Prologue 2019
Quinn looks around at the installation, pleased with the result of weeks of work and over a year of preparation. Standing in the center of the Whitney Museum of Art’s sixth-floor gallery, it seems as if she has an audience in these subjects. Many are her friends and loved ones. They watch her from their respective photographs, sometimes directly, sometimes as passive observers, but always there, aware. And she can time travel here, among these faces and scenes. They lure her into an elaborate hopscotch over decades or yank her through dense hours and minutes. She closes her eyes for a moment, trying to find some form in the darkness there.
A touch to her elbow brings her back, and William says, “Mom, Gary Radcliff from the New York Times is here. Are you ready?”
She nods and follows William to where the young man waits near the massive vinyl lettering at the entrance to the show. He stands with his hands clasped in front of him under the Q and U in Quinn Bradford: A Retrospective.
He smiles when he sees her and says, “Quinn, it’s such a pleasure to meet you.” They shake hands. “I really appreciate your time. I know you’re not a fan of interviews, so I’m grateful all the more.” He’s right. She’s not a fan of interviews, though she doesn’t like how it sounds coming from him, as if she’s deliberately challenging. She considers explaining why that is. She could tell him about how she was hounded by journalists after what happened to Billy, but she doesn’t because doing so would invite that conversation here. Instead, they exchange the usual pleasantries as Quinn leads Gary to a bench in the gallery. Workers in white coveralls are busy making last-minute touch-ups to the walls where things have been rearranged, shifted, and rehung. Gary taps the record button on his phone, and something about that formality changes his tone, deepens it to sound more serious when he says, “I’m excited to dig into the exhibition, but first, I want to ask you about Lulu and the Trucker after what happened this week.” And Quinn thinks maybe this is the real reason she doesn’t like interviews, how they can somehow, still, after all this time, make her feel like an impostor. Even so, she assumed he’d start like this.
“Well,” she says, “it was a surprise, for sure.”
“Maybe not,” Gary says, misunderstanding her. “That photo has long been considered the piece that launched your career.”
“That’s true,” she says. “Although, it’s hard for me to think of it that way. I’ve done so much work since then.”
“Understandably, but considering that it just broke records at auction, I’d say it’s an important one.” His eyebrows raise, and she realizes he’s asking a question with that statement.
“Oh yeah,” she says. “I don’t mean to diminish it in any way. It’s an important photo, and it pushed my career in a direction that I’ll forever be grateful for. It’s why Eric Hoffman ultimately chose to work with me. I meant that the auction was a surprise. It’s challenging not knowing who owns that piece now.”
What she would never say is there were so many times she thought of destroying the photo, so many times she held its edges and studied the interaction, hoping to find innocence there, but always returning to the dread that set inside her when the Polaroid first processed in the car, in front of her eyes. And the things the photo doesn’t show, the monster that she still sees plain as day as if it’s a third subject in the composition. How it looms around Lulu, hovering like an aura. She doesn’t need to possess the photo to see it all.
“And we may never know who owns it now thanks to the anonymous sale.” Gary brings her back to now, and Quinn swallows hard, her dry throat clamping to itself. She wishes she had a glass of water. “It has an almost mythical status seeing as it hasn’t been seen in quite some time. Would you tell me about that?”
She shifts a bit, unsure of how much she wants to say, then leans in toward him. “When I first exhibited it, it was all anyone could talk about. I didn’t want it to be the thing that I became known for, but I could see that was rapidly happening.”
“And so, you gave it to Billy Cunningham.” Gary watches her as if he knows he’s just treaded into a landmine territory.
“I did.” Quinn takes a deep breath. “For safekeeping. I always refused to allow it to be for sale, even though it would have helped me financially. And there were some hard times back then, really hard times. I was worried about what I might do. If I might get desperate enough to sell it. I told him not to let me do that, and I knew he wouldn’t. But then…” She trails here because she won’t talk more about this, and she doesn’t need to because it’s well known what happened next. She tries to put the lawsuit with Myles out of her mind, the endless arguments about ownership and rights and estates, the things she never wanted to have to fight about, especially not when she had just lost the love of her life.
Gary nods and squints in contemplation. “Do you still think about Lulu?”
Quinn tries to hide her disappointment in this question but then realizes that even though Lulu’s part of her DNA after all these years, she’s an invisible part, like an extra organ tucked deep inside of her that no one else could possibly know about. Her words come out husky when she says, “Yeah, of course I do.” She clears her throat to gain more control. “It’s been almost forty years since I took that photo, but I’ve never stopped thinking about her. Now, she’d be, like, fifty. I wonder what her life is like, if she’s still alive, married, kids, you know?”
