Queen of the Owls Page 8

  Elizabeth swallowed. Her hands hung at her sides, opening and closing, fingertips pressing into her palms. “I understand why I need to look at the art O’Keeffe created before and after Hawaii. But why would I need to look at the art she modeled for? What does that have to do with it?”

  It was the question that had been building in her, ever since the blue-haired student, Naomi, tossed it her way.

  “If you want to understand her.”

  The street turned black, silent, immobile. Nothing moved, not even the air in her throat. Elizabeth knew that O’Keeffe saw Stieglitz as a collaborator, an active and essential force that allowed her to bring forth the art that was inside of her. Was she a collaborator in his work, too? Did they produce two bodies of work, jointly? It wasn’t a revolutionary idea; art critics had suggested exactly that. Yet there was something about the way she felt the possibility now. It was urgent, personal.

  “All right. Fair enough.”

  Richard’s gaze was keen. “You do want to understand her, right? Not just write some PhD thing with a lot of footnotes and citations?”

  “You’re relentless, aren’t you?”

  “Am I?”

  A wave of dizziness swept over her. It was too dense, too close, as if he were offering her a choice. But she couldn’t choose because she didn’t understand what the choices were.

  They began to walk again, past a row of apartments and a convenience store. Oblongs of amber light flanked an open door. Ahead, Elizabeth could see a maple tree and a wire fence. The silvery-blue of the sky deepened to an indigo sheen.

  Richard was still speaking. “Like I said, I got intrigued and went to look up Stieglitz’s work. I hadn’t looked at his photos in a long time.” He glanced at Elizabeth. “Me, I try to find the essence of a subject, a single image. So it was interesting to see how Stieglitz tried to portray O’Keeffe through a kind of quantity. Everything. Neck, feet, arms.” He shrugged. “But you know that, of course, as a Georgia expert.”

  “I’m not sure I qualify as a Georgia expert.” Elizabeth slowed her pace. “It’s curious, though, that most of his photos of her were taken before she got famous as a painter.”

  “You think he lost interest in her as a subject, once she got known for her own work?”

  “Well, some people think the photos were the reason she got famous. They got a lot of attention.”

  “Because they were shocking? Exciting?”

  “People called them immoral. Of course, a ton of people came to see them.”

  “Of course. Wouldn’t you?”

  He was playing with her. And she liked it.

  Elizabeth kept her eyes on the ground. “You still think a single essential photo is the way to portray someone? Or did Stieglitz change your mind?”

  “It depends on the subject. Some people, like your Georgia, need to be seen in a whole range of ways.”

  She wanted to ask, And what about me? How do I need to be seen?

  She didn’t, though. Couldn’t. It took all she had to keep walking.

  The buildings gave way to a small playground with an assortment of children’s equipment—slide, swings, see-saw—set on foam pads bordered by a cyclone fence. It was deserted but the gate was ajar. Motion sensors lit up the ground as they approached.

  “Aha,” Richard said. “Much better than a coffee shop.” He opened the gate, beckoning Elizabeth inside.

  A playground? Playgrounds were for Daniel and Katie. Feeling foolish, she followed him into the courtyard. The gate banged shut.

  “So. What’ll it be tonight?” He surveyed the possibilities. “The swings?”

  Elizabeth wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think so.”

  “Don’t think, then.” He caught her fingers in his and pulled her gently toward the swing set. There were two canvas slings and a toddler harness, suspended by heavy chains from a metal frame. “Truth or dare. When’s the last time you’ve been on a swing?”

  “Good grief. Decades.”

  “Well, then.”

  Did he really think she’d hoist her adult body into one of those contraptions? Elizabeth began to shake her head, insist that she couldn’t. Then Mr. Wu’s words blazed across her vision. You try, and you can.

  She strode to the first swing, grabbed the chains, and sat down. Her legs were too long, knees poking up as she toe-walked backward on the foam padding. When she was a child, there had been dirt under the swings, not foam. She remembered—no, her feet themselves remembered—the particular sensation of digging into the dirt as she stepped back to gain lift, then letting go as she pushed forward, legs outstretched, back arched, face turned to the sky.

