Queen of the Owls Read online

  Elizabeth remembered the hibiscus Georgia had painted in Hawaii, its gaudy reproductive core shrunken to a thin and childish frill. A private message, perhaps, to the critics who claimed that her flowers were the outpouring of a repressed sexual fervor. Impossible to know Georgia’s intention, yet nothing she did was accidental.

  “I think O’Keeffe started out doing that,” Elizabeth said, “but then she painted the ocean, the lava caves, things she hadn’t ever painted before.”

  “Not quite successfully.”

  “Perhaps not. You can see that in the black lava paintings. They have an unfinished quality that’s unlike her other work.” Elizabeth flashed another smile. “I think it probably frustrated her no end, not to be able to capture the roiling ocean the way she saw it. She wasn’t used to falling short.”

  “It’s a challenge to render something totally new. Even for the esteemed O’Keeffe.”

  “Even for the esteemed O’Keeffe.” Elizabeth tented her hands, fingertips touching her chin. “When she came to Hawaii, O’Keeffe wrote: One sees new things rapidly everywhere, when everything seems new and different. But she also wrote: Maybe one takes one’s own world along and cannot see anything else. So yes, she understood that it might not be possible to begin entirely fresh, to work without old associations and ideas.”

  “In life, as in art.” Harold’s voice was dry. Elizabeth took his words as a concluding epigram and prepared to leave, but he motioned her to stay in her seat. “One more thing.”

  “Yes?” She tensed. Was something wrong?

  “This whole Hawaii business.” Harold eyed her over the rim of his glasses. “It’s an original idea and I think you can make it work, as long as you don’t imply that O’Keeffe’s Hawaii paintings were anything other than a bridge. In other words, don’t inflate them. They weren’t masterpieces. You’ll get ridiculed if you imply otherwise.”

  Elizabeth nodded, relieved that he wasn’t bringing up—what? Her obsession with the photos? He didn’t know about that. “Yes, I understand. And no, I’m not arguing that they’re some sort of under-appreciated artistic treasure. Only what I told you—that they were how she worked her way from her old themes to the art that came next.”

  “Her transitional relationship.”

  “Exactly. She was just passing through.”

  “Very good.” Harold placed his palms flat on the desk, shorthand for we’re done, then.

  Elizabeth was about to stand, as she knew she was supposed to, but she didn’t. Instead, she moved closer.

  “At the same time,” she said, “I don’t want to oversimplify anything about O’Keeffe, including her time in Hawaii. That wouldn’t be fair, since she rejected everyone’s attempt to pin her down—you know, the quintessentially female artist, beyond epochs. Or else the epitome of a modern artist, beyond gender. A painter of the flesh, or a painter of symbols. She hated to talk about her art. She thought it was something you had to experience directly.” Elizabeth gave a soft shrug, as if conceding the limits of her own vision. “So who knows? I could be wrong.”

  “You don’t have to be right,” Harold said. “You just have to be scholarly.”

  Elizabeth smiled, as she knew she was expected to. Then she heard Richard’s voice, as if he were right there, lifting his coffee cup in a challenge, or a benediction.

  If you want to understand O’Keeffe, you have to do what she did.

  Well, she had. And?

  “You’ve done fine work,” Harold told her. He pushed against the desk and rose. This time, the signal couldn’t be ignored. “You might want to confer with Marion Mackenzie, just to cross your Ts. If she likes your argument, no one in the department is going to challenge it. She’s our resident maven.” He gave Elizabeth an amused look. “And she likes you. Consider yourself fortunate.”

  “I do.” She stood. “Thank you, Dr. Lindstrom. For the book. And the advice. For everything.”

  “Glad to help.” He held the door, and Elizabeth stepped into the hallway. A bell sounded, the end of one class period. Elizabeth hurried to the staircase before it filled with students. Sliding her hand along the oak railing, she sped down the two flights to the ground floor. She would slip out ahead of the crowd, cross the quad, make her copies, and hurry back to Lucy’s. She was nearly at the bottom when she felt a tap on her arm.

