Queen of the Owls Read online

  Ben didn’t know how she felt. They’d never spoken of such things.

  It wasn’t what people talked about in grad school; you’d be called sloppy and subjective, and steered back to primary sources. A few weeks ago, she would have agreed.

  Her eyes darted to Ben’s face. Did she dare to explain?

  Phoebe sat up straight, her brow furrowing. “O’Keeffe was that old lady in the desert, right?”

  Elizabeth flinched. Yes, that was O’Keeffe. But it wasn’t the woman who had offered her breasts to the camera.

  She could feel the three of them waiting for her to answer. Her throat filled, words and silence vying for space. Could she say what she felt without dismissing all the work she had done, all that scholarship, yet without betraying Georgia? The intimacy, the breathtaking sensuality—it was real, but to speak of it risked reducing Georgia’s art in exactly the way Georgia herself had despised.

  “Wait.” It was Charlie. “She did those flowers, the big orange poppies?”

  “She did,” Elizabeth said.

  “They’re amazing.” He broke into a wide grin. “Phoebe, they’re the flowers on those note cards.”

  “Wow. Right, they are amazing.”

  Elizabeth gathered her strength. Do it. Speak.

  “You have to experience them,” she said. “That’s the point. You can’t stand apart and look at them. The way she uses cropping and enlarging? It forces you to enter, like you’re part of the painting.”

  She could hear Richard, as if he were speaking into her ear, through her mouth. She heard herself repeat his words. “You have to experience it with your whole self, not just your brain.”

  Then she stopped, unsure. Her gaze moved from face to face. Charlie and Phoebe seemed to understand. Ben looked bewildered. No, he looked embarrassed.

  Ray Charles’s music filled the room.

  “The note cards. How about that.” Phoebe looked up at Charlie. “Oh well, told you I was uneducated.”

  “Hardly—” Elizabeth began.

  Before she could finish, Charlie put his hands on Phoebe’s shoulders. “There are different ways to be smart, my darling. You’re a genius at web design.”

  Elizabeth shut her eyes. She couldn’t watch this.

  Ben turned to Charlie, his face brightening again. “You work for a web design company?”

  “We have our own business,” Charlie answered. “It can be a roller coaster financially, but it’s a lot of fun.”

  “I’d love to see some of your stuff.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. Our firm’s thinking about putting up a new site.”

  “Hey, that’s great.” Beaming, Charlie went to retrieve his laptop.

  “You’ve made his day,” Phoebe said. She picked up the red and blue ceramic plate. “More cheese?”

  Ben cut a generous chunk of Brie. It wasn’t like him, Elizabeth thought. He was always careful about cholesterol. Maybe it was his excitement about the vinyl and the web designs.

  More and more confused, she took a sesame cracker from the plate in Phoebe’s outstretched hand. If Ben could be excited about records and cheese, then maybe it was her fault there was no fire. Too owlish to evoke passion. Or maybe it was them, together, and the nature of the pact they had made—a pact she herself had crafted, that day in the little yellow kitchen.

  Could they renegotiate? Strange to think of a relationship that way. Still, maybe they could.

  “Here,” Phoebe said. “Try some of this Manchego.”

  Elizabeth opened her mouth, let the taste of the cheese penetrate the whole of her. Every pore, every cell, as if she had never tasted it before. The music swelled.

  The road leads back to you.

  When they got home, Elizabeth waited while Ben walked the sitter to the corner. Her boyfriend was picking her up, she told them. If Ben wanted to wait till the boyfriend came, that was fine, but he really didn’t need to. Ben was firm. “I’m not letting you stand out there alone.”

  Elizabeth paced the apartment. She didn’t know what she wanted. Part of her wanted to put the negligee on again and see if she could entice him into something adventurous and thrilling. Maybe even greet him in it, when he came back. Another part of her wondered why this new agenda of hers was so important. They’d managed till now, just as they were. What was different?

  She stopped, her fingertips grazing the back of the couch. She was different. It was Georgia, and Richard, and everything. It was herself. The mermaid in the school play, rising up out of the water and gasping for air.

