Queen of the Owls Read online

  Because this was Andie, charming irresistible Andie, with her rhinestone barrettes and midriff-baring halters, her lowered eyelids and the foxy toss of her head.

  Those things hadn’t protected her, after all. She might as well have been Lizzie-the-owl.

  Elizabeth struggled to take it in. Andrea was afraid. And Michael, who’d thought his dalliance was undetectable, had been mistaken. There were consequences, if you were curious.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Besides vent?” Andrea shook out her hair. “I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Let him get it out of his system.”

  “You mean, pretend you don’t know?”

  “I could,” Andrea said. “Because I don’t totally know. I don’t have, like, security tapes. Only what I know about him.” She sniffed. “Which is plenty, trust me.”

  Now Elizabeth was confused. “You don’t have any evidence?” She couldn’t help thinking of what Harold would say. Without data, it’s just conjecture.

  Andrea frowned. “Maybe I should do that, get actual evidence.”

  “It might be helpful. So you’d know, for sure.”

  “So he can’t tell me I’m being paranoid.”

  “Would he do that?”

  “Who knows what a person would do, if they thought they’d been caught?” Andrea flipped her hair behind her shoulders. “If I have proof, I can decide when to use it, or if I want to use it. I’ll have some power in this shit storm.” Elizabeth could see the sheen of tears on her sister’s cheeks.

  My turn to help, she thought. Andrea had given her highlights and a layered haircut. She could give her this, in return. Her skill, as an investigator.

  “If you want to get real evidence,” she said, “you have to think it through.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin. That’s your specialty, Lizzie, thinking things through.”

  Elizabeth pursed her lips. “You need a plan.”

  “Right. To catch him in the act.”

  “You want to confront him?”

  “No, not yet. He doesn’t know that I know, and I want to keep it that way.” Andrea’s face hardened. “I need to set a trap.”

  “You mean, spy on him?”

  “Fine. Spy on him. Whatever it takes to get what I need without him knowing.” Her expression was beseeching and demanding at the same time. It must have been the way she looked, Elizabeth thought, when she cajoled teachers into giving her extra time on assignments or finessed her way out of being grounded for coming home late. “You’re clever, Lizzie. You can think up a good scheme. I know you can.”

  Clever. That meant sly enough to figure out how to sneak behind a husband’s back.

  It was just so she could understand O’Keeffe. She wasn’t having an affair, like Michael.

  Andrea inched closer. “You know me, Lizzie. I do whatever’s in front of me. I don’t know how to think like that—two steps ahead, like someone who’d cook up a smart lie as a cover for sneaking around.”

  A pang of guilt stung Elizabeth in the chest, in the very spot Richard had touched. Whenever you’re ready.

  She glanced at the clock. The TV show would be over soon. “Well,” she said, “what sort of things does Michael do with his time—you know, something you’d never dare to question?”

  “Something above suspicion?”

  “Exactly. You’d look possessive and neurotic if you questioned it.”

  “Ha. That’s good, Lizzie. Keep going.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes darted to the bag of clothes. Her heart skipped a beat, as if she had already betrayed the person who would soon be wearing those neatly folded shirts. “Not squash,” she said. “Ben would rat on him if he used that as a cover.”

  “Unless they’re covering for each other.”

  Elizabeth snorted. “I don’t think so.”

  “You think Ben’s immune?”

  “No one’s immune.” Her jaw tightened. “But no, they aren’t badboy pals like that. It would have to be something else that Michael does with his time. Something altruistic.”

  “You’re right.” Andrea grew thoughtful. Then she brightened, looking almost happy. “I know exactly how the little sneak is playing me. It’s that damn coat drive at his office. I kept wondering how there could be that many fucking coats to organize.” She grabbed Elizabeth’s arm. “You’re the best, Lizzie. I always did love that steel-trap mind of yours.”

  Elizabeth flinched at her sister’s grip. Andrea’s elation scared her. She wanted to caution her: “Don’t count on my mind so much. It doesn’t know everything.”

