The Starfish Sisters: A Novel(15)

She looks at her watch, then at the window, which is showing plenty of light. “I can have some.”

Suze almost winks at me, and I’m grateful, at least in this moment, for her presence.



Jasmine absolutely loves setting the table—she loves eating at the dinner table, as a family, more than almost anything. We devour soup and freshly fried tortilla strips, Suze and I carefully skirting anything important. Stephanie asks what Suze knows about London, and she offers a few pointers along with her phone number.

Halfway through dinner, Jasmine says, “Did you know this is a tsunami zone? Where would we go if we heard the warning?”

“She’s been deep into tsunamis the past few weeks,” Steph says. “They had a section on them in school. Emergency preparedness week.”

“Tsunamis wouldn’t make it to Portland,” I say. “There are mountains in between.”

“Yes,” Jasmine says, “that’s correct. But it is a tsunami zone here. Where would we go?”

I crumble tortilla strips into my soup. “Where do you think we should go?”

“Straight out the front and up the hill.”

“Very good.”

“But it’s really steep. How would we climb? Especially if, like, it’s raining or something?”

“That’s a good question,” I say. “We can do a trial run if you want.”

“Maybe I do,” she says. “Did you know that a tsunami from Japan reached Oregon after the earthquake in 2011?”

“I didn’t know that!” Suze exclaims. I suspect she does know, but this is why Jasmine loves her. Like my grandmother, and very unlike me, Suze has a gift for loving people as they are. “Did it do any damage?”

Jasmine is only too happy to fill her in, and then Suze brings out her jewel. “You know,” she says, “I was in Sri Lanka when that really big tsunami hit.”

“What? You were? Did you get hurt?”

“No, I was really lucky. I was filming a movie and we were high in the jungle when it happened. Our hotel was completely wiped out.”

“I remember that!” I cry, and an echo of the painful worry I felt when the whole place went off the grid runs down my spine.

Steph scowls. “Maybe—uh—careful?”

“No!” Jasmine protests. “I’m not a baby, Mom.”

“We can talk about it another time,” Suze says, and she’s instantly apologetic. There’s something deferential in the angle of her head, and the way she crumbles a tortilla strip between two fingers. I haven’t seen this in years, and it makes me furious with her brutal father, with the people who attacked her, the media who’ve made her life a misery at times.

“It’s fine, Suze,” I say, frowning a little at my daughter. “I’m sure Jasmine heard all about it at school.”

“I did! Can I go get my notebook? I have all the details in there.”

Her mother nods, wearily. “Sure.” When Jasmine has bolted upstairs again, she says, “She’s so full of everything right now. She carries this notebook with her everywhere—school, swimming lessons, the grocery store, everywhere.”

“It’s exhausting to be a working single parent,” I say, but see immediately that it’s exactly the wrong comment. She can be so prickly and defensive. I don’t know where it came from. Then again, maybe that’s me, too. Not that I like admitting it.

“Oh, yeah, Mom, as I was always very aware.”

“Steph. That’s not what—”

“Whatever. I really do need to go.” She pushes back from the table.

Suze covers Steph’s hand. “Finish your soup, darling girl. Your mom didn’t mean anything.”

Steph settles. Gives me an apologetic look. “Sorry, I’m just . . . freaked.”

“I know.”

Jasmine sails from the foot of the stairs to the table, notebook in hand. “Okay! This is about the tsunami in Japan.” She regales us with a dozen bullet-point details.

“That’s amazing,” I say. “It reached all the way to Oregon!”

“But the big problem is, there’s a really big fault off the coast of Oregon, and when it has its next earthquake—”

“Okay!” Steph says, raising both hands. “That’s enough. I’ve got to get going, and I don’t want to have earthquakes and tsunamis in my head while I drive.”

Jasmine pouts. “I was just telling you. They taught us in school.”

“I know, baby,” Steph says. “I have a lot to think about. Can you write it down and send me a letter?”

She shrugs. “I guess.”

Steph blots her lips with a napkin, then pushes back her chair, and all at once my heart aches hard, in worry and loss and a million other mother things. She won’t be gone that long this time, only a few weeks, but then she’ll be gone for ages and very far away and I hate that idea so much, even as I know it’s a great opportunity. Her expression is blank, which means she’s feeling all kinds of things she doesn’t want to feel. “I’m off, then,” she says, standing.

“We’ll walk you to your car.” I hold out my hand to Jasmine, but she has tears in her eyes suddenly, and flings her skinny self into her mother’s body.