Chapter 23 #2
“Mom, I’d like to introduce you to Oriana and Reese,” Jenny said to the older woman before them. “Reese has just shared that he’s newly cancer-free. And Oriana, he said you’re retired?” Jenny looked at Oriana in confusion.
“That’s right,” Oriana said.
The older woman looked immediately more relaxed, as though she’d thought Oriana had come all the way out here to steal her artworks. She stood and extended her hand. “My name is Jasmine,” she said. “Welcome to Oahu.”
“It’s a pleasure to be here.” Oriana smiled wider at the name “Jasmine.” It felt remarkable that a young woman named Henrietta had decided not to be called “Henrietta” anymore. She’d chosen her own version of freedom.
They sat down and waited for their margaritas, chatting about the island’s beauty and how different it was from Martha’s Vineyard.
But eventually, Jasmine tilted her head and said, “You retired because of your husband’s health.”
Oriana understood that Jasmine was the sort of woman unafraid of saying exactly what was on her mind. She glanced at Reese, who shrugged to prove that the statement didn’t bother him.
“Yes. Mostly,” she said. “That, and dealing with Larry Calvin Johannes, made me recognize how frustrated I was with the art world. I was an art dealer for more than thirty years. I experienced my fair share of personalities. But something about this turned my stomach a bit too much. Something about your story. I knew I had to get out.”
Jasmine bowed her head. “It’s funny. You’ve met him. You know him.”
“I do,” Oriana said.
“To me, Larry’s a ghost,” Jasmine said. “He’s the man I had to escape.
I’ve dreamed of him hundreds of times over the years.
I was always terrified that he would find a way to discover where I’d taken his daughter.
He didn’t know I was pregnant when I left, but I imagined he’d figure it out one way or another.
He was always crafty. When I realized that he couldn’t love me, not in a real way, I knew I couldn’t trust him. ”
Jasmine sipped her margarita, then slid her fork through the top of her shark taco.
“What was your impression of him?” Jasmine asked, maybe because she couldn’t resist.
Oriana considered her first trip to Colorado, how excited she’d been about her new artist discovery, how enraptured she’d been with the paintings.
Back then, Reese had been overly tired, but they hadn’t thought it was anything but fatigue or poor nutrition.
It had been a completely different time in her life.
“To tell you the truth,” Oriana said, “I believed in him. I wanted to believe in him. Sometimes I think that’s all it takes.”
Jasmine bowed her head. “He could be believable. He could be whatever you needed him to be, until he got you right where he wanted you. But as it turns out, you were the one person in the world he couldn’t match.”
But Oriana wasn’t entirely sure about that.
She remembered that Larry had spent most of his years all by himself in that cabin, nursing the wounds Henrietta had given him when she’d left.
A part of her wondered if all that loneliness had been a curse.
It had certainly damaged his heart—not that he deserved anything less.
“He had a moment of fame,” Reese added to break the silence.
“It’s infamy, now,” Oriana said.
“Still, all of my mother’s paintings are scattered all over the world,” Jenny interjected. “They have his name on them. I can’t stand it.”
Oriana understood she meant that they hadn’t seen a lick of that money. And Oriana could tell from the state of their clothes and hair and faces that they weren’t exactly well-off, not like she and Reese were.
Jasmine excused herself to use the bathroom, leaving Jenny, Reese, and Oriana alone with their half-eaten tacos and half-drunk margaritas. Sunlight hung in a purple haze over the tables.
Now that Jasmine was gone, Oriana spoke with more urgency.
“We want your mother to have everything she deserves. I have an art dealer friend, a woman named Kendra, who would take Jasmine’s case in a second.
I wish I could take her myself, but like I said, I’m retired.
I’m out of the game. You said on the phone that she has more paintings? ”
Jenny nodded and glanced behind her shoulder to make sure her mother wasn’t coming up behind her.
“She’s nervous. She thinks money poisons everything.
I mean, it’s totally poisoned our island out here.
Culturally, Hawaii has been destroyed in many ways, if only because people destroy the land, our ecosystem, and our history for tourism.
But at the same time, my mother can’t retire and probably never will be able to, not the way things stand.
I’ve just gone through a heinous divorce, and we barely have enough money to pay the rent in the little apartment we share with my two teenage daughters.
I mean, there are so many arguments about who’s in the bathroom and for how long!
I can’t imagine it’s how my mother really wants to live.
Then again, I know she loves not being alone. ”
Oriana’s heart swelled with recognition. After all those years of loneliness with Larry, Jasmine probably adored having her family around like this. She probably adored listening to her granddaughters' footsteps down the hall.
“I can’t promise anything,” Jenny said furtively. “But maybe if we spend a little more time together? Maybe if you listen to her story and let her know how much you understand it? Maybe then, she’ll figure out a way to let the world see her new art?”
It was then that Jasmine returned from the bathroom, moving slowly, like a boat over the ocean, until she sat back down and gave them a steely look.
Oriana knew that she was, in some ways, the enemy: the woman who’d plucked Larry out of the nothingness of his life and brought danger to Jasmine’s anonymity. How could she convince Jasmine of how essential her pieces were for the rest of the world?
Before she could come up with something to say, Jasmine spoke.
“I don’t know what I want,” she said. “I don’t know how I want the last few years of my life to go. I could have a few years. I could have a couple of decades. But I’m an old woman, and I want things to go as fluidly and beautifully and kindly as possible.”
At this, Reese interjected. “Very recently, I thought my time on this planet was through,” he said. “I understand wanting to make peace with the time you have left. I understand wanting to honor the life you’ve created for yourself.”
Jasmine perked up, as though realizing that only Reese could understand.
“Yes,” she breathed. “Yes.” And then she raised her shoulders and said, “I would like to invite both of you back home to see my new paintings. Maybe you won’t think they’re good enough.
Perhaps you’ll think I’ve lost my talent somewhere between my twenties and my seventies.
If so, that’s fine with me. But you’ve come all this way. You might as well see what I’ve done.”
Jenny clasped her hands together and said, “Mom, I can’t imagine anyone who won’t think what you’ve done is incredible.”
Jasmine cackled at that. She asked Oriana and Reese, “Do you have children?”
“We do,” Reese said.
“Then you know how rare it is for them to compliment you,” Jasmine said. “It’s something I’m trying to get more accustomed to.”
Jenny laughed. “I’m fifty years old,” she told them. “But I don’t think we ever seem ‘old’ to our parents, do we? I know my girls still seem like little ones to me. I can’t imagine that they know anything about the world.”
Oriana confessed she knew exactly what she meant. “I worry and worry and worry,” she said. “But still, my kids seem to know exactly what they’re doing in the world.”
“It sounds like you’re a good mother,” Jasmine said, arching her eyebrow.
Oriana felt a thousand images rushing past her mind’s eye: scraped knees and breakdowns and failed tests and arguments.
She remembered all the dark days, the screaming matches, the hours when she and her daughter had been convinced they couldn’t get along.
But that was the thing about family, she knew—especially when there was a lot of love in a family.
You had to take all the humanity and all the pain and all the jealousy and all the hardships of being a person.
It all existed between you when there was real love.