The Other Side of Blue (13 page)

Mrs. Bindas titters. “No, of course not. They will park at the closest place to hike up. Only two hours. Mayur would not ask the girls on a too-hard hike.” Mrs. Bindas doesn't say anything more about the beach party, about the boys going into the surf at night and Kammi following them in. Or about the adults' reaction.

“Who's going?”

“Mayur, of course. His cousins Saco and Roberto. And his friend Loco. They were all at the cookout.”

When Mrs. Bindas says Saco's name, Kammi smiles. At Loco's name, she looks at me from under her lashes.

Mother frowns. “Any girls?”

Mrs. Bindas shakes her head. “Only boys in our family.” She spreads her arms, her bangle bracelets tinkling together like glass wind chimes. She shrugs. “What are we to do?”

“It'll be hot.”

“Oh, that is no worry. The boys will carry plenty of cold water. And Dr. Bindas, he is a medical doctor, you know.” Mrs. Bindas smiles, as if being a doctor is the answer to every problem. Mrs. Bindas doesn't betray whether she remembers that Dr. Bindas met the boat when they brought my father in from the sea. He did not bring Dad back to life. He only confirmed that Dad was dead before the officials drove his body of to the morgue.

Mother finally looks toward Kammi. “You're sure you want to go?”

“Yes,” Kammi says, looking at me.

“Cyan?” Mother asks.

“I'll go.” I've never been to the top of Mount Christoffel. By the time I was old enough to hike it, Dad had stopped coming with us, spending his Junes in Italy or somewhere with his language students or on a research trip instead. Last summer, when he finally came with us again, he and I planned to hike the mountain the last weekend in June.

“Mayur will be so pleased,” Mrs. Bindas says.

Pleased he can show off.

“Also, I am so hoping that before you leave us this year,
you will honor us. Dr. Bindas and I say for shame we have had no exhibition of your artwork.”

Mother shakes her head. “You are very kind. But I come here to paint. And relax.”

Mrs. Bindas's smile droops, then revives. “You are too modest. Yes, it is decided. We will host a reception—that is what you call it, yes?—for your artwork. Before you leave.”

Mother stands. “Really, that's impossible. My paintings are in galleries in New York. In Atlanta. Nothing I have here is suitable.” She doesn't admit that there are no paintings here, except the untouched canvases upstairs.

“I'm sure you could have something ready by then,” I say, knowing the canvases stand empty.

Mother's eyes flash at me. “Don't be silly.” She faces Mrs. Bindas, who has risen. “I'm sure you understand. An exhibition takes a lot of lead time. All those paintings to wrap and ship. It would take months to get ready. My agent would have to be consulted. The insurance.” She explains as if there would never be enough time to prepare for an exhibition here in Curaçao.

Mrs. Bindas straightens her sari. Her smile does not fade. “Of course, it is too much to ask. But perhaps a small reception, just a few friends of mine. Influential women who are liking art. They dabble a little, too. Maybe we each bring a single painting from this summer. It would be enough, yes?”

“I—I'll have to see.” Mother concedes this much, at least, enough to keep Mrs. Bindas happy. Mother will hate reviewing the amateur works of Mrs. Bindas's friends. But it might be better than a reception in her honor alone.

“Excellent. Girls,” Mrs. Bindas says, turning to Kammi and me. “Next Saturday, we will pick you up. Seven o'clock in the morning.”

“Seven?” Mother asks.

Mrs. Bindas shakes her head as she starts toward the door. “I know. So early. But best to hike before the heat. No one to have sunstroke, Dr. Bindas says. We'll stop for breakfast on the way. A café near Savonet.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Bindas,” Kammi says.

“And always, of course, you are welcome to swim at our pool. Always welcome.”

I follow Mrs. Bindas and Kammi to the door, as much to avoid being on the deck alone with Mother as to say goodbye to Mrs. Bindas.

M
ARTIA NO LONGER
says anything when I leave the house at first light to look for sea glass. No words of warning about undertow—she knows I won't go into the water. Nothing about the wild donkeys that sometimes wander through, munching prized vegetation. Instead, without speaking, she leaves a guava pastry on a waxed-paper square and a water bottle on the counter for me. I've devoured the pastry by the time I reach the waterline.

