Lila Blue (27 page)

I got us quilts and we sat facing
each other on the window seat overlooking the ocean. Spotlights lit up the
waves down below, and we could see stars and the bright white quarter moon
shining over the sea.

"I wish Ian could be
here," Shakti said.

"There's no room for
him," I said, only half joking. I'd shared Shakti with other people all
day and I wanted her all to myself this last night. She and her mom had to
leave early the next morning to drive back to Portland to catch a plane.

"Not
here
here,"
she said. "I mean I wish he could see the moonlight on the ocean and meet
you and Lila. I know you'll love him too."

"I'm not so sure," I
said. "I've never been crazy about any boy."

"How about Timothy Gonzalez in
fifth grade?" she asked. "You sat next to him every chance you
got."

"I liked him because he was
really smart," I said.

"And really cute," she
said.

She was right. He was really cute
and smart, but the thing I really loved about him was he always stood up for
kids who were getting picked on. He was brave, kind, and gentle.
"Okay," I said, "I guess I did have a crush on him."

"Everyone knew," she
said.

"How could everyone know? I
just now realized it myself."

"The last to know," she
said.

I did feel like the last to know
things, especially about sex. Maybe the sugar and knowing this might be the
last time I would ever see Shakti made me bold. I said, "I've never even
kissed a boy. What's it like?"

"Oh, kissing is
wonderful," she said. "It's like swimming your best time, feeling
strong, free, and alive. It's like the best ice cream cake in the world, or hot
chocolate on a cold night, or a delicious dream where you're flying over
mountains and rivers. Oh, Cassandra, kissing is the best."

"Did you kiss Ian?"

"We kissed a hundred
times," she said. "We couldn't stop. It's a good thing he's going to
be in London, because I'd never get anything else done."

"Did you do anything
else?" I asked. "More than kissing?"

"We wanted to do
everything," she said. "But we didn't. We know the facts of
life."

"What did you do,
though?" I said, hungry to find out all I could before she left in the
morning.

"We kissed. And hugged and
touched each other all over, but with our swimsuits on. We didn't take our
suits off." She sighed. "It was heaven, only hotter."

"Weren't you
embarrassed?" I asked, trying to imagine even touching a boy's neck, much
less kissing it.

"Oh, no," she said,
shaking her head. Her eyes were bright in the moonlight. "Excited, happy,
strong. Feeling sexy is feeling powerful. Invincible! Just you wait,
Cassandra," she said, hugging me. "You'll love it."

"But I won't know what to
do," I said, truly distressed. "What if I do meet someone and he
wants to kiss me. I don't know how."

"You never kissed a boy?"
she asked, as though such a thing were unthinkable.

"Never," I said, annoyed
at her. "I told you. How many boys have you kissed?"

"Wow," she said. "I
never counted. I just always have. Every time I liked somebody, I kissed
him."

"But how did you learn? When
did you start?"

"I don't know," she said.
"I remember practicing kissing with a little boy in kindergarten. He lived
in my neighborhood, and we would play in the park together after school. Our
nannies were busy talking and reading magazines on the park bench, and we were in
the sandbox kissing. We were imitating what we saw our parents do, I
guess."

"Then how come I missed out on
all the kissing practice?" I asked.

"Maybe you didn't want to
imitate your mom."

"That's the truth," I
said, mad at my mother for being such a poor example.

"Don't worry," Shakti
said. "It's never too late to learn. Here. Lie down. Close your eyes.
Think about Timmy Gonzalez. I'll show you."

"No," I said, pushing her
away. "This is too weird."

"It is not weird," she
said. "Kissing is a skill you missed out on. I'll teach you. I've taught
lots of people. Come on. It's easy. Just use your imagination and do what I
say." She pushed me back down on the window seat. I gave up, because when
she made up her mind, it was best to go along with her.

"Think of Timmy," she
said. "Keep your eyes closed. Think of how cute and sweet he was, and how
much you liked to sit close to him. Think about love."

I did as she said, and it was
surprising how easily my mind gave me the picture of Timmy standing up for some
weaker kid, being a fifth-grade hero, and how much I liked and admired him.

I could feel Shakti bend over me,
but she didn't touch me, and I struggled to relax and keep my eyes closed. She
smelled like honeysuckle blossoms. Then I felt the slightest touch on my cheek,
like a whisper, like a moth's wing, and all my senses came alive with waiting.
I didn't think of Timmy or kissing or Shakti or anything at all. All thoughts
were gone. There was only waiting, waiting and breathing and heart beating and
blood pulsing through my veins.

Seconds went by and then again
another light touch, this time on my forehead, a deliciously gentle brushing of
skin on skin. Again everything in me strained for what might happen next.
Waiting, and more waiting. Another touch to my cheek, and this time I named it
a kiss, warm soft lips on my cool cheek, a sweet, quick kiss. Then the terrible
wonderful waiting.

