Queen of the Owls Page 23

  “I get that,” Ben began. “But I’ve never seen—”

  Before he could finish, Daniel looked up from his plate and said brightly, “She’s mad at Mommy because Mommy didn’t come. She ripped up her snowflake dress. It’s a secret.”

  Elizabeth wanted to melt into a puddle and disappear. She should have known that Daniel, who had proudly told her about the “surprise” play, would say exactly that. It would have been more startling if he hadn’t.

  Ben looked at her. “Didn’t come?”

  She sighed. “Just my luck. A horrible backup, thanks to a stalled van.” Oddly, she almost believed the story now. She’d told it three times at Lucy’s house and it felt more real than the awful encounters with Joaquin and Richard that really did happen. “There was nothing I could do.”

  “You didn’t even go?”

  Indignant now, she snapped, “Of course I went. I was late, that’s all.”

  He looked puzzled. “Why didn’t you call Lucy and ask her to delay a few minutes?”

  Elizabeth stared at him. It had never occurred to her. She’d been too full of everything else—panic, shame, rage, the pain of thwarted desire. There hadn’t been room in her mind for a practical thought like calling Lucy. She considered making up another story about a dead cell phone, but there were so many lies already. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I was too upset to think.” That, at least, was true.

  Ben set down his fork. “Honestly, Liz. Thinking is what you do.”

  Oh, that was cold. A terrible, unlovely way to describe her. Lizzie the brain—and a failed brain at that, someone who hadn’t even had the sense to call Lucy and say she was running late.

  Daniel looked from parent to parent. Ben reached across the table and gave Daniel’s arm a quick squeeze. “I know you were disappointed, buddy, but Mommy got there as fast as she could.”

  Elizabeth tried to salvage something from what had been a stunningly disastrous day. “At least Phoebe took some good pictures. She was nice enough to email them to me, so we can look at them together after dinner.”

  Daniel sat up straight. His voice was full of authority. “The Ferris man wasn’t there either,” he told Ben. “Or else he would have taken pictures, instead of Rex’s Mommy. From the sky.”

  Ben swiveled his head. “What Ferris man?”

  Elizabeth tried to suppress her alarm. Daniel missed nothing. It was all stored in a memory bank organized into Daniel-specific categories and retrieved, hours or weeks later, according to a Daniel-specific logic.

  “He wanted to know what a Ferris Wheel was,” she explained. “So I told him how you got to ride up into the sky.” She prayed that Ben wouldn’t ask what that had to do with taking pictures. One more twist, and whatever was holding her together would split apart.

  Ben threw her a dark look. It was only an instant, and then he turned back to Daniel, his features shifting into the encouraging expression he’d had before. Yet Elizabeth saw the contempt in the way he had glared at her; he would never have let a stalled truck keep him from his children’s play. Or maybe it wasn’t contempt, but suspicion. The stupid lie about the food co-op, her obvious agitation after Tai Chi, and now a conveniently timed traffic jam.

  Katie pushed her plate across the table to get Ben’s attention. “Pity,” she told him. “Pity Katie.”

  “Yes, pretty,” Elizabeth answered, before Ben could wonder if her daughter was asking him to pity her for having such an terrible mother. “You were so, so pretty in your snowflake dress.”

  Katie gave her a disdainful glance. Elizabeth could imagine that look breaking hearts in fifteen years. Right now it was breaking hers.

  “I had a sword.” Daniel said.

  “Indeed you did.” Elizabeth pushed out her chair. “I know. Let’s look at the photos on the computer right this very minute. I’ll put my laptop on the table and we can eat our applesauce while we look at them.” Ben raised an eyebrow. A laptop on the dinner table? She didn’t care. Anything to end this conversation.

  She plucked a napkin from the center of the table and bent over Katie, giving her mouth and cheeks a decisive wipe. She was still the mother, even if Katie wanted to keep punishing her.

  “Hands, please.” Katie looked up, her mouth falling open into a startled O. She extended her hands and let Elizabeth clean them. A small concession.

