Landlocked (A water witch novel) (11 page)

“It’s not just the fishes, and I’m not about to believe—”

Cala stepped into the room with a tray full of drinks precariously perched on one upturned hand. Sylvia jumped up to help her. “I got it, child. I’m not dead, you know.” She set the tray down as Sylvia took her seat. Cala handed me a silver cup that was ornately carved to look like a shell. The drink was gold and smelled amazing, right away brightening my mood.

She finished handing out the drinks and raised her cup. “To Maribel, you survived childhood with its bumps and bruises and made it through your teenage years, now you’re all but guaranteed to grow as old as me one day. Sorry about that.” She chuckled softly and took a drink.

I put the cup to my lips and drank the rich fluid. It was like nothing I had ever tasted. It was salty with a hint of honey and something else that I couldn’t pinpoint. It was very delicious, and I drained it quickly, hoping that after drinks, I would be alone with Sylvia and Dylan to, to… I looked down and the cup was out of my hands and Cala was nowhere to be seen. “Where did Cala go?”

“Who, darling?” Sylvia asked.

I closed my eyes and shook my head. I felt so tired.

“What are you going to order, Mari?” Dylan asked.

I was surprised to find a menu in my hand. While reading the entrees, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should be upset about something. Then I remembered Jaron. The night at the movies was trying to follow me on my mini-vacation. Well I wasn’t about to let it bring me down. “I think I’m going to have the oyster basket and a side of gumbo.”

“Think it will be better than my gumbo?” Dylan asked, wiggling his eyebrows.

“I’d never tell you if it was.” I laughed and looked over at Sylvia, her head was turned away from me and the way her tight fist was clutching her chest made me think she was crying. “Are you all right, Aunt Sylvia?” I asked, getting out of my chair.

“I’m fine,” she choked out. She had a tear running down her left cheek. “Just had my drink go down the wrong tube.” She cleared her throat a couple times and wiped away the tear. “There, all better.”

I glanced at
the table. There were no cups. “What drink?”

She bent down and pulled a bottle of water from her purse.

I shrugged. “Well what are you getting besides catfish?”

Dinner was great, as it always was there, and I was feeling better. On my way out of the restaurant, I paused to look through one of the fish tanks where a cute little girl was making funny faces at me. I blew at my cheeks out like a blowfish and she giggled.

“They don’t like you anymore!” she said.

“What?” I asked.

She pointed at the tank between us where different types of fish swam back and forth in their glass walled house. “The fishies, they don’t like you anymore.”

I stared down at her in confusion and waved goodbye. My aunt went straight to the lobby, but Dylan paused and turned his head to the left. He nodded and mouthed the words thank you.

When I caught up to him, I saw a sweet, albeit strange looking, old woman. “Who’s she?”

“Her name is Cala. She owns the place,” he said as we turned to leave. “I'm stuffed. Let’s go crash at the house.”

I glanced over my shoulder. For a moment, I pictured the old woman holding up a silver cup.

6

The next day, I woke up confused. I had fallen asleep almost as soon as I'd walked into the lake house, crashing on the plush tufted sofa that overlooked a wall of windows on the south side of the house. I remembered watching t
he bright Louisiana sun reflect off of the water, it was still high in the sky when my eyelids had surrendered to the weight holding them down. But when I cleared the sleep from my eyes, I was in my room. Dylan must have carried me up the stairs. I couldn’t believe he could move me that far without waking me. It was nice to wake in my room though. Sylvia and I had redecorated it two summers earlier, and it was mostly white and silver with bright accents of turquoise and mint. I loved it so much, I'd brought the theme back to my room at our home.

I jumped out of bed and grabbed the robe that was hanging on the drift wood headboard. There was a window seat in the room where I liked to curl up with a good book. But I wasn't in the mood for reading. Coming here hadn’t helped. Even miles away, I was still thinking about Jaron. And wondering why I couldn’t get him out of my mind. I had known him far too short a time to have his every detail memorized, but inexplicably, I did.

I closed my eyes and let the sun warm my eyelids while I tried to think about anything other than him. He was literally the man of my dreams, I had dreamed about him again last night, and in my dream he was alone and hurting. It was almost more terrifying seeing him in pain than my nightmare had been. It cut through my core the same way the shrieking had. I shuddered. How was I supposed forget about him if I kept having those dreams?

It was getting harder for me to remember that he was the one who had hurt me, not the other way around. I shouldn’t want to console him or protect him from anything. I heard a knock at the door and turned to look. Sylvia popped her head into the room. I wasn’t in her eye line and she ran to my bed flipping back the covers with panic in her eyes.

“Maribel!” she shouted.

“Over here.”

She looked over and her shoulders drooped in relief.

“Are you worried someone climbed through the window and snatched me up?” I teased.

She walked over and hugged me close. “You are a rare and precious gem and there are plenty of jewelry thieves out there.”

Sylvia could be so ridiculous sometimes. “Why don’t we get out of the house today? I need to be out in the world to make sure that your influence doesn’t turn me into a narcissist…” I snorted and shook my head. “A rare and precious gem.”

“Well you are, so get over it,” Sylvia said before smoothing out the cover on my bed. “What do you want to do today?”

There was something that Sylvia had told me she would do a long time ago, and even though I was a little bit worried about bringing it up, it was probably the only thing that could take my mind off of Jaron and my dreams.

“Could we maybe find an art supply shop?” I asked.

