It was the third time I had heard Remy speak about her mother and the mention rendered my mother surprisingly silent for a very long time. In fact, Remy seemed to throw her off kilter just by being in the same room. Even though my mother was snippy with her, her bitchiness lacked steam and I had noticed something else: underneath the sparring, there seemed to be some sort of connection between the two. Their eyes often held for just a second too long and a private unspoken conversation seemed to pass between them.
“Well, think about it and let me know. It would give her something to do, keep her out of trouble. With the bike, she would have a way to get to work. And, I’ve got to admit, I’m not half bad at history and math. She could bring along her books while we cart passengers and I’d quiz her. There’s a solid two hours to kill on each ferry run.”
“Okay.” I don’t know if it was the memory of my father, or if Remy had just worn her down, but my mother’s tone had softened and she was looking right at Remy without any fire in her eyes.
“Okay?” Even Remy seemed surprised.
“Yes, okay. She’s not a little girl anymore.” My mother glanced at me as if seeing someone different than she had before. “It might be good for her. But today she’s got to go to Herman’s. And, for Christ’s sake, keep her away from those girls.”
“Tomorrow.”
“What?”
“Tomorrow she has to go to Herman’s. They couldn’t get the glass cut in time. I’ll bring her down there bright and early, and when she’s done there she can make the two o’clock run with me.”
“Fine. But she takes her homework with her.”
“Fine. Alrighty, then. Let’s get to those pies. Tell Josephine she’s welcome to join us.” Remy made her way to the door, paused, and looked back at my mother. “You know how to bake a pie?”
“No, but thanks for the offer.”
“Not an offer, just a question,” Remy bit into the pear she was still holding. “But you can cut up the butter, if you want, as long as you don’t let it soften.”
“As fun as that sounds, I really—”
“Have to work. Uh huh, I know.”
I was still considering how to get my Yemaya Stone back as Remy pulled a stack of pie pans from the pantry with a clatter.
“Pull up those three stools.” She waved at a row of bar stools lined up against the wall and laid out three rolling pins in front of them. “Here’s an apron.” She tossed a neatly starched cloth at me, laying another stained apron in front of the third stool.
I tied the apron around my waist and climbed onto the far stool. Remy froze, holding a bag of apples an inch above the counter.
“Not there.” Her voice wavered sharply. “There.” She pointed to the stool beside it. Setting a bowl of ice water and a mug of tea beside the vacant stool, Remy offered no further explanation.
“Ready? Okay, take your slab of butter and cut it into three cups of flour. Once you work it through, give it a pinch of salt and a tablespoon of that ice water.”
Picking up a fork, I started chopping through the flour. The hard butter fought back, and by the time I’d worked it into some semblance of dough I had white clumps dappling my face and hair.
Glancing up from her stool where she was peeling the bag of apples, Remy let out a hearty laugh, plucking at my curls. “You’ve never done this before, have you?”
I shook my head.
We’d been at it for half an hour when Grandma Jo arrived carrying a casserole dish with her.
“Tofu macaroni and cheese.” She lifted the dish proudly before setting it on the butcher’s block in front of the empty seat.
“You shouldn’t have,” Remy said, snatching the casserole away from the empty stool and moving it over to the stovetop.
“It was my pleasure.” Grandma Jo dismissed the comment with a wave of her hand. “I was making a batch for Izabella anyway.”
“No,” Remy crinkled up her nose at the casserole. “I mean you really shouldn’t have.”
There was something musical about Grandma Jo’s laugh, like silver bells dropping to the floor. “Just try it.”
“Bean curd.” Remy shook her head in wonderment. “Who in the hell ever stopped what they were doing, looked at a bean, and said, ‘I think I’ll make curd out of that’? Do you like to bake, Josephine? I mean things other than curd from a bean?”
“I make a mean carrot cake and cheese biscuits that melt right over your tongue.”
“Cheese or cheese curd?”
Grandma Jo laughed again, peeling off her cardigan and reaching for the third apron. Remy put a hand on top of it to stop her.