  Too soon, she heard Ben’s footsteps in the hall. No time to change into a peach-colored surprise. If she wanted to captivate him, she needed to think fast, come up with an alternate plan.

  A plan to become aroused? That wasn’t how it worked between men and women.

  Tears stung her eyes. Liz-the-brain, on her latest mission, her next achievement. There had to be another way to evoke desire.

  Ben stepped into the apartment and closed the door behind him. “Man, I’m tired.”

  Intelligent, dependable, hard-working. The words drummed against her skull. A stressful case, a noble cause. Wyckoff versus Solano.

  “I’m tired too,” Elizabeth said. “It’s been a long week.” She brushed back her hair, the highlights and new layered cut that Ben still hadn’t noticed.

  Richard had. And he saw what she saw in O’Keeffe’s art.

  It wasn’t like she was going to be unfaithful. She just needed to do this one thing, so she could understand Georgia.

  “By the way,” she said. “There’s a good chance I’ll be home late on Wednesday. Some of us were thinking of going out to dinner after Tai Chi, you know, like you guys do after squash?”

  Ben hung up his jacket. “Makes sense to eat afterwards. Better than exercising on a full stomach.”

  Elizabeth watched him adjust the hanger, making sure the jacket was straight. “That won’t be a problem, will it?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “I’ll leave something for you to heat up. A casserole. I mean, if we end up going out. I don’t know yet. I have to confirm it with the other people. I have to find out.”

  She was talking too much but Ben didn’t seem to notice. That was the point.

  Part Two:

  The Photo

  Eleven

  Mr. Wu dismissed the pupils’ attempts to express concern for his health or gratitude for his return, saying only, “We commence.” His face was grave, impassive. To Elizabeth, his movements seemed slower and more solemn than ever.

  Richard took his place in the center of the front row, but Mr. Wu motioned for Richard to stand beside him. “You say,” he told him. Richard stepped forward, facing the class. Elizabeth’s heart began to thud. She hadn’t been prepared to look right at him for the entire hour.

  Richard took the first posture, saying the names aloud as the class moved from one form to the next. Hand strums the lute. Elizabeth moved her arms, tried to match her tempo to his. Grasp the bird’s tail.

  She had decided to pose, to bare herself as Georgia had done, but that was back in the safety of her apartment. Now, facing him, she wasn’t so sure. It was hard enough to have him look at her, one pupil among many. Dressed. Indecision seeped into her limbs, and she stumbled over the next movement. Richard caught her eye, and a silent understanding seemed to pass between them. The flare of a match, searing her. She straightened, correcting her posture.

  “No tension,” Mr. Wu said. “Nowhere.” Then he indicated for Richard to continue. Richard nodded, scanning the rows. Elizabeth felt strangely bereft without his gaze.

  Could she really do it? Posing was impossible, but so was not posing. Her stomach clenched. Which impossible thing was she going to choose?

  It wasn’t the posing itself, the arrangement of neck and limbs and spine. It was posing for someone. Revealed, beheld.

  Regarded in its entirety. Be held.

  Elizabeth realized that the class
had moved on to the next posture. Wave hands like clouds. Again, she stumbled to catch up. Juniper gave her an encouraging smile.

  After an hour, Mr. Wu’s energy seemed to fade. He put his hand on Richard’s arm, leaning close to whisper in his ear. Richard listened attentively, then said, “Sifu says it’s enough for tonight. He wants everyone to practice and come back next week.”

  Juniper clasped her hands. “Of course, of course. We totally understand.” Mr. Wu frowned. There were a few murmurs, and then Mr. Wu spoke to Richard again.

  Richard looked at the class. “Maybe someone else can lock up? I need to help Sifu into a taxi. It would be good if he and I can leave first.”

  Elizabeth jerked to attention. Richard was leaving? He didn’t know that she’d decided yes, I’ll pose. Like Georgia. She needed to tell him, right away, while Mr. Wu was slowly, slowly putting on his shoes.

  She hurried across the dojo. Richard was sitting on the bench next to Mr. Wu, putting on his own shoes. She slipped into the empty place beside him. A woman knelt in front of Mr. Wu, speaking earnestly.

