The Appetites of Girls (33 page)

So Amara would never sob over a man until her face was puffed and mottled as I had seen Mother do more times than I could count. Never would she attempt to swallow sorrow, calm her nerves with rounds of tall rum drinks that left her moaning with sickness. No, she was too independent to let someone else turn her life upside down. And the more I watched her, the more I felt I could learn her strength. If I wanted to believe in fate or destiny, maybe it was for
this
reason I had come to Florida, more than for any career opportunity.

•   •   •

I
n the summertime, the off-season for tourists, Amara explained, patronage of the gallery as well as of the health bar was lighter than during the remainder of the year. So she and I often had hours of unoccupied time, and we sat at two of the bamboo stools, sipping blended shakes of celery, carrots, parsley, wheatgrass, or whatever concoction Amara had most recently discovered, as she described for me the vitamins and nutrients of each ingredient. Just as I did, Amara adhered to a vegetarian diet, but she had stuck with it for years and was a font of knowledge. She understood how to balance a meal precisely, how to complement proteins or roots or berries for maximum nourishment, how to stop eating before fullness set in to prevent the storage of excess fat. “I believe in conditioning the interior as well as the exterior of my body, don’t you?” Amara asked. She agreed to come running with me along my route by the water one afternoon. “I don’t know how people can
stand
to live in cold climates,” she said once we’d found a matching stride. “This is heavenly, isn’t it?” And she held out her arms as if she were drawing the beauty of our surroundings into herself.

My breath was too heavy in the sticky air to speak much as we ran, but Amara talked of the gallery, of the artists whose work she’d been lucky enough to show. It was really a matter of being discerning, she thought. There was so much done in the name of art these days that was crass, sloppy, wasn’t there? “But art is like anything else in life, isn’t it? There is a purity, a harmony in that of highest quality.” Did I agree?

Yes. Yes! Amara was saying all of the things I already believed but had never quite put into words. If my legs had more strength in them, I could have run and talked with her like this forever. I thought of the drawings I’d been working on intermittently over the past months, from photos I had taken of children playing on a playground near Brown. More than once I had thought I’d finished them, but always, later, something would seem off. Maybe I had emphasized too many elements, trying to make too
many aspects come to life. Maybe what it lacked was just what Amara spoke of—a purity of vision. When I returned to it, I would keep this in mind.

“I enjoyed our run, Opal,” Amara mentioned the next morning. Later, if I liked, she would show me her own exercise regimen, one she followed on a daily basis. So I mirrored her as she worked through a series of elongating bends and muscle-toning poses that she held for impossibly long stretches. One after another after another, until by the time she had finished, I could not remember how she had begun. In a single day with Amara, I could gain more than I had gleaned from any health magazine, any philosophy or self-help book I’d ever read. And with each secret she shared, I became hungrier for more.

•   •   •

F
or eight hours of each Tuesday through Saturday, Amara and I were together, and I noticed that I was beginning to develop the almost reflexive habit of asking myself how
she
would handle certain choices, various situations, sensing that her decisions would be the braver ones, the stronger ones. She had begun to compliment my instinct for finding art that worked in the gallery’s space, that was of the style she wished to promote. I had discovered Lia Chelsea’s work at an outdoor art festival in Bonita Springs and Joy Ling’s beautiful landscape photos at the Sun Gallery. At the evening parties Amara had held at the gallery to honor the debut of each of these artists, she interrupted the passing of champagne and hors d’oeuvres to toast me in front of the crowd. But in other ways I was frustrated by my many mistakes. Whenever male customers talked of my smile, my eye color, drew me into lengthy conversations, I stiffened with self-consciousness, aware that Amara observed me, certain that she would have dismissed these unwanted attentions more quickly and with a flair I did not possess.

