Thirty-One
“I’ve never been to Santa Barbara,” I say when she answers.
“The exhibit is going to be beautiful—Picasso and Matisse. Van Gogh. Stettheimer. Some newer artists, too. We let them borrow the O’Keeffe from our collection. I have a place for us to stay and a restaurant I’m dying to take you to.”
She drives us along the coast, top down, scarves wrapped around our hair.
In Santa Barbara, the ocean’s bright blue and distant, the buildings creamy white with red clay roofs.
Elise winds up the hillside, turns off the road onto a gravel drive.
We get out and sling our overnight bags over our shoulders.
I’m struck by the ease of it—the slopes of the hills, the casual way Elise turns over a pot outside the front door and reaches for the key she knows is there.
“Remind me how you know these people again?”
“We went to Stanford together,” she says. “They’re part of the whole gang. Fred and Melinda and Harry and us. Except they’re always traveling now so we mostly just use their house.”
“Too bad I won’t get to meet them.”
“Oh no, it’s much more enjoyable when they’re gone.
All they do when they’re home is show you photo albums and souvenirs from their trips and get deeply, troublingly drunk.
Once they told me an hour-long story about an elephant they met on safari, and they sobbed.
I have no doubt that a personal encounter with a grand creature could have a profound effect, but clearly, it’s the kind of thing you keep to yourself.
Now I can barely see a picture of an elephant without remembering how Rodger boohooed in Carolyn’s arms in front of us.
It was like someone died, really. His nose was running, she actually started singing to him—some tribal song from the trip.
I swear to you, I’ve never been so uncomfortable in my life.
If they didn’t have such a fabulous guesthouse I might have cut things off with them right then. ”
She’s leading me down steep stone steps, and curved, wall-like clusters of bamboo, to an opening where two small Japanese-style structures are separated by a pond and an arched wooden bridge.
“Now,” she says. “You can see how it’s worth it to forgive them. They flew an architect out from Kyoto to recreate their favorite inn. Have you done the Japanese bathing ritual?”
“Definitely not.”
We slip our shoes off in front of the first little building and tuck them under a bench by the door.
She takes hold of a handle and slides a wood panel aside, revealing a deep cedar tub with a circle of smooth stones around it.
“You shower first,” Elise says. “And then get in the tub. The water’s special, has some minerals in it.
And it’s very hot. And here’s drinking water for tea and lounging.
I’ll get it started now. And then you shower again and that’s it! ”
I laugh. “All right,” I say. “I’ll try it.
” I’m tentative at first, undressing next to Elise, taking turns under the showerhead, lowering into the tub.
She’s efficient, practiced, keeps her eyes straight ahead.
I follow her lead. And then we’re both in the water, so hot I lose my breath, and she looks at me again and says, “You haven’t said much about Ginny lately. ”
My body gives in to the heat, my lungs take in air. I turn my face to the wooden ceiling. “She’s still with Pamela.”
“You know … you and I never talk about sex.”
“That’s true,” I say. I close my eyes. “It’s probably my fault. I’m so used to keeping it a secret. And there’s not much to talk about. I’ve been alone for most of my life.” She’s quiet and my words play over. “That sounds self-pitying. I don’t mean it to.”
“There are other women, you know. Besides Ginny.”
“Yes,” I say. “I know.”
“I had sex with a woman once.” She says it as though she doesn’t really care, with an air of just having thought of it, but I know her well enough to catch the nervousness under it, the slight twitch and blink. “Not sure why I didn’t tell you before,” she says.
“When was it?”
“About a year ago. It wasn’t all that satisfying. We were attracted to each other but neither of us knew how to be the aggressor. I spent all my life learning to be an object of desire. But then when there’s something I really want, I don’t know how to take it. I just lie there like a rag doll.”
“I see you as a person who gets what she wants,” I say, but once I’ve said it, I realize it’s not quite right. She’s telling me something about herself. I owe it to her to believe her. “A year ago…” I try to place her in time. More recent than Mexico City and Giovanni’s Room.
“I don’t know why I didn’t tell you.” She stands abruptly, slim stomach and pale thighs pink from the heat. She steps out of the tub and slips on a robe. “She reminded me a bit of you, actually. That’s why I noticed her at first. Gorgeous.”
