Queen of the Owls Read online

  She’d told Ben that she needed to cover for Andrea at the food co-op. Before he could ask why Michael couldn’t do it, since it was a family membership, she spun a vague story about a family event in honor of one of Michael’s cousins. Ben didn’t press her for details; he was used to the endless baptisms and weddings and confirmations of the extended Silvestri family. Nor did he ask what she intended to do with Katie while she stacked produce and sorted boxes. People brought their kids to the food co-op all the time. It was part of the natural food, natural parenting philosophy—principles she and Ben agreed with, in theory, but hadn’t had time to actually practice since Elizabeth started graduate school.

  At the last minute she grabbed a frayed parka Daniel had outgrown and tucked it behind Katie in the stroller. She couldn’t very well show up at the coat drive without a coat.

  Michael worked at a small advertising agency, a progressive firm that promoted solar energy and organic cleaning supplies. A community coat drive was their kind of project, and it wasn’t so farfetched for Michael to be involved. Still, Elizabeth had promised Andrea that she would try to catch him in a lie, so she pulled into the parking lot, flipped open Katie’s stroller, and entered the building.

  The lobby was full of people, boxes, and racks on wheels—a bigger and more disorganized event than Elizabeth had expected. Maybe Michael really did have to put in all those hours. She looked around, trying to decide what to do.

  “Can I help you?” A man with a parrot-like profile was standing in front of the stroller. He had a clipboard and a plastic badge with the logo of Michael’s firm.

  “Oh,” she said. “Yes. I’m looking for Michael Silvestri. I don’t suppose he’s here?”

  She was sure the man would say haven’t seen him since Friday or who’s he? Instead, he craned his neck and pointed to a table in the back of the lobby. “He’s over there, with his laptop.”

  “He is?” Elizabeth looked where the man was pointing. It really was Michael. There was a woman seated next to him but she was typing away on her own laptop and Elizabeth didn’t think they looked like people who were having an affair.

  Andrea had been wrong, then. The coat drive wasn’t a cover story for an illicit tryst. Well, that was an answer too. “You want me to get him for you?” the man asked.

  “No. Please don’t.” Elizabeth was sure she sounded ridiculous after telling him that she was looking for Michael, but the last thing she wanted now was for Michael to see her and ask why she was there. “It isn’t really necessary.”

  “No problem—” the man began.

  Katie stood up in her stroller and pointed in the direction the man had indicated. “Un-ca My-ca!” she shouted.

  Michael looked up. He seemed confused, then pleased when he recognized them, and then confused again. But not guilty, Elizabeth thought. Not like she would have looked if someone had caught her coming out of Richard’s studio.

  Katie was trying to climb out of the stroller. “Sit,” Elizabeth ordered. “We’ll go say hi to Uncle Michael when you sit down.”

  She angled the stroller across the room, toward the folding table where Michael and the woman were sitting side by side. Up close, the woman was more attractive than Elizabeth had realized. She had dark hair cropped close to her skull, a high forehead and perfectly arched brows.

  “Liz,” Michael said, his voice rising in delight. “Caro, this is Liz, my sister-in-law.”

  Katie raised her arms. “And Katie,” Michael said. “Katie is my absolute favorite niece. Especially now that she can say my name so beautifully.” He bent to lift her from the stroller, then turned to Elizabeth. “What brings you here?”

  Spying on you. She stole a glance at the woman, Caro, and something seized in her stomach. She didn’t want to be the one to catch Michael flirting behind his wife’s back. And even if he was flirting, it didn’t mean he’d been unfaithful. A person could do a lot of things without crossing that line.

  She watched as Caro brushed her index fingers across her eyebrows. Her fingernails were dark blue, almost black. A dozen silver bracelets circled her wrists. Flair, that’s what she had, Elizabeth thought, and a slinky feline appeal. She could imagine Michael wanting to take Caro to bed, but that didn’t mean anything. Both people had to take the step, together.

  She reached into the stroller and pulled out the matted parka. “I wanted to drop this off. Daniel’s outgrown it.” Caro gave her a wary look. “In person,” Elizabeth added. “I thought it would be nicer that way.”

