The Starfish Sisters: A Novel(5)
She didn’t seem to need me to talk, which was a relief. She pointed and squatted and peered, and I hung with her, trying to not look like a complete idiot.
After a while, she straightened and seemed to really see me. “You have the longest hair I’ve ever seen.”
My braids nearly reached my knees. “I’m not allowed to cut it.”
“Why?”
“If a woman have long hair,” I quoted, “it is a glory to her, for her hair is given her for a covering.” At her blank look, I added, “The Bible. My dad’s a preacher.”
“Oh. My grandma goes to the Methodist church. She makes me go to Sunday school sometimes. Is your dad Methodist?”
I shook my head. “Pentecostal.”
She blinked. “You know, you could be Rapunzel.”
“I like that.”
She brushed her hands together, shedding dark sand. “You want to come to my grandma’s house for lunch? Bologna, probably.”
The closed doors of the world blew open. “Sure,” I said, like it didn’t matter much.
But oh, it did.
Did it ever.
Chapter Three
Phoebe
The morning is drizzly, but the path runs through a pine forest that offers some protection. Drops splat against the hood of my raincoat and against my nose, and I remember hurrying behind my grandmother on days like this, her galoshes sending out splashes of mud, my own smaller ones wading through the puddles on purpose. Now mine are the big feet, and my granddaughter, Jasmine, has the smaller ones.
Jasmine. She’s ten and still mighty, a grasshopper of a girl with wild hair. Even this tiny thought of her lifts my spirits. She’ll be here later this afternoon, to stay with me while her mother finds a place for them to live.
In London.
A pain stabs my lungs. So very far away. Portland is far enough. I don’t know how I’ll bear London. It isn’t the distance, and of course I want her to have the experiences she’ll have there—but how often will I see Jasmine? Will it fray our relationship? We’ve been as close as skin and bone since she was born, one of the great gifts of my life. Motherhood is a dangerous journey, full of pitfalls and terrors. Grandmotherhood is more a dance on a summer evening, full of love and hope. Or at least that’s how it feels to me.
Water drips from tree branches onto my head as we wind around a small bluff and end at a square building tucked beneath a shelter of old trees. I unlock the blue-painted door, letting it swing open into the space I love more than any other on earth. The mingled scent of oil paint and damp wood strikes my sinuses, easing the muscles along my neck. I close the door behind me. Maui shakes the rain from his coat, then trots over to his bed in the corner and falls down with a huff.
This was my grandmother’s studio before it was mine. Her second husband built it for her, a robust structure nestled for safety into the earthen side of the hill to protect it from the harsh elements. That wall against the mountain is solid wood covered with corkboard. Some of my grandmother’s sketches still hang there, birds and trees, the detail of a butterfly wing, the branch of a long-needle pine. She was a naturalist and painted what she loved, all the things that sing and howl and sway in the wind.
My paintings and sketches and ideas, old and new, hang there, too. Snippets of a new fabric design, a contracted illustration for an article due next week, my starts and experiments. Jasmine has started adding her pieces as well—girls and cats with an anime feel, faces with giant eyes.
I’ve added a laptop for editing software, and a heavy-duty printer, which rests on a desk by the window, somewhat safe from water and paint.
In this room, I am fully myself. Here, I am a maker, an artist with a vision of the world that is entirely my own. Here, surrounded by color and memory and paper of a thousand sorts, and paintbrushes and pencils, and rolls of butcher paper to cover the solid walnut table in the middle of the room, I am me, Phoebe the Maker. I take a breath, let it go.
The view is centering. Spectacular. Opposite the corkboard is a wall of windows that overlook the sea, straight north along the rocky coast. Waves endlessly interact with rocks and cliff and shore. A cluster of three tall stacks, the Starfish Sisters, offers habitat for birds and seals, and along the top of the tallest is a patch of forest two feet wide, like hair. It’s a tourist mecca in the summertime, but now, when the rains have arrived, we have it mostly to ourselves again.
Wrapping my body in an apron, I center myself with the scene, the one that inspired The Starfish Sisters, which is my picture book about two girls who love the tide pools, published six years ago. It hit the New York Times bestseller list for months and continues to do very well. At its heart, it is a love song to my friendship with Suze. With two fingers, I touch the cover of the book, standing on a shelf so I can have it close by. One of my biggest accomplishments, and a healing one.
But now, it’s time for work. Pushing up my sleeves, I settle in.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve seen the world in terms of color: the sky—today cerulean, now light blue, now deepest gray—and flowers, peach and pale magenta and scarlet and that vivid, vibratory hot pink that almost buzzes under a cloudy sky. The gradations of rain clouds, the variations of tossing waves under many weathers. Color fills me, calms me, gives me an exit from this mundane world into one made of shimmer and blaze.