Freaky Green Eyes

  Samantha said, “Mom, you’re so much fun!”

  Samantha hugged Mom, and they laughed together. I felt a stab of jealousy. Even if I felt that way, I couldn’t behave like Samantha—I wasn’t ten years old.

  Mom told us that our aunt Vicky was planning to drive up from Portland, to visit with us on Sunday, three days away. “Vicky is eager to see all of us,” Mom said. “It’s been a while.” I was feeling guilty about Aunt Vicky but didn’t know what to say. I wondered if Mom knew how Vicky had called me, and e-mailed me, and I’d never answered. I decided no, probably Mom didn’t know; Aunt Vicky would not have told her, because to tell Mom would be to indicate that she, Mom’s older sister, was concerned about her. And that meant she’d been concerned about Dad. How Mom and Dad were getting along together. I imagined Mom telling Aunt Vicky, Things are fine! I imagined Aunt Vicky gripping Mom’s shoulders in her strong hands and giving Mom a little shake and saying, Krista, tell me the truth.

  Beyond that I couldn’t imagine.

  Mom must have seen a look in my face. I guess my emotions show like ripples in water, and she said, “Vicky loves Skagit Harbor too. She’s going to stay for two weeks in August, in a bed-and-breakfast, if she can get away.” Mom paused, smiling tentatively. “Vicky has been a little worried about us. I mean—concerned. She has the idea that things are different between your father and me, and really—they are not.”

  Samantha said, “But, Mom—”

  Mom said, “No, really. Things are not changed between your father and me. We have a slightly different schedule, but that isn’t so unusual. We’ve worked things out very well, I think.”

  Dad has told you to say that. Those are Dad’s words.

  This was a shrewd Freaky-thought. It came and went in my head, in an instant.

  I said, “You and Dad seem to be getting along okay. Last week Dad was telling me, he thinks you’re doing some interesting paintings.”

  This was not true, exactly. I said it to make Mom feel better.

  Mom glanced at me, smiling but puzzled. As if she wanted to believe. “Oh yes,” she said quickly, touching her throat as if to adjust a nonexistent scarf, “I—things are fine between us. They always have been.”

  We were outside, walking in Mom’s backyard. Samantha and Rabbit ran ahead, through a meadow of wildflowers. There was a lot of loosestrife in bloom, spiky purple flowers growing on upright stems. I hoped that Mom wasn’t going to ask me which paintings of hers Dad was referring to. I pointed at the weather vane rooster on the roof of the old barn and said, “I used to think he was the one who crowed, remember?” Mom glanced up at the rooster and laughed. “Francesca, you were such a—fantasist! As a little girl, you made up such stories about animals.”

  “I did? I don’t remember.”

  “Well, you remember Mr. Rooster. That was your name for him.”

  I guess I remembered. It was sort of vague. I remembered, from a long time ago, the day Daddy scolded me for “lying.” For “making up things that aren’t true.” My grandma Connor was there, asking me about nursery school, and I must have said something fanciful and ridiculous, because Daddy interrupted, and everybody became quiet.

  Mom and I tramped through the tall grass and creepers to explore the old barn from the outside. I loved the barn smell of hay and ancient dirt, grime. I loved the way swallows flew in and out of a paneless barn window, like big butterflies. Mom said that her neighbor was elderly, in her eighties, and would probably be leaving her property to children who lived in Seattle, and who wouldn’t care to live in Skagit Harbor. “If I could afford it, I’d love to buy this property. There are three acres. Just think!” Mom sounded so wistful, I hardly had time to think, But Dad makes so much money, don’t we have money? Can’t we afford it?

  We circled the barn and peeked through the cracks in the old weather-worn boards. Rabbit came trotting back to us and ran away through the field, with Samantha clapping and calling after him. It was a warm day, streaks of cloud overhead but a pale-blue sky. As Mom said, things were very quiet here. At one corner of the barn there was a large, sand-colored boulder that must’ve weighed a ton, partly covered by morning glory vines, and almost hidden beneath this boulder was a burrow some creature had made. I thought it was a rabbit but Mom said no, the burrow was too big for a rabbit, probably it was a groundhog. It was an old burrow, not a new one. Maybe it wasn’t even inhabited any longer. I said, “A special hiding place.”