  “Why didn’t you just give it to Andie?” Michael asked.

  Just give it to Andie? Because we wanted to catch you in a lie. Only they hadn’t. Elizabeth scrambled for an answer that made sense. It really was a half-baked scheme; she couldn’t remember why she had agreed to it. “I didn’t have it with me when I saw her.” A stupid excuse. Why was she acting so nervous, as if she was the one who’d been caught?

  “Anyway,” she added, “I figured it would be interesting to see the coat drive.”

  She cringed at the inanity of her words. She could almost read Michael’s mind. Since when was Liz, his hyper-intellectual sister-in-law, so fascinated by seeing people sort jackets into small, medium, and large?

  Katie wiggled in Michael’s arms. “Un-ca My-ca,” she repeated. “Katie Un-ca My-ca.”

  The skepticism on Michael’s face was hard to miss. After a moment he returned his attention to Katie. “I am, indeed, the famous Un-ca My-ca. How smart of you to find me.”

  Elizabeth grabbed at the opening. “That was another reason for stopping by. Katie wanted to show you how beautifully she can say your name.”

  Jesus. What was wrong with her? Every idiot knew that giving a second reason, when no one had questioned the first, meant there was something you were trying to hide.

  Caro gave a snort of amusement. “We’ll have to put it in the firm’s newsletter.” Then she looked at her phone. “I have ten minutes, max. Then I have a Pilates class.”

  “Ten minutes?” Michael quipped. “Max may be that quick, but I prefer to take my time.” Caro rolled her eyes. Elizabeth understood, then, in the very tartness of their banter, that nothing was going on between them. Lovers wouldn’t joke like that. Not that she’d had a lover.

  “I have less than ten,” she said. “I just wanted to drop the coat off.”

  Michael arched his eyebrow again, and again Elizabeth could tell what he was thinking. Fine, we’ll let it go. But you and I both know there’s some major bullshit going on here.

  He returned Katie to the stroller. “And now, your famous Un-ca My-ca has work to do.”

  It could be someone else, Elizabeth thought. Not Caro-of-the-sculpted-haircut, but someone else.

  Not her problem. She’d done what she promised Andrea she would do. Time to get out of here. “Of course,” she said. “We’re on our way.”

  “Tell Ben I’ll see him at squash,” Michael said.

  Tell Richard I’ll see him at Tai Chi.

  Elizabeth’s steps were slow as she entered the Tai Chi studio. For the second Wednesday in a row, Richard wasn’t there.

  Seventeen

  She hadn’t seen Richard in twelve days. The last time she saw him was in his studio, her naked body silhouetted against a white curtain.

  “I’ll see you at Tai Chi.” That was the last thing he had said to her.

  Those Wednesday meetings, with their danger and their promise, had been a path. She had followed the path, all the way to the white curtain, exactly as he told her to.

  She’d been certain there would be more between them, after the photos. He’d let her believe that. And he’d felt it too. She had felt his desire, all the way across the room. Maybe he hadn’t planned to want her, but he had.

  This was insane. Unbearable. It took everything Elizabeth had not to run to his studio and up those stairs and through that door, tearing off her clothes as she ran—the way O’Keeffe had done, at Lake George, laughing as her clothes flew behind her like bird
s, because she and Stieglitz couldn’t wait another second.

  Instead, she climbed the two flights of stairs in the Humanities building, her hand tracing the groove in the wooden bannister, and rapped on Harold Lindstrom’s door. This time, she was on his calendar. A scheduled meeting.

  Harold leaned back in his leather chair and studied her across the desk. “So, Ms. Crawford. What have you come up with?”

  Elizabeth collected her thoughts. She needed to show him, step by step—the idea that would catapult her dissertation straight to publication, and from there to a tenure-track position and an office like his, with a view of the campus green and her nameplate on the door.

  It was simple, really. Georgia had spent nine weeks in Hawaii. It was long enough, and different enough, for something new to happen. And it had.

  After Hawaii, Georgia had turned from the lushness of living forms to the beauty of the void. A pelvic bone, opening to an azure sky. A doorway, a window. None of it was an accident, because everything Georgia did was intentional.