  She pointed her toes, ready to pump, when she felt herself raised up from behind. It was Richard, his hands on the metal chains. He leaned forward and thrust her into the air. She wanted to say no, wait and not so high, but there was no time. Again, he grabbed the chains, pulled her back, and pushed. The world flew past. Buildings, stars. She returned, and he pushed again. Higher, this time. And then she was flying, helpless to stop it. All the way to the tip of the air, the place where she would surely vault upside-down over the top of the metal frame, though she didn’t, but fell back again, only to be lifted up once more and thrust into the whooshing immensity of space.

  Elizabeth opened her mouth and laughed. It was delicious. To surrender, just for those few minutes. Then she yelled, “Enough! Please. My poor stomach is doing flip-flops.” Richard took hold of the chains and eased the swing to a stop. Elizabeth let her feet drag on the ground. She was still laughing. “Whew. I don’t know how kids do it.”

  “They like the flip-flops. The wildness.”

  “I suppose that’s it.” She stood and dusted off her leggings.

  “What about you, Elizabeth?” Richard asked. “How do you feel about wildness?”

  She froze. Sweat began to pool in the hollow of her collarbone.

  He was trying to seduce her. This was what seduction felt like.

  She began to tremble, a quiver rising from her soles all the way up the back of her neck. She hoped Richard couldn’t see, though she was sure he could.

  It was only an instant—the merest pause, as if the sky had stopped its wheeling to await her response—and then she tossed her head. “Well, I’m not a fan of anything that makes my stomach lurch.” She looked at her watch. “Anyway, it’s late. I’d better be going.”

  She almost said going home, but that would draw attention to the fact that she had a home. He’d never asked about that. She wondered what he thought about her life, or if he thought about it at all. Well, why should he? They weren’t on some kind of date. It was just a walk, after Tai Chi.

  “You still owe me an Americano, you know.” Elizabeth’s eyes jumped to his. He was smiling.

  She stared at him. Every inch of her was alive.

  “I know. I won’t forget.”

  —

  Before and after. That was how Elizabeth needed to orient herself so she could write a dissertation that would knock their socks off.

  Before. In 1932 O’Keeffe painted Jimson Weed/White Flower. Everyone in the art world knew the painting; it sold for $44.4 million at a Sotheby’s auction in 2014, making O’Keeffe the highest-selling woman artist of all time. Then, in 1939, while she was in Hawaii, she painted Bella Donna, a strikingly similar composition. It was because of the resemblance between the two paintings that the O’Keeffe Museum put Jimson Weed up for auction. The curators didn’t think they needed both.

  Bella Donna, one of the last of O’Keeffe’s oversized flower paintings: a close-up of the white angel’s trumpet, a beautiful but deadly flower, cousin to the jimson weed. Every part of the angel’s trumpet was highly poisonous, as Elizabeth discovered in her research. Gardeners had to wear protective clothing, goggles, and gloves to avoid accidental poisoning. How had O’Keeffe managed to paint it, then? To get so close, without touching it?

  And why? It wasn’t a typical Hawaiian flower. Why hadn’t she painted an orchid
instead? Orchids were everywhere in Hawaii, gorgeous and intricate, with their endless shadings of lavender and purple and mauve. O’Keeffe’s kind of flower. But not poisonous, not dangerous, like the Bella Donna, the beautiful untouchable lady.

  Elizabeth pulled two more flower paintings from her folder and laid them side by side. The pink banana and the bright red heliconia—one girlishly sweet, the other garish—yet they seemed to have a similar intention. Both plants looked oddly staged, isolated from their natural setting, no messy undergrowth to clutter the portrait. Only a pink stalk alone against a froth of clouds, a spiky red heliconia suspended like a dancer stepping into the sky. Georgia had given them space to exist and be seen.

  After. The pelvis and the desert. Dry hills, white bones. In 1940 O’Keeffe bought Ghost Ranch, her first home in New Mexico. In 1941 she painted Red Hills and Bones, a row of vertebrae against the rust-colored mountains. After that, more aridity. In Grey Hills and Cliffs beyond Abiquiu, painted two years later, the landscape was desolate, barren. Eroded hills, dry soil. A stark, elemental planet, all the luxuriance gone.

