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By Root 1006 0

was still another hour and a half before I saw a sign for Pendleton. I nearly cried with relief. My head throbbed from ten hours of highway and a day’s diet of Pepsi and Circus Peanuts. I stopped at the next gas station. In the eerie green light of the bathroom I changed out of my jeans and into the slacks I’d kept on a hanger in the back of the car; I’d hung them the way my mother taught me, mindful of the seams, fully aware that this was the kind of detail Eli never noticed. I rinsed my face, pinched my cheeks, slipped on the earrings he had given me for my birthday, then decided that would be a bit much and replaced them with inconspicuous silver hoops.

Off the exit ramp I passed an old grocery and a Wal-Mart.There was a strip of pastel-colored historical downtown. Twenty minutes past the last light, up a winding bit of country road, I arrived at the Pendleton Residency campus. It was just as the photographs depicted: a secluded, sprawling landscape boasting four closely built studio complexes, an old barn, and, upon the farthest hill, a compact, modern building of cement and glass. My destination for the night. A shallow, decorative pool framed the perimeter of the building, reflecting its minimalist facade as flawlessly as a polished mirror. Like a moat surrounding an impenetrable castle.

I was barely in time to catch the end of the show, but I sat in the car five minutes gathering the courage to go inside. I actually thought about turning around, worried that my unexpected appearance would not come as a pleasant surprise for him. Until that moment I hadn’t even considered the horrible thought that Eli’d met someone during the residency. I turned off the ignition. Too late now.

The gallery was as warm and inviting inside as its exterior had been cold and intimidating. The exhibition filled two rooms joined at center by a foyer. The tables had been spread with real linens, with mushroom tarts and manicured fruits speared on skewers. Women in black poured red wine into plastic cups. I walked through the show slowly, pretending to examine each piece in turn while furtively searching for napkins pinned to walls or framed lithographs in rows. I expected to see Eli every time I turned a corner, but I walked through each room twice without even a glimpse of his work.

My heart sank with the possibility that I had somehow misread the card or the calendar, that in my hurry to see him and by some gross miscalculation I had ended up at the wrong show.

A binder containing the résumés of the various artists had been propped on a white pedestal near the dessert table. I loitered there, reading the long list of accolades behind each name. Someone bumped into me, and when I turned to acknowledge the man’s apology, my eyes crossed a small sign posted beside the door, all but obstructed by the viewers crowded around the desserts. It read Sculpture above an arrow pointing to the right.

I followed the sign out the back doors and into the courtyard.

I was met by a field of lights.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the diffuse light gained clarity and became not a blanket of white but row after row of glowing globes standing knee-high in the grass. Though each bubble of blown glass varied in size, they were uniform in shape, tapering to a narrow neck. They stood on stems translucent as glass, some straight, some bent. Beneath the individual lamps, tucked in shadow and barely visible, a web of black cords like roots filled the twin patches of perfectly square lawn. A narrow sidewalk passed between.

I followed the path, feeling, foolishly, like a bride on the aisle, suffused in white and deliberating her steps amidst the hush of a summertime garden. I was so taken by the delicacy of the sculpture I did not at first notice that every other globe illuminated a phrase printed on its interior.

A strange sense of déjà vu washed over me as I read the first: It had been taken from them.

I walked to the next and read: leave leaf palms open.

And the next: happiness like a blush to the cheeks.

The familiarity deepened with each phrase.