The Starfish Sisters: A Novel(57)

I found some feathers and leaves I thought you’d like. Write soon!

Love you so so so so much!

Suze

When the movie wrapped and all the plans were made for releasing it, appearances at talk shows and media training sessions and how to conduct myself on the red carpet and how to answer hard questions from an interviewer and a million other things that seemed slightly ridiculous but proved themselves necessary, I called her to express some of my terror. “What if I’m terrible?” I cried.

“You will not be terrible,” she said with a cluck. “You know that. Say it out loud.”

I took a breath. “I will not be terrible. In fact, I’m going to be very, very good.”

She laughed. “There’s my girl.” I heard clanking in the background, the faint sound of the Rolling Stones. “You are about to lose something you don’t even know you have, however, and you should spend a little time appreciating it.”

“What do you mean?”

“The minute that movie comes out, you’re going to be famous. Very famous. Everyone will know your face, and it’s going to change your life in ways that you can’t imagine right now.”

My stomach flipped, both in anticipation and fear. I wanted to dissemble, protest, be modest, but I also knew it was true. The production company and everyone around me were counting on it. The picture was slated to be the biggest movie of the year. “Yeah,” I said, quietly.

“Take some time, sweetheart, to be anonymous. Walk around busy places. Go to the grocery store. Go see Phoebe and eat out.”

Standing in the kitchen of my new house with the phone pressed to my ear, the turquoise line curling away to the wall, I looked out at my swimming pool and thought of how lonely I was, all the time. If I got famous, maybe I wouldn’t be so lonely anymore. “I will.” I closed my eyes. “Thank you. I love you so much, Beryl. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“You’re a great light, sweetie. I love you.”

Sitting with Jasmine so many years later, I realize that she will carry Beryl’s memory forward in time. It comforts me to think of her going to the end of her long life (may she live to 150, never mind one hundred), carrying the face of a woman who has shaped all of us so much.

She will carry memories of me, too, and Phoebe. All of us a background swirl to Jasmine’s life, which will hold big loves and hates and broken hearts and dreams and losses and all the other things. For a moment, I try to imagine her at forty, a marine biologist professor with oversize glasses, maybe, or an athletic treasure hunter with a gorgeous partner who loves her. Or maybe she’ll be an artist like her grandmother, and her grandmother before her, and living at the flower farm with a tumble of children.

All good possibilities.

When Phoebe and I tried to imagine our lives, we found it hard to imagine that we’d ever be thirty, much less forty, but we did conjure great futures for ourselves—she living in a funky old brownstone in Manhattan, showing her canvases at high-end galleries. There would be articles in glossy magazines about her and photos of her ever-so-hip self in her loft studio. I would be an actress, and we would go to each other’s openings, and toast with champagne and tell each other everything. We pinkie swore to never give up our careers for a guy.

But Phoebe did. I was so upset that she’d let Derek talk her out of finishing art school, that she’d drop out to be a wife and mother instead of sticking to the path she’d imagined for herself, that I couldn’t leave it alone, even when she asked me to respect her wishes. Beryl, too, was distraught, but even both of us talking ourselves blue didn’t make any difference. Phoebe insisted she knew what she was doing. Looking at Jasmine, reading her book in the soft yellow light cast by a lamp, I think maybe she did.

If I’d been able to keep my daughter, I wouldn’t have gone to New York. I wouldn’t have been auditioning. I wouldn’t have had the life I’ve had.

If Phoebe had come to New York with me, she would never have met Derek, never had Stephanie, and the wonder who is Jasmine would not exist. The thought gives me an actual, physical pang.

Maybe it’s impossible to play the what-ifs backward. Life takes the path it takes.



Jasmine and I are making toast when Phoebe knocks. “That must be Nana,” I say, licking jam from the tip of my finger.

“Yay! She can eat breakfast with us!”

I open the door to Phoebe, and it’s obvious something is wrong. “What is it?”

She glances at Jasmine, who is giggling at the seagull cocking his head and trying to coax her to come outside and give him food. “Close the door. I want to show you something.”

“Jasmine,” I call over my shoulder, “stay put. We’ll be right back.”

Maui jumps up to go with us, but Phoebe says, “Stay,” and points to the floor. Alerted by something in her voice, he sinks to the ground, but his ears and shoulders are alert.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. I lower my voice. “Did something happen with Ben? I mean, he seems—”

“It’s not that.” She walks down the driveway, gesturing for me to follow, and then stops. Points back to the house.

There, on the side of the house in bright-red paint, is the word WHORE in letters two feet high. My gut drops, and I think of Maui, warning me. “Damn.”