  Elizabeth dared to let herself feel a glimmer of relief. Katie would come around. It wasn’t in her nature to reject her mother forever. Ben—well, that was more complicated.

  One thing at a time. Right now, the priority was repairing her daughter’s trust. Tomorrow, it would be getting rid of those damn photos.

  Hanging them up in Ventana’s gallery might not be illegal but it was wrong. She’d tell him that. No apologies, no begging.

  Tomorrow was Tuesday, a Lucy day. Unencumbered by Daniel and Katie, she’d rush over to that gallery and be there before Joaquin Ventana unlocked the doors. The pictures would be gone by Wednesday.

  Before the next Tai Chi class.

  “I already explained,” Ventana said. Elizabeth could tell that he was trying not to lose his composure. “I have no authority to remove someone else’s work.”

  She tried, equally hard, not to lose hers. “I understand.” She forced herself to smile. Determination was good, but she had to get him on her side, make him want to help her. “Your hands are tied, in terms of doing anything directly. Of course. So it’s a matter of convincing Richard to remove them. That’s something you can do.”

  Joaquin eyed her coolly. They were standing in the entrance to the gallery; he had barely let her cross the threshold. “Why would I want to? Richard’s an old friend. There’s no benefit to me in pissing him off.”

  Elizabeth’s mind shot ahead. Thinking was what she did; Ben had told her that. “Well,” she said, scrambling for a new approach. “I can’t imagine it would be good for business if there was a lot of negative attention. An irate model. Protests. Maybe I’ll talk to a lawyer.” Ben was a lawyer—the last person she would go to for help, but Ventana wouldn’t know that.

  Joaquin’s face turned hard. “Please don’t threaten me. Especially when you don’t know what you’re talking about. No one’s going to stage a protest in front of my gallery because you posed nude.” His eyes locked onto hers. “Voluntarily.”

  Elizabeth blanched. Of course he was right. What was she thinking—a student protest, with signs, chanting, candles? Her students thought what she had done was heroic. They weren’t going to link arms around the gallery and demand that Ventana take the pictures down.

  “Look, I’m sorry.” She put out her hand, then quickly withdrew it. “Please. Can’t you just talk to Richard, out of humanity? Let him know how damaging this could be for me. Ask him to reconsider.”

  Instead of relenting, Joaquin stepped back. “I really can’t get in the middle of this. And frankly, I resent your trying to put me in that position.”

  “Please.” She hated to throw herself at his mercy like this, but she was growing desperate. “I’m begging you.”

  He winced, as if her plea was in bad taste. “I think I’ve tried to be civil but, frankly, I’m reaching the end of my patience. If you keep badgering me, I’m going to have to complain to Richard that you’re interfering with his work.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “I most definitely would.” He narrowed his eyes. “So you decide.”

  What sort of decision did he think she had? Walk away, which was impossible, or tell him, “Sure. Instead of helping me, why don’t you complain to Richard so you can join forces against me?”

  To her surprise, a hint of compassion crossed Joaquin’s face. “I understand that you’re upset. But I can’t have you standing here ranting at me. Customers are going to walk in, it’s bad for business.” Then the compassion faded. “In any case, I’m not interested in being a go-between, particularly when one person’s a friend and the other’s a stranger. I’m sure you can appreciate that
.”

  When Elizabeth didn’t answer, he opened the door and motioned toward the street. “It’s time to end this conversation. Nothing personal, but I don’t see a point in continuing.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes darted to the gallery’s name. On View, etched onto the glass. That was her. It might even be funny, if it wasn’t so horrible. She remembered a sign she’d seen in the window of a bar. Live Nude Girls, in pink neon. As opposed to what—dead nude girls? She had pointed it out to Ben, marveling at people’s inanity.

  Ventana was waiting for her to leave. Reluctantly, she bowed her head and stumbled onto the sidewalk. He closed the door behind her.

  Elizabeth looked around, staring at the once-familiar street that now seemed alien and unwelcoming. The blare of horns, the smell of diesel, the beeping of a truck as it backed up. The sunlight was absurdly bright, like yellow paint splattered across the buildings.