I realized my whole body was tense
with anticipation, and I forced myself to breathe calmly and relax everything,
breathing, waiting, breathing, until I was almost sleepy. Then came lips on my
lips, and kissing, real kissing, sweet grownup kissing that astonished me.

Shakti's kisses on my lips and my
mouth woke up my entire body. My body had been asleep for twelve years, like
sleeping beauty under a curse in the locked castle. After several minutes of
kissing practice, every cell in my body was gloriously awake and I groaned with
pleasure. Then we both giggled so hard we had to sit up and get control of
ourselves.

When we finally quieted down, I
said, "So that's what I've been missing!"

"See," she said. "I
told you it was easy."

"You said it was easy, but you
didn't say how wonderful it is."

"Yes I did," she said.
"You didn't believe me."

"I believe you," I said. "I
completely believe you."

"The more you practice, the
better you get," she said. "Like everything else. So your assignment
in seventh grade is to practice with at least three boys."

"What if I want to practice
with girls?"

"You can," she said.
"But I prefer boys."

"You mean you'd rather kiss
Ian than me?" I asked, pretending to be hurt.

"Hey," she said.
"You're a rookie. Ian is the best kisser in the world. No
comparison."

"Okay," I said.
"I'll practice. I'm kind of looking forward to seventh grade now." The
idea of school took on a whole new dimension for me.

"I'm going to miss you,"
she said, and she hugged me hard. "You'll write. And I'll call. And we'll
stay close, even with the whole continent between us."

"Yes," I said.
"You're here now. We'll be together again someday. We will."

We stayed awake as long as we
could, dragging more pillows and quilts from the bunks and piling them on the
window seat to make a big nest. She went to sleep first, and I stared at her
face in the moonlight, thinking how lucky I was to have my first real kiss be
from a beautiful goddess I loved and trusted. It was a sign I would be lucky in
love.

When I was too tired to keep my
eyes open, I gave her the softest kiss on the cheek and whispered, "Thank
you, my sweet as honey friend. Thank you."

The ocean serenaded us all night
long, and we were still asleep the next morning when Lila knocked on the
upstairs door and called for us to get up. Radha was already downstairs with
the packed rental car. She and Lila were drinking coffee at the kitchen table
when we came down.

"Thirty minutes," Radha
told Shakti. "The airplane won't wait for us."

Shakti nodded and took her
overnight bag into the bathroom. I got myself some coffee and sat at the table with
them, feeling half asleep.

"How are you?" Lila asked
me.

"I'm fine," I said.
"Happy. Sleepy. Fine."

"You didn't stay up all night
howling at the moon?" she asked.

"Not all night. But we did
make a nest in the window seat and sleep in the moonlight."

"Good for you," Radha
said. "I still keep in touch with my best girlfriend from childhood. She's
in France now. She's a psychiatrist, which is perfect because she's a
nut."

Lila and I laughed.

"I hope I never lose
Shakti," I said. "She's the best."

"She loves you, too,"
Radha said. "I'm glad it worked out where she could tell you in person
about us moving."

"Thank you for bringing her
here," I said, so grateful tears sprang to my eyes. I brushed them away,
annoyed at myself. This crying business was such a nuisance.

"Thank you," she said.
"Thank you both for being so good to us. Now we know firsthand what the
Oregon Coast feels like."

"What does it feel like?"
Lila asked.

"Wild, dangerous, primitive,
magnificent!"

"Cool," I said.

"Cold," she said, and we
laughed. "It's a hundred degrees in Sacramento!"

I thought about Janice. We hadn't
mentioned her at all. Radha had met her several times of course, but they'd
never talked about anything except schedules. After less than twenty-four
hours, Lila knew Radha much better than Janice did.

Shakti came in then, all fresh from
a quick shower, wearing a white shirt and black jeans. She looked happy and
ready for the next adventure. I got a vision of her future, where she would always
be ready to go anyplace in the world, ready to face any challenge.

"Come on, then," Radha
said. She stood up and hugged me. She and Lila bowed Namaste and then hugged
each other. Shakti shook hands with Lila and thanked her for everything.

Outside next to the rental car,
Shakti and I hugged and laughed and promised to call and write as often as we
could. We said thank you and I love you about a dozen times to each other, and
then they were gone. Lila and I stood by the road waving as the car
disappeared.

"Like characters in an exotic
fairy story," Lila said. "So beautiful, smart, and sweet. Simply
delightful people."

She turned and hugged me.
"Thank you for bringing them to our home," she said to me. "You
are a treasure who attracts more treasures. I am blessed to have you with
me."