  “Professor Crawford?”

  She turned to see who had spoken and recognized the young woman, a student in her Feminist Art class. The blonde hair, buzz-cut on one side, long on the other. Her mental roster of names stopped at Sutton, Isabelle. “Hello, Isabelle,” she said, pleased with herself for matching face to name.

  The young woman was out of breath. Clearly, she’d been running down the stairs to catch up. “I just wanted to let you know,” she gushed, “that I think it’s totally awesome.”

  “Awesome? I’m not sure what you’re referring to.”

  Isabelle gave her a knowing look and edged out of the way to let others pass. “I get it that you wanted us to find it for ourselves, instead of, like, announcing it in class. That makes it even cooler.”

  Find it, announce it. What it was the girl was talking about?

  Students passed them on the stairs, hurrying in both directions. The clattering of feet, a swirl of colors and sounds. Around the noise, a deadly silence. Something thick and cold dropped into Elizabeth’s stomach.

  “What is it you’ve found?”

  Isabelle’s expression reminded Elizabeth of the arch look Naomi had given her after the last class, as if they shared a secret. “A bunch of us have been over to the gallery,” Isabelle said. “And all I can say is—wow, what a totally awesome way to make your point.”

  “My point?”

  “About Feminist Art? Putting your own body on the line. Using your own body, instead of hiding behind words and impersonal forms. Like you told us.” Isabelle inched closer. “Naomi didn’t think you’d actually do it, but she was, like, the first person to find out. She was the one who told me.”

  No. Not possible.

  The staircase turned black. Airless.

  Using your own body.

  No, he couldn’t have. It’s our project. That’s what he’d told her. A collaboration, just the two of them.

  She wanted to grab Isabelle by the throat. The girl was cruel, evil, messing with her in that sly fucked-up way.

  Or else it was Naomi, spreading a crazy rumor to show what a hypocrite Elizabeth was. Some kind of sick little enactment, her demented idea of performance art. Elizabeth could almost see it: Naomi’s idea of dismantling the academic power structure and exposing them as cowards who taught one thing but lived another.

  “Naomi?” she hissed. If Naomi was behind this disgusting hoax, she’d rip her to shreds.

  Isabelle’s grin widened. “She’s so, so impressed with you, Professor Crawford. Me too. I just had to tell you.” Her face grew serious. “What you did took guts. You’re a model for all of us.”

  A model for all of us. A bad pun, or was the girl too naive to realize what she’d said?

  No, it wasn’t a hoax.

  “You saw the photos?”

  “They’re amazing,” Isabelle said. “And putting those little pictures of Georgia O’Keeffe next to them? Like, you can take something famous and embody it, claim it for yourself? It’s like the ultimate empowerment. So—wow. Really.”

  Elizabeth’s fingers groped for the railing, wrapping themselves around the oak as if its realness would undo the unreality of what she was hearing.

  She’d never thought about the photos as having an existence separate from the taking of them. It was the act of being photographed that mattered.

  Richard had tried to tell her. I can blur the background when I make the print. She hadn’t listened. She hadn’t wanted to hear about what he would do later. Only about what he was doing right now.

  She needed to ask Isabelle where she had seen the pictures. Then, in the next instant, she knew. Juniper had told her. “H
e always has stuff up at that gallery right by campus—you know, the one next to the old firehouse?” Some kind of permanent showcase, the exhibit changing whenever he had a new concept.

  Somehow she got out the next five words. “How did Naomi find it?”

  “She was googling O’Keeffe,” Isabelle said, “because of that thing you said, about how O’Keeffe painted whatever she felt like? You know, just random googling? And then this link popped up about how O’Keeffe was, like, still inspiring people, and one of the things they talked about was this show right here in town. They had a photo of O’Keeffe with her shirt open, and then a picture of you doing the same thing, and then they had a link to the gallery website. So Naomi texted me, ‘Hey, let’s go see it.’”

  Elizabeth could hardly breathe. “It’s on the internet?”

  “Only that one picture, in the article. But the gallery website had, I don’t know, three or four. They picked some of the really good ones. That’s what Naomi said.”