This morning the sea is glass itself, like a green bottle, and the surf overnight has yielded few treasures. Some broken shells, a washed-up jellyfish. I don't even find any prized blues near the outwash. The boring brown pieces seem too sharp, too raw, like beer bottles recently tossed overboard from some party boat or washed down from the hills. I leave them to the sea, to have their edges ground smooth.

When I reach the point, I hike my way to the top of the small rise. I sit on a piece of driftwood that someone's dragged this far and left as the perfect seat from which to watch the morning sea.

June 21 already. Mother and I haven't talked about the coming date. Today may be the longest span of daylight of the year, the summer solstice, but in two days it will be June 23 again, the longest day of my life. As sure as the earth turns on its axis, the seasons change. There's a time to mourn, and a time to turn from mourning. Is this what we are doing—Mother and I—in our own ways, like magnets pushing each other away? On the twenty-third, after a whole year has passed, are we supposed to stop? Turn everything off, all our feelings, and let Howard move into the Maine house? Adopt Kammi as our own and set up her easel and paints near a window with a southern exposure?

A group of boys jog along the beach, splashing through the surf, kicking up wet sand. Laughing, they pass close in front of me, but they don't turn to look. They'd recognize me if they did. I know them. Saco's running in front. Panting, Mayur brings up the rear. How will he ever hike Mount Christoffel on Saturday?

The boys stop before they get close to our house, before they've crossed an imaginary property line. They look toward it, and then they wave in unison at someone standing on the deck. I squint. It wouldn't be Mother. She'd be in her studio near the widow's walk, higher still, except that it's
not even eight o'clock yet. Martia, maybe? She might be sweeping the sand off the deck, careful not to drag the furniture for fear of disturbing Mother, who demands quiet in the mornings.

The figure comes down from the deck and meets the boys on the beach. They crowd around.

By the time I get there, Kammi's at the center of the group of boys.

“Where'd you go?” she asks when she sees me. The boys part around her like a river around a rock.

“I walk the beach every morning.”

“What's in the bag?” Mayur asks.

Before I answer, Loco elbows his way between Mayur and me. “If you want shells,” Loco says, “we know a good spot. Where they aren't broken up. Off the reef.” He's pointing up the beach, on the other side of
Blauwe Huis.
“You have to swim out past it.”

“It's safe,” Saco says to Kammi.

Kammi looks from Saco to me.

“I'm not looking for shells,” I say, gripping the plastic bag harder in my fist even though it's empty, as if someone might take it and look inside.

“I like to pick up shells,” Kammi says. “At Sanibel Island, in Florida, the beaches have thousands of shells. So many you can't walk barefoot.”

Saco nods, serious. “I know a beach like that here, too. It's on the other side of the island. Maybe we can go—”

“Hello.” A voice carries on the wind. Mother waves from the widow's walk. Up early. Maybe she heard the voices after all and decided she'd better worry about Kammi. Because she can't trust all those boys, and she can't trust me to protect Kammi. Not after the nighttime swim at the Bindases' house.

Saco hesitates, but then he waves, and the other boys do, too. He's the leader. Even though Mayur thinks he is, because it's his beach and his house and his father's a doctor.

“Come over for breakfast. Martia, we have company.” Mother goes back inside, but I can still hear her calling for Martia. When Mrs. Bindas came to visit, Mother couldn't wait for her to leave. Now Mother's asking for the boys to come closer. She wants to meet them, check them out herself before she lets Kammi go hiking with them.

Saco opens his mouth, but Mother's already disappeared.

“Mother wants to meet you before the hike,” I say.

Mayur says, “She was at the cookout.”

“That was before the hiking invitation. She wants to make sure no one's going to push Kammi off a cliff,” I say.

“That's not true,” Kammi says, blushing.

“Okay, so maybe no one's going to push
you
off a cliff,” I say.

Martia appears on the deck. She's carrying a tray. “Breakfast,” she calls.

Mayur barrels his way forward, the other boys following his lead. Saco waits with Kammi and me. Funny how when other people are around, Mayur assumes his princely role. Kammi is
his
guest for the hike, so he goes first in the natural order of things.

