Queen of the Owls Page 15

  “On your own time? Seems a bit exploitive.”

  “I’m just trying to help. Anyway, they aren’t making me. I offered. If you can watch the kids, that is.”

  Ben shook his head. “It’s not the greatest timing. I was hoping to meet with the leader of the tenants’ organization on Saturday morning. He works Monday to Friday.”

  Elizabeth tried to mask her disappointment. She didn’t want to pit her good deed against his, even if hers was a fabrication. On the other hand, he hadn’t actually refused.

  “I’m a little confused,” she said. “You were hoping, or you already arranged it?”

  He sighed. “Fine, I’ll do it another time.” His eyes darted to the TV as someone in a white-and-green jersey pushed a basketball through the hoop. “I’m sure your students will appreciate it.”

  Something altruistic, above suspicion—that’s what she had advised Andrea, who wanted to unmask her husband’s deception. “Thanks. It’ll only be a couple of hours.”

  Oh, she was learning fast. That was one good thing about being an owl.

  Richard had a stack of prints, reproductions of Stieglitz’s portraits of O’Keeffe. “We’ll start with the top one,” he said, “and work our way through, as far as you want.”

  Yes, that was better, Elizabeth thought. A trail to follow, a plan. No Richard, wanting to see her collarbone when she wasn’t prepared. She examined the pile of photos he had placed on a wooden table in the center of the studio. The top photo was a close-up of O’Keeffe’s hands, one above the other, bent, like cranes poised in a pas de deux. The others were hidden below it.

  He touched the picture, then gave a soft shrug, as if to say: You see? You’re in control. Nothing’s going to happen that you don’t want to happen.

  Like the cranes, in a delicate dance. If one crane wanted to stop, the dance ended.

  She considered asking to see all the pictures, to know what lay ahead. But Richard was already in motion, pointing her toward a dark screen. “Stieglitz tended to use a dark backdrop, so we will too.” He grabbed a camera with one hand, using the other to steer her to the screen. “He did a half-dozen shots of her hands, all of them gorgeous. Always both hands, never just one.” He gave Elizabeth a sideways look. “I think he was in awe of her hands. His art was all from his eyes and his mind. Not from his hands the way hers was, as a painter.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “It’s all interesting.” He pulled a metal stool in front of the screen. “Here. You can sit. It’ll be easier for you to hold your hands up.”

  Elizabeth climbed onto the stool while he adjusted the settings on his camera. She began to feel nervous—not because he was trying to seduce her, but because he wasn’t. No smoldering looks or slow stroking the curve of her finger. He was serious now, professional. Well, that was the idea, wasn’t it? A photo shoot, not a date.

  She wanted to ask him why he was doing this. She had never really asked, only accepted that he understood what she needed. But he didn’t really know her. He didn’t even know about Daniel and Katie.

  “I’ll position your hands,” he said. “Just hold them where I put them.”

  “Not for four minutes, I hope.”

  He laughed. “No, it’ll be quick. We’re a hundred years past the technology Stieglitz had to use.” Delicately, he bent her hands and placed them the way O’Keeffe’s were in the photo. Then he stepped back and snapped the picture. “You see? Easy.” He took a step to the left and clicked the camera three more times. “Hold it, just like that.” More shots, from different angles.

  “I can drop my hands now?”

  “You can drop them.” He walked to the table, placed the photo of Georgia’s hands to the left of the stack, and picked up the next photo. “This one is wonderful too.” Elizabeth waited. He returned to where she was sitting and handed the picture to her.

  Georgia’s face was in profile, her hair pulled back. Her bare upper arm filled the bottom of the frame. Both arms were raised, fingers open like the fronds of a fern. “She looks so strong” Elizabeth said. “Like a priestess.”

  “That’s good. Try to feel that way yourself, when you take the pose.”

  Elizabeth studied the picture. Georgia’s shoulder, round and powerful, was cropped at the base of the composition. There was no way to tell if she was wearing anything. There might have been a strap, hidden by the curve of flesh, or there might not.

  “Take your shirt off,” he said. “You can leave everything else. All I need is your arm.”