I hugged her and cried and cried,
from happiness and sadness and fear and joy and anticipation and dread all at
the same time. I was blatantly effusive.

While Lila was at work that
afternoon, I went back to the calligraphy book again and practiced writing
Shakti and Cassandra and Janice and Molly and Delilah in pretty script. When I
felt I had the shape of the letters right, I was frustrated that I couldn't
make the thick and thin parts of the lines, so I called Kim for advice about
pens.

She answered on the first ring, and
when I told her what I needed, she said, "Come to the shop. I have a whole
collection of pens here. You and Molly can try them all, so you won't have to
buy as many as I did to find one you like."

On the way I collected Molly, who
had just finished sweeping the bookstore floors for Marge. When I saw Curtis
reclined in the window chair, I had a vision of his mother doing every single
thing for him, the way Marge and Molly did for him now and the way they did
everything for Bradley. Had his mother created him? Or had he trained his
mother by being so passive, sweet, cute, and occupied by the noble pursuit of
knowledge or at least by the noble activity of reading? How had my mother
shaped me? And how I her?

When Molly and I got to The Salty
Dog, Kim was at the front counter. "Les is walking Sailor Girl," she
told us when we looked around for them. "They both needed a good break, so
I sent them on a long walk."

She showed us a plastic pencil box
full of calligraphy pens, and Molly and I practiced on a pad of paper until we
chose a few that seemed to feel good in our hands and look good on paper. Kim
guided us to practice holding the pens with a gentle, graceful flowing motion.
Then she made cards for us that read our names and
Calligraphy Artist
.

After we thanked Kim and left,
Molly said, "Kitty Lynn is opening her shop again tomorrow. They're
getting it ready. Let's go help."

Kitty Lynn was sitting in a chair
by the door of her shop, supervising her daughter and son in law, who were
moving the counter and the center displays all around. "Oh, girls,"
she said to us when we came in. "You can help me decide where things
should go."

"You look good," I told
her, pointing to my eyes and smiling. The stitches were gone from her forehead.

"The wonders of makeup,"
she said. "I was going crazy staying home. It will be good to work again."

Her daughter said, "You said
only half days, Mother. Now I'll be nervous to leave you here."

Kitty Lynn dismissed her with a
wave of her hand. To us she said, "Linda forgets
I
wasn't the one
who had the stroke."

Then she addressed her daughter.
"I fainted and fell. It could happen to anyone. I'm strong as a horse. I
need to work."

"Okay," Linda said.
"But I'm calling you every day."

"You call her every day
anyhow," her husband said.

"Well I'll nag her more
then," Linda said.

"What do you think,
children?" Kitty asked us. "Should the counter face the front door
this time?"

Molly had a definite vision for how
things should go. "Mom has her counters in an L out from the wall,"
Molly said, "so she can see the whole shop while she's ringing up sales,
plus she has her eye on the front door."

"That makes sense," Kitty
Lynn said, and she directed Linda and her husband to place everything as Molly
suggested. It did look good when they had it all arranged, better than before.
Plus it didn't remind you of the basket on the shelf against the wall where
Oleander had napped. I was sure the entire furniture rearranging was to help
Kitty Lynn move on alone.

"This is perfect," Kitty
said when they were done.

Linda's husband said, "I sure
wish you kids had come in three hours ago. My back hurts."

Linda playfully slapped him on the
shoulder and said, "You'd complain if I swatted you with a new
broom."

"You got my number,
baby," he said, slapping her just as playfully on the bottom.

"Stop that, you two,"
Kitty Lynn said. "Now take me home so you can get on home and take care of
your own selves instead of fussing over me. I'm all healed."

We left them closing up the shop,
and I walked Molly back to the bookstore. "Do you want to come in to
practice writing?" she asked.

"No thanks," I said.
"I want to get back. Plus the book is in the Crow's Nest," I said.

"It's okay," she said.
"Mom got a copy for me, so we both have one."

I left two of the special pens with
her and went on to Lila's shop. Herbert took Sunday afternoons off, so Lila was
there by herself cutting hair. When I came in the shop, the man in the chair
stopped talking, and I got the feeling that he didn't want to continue in front
of a kid, or at least in front of a girl kid.

The emotional vibration in the room
was intense, and it made me nervous for Lila, so I sat in a chair in the
waiting area and pulled a book out of my backpack, deciding to wait there
instead of going on home. There was a man already sitting in the waiting area,
and he nodded at me and then picked up a magazine. I felt he had been in on the
conversation I'd interrupted, and it made me curious and a little suspicious.

For the first time I realized how
vulnerable the shopkeepers were, especially people like Kitty Lynn who were
mostly there by themselves during the day. Anyone could walk in and do anything
they wanted.

