“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.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Three months after Oriana and Reese’s trip to Hawaii to meet Jasmine for the first and final time, Oriana and Reese got in the car in Martha’s Vineyard and sped off for Manhattan. It felt like their millionth spontaneous trip of the summer, a summer of family parties and countless barbecues and beautiful adventures. But tonight begged for something different: a celebration of an iconic artist, Henrietta Johannes, a painter. The name meant everything.
Oriana was in the passenger seat, watching Reese’s capable hands as he steered them into the valet area in front of their favorite hotel in the city. Sunlight reflected off his new sunglasses, which he’d bought at the airport in Rome during a trip to visit Rachelle last month. He looked tan, muscular, and well-fed. He looked like her husband, but slightly older. She beamed.
Reese tossed the car keys at the valet, then opened the trunk to pull out their bags. Oriana realized that a few women coming out of the hotel were checking him out, which made her laugh. She knew how good he looked and how envious they were. But Reese had only ever had eyes for her. She pressed a kiss onto his lips, and he asked, “What’s gotten into you?” She told him sheloved him. She thanked him for coming into the city for “this thing.”
“You know I want to go wherever you go,” Reese said brightly.
Upstairs in their hotel suite, a far grander one than the room they’d enjoyed in previous stays, Oriana put on a chic black dress and a pair of earrings and helped adjust Reese’s suit and tie. The celebration of Henrietta Johannes’s new paintings was to be held at a swanky restaurant not far from the convention center where Oriana had announced her retirement. That frigid day in February felt like a lifetime ago. Oriana sent another congratulatory message to Kendra, who’d taken Henrietta Johannes on as a client, and wished her luck for the night ahead.
KENDRA: I’m so sick to my stomach! But so excited! Thank you for the connection. Thank you for everything!
Oriana knew that Kendra felt as though her career had finally begun.