  Elizabeth didn’t know what she meant by really good ones. She didn’t want to know. “Who else has seen it?” Her voice cracked.

  “Who else?” Isabelle echoed. “I wouldn’t know. But Naomi did a post. Crawford rocks, that was the headline. And you do. Totally. Not like the other professors around here.”

  Elizabeth met Isabelle’s star-struck gaze. This was insane. She didn’t need the girl’s adoration. She needed to get those fucking pictures off the wall.

  The bell sounded again, its shrillness slicing right through her flesh. The next class period. As if Isabelle’s tap on her arm had been a pause button and the bell had unfrozen a suspended world, the staircase was filled, once again, with the blur and cacophony of bodies on the move. “I better run,” Isabelle said. “I have a class over in the Math building. But I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Elizabeth didn’t answer. Before Isabelle had finished waving, she was out the door and on her way to the gallery.

  —

  “You need to take them down,” she hissed. “Now.”

  Those were O’Keeffe’s first words to Stieglitz. He had mounted a show of her drawings without her consent, and she told him: I’m the person who made them, and I didn’t give you permission to hang them. You have to take them down.

  He didn’t. Determined as Georgia was to maintain control, Stieglitz was equally determined that the world needed to see her work. What persuaded her, finally, was her feeling that Stieglitz actually understood what she was trying to convey. The possibility of being seen, so fully, was irresistible.

  But this wasn’t like that. Elizabeth was the model, not the artist. And the man facing her, the gallery owner, didn’t care what she felt.

  The gallery, called On View, was owned and managed by a sculptor named Joaquin Ventana. Ventana’s work—mid-sized abstractions in bronze and wood—was mounted on pedestals in the center of the room. He needed something interesting on the surrounding walls. Bare walls were too cold, he explained; customers didn’t like them. Richard, a long-time friend working in black-and-white, had suggested an arrangement that suited them both. For Joaquin, original art on the walls that complemented his sculptures and changed often enough to sustain attention. For Richard, a reputable and well-trafficked place to hang his work—a place where he could be seen and talked about, without having to pay rent, as long as Ventana’s sculptures were the only work for sale.

  Richard had been showing his photographs at On View for several years. From there, he’d picked up commissions, a one-man show at a major gallery, and a coveted spot in a museum exhibit on American portraiture.

  His new show was called Re-Visions. Georgia’s body was the vision. Elizabeth’s body, re-enacting the poses, was the re-vision. She wasn’t sure what it meant. Revising: improving the first draft? Or re-visioning: seeing anew?

  It didn’t matter. Whatever Richard had in mind, the photos had to go.

  Joaquin Ventana laughed.

  They were in the anteroom of the gallery. Elizabeth could glimpse the exhibit off to the left, the light reflecting off a curved bronze form in the center of the room, the rectangular shapes of the photographs on the walls, illuminated by spotlights but not discernable from where she stood. “It doesn’t work that way,” he said. “You can’t storm in here and demand that I remove my exhibits.”

  Elizabeth glared at him. He knew it was her in Richard’s photos. She had insisted on face and body together; that was the point. “I never gave permission.”

  “You didn’t have to. You posed for an artist. He’s showing his work. End of story.”

  “I didn’t know he was going to show it. I just—” She stopped. She’d just—what?

  “Did he take the photos covertly, without your knowledge?”

  Elizabeth dropped her eyes. “No.”

  Ventana wouldn’t shut up. “You went to his studio, then? Freely, without coercion?”

  Oh, she hated both of them. “I get it. Freely. Yes.” Then she tightened her jaw. “But it was a private matter. He never said he was going to put the photos in a public gallery.”

  Ventana shrugged. “They’re his, to do with as he wishes.”

  No, that couldn’t be right. “There must be some law against that, when it’s a recognizable person.”

  “Actually, no, since the photos aren’t for sale. He’s simply showing his art.” She began to argue, but Ventana cut her off. “That’s the way it works. As long as it’s not for commercial use. They’re his work, his property, and he’s the only one who can put them up or take them down. Not me, and not you.”

