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For once, dinner isn’t conversational, but Grace can’t help but fixate on the persistent lack of quiet. Frankie makes clattering switches between chopsticks and fork based on the bite she’s working on, mm-mm-mmms every morsel into her mouth, and sprinkles some extra peanuts on top of the dish with a flourish that would put Salt Bae to shame. She might be late to the party, but she’s at the party, and sprinkling like Salt Bae is her new favorite thing.
The leftover pad thai is good, but it isn’t that good. Grace sets her chopsticks across the edge of her plate. “Something to share?”
Frankie beams. “I said I was gonna do it, and I did it.” She pumps a fist in the air. “I did it!”
“I need more information,” Grace says. She picks up her wine glass and waits. Frankie’s had a lot of ideas lately. Grace has a fresh new divorce and an entirely unarticulated identity crisis; Frankie’s got plans to reupholster a yard sale chaise lounge in vintage velvet, melt down their wedding rings and turn them into a miniature version of an as-yet undetermined weapon, and bowl a full game granny-style as performance art.
“I signed up for the life drawing class at the senior center.” Frankie lowers her volume. “You know, the one that’s really cheap because the students take turns modeling.”
“Wow,” Grace says. She vaguely remembers hearing about this course a couple weeks ago, when the program catalog came in the mail and Frankie spent the better part of two days making fun of (almost) everything on offer.
Grace doesn’t say what she’s thinking, which is But Frankie, you barely like to get naked to take a shower. Even thinking it brings up a drunken, pieced-together afternoon from years before, when she interrupted Frankie’s lunch with Jacob and her sons, got in her face, said cruel things to her about sex in the vagina, about purging, her own miseries plunged into Frankie as wounds. Easily one of the top three moments she’d rewind if she could. She sets her glass back down. “So, ah, you’re feeling ready for that?”
“Hey, I’ve got a rockin’ bod and more artistic integrity in my left nostril than some people have in their”—Frankie gulps, as if unprepared for the anatomical consideration she’s almost certainly experiencing—“in their entire beings.”
“So you’re all set.”
“Yeah. We get the modeling schedule at our first class. Word on the street is, some old-timer named Vince already volunteered to go first.”
“Well, maybe Vince’ll be nice to look at.”
“Maybe,” Frankie says, but it sounds like she’s already thinking about something else.
—
The class meets Tuesday mornings. When the day of the first class arrives, Frankie cheerfully skips out on Vybrant, eager to meet naked Vince and the other presumably-clothed participants.
“Did you remember to pack your artistic integrity?” Grace shouts as Frankie heads for the driveway. Frankie flips her the bird.
Frankie returns hours later, a roll of drawings tucked under her arm. Grace figures she’d have taken the drawings straight to the studio if she didn’t want any inquiries. “Well,” Grace says. She gestures to the only part of the dining room table not covered in vibrators. “Let’s see.”
“It wasn’t pretty,” Frankie warns. Is she pale? “Vince is a very...angular man. Yet droopy in all the right places.”
“Oh my God,” Grace says when Frankie reveals the first drawing. Frankie wasn’t kidding about the angles: Vince is basically an elbow. He’s more structurally sound than what you usually see at sixty-five and up, Grace can give him that, but the pose—at rest on a sofa not unlike Frankie’s yard sale find—doesn’t do him any favors. Frankie’s lines seem good, though, quick and sure.
“Be nice,” Frankie says, the admonition half-hearted at best. “Figure drawing isn’t about beauty, necessarily. It’s about understanding bodily form, and posture, and movement.”
“Maybe next week will be more pleasant. Someone a bit more Rubenesque.” Grace tries not to look down at her own body. Her own angles. She grips the corner of the page between her thumb and forefinger.
“Oh, Grace,” Frankie wails. The sound stops Grace from peeling the first drawing away from the stack. She glances to her side; Frankie is pale. “What have I gotten myself into? I’m next.”
—
In the days leading up to her modeling debut, Frankie doesn’t talk about the class much. Not directly, anyway. Sure, she walks up to Grace and asks, apropos of absolutely nothing, “What’s a crunch?” But if she actually does any, Grace doesn’t hear about it. And one morning before the coffee’s even halfway done brewing, she corners Grace in the kitchen: “Bananas. We all know about their famed potassium. But how related is potassium to metabolism?”
“Both words end in m,” Grace says. “But potassium’s great for blood pressure.”
Frankie has a bagel. Grace abstains from follow-up questions.