“That’s my mother’s. I’ve got another one right here.” I looked around the empty cottage wondering if Mrs. O’Malley was running behind schedule while Remy dug free another apron. “Sit here.” Remy pulled over the stool she’d been using for Grandma Jo, who was studying her thoughtfully. Remy glanced at her quickly and then turned her attention to me, laughing.
“You look a little like that picture of Yemaya you drew all covered in pearls.” Plucking a floury glob from my hair, she popped it into her mouth then ran a chopping knife through the pile of apples until they were nothing more than small chunks. “Did you show your grandmother the cover of the flyer for the festival?”
I shook my head.
“Festival?” Grandma Jo spun an apple in her hand, peeling it with expertise.
“The Yemaya Festival is coming up.” Remy snatched a copy of the flyer from the counter, setting it down beside my grandmother. “And your granddaughter is the artist gracing the cover with her illustration this year.”
“Izabella Rae! You drew this? It’s gorgeous.” She picked the flyer up, examining it closer. “Izabella says you’re somewhat of an expert when it comes to the Yemaya tradition.”
I leaned into a slab of hard butter, splitting it into quarters and sending a puff of flour over the counter.
“I guess that just comes from growing up with her. I remember walking around these cliffs as a kid and seeing her around every corner.” Remy tossed the apples in cinnamon and set them aside. “That reminds me . . .” She made her way around the butcher’s block, knocking into the empty stool beside me. “Excuse me,” she said, as though there were a person sitting there.
Mrs. O’Malley hadn’t shown up yet, and Grandma Jo and I glanced awkwardly at one another.
Remy shoved a chair under a bookcase, set aside a copy of Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, and climbed up, removing a small wooden statue from the top shelf before clamoring back down to set it in front of me.
“Have you read that yet?” Grandma Jo nodded at the book. “It’s fabulous. You’ll never think of sex the same way again.”
I looked up at her, wide-eyed.
“Not yet,” Remy said, letting her eyes flick toward the book. “But I’m sure as hell going to now.” She made her way back to the counter with the statue. “You know what this is?”
Grandma Jo glanced across the pile of apples.
Scraping the dough from my fingers first, I picked up the figurine, surprised that I did know what it was: a statue of Saint Agnes of Assisi. Back when my parents were doing all that fighting, and I was doing all that praying, I’d sent a million winged prayers to Saint Francis for the simple reason that Reverend Mitchell had once read us a story about God ordering Saint Francis to restore peace to God’s House. I was so young I thought it was an actual house with a winding staircase and dirty living room, and that if Saint Francis could fix God’s house, fixing mine should be a cinch. So when I was nine and we had to write an essay for Sunday school about a religious figure, I’d chosen him as my subject. In the essay, I’d copied a picture of him giving a habit to Saint Agnes, charging her to look over the poor.
That was a long time ago, though, and somewhere along the way, I’d grown tired of waiting for an answer and forgotten about him altogether.
“It’s Saint Agnes,” Remy said, taking a fork to the pie crust. “There’s thi
s religion, sort of, called Santeria that the slaves practiced. Slave owners and missionaries forced the slaves to worship the Christian saints and god. But the slaves already had gods of their own. Flip it over,” she wagged her head at the statue, “go ahead.” On the bottom of the statue was the figure of a small woman caught in a shell. Remy picked up the crust and flopped it into a pie pan, busying herself with pinching the edges. “It’s Yemaya. The slaves didn’t want to abandon their own gods, so they carved symbols and pictures of them into the bottom of these statues and worshipped them, instead, all the while. The whole time, the slave handlers thought they were praying to the saints. Cool, huh?”
“Very,” Grandma Jo agreed.
I nodded, running a hand over the carved figure at the base of the statue.
“My mother got me those when I was around your age from an antiques store over on the mainland.” Remy waved her hand at the empty stool.
I set the statue down, watching it while I measured out three more cups of flour, tossed it into the sifting can, and gave the crank a spin. The powder flitted through the screen with the grace of winter’s first snow.
