The Other Side of Blue (20 page)

I see Mother's completed painting for the first time. Even without the ultramarine paint tube I never returned, she has managed to evoke the sea. A mixed-color wake trails the blue boat as it cuts through the water, moving away from the artist. I imagine that Mother painted the boat with an invisible bridge of good fortune overhead, framing it, like Philippa's painting of the Bridge of Sighs. The figures in the boat are still muted, shadowed, as if not real but imagined. The way Mother and I would have wanted the scene to be. I can now make out three people: a man, a woman, and, I think, a child.

“Striking,” Mrs. Bindas says, as if she read that comment
in an art magazine. As if she doesn't trust herself to speak about the painting, especially considering the subject. The blue boat. The name
The Nautilus
is even painted ever so faintly on the side. It can be seen only if one knows to look for it.

“Right here, Kammi.” Mrs. Bindas directs her to place her smaller watercolor of the island and the sea from the day of our hike to Mount Christoffel.

“And what have you worked with Kammi on?” Mrs. Bindas asks Mother. “She is such a lucky girl.”

“I haven't even seen this piece, and Kammi refused to show it to me in advance.” Mother sounds stern, but it's hard to tell what she's really thinking.

Kammi unwraps the painting and clips it to the easel. She grins and steps back so that Mother and Mrs. Bindas can see it in the clear light coming through the window.

Mother doesn't react at first. I'm used to this, but Kammi starts shifting from one foot to the other, like a little kid.

Now that she's finished her seascape, I see that Kammi really does have talent. Whether it would match Catrione's or Philippa's, or whether Mother will ever take on another student, even a stepdaughter-to-be, is hard to tell.

“Who helped you with this?” Mother asks, walking back and forth in front of the painting to catch the best light. To see the strokes, to study the color blends Kammi used.

Kammi looks at me before she answers. “Cyan.”

Mother's gaze goes from Kammi's face to mine and back to the painting. “Cyan?”

“Yes, she helped me focus, to see all the colors.”

Mother nods and stares at the painting, as if deciphering how Kammi captured the glints of light on the water, how much is Kammi's work and how much mine.

“It's good. A study in contrast.”

For Mother, that is high praise. Kammi beams.

Mrs. Bindas pats me on the arm, as if she's known all along I have an artist's soul, and then she flits away to greet her friends.

I take that chance to snag a cold drink and some finger food. A chicken wrap, with some exotic sauce oozing out the wrapper bottom. An odd-looking green, but edible.

When they come into the room, Mrs. Bindas's guests approach Mother with awe, standing close to her but not daring to make eye contact or say anything to her. Then they wander away to study Mother's painting in depth or to size up the competition for gallery space.

Mother walks over to stand by me. For once, she doesn't say anything about the amount of food I've taken from the buffet. She looks out at the crowd, smiling and nodding at people as they catch her eye. Her public face. “What's Kammi talking about, you helping?”

“You didn't think I could?” I answer Mother's question with my own.

“I didn't say that. I didn't think you wanted to enough.”

“Enough to what?” That's what I've always wondered.

“Enough to give art everything you had—and then more. To give up love.” Mother swirls a slice of lemon in her sparkling water. This time without alcohol.

“Is that what you did?”

“Yes. My mother had this notion that painting was only for children. Adult women had to give up certain things to be successful in other, more important areas of our lives. She said that the life of an artist was a selfish way to live.”

I look at Mother, puzzled. Her mother, my grandmother Betts, plied me with paints when I was very small. Mother was the one who discouraged me. Grandmother always said I could be anything I wanted.

“Your grandmother mellowed with age,” Mother says, as if reading the protest forming in my mind. “But to me, that's what she said. Every day of my childhood, practically.”

“So why repeat that?” I ask. “When you didn't believe it?”

“Because what my mother said and did made me tougher. I was tough enough to deal with not having enough money early on to pay my bills.”

Mother walks around Kammi's painting again. “Not bad,” she says.

“That means great, right?” I ask.

Mother nods. “For a first-timer. Guess she had a tube of ultramarine?”

I feel myself blush, something I rarely do anymore.