—
On Monday night, Grace is starting to consider putting her book down and turning out the light when there’s a tentative knock on her bedroom door.
She sighs. “Come in.”
Frankie lingers in the doorway.
“What’s up?” Grace asks, trying again.
Frankie walks to the foot of the bed. “I think I’m gonna make our rings into a little dart,” she says. She mimes a throw. Bullseye.
“Okay. Everything all right?”
“Oh, I’m great. I’m fantastic. Tomorrow morning I’m going to strip down to my birthday suit in front of eleven of my favorite charcoal-wielding senior citizens.”
“It’ll be fine, Frankie. I promise.” But Grace doesn’t know if she’s going to be fine. There’s an art show at the end of the class; Grace will attend, walk through what she pictures as an aisle of naked Frankies, even if she knows some students might choose to highlight their work from a different week. And there’s a more immediate problem, too, because Frankie’s got the hem of her t-shirt in her hands, fingers twitching with a decision.
Frankie flings the shirt over her head, stands before Grace in the dim light. “Be honest,” she says, and for a moment it seems like she’ll cross her arms in front of her chest, shirt still in hand, but she doesn’t. “I mean, be serious. Can they make art out of me?”
Frankie’s rosy in the dim light, all gently curved lines, all small slopes. “Of course they can,” Grace says. The next words out of her mouth aren’t like anything she’d ever thought she’d say, but they spill out all the same. “Of course you’re art.”
Frankie breathes out the breath she must have held since speaking. Grace turns down the sheet and blanket on the other side of the bed as if she does this every night, and Frankie walks around the bed, sits in the open place. She tucks her legs up to her chest, hugs her arms around her knees.
“I don’t know how to draw,” Grace says softly. She rests her hand at the center of Frankie’s back, and Frankie looks over and smiles, a little sadness in her eyes. Frankie’s skin is warm, and even softer here than the other places Grace has collected in her memory. “I don’t recommend that twisty pose of Vince’s,” Grace continues. “Drawing four, I think? I mean, it was really upsetting. But Frankie, you’re—you’re beautiful. Week two’s gonna be everybody’s favorite.”
Frankie lies down and pulls the bedclothes over her at the same time, moving down the bed so her head’s off the pillow and her feet nearly hang off the end. She looks like she might cry, but they both laugh when she says “I’ll be going now,” the words muffled by the covers.
“You don’t have to go anywhere.”
—
In the morning, Frankie’s gone. Well, not all the way, because as soon as Grace makes it out of the bedroom and into the hallway above the stairs she can hear Frankie in the kitchen being as loud about utensils as ever. Grace has to force herself to slow down—run a toothbrush through her mouth, a comb through her hair, halfass the morning routine—instead of rushing to the source of the sound. Just hours ago, she’d held Frankie close, rubbed her back until Frankie found one of Grace’s hands and placed it on her stomach, let her move higher and palm her breasts. They’d fallen asleep like that, Frankie tucked into Grace’s arms.
“Hey,” Grace says when she makes it to the kitchen. Frankie’s dressed for the day, Grace supposes. For the dressed part of it, anyway.
“Hey,” Frankie says. “Cheers.” She hands Grace a mug of coffee, and attempts to clink the mug against her own before they’ve completed the hand-off. Coffee sloshes over Grace’s arm and onto the countertop. She wipes her arm on a kitchen towel before it has a chance to burn. “Oh, good grief.” Frankie sounds almost angry.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Um. I have to leave for class.”
Grace nods. Swallows hard; prepares for something hard to swallow. She doesn’t know what it will be. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“I know. I want to do this,” Frankie says. “I’ll be fine.” She looks down at the floor. “Before I go, though—well, that was an unfortunate rhyme, but probably a frequent one—”
“Frankie!”
“Before I go.” She looks up. Looks into Grace. “Are you gonna try to drink away last night?”
“No.” Grace hears herself moaning into Frankie’s neck, reaching for more of her, secretly calling it art. Hears the sounds as something Frankie assumes she might want to forget. “I wouldn’t be able to.” And the next truth, the one she and Frankie both need to hear: “I wouldn’t want to.”
Frankie’s mouth relaxes, and the corners collect into a smile. “I really should get going.” She picks up a bag from the counter and explains, eyes widening with scandalized joy: “I was asked to bring my own robe.” She steps closer to Grace, bag slung over her shoulder. Kisses her on the lips. “For fortitude.” Does it again. “For nudity.” Once more. “For bodily form.”
For beauty, Grace thinks. “Go get ‘em. I’ll be here when you get back.”