“I’ve heard of that bridge,” Kammi says, smiling.
“Please put it away, Cyan. I’d like to eat in peace.” Mother unfolds her napkin. That’s Martia’s signal to serve.
Martia moves efficiently between the kitchen and the table. She places a salad next to Kammi and a pitcher of iced tea next to me. Then she uses both hands to carry in a steaming bowl of saffron rice and shellfish. She nestles it right in front of Mother, the steam rising into Mother’s face.
“Kome, kome,” Martia pleads with us as she reties her apron. “Eat, eat.”
Kammi picks at her salad, not bothering to arrange the greenery, the way she did her first day. Today she is more abstract expressionist, like Jackson Pollock, jumbling the vegetables on her plate, not caring how they’re placed. She’s not trying to please the eye. All because I got her to say what Howard said about me? And I laughed at her? Or because Mother ignored her when she said she knew about the Bridge of Sighs?
I fish out some carrots and red cabbage from the salad bowl Kammi passes to me before sliding it across the table to Mother, who doesn’t even seem to notice. She’s too busy scooping rice in slow motion. I like the colors that clash on my plate. When Mother passes the rice dish, I’ll spoon yellow rice and pink shrimp onto my palette, too.
“Do you have a student now?” Kammi asks.
“No,” I answer for Mother.
“Cyan, I can answer for myself,” Mother says. “Kammi, having a student is a big investment. At the moment, I’m trying to concentrate on my own work.”
Kammi looks crestfallen.
I smirk into my napkin. Kammi’s dreaming if she thinks Mother will take her on. Kammi, whose only painting experience is grade school art once a week. This week, bringing Kammi to Curaçao into Mother’s sanctuary, this is just for show. Just to make a good impression for Howard’s benefit.
Mother takes a long drink of iced tea, reviving herself. She asks, “Kammi, what’d you think of Willemstad?”
“I liked it. We walked along the floating market. We also went to a bead store. It had interesting beads, more than I’ve seen at home.”
I breathe in and out. Tingling with almost-fear that she’ll mention the commissioner. Anticipating Mother’s reaction.
“Do you string beads?” Mother sounds as though she’s trying to make up to Kammi for the lost day. She plants her elbows on the table and holds her head in her left hand. With her free hand, she stirs the saffron rice around on her plate, placing the shellfish on top of the rice haystacks. Mother thinks stringing beads is like painting by numbers. Or knitting from a pattern. It’s just a craft. It isn’t Art. I’ve heard her say it enough.
“Beading’s something I can do with my friends.” Here, Kammi looks at me. She must be thinking of how things might have been different, how we could have shared beading together. I can tell just by the way she said “friends.”
“Antje has classes, all on cruise-ship days. I bet you could take one next week.” Smiling, I offer the classes up to her. She’ll think I’m being kind. Mother might suspect I’m not, since I know how she feels about bead stringing. When I took a beading class last summer after we went home to Maine, Mother encouraged it only because it meant I wasn’t eating and I wasn’t moping around the house, disturbing her studio time. She never asked to see my work. She didn’t even know that what I liked was wire-working in silver. The beads almost didn’t matter, and stringing them on fine, nearly invisible thread bored me. But the silver I liked. I liked the feel of it in my hand, the way the warmth of my fingers softened the wire and allowed it to be shaped, capturing blownglass beads, making three-dimensional sculpture on a small scale. It made me think for the first time that I might someday feel better again. Because at least in those moments, I forgot that Dad had died. I forgot that I felt mostly nothing.
I gave most of it away. I saved only one piece, and it isn’t finished. It’s silver with blue sea glass. I don’t have enough sea glass yet to finish it.
“I’m sure Kammi can take bead classes back in Atlanta.” Bead stores are the latest fad, she’s thinking, I know.
Kammi’s bottom lip sags.
“What else did you do?” Mother asks her. “Something unique to Curaçao, I hope.”
Kammi picks at her rice. She cuts her eyes at me. “The ostrich farm,” she says in a whisper, maybe uncertain what to say next, whether Mother approves.
Mother frowns at me. “Ostrich farm? You had time to go there?”
“Jinco said he’d take us,” I say.