“Of course!” she said, her face lighting up. “We can paint all day, a peaceful day before Clarissa comes tomorrow and we shop till we drop. The two of us need to start planning our annual spring break party as well. Remind me to stop by that party supply store… and I still haven’t found material for your prom dress. Maybe I’ll work on that while you paint—”

“Well…” I started, not sure how to continue. “I was actually hoping that you could do a portrait of my mother…”I trailed off when I saw the horror on her face. “I know it might take longer than just today, and you don’t have to unless you want to. I just thought… I don’t know, it would be nice to see her, you know. Just see her.” I turned away, choking on emotion. I was never one to get upset if someone saw me crying, but I wouldn’t pressure Sylvia into doing something she didn’t want to do with tears. Her hand gently squeezed my shoulder and I faced her.

“I won’t be able to capture her just right. She was too beautiful, so full of life. She won’t look right on canvas,” she said.

I felt my heart drop as the hope I had irrationally gained fled. “It’s okay—”

“No, sweetheart, I’ll do it. It’s time that I should. I just wanted to let you know that anything I do.” She stepped over to the bed and sat. “It just won’t be good enough.”

“You’ll do it?” I screamed and jumped on the bed next to her, ruffling the covers again.

Sylvia beamed. “I would do anything for you, Mari. Making you happy, it’s what me and Dylan live for,” she said running her fingers through my hair. “Well, hop in the shower. I’ll meet you downstairs in half an hour. If we’re going to do this, we’ll need to go to the best shops and get stocked up. I’ll need all new brushes…” Sylvia left my room and shut the door behind her, but I could still hear her making a shopping list on the way down the stairs.

I showered and dressed quickly, not wanting to waste any time. Sylvia was going to paint my mom. I was going to see her. See her face, her eyes—see the woman who had brought me into this world. I went to slip on my Nine West heels but thought better of it—my legs were feeling unsteady—and put on my red ballet flats. It wasn’t like I was actually going to meet my mom. I shouldn’t be so nervous. But just the thought of seeing any kind of image of her had my mind reeling.

I ran downstairs and saw Dylan smiling up at me from his coffee mug. “She’s finally going to do it, huh?”

“Yes!” I jumped up and sat on the counter. “Can you believe it? How long do you think it will take her?”

He took a sip of his coffee. It smelled of vanilla. “Well, I know it won’t be one of the paintings that she churns out in a day. I wouldn’t count on anything less than a week or two.”

My mouth fell open. Sylvia had never taken that long to complete a painting, not even the detailed family portrait of us that hung above the fireplace at home. It was such a lifelike image of me that sometimes it felt like I was looking in the mirror when I was in front of it.

“A whole week?” I asked, pouting.

“Maybe two,” he added with a laugh. “Don’t worry, time will fly, and it will be done before you know it. Your mother was just so special to Sylvia, and to me, it will be hard for Sylvia to paint her for a hundred reasons…” He paused and I felt guilty, maybe I shouldn’t have asked Sylvia. He must have seen something on my face because he added quickly, “Don’t get me wrong, I think it will be good for her to paint your mother, almost therapeutic, and good for you to see her. It’s time that you knew what you came from.”

“What do you mean?”

He stared into my eyes, seeming to be searching for something. What, I wasn’t sure. “Just that seeing your mother might help you feel complete, that’s all. I know how hard it can be to lose a parent, but I don’t know how it is to not even get to know them before they’re gone.”

Sylvia came into the room holding a pen to a notepad. She was still making a list, it was funny I had never seen her so worked up. I mean it wasn’t complicated, canvas, paint, and apparently she needed new brushed; but even then, it was a pretty small list. She walked to the coffee pot wide-eyed, but Dylan held out a hand.

“Think you better skip the caffeine this morning, dear, might give yourself heart palpitations.”

“I’ll just get some when I go into town. I mean, Starbucks brews a better cup of coffee than you any day,” she said, winking at me.

“What?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Oh that was a low blow.”

“Come on, Mari honey, I’ll get you a vanilla latte the way they were supposed to be made.” She walked over and looped her arm in mine; I gave an apologetic look to my uncle, but was happy to see that Sylvia had chilled a few degrees. I didn’t want her on stress level nine for the next week… or two.

***

We walked down Main Street past some of the more touristy shops into the art district of town. Wide windows displayed an array of oil paintings by local artists, some of them quite remarkable, and others not to my taste. Then again, I never did understand ‘modern’ art. It didn’t seem special at all to me. But I guessed the beautiful thing about art was that, like life, everyone saw it differently.

“Maribel!” my aunt called out. She had gotten a few paces ahead of me while I had paused at the window. Her beautiful face was moving back and forth searching the crowd, when she landed on me, her eyes lit up.

I sped walked to her, only slowing for a moment when I noticed a beautiful red Harley parked on the street. “What’s up?” I asked looking inside the shop she had paused in front of. No paintings hung in the windows, or if they did, I couldn’t see them, as they were blacked out.

“This is the first shop I want to hit,” she said.

I looked the dark shop over once again. The whole building seemed like it didn’t belong. “Okay…”

We walked together down the entryway and through a door that strings of beads covered. Pushing them aside, the beads rattled and caught my eye. They shone in iridescent gold and purples. I pinched one of the gold ones between my thumb and forefinger and inspected it. It was the most beautiful bead I had ever seen. At first I thought it to be glass, but the weight was all wrong, it was too light.

“Pretty aren’t they?” Sylvia’s voice startled me. I looked up at her as she ran her fingers through a string of the shimmering purple beads. “The owner of the shop makes them.”

“Out of what? I was just trying to figure it out?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. This shop is filled with raw ingredients to make a variety of things. That‘s why I came here first. I need to know what they have so I can try to find things that will work at other shops if they don‘t have everything I want,” she said.

We walked into the heart of the shop; the inside was well lit by antique looking wavy green light fixtures. It put out an interesting glow, almost like the light that shone down through the pool water when I was at the bottom looking up.

“Can I help you?” a voice so deep it shook my bones asked. I jumped and turned around.