  Elizabeth wet her lips. “Right.” She drew the blue jersey over her head and let it fall to the floor. She kept her bra on. He hadn’t told her to take it off, not yet.

  “I need your hair back.” He came up behind her and smoothed her hair from her face. “Like that. Just a part of the ear, and a scallop of hairline. The rest won’t show.” Elizabeth felt his palms against her scalp, their loss when he stepped away. “Look down,” he told her. “Inward. You’re quiet and alone. Nothing can distract you.”

  He raised her arms, opened right hand into a fan. She felt regal, pure, poised in an ancient ritual. A queen, sure of her power.

  “Don’t move.” He took two shots, then a third. “Perfect.” She held the pose as he tried different angles, closer and further away. Then he met her eyes. “Another?”

  “Yes. All right.” She lowered her arms and started to reach for the blue jersey, then thought: why?

  “I thought we’d focus on hands today.” He took the next picture from the stack. “Hands and faces. There were so many ways he tried to portray O’Keeffe, just through her hands and face.”

  “Yes. I want the pictures that show her face. So we know it’s her.”

  Richard stood behind her as she examined the photo he had placed on the table. Georgia looked pensive and lovely, dark hair loose across her shoulder. One arm framed her face while the other, cropped, entered the portrait from outside. The fingers were spread, palms facing the camera. Elizabeth noted the thin white strap of a camisole. It meant she would be covered. She felt a flicker of relief, yet the dark mass of underarm hair, so raw and exposed, seemed unbearably erotic.

  “This one was taken against one of her paintings,” Richard said. “We’ll have to make do with a dark background.”

  Elizabeth was still looking at the picture. She didn’t have a camisole, just a bra, but only the strap would show. Like a bathing suit. People wore less at the beach.

  “Take the pose,” he told her. “Don’t think about it.”

  Elizabeth looked closely. “I think she was leaning against the painting.”

  “You’re right.” He looked around. “Pick a wall.” Seeing the question on her face, he added, “You can’t lean against the screen. It’s not sturdy enough.”

  Leaving the jersey on the floor, Elizabeth walked to the far wall. A strange new boldness filled her limbs as she walked; she hoped he was watching. “Show me the picture again. Or do you want to arrange me?”

  “I want you to take the pose yourself. However you feel it.”

  “All right.” She pressed against the wall and raised her arms. Her armpits were shaved. She wished they weren’t, wished she had that raw mass of hair to reveal to him.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  The word spoke itself. “Beautiful.”

  “Yes. Beautiful.” He watched her, his eyes shrouded. “Show me.”

  She held the pose. Her expression was private, like Georgia’s. She could feel her skin tingling, alert and alive. She couldn’t believe she was doing this. It was unreal, yet realer than anything she’d ever done.

  She heard the click of the shutter. Then again, as he circled her. “Yes, good.”

  She dropped her arms. “What’s next?”

  Richard walked to the little table. He ruffled through the stack of prints. “Do you want to see what we’ve got so far? I can load the photos onto my laptop.”

  Look at the pictures, with Richard? No. She didn’
t want to see them. It would make her into a looker instead of a woman in a body; it would break the spell. “No. Let’s keep going.” She followed him to the little table.

  He moved the portrait she had replicated to the side of the stack. There were three photos on the left now, completed, and a dozen remaining on the right. “Have a look at these. They’re all from the same day, the same series. We can do one, or all, or none.” He spread three new photos across the table.

  Elizabeth leaned forward to look. The first was of Georgia in a white robe, dreamy and disheveled, her left thumb resting inside the open V of the robe. In the next, her chin was held high, her expression austere and ethereal, the robe open to reveal the top of her breasts. In the third, she was looking into the distance, the robe fully open, hands cupping her breasts, the edge of a dark nipple between her splayed fingers.

  Her boldness dissolved. The sense she’d had, only moments before—of being more fully herself, imitating Georgia, than she was in her own life—fell away like petals from a dry rose, like the dust of the stolen hibiscus. What game did she think she was playing? She was supposed to hold her breasts and offer them to Richard? It was sick, a delusion. The pathetic fantasy of a lovesick adolescent. And what did it have to do with her dissertation? Was she planning to tell Harold, “By the way, I’m adding another kind of data?”

