The Other Side of Blue (3 page)

Shoes off, Kammi nestles her pale toes in the sand. Even her toenails are pink.

Perfect. I laugh.

“What's so funny?”

I shake my head, glancing down at her feet and then at the water. “Nothing.”

“What?” Frowning, she looks at her toes. “You don't like my nail polish?”

“No, I mean ... sure, it's fine. Pink's perfect, really.” For her. She's soft and easily burned.

But if I can see Kammi's pink, why can't I tell what color I am? Yesterday, I asked Martia what color she thought I was.

“Color?” she asked, as if she thought she'd heard me wrong.

“Yes, color. Like the way my name means ‘blue,'” I said. “But what color do
you
think I am?”

She squinted at me, as if narrowing her vision until I appeared as just a color, no shape.

“Yellow,” she said.

“Like sunshine?”

“Yellow like
kibrahacha.
Flowers, you know.”

Actually, I didn't. Later I looked up the word in the guidebook to the flora and fauna of the Dutch Antilles. After the spring rains come, the western hills blaze up with yellow
kibrahacha.
Persistent, rangy, and rugged, they're all bloomed out by June when we arrive.

What did Martia mean? Am I really yellow?

At home in Maine, I have a book my father gave me about color. Goethe, a German philosopher, wrote it two hundred years ago. I keep it by my bed, moving the bookmark a page or two each night to keep Mother guessing about whether I'm reading it or not. Most of it bores me, and I skip pages, but I understand some of Goethe's ideas. He said color isn't just light hitting an object. Color is how we
perceive
light hitting an object. The color closest to light, he said, is yellow. The opposite, the color closest to the darkness—the absence of light—is blue.

I look past Kammi to the sea, but I don't say anything to her about the water or about color.

“Race you to the point.” I burrow my feet into the sand, giving me traction and propelling me forward. I'm taller, longer-legged, and older than she is. I have the advantage.

I beat her, but she's not breathing as hard as me when she catches up. She turns to look back the way we came. Maybe she's trying to get her bearings, figuring out landmarks, making a map in her head.

“You can see the point for a long way down either beach. You won't get lost,” I say.

“I just wanted to see what it looks like from here. The house.”

I look, trying to imagine what it must be like to see it for the first time. From the beach side, you can see all three stories and the widow's walk on top. From the main entrance and driveway, which faces the hills, the house looks smaller—you can't see the ground floor. From here it looks like a castle, especially with the copper roof on the cupola, how it reflects the glare like a torch. I wonder if Dad saw it from the sea before the sun went down the first day he went missing.

“The Bindases live this way, around the point and along another cove. It's quicker to get there by going along the road.”

“Who are the Bindases?” Kammi asks, still looking toward
Blauwe Huis.

I know she's asking about Mayur. “Dr. Bindas is a doctor. Mrs. Bindas is very nice; pretty, too. You'll like her. They have a pool down by the sea.”

“And Mayur?”

“You be the judge.” I start to walk around the curve of the point, where I'll be out of sight of the house. “You'll meet him tomorrow. He's about fourteen.” Older than Kammi, younger than me. All brat. What's he going to try to tell me?

“Who's waving? Is that your mother?” Kammi asks.

I turn around. Before I answer, Kammi starts waving back.

“Yes, it's her.” I look down at the line of shells at the high-tide mark. I refuse to let Mother see me stare back at the house. Even when she is supposed to be painting, she is watching. I won't wave. It's not me she's waving to anyway. She's trying to impress Kammi, to make it seem as if we're a happy family. Or will be, once she marries Howard, Kammi's father.

Before Dad died, Mother's art students—her protégés, anyway—were the ones she tried to impress. Every year or two, she had a new favorite. They all had wonderful names, as if they'd been born to be artists: Catrione, Kiera, Samantha, Philippa.