  Mom said, “It is. A special hiding place. You’re right, Francesca. Someone could leave a secret message for someone else in this burrow. No one would ever look here.”

  We hiked back to Mom’s cabin, where Samantha and Rabbit had been joined by Mom’s friend Melanie, her two young children, and her Border collie, Princess. The way Rabbit was making up to Princess, who was twice his size, you’d have thought he’d never seen another dog before, let alone one so beautiful.

  Mom’s friend Melanie was a young widow: her husband had been a trucker, hauling logs, and he’d died in a fiery crash just fifteen months before. Mom told us this after Melanie had left. I’d noticed, while Melanie was with us, drinking cranberry tea and eating oatmeal cookies Mom had baked, that neither woman alluded to a husband, deceased or living. I wondered if people in Skagit Harbor knew anything about Mom’s private life. And if they knew, what they thought. To them, she was Krista Connor, which was the name Mom used to sign her art. But obviously, now that Samantha and I had showed up, Mom had a family, too.

  There was a single closet in the cabin, and I saw in it only a few of Mom’s clothes. Mostly shirts, jeans, slacks, what Mom called “old clothes.” A long skirt, and a single pullover jersey dress, pumpkin-colored, that she wore with strands of amber beads, that I liked. A few sweaters, a lightweight canvas jacket. And only a few pairs of shoes. Back home, Mom’s closet was crammed with beautiful clothes, most of them dresses. She must’ve owned thirty—forty?—pairs of shoes.

  I didn’t ask her about this. I wasn’t spying on Mom. I wasn’t going to tell Dad anything revealing, though I guessed he would ask me.

  For the next two and a half days, Samantha and I had a wonderful time in Skagit Harbor. As if some part of us understood that it couldn’t last.

  Mom took us hiking on a small mountain north of town which overlooked the harbor and, to the east, the foothills of Mount Moon, which was a much higher mountain. Melanie, her children, and Princess came with us; we packed a picnic lunch. Later, while Mom was working in her studio, an artist friend named Mero Okawa took us rowing and swimming on the Skagit River near his place, a cabin like Mom’s except larger and a little showier. Everybody seemed to know everybody else in Skagit Harbor, at least in Mom’s circle of Deer Point Road residents, artists, and gallery owners. I had the idea that in a week, everybody would know me. There were girls my age I met who seemed really nice, and a few guys. People began calling me Franky almost immediately, which I liked. Nobody asked me about my dad, if they knew who he was. And nobody asked where I went to school, as they would have in Seattle where the school you attend, public or private, is a shorthand way of signaling who you are, how much money your parents have.

  Friday evening there was a barbecue at a neighbor’s house on Mom’s road, where everybody brought food and things to drink. We helped Mom make potato salad and husk sweet corn. There was a softball game before supper, and rowing on the river, by moonlight, afterward. All ages of people were together, having a great time. I have to admit, I met a boy named Garrett (a senior at Skagit Harbor High) who seemed to like me, I mean in a casual, kidding-around sort of way. He was nice to Samantha, too, and offered to take us sailing on Sunday anytime we wanted. Saturday evening, Mero Okawa invited people to his gallery first (he owned the Orca Gallery), then took about twelve guests out to dinner at this place that was everybody’s favorite fresh-fish restaurant, on the river. At first I thought that Mero Okawa was sort of weird, then I really got to like him. Mom said of him he was her closest friend in Skagit Harbor,
like a brother.

  Mero overheard, and said, deadpan, “Krista, I hope I’m nicer than a mere brother. My brothers are beasts.”

