Chapter Seven

Eleanor had never flown on a private jet before. She could get used to this sort of air travel, she decided as she stretched out in a comfortable recliner, feet extended. Tessa sat on another recliner nearby reading the Sunday edition of the New York Times while Laya slept, head on her mother’s lap. As Eleanor watched, Tessa glanced up and smiled at her over the top of the newspaper. She smiled back until she felt warmth rising in her cheeks, then looked away, focusing on the book in her hands. When would she stop blushing like a starstruck schoolgirl? She had practically lived with the Flanagans for the past two weeks, spending most days looking after Laya while Tessa worked and Ama and Dani packed up the carriage house.

To keep Laya out of everyone’s hair, Eleanor had taken her on day trips to a variety of local sights, from the aquarium and the children’s museum to Disneyland and Sea World. The days had been fun, for the most part. From teaching, Eleanor knew the art of distraction and blood sugar management. If Laya got cranky, either food or a nap was usually in order. If neither of those worked, a favorite book or a dip in the pool usually turned the girl’s mood. Eleanor still couldn’t quite believe she was getting paid a small fortune to entertain a child. New England, with its Puritan notions of frugality and hard work, seemed a world away.

Currently her charge was snuggling with her mother. This flight was the most time Eleanor had spent with Tessa since starting the job, a change that would supposedly stick now that Tessa was officially on vacation. Eleanor wondered what the word “vacation” meant to her, since her version of “retirement” had no apparent bearing on reality. Most mornings back in L.A., Tessa had left for the city shortly after Eleanor arrived, and stayed away all day. The actress-turned-humanitarian usually reappeared in plenty of time to join them for dinner, but then it was bedtime for Laya. While Tessa read her daughter a bedtime story, Eleanor would drive downhill to Sasha’s apartment to fall nearly directly into bed herself. She’d thought teaching a dozen kindergartners was exhausting, but full-time “parenting” allowed few breaks, she was learning.

She glanced surreptitiously at her employer again. Tessa seemed tired, the skin under her eyes bruised, her mouth taut. Ama and Dani had seen them off at the airport in Burbank. Laya had sobbed, and Tessa and Ama had wiped their eyes continuously as they hugged and kissed goodbye on the tarmac outside the private terminal. Even Dani had seemed bright-eyed and forlorn, waving disconsolately as Eleanor and the Flanagans climbed the steps to the small, sleek jet that would take them to Kauai. Tessa and her daughter had both watched out the window as the plane took off, Laya waving furiously long after Ama and Dani had shrunken to mere dots on the gray tarmac. Eleanor had buried her nose in a book and left them to their shared grief.

Now, almost as if she sensed Eleanor’s scrutiny, Tessa looked up. “How are you doing?” she asked, raising her voice slightly to be heard over the jet’s engines.

“Fine. How about you?”

“Fine. Good.”

They’d been on the plane for over an hour already. The flight from Burbank to the Princeville Airport on Kauai’s northern coast would take five hours. And then they would have two entire weeks to spend on the Hawaiian island nicknamed the “Garden Isle” for its lush greenery and sparkling beaches (according to Eleanor’s guidebook). She had never been to Hawaii before. This summer, she had a feeling, was bound to supply a variety of firsts.

“What are you reading?” Tessa asked.

“Persuasion, by Jane Austen.”

“That was her last novel, wasn’t it?”

Eleanor tried to hide her surprise. Despite the books proliferating throughout Tessa’s house, this was the first time she’d seen the actress sit still long enough to read. “It was. Her family published it after she died, along with Northanger Abbey, her first novel. I reread all of Austen’s books every few years, usually in the order she wrote them. This summer I thought I’d read them in reverse.”

“Once you start graduate school, you probably won’t have time to read for fun, will you?”

“Probably not.” She paused. “How’s the news?”

Tessa dropped the newspaper to the carpeted floor. “The usual—war, famine, pestilence.”

“Is that why you decided to start a foundation? To take on those things? Or was it…” Eleanor trailed off. She was fairly certain it would be rude to ask one of the richest women in America if she was trying to give money away to assuage her guilt at being a have in a world of have-nots.

“An ego thing?” Tessa supplied. “I know it probably looks like a ploy for attention, but really it isn’t. I just never planned to make this much money. I’m not sure anyone does.”

“I don’t know about that,” Eleanor said, picturing some of her Smith classmates. Old money legacy and new money first generation Smithies, all with one thing in common—the expectation of greater wealth than their parents.

“I should have said that no one I knew growing up planned to make so much money,” Tessa amended.

“That’s probably why you don’t mind giving it away.”

She shrugged. “I don’t have a problem with higher tax rates for the wealthy, either. What I do have a problem with is helping bankroll a war I don’t believe in, not to mention an administration so deceitful and manipulative that I still sometimes find myself wondering if 9/11 might not have been some sort of conspiracy.”