“In your later series, you followed your subjects for long periods of time. Did you ever think about going back to shoot more of Lulu?”
“I did think about it.” Quinn doesn’t offer more, doesn’t say that she tried, and, surprisingly, he doesn’t ask. She wonders if he can see inside her now, can feel the edges of that aching appendage as it pulses throughout her. She’s relieved when he shuffles his small notebook in a gesture to move on. “Your work is often discussed in the context of the downtown arts scene. You certainly chronicle a special moment in New York City’s history. Many of your friends who appear in your early work became equally well-known artists, writers, performers, and the like. Liv Brown, Micky Hart, Alex Campeau, Myles Wainwright, and of course, Billy Cunningham. You followed them for years, and it’s a delight that we get to see them grow up in these images. And then you stopped, which felt abrupt to many of those who were following your career. What happened?”
“Well, I started doing more time-based, thematic series, as you noted. But I never stopped taking photos of my friends. I just stopped showing them.” Quinn doesn’t elaborate on why. Anyone who was even kind of paying attention could figure that out on their own.
“Do you miss the New York of those days?”
She’s been asked this before, and she wonders how old he is, if he’s lived long enough to watch something disappear only to reappear as a stranger. She’s never sure how to answer cleanly, simply, because there was nothing clean and simple about that time.
“I don’t know,” she finally says. “That New York is long gone. I mean, it was a free-for-all, like. People doing anything they wanted. Which can be amazing, right, but also dangerous. New York was coming out of near bankruptcy when I started my career. There was so much need, so much desperation. We were all working in these various areas around consumerism, that huge thing. And any time you’re creating in a transitional space like that, you don’t really know something big is happening. So, yeah, there are some things that I miss about that New York City. That urgency. Feeling hungry for everything.”
Gary leans intently toward her. “What changed?”
More like, what happened? She could blame AIDS, heroin, and crack, which killed so many beautiful minds and devastated the city. Racism, sexism, homophobia. Or the rise of the art market, gentrification, the machine that forced artists who couldn’t afford exorbitant rents to move away. She could blame commercial galleries, Wall Street art collectors, real estate tax credits, political lobbyists, and so many other things and maybe even herself. She could tell Gary all that, but she doesn’t. Lost now, stuck there, stuck in all of it, she doesn’t say anything at all. She knows she hasn’t answered his question, but she can’t really remember what it was anyway.
[G]
“I had some smokes in my pocket when I came in last night,” Lulu says. “You know where they might be?”
The clerk waves her hand at the plastic bag that has Lulu’s keys, a lighter, and an expired driver’s license. “Would have been in there if they made it. Sorry, hon.”
“Alright then.” Lulu signs the form that itemizes her belongings. She fishes out her things and shoves them into a back pocket, leaving the plastic bag with the woman. She’s relieved to find JP outside the precinct, leaning on his car.
“Thanks for coming for me,” she says, and she immediately feels bad for the worried look on his face.
“Of course I’m gonna be here,” he says. “But what happened? I tried calling last night but they wouldn’t tell me shit.” He pushes off the car and puts his arms around her. She holds onto him, briefly appreciating the feeling of him against her. Jacko whines from the car, his feet perched on the open window frame, his cropped tail zigzagging in excitement. She reaches over to scratch him behind the ear and shakes her head.
“Just a dust up with some asshole outside the motel. No fine or nothing. The cops wanted to teach me a lesson by keeping me overnight.”
“Jesus,” JP says. “Lulu, you can’t go beating up on those guys. They’re dangerous.”
“Don’t I know it,” she says. “But I’m tired of this shit. I’m tired of seeing it.”
JP gives her a cigarette, and she clicks her lighter several times, stopping to shake it before it finally catches a flame. She takes a deep drag, and her head momentarily spins, casting rainbows around her in the brightness of the sunlight. She blows a cloud into the blue sky. “Let’s get out of here,” she says.
In the car, she scoots Jacko to the back, but he noses her ear, licks the side of her face, and tries to climb back up into her lap. “You missed me?” she says, nuzzling the dog’s thick snout. She holds the cigarette out the window, away from him.
Despite yesterday’s double shift, she’s due back to the motel in less than an hour. She leans back into the seat, sinking into its worn sides, and she wishes for a day off. Just one full day away from that place. And it’s not just the back-breaking work of cleaning the rooms, it’s the way the motel girls look wearily at her like people do when they don’t want to see themselves in you. She remembers looking at her ma the same way.