  “You don’t understand.” She tried to quell her rising panic. “I can’t let them be seen.”

  “Like I said, it’s not my decision.”

  Her voice sank to a whisper. “Please.”

  Ventana’s irritation was obvious now. “I don’t know what you expect me to do. I’m not going to shut my gallery down while you and Richard work this out.”

  Richard. The thought of seeing him, begging him, was almost unbearable. But there was no other way.

  Elizabeth looked at her watch. 10:43. Thank goodness she had left Lucy’s with plenty of time to spare. Forget making copies of her handouts; she’d wing it in class tomorrow.

  Richard’s studio was less than ten minutes away; that gave her half an hour to confront him, convince him, and get out. She wouldn’t need half an hour, because his violation was so egregious and so wrong. As soon as he saw her, he’d know there was no way to spin what he’d done. She’d been pathetic with Ventana, but now she was angry. She wanted to grab Richard by the hair and scream, “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

  She hurled the words at him like hailstones, pummeling the Richard in her mind. What. The. Hell. Are. You. Doing.

  Did he have any idea what his exhibit would do to her? He couldn’t, or he wouldn’t have done it. No one could be that careless, that naive, or that cruel.

  She wanted to twist that hair, hurt him back. The blithe confidence that had attracted her was her enemy now.

  I didn’t say you could let anyone else see them. They were for you.

  She could already hear his reply. You didn’t say that I couldn’t.

  Did it have to be said? Wasn’t it obvious?

  Well, he’d hear it soon enough. And then she’d rip his hateful photos right off the walls.

  Part Three:

  The Woman

  Nineteen

  Elizabeth didn’t stop to wonder if Richard might be in the middle of a shoot—if another woman might be there, taking off her clothes for him. She slammed the car door, crossed the street in three quick strides, and jammed her finger on the buzzer next to the little white card. Ferris.

  He buzzed back. The door clicked, and she pushed it open. His immediate response seemed odd. Had Joaquin Ventana called to warn him? Or was he expecting someone else? Or maybe he just let people in, not caring who they were.

  Elizabeth grabbed the iron railing and started up the stairs. The first ti
me she came here, he’d been waiting for her at the top, watching her ascend. Letting her come to him. Her heart had been pounding with the knowledge of what she was about to do.

  Her heart was pounding now too, but it was a different kind of pounding, full of rage and desperation.

  The stairs were planks of dark wood, steep, and worn in the center. There was a water stain shaped like South America on the right-hand wall. She’d never noticed it before—too eager to get to the top, to begin. A Styrofoam coffee cup had been left on the third step, the plastic tab pointing upward like a flag.

  She climbed the rest of the stairs to the second-floor landing. Richard’s door was shut. She waited, listening for the sound of voices or footsteps. Finally she knocked.

  More than two weeks since she’d seen him. Would he be glad to see her? Would he touch her? Oh, she was demented. She was there to yell and demand and scream, not to swoon. He’d done something unforgivable, and he had to undo it.

  After endless seconds, the door swung open. “Elizabeth.” He did look glad. “Come in.” He ushered her inside the studio, fingertips light on the small of her back, and pulled the door shut.

  A woman in a burgundy turtleneck was perched on the stool. She was older than Elizabeth by at least a decade, with a long neck and an aquiline nose. Fully dressed, Elizabeth thought, relieved, and yet disappointed because now she couldn’t be angry at Richard about that.

  “Elizabeth, Teresa,” he said. He turned to Elizabeth. “Teresa’s a physical therapist. She’s showing me how the different muscles work.”

  His face lit up. “I have this idea for a new series. I want to capture the point of transition when a movement begins, when the body starts to do what the mind’s decided, or maybe before it’s decided— it’s an interesting question, isn’t it? I might shoot a few athletes, dancers, people like that. But first I have to understand the anatomy.”

  Teresa lowered her head in a regal nod. Elizabeth didn’t give a shit. “You need to leave,” she spat. “Richard and I have to talk. Alone.”