Operation Oleander (9780547534213) Read online

  “Really?”

  “Yes, Mr. Johnson sent them. I’ve made copies. A set for you. A set for Meriwether. Will you come with me?”

  “Where?”

  “To Meriwether’s house. I want you to be there when I give them to her.” All of us together. All of Operation Oleander.

  Sam doesn’t answer right away. He shuffles from one foot to the other. I can tell even through the phone line.

  “Okay, I’m coming,”

  Sam meets me at the corner of Madrid, and we bike to Meriwether’s house together. Like we used to.

  This time the Scotts’ car is there, parked on the street. The curtains are open. But in the driveway there’s a moving van. It’s backed up to the carport, and men are loading it with boxes and furniture wrapped in heavy quilting.

  The thud of the moving boxes echoes in my heart. I am the day lilies Meriwether dug up. The missing dragonfly garden stake. I am all the things being ripped away.

  They have to move off post. Everyone knows that. But not so soon. They’re going farther, to South Carolina, for now.

  “Did you know they were moving today?” I ask Sam.

  He nods. “Mom told me.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” We are best friends, Meriwether and me. And Sam.

  He shakes his head. “Couldn’t.”

  “More duty, honor, country?” Is he just like his dad after all?

  “No,” he says. “It was one more sad thing.”

  I blink back tears. No crying here.

  “Come on,” I say.

  We pick our way through the chairs and tables waiting to be loaded. Dodge packers and movers who work like robots, knowing how to be efficient.

  Inside the living room, it already feels like a stranger’s house.

  “Jess, Sam.” It’s Mr. Scott. He waves us toward the hallway and the kitchen beyond, where the lighting shows off the azure tiles.

  My heart beats hard. The last time I saw Meriwether was at the funeral. The last time I was here before that, I tried to give Meriwether an album. An album of photos of us. It’s back at home in a drawer. If I’d known they were moving today, I’d have brought it. Even if Meriwether rejected it. I could have hidden it in the moving van, and she’d find it later, when she might want it.

  Sam and I join Mr. Scott, who’s standing next to the sink, a cup in his hand. He looks like he’s having a morning cup like any other morning and the chaos around him doesn’t bother him. As if he doesn’t see any of it.

  “We have something for Meriwether. And for you.” I hold out the packet of processed photographs.

  “Meriwether?” Mr. Scott calls out the back window.

  When Meriwether walks in, we all stand straight and silent in four corners of the kitchen, walled in by the blue tiles that always made me smile.

  “Mr. Johnson sent me these photos—”

  “I don’t want them.” Meriwether folds her arms.

  “They’re—”

  “I told you I don’t want them.” She and her dad don’t look at the package.

  “I can explain.” I look to Sam, and he nods but doesn’t say anything. “That day, that day at the orphanage, your mom took photos.”

  Meriwether’s foot is tapping, and her arms are so tight across her chest, her hands are clenched. My hands are shaking, just a little, but enough so the paper bag crinkles. “She took photos of the children and my dad. They are the last images she captured on film.” They are what she saw.

  Mr. Scott clears his throat.

  “Photos of the orphanage? Really, Jess?” Meriwether’s eyes whip like frothy wind-tossed waves. “What makes you think I want them?”

  “Because your mom took them.”

  Mr. Scott’s hands clench together in front of him. Meriwether doesn’t budge.

  “I’ll just leave them here, on the counter.” Where the movers won’t throw them out as trash. “We’ll go, Sam and me. Please write and tell me where you are.” South Carolina.

  I ease the photos onto the counter space, and Sam and I leave through the front hallway.

  Finally, outside, I can breathe again.

  “It’s not your fault, Jess,” Sam says after we start biking back toward my house.

  I nod, but I don’t believe him. Not really.

  “I’m going to talk to your dad again,” I say.

  He hits the brakes and stops. “What?”

  “I’m going to ask him about restarting Operation Oleander.”