Catrione was the one I liked best. She took time when Mother wasn't looking to show me things—how to arrange still-life objects to best effect, how to understand perspective. Things Mother lost patience in trying to explain to me. When Mother told me to think of an orchid in a vase as a cylinder, all I could see was the delicate lip of the blossom, the tiniest ruffles along the edges of the fragile petal, and the thin lines disappearing down its throat. I imagined the color
turning darker and darker deeper inside the stem, and I wondered how that secret place could be painted. The next week, Mother bought a crochet hook and granny-square kit for me. “Some people are artists, some are craftsmen,” she told me.

Catrione had more patience. Once, she even sneaked to my room while Mother was out talking to a gallery owner. She looked over my sketch of the orchid, which I kept under the cloth runner on my dresser. Hidden, but close to the surface.

Philippa was Mother's last student. She was around the longest and was the most like Mother. She trashed more canvases than all the other students combined. I'd find a canvas by the curb on garbage day, and I couldn't see why it had been tossed away. Even Dad, who didn't “involve himself” with Mother's art, rescued a couple of Philippa's paintings and hung them where the light showed them off.

“She's a perfectionist,” Mother explained as she straightened one of Philippa's rescued paintings. She said it as if that was a good thing. I thought of the tangled skein of yarn in the back of my closet.

I am tracing the outline of a broken whelk with my finger when Kammi's shadow falls over me and blocks the light. I hold the shell up for her to see. The inside is still shiny lavender.

“Do you go shelling?” she asks, picking up an open coquina, still connected at the center so it looks like wings.

“I go out early.” Not to collect shells but to scavenge for
sea glass. “It's best in the morning, just after high tide. Before anyone else gets there.” I hate it when I find fresh footprints there before me. I always wonder what treasure others have stolen.

“These are all over Florida. We stay at Sanibel Island every summer. Mom once made a soup out of coquinas I gathered. I wouldn't eat it.”

I reach down and scoop up a still-whole scallop shell. I hold it out to Kammi, who takes it in both hands.

Kammi's parents are both still alive. Every time Mother tried to tell me about Howard saying “Kammi did this” or how “Howard and Kammi did that,” I wouldn't listen. I didn't want to hear about her or her father, especially not about them together.

“Come on.” I want away from the sight of the house. I start running.

“Wait up!” Kammi's voice is broken by the wind in my ears.

I
JOG ALMOST
all the way to the beginning of the Bindases' property, but I stop before crossing over onto it. I don't want Mayur to see me. He might think I've come to talk to him, that I'm eager to hear his secret. Last year, when he claimed he knew something about what happened, I thought he was lying. What could he know? When he tracked me down by e-mail, I blocked his messages. Back here on the island, I still think he's lying, but I need to know what he thinks he knows.

Walking back toward
Blauwe Huis,
I meet Kammi, who apparently followed me. She isn't running, just walking, as if she knew she'd find me.

“Where'd you go?” she asks.

I shrug.

She waits a moment for me to answer. When I don't,
she asks, “Is that a canal?” She points to a dry ravine coming from the hillside all the way to the shore.

“When it rains hard—not all that often—the water runs off down the hills and out to sea. Once, we found a dead goat on the beach there.” Last year, Dad and I took a walk every morning down to this area where, if there wasn't any haze, we could see another island.

“Yuck,” she says.

I ask, “Do you swim?”

She beams. “Sure. I took lessons. Last year I swam at the country club where we belong. What about you?”

“I know how.” I don't swim, though. Not anymore. “Watch for undertow here.”

Kammi's smile fades.

My lips turn up. “We better go back. Martia's making a special dinner. For you.”

For Martia's sake, I don't want to be late.

 

We walk in silence, listening to the surf. Kammi's steps start to match mine, even though my stride is longer. I wonder if it really is true, that women who live together start to have periods at the same time, and they aren't even aware of it happening. Does Kammi have periods? Is she too young? Mother and I don't discuss periods anymore. I buy extra supplies so I don't run out and have to ask her.

“Hey, look.” Kammi points to a wooden building tucked into the manchineel. “Is there a sailboat? Can we take it out?”
She doesn't wait for an answer. She runs to the boathouse and pulls on the door. Padlocked. I could have told her that. She stands on tiptoe and peers through a cloudy window, cupping her hands around her eyes so she can see inside.