  Mero Owaka described himself as two parts Hawaiian, one part Caucasian—“But which part is which I haven’t been able to figure out.” He was a “sculptor, sort of,” but mostly a small-scale art entrepreneur, owner of the Orca Gallery and also a co-chair of the Skagit Harbor Arts Festival, which was scheduled for Labor Day weekend. (I heard a lot about this because other dinner guests, including Mom, were helping out too.) Mero was slender and not very tall, with stylishly bleached ashy-blond hair dark at the roots, and a smooth olive skin, and eyelashes longer than most girls’, including mine. He carried a Polaroid camera on a plastic strap around his neck and was always taking pictures. He wore rings on both hands, a gold chain around his neck, and a sapphire in his left earlobe. People teased Mero in a funny, affectionate way for his “fashion sense”—his “Armani look.” He was really nice to Samantha and me without being condescending, like some adults. I didn’t want to see this friend of Mom’s as my father would, sneering at him as a “pretty boy” or, worse yet, a “fag.”

  That evening, Mero took Polaroid shots of Mom, Samantha, and me. He said we were “terrifically photogenic,” which made us laugh. “No, seriously,” Mero insisted, raising and aiming his camera, “you are. ‘Krista, Francesca, Samantha: A Mother and Two Daughters.’ Oh, to be John Singer Sargent, to do justice to you!” It was Mero’s way to be shamelessly flattering and to make you laugh, and yet you knew that, in fact, he meant what he said.

  Later, Mom said of Mero he was the “most honest” man she knew, and “probably the most good-hearted.”

  Next day, Sunday, Aunt Vicky was scheduled to arrive in the early evening. She was driving up from Portland, and would be staying at a bed-and-breakfast place in town, since there wasn’t room for another guest in Mom’s cabin. I’d decided not to be embarrassed when I saw Aunt Vicky but just to tell her, when I had a chance, that I hadn’t called her because I’d been feeling a little depressed about our family situation. But now I was feeling one hundred percent better.

  Though it was Sunday, Mom didn’t vary her schedule much. She dressed in her old paint-stained clothes and tied a scarf around her hair. She was preparing silk screens of big, luminescent green cattails and marsh grasses, and Samantha and I were helping her. Time really passes quickly when you’re absorbed in the technical side of art! Sometime between three and four o’clock, my new friend Garrett was coming over to take Samantha and me sailing. Unless the weather suddenly turned bad: by midmorning, the sky was ribbed with darkish clouds, but there was a wind out of the northwest, blowing them away. I checked the sky every few minutes, keeping my fingers crossed.

  Around lunchtime, a woman friend of Mom’s dropped by, and Mero Okawa bicycled over, on his way into town. The three of them were talking mostly about the arts festival. I asked Mero if it was okay if I rode his bicycle around, and he said sure. I hadn’t realized how hilly Deer Point Road was—I was coasting downhill toward the harbor and enjoying myself, and would have to struggle to pedal back uphill. In between, I bicycled on First, Second, and Third Streets, which were parallel to the river and not too hilly. (I have to admit, I knew that Garrett lived on Third Street; he’d told me what his house looked like. So I pedaled past Garrett’s house. It was one of the older wood-frame houses, painted a pale apple green. And there were wide-branched apple trees in the front yard, and lots of flowers: I guessed Garrett’s mother was a gardener. Fortunately, nobody was out in the yard or sitting on the porch, to observe me bicycling innocently past.)

  When I returned to Mom’s cabin, and Mero was about to take the bike from me, he asked me how did I like Skagit Harbor, and I told him I loved it. Samantha said, “I wish I could live here all the time, and go to school here. You can walk to school here.”

  Mero said, laughing, “You can walk just about anywhere here. Except on the river.”

  Mero had a way of fixing you with his long-lashed eyes and pursing his lips, allowing you to know how intently he was listening. It was flattering, and I believed it was sincere, but it made me feel self-conscious, too. There are some people who are so naturally interested in others, and so intense about it, if you don’t feel you’re anything special, they make you uneasy. It’s like Mero Owaka was saying to me, Francesca, yes you’re someone special. You’re Freaky Green Eyes, and I know you. C’mon!

  Seeing something in my face I didn’t mean to be there, Mero called me “Franky”—I’d told him to call me that, not “Francesca,” as Mom did—and told me that Samantha and I had made our mother very happy these past few days. “She’s been missing you girls so much. She wouldn’t want me to be telling you, but—well, she loves you. She doesn’t want you to be . . .” Mero’s words trailed off into silence.