  She’d been as stupid as Andrea, trying to recruit someone else to intervene and solve her problem. It hadn’t worked for Andrea and it wasn’t going to work for her.

  “Sorry.” A teenager on a skateboard tossed the two syllables her way as he angled past. Elizabeth jumped to the edge of the sidewalk, then hurried across the street to her car. Her feet moved by themselves, lifting and falling, like the turning of a wheel. A Ferris Wheel. A bad joke, sickening her with its mixture of desire and remorse. She remembered how she had watched Richard at Tai Chi, long before they spoke. That regal, animal presence—as if the very space of the room was defined by the shape of his body, the others in the class existing only in relation to him. And then, once he had touched her elbow in that coffee shop, how she herself was shaped and situated by his presence. Knowing herself by how far apart they were in the room, how many days until she would see him again. Moon to his planet, tide to his gravity.

  It was the same force that had drawn her to the photos of O’Keeffe. Four-minute exposures, Richard had told her. How was it possible to stay there, being seen, for that long? A moment at a time had been as much as she could bear.

  She yearned to undo everything. To reel back time and let the pile of photographs stay as they were on the wooden table, never plucked from their places in the stack he’d prepared.

  Let the coffee stay un-poured, safe in its carafe. Let the swing hang on its chains.

  She yanked open the car door, jerking it shut as she got in. How was she supposed to show up on campus now, as if nothing had happened? What if she ran into someone else who had seen the exhibit? A fellow doctoral student, another instructor?

  Her hands slick with sweat, she pushed the hair off her face. Damn highlights. Who did she think she was, anyway, with a hairdo like that? Some kind of runway model?

  Shit. The double meanings were everywhere. Run-away model, that’s what she wanted to be. Elizabeth grabbed her hair in her fists, hating the falseness of its shimmer, the sleek sophisticated way it framed her face.

  She didn’t want it any more.

  She couldn’t get Ventana to pull those photos off the walls, but she could do this. Would Andie agree to help her, after the awful way they had parted? She couldn’t believe her sister would refuse. Anyway, she was asking Andie to take something back, not do her a new favor.

  What the hell. The worst Andrea could do was say no.

  Elizabeth jammed the key into the ignition and screeched away from the curb.

  Twenty-One

  There were two women in Andrea’s salon, one with foil packets covering the left side of her head, the other under the dryer. Andrea was bending over the first woman, a brush thick with blue cream poised over the woman’s scalp. She halted in mid-gesture when she saw Elizabeth. “Lizzie? What’re you doing here?”

  “An unscheduled stop. Can you fit me in?”

  Andrea looked puzzled, but she said, “Of course. Give me half an hour.”

  Elizabeth looked for a place to wait. There wasn’t one, except in the playroom. She perched on the edge of a child-sized chair and tried to contain her impatience. Behind her, she could hear the women talking. One was saying, “What I do, when I need to zone out, is I knit. And let me tell you, it definitely works.”

  “Well, what I do,” the other woman answered, “is I go and pull the crabgrass out of the flower beds.”

  “I don’t know. At least with knitting you’re making something.”

  “What I’m making is a nice flower bed. Anyway, the one thing doesn’t, you know, stop you from doing the other thing.”

  Preclude, Elizabeth thought. You mean it doesn’t preclude the other.

  She turned around, wanting to tell them that there was a word for what they were talking about. It seemed important to let them know, but their attention had shifted to Andrea, who was adjusting the hair dryer and explaining, “I’m going to let you air-dry for a few minutes, Lois, okay? Then I’ll brush you out while Mary sits under the dryer.”

  Elizabeth lost interest in their conversation. She planted her elbows on her knees, took out her phone, and typed: Can you stop someone from using a photo of you? All the links were about Facebook and Instagram. Nothing about art exhibits.

  Still, there must be some kind of law. She tried model’s legal rights but the sites had to do with working conditions for professional models. Then she tried model’s right to photos and model’s release for photos. Damn. Ventana was right. Unless she had paid Richard, which she hadn’t, he owned the photos. And unless he used them for a commercial purpose—sold them or incorporated them into a commercial product—he didn’t need her permission. “Under U.S. copyright law,” she read, “copyright in a photograph belongs to the person who presses the shutter on the camera.”