  Elizabeth cleared her throat. “I’ve been looking at O’Keeffe’s timeline, like we said? Well, turns out she bought her first house in New Mexico in 1940, six months after she came back from Hawaii. It was a commitment to a new life, separate from Stieglitz.”

  Harold seemed unimpressed. “They’d already been living apart. That doesn’t mean Hawaii was a seminal influence on her work.”

  “Here. I’ll show you.” Elizabeth opened a folder and drew out a dozen prints, spreading them across his desk.

  Pink Tulip, painted in 1926. The vibrant colors, a living plant in the very act of opening. Pink Ornamental Banana, painted in 1939. The same colors and shapes, but closed now, tall and proud against a lavender sky. “O’Keeffe painted the first one when she was living in New York with Stieglitz, the second one when she was in Hawaii by herself. They’re similar, right? Like they’re part of a series—except the second flower is shut, contained. No one can see what’s inside.”

  She pointed to the next two prints. Waterfall No. 1, another Hawaii painting, and The Black Place, painted four years after O’Keeffe’s return to New Mexico. The same composition, but the landscape in The Black Place was stripped of life, dark and lunar, the waterfall reduced to a desiccated crack.

  “It’s as if she had a final burst of sensuality in Hawaii, and then she began to withdraw, renouncing all that ripeness and vitality, so she could come to something stark and pure.” She touched the print of a hollow pelvis that she had placed next to Hibiscus with Plumeria. It was one of O’Keeffe’s last flower paintings, pretty and pale, like a girl’s cupcake. Its lushness was already fading.

  “After O’Keeffe bought her house in New Mexico, she started painting the empty pelvis. No more flowers.” Elizabeth paused, wanting her words to have the gravity they deserved. “And then, after Stieglitz died in 1946, all she wanted to paint were doorways. In the end, it was all geometrical, abstract.”

  “That doesn’t prove Hawaii was the catalyst.”

  “Of course not.” Elizabeth scooped up the prints, tapping the edges into a neat stack. “Things aren’t provable in art, as if they were math problems. But if you line up the evidence—the paintings, the dates, the facts of her life—it all makes sense.” She slid the papers back into the folder. “That’s what I intend to argue. A fresh argument, like you said, supported by data.”

  Harold dipped his chin, a smile warming his features. “You’re good, Ms. Crawford. Well said.”

  Elizabeth beamed in return. “I hope so.” Then she grew pensive. “There’s a curious aspect to her time in Hawaii, you know. O’Keeffe was very precise about everything, right down to the color of her linens, and definitely about how she presented herself. Neutral colors, always. So the photos of her in Hawaii are strange, because they depict an entirely different woman. You’ll see, if you look at them, that she’s happy and relaxed, in this big straw hat, with a patterned shirt—completely different from the way she dressed in nearly every other picture.”

  “And?”

  “And it’s odd. For someone who loved color and line, the curve of a petal or hillside, there was nothing soft about the way she looked and dressed. Her hair pulled tight, in a black cape or a black suit. That Zen-like dress she wore in New Mexico.” Elizabeth’s voice dropped. “It’s almost like she refused personal beauty. Or only let herself be beautiful when she was nude.”

  As soon as she heard herself utter the last four words, Elizabeth knew she had taken a risk, maybe even a stupid one. But she yearned— suddenly, desperately—to talk about the photos. If she couldn’t talk about the photos Richard had taken of her, she could talk about the ones Stieglitz had taken of Georgia.

  She began to speak rapidly now, driven by an urgency she couldn’t seem to halt. “If you look at O’Keeffe’s early years, the more the art world raved about how erotic her paintings were, the more she presented herself as this stern, austere, almost androgynous figure. Like she was trying to project a counter-image of someone harsh and sexless, the exact opposite of the sex goddess everyone assumed she was, and wanted her to be—all because of what Stieglitz had written about her in the beginning, and how he’d portrayed her in his photographs.”

  Elizabeth stopped to catch her breath. She could tell from the look on Harold’s face that she’d gone too far.

  “I’m not sure why we’re talking about all this,” he said. “Your dissertation is on O’Keeffe’s paintings, not Stieglitz’s photographs. On Hawaii in 1939.”