  Sam gives me one of his looks, the looks I have trouble reading. “Okay.”

  Okay? That’s it? He doesn’t argue. I don’t believe him.

  “I’ve been thinking about what else we could do. For when your dad lifts the ban. I did some research online. We could donate everything we get to a national organization that provides for an Afghanistan aid center,” I say.

  “I’m listening.” Sam twists the handlebars on his bike.

  “That way there’s no link between the U.S. military and the orphans. I liked knowing that what we had done we did ourselves. But it’s more important that the supplies get where they’re needed. The safest way for everyone.”

  “It might work.”

  The next morning, I head over to the PX. The table for the snack sales is already unfolded and in its place. I just need to unlock the closet and unpack, then add some information about the Afghanistan Aid organization I researched.

  “Reporting for duty,” a voice says.

  I look up.

  Sam’s standing in front of me, saluting.

  Next to him, Aria clutches a stiff poster board. On it she’s made a collage with photos of Warda and the others.

  Suddenly, I am standing on the edge of a cliff again. Dizzy, the way I felt when Meriwether told me about deleting her mother’s voice-mail message. When I think about the destruction done by the insurgents, the bombings, the anger and hatred of the Angustus protesters with their signs. Both sides of hatred, each claiming the other is evil.

  “Aria, do you agree to the membership duties of Operation Oleander.”

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Duties?” Sam asks.

  “Like duty, honor, country. Only ours are different in some ways. Giving isn’t always only a good thing— I know that now. Even good motives lead to unintended consequences. But I’m not giving up. And neither is Operation Oleander.”

  I continue. “Giving matters. Each small gift together. Maybe that’s all that matters.” Giving without the thought of return. Not for a gold star. Or to make Dad proud. Not even for the internal joy. I distrust my own heart.

  “Father Killen said that we should do it, follow the form. And the substance will come,” I say.

  “He was talking about prayer, Jess,” Sam said. “He always says that.”

  “I know that. But giving is a form of prayer too.”

  Through the fabric of my pocket, I feel the stone. A stone that is my own gift, my own shared prayer of life.

  “If one orphan benefits, isn’t that good enough?” Aria asks.

  I salute them back.

  Yes.

  That afternoon, it’s raining again. I’ve taken an umbrella and walked to the street in my flip-flops to get the mail.

  Mr. Scott pulls his car up to the curb, and Meriwether bolts from the passenger side without an umbrella. I stand on the sidewalk, not sure whether to go to her or back away. I wait for her anger to crest over me like a rogue wave, my body stiff.

  “Don’t. You’re getting soaked,” I say.

  But Meriwether grabs onto me in a hug that crushes my lungs.

  “Jess” is all she says. I hug her back. Without her telling me, I know the photos her mom took are going with her. They are the gift she can hold on to.

  “Wait, don’t leave,” I tell her. I give her my umbrella and run for the house.

  Mrs. Johnson says, “What the—?” when I crash into the living room and down the hall, my flip-flops squeaking from the rain. In my room I find the al
bum still in the tote bag. I race back outside.

  “Here. Take this. It’s for you. It’s an album. Of us. I’ve been saving photos since last year.”

  Meriwether shelters the album as she carries it to the car and stashes it inside, out of the rain.

  Then she reaches for something in the back seat.

  “I want you to have some of these.”

  Day lilies.

  “Please take care of them,” Meriwether says. “Mom loved them.”

  A flash of lightning singes the air.

  The thunder booms, and Meriwether and I hug hard one last time before she leaves.

  From under the dry carport, I turn and wave at the Scotts. The rain is coming down so hard, I can’t see them through their car windshield. But I know they are waving too.

  I hold the burlap-wrapped day lilies tight in my arms. They’re my orphans too, like Warda and the other children.