  And yet, there was nothing about Hawaii to account for the change. Hawaii hadn’t desiccated O’Keeffe; by all accounts, she had enjoyed her stay. In her letters to Stieglitz, she described the peaks and volcanoes, visible through the clouds, as fairy-like, a beautiful dream. Everything amazed and delighted her—the fantastic twists of black lava, the waterfalls and plush green slopes, the bright blue sea. She wrote to Stieglitz: “It’s just too beautiful.” Her notion of beauty, she told him, had been insufficient. When her Hawaii paintings were exhibited in 1940, she called them her gift to the world.

  Elizabeth pored through her notes, growing more and more confused. She was supposed to immerse herself in the evidence and come up with a scholarly theory. That was what you did, when you wrote a dissertation.

  She laid down her pen. She was trying to understand Hawaii with her mind.

  It was never going to work.

  Elizabeth dropped her papers onto the oak desk and raised her eyes to survey the class. Naomi was front and center, as usual, but there was something different about her. It took Elizabeth a few seconds to register what it was: the spikes in Naomi’s hair were scarlet instead of cobalt. Good Lord, she thought. Or were the outlandish colors supposed to be some kind of statement?

  Suppressing the eye-roll that would, she was certain, brand her as judgmental and uncool, Elizabeth placed her hands on the desk and looked from face to face. “So,” she said, “how did you find the assignment?”

  Naomi thrust out her jaw. “I opened my binder and there it was. Or did you mean, what was it like to do it?”

  The girl didn’t miss an opportunity, Elizabeth thought. She kept her voice neutral. “What it was like to do it.”

  The student with the tattoo flung her hand in the air. “I have a question.”

  “Please.”

  “We were talking about including yourself in your art, right? Like performance artists. But what about self-portraits? Aren’t those, like, the ultimate way of including yourself?”

  Naomi swung her head to glare at the other student, her jewel catching the light. “No,” she said, “because self-portraits are static.” She turned back to Elizabeth. “That’s not what the assignment was about—if you’re putting out something that’s already set, finished, and you’re, like, off somewhere drinking a Pepsi while people look at it. You aren’t risking anything.”

  Elizabeth was intrigued. “Is art about risk?”

  Naomi folded her arms. “It should be.”

  More hands waved in the air. Elizabeth was happy. This was what she loved about teaching.

  She’d brought a lot of slides today. Self-portraits, in fact. Frida Kahlo’s Broken Column and Louise Bourgeois’ drawing of a baby inside a two-faced globe. And a photo of O’Keeffe. Not a self-portrait, technically, or maybe it was, if you believed that O’Keeffe had partnered with Stieglitz in producing it.

  The hour sped past, and she didn’t have time to show the O’Keeffe slide. Ruefully, she switched off the projector. “For next week,” she said, “read the chapter on symbolism and think about the dichotomy between symbols of fertility and symbols of purity, both used to represent the female in art.”

  “How can you be both?” Naomi asked.

  Elizabeth gave her a dry look. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  She gathered the student essays and tucked them into her messenger bag, her thoughts already spiraling around Georgia. She had told Richard that Stieglitz’s portraits captured the personal and the impersonal, the embodied and the abstract. She wasn’t sure if she really believed that or had wanted to be clever. More than clever. Provocative, the way he was. To see what would happen.

  She hoisted her messenger bag, shoving a hand into the pocket of her jacket. Her fingers brushed something dry and feathery. Curious, she pulled it out.

  At first she didn’t know what it was. Then she understood: it was the dried remains of the hibiscus center she had plucked that day in the botanical garden. Disconnected, unused, it had shriveled and turned to powder.

  “Ms. Crawford? Professor Crawford?”

  Elizabeth looked up. Naomi was still there, gripping the straps of a dirty yellow backpack. “Yes?”

  “I think self-portraits are bullshit,” Naomi said. “They’re like— fake sincerity.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The artist is trying to control how people see her.” She searched Elizabeth’s eyes. “Don’t you think that’s cheating?”

  “An interesting point.” Elizabeth dusted her fingers, wiping them along the side of her bag.

