The Starfish Sisters: A Novel(23)

Have I ever loved anyone like that, fully and without reservation? I loved Dmitri, deeply, and we had a strong, sexy, tender relationship, but I’m not sure I ever dropped my guard completely. Maybe it isn’t even possible to feel the power of a first love ever again. Maybe nobody would even enjoy it.

I knock at the door and Phoebe yells, “Come in, you dork!”

Laughing, I push open the hobbit door in time to hear Jasmine say, “Nana! That’s not very nice.”

Phoebe is wrapped in her paint-spattered red sweater and a bibbed apron. A thin streak of yellow marks her left cheek, and I can see she’s been painting with her fingers, once her favorite thing. “She knows better than to knock.”

The smell of paint and time and lingering hints of the Nag Champa incense Beryl burned adds a layer of almost instinctive calm to the sense of well-being from the long sleep. I feel her presence, almost hear the songs she would sing under her breath, the easy way she talked about life and nature and human traits and God and prayer and faith, the latter three in ways that my father might have called heretical.

She came to his church a few times. It surprised and thrilled me to see her there. She didn’t dress up as much as some of the women, but she wore a skirt and blouse, and wove her hair into a tidy braid. It didn’t change the tan she always sported, especially rare in coastal Oregon, but she spent so much time outside, studying nature, seeing to her flower farm, communing with the hawks and finches and starfish that she was always deeply tan. The memory of her in the pew, giving me a wink, reminds me how much I was loved.

Maui leaps up from his corner and comes over to offer his greeting, back end wiggling his whole body. I bend to kiss his nose and he slurps a kiss over my chin.

“Okay, Maui, that’s enough, baby,” Phoebe says. “God, he loves you.”

“That’s because she saved his life!” Jasmine says. She’s wrapped in an apron, too, and she’s painting something.

I amble over. “What are you guys working on?”

“Mine is a girl!” Jasmine says. “With a cat like you had once. A tuxedo.”

The drawing is quite good, with an anime feel. The cat is black with a white ruff, his green eyes tilted. I look at Phoebe. “You told her about Peter?”

“I thought of him this morning for some reason.”

I measure her, and she doesn’t meet my eye. What I remember about the day I asked Beryl to let him live here was that she was so jealous. Unreasonably jealous. Was that when the trouble started between us?

But I’m not going to stir the waters here. Mildly, I say, “He was a great cat. I don’t know what I would have done without him.”

Jasmine asks, “Did he die?”

“He did,” I say, “but not until he was a very, very, very old man.”

“How old?”

“Twenty, which is something like a hundred and two in human years.” I point to her drawing. “You did a great job. Is the girl from a game?”

“Kinda. I mean, she was, and then I drew her my way.” She pats the empty stool next to her. “Do you want to draw, too?”

I glance at Phoebe for permission and she gestures like a game show host—it’s all yours.

First I wander to her side of the enormous table to see what she’s working on. It’s an elaborate, detailed design, yellow and white vines against a forest-green background. I can see where she’s used her fingers to make round spots of yellow along the edge of each big leaf. “Very William Morris,” I say. “Fabric?”

“Wallpaper, actually. It’s become very popular the past couple of years.”

“I love it.”

“Thanks.” She dips a thin brush into a pool of paint and draws a tiny line along a petal. “You sleep well?” Her tone is impersonal, as if she’s talking to a shop clerk. Beneath it, I feel the swirling of all that’s unresolved between us.

I answer in the same tone. “Understatement.”

“Good.” She examines my face. “You look a lot better.”

“I guess Yul Brynner and I will have to move in with you.”

She snorts, and although I was kidding, it stings. I sip my tea.

“Jasmine wants to go to the Pig ’N Pancake for lunch in an hour or so,” Phoebe says. “Want to come?”

I can’t read in her eyes whether she really wants me to, but I’m desperate not to be alone. “That sounds so good.”

“Come draw with me,” Jasmine says. “There’s paper over there, and”—she gestures her hand in a swirl, just like her nana—“all those things. Crayons, pencils, whatever.” She pulls a black metal tin, long and narrow, from the jumble. “Watercolor if you want.”

I settle my tea on the lower table so that it won’t spill on the art, as Beryl taught us, and peel off my sweater and sit down with a fresh piece of paper, feeling the old lure of calm. In those days, I never lacked for ideas and would be drawing before I fully sat, but now I look at the paper and feel frozen by all the years I haven’t done this, by all the bad drawings I will do again until I get the hang of it.

“Just paint color,” Phoebe says, picking up on my discomfort.

I glance at her. As if she feels it, she looks up. “Purple,” she says, her mouth lifting on one side.