“And what about Philippa?” I ask, my voice low.

Mother stands still next to me, almost as if she hasn't heard me. As if she's heard a memory whispering.

“Mayur told me there was a note,” I say. “From Pippa. To Dad.”

Mother stiffens. Maybe she's going to lie to me. She sips from her glass and sighs. “Was that what happened on the hiking trip?” She turns to me. “I thought Mayur was up to no good.”

I nod. “Mayur said it was a love letter.”

Mother holds out her hand, as if steadying the easel holding Kammi's painting.

“Yes” is all she says.

“That day ... the day Dad went out in the boat. Did you know about the letter?”

She shakes her head. The air goes out of me. “Not the letter.”

“Then why didn't you go?” I wonder if she revises the trip over and over in her mind like I do. Whether, in the new version, she says yes.

“Your father and I had drifted apart. He'd come back to reconcile, he said. I wasn't ready. At first, I didn't know about Philippa. But your father told me she'd seen him in Italy. Looked him up.
Been
with him.
Pippa.
I should have seen it coming.” Mother seems far away from me.

She doesn't ask me about the note, what it said, whether Mayur gave it to me. I remember the words about there being only a single color in the world—not blue, not yellow, not pink. Only the color of love. I don't tell her that I held the note for a moment in my hand, that I lost it in the cave at Mount Christoffel. Maybe someday.

“Why'd she send the postcard?” I ask. The Bridge of Sighs, for lovers.

“I think it's a kind of apology.” Mother's voice is soft, softer than I ever hear it. I almost don't breathe, because this is like a magic spell that will break if I talk too loudly, if I ask another question. If a cloud moves in front of the sun.

If it was an apology, did Mother accept it? Would I?

 

When the last guest leaves, Mother collapses her easel, keeping the canvas clipped to it to transport it back to Maine.

“You'll exhibit this in New York?” Mrs. Bindas asks.

“Not right away,” Mother says. She needs time to let the paint dry.

The door opens, and Dr. Bindas appears.

“Oh, so sorry,” he says. “I thought the party was over.” He starts to back out, shooing boys behind him. I see Saco and then Mayur peer around him. Kammi smiles at Saco, who grins and lets himself be pulled back. Mayur smirks from behind his father's shoulder, then looks to make sure the others haven't noticed. He hasn't told them, I'm sure. There
is now another secret between us. But this one we share. I roll my eyes at him and he disappears behind his father.

“No, Dr. Bindas, please to come in and say goodbye to Mrs. Walters,” Mrs. Bindas calls after him. Dr. Bindas, stiff in his short-sleeved shirt and pressed slacks, enters and nods to my mother. Very proper. His physician's eyes then take me in. He sees I'm no worse for wear, the bruises fading from blue to yellow.

“Glad to see you are feeling better,” he says.

“Thank you.”

Kammi raises an eyebrow, motioning toward the door. I shake my head at her. I'm not interested in Mayur. Absolutely not. Maybe.

“We are indebted to you,” Mother says.

Dr. Bindas raises a hand. “No, it was so little, and we are grateful. No permanent injuries. Here, let me help you. We shall drive you back.”

Dr. Bindas reaches to take Mother's painting. Mother's never let anyone else handle a fresh painting.

“No,” I say, suddenly not wanting anyone else to touch
The Blue Boat.

“It's all right, Cyan,” Mother says, touching my arm. “Dr. Bindas, wet canvases require special handling. I'd feel better carrying it myself.”

Dr. Bindas blushes, as if he's done something improper, but he nods politely, as always. He holds the door for Mother.

Even when she moves away to allow Mrs. Bindas to hug her ever so gently before we leave, the warmth from Mother's touch on my skin lingers.

 

“Do you want to go to the airport?” Mother asks me the next morning. As I did the day Kammi arrived, I shake my head. It's only been a few weeks since then, and yet it seems like months. Time is like that. Fast and yet slow, like waves of light shimmering through glass. Goethe said that, in order to be seen, every color must have light within it or behind it. Blue is the first color that appears when darkness is penetrated by light.