  Richard’s head was bent as he tied his laces. Elizabeth kept her face averted. Her voice was soft. “I’ll do it,” she said. She didn’t say what it was.

  All she could see was the corner of his mouth. “Good.”

  She waited for him to tell her what to do next. How long would it take for him to get Mr. Wu into his taxi?

  “Can you come Friday morning?” Richard asked. “Say, at eleven?”

  Friday? Somehow she’d assumed he would photograph her right now, the instant she told him.

  “I have to help Mr. Wu,” he told her, “and anyway, I need light. Evening’s no good.”

  Of course. What he said made sense, yet her disappointment was acute. She began to edge off the bench.

  Richard put out a hand. Elizabeth thought, for a wild instant, that he was going to stop her from leaving. Instead, he pressed a folded slip of paper into her palm and closed her fingers over it. Mr. Wu rose. The woman who had been speaking to him gave a swift bow, and Mr. Wu turned to Richard. “We go?”

  “We go,” Richard echoed. Without looking at Elizabeth, he put his hand on the older man’s elbow and helped him to the elevator. When they were gone, she opened her fist and unfolded the paper. Across the top, in embossed lettering, was Richard’s name—Richard Ferris, photography—with his address and phone number. Heat surged into her cheeks, for anyone to see. The fact that he’d brought the paper must mean he had expected her to say yes.

  Below the phone number, he had scribbled a note. His handwriting was large, bold. Elizabeth hunched over the paper, shielding it with her hand. “In 1923,” Richard had written, “Stieglitz photographed the sun through the clouds. O’Keeffe was nowhere in the photo, not literally, but he named it Portrait of Georgia.”

  Elizabeth caught her breath. Why did it shock her, that he’d thought about her during the week? She’d thought about him.

  She looked around. People were collecting their things, getting ready to leave. Someone had already dimmed the lights. She looked at her watch. The class had been short. She’d be home early, instead of late, as she had told Ben. Well, she’d make up a new story.

  She pulled her jacket and shoes out of the cubbyhole. The man with the shaved head, the same man who had helped Richard when Mr. Wu collapsed, was standing by the elevator and waiting for the stragglers to leave. “I’ll lock up,” he told her.

  “Yes, all right.” She stepped into the elevator. The doors closed. It felt strange to be going straight home instead of out for coffee with Richard, but she couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. She walked home slowly, postponing her return.

  The wind rose up in the empty street. A gust lifted her hair, throwing it across her face. Her mind raced. She’d have to arrange to leave the kids with Lucy, since Friday wasn’t one of her regular days. Actually, she hadn’t agreed to Friday aloud, only in her mind. Did he assume she would come, or did she need to confirm? And for how long? Lucy would want to know.

  Was this something a person like her could really do?

  Yes. It was. She just had to organize it.

  When she walked in the front door, Ben looked surprised to see her. “Wasn’t this the night you were supposed to have burgers with the Tai Chi people?”

  Elizabeth turned her back as she pulled a hanger from the closet and hung up her jacket. “It didn’t work out. We’ll do it another time.”

  “Well, if you’re hungry, there’s some of the casserole you made for the kids. It’s in the refrigerator.”

  Elizabeth felt a flare of anger. She had no idea why she was angry but there it was, ready to burst out of her skin. “It’s fine,” she said. “I grabbed a sandwich.”

  She hadn’t, though. She was ravenous; she could eat cardboard, mud, anything. Instead, she clamped her lips shut and let herself feel the raging hunger.

  “I hear you made a conquest,” Harold Lindstrom drawled. He was tilted back in his leather chair, fingers laced together, in the tweed jacket and tortoise-shell glasses that lent him the vaguely avuncular look that Elizabeth assumed he was aiming for.

  Across from him, she shifted uneasily in the smaller chair. How could Harold have found out about Richard?

  “Marion Mackenzie,” he said. “She’s taken a liking to you. Told me she was disappointed you couldn’t make it to her talk.”