  The Scotts’ car turns at the end of the block. Later, whoever moves into their house won’t know the day lilies left in the yard belonged to Mrs. Scott. They won’t know that she planted them carefully, babied them. Or how much she loved them. Whoever moves in next might even replace them with other landscaping.

  But I know what they’re called. Hemerocallis. From the Greek for “beauty for a day” because each bloom lasts for only about twenty-four hours. Just a single day, and I think about what Mrs. Scott said: “Life is too short not to plant flowers.”

  I won’t forget these links between us. Between Mrs. Scott and Meriwether. Between Meriwether and me. Between us and the orphans in Afghanistan whom we will never know in person.

  I will call them all by name.

  Chapter One

  WE’RE IN PARADISE, so the tourist brochures say. That’s what I thought, too, before last June, when the unspeakable happened, when Dad took the blue boat out and didn’t come back.

  The Caribbean island of Curaçao beckons sun worshipers and cruise ships that sail up St. Anna Bay and dock near the House of the Blue Soul. Taffy pink, aqua, and lemon yellow buildings like squares of colored candies line the streets of Willemstad’s shopping district. Bon bini signs welcome arrivals at every port of call, the airport, and almost every shop in Punda and Otrobanda. They’re even plastered to the side of boats taking tourists out to scuba-dive in deep water. Paradise. Where the water is so blue, so calm, so deceptive.

  “You’re sure you don’t want to come with me, Cyan?” Standing in the driveway outside our rented house, Mother says my name—Cyan—like a sigh. “I’m sure Kammi would appreciate your meeting her at the airport. You know, the first time. To welcome her.”

  I shake my head while the dry wind billows my broomstick skirt like a sail. The girl in the photograph Mother showed me last night—the one she keeps in her art studio—is younger than I am. Thirteen, Mother said, two years younger. Her face in the photo appears fair and freckled across the nose, but she has brown hair, not blond like me. She’s thin, too, not fat. I studied every detail.

  Mother opens the car door and folds herself into the back seat of Jinco’s rusty faded-denim-colored taxi. Untroubled by the wind, her spiky short hair sets off her sharp cheekbones. Today she’s highlighted them with a subtle peach color, but she’s still all angles, down to her creased linen pants, bony ankles, and pointy red leather mules.

  “I’ll wait here,” I say, “with Martia.” I’d rather stay with the housekeeper, whose services have come with the lease for as long as I can remember. For Martia, who’s already abandoned us to prepare a welcome meal, everything centers on the kitchen. Mother and I aren’t even allowed inside except to get a glass of iced tea or to sample sweets from a tray.

  Mother’s face goes flat, as if she’s smoothing out emotion the way she would layer paint with a palette knife.

  The scent of plantains mingles with burning motor oil from Jinco’s taxi. As soon as Mother snaps the car door shut, Jinco punches the horn—his usual way of announcing his arrival or departure—and floors the gas pedal. I lose sight of the car in the fine dust of the shell driveway. I imagine Mother sitting straight, her feet planted, staying balanced even as Jinco careens toward the airport. She is so practiced, so centered.

  Martia appears in the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron. When I was little, I imagined the spices she mixed were like voodoo. I told Dad that if she wanted to, Martia could poison us. Dad laughed. Martia, though, said I was a smart girl, that you can’t be putting the trust in just anyone. I trust Martia now.

  “I’m okay,” I say before she asks.

  She shrugs, motioning me into the kitchen. From nowhere she hands me a plate of kokada.

  “Kome,” she says. “Eat.” I start to say no, but I don’t. I can’t. I lift the first pink treat to my mouth, sucking in the sweet coconut taste.

  Mother always refuses Martia’s sweet offerings. She won’t eat them.

  I can’t get enough.

  Martia smiles and turns her back, leaving me the rest of the kokada. She starts to peel some just-cooked shrimp; their shells bubble like painful blisters in her hand. Her worn raffia scuffs sound like palm fronds as they brush the floor. She never seems to wear the new pairs Mother brings her every summer from Maine. Like mine, Martia’s middle is wider this year, but she is comfortable with it. Her apron is stained with papaya and the essence of almond. She belongs to the house more than the absentee owner, who lives in Amsterdam and visits here in the winter months when the European skies turn gray.

