Page 94 of Meet Me in the Garden

“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’tknowhow 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 fruitsand 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.”

She spoons a little of the sauce onto one of the oysters, lifts it in its gray shell to her mouth. “You sort of sip it,” she says. “Sometimes slurping is necessary if they don’t slide off. But ideally…” She tips the shell back, closes her eyes in pleasure as she swallows. Sets the shell back onto the ice, the smooth inside facing down now. “Your turn.”

I do as she’s shown me, and the oyster flesh slips easily from its shell, into my mouth, cold and bright, like rocks and seawater. With it, a revelation: I know only the slightest bit about life and its pleasures.

Following, unbidden, a question: Has Delphine tasted an oyster, straight from its shell? Had life taken different turns, could she and I have found ourselves on a night like tonight, together? Elise hands me another. I take it, force the thoughts away. I’m here now, I’m with her. “Now I understand how someone could sob over an elephant,” I say. “I might sob over this tray of oysters.”

“No reason not to.”

“Only that you might not be my friend anymore. I don’t have a guesthouse to make up for it.”

“Stop,” she says. “You’re nothing like those two. Sometimes I fear that I am, though. It embarrasses me, being just another person getting out of a car to see a show. Just another opinion in the room. I’m not proud of it. What separates me from everyone else besides my own sense of self-importance?”

We’d spent the afternoon naked, talking about sex, and yet this confession feels far more intimate. She shifts in her seat. “Do you want to make art?” I ask.

“No, no,” she says. She scans the restaurant. Takes a breath. “I want a gallery. I have excellent taste.”

“You should do it.”

“I need Espen to want it, too. No one would show with me on my own. A woman.” She blinks hard, resetting her face. “On that note, it’sabout time to show him your work. People listen to him. They get excited about whohe’s excited about.”

The thought of him—of anyone—assessing my work makes me want to crawl under the table. “There’s no guarantee he’ll be excited.”