  Instead, she kept her reply mild, noncommittal. “Don’t be so quick to draw conclusions, that’s all. Life’s complicated.”

  “Aha.” Animated now, Andrea pounced on the remark. “I get to ask you, again, why it’s so complicated. And you get to answer me this time.”

  “Me?”

  “You. Something’s up. I can tell.”

  Elizabeth hesitated. She’d wanted to talk about it. Well, why not now? Maybe it would take Andrea’s mind off her own concerns. “You really want to know?”

  “Duh. So you’d really better tell.”

  Again, she wavered. Once said, it couldn’t be unsaid.

  Oh, who cared? Hadn’t the impossible just happened to Andrea? That meant anything could happen; the world could flip inside-out. “I’m kind of interested in someone.”

  “Other than Ben.”

  “My turn to say duh.”

  “Who?”

  “He’s in my Tai Chi class.”

  “The plot thickens.”

  “It’s nothing, really.”

  “How do you know? Is he interested back?”

  Elizabeth thought of the way Richard had undone the button on her shirt. Let yourself open, right from here. “He might be.”

  “So. No sizzle with old Ben, even with your new haircut?” Andrea thrust out her chin. “Then I say, go for it. If they can, we can.” Her tone grew sharp. “Men. Husbands. We can do it too.”

  She’s angry, Elizabeth thought. She wants to get back at Michael.

  “We’ll see.” She glanced at Daniel and Katie again, saw that they were still enraptured by the monkey’s antics, and turned back to Andrea. “And what about you, Andie? What are you going to do about Michael? I mean, how?”

  “Pooh. That’s the easy part, now that you’ve broken the code.”

  “You need to think it through—” she began, but Andrea cut her off.

  “I got it. I’m not a complete moron, you know.”

  The brassy chorus filled the room. And that’s your reward, you’ll never be bored. “I think the show’s over,” Elizabeth said.

  Andrea stood and dusted off her jeans. “That’s my cue. I’ll keep you posted.”

  Elizabeth rose too. Don’t, she thought. She didn’t want to know if Andrea had caught Michael in his secrets and lies.

  But she gave her sister a hug, saying only, “Thanks for the clothes. And good luck.”

  Mr. Wu’s daughter was waiting on the fourth-floor landing, at a respectful distance from the curtained archway that led to the dojo. “I have a cab waiting,” she announced. Within moments, she had whisked her father into the elevator.

  Elizabeth went to get her purse and shoes from the cubbyhole. Around her, the other students were collecting their own sweaters and shoes. She could hear fragments of conversation, Juniper’s high-pitched commentary. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do. Wait for Richard again? Could they still sip Americanos, after the hour in his studio? Not that anything had happened. She had fled before it could.

  She drew her shoes out of the cubbyhole and bent to slip them on. She could have tossed them on the floor and stepped into them quickly, but every second she took before leaving the dojo was another second before she would have to find out—or decide—if she would see Richard tonight.

  He’d have to lock up. Should she wait for him on the street? What if she did, and he walked right past he
r? What if she didn’t, and he wished she had?

  The lights flickered, and the dojo turned dark. Only a splatter of light remained from the waiting area in front of the elevator. Her heart throbbed against her ribs, a fat red muscle she couldn’t fool.

  “Anyone back there?” Richard called.

  Voices rang out from the far end of the landing, near the restrooms. “Coming!” It was one of the older women, a wiry elf with a grey pony-tail.

  A bearded man, her husband, hurried to join her. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  Elizabeth hoisted her purse onto her shoulder. She’d walk out with them, a protective flank. That way, Richard wouldn’t think she expected anything. She caught up with the couple, trying not to look at him, but her lashes lifted, on their own, and she looked into his eyes.

  He wanted her to wait. The message was right there, in those smoky grey irises. “We’d better go down together,” he said. “I have to turn off the access to the floor, once we’re all out.”