  Come to Curaçao, blue heaven. But Martia is not what the tourist brochures advertise with their slick, modern photographs: Perfect smiles. Thin bodies in thong suits lying underneath beach umbrellas, sipping cold drinks.

  Except for the thong, that could be my mother on the cover of the brochures.

  Cupping two more pieces of kokada in a napkin, I flee the safety of the kitchen. Martia’s peeling mangoes now, letting the thin green skins plop into the sink. I hear her singing tambú, and I wonder what she thinks when she sings the old slave songs. I don’t ask, though. Martia acts as if she doesn’t know I’ve left the room, or where I might be going.

  At the top of the metal staircase, I enter Mother’s studio, the forbidden room. Martia cleans here only under Mother’s direction, with any paintings in progress shielded from sight. Martia cannot risk looking and perhaps being fired.

  From the studio windows, I notice the sea is the color of tumbled blue-green glass, roiled and unsettled. Last June after Dad died, his seat between Mother and me on the plane going home sat empty until just before takeoff, when a red-faced, sweating tourist weaved her way down the aisle and claimed it. She stuffed an oversized tote bag under the seat in front of her, leaving me to huddle against the window. As our plane rose into the sky, I couldn’t take my eyes off the sea. I thought the color of the water might change with the light, but it didn’t. It appeared deep blue, almost black, and dense as oil. No light penetrated the surface; we were left with the dark skin of the sea and no answers.

  By now, the end of the first week of June at Blauwe Huis, Mother should be knee-deep in wet canvases, already ignoring me for the favorable slant of light under the eaves of the widow’s walk. This spring she said the hot, dry island has been her “artistic touchstone” ever since she started coming here as a girl, and she had to come back, even this year, even after what happened. She insisted I come, too. We would start over.

  Her canvases remain stretched and ready but empty, and her mixing palette has dried out, the smudges of blue paint wavy and stiff under my touch like a bad van Gogh imitation.

  The tubes and glass bottles of paint feel cool in my hand. Mother’s lined them up on the shelves like a display in a paint store, with the blues up front. She contemplates blue, collects it, honors it in every painting. Her marine blue appears steel gray, like a New England harbor in winter. Savannah blue acts sultry, with an undertone of indigo. Bahama blue seems paler than curaçao liqueur, more a bleached blue, the color of shallow water. It reminds me of
the shade of Winslow Homer’s Caribbean water, but not quite—as if for Mother the sun has come on too strong, the glare blinding her to the undertones.

  Mother chooses her blues carefully, with an eye toward the light, the swirl of colors on a glass palette tray. Fifteen years ago, she even named me for cyan, a fundamental blue.

  On some mornings when she says she is working, I can stand down the beach, careful of the poisonous sap of the manchineel, and see her on the widow’s walk, hand raised, holding a glass. Martia keeps the shelf in the dining room stocked with blue curaçao, the national liqueur, made from the bittersweet peel of the apelsina. Mother drinks it with bitter lemon soda over ice—a Blue Bay. Sometimes the light catches her drink glass like a prism. Maybe she is toasting the sea. If she is, she never acts drunk, not like my best friend Zoe’s mother, who drinks when she thinks no one else is looking, but everyone knows.

  Mother painted me blue, but as I look out over the sea, I think about Dad and wonder what color I really am.

  What is the color for lost?

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  About the Author

  VALERIE O. PATTERSON was raised in Florida. She has an MFA in children’s literature from Hollins University, where she twice received the Shirley Henn Award for Creative Scholarship. She also won an SCBWI Work-in-Progress Award. An attorney by day, she lives with her husband in Leesburg, Virginia. Visit her website at www.valerieopatterson.com.