Mother doesn't ask a second time. She slips into the cab. From the window closest to me, Kammi waves. Excited like a kid going home from summer camp, she moves her arm back and forth in a wide arc. The top edge of her carefully wrapped painting peeks over the back seat.

I hold my hand up in the air, not waving. But I imagine my hand touching hers through the air, the glass. My yellow to her pink. I don't think about Howard yet. He's overeager, like the puppy he gave to Kammi's mother. But he might be okay.

Jinco pulls away, bits of shell spitting from under his tires. If he's watching Kammi through the rearview mirror, he'll be subtle so Mother doesn't see him. She wouldn't like it. Kammi won't notice, either. Later, I'll tell her, warn her about guys.

Martia stands next to me, but she doesn't put her arm around my waist or hug me. I don't have to say I'm okay. Martia knows somehow, knows I don't want to be too close. She steps inside, and the scent of food wafts through the open door. For once, I am not ravenous.

Tonight, before Mother and I finish packing, Martia will go home to her family. To her children and mother. They must already be thinking of the sweet
kokada
treats she'll bring.

In my room, I open the box of sea glass and add the photo of Martia's family to it. Then I get out the largest, bluest piece I have, the one I keep in the sock, and hold it to the light. Without my jeweler's pliers, I use my hands to pull the wire I've hidden away straight. The sterling silver grows warm in my hand. It curves around my finger and over the glass. I wrap until the silver holds the glass fast, and I twist it to make a loop, securing the back of the glass. I file the rough edge before tucking it underneath. Hiding it.

In the bottom of the box, there's still the sliver of sharp, clear glass from the blue boat. If I toss it back into the sea, years from now the ocean will have worn down the jagged edges. Someday, the sea will give up its smooth treasure along the shore for someone else to find.

Maybe my box is like the one Pandora decided to open. Maybe I was too curious, like she was. But with all the chaos and longing, everything Pandora released into the world, there was something else at the bottom of the box, a gift.

Hope.

I think that's what we have left, Mother and me. I give it to both of us, cupping it in my hands like a piece of tumbled sea glass, holding it up to the light.

Thank you to the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) for years of community and a Work-in-Progress grant for an earlier, unpublished novel.

Thanks to Lisa Fraustino, Han Nolan, Alexandria LaFaye, and Amanda Cockrell of Hollins University's Graduate Program in Children's Literature for gentle encouragement and the occasional kick in the rear. To Hollins students Brie Shannon, Candice Ransom, Tere Stouffer, Amie Rotruck, the Owl Girls, and the Wildflour online group—thank you for your friendship.

With appreciation to the Writer's Center of Bethesda, Maryland, and its committee, Northern Virginia Writers, for bringing writing to the larger Washington, D.C., community through such gifted instructors as Barbara Esstman.

Thanks to Lee Smith and the members of her Advanced Fiction Workshop at the Key West Literary Seminar, January 2008.

For the Rector Lane Irregulars—Donna, Carla, Ellen, Peggy, Laura, Noreen, and Sandi—thank you for a roundtable of mystery and sisterly support.

Thanks to Leone Ciporin, Marcy Dolan, Lee Lawrence, and Sue Buck for believing.

With special thanks to my children's writing group—Ellen Braaf, Erin Teagan, Sydney Dunlap, Lorrie-Ann Melnick, and Corinne Wetzel. To Ellen, who does so much for the Mid-Atlantic SCBWI and for the Writer's Center and who still has more love for others and their dreams than anyone I know, an extra hug.

For the wonderful agent and literary godmother Sarah Davies of the Greenhouse Literary Agency—thank you so much for helping me realize a dream.

With special thanks to editor Jennifer Wingertzahn for loving Cyan from the beginning and for guiding me along with a gentle touch and a kind soul. And to everyone else at Clarion Books, thank you for making
The Other Side of Blue
such a beautiful book.

Thank you to my parents and late grandmother for encouraging my love of books; to my siblings, Melanie and John, for letting me subject them to my earliest writing efforts; and, to my sister-in-law Jane for artistic consultation—any errors are my own.

To Tom, who has never wavered in his support of my dreams despite too many takeout dinners and a seriously cluttered desk, thank you for being on the journey with me.