The Starfish Sisters: A Novel(38)

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, because I 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?”

“Like like,” I say, and realize I do, that I have been liking him 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!”

And then he’s off and I’m standing in my studio, flush with pleasure and anticipation and things I had completely forgotten.

A date. With Ben.





Chapter Twelve


Suze


It’s awkward in my house after Joel comes in. I have no idea what to do with my hands or where to look or if I should talk or not talk. My body is noisy with reaction, blood racing through my veins, thoughts and memories chasing each other through my brain, my mouth dry as a bone, my limbs shaky.

Joel simply goes about the business of the electrical problem. I watch him open the fuse box, and he moves differently, like a man, like the grown-up man he is. Silver threads through his long hair, but it’s still beautiful hair. His jaw is softer. His hands look like they’ve been used hard, with scars and marks and calluses, but they’re still beautiful, long fingers and wide palms. His frame is still lean, almost ropy. Beryl used to say we either get too lean or too fat as we age, and it proves true.