After a few minutes, I meander into the kitchen and filch a coconut cookie off a plate. Martia smiles, shaking her head at the same time. When I go out again, she’s still working.
Mother’s studio.
I leave Kammi’s novel on the glass table in the living room. Open, spine up, as if I’ve walked out of the room for another cookie but am coming right back to pick up where I left of.
Barefoot, I don’t make a sound even on the metal stairs. The scarf around my neck bounces down my back as I skip the third stair from the top because it creaks.
Mother’s room smells of paint thinner, almost of pine. More Maine than Curaçao. The easel faces the back wall. I hold my breath and walk in front of it.
Paint clings to the canvas, a light wash of color. The pencil lines show through, giving guidelines for the next step.
The outline of a boat on the water. It’s hard to tell if it is the boat. Whether she will actually dare to paint it.
But she is painting, or at least preparing to paint.
I flip open the tackle-box case that holds the paints she plans to use most for her current project. That’s how she organizes her work. The ultramarine is on top. Ultramarine for the bold lines of the boat, to distinguish it from the water. To show the depth where the boat meets the waterline. It’s the next color she’ll apply.
From my pocket, I pull out the Prussian blue. I substitute it for the ultramarine in the tackle box and snap the lid shut. The ultramarine goes in my pocket, a new tube cold against my leg.
I go out through the doors and onto the widow’s walk. From here, Mother must have seen Dad take the boat out. She must have stood here, watching the boat cut the swells until it merged with the sea and disappeared.
There was no storm that day, only calm seas. Clear skies. That first night, the stars shone until the light from the bonfires quenched them and they faded away.
At first, I thought he’d just left, taken the boat and returned to Willemstad by sea, to catch a ride to the airport. I told Mother to check the airport. Martia looked at me, as if she thought I understood something I wasn’t supposed to. But Dad didn’t lash the boat to the pier in Punda and take a flight out that night. When they checked the roster of outgoing flights the next day, his name wasn’t on any of them. Mother told the commissioner, “It was a ridiculous idea.” She folded her arms tightly around her middle. “I told you.”
I’m sitting on the deck after lunch when I hear them returning. I stretch out the way Mother would if she wanted to look relaxed. It doesn’t take long before the French doors snap open.
“Where is it?” Mother grips the doorframe as if to hold herself steady on a rolling ship.
Squinting, I turn toward her and pull my scarf in front of my face, making a gauzy film between Mother and me. “What?”
“Prussian blue. Winsor and Newton.”
I smile. The Prussian is one of her most prized blues. I should have buried it in a tin box under the deck, like a treasure. The paints are evidence, after all, though not the kind the commissioner wanted when Dad died. Or I might have pitched the paint into the sea—but I couldn’t. The color makes me ache, too. I’m ashamed that I can feel the way she does about anything.
“What are you talking about?” I ask. “We’re not even allowed in your studio.”
“There isn’t a ‘we’ here. Don’t bring Kammi into this.” Mother shuts the French doors, keeping our argument away from her.
The sea gleams in the bright sun.
Whitecaps toss on the surface.
I pick up a pad of paper and a pencil from the wrought-iron deck table as if I’m an investigative reporter. “When’s the last time you saw it?”
“You think this is funny?” Mother folds her arms in front of her, digging her nails into her skin. “Do you know how much Winsor and Newton costs? I can’t get it here. I’ll be stuck leaving that section undone until we get back to Maine.”
I know how much it costs. Over the summers, I’ve been dragged by Mother to all the art supply stores, good and bad, in Willemstad. Most of what can be had is second rate, the tubes dried out, the colors unreliable. She’d never trust her blues to one of the local merchants. “So, you’re painting again?”
“I am.” Her tone says that she knows I’ve been in her studio.
“I’m so happy for you.” I cover my head with the scarf. It shields the sides of my face like a prayer shawl, and the sunlight filters through it. I study the notebook in my hand, flip the pages. Tiny perfect squares of blue-lined graph paper blur as the pages cascade. “I should write that down.” I’ll keep a diary of my mother’s special events. Someday, she’ll want to write her memoir, and she’ll want to know all the important dates. I’ll be sure to underline June 23 several times so she won’t forget it.