Martia has filled a blue and white tray with pastries and rolls, butter and jam. We walk onto the deck, where the boys stand around in a circle, their backs against the railing. A moment later, Martia returns with a pitcher of chilled passion-fruit juice and thin plastic cups that, when empty, will blow away in the wind. She fills the cups and passes them around.

Mother appears, putting herself into the circle of boys. “I didn't have a chance to meet most of you at the cookout.” She hasn't asked a question of them yet, so they don't say anything.

Then Mayur steps forward. “These are my cousins, Saco and Roberto. This is Loco—his real name is Achal.” Mayur introduces the other boys, too.

Mother smiles at each in turn, studying them. “Ah, yes, Saco, I've heard of you.” She says it as a warning, though she sounds like she's teasing.

Too late, Kammi steps away from him, already having drawn enemy fire to him by standing too close.

Loco refills his own cup, as if he isn't a guest. “Mayur's mother says you are an artist. What do you paint?”

Mother folds her arms. “Landscapes, still lifes.”

“Like fruit bowls and bottles?” Loco asks.

Mayur laughs and punches his cousin in the shoulder.

Mother blanches. Loco doesn't seem to realize he's insulted her. Maybe he really is crazy. Or maybe he's truly interested.

“It's not just junk on a table,” I answer. I'm not defending Mother but I don't want her to say something rude to Loco, even though he doesn't mean anything to me. “Still lifes are carefully composed. It's all about balancing shapes and colors.”

“Like Cézanne? The way he drapes the folds of cloth next to the fruit?”

“Yes.” Maybe Loco's not so crazy.

“We have to go,” Mayur says, making a display of handing his cup back to Martia so it won't blow away and litter the beach. “Mother's driver is taking us into Willemstad to the arcade.” He doesn't ask if we can go. He's just showing off. “Thank you, Mrs. Walters. Don't forget Saturday.” As he walks by me, he says low, so only I hear, “Maybe I have something for you. On Saturday.”

“So tell,” I whisper.

“If you're nice.”

“Thank you,” Saco says to Mother and Martia as he turns away stiffly. He knows Mother doesn't approve of him, just because he appears to like Kammi. Loco and the other boys mumble thanks, too, as they follow Mayur back down the beach. When they're almost out of sight, I hear them laugh, and they start jogging again.

Martia begins to clear the tray. She always shakes her
head about the Bindas family and their big house and all the ornamentation that just exudes from their property, their green lawn. Even the rings on Mrs. Bindas's fingers and the bangles on her wrists. But Martia's careful around Mother. “Is good to see boys hungry,” Martia says. “Polite, too,” she adds.

“I'm surprised Mrs. Bindas encourages so many cousins to visit at once. I'm not sure Saco or Loco are positive influences on Mayur.”

I roll my eyes when Kammi looks at me with raised eyebrows. For an artist, Mother is about as observant as a shark: she can't see what's right in front of her, but she can smell blood at a great distance.

Mother suddenly seems to remember Kammi and I are still standing there.

“Kammi, I see you have your supplies. Why don't you and I go inside? Still lifes make excellent studies, as Cyan properly noted. You want to make the most of your time here.”

Kammi almost trips, she's in such a hurry to gather her materials and follow Mother inside. She doesn't seem to notice that I am not included.

O
N THE
twenty-third, early in the still-dark, before even Martia is up, I slip outside. Flip-flops, headscarf, T-shirt, and skirt. I know as I leave the house, feel the damp sea air on my arms, that this is not my usual scavenger walk down the beach. I know the date without looking at the calendar. I went to bed last night knowing and I woke up knowing.

June 23. A year ago today, Dad died. If I dreamed last night, I don't remember.

I clutch the key I borrowed from Martia's key ring. If I drop it in the sand, I'll never find it, not in the dark.

Shadows skitter along the sand. Not lizards, it's too cold at night. Their bodies don't hold heat. No, these are sand crabs. Scavengers like me, ghostlike at night.

The air feels so damp, maybe it's misting.

In front of me, the boathouse looms darker than the air around it. It looks like the entrance to a cave. I touch the peeling-paint walls, the indentation of the door—I think it's the door—and feel for the padlock. The metal chain is cold and wet. I trace my fingers down it like a blind person reading Braille. What if the lock has rusted through inside and the key won't work? What if no one can ever get in again?