Eleanor’s eyebrows rose. “Not a Dubya fan, I take it?” She already knew the answer, but couldn’t resist commenting. Usually Tessa seemed so carefully reserved, so deliberate about what she said and did.

“Hardly. You?”

“Not exactly.” Eleanor had attended protest rallies up and down the eastern seaboard during the too-long years of the Bush administration. “What’s your personal favorite? Cause, I mean.”

“Kids,” Tessa said. “Children should be able to be children, and yet so many of them are in situations where they’re physically and emotionally abused. I wish I could change that.” Her eyes seemed to come unfocused for a moment. Then she turned a practiced smile on Eleanor. “Apparently we have that in common. Developmental psychology is a fancy way of saying you want to help kids, right?”

Eleanor nodded. “It is.” As the plane sped westward, she found herself telling Tessa about her first trip to the juvenile mental health care facility in Worcester a million years before, back when Bill Clinton was president and anything seemed possible.

“If you knew you wanted to be a child psychologist back then,” Tessa said, absently toying with her daughter’s curls as she slept, “why are you only now going back to school?”

She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t told Tessa about her mother yet, except that since she’d been in L.A., her circle of contacts had split into two distinct groups: people who had known her before her mother’s death and people who hadn’t. From now on, for those in the latter category—like Tessa—she would always and forever be motherless.

“Well,” she said, and was about to admit to the family crisis that had derailed her professional plans, when the flight attendant drifted into their section of the cabin. Laya woke up with a hankering for french fries, and Eleanor was saved from having to delve into her family’s drama.

Which was good, she told herself, watching Tessa patiently try to redirect Laya’s post-nap crankiness into a more agreeable form of communication. She wiggled her toes in her Teva sandals and thought back over their conversation as she waited for her own veggie burger and fries. Tessa was intelligent and thoughtful, self-effacing and ironic, all traits Eleanor appreciated. Was this what life would be like now that Ama and Dani were gone and Tessa was officially on vacation? Hours spent talking politics and books and personal histories while they soaked in the Hawaiian sunshine?

In midair, with the Pacific stretching from horizon to horizon, Eleanor shivered in anticipation. Capitalism was a pestilence that, in tandem with industrialization, had caused the decimation of the natural world, it was true. But she wasn’t going to let that stop her from enjoying her Kauai vacation with the Flanagans. For once, she was going to guiltlessly revel in someone else’s luxury. After all, it was temporary.

As the plane banked low over the ocean and turned to line up with the narrow landing strip at Princeville, Tessa watched the familiar landscape take shape below. There were the manicured grounds of the Princeville resorts with their golf courses and oceanview condominiums. There was Hanalei Bay, a perfect half-moon indentation in the coastline bordered by her favorite Kauai small town. Inland, to the south, lay the green mountains and thick foliage of a dozen protected forest reserves. After the desert of L.A., the lush greenery of the island was always a welcome change. She loved Kauai, and she loved the property she owned on the island more than anyplace else in the world. Which was saying something, considering the variety of locales she’d inhabited during her career.

On the other side of the cabin, Eleanor had her face pressed to the window. Laya was buckled in next to her now, and was leaning across her former teacher to point out landmarks she claimed to recognize from their regular pilgrimages to the island. Tessa listened to her daughter incorrectly identify the nearest bay and shook her head. Geography was not Laya’s strong point. Blindly insisting she knew something she didn’t, though, was. Tessa noticed that Laya’s hand rested on Eleanor’s wrist, and for a moment she envied her daughter the ease with which she demonstrated her affection. Laya had a big heart. Almost too big sometimes. Saying goodbye to Ama and Dani that morning had left her empty and exhausted. She’d perked up a little after lunch, but Tessa suspected her grief would return. At least Eleanor was here. Her steady, warm presence might help coax Laya out of her funk.

The Princeville Airport consisted of a single runway that paralleled State Highway 56 at the north end of the island. Once they were on the ground, Tessa thanked the flight crew and led Laya and Eleanor toward one of the two small hangars.

“Now we get to ride on the helicopter!” Laya announced, literally jumping up and down as they walked.

Eleanor grinned at Tessa. “Sounds like we’ve got a future pilot on our hands.”

Tessa liked the sound of the word we coming from Eleanor’s luscious-as-ever mouth. It was different somehow from Ama’s we, different from any other incarnation of the possessive pronoun. She looked away from Eleanor’s friendly smile, telling herself to stop ogling her employee. She’d managed to avoid any additional sexual harassment episodes in the two weeks Eleanor had been in her employ. Of course, she’d accomplished this feat mainly by staying away from the house when she knew her daughter’s nanny would be there. As a bonus, she’d managed to avoid having to watch Ama and Dani preparing to leave L.A.

“First helicopter ride?” she asked Eleanor as one crew member secured their luggage while another helped them inside and handed out headsets.