  “Good security,” the bearded man said. “Can’t be too careful, these days.” He motioned for his wife to precede him.

  Elizabeth followed them into the elevator. Richard was the last to get on. He leaned against the side, near the panel of buttons. There was an empty spot in the front but he settled near the back corner, only inches from where she stood. She could see the planes of his face, a shadow of stubble on his cheek. The elevator growled to a halt, and the couple got off. “See you next week,” the woman called. Her husband fished in his pocket, pulling out a set of car keys. He gave a quick salute, and they hurried across the street.

  Elizabeth and Richard were alone in front of the building. The streetlight flickered. If she did the wrong thing, it would all be over.

  “So,” he said. He slouched against the building, hands in his pockets. “I did some more reading about your Mr. Stieglitz.”

  Elizabeth tried to match his nonchalance. “And?”

  “And he had an interesting approach to photography.” He smiled, and her pulse began to race. “He’d go out into the world with his camera until he came across something that excited him. He’d take the picture, and then he’d manipulate the print, make it into a kind of abstraction, an evocation, of what he felt when he looked at the scene. It was pretty radical for those days. Because he wasn’t trying to be accurate. He was expressing, creating.”

  “Learning,” Elizabeth said. “He was always learning.” About photography, and about Georgia. The way Georgia was learning about herself, by posing for him.

  “O’Keeffe said the same thing,” she told Richard. “I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at, not copy it.”

  “You think one of them imitated the other, or they both saw it the same way?”

  “It would be nice to think they were that attuned, wouldn’t it? But they probably talked about it.”

  Richard’s voice was low, unhurried. “They had a lot of time to talk, you know, while he was taking his pictures. The exposures were really long in those days, up to four minutes. Think of it. The two of them waiting together, not moving, all that time.”

  Elizabeth held his gaze. Not four minutes, but longer than two people ought to, who were standing in public like that.

  “Of course, maybe he was just wrapped up in his own creativity. O’Keeffe once said that Stieglitz was always photographing himself.”

  Richard stared at her in surprise, then let out a roar of laugher. Elizabeth flushed, pleased with herself. Then, abruptly, he grew serious again. “What do you think, Elizabeth? Is the photographer always taking his own portrait, or can he see and capture someone else?” The grey eyes penetrated hers. “Really see them?”

  “I guess it would depend on how carefully he looked.” She cleared her throat, trying not to fly out of her skin. “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment.”

  “More quotations?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Are you?” He caught her fingers in his hand. “Afraid?”

  “A little.”

  “Are we going to try again, anyway?”

  Elizabeth drew in her breath. “Yes. We are.”

  After all, her sister had told her to.

  Thirteen

  Hawaii. Elizabeth typed the word into the search engine of her laptop. She needed to know about the real things O’Keeffe had seen and touched while she was there, the raw material O’Keeffe had transformed into her paintings.

  Most of O’Keeffe’s time had been spent on Maui, with Patricia Jennings as her guide. Jennings, a young girl whose father managed a sugar plantation, took O’Keeffe to her favorite places, introducing her to a verdant landscape that must have taken Georgia’s breath away. Elizabeth scrolled through the websites designed to lure travelers to the islands. Rainforests, cascading waterfalls, the freshwater pools of the Ohe’o Gulch. The massive Haleakala volcano. The hairpin turns of the Hana Road, with their heart-stopping view of cliffs plunging to the sea. The Wai’anapanapa coastline, black sand beaches, arches, and caves; the white sands of Palauea. The ’Iao Valley, inspiration for four of O’Keeffe’s paintings. Hawaii’s exotic flowers: Plumeria, Bird of Paradise, Ginger, Heliconia.

  Everything about Hawaii was the inverse of what Georgia was used to. Breathing itself must have been strange and new. In New Mexico, Georgia had breathed air that was crisp and dry; in Hawaii, the very oxygen was thick and soft, heavy with a different kind of heat. Volcanic mountains replaced New Mexico’s bare red hills. High and craggy, emerald and jade against an azure sea. A landscape lush and fecund and wet, unlike anything in Georgia’s experience.

