"You look like Alice in Wonderland in that dress," Faith said. Faith in her jeans and flat suede lace-up shoes, with her round wire-rimmed glasses and practical, man's hair.
Gia ran her hand through her long hair. The tangles were worse than ever. "I do?" How long had Faith been in the studio? She put her brush to the canvas and made a pale scratch. Dry. Bristles as stiff as if she'd left it out all night on the palette. "Did you just come in?" Gia asked.
"Yeah," Faith said. "You're almost finished." Faith pointed at Gia's canvas where there were dead babies descending through a thicket of flames.
Gia laughed. "No, I just started."
"It looks finished to me," Faith said. "Your best yet."
Three plain brown birds flew past the studio window, high above their heads. Gia wondered if they'd fly inside. The sky was a painful blue. The sun filtered through the window, warming her arms and bare legs.
Gia had been somewhere else and she remembered then, all of it.
"My mother came. It was like she never died," Gia said. Something stinging and hot slithered down her cheek. She touched her face, then held her fingers up, wondering. They were wet.
Faith frowned to see the tears, then she took Gia's shoulders, embracing her. Faith was a little taller, sturdier. She smelled like Ivory soap. Her cheek was dry and smooth, a pale color of peach. She wore no makeup.
"I haven't been drinking," Gia said. Most days, she was. But not now. They went outside and sat on the adobe seat by the fish pond, near the green lily circles in the water. The fish fed, orange and white glimmerings in the rippling water. Faith took Gia's hand.
Words came, slowly. Gia did not trust words because she knew what lies were and what made them. The loss and the knowing of the loss was a jagged chunk of ice in her gut. Her mother had come. More than that, for whatever time it was and Gia could no longer remember, she could only guess or imagine, it had been as if she had always been there. Her mother had been proud. Despite Gia's liquor and men and endless fear, her mother had been proud. Lovelier than any Madonna. Gia had heard her voice and seen her face: almond-shaped green eyes and high cheekbones and kind lines at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth. They had gone for lunch and walked the campus, down the long oak-lined lawn and through the rose garden with the hummingbirds feeding among the luxurious blooms.
"She wasn't a ghost," Gia said.
Faith listened.
"It was like she had always been there. I told her things..." That Gia had never told. Salt tears stung her lips, hot and unstoppable. Gia was silent for long moments. The fish pond burbled. Faith took her in her arms once more, patting her back. Gia remembered someone telling her that when people patted your back like that you knew you'd gone insane.
)