“You hungry?” JP gestures to a plastic bag tucked in the console. Lulu fishes out a package of mini powdered sugar doughnuts from it.
“I am,” she says, then touches the top of his arm. “Hey, don’t worry so much about me, okay?”
That brings a small smile to his face as he shakes his head a bit. “I’ve been worried about you my whole life.” And she knows it’s true, and she wishes it wasn’t.
Garth Brooks comes on the radio and JP starts singing off-key to the song. Lulu stuffs a doughnut in his mouth to get him to stop. The white sugar rings his lips, and she laughs, and it feels good to laugh. Jacko begs with a hot breath behind her and chomps his own doughnut in one bite. Lulu lets the last one linger between her teeth, pressing it against the roof of her mouth until it slowly becomes nothing. The sun streams through the windows and she closes her eyes, feeling the warmth on her face. And she wishes they could just keep driving.
At the trailer, JP tells her he’s got to get to work and kisses her forehead good-bye. Lulu goes inside and checks Jacko’s food and water bowls. She rolls her neck. She has just enough time to shower and brush her teeth and she does both before regretfully leaving her bed behind. The night in jail released a barrage of painful memories, dragging her to places she never wanted to go again. The thoughts follow her as she walks the worn pathway through the trailer park, past the diner, past the gas station, and across the parking lot to the motel. She can almost feel Maureen and Hank and Barb and Roy and all of them, trailing her. Their feet having worn these paths themselves.
The rooms are a wreck when she gets there. Doors left opened like surprised mouths. She does a quick scan after resetting her punch card and decides to start at room ten, dragging the cleaning cart behind her down the walkway. Its wheels catch on the small rocks spewed over the broken concrete. The sunshine she appreciated in the car ride now glares.
She stands for a moment in the center of the room, deciding where to begin. The bathroom has taken the brunt of the occupants. She decides to get the worst over with first and starts there. The toilet is clogged with a washcloth and the filthy water teeters close to the edge of the bowl. She drags her hand to dislodge it and then tosses it into the wash bin. On the small oval of space around the sink sit several empty baggies. She sweeps them into a trash bag.
Lulu strips the bed, though something has stained the sheets and sunk through to the mattress. She doubles up clean sheets over it and hopes whatever it is won’t smell. She tucks the corners and fluffs the pillows as much as they will and she can kind of imagine this is a nice motel, and she gives it the care she would if it was. There’s not much to be done about a broken lamp, but she props it best she can and flips the switch to be sure it’s still working. She runs a vacuum over the thin carpet, but the suction is old and it sprays dust out the back. She drags the trash bag and wash bin outside and leaves the door unlocked because soon a young woman will cross the parking lot, a trucker in tow, one of a stream of many over the course of the day, and then she’ll do it all over again.
Lulu is finishing the final room when Bob, the manager, comes out of the office and corners her near the supply closet. “What was that stunt yesterday?” he asks. Lulu steps back from him. He’s an old man and try as she might, she can’t remember him ever being anything but. “We’re losing customers over your shit.”
Lulu is still holding the wash bin and she tosses it to the side, rubs at the aches in her arms from its bulky weight. “Then maybe you should get some better clientele. That ever occur to you?”
“This ain’t the Four Seasons, Lulu. Who else you think’s coming through here?” And she hates his sagging eyes, the way she’s seen them scan the girls who rent the rooms here.
“And where were you yesterday when that asshole dragged Julia out here and started beating on her? I did what any good person would do. Someone has to teach those assholes to respect women.” Lulu’s voice has raised, and she’s perched on her tiptoes to make herself seem taller. She settles back onto her feet, but the anger is still there because she hates this man so much, she hates that this is the only job that would take her with her record, she hates that she has to rely on this filthy place to earn a living after the ways it has ruined her.
Bob shakes his head. “You’re fired.”
“Fired? Who else is going to do what I do?” Now Lulu steps towards him and she feels the heat rushing her limbs and she clenches her fists because she cannot hit him, she cannot get into another fight after yesterday’s fight.
“You don’t think there’s a line of illegals waiting for your job? Come on, you’re not that dumb.” Bob shakes his head again and for some reason that makes her almost angrier than anything else. He walks away.
Then suddenly, there’s a buzzing in the silence. Lulu looks up at the wasp nest that has clung in the same corner for decades now. And she fantasizes, as she has for years, about knocking it down. Letting whatever is inside out. Unleashing whatever mayhem that might bring.