  Her neck and face were wet. She wiped her hand across her forehead.

  Richard’s voice was quiet. “Or none. Whatever you want.”

  Why did she have to decide? She wanted him to decide.

  Georgia would have decided for herself. That was the point. That was why she had to do this—so she could understand how to be like Georgia, who did what she wanted.

  “This one,” she said, touching the middle picture. A compromise.

  Richard looked at the photo. “I don’t have a robe but I can get you one of my white shirts. Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  Did he really think she would leave, now that she’d come this far? Again, she wondered why he was doing this. Shouldn’t she ask? She watched him disappear through a door at the other end of the long room. Maybe she didn’t want to know. She shivered and wished, for an instant, that she had picked the third photo.

  Richard returned with a white shirt. “We’ll use the light backdrop this time.” He handed her the shirt and went to retrieve the metal stool. When his back was turned, Elizabeth unhooked her bra, slipping it off her shoulders, and put on the shirt. Holding it closed with her fist, she followed him to the other side of the studio.

  She sat on the stool, and he lifted her chin. “Your hair needs to be loose, down your back.” Then he moved her hand, gently, and the shirt fell open.

  She began to tremble. In a moment he would look at her, see everything. The tender nipples, the sensitive skin. An offering that felt, just then, more intimate than anything she had ever offered to Ben or her children.

  “You have nothing to be afraid of,” he told her. “Your breasts are lovely. Your skin, and that beautiful collarbone.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. Yes. No. She couldn’t bear it.

  “Don’t disappear,” he told her. He picked up the camera.

  The trembling grew stronger. And then, suddenly, it stopped. She opened the shirt all the way. She looked right into the lens. A series of clicks, like raindrops, or a heartbeat.

  “The third one,” she said. The one where Georgia took her breasts in her hands, loving them. She wanted Richard to see her doing that.

  His hand was steady as he snapped the picture. Each snap, another heartbeat.

  Elizabeth looked at the wooden table. There were more photos in the pile; these were only the beginning. As if he had read her glance, Richard drew a photo from the middle of the stack. “I know you want pictures with her face, but I want this one too.” It was a close-up, cropped, of Georgia’s hand between her breasts. One breast faced into the camera, heavy and full, the nipple like a child’s eye. “Can you do this?”

  Elizabeth looked at his hand, holding the photograph. “Yes. I can do this.”

  —

  She lay next to Ben, listening to the low pfft of his breathing as he slept. The room was dark, only the yellow glow of the night-light in the hall and an oblong of moonlight, slanting from the window onto the hardwood floor. Elizabeth lay on her back, staring at nothing. The quilt was impossibly heavy. She kicked it off.

  Memories of Richard’s studio swirled in her mind. Watching him watch her. Herself, inside her body. The pictures of Georgia spread on the table. She’d thought of asking Richard if she could see the photos he had taken, after all, but she didn’t, and he didn’t offer again. She didn’t really want to see them. If she did, she might feel foolish and want to stop.

  Lying in the dark bedroom, she relived the morning, pose by pose. An ache rose up in her to be seen, ever more fully.

  She propped herself on an elbow and studied the slope of Ben’s shoulder as he lay on his side, the slow rise and fall of his chest. He had touched her many times, yet never with the intimacy she had felt in Richard’s studio. Had she betrayed him? No. There was nothing to betray.

  Then she rolled away, pulled up the quilt, and tried to sleep.

  Phoebe was helping Ruthie and Rex out of their jackets when Elizabeth arrived at Lucy’s house. Rex squirmed out of his jacket as he and Daniel slammed into each other, half tackle, half embrace. “I have Batman,” Daniel shouted.

  “I have Spiderman,” Rex countered, holding up the action figure like an Olympic torch. They raced off to the playroom.

  “Don’t cry,” Ruthie told Katie. “I’ll play with you.” Katie dropped Elizabeth’s hand and followed Ruthie down the hall.