“If you really want to know about Yemaya, you should check out the library down on Chestnut Street. They had a bad fire a few years back—space heater on the second floor—but they’ve been able to save a lot of stuff and what they couldn’t has mostly been replaced. They have a whole display set up for the walking tour. As a matter of fact, if you’re interested you could drop a bundle of festival flyers off at the desk, and this.” She crossed the room and pulled a book from the shelf. “It’s overdue. Tell them I’ll pay with pie at the festival.” She laid the book beside me and opened the oven to peek inside.
It was seven o’clock when Remy finally set the last bowl in the sink. “Well, I guess that about does it for tonight.”
The darkness beyond the kitchen window, and Grandma Jo at my side, erased any chance I might have had to sneak back up to Witch’s Peak to look for my Yemaya Stone.
“I’ll see you bright and early to bring you down to Herman’s,” Remy said.
I pushed the stool, which I had managed to cover with flour, under the butcher’s block and began to shove in the one beside it when Remy stopped me. For a fleeting second, her eyes seemed to burn right through me, then the look was gone and the lilt returned to her voice, leaving me wondering if my mother was right about Remy being a raving lunatic.
“Here.” She shoved three fives and five ones into my hand. “Give your mom fifteen dollars toward Mr. Herman’s window.”
I held up the five ones questioningly.
“Those are for you.” She closed my fingers around the money, looking over at Grandma Jo. “Josephine, maybe you’d like to bake some of your biscuits for the festival? The ones without curds.”
“It would be my honor. But only if you promise to try the macaroni and cheese I brought you.”
Remy lifted an eyebrow then sighed. “Fine.”
Tucking the money into two separate pockets, I picked up Remy’s book and the stack of flyers, glancing once more at the stool Remy had nearly bit my head in two for touching, and walked out the door. By the time Grandma Jo and I made it to the Booth House, my mother was locked in her room, dictating prices into her handheld recorder:
“Bradley Museum Cavanaugh Collection. Oil-based, fair condition. Eighty-five hundred dollars.. Michael Scott Lasser sculpture, fifteen hundred dollars.”
I laid the fifteen dollars on the counter and slipped upstairs to wash the dough from under my nails in the bathroom. Flicking on the light, I stared at the girl watching me in the mirror with an expression of curiosity on her face. The honey had mostly washed free of my dark strands, but the curls still spiraled down to my breasts in smooth loose springs that reminded me of coils of chocolate shaved from the brick. Maybe Remy was right, that honey was conditioning, or maybe it was the best hair spray in the universe.
Running the water until it warmed, I used one nail to scrape the piecrust paste from the other until tiny clumps littered the porcelain then splashed my face. It was almost as pale as the basin, as if God forgot to color it in altogether, then realizing his mistake, tossed a handful of freckles across my nose just to make sure people could see me. It would be easier, I often thought, if they could not—if I could just slip from shadow to shadow through the universe, unseen and unheard. Even my eyes were lacking real color. The dim tint of a perfect storm, that’s what my father used to say. But, really, they were the pale gray of a day that a pending storm had snuffed all the light from.
For a splintered second, I couldn’t tell if I was studying the girl in the mirror or if she was studying me, and I thought Grandma Jo might be wrong about me not being insane. Did I get the best of my father? I couldn’t say. One minute the memory of him was sharp as a razor. The next it was all mushy around the edges and lacking form. Tipping my head upside down, I shook my hair to knock the flour from it and went back downstairs.
I found Grandma Jo in the kitchen making her famous tofu macaroni and cheese.
“Just in time,” she chirped when I came back into the kitchen. “I was looking for a tester.”
I took a bite and rolled my eyes heavenward. It was divine.
There is my mother’s pasta, and then there is Grandma Jo’s macaroni and cheese, made with Vermont Cheddar so sharp it stings your tongue. I did not even mind that it was whole wheat, or that she always snuck tofu crumbles into the pasta.
