow. She had expected a photographer’s apartment to be covered in photographs, but the walls were bare. Later she would learn that Pauline’s studio was upstairs, that she never hung anything because when she wasn’t working, she wanted the white space. Palate cleanser, Pauline would explain. But at this moment, Mia simply sat down beside her on the nubbly gray couch, where they laid photograph after photograph across the coffee table. Pauline was full of questions, as she had been that second day of class: Why did you set the camera so low in this one? Why so close in that one? Did you think about adjusting tilt here? What were you thinking about when you took this shot? In the photographs Mia lost her shyness. They were so engrossed that when a woman entered and set two cups of coffee down on the end table, one beside each of them, she jumped.

  “Mal,” said Pauline, with an offhand wave. “Mal, this is Mia Wright, one of my students.”

  Mal was slender with long, wavy brown hair. She wore jeans and a green blouse and, like Pauline, she was barefoot.

  “Thought you’d like some coffee,” Mal said. “Lovely to meet you, Mia.” She kissed Pauline on the cheek and went away.

  Mia spent all afternoon there, until it was time for her shift at the bar. Pauline and Mal pressed her to stay for dinner, until she finally admitted she had to go to work. “Then next week,” Pauline suggested, “when you have a day off.” Over the following months she would visit Pauline and Mal often, talking photography with Pauline, watching her at work in her studio, listening to Pauline think aloud about whatever she was working on at the time. “I’ve been reading about ancient Egypt,” Pauline might begin, flipping a book open. “Tell me what you think of this.” At their dinner table Mia tried foods she’d never tasted: artichokes, olives, Brie. Mal, she learned, was a poet, had published several collections of poems. “But no one cares about poetry,” Mal said with a rueful laugh. She lent Mia books by the stack: Elizabeth Bishop, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich.

  By the time winter came, Mia would bring her newest photographs to show Pauline nearly every week, and they would talk them over, Pauline pressing her to articulate what she’d done and why. Before, Mia had taken photographs by feel, relying on instinct to tell her what was right and what was wrong. Pauline challenged her to be intentional, to plan her work, to make a statement in each photograph, no matter how straightforward the photo might seem. “Nothing is an accident,” Pauline would say, again and again. It was her favorite mantra, Mia had learned, in both photography and in real life. In Pauline and Mal’s house, nothing was simple. In her parents’ house, things had been good or bad, right or wrong, useful or wasteful. There had been nothing in between. Here, she found, everything had nuance; everything had an unrevealed side or unexplored depths. Everything was worth looking at more closely.

  After these sessions, Pauline and Mal would always press Mia to stay for dinner. They knew, by now, about the three jobs, and Mal would urge extra servings on her, would send her home with Tupperware full of leftovers, which she would return on the next visit. They would, in fact, have encouraged her to stay the night, to settle into one of their guest rooms and stay for good, if either of them could have thought of a way to suggest it.

  Because Mia was proud: this was quite obvious. Although she accepted their hospitality gratefully, after that first visit she made a point of never arriving empty-handed. She brought them little things she had made: bunches of leaves gathered in Central Park and bound with a ribbon into a ruddy bouquet; a thumb-size basket woven from grass; once, a little sketch of the two of them she’d drawn in ink, even a handful of pure-white pebbles after Pauline mentioned she’d begun a new project with stones. It was clear to both Pauline and Mal that these gifts eased Mia’s guilt over all they offered her—their food, their knowledge, their affection—and that otherwise Mia’s pride would prevent her from coming back.

  And they very much wanted her to come back. By Christmastime it had become clear to all of them—Pauline, Mal, and Mia’s other teachers and fellow classmates—that Mia was immensely talented.

  “You’re going to be famous, you know that, right?” Warren said to his sister one evening. She had come home for Christmas, and true to his word, he’d come to pick her up at the bus station in the little tan VW Rabbit he’d bought that fall. Now, four days after Christmas, he was bringing her back. Without discussing it they had agreed to take the long route, along the winding back roads, in order to stretch out these last few minutes together. Warren was now a junior in high school, and it seemed to Mia that he’d grown in the time she was away: not taller, but that something about him had deepened. His voice had lowered and he’d begun to grow into his hands and fingers and feet, which for the past few years had been too large for him, like a puppy’s paws. In the fading afternoon light the stubble on his throat looked like only a shadow, but she knew it for what it was.

  “We’ll see” was all she said. Then: “And you? What are you going to be when you grow up?” In kindergarten, when the teacher had asked this question, Warren had answered with his plans for that afternoon—the afternoon being as far into the future as his five-year-old mind could imagine. Since then, “What are you going to be when you grow up” had been their way of asking about plans for the day, and even now, Mia teased him, Warren never seemed to be able to look more than a week or two ahead.

  “Tommy Flaherty and I are going hunting Friday,” he said now. “Getting in one more trip before school starts.” Mia made a face. She had never approved of hunting, though everyone in their neighborhood had a deer head or two somewhere in their houses.

  “I’ll call you when I get back,” she sai
d, and kissed him on the cheek. She was struck again by how he’d grown, how he seemed leaner and stronger and more solid than she’d remembered. She wondered if there was a girl in his life. What would he look like the next time she came home, she thought—and when would that be? Summer, perhaps, unless she got a job to save up for next year. There was so much to do. Already, in the few months since she’d come to New York, her work had developed: from her time with Pauline, from studying the work of her classmates, even from the long hours she put in at her many jobs and the constant rotation of strangers she encountered there. It had become smarter and more deliberate, more technically advanced and adventurous, riskier and edgier, and everyone—including Mia herself, and Warren, waving to her through the passenger window before leaning over to crank it closed—was certain she would go far. Nothing was going to distract her from her work, she promised herself. The work was the only thing that mattered. She would not allow herself to think about anything else.

  She was so focused on her work that, on the afternoon in March when the man with the briefcase began staring at her, she did not notice right away. It was midafternoon when she got on at Houston Street, heading up to her job near Columbia, and the 1 was quiet, with only a handful of passengers. Mia was thinking about her project for Pauline—Document a transformation over time—when she felt the sudden prickle on her skin that meant she was being watched. Mia was used to stares—this was New York, after all—and like all women she had learned to ignore them, as well as the catcalls that sometimes accompanied them. But this man she couldn’t quite read. He seemed respectable enough: neat striped suit, dark hair, briefcase between his feet. Wall Street, she guessed. The look in his eyes wasn’t lust, or even playfulness. It was something else—a strange mix of recognition and hunger—and it unsettled her. After three stops, when the man had not stopped staring, she bundled up her things and stepped off at Columbus Circle.