•   •   •

W
e were just days from transitioning from Faye Hallowell’s work to the watercolors of a friend of Amara’s, a popular local artist whom she had showcased some years before, selling all but one of her paintings. This was late August, the air, even at night, thick and hot as breath, the temperateness of my apartment and of the gallery always a happy relief. The young man who entered Art of Life I hadn’t seen before, but from the way he stepped in so purposefully, confidently, I assumed he was a friend of Amara’s or Calliope’s, that he’d spent time in the gallery previously and knew his way around. But he didn’t inquire after either of them, and I saw that he held the handles of an artist’s black portfolio case in his left hand. He stepped close enough for me to smell the salt air on him, and he was smiling widely, almost grinning, as if he expected some effusive or enthusiastic greeting from me. I returned a more lingering smile than I’d intended, my voice too high, too soft in answering. So stupid. He irritated me, even before he said another word, the way he seemed so sure of his likability, his masculinity, with his shoulders pushed back in his U Penn T-shirt, smiling his too-radiant smile, which I supposed he knew made up for his deep-set eyes, his slightly crooked jaw. I was not interested. And the Art of Life, unfortunately, I told him—though I would check with the owner—would probably not be a fitting venue for his work, primarily sculptures, of which he’d brought photos. “We’re not set up to display them,” I said. “Ms. Silver’s focus is solely on two-dimensional art.”

“Oh, but wait.” He’d done a few watercolors, as well, he said. Still these, too, I was sure, were all wrong for the gallery. I could see that he had proficiency as a painter, but I found his work distasteful: bare-armed carpenters sawing lumber, their hunched backs bulky; a dock full of thick-legged fishermen gutting their catch.

Amara’s response was what mine had been: the paintings—she was
sorry—were unsuitable for the gallery. If she decided at some future point to consider sculpture, she would be in touch with him—Marco Everly—taking his card. And so, just like that, she turned him away, civilly and without ado.

For the next day or two, the stifling temperatures kept the café and gallery nearly empty. We counted six hours one Friday without a single customer until two men entered, allowing in a cloud of hot, heavy air. They were friends, or father and son, perhaps—the slightly taller one seeming to be a younger version of the other—their hair identically styled, slicked off their foreheads with some sort of shiny gel. They wore similarly patterned flowered swim trunks and cotton shirts, each with the top few buttons unfastened to reveal a wide vee of tanned chest.

“Like twin Hawaiian Elvises!” I whispered to Amara.

“Or Elvis impersonators,” she laughed.

“Do you ladies mind some company? It’s so nice and cool in here we just might stay all day.” The older man grinned, leaned his brown-speckled arms on the counter, and propped a thick, sandaled foot on one of the bamboo stools. He and his companion ordered Caribbean smoothies—coconut milk, papaya, mango, pineapple, honey—then straddled their stools and began to chatter, making repeated attempts at small talk as if they really did intend to settle in for a long while. The older one directed his conversation toward Amara; the younger one had a stream of questions for me. I occupied myself behind the bar, rinsing berries, stacking glasses, so that I could keep my answers to his inquiries brief. Perhaps I was finally learning Amara’s techniques. So when he asked if I planned to take a break soon, this time words came quickly. No, I was sorry, I said. I would be very busy all day checking inventory. But as I spoke, my voice echoed Amara’s, or was hers trailing mine? We glanced at each other, biting our cheeks to suppress our mirth, realizing we had simultaneously conjured up the same excuse. With tight lips, the younger man dropped crumpled bills on the counter for their drinks; then the two turned, hustling out, their elbows stiff at their sides, their chests puffed like
waterfowl, with no more than a mumbled “goodbye” over their shoulders. As soon as the chimes above the door jingled behind them, Amara and I exploded.

“Quite taken with themselves, weren’t they? They really believed they were doing us the biggest favor of our summer!”

“God, how ever did we resist?” We laughed until tears welled in our eyes, until our ribs ached. And I sensed, with a shiver of happiness, that this was the beginning of a change, of a new closeness.

It was not long before Amara began to divulge details from her past, plans for her future. “I’ll tell you because I trust you, Opal,” she would sometimes whisper before she began. So I would savor each tidbit, nodding silently as she spoke, still not quite believing she had chosen me for her confidante, feeling a sudden rush of pride when she glanced over her shoulder to make certain Calliope, whom she had known far longer, could not hear. And in these intimate moods came a sudden urge to share my own secrets. My voice quaking, I told things no one else knew: of how I’d panicked at my first school dance when my date walked me down to the sports fields, then pinned me against the equipment shed. Of how I’d begun to wheeze and shake—knowing,
knowing
what he would make me do for my release—though he’d only laughed at me and then stalked off, calling over his shoulder that I could not take a joke. I told of my own pencil sketches I’d been collecting for the last few years—I would show her someday when they were more finished. I told, too, of my hope that I might eventually try color. Each revelation made my heart pound from nerves but also with the thrill of having disclosed a truth to Amara, and Amara alone.

