Page 44 of The Starfish Sisters

Derek and I started living together at the end of my sophomore year. We’d been dating the whole year, spending nights at his crowded, shared apartment, where no one ever did the dishes and the air smelled of dirty shoes and beer. At the start of the summer, both of us had good jobs waiting tables, so we found a tiny cottage, just a bedroom and kitchen, a postage stamp of a bathroom, and a living room barely large enough for a couch and a single chair. I filled the windows with houseplants and bought used pans and dishes at Goodwill that I used to make dinners and bake the treats we loved to eat when we were stoned. I developed a little fame over my muffins and scones and quick breads, thanks to Amma’s instruction.

The reason we chose the cottage was the big shed in the backyard. It was unheated and not really big enough for the canvases Derek was painting, so he continued to use the space he’d rented in downtown Seattle, while I set up in the shed, sweeping out the spiders and dirt. It had two big windows that faced north, and enough room for an easel and two long tables against the far wall. A rolling cupboard held my supplies.

The year in that house, June to June, was one of the happiest times of my life, despite the fact that art school was kicking my butt. I loved the people, loved being around other artists and the wild, far-reaching imaginations that made conversations so much fun. At parties, someone always had a guitar or a banjo or a recorder to play music, and someone else would read poetry they’d written, and we’d have loud debates about the palette of Kahlo or the technique of Matisse or the differences between Impressionism and Fauvism. I loved only thinking about thework and what was emerging, and having paint under my fingernails like Amma.

But the truth was, that summer between sophomore and junior year, painting on my own in that studio of my own, I had to face the reality that I didn’t love postmodernist styles, or abstract anything. I loved representational work, and things that Derek and most of the rest of my peers and teachers rolled their eyes over. I loved paintings that were too girly for words—flowers and cats and windows and interiors. I loved Matisse’s cats and William Morris patterns andNew Yorkercover illustrations—oh, to have a cover on theNew Yorker!—and saturated pinks and oranges and blues that everyone thought too overt. Too much.

I struggled in classes with criticism of paintings I didn’t even love myself. Abstract work felt cold and distant to me, like planets in some faraway galaxy. I wanted warmth and love and coziness.

That summer in my studio, I painted interiors, rooms with overstuffed couches and cats lounging on the cushions. I did watercolor gardens and pen-and-ink renditions of my grandmother’s flower farm. I didn’t show any of it to anyone, but I felt like me for the first time since starting school.

I felt like myself when I baked cranberry orange bread and learned to roast vegetables on rainy days. I loved being in my body when Derek and I made love in our tiny bedroom on our mattress on the floor, reveling in each other’s flesh, giving and receiving endless pleasure. Sex made us artistic, and art made us horny, and we reveled in all of it.

That was the summer Suze was working in France, filming her first movie, and her letters were filled with wonders—the cobbled streets and old houses and the grueling days. Because I was happy in my own skin, I was happy for her. Because I was in love, I could imagine her falling in love, too. In the spring, I went to the premiere and realized that she was going to be very, very famous, and I didn’t even mind that, becauseI knew the secret I carried in my belly, the baby who would become Stephanie, my girl.

Decades later, in my grandmother’s studio, I lift my brush and tilt my head. The dahlia wallpaper is nearly finished, but there’s something a little bit off. To help me see it more clearly, I upload it to my computer and open the design in Adobe. In a new layer, I manipulate the darks along the leaves and the stems. Better, but not there yet.

Another layer.

A knock sounds at the door, and I’m relieved. Suze has finally come down the hill. I’ve been fretting about her, about the encounter in the diner. “Come in!”

An enormous bouquet of dahlias, some a little worse for the wear, parades itself into the room. “The last of the blooms,” Ben says, settling the flowers on the table where I’m working. “It’s going to freeze tonight, so I thought you might like them.”

Looking at the real-life flowers, I see instantly that what I’m missing is another round of subtle color, deep in the throats of the petals. “I’ve been struggling all morning with a problem and now I see exactly what it is.” Sliding a particularly pretty one from the vase, I hold it toward the window, narrowing my eyes to pick out the peach, the pink, the touches of magenta at the base of the petals. “Thank you!”

He stands there a moment.

I look up. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” he says, and the shine of his eyes lands on my face. He clears his throat. “I was actually wondering, Phoebe, if you’d go to dinner with me.”

At first it doesn’t sink in. “Like tonight? It’s going to be busy.”

“Not tonight, and not in town. I thought we could get dressed up and drive up to Poseidon and have some surf and turf or something.”

Now I look up. A heady mix of intense yearning stirred with extreme embarrassment washes through me. “What? I mean ... yes? But are you—”

He steps closer and covers my fingers where they lie on the table. “Asking you on a date? Yes.”

I gape, feeling as if a giant hand has shaken my world. A sensation I nearly do not recognize wakes up and rolls through my gut, my thighs.

I hesitate for so long that he looks embarrassed, and he steps back. “I’m sorry. I got it wrong. I thought it was mutual. It’s okay.”

“Wait!” I grab his arm as he’s about to turn away. “You just ... I didn’t ... uh ... I’m surprised, that’s all. I forgot how to like someone that way.”

A slow smile lifts one side of his mouth. “Like how?”

“Likelike,” I say, and realize I do, that I have beenlikinghim for quite some time. All those days when he made tea in my kitchen, when he fixed the windows in my studio. When I noticed his mouth and then insisted to myself that I did not out of embarrassment over my wish to have something like that in my life again.

I take a breath. “Ben, I would love to get dressed up and go to Poseidon and get a margarita with you. When?”

“How about Friday night?”

“Yes. I’ll ask Suze if she can babysit.”

Is it my imagination or does he look at my mouth? I look at his, neatly framed with his thick black-and-silver beard. I’ve never kissed anyone with a beard before. His lower lip is full, red. I realize I’m staring and, predictably, blush.

“Okay.” He grins. “Okay!”