“We don't have a sailboat.” I know what she'll see, even though I haven't looked myself this summer. Fishnets nailed to the wall, as if they're still drying after a long day in the water. A fishing boat, yes, but the motor's gone, and the blue paint's chipping off.

Mother painted
The Nautilus
two summers ago as a favor to the Dutch owner. He'd named the boat after the submarine in Jules Verne's
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,
his favorite book. Dad took the boat out twice last summer to fish in deep water when he heard the fish were running.

Once, he came back with fish.

The second time, he did not come back.

Unlike the blue boat, a real nautilus shell has dozens of chambers filled with air. The animal inside lets out air to maneuver itself into the depths of the sea, taking oxygen with it to the bottom. Is there enough air for a person to breathe? If you could cup the shell to your mouth under water and inhale, could you get enough air to get to the surface if you were drowning?

 

“Come on, we'll be late,” I tell Kammi, picking up my pace. Not looking at the boathouse. It's not that I care about being late, it's more that I don't want Martia to think I don't love her.

Mother's waiting for us at the French doors. Did she notice Kammi at the boathouse?

“Nice to see you two getting acquainted,” Mother says. She sweeps her arm out, motioning us toward the house like a stage director. “Miss Kammi, please lead us in to dinner.” She acts as if we're at a royal court in some play. Martia will serve us golden trays of figs, pomegranates, and other delicacies while we lean back against soft floor pillows.

For this we need an entrance. “Bring on the trumpets,” I say.

“What?” Mother asks.

“Crumpets. I wonder. Shall we have crumpets with our tea?” I imitate the British accent of Philippa. She'd been studying in Italy last year, but she was in Maine when we got home. And she was the only one of Mother's art students to attend the memorial service. Mother didn't talk to her. Philippa sat a row behind Mother and me, and I heard her tell someone she couldn't believe how the sky could be so blue, so clear and cloudless, on such a sad day.

Kammi giggles. She's probably thinking that we're joking, like all families do. I curtsey, the damp edges of my skirt sweeping the wooden planks as I trail Kammi inside, leaving Mother to follow us both.

Kammi folds her sunglasses and tucks them beside her plate, just so. She bows her head for a moment. I can't believe she's praying.

When she opens her eyes, I say, “Are you okay?”

Mother laughs. “Don't be ridiculous, Cy. Kammi's fine.”

Kammi blushes, and I pass her the shrimp platter.

Except for my friend Zoe, I don't know anyone who says grace. Suddenly, I want to ask Kammi about God and how she knows God exists. Is God more than a feeling inside? Does she believe because her parents told her to, or does she believe because nothing else makes sense? When even a simple flower is so perfect, it can't have been due to chance.

Maybe I will pray, too, at our next meal, if only because Mother won't be able to say anything. But whatever Mother thinks about God or church, she wouldn't question Kammi. So how could she question me? Not like when Mother wouldn't let me attend Zoe's church, not even after Dad died.

“What church do you go to?” I ask. Maybe it's something exotic—a group of snake-handling fanatics. But it can't be. Not for a girl who attends boarding school in Atlanta.

“Episcopal.”

Of course. A church for rich people. “Don't they have priests?” I ask.

Kammi tilts her head to one side, as if she's thinking about my question.

“Yes,” she says. “But they're not like Catholic priests. They can marry.”

She blushes, and I bet it's because she was talking about marriage and thinking about sex, and those are subjects we're not ready to talk about. Not even Mother, who uses the tongs to serve herself salad. She passes the bowl to Kammi, who arranges salad on her plate as if it's an art display. Maximizing texture and color, minimizing blank space. They both do it, seemingly without thinking. With a pang, I realize Kammi is an artist.

“Is your dad Episcopal, too?” Howard hasn't mentioned religion in the times we've been together, but with me he's stiff and formal. He stands in doorways, as if he isn't sure whether to enter or retreat. Whether he can calculate the business of stepdaughters the way he does a profit margin. Suddenly, I want to know what his beliefs are. What if he believes in purgatory or converts dead people from his family tree?