Martia swishes around the table, clucking at the lack of food being consumed by everyone but me. That and she’s probably disapproving of the detour to the ostrich farm. She’d know I would have had to bribe Jinco to take us, which made us late coming back. On purpose. And it cost more money.
“You liked it?” Mother sounds accusing when she asks Kammi, but she smiles at the end of the sentence, as if she’s sorry she’s said the words but they’re out.
Kammi folds her hands in front of her plate. “A little.” A weaselly answer. She should have just said yes in a loud voice. Or even no because the ostrich scared her, or because I was mean, or because feathers make her sneeze.
“Tomorrow I’ll take you painting, like I planned for today. Just the two of us.” Mother raises her head off her hand, sits straighter. She takes pity on Kammi. “That’s more fun than any old petting zoo. I’m feeling much better.”
“It’s not a petting zoo,” I say. On the refrigerated shelves at the farm store, tourists can buy ostrich meat. Hardly what they’d sell at a petting zoo in the United States. The signs say “Ostrich: leaner than beef, lower in cholesterol.” I’m surprised Mother doesn’t buy it for me.
Mother doesn’t respond to my comment.
I feel the postcard in my lap. For the moment, Mother has forgotten it. Eventually, she’ll ask for it. She’ll say she’s glad for Philippa. She’ll be lying. Something happened between Mother and her best student; what, I don’t know. Mother doesn’t want competition in her art, I know that.
I’d like to lie, too, and say everything between us will be okay. If I lie, then maybe we can pretend we remember the same things. Like the article that came out the day after Dad died. It said the boat was gray. But the boat was blue. The paper said his body was found washed ashore. But he was found trapped in fish netting, one end of the rope still tied to the boat.
Chapter Thirteen
GOING TO PAINT en plein air the next morning is a production. Mother is late because one of her precious tubes of oil paint is missing. (I wonder which one it could be.) When she finally arrives downstairs, Martia scurries around to pack a soft-sided cooler with drinks while Mother collapses her field easel. An art bin holding her oil paints teeters on the edge of the counter. She’s armed to do battle with the elements that defy the artist. The wind that carries with it bits of sand, which stick to still-wet canvases.
I sit at the kitchen table, pretending to read one of Kammi’s stupid horse books. Kammi stands half in and half out of the room. She looks as if she thinks she’s supposed to be doing something to help but no one has told her what to do.
Dressed in a pale pink linen shorts set, she looks ready for a garden party, complete with gardenia scent.
She’ll find out soon enough what she’s supposed to do. Beast of burden.
Martia draws her in. “Sit, sit. All is no problem. All is well.” Kammi lets herself be coaxed into the kitchen to perch on the edge of a chair, ready to go at Mother’s call.
Mother wears a flimsy metallic cover-up over her onepiece. “Don’t you look nice,” she says to Kammi.
Then she slaps a wide-brimmed straw hat onto her artist case.
“You’ve been out?” Mother nods at the bottom of my skirt, damp and sandy.
“Walking. You said exercise is better than Ding Dongs and Ho Hos.”
Kammi blushes and stares at the floor. Maybe she’s embarrassed on my behalf, because she’s thin and I’m not.
Mother brushes air away as if she’s walked into a spider web. “What are you going to do?” she asks.
“Besides read?” I lift the book.
Mother doesn’t lose it. “While Kammi and I are painting.” Mother smiles at Kammi, sharing a secret with a fellow artist.
I think of all the things I might say. Write to Zoe, help Martia in the kitchen. Sand the blue boat, or touch up the scratches along the underside, the scratches that couldn’t be seen until the boat was lifted out of the water.
I shrug. It doesn’t matter.
“Do something productive. I don’t want to find you just lying around when we get back.”
I bury myself in the sentences of the book until I hear them leave. Then I fold the corner of the page and crease it.
The house becomes silent, but then Martia starts making a racket in the kitchen, washing the dishes, banging pots, chopping vegetables for the next meal. She saves her fury for the kitchen. I wander outside onto the veranda, clutching Kammi’s stupid novel. I’m not reading it, it’s just a prop.
The stiff breeze shudders along the veranda, whipping my hair and the flag hanging from the widow’s walk.