  Elizabeth snapped to attention. What the hell was she doing? Harold had singled her out—from a cadre of equally smart and ambitious doctoral candidates—and become her champion. He’d recommended her to Marion Mackenzie; he was grooming her for academic stardom.

  “Yes, of course. I was just putting Hawaii in context. Before and after.”

  “That’s my point,” Harold said. “Can you make a convincing case that Hawaii was the crucial juncture? The pivot, if you will. Otherwise it’s wishful thinking, not scholarship.”

  “I can. And my point is that, after Hawaii, O’Keeffe’s work was stripped to the bones. Literally. As if she’d left everything else behind.”

  “She changed, matured. All artists do.”

  “True, but for O’Keeffe it was a complete contrast. Once she started her patio series, the curves and whorls completely disappeared. Everything became sharp and geometrical. Stylized, reduced to its essence.”

  After Stieglitz was dead. After the nudes ceased to matter.

  She held Harold’s gaze. “Only the doorway, the passage. That’s all she cared about, in the end.”

  “And it began in Hawaii?”

  “I think so.”

  He nodded. “All right. You have your idea. You’ll be challenged when you defend it—Marion, especially, is quite the stickler—so you’ll have to line up your sources. But if you can do that, you’ll be off to an impressive start as a top-notch scholar.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Lindstrom. That means a lot to me.” Elizabeth let out a sigh. “I do love it, you know.” She gestured at the bookshelves that lined his office. “Research, teaching. The academic life.”

  “I know you do.” Harold pushed back his chair. “Actually, I have a book that might interest you. It’s about the doorway in contemporary art.” He rose and went to the bookcase. “It’s quite valuable, both in itself and to me personally, since it’s signed by the author.” He pulled a heavy volume from its place on the top shelf. “I’ll loan it to you if you promise to guard it like one of your children.”

  “I will. Thank you.”

  “Monday,” he said. “I need you to return it to me on Monday morning.”

  She took the book from him. “Monday morning. And thank you again, Dr. Lindstrom.”

  “Let me know if you find it useful.”

  Lucy’s play was at noon on Monday. Fine; she could drop Daniel and Katie at Lucy’s house to get ready while she ran over to campus to give Harold his book.
r />   Finding time to read the book over the next few days would be more of a challenge than returning it. At least there were no secret trips to Michael’s advertising agency, no double dates with Phoebe and her husband.

  Just life. Her ordinary life that she would have to get through, somehow, until next Wednesday.

  He had to come back to Tai Chi. See her. Want more.

  It was another of Ben’s squash nights. Elizabeth made Daniel and Katie’s favorite meal, pasta with baby tomatoes, and read Where the Wild Things Are before kissing them goodnight. They were sound asleep by the time she heard Ben’s key in the lock and the click of the front door. She set down Harold’s book, the cover drifting shut over the single page she’d read, and went to greet him. “How was your game?”

  Ben eased out of his windbreaker, dropping it onto the back of the couch. “Not bad. Michael was in rare form.” Then he sank onto the cushion to take off his shoes. “He got a kick out of Katie knowing his name, by the way. He didn’t think she’d ever said it before.”

  “Yes, that’s right. It was her very first time.”

  Ben glanced up from untying his laces. “What were you doing at Michael’s office? I thought you were going to the food co-op because he had a big Silvestri family baptism or something.”

  The food co-op? That stupid lie. Why had she wasted a lie on Andrea’s ridiculous scheme? No wife, even one as clever as she was, could pull off an endless number of deceptions and half-truths. She needed to spend hers more carefully.

  Elizabeth rearranged her features, though she could feel the tell-tale heat rise into her cheeks. “I got mixed up, that’s all.”

  Ben kept looking at her—not suspiciously, Elizabeth assured herself, merely waiting for her to explain. There was no reason for him to be suspicious, since she’d never done anything she had to keep from him. Until now.

  “Andrea was telling me about the baptism,” she said, “and then she asked me to sub for her at the co-op. Some new customer who absolutely had to have a Sunday appointment. It was all part of the same conversation, so I got the two things confused.”