Kammi stares at me.
“Don’t worry. I’ve done it before. Just don’t look down.” It’s funny. After the fall in the cave, I should be afraid. I’m not, though. Here I can see. I can breathe.
I ease my way along the ledge, sliding my hands along the overhanging cupola roofline above me. In another ten feet, the house is closer to the ground, seemingly carved into the earth, like a ship run aground into a beachhead. I jump, landing on the shell drive in my flip-flops. Every muscle shrieks.
When I can speak again, I say, “Your turn.” I motion Kammi down. She balances herself, slipping into her shoes. She pauses, suspended, and then jumps. She gasps when she lands.
The kitchen curtain flickers. Martia pulls it back to see what’s happening.
“Come on,” I say, and we head off down the beach. Martia won’t have to lie to Mother and say she hasn’t seen us.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
THE DAY before Kammi leaves, Mother allows herself to be the center of attention at Mrs. Bindas’s party. Instead of accepting Mrs. Bindas’s offer to send a driver, Mother hires Jinco to take us the short distance in his taxi. Mother holds her canvas, still mounted to the easel, not trusting it to Jinco since it’s painted in oils and still wet. For once, he doesn’t spit shells out from under his tires as we leave. Kammi carries a canvas, too. It’s smaller and completely covered. Since it’s a watercolor, unlike Mother’s, it’s safely dry.
Mrs. Bindas opens the door herself, before we knock.
“Ah, we are so happy. Please to come in,” she says.
I wonder about Mayur, whether he will attend.
“Is Dr. Bindas coming?” I ask instead.
“No, no, only women are allowed to stay today,” Mrs. Bindas says, smiling. “All the boys, they are out of the house.”
Kammi’s face droops—she was hoping to see Saco. I thought I’d be relieved not to see Mayur, but I’m not sure. I wonder if he’s told the other boys he touched me, if they’ve laughed about the easy American girl.
Mrs. Bindas is all happiness as we follow her inside. “Come, come. Bring your work.” She motions Mother in with her easel. “You, too, Kammi,” she adds as Kammi offers her own watercolor.
“The oil paint is still wet.” Mother maneuvers her canvas carefully. She sets up her easel in the center of the room, a place of honor. Other empty easels stand around the perimeter of the room to hold guests’ work. Nothing, though, will be allowed to overshadow Mother’s.
I see Mother’s completed painting for the first time. Even without the ultramarine paint tube I never returned, she has managed to evoke the sea. A mixed-color wake trails the blue boat as it cuts through the water, moving away from the artist. I imagine that Mother painted the boat with an invisible bridge of good fortune overhead, framing it, like Philippa’s painting of the Bridge of Sighs. The figures in the boat are still muted, shadowed, as if not real but imagined. The way Mother and I would have wanted the scene to be. I can now make out three people: a man, a woman, and, I think, a child.
“Striking,” Mrs. Bindas says, as if she read that comment in an art magazine. As if she doesn’t trust herself to speak about the painting, especially considering the subject. The blue boat. The name The Nautilus is even painted ever so faintly on the side. It can be seen only if one knows to look for it.
“Right here, Kammi.” Mrs. Bindas directs her to place her smaller watercolor of the island and the sea from the day of our hike to Mount Christoffel.
“And what have you worked with Kammi on?” Mrs. Bindas asks Mother. “She is such a lucky girl.”
“I haven’t even seen this piece, and Kammi refused to show it to me in advance.” Mother sounds stern, but it’s hard to tell what she’s really thinking.
Kammi unwraps the painting and clips it to the easel. She grins and steps back so that Mother and Mrs. Bindas can see it in the clear light coming through the window.
Mother doesn’t react at first. I’m used to this, but Kammi starts shifting from one foot to the other, like a little kid.
Now that she’s finished her seascape, I see that Kammi really does have talent. Whether it would match Catrione’s or Philippa’s, or whether Mother will ever take on another student, even a stepdaughter-to-be, is hard to tell.
“Who helped you with this?” Mother asks, walking back and forth in front of the painting to catch the best light. To see the strokes, to study the color blends Kammi used.
Kammi looks at me before she answers. “Cyan.”
Mother’s gaze goes from Kammi’s face to mine and back to the painting. “Cyan?”