  Phoebe blew her daughter a kiss, then burst out laughing. “Go figure. Just when I’ve written Ruthie off as a hopeless diva, she goes and does something lovely like that.”

  “Katie will be her slave forever.”

  Phoebe turned to Elizabeth. “So how are you?”

  How was she? Elizabeth longed to tell Phoebe what she had done. It was so extraordinary, so far outside anything that mothers talked about. Yet she needed to talk, she needed to tell someone.

  Lucy hurried into the foyer, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. “I thought I heard you.”

  “You did,” Phoebe answered. “It’s us. The conjoined moms.”

  “You do seem to be on the same schedule these days.”

  “It must be a conspiracy.” Phoebe gave a merry grin, and Elizabeth considered, again, whether Phoebe was someone she might confide in. They were women, weren’t they? Mothers, professionals, members of the same generation.

  “Well, now that the troops have landed, I’d better see what they’re up to.” Lucy slung the towel over her shoulder. “See you later, ladies. Enjoy your day.”

  “You too.” When Lucy had vanished into the playroom, Phoebe turned back to Elizabeth. “Really. How are you? You look a little—I don’t know, wired?”

  Wired? Maybe. Like a guitar string that had stretched further than it ever imagined.

  I want this one, too, he had told her. Not a question. The ripe naked breast. The single faceless portrait among all the photos he had taken, but it was still her.

  Oh, she had to speak, right now, before she started to think of all the reasons she shouldn’t. “How am I?” she echoed. “In transition. A work in progress.”

  “Hey, aren’t we all?”

  “I mean, I really am.”

  “Well, of course. You never know what’s up next. Charlie and I are, like, so what’s today’s insanity?”

  Elizabeth felt her conviction dim. Even if she tried to tell her, there was no way Phoebe would understand. She had Charlie.

  Phoebe picked up the jackets and hung them on pegs by the door. “Wine and cheese was fun, by the way. We should do it again. The four of us. We have a lot in common.”

  No, we don’t. But Elizabeth nodded politely. “Absolutely.”

  Phoebe blew an air kiss at
each of Elizabeth’s cheeks. “Well, got to fly. But text me, we’ll find a good time to do it again.” She yelled, “Bye, Lucy! See you later.”

  Elizabeth watched Phoebe stride down the flagstone walkway to her car. It was Phoebe’s fault. If she hadn’t flaunted her relationship with her husband, Elizabeth wouldn’t have had to bare herself to Richard.

  Phoebe, Andrea. There was always someone reminding her that what she had wasn’t enough.

  If she wanted more, she had to take it.

  Fourteen

  Marion Mackenzie’s office was bigger and grander than Harold Lindstrom’s. Marion had written textbooks, had an endowed chair; that was how these things worked, so many square feet for each line in your c.v. Tall shelves were jammed with art books and spiral-bound university publications. A framed print of Dove’s Me and the Moon hung above the glass-topped desk. A bright rug in matching tones of black and grey and gold covered the floor.

  “I’m glad you could stop by,” Marion said. “I thought we should get to know each other a little.” She crossed her legs, graceful in real stockings, and arranged her hands in her lap. A silk scarf was twisted around her throat, a swath of coral that matched her lipstick. “Harold sang your praises—which is, of course, why I agreed to join your committee—but there’s no substitute for a personal connection, don’t you think?”

  Elizabeth wasn’t sure which part of the sentence to respond to. The last part seemed safest. “Definitely,” she said. “And truly, I’m honored to have you on my committee, Dr. Mackenzie.”

  Marion waved an elegant hand. “Please. Call me Marion. We’re on the same team.”

  “Yes, thank you.” She didn’t think she could say Marion, though. It seemed indecent, unearned.

  Marion ran her palm across the glass figurines that lined her desk. They were cobalt, lime, amber, curious abstract shapes. “A shame you couldn’t make it to my talk but I’d be glad to send you a copy of the paper.”

  Elizabeth resisted the impulse to repeat the story about the babysitter with the flu. “I’d love that. Thank you.” Was she thanking her too much? Humble plus confident, she reminded herself. The best stance for a budding scholar.