  How had Georgia coped, a desert creature flung into the tropics? The weight of the air, hot and moist on her skin—it must have pushed at her with the relentless question. Who am I, here, in this place?

  Elizabeth could almost feel it. The sensuality, everywhere. Georgia had to paint. It was the only way to keep from drowning in sensation.

  She turned to her folder of prints, flipping through the pictures, looking for something she had missed. Hibiscus with Plumeria, with its flimsy diminished sexuality; the mysterious golden Hibiscus that never got included in the art books. Cup of Silver Ginger, a complicated painting that she had found difficult to like.

  She drew Cup of Silver Ginger from the stack and laid it next to her laptop. The white petals, tinged with lime, seemed to bulge outward— begging her to fit her palm over the white mound, press her thumb into the dense green swirls, trace the frayed edges of the petals. She could almost feel the soft mysterious mass of palest orange, like cotton or smoke, the silk of the lavender corners. She wanted to crawl inside and lie down.

  And then she understood. The understanding had begun earlier, when she looked at the ’Iao Valley paintings, but now it opened wide, revealing itself to her stunned comprehension.

  Georgia’s paintings weren’t meant to be looked at, from the outside. They were meant to be entered, experienced.

  Elizabeth remembered what Richard had told her about Stieglitz. Stieglitz would use cropping and lighting to transform an object into something universal and abstract. In control, always. Georgia was different. She used her art to draw the viewer inside. Whether it was a flower, a pelvis, a fissure in the hills—it was the same gesture. Enter. Participate.

  After Hawaii, the openings were cleaner, starker, nothing that could be mistaken for mere beauty. A pelvic opening against the flat blue sky. A doorway, a window.

  Elizabeth sat back, staring at her folder. She had figured it out, what she wanted to say in her dissertation.

  Lindstrom would be happy. Marion Mackenzie too, because her dissertation would be about a female artist claiming her own form of knowledge.

  There’s something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore.

  Hawaii had transformed Georgia through her body, not just her eyes or her paintbrush.

  Instead of elation, Elizabeth felt a gri
ef so immense that it made her grab the edge of the desk. She had her idea now. She didn’t need to do what Georgia did, in order to write about her. The whole point of posing for Richard was gone.

  They had an agreement: posing was a way to jolt her into understanding how O’Keeffe related to the world. It was audacious, provocative, but it had a purpose. Without that purpose, there was no reason to continue.

  Unless she just—wanted to. Wanted to take her clothes off and let him look at her, the way Stieglitz had looked at O’Keeffe.

  They hadn’t even started. It wasn’t fair to stop now.

  Elizabeth let out a cry. She tried to stifle the sound but it was too late. There were no walls between the dining room, where she had her desk, and the living room, where Ben was watching a basketball game. “Liz?” He turned around. “You okay?”

  “I jabbed my elbow, that’s all.”

  “Be careful.” Elizabeth didn’t know if he was being critical or concerned; it didn’t matter. He made a vaguely sympathetic sound and returned to the game.

  No, she told herself. Just because she had a good idea about the ovoid motif, it didn’t mean she was finished with her quest. She needed to understand O’Keeffe in any way she could. Harold had told her not to limit herself. She could experiment. Pose, if that was part of her research.

  Good Lord. She was on her way to a gold medal in the self-deception Olympics. You didn’t need a graduate degree to figure that out.

  And yet, it was true. Something had shifted. She didn’t want to imitate Georgia any more. She wanted this for herself.

  Elizabeth closed the laptop and stood. “Ben,” she said. “I meant to ask you.”

  He muted the sound and turned around again. “Ask me what?”

  She leaned against the arch that separated the dining alcove from the rest of the room. “If you can watch the kids on Saturday morning. I said I’d do a tutorial session for some of the students who’re falling behind.”

  Saturday, Richard had told her. She could try again on Saturday.