“That’s a nice compliment,” I say.
“It’s just the truth.”
“I find you gorgeous, too, you know.”
“But not your type,” she says, turning toward the counter, and I barely have time to form a thought before she says, “Don’t worry, I care about your friendship too much to ever risk anything.
Even if you were to find me irresistible.
” Her back to me, she pours tea into a tiny black cup, turns around again and sits on the mat and smiles.
She’s so beautiful, and yet it’s Ginny who I think of, walking naked down the hallway that first night at her house.
The curve of her hips, the proud line of her back.
How I wanted her, how my body froze against the want.
“The first night I spent with Ginny … I didn’t know how to give in.” I stretch out my fingertips, float my hands on the surface of the water.
Elise waits, says, “But you did eventually? Give in?”
I nod. When I was young, I’d rush to Hattie on our Thursday afternoons, bold and unselfconscious. Over those few weeks with Ginny, desire rushed back. My body turning toward pleasure again, turning away when it was over. So distant now. “I guess I don’t know how to talk about sex,” I say.
She waves it off. “We’ve divorced ourselves from our animal natures. As a species, I mean. We’ve imposed so many rules.” She finishes her tea, rises, takes a towel and holds it out for me. “Time to get ready,” she says.
An hour later we’re parking on the main strip, every person out the window fair skinned and expensively dressed. My shoulders tighten. “Listen,” I say as she cuts the engine. “If anyone asks, let’s say I’m Italian.”
“They won’t.”
“But if they do.”
“It might be more fun to shock them.”
“Not for me.”
“All right. We don’t have to stay very long anyway. It’s a small exhibit in a small museum.”
It’s plenty large to me, a pace behind her on the stone steps, following through the arches to the grand entry, voices ricocheting off the stone floors and bare walls.
Is this how Delphine felt on North Harper Street?
This same tightness, this sense of bracing?
One of the voices, a man’s, says, “Elise Eriksen, do I have to come all the way to Santa Barbara to see you? No Romanoff’s lunches anymore?
” and I slip away before she has a chance to introduce me.
Toward the paintings. Many of the works are very old, meticulous, united by their realism and the theme of fruits and flowers.
Nothing like the abstract art in the magazines we read.
I start with a dark painting in an ornate gold frame, a pumpkin with a slice out of its center, brown earthenware, white table linens.
Next comes a softer one, a rendering of pink apple blossoms and green leaves.
Humanity in the brush strokes. Comfort in this way of looking.
A hint of ease returning to my body. I turn a corner and across the room a painting beckons me.
Strange and bright and childlike. The background is white and pale blue, sky and angel wings.
At the center, a firefly leads a procession of flowers toward the sun.
It’s whimsical, a rebellion in this room of painstakingly rendered, serious still lifes.
I make my way through the rest of the exhibit, accept a glass of champagne from a tray carried by a young blue-eyed man.
For my great-great grandmother, born into slavery—the thought thundering so clear and sudden that I almost say it aloud.
A lurch in my chest remembering how I held her freedom papers between my fingers. What would she make of me?
I go back to the bright painting. I check the plaque again. Journey to the Sun, by Florine Stettheimer.
“It’s a breath of fresh air, isn’t it?” Elise says, appearing next to me.
Scanning my face to see if I’m all right.
Once satisfied, we turn back to the painting.
“After she died, Marcel Duchamp curated an exhibit of her work for MoMA. It was their first retrospective of a woman artist, if you can believe it—which of course you can. And then the show came to San Francisco. I was eighteen and had never heard of her. It swept me off my feet. I must have gone to see it a dozen times.”
We leave, drive to dinner. Soon, we’re seated in an elegant dining room.
A waiter’s at our table and Elise says, “We need oysters on the half shell with mignonette, and two glasses of dry white wine—a mineral wine, like licking the wall of a cave. Do you have anything like that? If not, we’ll skip the wine and have martinis.
” Martinis come with an apology from the waiter.
And then oysters on a silver tray with the mignonette in a matching dish with a tiny spoon.
Metal and ice and creature. Everything looks like a painting.
“Oh, good,” she says. “The small ones. They have the best flavor and they’re the easiest to go down, don’t you think? ”
“I’ve never tried them raw. Gulf oysters are much bigger; we always cook them. That’s what I’m used to.”