  Mackenzie. Of course. Harold didn’t know about Richard. Anyway, there was nothing to know. He certainly wasn’t a conquest.

  “I was disappointed too,” Elizabeth said. “I’m in awe of her, to be honest.”

  “A worthy object of your awe.” Harold eyed her keenly. “Marion’s a formidable ally. A word to the wise, though. If you get her invested in you, you’d better not let her down. She takes it personally, especially when it comes to rising young female scholars.”

  “I don’t intend to let her down. Or you.”

  A smile flickered across his face. “I happen to know that Marion’s old university is on the lookout for someone to fill her vacant spot. They want someone young, with a promising future. It’s being advertised in the usual ways, but the truth is that whoever Marion recommends will get the job.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “You’re joking.”

  “Not at all. But you didn’t hear it from me.”

  “Of course not.”

  A job at Marion’s former university, filling Marion’s place, was a prize Elizabeth hadn’t dared to dream was within her reach. Yet Harold had said it might be. Her mind began to spin. They would have to move. A new apartment, a new babysitter. Ben’s job.

  “No promises,” he said. “But keep doing what you’re doing.”

  Elizabeth pushed her concerns aside. She’d deal with those details when—or if—she was offered the job.

  Harold refolded his hands and peered at her over the top of his glasses. “So. What have you come up with, since we spoke?”

  Everything.

  The events of the past week came roaring back. The realization she’d had about the photos—how Georgia had given herself to the camera, face and body together. How Stieglitz had seen her everywhere. Her presence in the clouds, the very air. The slip of paper Richard had pressed into her palm.

  Harold coughed. He was waiting for her to talk about her dissertation.

  Elizabeth adjusted her position in the chair. “You told me to think about themes that emerged after Hawaii, and whether there were any indications in the Hawaii paintings. Like an experiment, a foreshadowing?”

  He nodded, and Elizabeth continued. “So I thought about the next group of paintings O’Keeffe did, after Hawaii. The pelvis series. She started them in 1940, right when she got back to New Mexico. The same image, that empty ovoid, again and again. In her next show, nearly half the paintings were pelvises. Shocking, in a way, after the living subjects she’d depicted before. Just an open bone against the flat blue sky.”

  Her voice dropped. “I did the math and, w
ell, O’Keeffe was fifty-three in 1940, fifty-nine when she completed the series. She was probably going through menopause. She’d been clear about her desire to have a child but Stieglitz wouldn’t allow it; he said it would interfere with her painting. And now it was too late.” Elizabeth spread her hands. “I think O’Keeffe had to reclaim her center. Take it back and redefine herself. Pure, down to the bone. Beyond flesh, beyond desire. Beyond all the things people projected onto her work.”

  Harold was quiet, his eyes fixed on the desk. Elizabeth grew anxious. “You think I’m psychoanalyzing her? Making things up?”

  “I don’t see how it’s anything you can verify.”

  “But I can. I can show you the first intimations.” Elizabeth tried to contain her fervor. If he thought she was getting ahead of herself, he wouldn’t listen.

  “You can see it,” she went on. “If you look at the Hawaii collection as a whole, you can see that O’Keeffe was saying farewell to her old themes, painting those giant flowers for the very last time, and preparing for what would come next.”

  “You’re rather passionate about this, I must say.”

  “I guess I am.”

  “Why?”

  Elizabeth stopped, wondering if she had gone too far. Then she thought: might as well go all the way.

  “I think O’Keeffe was trying to understand what it means to be a woman. She did that her whole life, but people kept misunderstanding.”

  “And you think you’ve got the missing piece?”

  “Ouch. That sounds arrogant.”

  “Not if you actually do.”

  “I don’t know. Everyone seems to dismiss the Hawaii paintings, as if they never happened. The enormous retrospective at the Tate, a few years ago? Not one painting from her time in Hawaii, and only one tiny reference in the whole 250-page catalogue.” Elizabeth shook her head. “Sure, there was that exhibit at the New York Botanical Garden, when they showed the Hawaii paintings all together—well, most of them. But it was a flower show, really. At a garden, for heaven’s sakes, not an art museum.”