  “Don’t you think it’s cheating?” Naomi repeated. “Doesn’t a person have to put herself out there, and let people see her, and then see what happens? Isn’t it bullshit to do anything else?”

  The girl was taking this too far. It felt aggressive, as if Naomi had crossed a dangerous line.

  “We’ll talk about it next time,” Elizabeth said. Naomi looked unhappy. “I’m sorry,” she added. “I have an appointment, that’s all.” She gestured toward the door. The girl went first. Elizabeth followed, kicking the door shut with her foot.

  She didn’t really have an appointment, although it might be smart to talk to Lindstrom again; maybe he could help her get past the impasse she’d come to. She nodded goodbye to Naomi and headed to the western wing of the Humanities building where Harold Lindstrom had his office. A long shot that he’d be available, but she took a chance.

  “Dr. Lindstrom?” She gave a loud knock.

  “Yes?”

  Elizabeth was aware of the swift change in her role from teacher to student, from knower to novice. That was the way it worked in academia; you couldn’t be both at the same time. “Do you have a minute?”

  Luckily, he did. “I’ve boxed myself into a corner,” she told him, settling into the visitor’s chair and facing him across the desk. “I’m not seeing how the work O’Keeffe did in Hawaii led to the work she did afterward.”

  “And if it didn’t?”

  Then I’m screwed. “It had to. I’m just not seeing it.”

  Harold steepled his fingers. “What was her dominant image, afterward?”

  Elizabeth didn’t hesitate. “The open pelvis. The ovoid, pulling the viewer into the blueness of space.”

  “Were there any openings in her Hawaii paintings? Into the blueness of space?”

  At first she thought he was making fun of her. Then she realized he was serious. “Well, she did those fishhook paintings. A circle of blue, floating above the horizon? I haven’t really focused on them. They’re not all that interesting, to be honest.”

  Harold eyed her sternly. “Get interested.” Elizabeth gave a start. “Go where the data takes you. You didn’t expect to know the road in advance, did you?”

  “No.” She laughed. “I mean yes, I’ll do that.” She thought of O’Keeffe’s painting of the black lava bridge on the Hana coastline. A brid
ge and an aperture, both at once.

  “Let me know what you find.” He dropped his hands into his lap, coughed, and rearranged the papers on his desk. It meant: meeting over.

  Elizabeth stood. “Thanks for letting me stop by.” She left his office and headed down the corridor. Something wondrous was swirling in her mind.

  She’d been wrong. Georgia hadn’t turned dry in Hawaii. She’d found an opening and walked through.

  Eight

  Two days later, there was Phoebe again, swinging a big leather purse as she strode down the flagstone path from Lucy’s house to the street.

  It was 8:30 in the morning, drop-off time. Elizabeth had said goodbye to Daniel and Katie a few minutes earlier, then made a quick U-turn when she realized that Katie’s bunny was still on the back seat. Easier to return to Lucy’s now than to get a frantic phone call later.

  She was sliding out of the car, bunny under her arm, when Phoebe spotted her. “Hey there!” Phoebe’s eyes were hidden by oversized sunglasses, but her voice was bright. “Funny how we’ve both been using Lucy for months now but never ran into each other. And here we are, same schedule for the second time in a week. Go figure.”

  Elizabeth shut the car door and held up the bunny. “Actually, I already dropped the kids off. Except Katie left The Precious in her car seat.”

  “Ah yes. The Precious.” Phoebe gave a low chuckle. “I hate getting up this early, don’t you? But I have a new client who absolutely l-o-v-e-s those sunrise meetings. You’d think we could do all this over the internet, right? I mean, since what I’m doing for him is internet design. But no, he likes to talk in person.” She mimed putting a gun to her head. Then she removed her sunglasses and peered at Elizbeth. “Did I say something to offend you, last time? When we met?”

  Elizabeth blinked. Was it that obvious? “No, of course not. Why?”

  “You took off so suddenly.”

  “Oh. That.” She released her breath in what she hoped was a casual laugh. “No. I’m sorry you felt that way. You hit a nerve, that’s all.”

  “Ha. Got some of those myself. Like when Lucy told me you were some kind of professor? I thought you’d be, I don’t know, a snob or something.”