“Yes,” Eleanor confirmed, buckling her seat belt and looking around with apparent interest.

The helicopter was small and new, and would whisk them the short distance to the estate at Kahili Bay in a matter of minutes. The estate was only a quarter of an hour from the airport by car, but Laya had fallen in love with helicopters the previous year and Tessa had thought that a ride in a “twirly-bird,” as her daughter sometimes called them, might cheer her up. Both of them, actually. She knew she was trying to buy her daughter’s happiness, a tactic she would like to believe she didn’t often stoop to. But this would be their first trip to Hawaii without Ama and Dani, not to mention half of the extended Mercado clan.

Christmas last year had included Ama and Dani’s four grown daughters, their significant others, and their children. Laya had been in heaven running around with Ama and Dani’s grandkids. Tessa had even caught herself thinking that it might be time to give Laya a sibling. While she was pregnant, she’d purchased extra vials of sperm from the original donor, enough for a dozen additional tries. The vials were in storage at the clinic in Switzerland, available any time she wanted them. But being a single parent to one child could be difficult enough at times, even with her resources. She wasn’t sure if she was up to lone-parenting two.

As they flew to Kahili Bay, Tessa watched Eleanor. Though she had seemed nervous at takeoff, her face relaxed and her eyes began to glow as the helicopter followed (at Tessa’s request) the coastline east from Princeville out toward the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge, with its diverse seabird population and postcard-perfect lighthouse. There was nothing quite like a helicopter ride to provide an aerial introduction to a place. A trip on an airplane offered few opportunities to pause—if a plane’s speed decreased, it lost altitude. But in a helicopter you could take your time, drift closer to an object of interest, hover, as their pilot was doing now just offshore from the Refuge, far enough away to protect the flora and fauna but close enough to clearly observe the lighthouse and the bird-covered cliffs.

Laya was busy listing the species she knew—wedge-tailed shearwaters, Laysan albatrosses (which sounded like her name, she pointed out) and red-footed boobies (which made her snicker)—when the pilot turned the chopper and pointed at a dark shape in the water just off the coast.

“What is it?” Eleanor asked.

“A humpback whale,” Tessa said.

“They’re in danger,” Laya confided.

“Endangered,” Tessa corrected. “We’re lucky to be seeing them.”

They watched the whales surfacing, distinctive humps visible in the midday sun above the blue-green water, until one of the whales dove deep and displayed its tail fluke. At that, the pilot turned the helicopter toward Kahili Bay.

“It’s a good sign to see his tail, isn’t it, Mom,” Laya said, settling her hand in Tessa’s.

“Yes, it is.” She squeezed her daughter’s fingers. Until today, she’d only seen humpbacks in the winter, and even then they were rare.

The pilot landed his machine on a flat section of road just outside the entrance to the estate, where Robert, a gray-haired native Hawaiian who served as the year-round caretaker, met them. He and Eleanor carried the bags to the golf cart, and then the helicopter lifted off again, Laya waving at the pilot from her seat in the back of the cart as they drove through the security gate. As soon as they were inside, Robert hit a remote mounted on the dash, and the tall, iron-pronged gate slid closed behind them.

Tessa slouched in the front seat and looked out over the colorful flowering bushes and low fruit trees that crowded the long drive. Robert allowed the jungle to grow thick and tangled here at the edges of the estate to provide a natural protective barrier. Almost home, she thought, rubbing her sore neck. She was exhausted. The night before she’d barely slept as she, Nancy and Evangeline, another of Ama and Dani’s daughters, had helped the older couple finish packing. Ama had insisted on cleaning the carriage house from top to bottom despite Tessa’s protests, and around three in the morning, Evangeline had produced a fat joint that Tessa and Nancy had been only too happy to share with her out on the patio, away from Dani’s disapproving gaze.

Staring up at a few stars barely visible through the light and air pollution, Tessa had only taken a couple of hits. That’s all it took to relax her these days. She’d gone through a near wake-and-bake phase when she was younger—at first, a hit of pot was the only thing that kept her calm enough to run her lines in front of the dozens of people on a typical film set (gaffers, grips, camera operators, director, director of photography, first assistant director, studio rep—the list seemed endless at times) without breaking out in hives. Early on in her acting career, she was convinced everyone would see her for the fraud she was. But as the years passed and no one outed her, sexually or otherwise, she grew more secure. Until a woman she’d decided to trust proved that she’d been right to worry all those years. She shut her eyes briefly against the memory. She must be tired. Normally she didn’t have any trouble not thinking about Nadine.

As they rounded a curve and the house came into sight, a well-ordered oasis in the middle of the jungle, Tessa put thoughts of the past out of her mind. She and Laya were on vacation in a beautiful place where no one and nothing could hurt them.

“Welcome to Mele Honu’ala,” she said, turning to Eleanor.

Well, almost no one.

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 642