“Different. You had friends, and eventually you started seeing that boy,” Anita says, apparently determined to continue her tradition of not using Pete’s name, “but I always felt you only shared the surface with everyone. The rest came out in your art.”
“I’m not sure what the rest is,” Claire says. Based on the blank white paper she’s staring at, the answer isnothing. “I saw myself as not much at all, then. A nobody. Waiting to bloom, like my mother always said. I want to think I’ve gotten past that, but sometimes I think I’m still waiting.”
“You were always bloomed then, chickadee,” Anita says. “Your petals just looked different than the rest. I think youwere waiting to…” Anita pauses. Claire can hear her tapping her fingers against a surface. “Tobe, maybe.”
Claire rolls a paintbrush between her fingers. “Waiting to be what, exactly?”
“Whatever you were meant to be,” Anita says simply. “Find it, and the art will come.”
Claire sits with that, after hanging up the phone. She has no idea what she’s meant to be. Being around Jackie has brought out new things in her—is that what Anita means? Under Jackie’s camera lens she felt herself became something worthy of being photographed, like one of Jackie’s impossible flowers. Claire had put it down to Jackie’s talent in finding beauty in the unremarkable, but maybe Jackie was just finding something that was already there. Something interesting on its own.
Claire gathers her supplies and carries everything out to the backyard, setting the mini easel up on the grass and kneeling in front of it. The breeze ruffles her hair. She breathes in the fresh air, and for the first time in years she puts brush to paper.
She ends up with something abstract. It’s all shades of blue, ripples and waves interspersed with white. She’s not sure what it is, exactly, but looking at it gives her a sense of comfort.
~ ~ ~
August has turned to a warm September when Jackie returns.
A mere hour after the Mustang pulls into the drive after her week away, Claire is knocking on her door. It’s a hot day for early autumn, and Claire can hear movement inside—the back door sliding open and closed, footsteps through the house.
And then Jackie is answering the door in a yellow bikini.
Claire had seen Jackie in a bathing suit that afternoon by the pool with Theo, but this time is different. There’s no sarong. It’s not a one-piece with cutout sides. It’s nothing but skin, warmdark tones against the yellow fabric, and there’s just so much of it. It’s like someone drew her up in a laboratory in the quest to make a perfect specimen of womanhood.
Claire isn’t sure she truly understood the termhourglass figureuntil this moment. Jackie’s bust seems more generous than ever with so little fabric covering it up. There’s a lovely dip between Jackie’s ribs and her hips, a spot that seems to beg for a hand to be resting there, and another between hip and thigh. There’s a scattering of dark moles across her torso. There’s a thin line of dark hair that trails down the middle of her belly, over the swell under her bellybutton, and disappears under her bikini bottoms.
At the very edges of Jackie’s bikini line, Claire can see more dark, curly hair.
“Great timing. I was just thinking of calling you,” Jackie says, leaning against the doorframe. She doesn’t seem to notice Claire’s eyeline, but that doesn’t make Claire any less ashamed of it. “I missed you this week. Come on in.”
“You’re swimming,” Claire says loudly, already spinning around to head back towards her own house. Her face is so hot that she’s sure her blush must be visible from the moon. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jackie calls after her. “Why would that stop you from visiting?”
Claire stops, but doesn’t yet turn around.
“I…don’t know,” Claire says, still staring resolutely at Jackie’s mailbox. Her heart is beating so hard that she’s sure the fluttering can be seen under her dress. “It feels rude to impose?”
“Just go get your suit. We’ll swim together,” Jackie says.
“I don’t have a suit,” Claire says, finally daring to look directly at Jackie again. It’s a lie, of course, but Claire would rather not swim at all than have Jackie see her in that shabby homemade number.
“Not even one? Do you not like to swim?”
Claire rubs her arms self-consciously. “I don’t often have the chance.”
Jackie hums. She shifts her weight, cocking a hip, and Claire stares very carefully at a spot on the side of Jackie’s house. “At least come sit with me?”
Claire trails Jackie through the kitchen, avoiding the wet footprints all over the linoleum. She’s wearing her regular clothes today, rather than the ones Jackie bought, a brown dress with yellow flowers and a low bun, and she kicks off her shoes before taking a seat on a lounge. For once, she lays back comfortably rather than sitting up straight.
“I do like to swim,” Claire finally admits when they’re settled, staring up at the rainbow pattern on the deck umbrella. She feels a bit like she’s in a therapist’s office, reclined on one of those couches while she confesses her sins. “I think.”
“I thought so. Didn’t I see a bunch of cabin photos in your house?” Jackie asks. Her hair is gathered on top of her head in a loose updo, and Claire can’t stop looking at the seldom-seen column of her neck.
“Oh, yes. Pete’s family owns it,” Claire says, looking up at the canopy above to keep from staring at Jackie’s neck. “But I don’t usually swim there. He goes hunting, and I get to spend the weekend with his mother.” Claire can’t quite keep a leash on the resentment in that sentence.
Jackie snorts. “There’s a story behind that tone.”