  She had nothing. Richard had everything.

  Dimly, she heard the two women leave. Andrea joined her in the playroom. “What’s up?”

  Elizabeth extracted herself from the too-small seat. “I want to get rid of these.” She flicked her fingers through her hair. “The highlights. It’s not me.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not. It was a stupid idea.”

  “It was not stupid. You look fabulous.” Andrea put her hands on her hips and gave Elizabeth a shrewd look. “Is this a way of telling me to piss off, I don’t want any of your damn favors?”

  “Good Lord, Andie. Not at all.”

  “Well, what is it, then? You have a fight with Ben or something?”

  Elizabeth gave a bitter laugh. “Ben never even noticed my haircut. Not that I cared.”

  “Maybe you need a more dramatic look.”

  “Forget Ben. This has nothing to do with him.”

  Andrea frowned. “If it has nothing to do with Ben, then it’s just some bad mood you’re in, and I’m not going to pay attention to anything you’re saying.”

  “Are you refusing to help me?”

  “I’m refusing to take back what I gave you.” Andrea’s glare was a stubborn as Elizabeth’s. “Don’t be a moron, Lizzie. You never looked better.”

  Such a lovely face, Richard had told her. Surely you know that.

  Pushing past her sister, Elizabeth crossed the playroom in three quick strides. She grabbed the nylon cape that one of the women had tossed onto the counter and fastened it around her neck. Then she dropped into the salon chair and pulled her hair off her face. She looked pure, severe. Like Georgia, swathed in black.

  “Never looked better than what? Than myself?”

  “Oh please,” Andrea said. “Don’t do some philosophy thing on me. Just leave the highlights alone. You look good.”

  “I don’t care what you think. It’s my hair.”

  My image. My body.

  Andrea eyed her warily. “Look, Lizzie. Let’s not make this into some kind of battleground for whatever’s going on between us. You know, instead of the stuff we’re actually mad about.”

  “No, it’s not that.” She tried to sound calm, even though she wasn’t. “Look, I know there’s a lot going on right now. But I need to do this one thing, and
I need you to help me. Will you?”

  “You mean, will I take back my gift?”

  Elizabeth didn’t answer.

  “I won’t,” Andrea said. “Because you gave me a gift.”

  “Me?” Elizabeth remembered the angry words she had flung at her sister. Where was the gift in that?

  “You.” Andrea sank into the opposite chair. “You made me realize that I wanted to keep my husband and I’d better focus on that, instead of trying to pull off a dumb gotcha that would only make him furious.”

  “I didn’t make you realize that.”

  “Maybe not on purpose, but you did. When you screwed up my little scheme, I figured I could either be pissed off or relieved. So I picked relieved.”

  Elizabeth tried to make sense of what Andrea was telling her. “You decided you’d rather not know?”

  “I decided I’d rather be hotter than Miss Whatever.” The corners of Andrea’s mouth twitched in an impish grin. “And I was. Our weekend getaway?”

  “Oh.” Elizabeth looked down. She smoothed the nylon folds of the cloak across her lap. “I take it your weekend went well.”

  “Very.”

  “So you two are good?”

  “Better than ever.”

  Like her hair—which, clearly, hadn’t been good until Andrea intervened.

  Don’t, Elizabeth told herself. Don’t resent Andie for making sure she got what she wanted. Her sister had already delivered the bittersweet truth. No one kept you from getting what you wanted except you.

  “Why are you giving me such a sour look? Aren’t you glad Michael and I worked things out?”

  “I am glad.”

  “I think you’re a little bit not-glad. A little bit disappointed.”

  “You mean, a schadenfreude thing?”

  “Stop showing off.”

  “I’m not,” Elizabeth said. “It means pleasure at another person’s misfortune.”

  “That’s a shitty attitude.”

  “I didn’t say I felt that way. I just said what it meant.” Then she sighed. “It hurts, sometimes, when you remind me of what you and Michael have. That’s all.”