  I felt my face burn. Doesn’t want us to be—what? Hurt?

  But who would hurt us?

  Samantha wasn’t in this exchange—she’d drifted away. But I was definitely in it. And I didn’t like it. Abruptly I turned away from Mero without saying good-bye. I was afraid of crying. I felt a flash of resentment, that this man I didn’t know, even if he was a nice person, and meant well, should speak so familiarly to me about things that were none of his damned business.

  Mero seemed to know this too. He called after me, “Franky? Hey, I’m sorry if—”

  I walked away without glancing back. Like I had somewhere to get to, fast.

  It would be the last time I spoke with Mero Okawa.

  This shrewd Freaky-thought.

  Stay here. With Mom. For the rest of the summer.

  Stay here for school, too. You could walk to Skagit High.

  We were outside in the backyard helping Mom weed and trim, at about three P.M. It looked as if we’d be going sailing with Garrett—the sky was mostly a wet, washed-looking blue, storm clouds strung out at the horizon, and a good, not-too-strong wind. I kept listening for a car on Deer Point Road and glancing up every time I heard one. I tried not to feel so self-conscious; I reasoned that I looked okay in jeans and a tank top, a pair of Mom’s sneakers (with the kind of rubber sole, Mom said, that’s good for the deck of a sailboat), and my hair in the usual ponytail except I’d shampooed it that morning, and I guess it looked pretty good. Mero Okawa had said I had “dynamite red hair” and “just the kind of freckles” to go with it, and I think he was serious, though teasing a little, too. Anyway, I was trying not to think about how I looked. I was trying to think about behaving naturally, relaxed and warm and funny. This isn’t a date—Samantha is invited, too. Keep that in mind.

  I heard a car approaching on Deer Point Road but it was going fast, and the sound of it was angry and impatient, unusual for Skagit Harbor, where the speed limit was twenty-five miles an hour in town. And when we looked up, there was a car pulling into Mom’s crude little driveway and braking to a stop.

  Dad climbed out of the car, leaving the door swinging open behind him. He was in shirtsleeves, but his shirt was an expensive white silk dress shirt, and he was wearing dark, perfectly creased trousers, as if he’d just stepped out of an important meeting. His face was glowing with indignation and fury bright as neon. He called, “Francesca! Samantha! Come.”

  Mom stood staring, pruning shears in her hands. It was clear she was completely surprised.

  “Reid, what’s wrong? I thought—”

  “Girls, did you hear me? Get your things. We’re leaving.”

  Samantha began crying and ran to Mom. I stood hesitantly, not knowing what to do. I had a big clump of yanked-out dandelions in my hands. I remembered how Dad had grabbed me at the Blounts’, and it flashed through my mind that he could grab me again like that; he could grab Mom and hurt her. He was headed swiftly for us, like an athlete closing the gap between himself and his opponents. When Mom asked again what was wrong, in a faint, frightened voice, Dad seized the pruning shears from her and threw them down. He called her a name I guess I don’t want
to repeat.

  Not that I hadn’t heard that ugly word before. Sure. But never applied to my mother.

  It was a confused scene. The crucial thing was, the pruning shears were on the ground and couldn’t be used to hurt anybody; and Dad was relenting a little, which he often did in a situation like this, seeing we were all respectful of him, not resisting. He agreed to go inside the cabin to discuss whatever the problem was, while Samantha and I waited outside.

  Samantha was crying and needed a tissue. I debated going into the cabin to get one for her but knew I’d better not. Luckily I found an old battered box of Kleenex in the back of Mom’s station wagon.

  Samantha whimpered, “Why is Daddy so mad? He said we could come here. He said.”

  “I guess—he changed his mind.”

  My heart was pounding so hard it hurt. Maybe it was an adrenaline rush. I was able to think clearly: if I heard Mom cry for help, or scream, I would run next door to Mom’s neighbor and ask her to dial 911.

  I would do this immediately, without hesitation. I would not go into the cabin. I would run next door.

  It was like the start of a swim meet: you wait for the signal.