Soon I began to dread Sundays and Mondays, when the Art of Life was closed. On these days the hours ticked by sluggishly. In the glaring sun of late summer, it was too hot to lie on the baked sand of the beach, too sticky even to last long in the tepid water of Emerald Cove’s unshaded pool, where, within minutes, I was swallowed into a circle of lumpy-legged older women in their confetti-bright bathing suits who
liked to tell me what a beauty I was and that they remembered a time when they’d had pretty, pretty figures like mine. I read books that I borrowed from the neighborhood library—an anthology of Native American lore, a biography of Jackson Pollock, two novels by Isabel Allende—as I soaked in cool baths—far more refreshing than the pool water—until my fingertips shriveled. From the photos I’d taken of children at play, I attempted other drawings, this time using, instead, a very soft pencil. I thought of Amara’s suggestion that the best art creates a sense of balance. And so I darkened certain lines and shaded areas so that your eye moved around the drawings but then found rest. Still, I wasn’t sure this worked. I contemplated bringing the new sketches to the gallery at some point for Amara’s opinion.

I ran after sundown, or early in the morning when the sun was not bright white and overhead but low and yellow and blurry-edged near the horizon. Lacking the structure of a workday schedule, I ran often without a planned route, sometimes looping the sand-dusted asphalt paths of Emerald Cove then through the more sprawling complexes south of it, sometimes following the never-ending stretch of coastline. One morning I thought I recognized Marco Everly—the artist Amara had turned away just days before. He was in a black short-sleeved wetsuit, a paddleboard under his arm, his hair dark with water, his face crinkled from squinting into the sun. As he turned, I tucked my chin, dropped my eyes to the ground, though I thought as I picked up speed, I could see his hand lifting in a wave. “Hi!
Hi . . .”
His call shredded by wind. Or had it been merely one of the raucous gulls circling above the waves? Perhaps I’d only imagined he’d seen me. Maybe I should have stopped and offered at least a polite greeting. But for some reason, I could think only of creating more distance, and I ran without looking back.

Not until Tuesday morning, when the café and gallery reopened, did life seem to settle once again into a purposeful rhythm. I looked forward to the routine Amara and I had begun to establish: our shared breakfasts of soy milk and cereal, eaten while seated on the low stuccoed wall of Art
of Life’s small patio, watching the geckos that darted to and fro and the ibises strolling about the plantings of the gravel lot. And later, our cups of caffeine-free tea, our lunches of chopped salad—that day’s special from the health bar. If the gallery was empty of customers, I would follow Amara in her daily sequence of stretches. Her back solid and reaching, like the trunks of the palms beyond the windows, her arms, in her breezy tunic, easy at her side, she showed me how proper breathing through each movement united body and mind, how the right cadence of inhaling and exhaling gave one focus. “Like this,” she said, nodding, her eyes sliding closed as her diaphragm swelled and then drew in. And soon I had proof that the things she told me were true. Always I had feared there was something wrong in me, something that kept me from being whole. More than once, while we worked together, in the comfortable silence that seemed usually to belong to families, I almost told her so. But accompanying Amara in these rituals, I felt myself shifting to a higher level of well-being; it seemed I was beginning to absorb her energy, her confidence, her completeness—suddenly sure of my thoughts, sure of making right choices. When the two of us were together, I could be like her, soaring with a sense of invincibility I had never before known.

But later, in the solitude of my apartment, the strength, the discipline that came so easily in Amara’s presence turned elusive. So, hoping for inspiration, I studied the pamphlets that Amara kept on one of the tables in the gallery’s back room, stacked beside brochures from other galleries and auction houses. Pamphlets on yoga and meditation, on diuretics, on herbs and vitamin-rich fruits known for promoting equilibrium. I pored over a book she had lent me called
Living in Health
, memorizing the pages she had dog-eared, the paragraphs she had underlined on exercise, on diet, on eliminating stress and the importance of meaningful work. For suppers, I attempted recipes listed in the book’s appendix, favoring the ones Amara had marked with asterisks.