“Shoot!” Grandma Jo pulled her hand back from the casserole, sucking on her finger. “That’s hot.” The memory of my mother shoving her bloody thumb in her mouth flitted back to me, and I couldn’t help but notice how much they sometimes resembled one another.
“Can you put the wineglasses on the table for me?”
Pinching the rims together, I clinked my way to the table.
“Zo, dinner!”
“Busy,” my mother called back from her room. “I’ll eat later.”
“You’ll eat now, or Izabella and I will come in there with the food and eat on your bed.” Grandma Jo’s voice was warm but firm as concrete.
My mother shuffled into the room and began filling water glasses with ice. I followed behind her, setting the plates.
“Pie turn out okay?” She gazed up at me. Aside from my mother telling me she missed my father, too, we hadn’t really spoken since the argument about Mr. Herman’s window and I recognized the question for what it was: a white flag.
Laying a bread plate down, I nodded, trying to remember the last time we’d sat down to eat together. The scent of baking bread began to waft through the house.
“Maybe you and Grandma Jo can explore the island tomorrow night while I work.”
“Maybe you can finish your work another time and we can go together,” Grandma Jo offered as she pulled the bread from the oven, grated fresh Parmesan on top, and set it in a basket for me to take to the table. My mother sighed. I knew Grandma Jo drove her nuts, but I wondered, too, if she saw the way Grandma Jo prodded her back into herself. The cracks seemed to fill in when my grandmother was around, not perfectly, but noticeably.
Grandma Jo padded into the dining room barefoot carrying a candle and matches. She set a plate on the floor for Luke, who scampered up to sniff it. Maybe it was a result of what I had overheard the night before, or the way the puzzle pieces were shifting slowly into place. Maybe it was the smell of autumn roses in the air, or the flickering of fall’s last fireflies in the yard. Whatever it was, I did not see it coming. Grandma Jo lit the candle. There was a burst of light, like a flashcube I had not closed my eyes to.
A cake. Six pink candles. Let go . . . let go . . . let go. And then the world went white.
“Izabella, honey!” I was surprised to find my body upright, my hands clutching the ladder-back chair with enough force to numb my fingertips. “Honey?” Grandma Jo’s voice sifted through the white light from a distant land. “Here, sit down.” Grandma Jo held me from the front while my mother tilted
a glass of ice water to my lips. As I slowly touched down, their faces drew into focus, breaking through the blaze of white.
“Sip.” My mother poured water down my throat.
“What is it?” Grandma Jo held my hand.
“Probably the heat from baking all afternoon. It’s warm in here.”
I nodded in agreement.
“Do you want to lie down?”
I shook my head, mopping the clamminess from my brow and getting to my feet.
“Better?”
I nodded, knowing for a fact that it wasn’t true. Something in this place was sending all those memories I’d spent eight years burying bobbing to the surface inside me like land mines dislodged from the ocean floor. There was no avoiding them, no telling what might bump into one, setting it off.
CHAPTER TEN
When I woke curled up on the couch the following morning, autumn had pounced on Tillings Island with both feet. Sometime in the night, my mother had come to cover me with a quilt and Luke had squirreled his way underneath, sticking a wet nose under my chin while he slept.
“Are you feeling well enough to go with Remy today?” My mother shuffled into the living room carting a clean load of laundry. The nod escaped before I thought better of it, remembering I was due at Herman’s in half an hour.
“All right, then you’d better get yourself up and dressed before she comes blaring that godforsaken horn.”
Untangling myself, I tossed the quilt aside, sending Luke flopping over with a sleepy snort, and went upstairs to throw on a clean shirt. I left on the old pair of jeans I’d slept in, since I was going to be painting anyway. A strapping frost the night before had left the leaves outside the window dipped in shades of molasses and cranberry red. Just looking at them made me hungry for a tall stack of Grandma Jo’s flapjacks and homemade maple syrup, which I could smell cooking downstairs. Pulling on one of my father’s old sweatshirts with a shiver and letting it hang clear down to my knees, I stuck my hair up in a curly mop and darted downstairs.
What the Waves Know Page 13