There was a real feeling of
watching out for each other in Rainbow Village, and now I realized they needed
each other more than for social enjoyment and business referrals. They kept an
eye out for each other, too. They cared about each other, and their caring gave
them a level of safety they might not have had in isolation. Even Curtis's ever
constant presence in the window of the bookstore took on a new meaning for me.
He'd been a security guard.

I thought all these thoughts to
myself while I was pretending to read a cat mystery book, and after a few
minutes, the men started up their conversation again.

The one in Lila’s barber chair said,
"People have to speak up."

The one near me said, "Yea,
speak up and get your tires shot to pieces. You know how defensive some guys
are about guns."

No one said anything while Lila was
finishing up the haircut and giving the man a leisurely scalp massage. I
noticed she closed her eyes when she was massaging, and so did the man. They
were both in some other world for a minute.

Lila opened her eyes, smiled,
combed the man's hair into place, spun him around in the big barber chair, and
handed him a mirror so he could admire the back of his head. He nodded
approval, and she took the mirror, whipped off the hair cape, and took his
money with a smile and a bow.

"So you'll write
something?" he asked, pinning her in place with his gaze.

"I'll pray about it," she
said.

"Well, pray hard, because it's
on the agenda for the next council meeting. We need people to be thinking about
it. You always get things buzzing with that column of yours," he said,
grinning, but the serious note had not left his voice. "Marta's on board.
She'll print whatever you write."

"Thanks, Hank," Lila
said, bowing to him again but not making it a commitment.

For the next haircut, I kept my
nose in the book, practicing invisibility, and this is what I pieced together
from the man’s conversation with his barber.

At the beginning of the summer, a
seven-year-old boy had shot his baby brother to death with their father's gun.
Now in a nearby town another kid had found his dad's gun and shot himself in
the head. He died in the hospital three days later. People were so upset about
children dying that they wanted to regulate handguns in the county. Instead of
protecting their families, irresponsible gun owners were making fatal accidents
too convenient.

"I've known three families in
the last five years where a kid was wounded by a household gun," the man
said. "I haven't known anyone who actually saved his family from an outside
threat by using a gun."

He thought about it a minute more,
and when Lila didn't respond, he said, "That's not counting that teenager
who shot her dad or the one three years ago, what was that? The man shot his
wife and himself in front of the kids. Can't people see guns are the problem?
Kids might hit each other with a rock or a stick, but the chances of murdering
each other in less than a minute are slim without a gun."

Lila kept working on his hair
without speaking.

He didn't seem to need her to talk,
though, because he went on, this time defending gun owners. "I'm not
saying people shouldn't own them. I guess some people need them, like you,
Lila, to protect yourself, a woman living alone, running a shop by yourself.
But you wouldn't leave it out for a kid to play with."

Lila was silent, working on the
back of his neck, getting the taper just right, checking her work in the
mirror, spinning him back and forth like rocking a cradle.

"Still," he continued,
"I don't know if making it a big issue is going to help. People who love
guns are going to have a million excuses why they don't need to change just
because a few kids get hurt, even if the kids are right next door. Hell, I bet
the families with dead kids don't even get rid of their guns. People dig in if
you try to tell them what to do."

He was quiet then, because Lila had
put down her comb and clippers and started into the head massage. They both
closed their eyes and relaxed, and it seemed to make time slow down. By the
time Lila opened her eyes and smiled, the whole conversation about guns seemed
insubstantial.

After he paid and left, I helped
Lila sweep the floor and close the shop. It was almost six, and everything was
pretty quiet on the sidewalks outside. While I swept the welcome mat and the
sidewalk in front of the shop, I could see the other shops in our area.

Kitty Lynn's shop was closed, and I
could see her night light near the back door. I could see Les turning off their
signs and locking the door, and when she saw me watching her, she waved. In the
soup and salad place they were putting chairs up getting ready to mop the
floors. The guy who closed up there waved at me, too.

The Bakery Boys closed at one on
Sundays. The flower shop was closed. Franny closed anywhere from noon to three
on Sundays, depending on how busy she was. And finally there were the hardware
store, closed, and Sunshine Books, where Curtis was sweeping the sidewalk and
waving to me.

So here it was, a big consortium of
caring, something deeper and more important than casual neighbors. This was a
community of people who relied on each other and protected each other by their
loving vigilance. Wow. Home. Family. Neighbors. Home.

I didn't want to think about the
gun thing. I'd seen lots of pickups go through town with guns hanging across
the back window. Sometimes drivers would park their trucks and leave their
windows rolled down. Anyone could reach in and get the guns if he wanted to. It
always made me nervous to see guns. Even when a policeman had a gun in a
holster. Guns scared me.

One time I was in Lila's shop when
a man carried his rifle right into the shop and propped it up by her cutting
station while he got a haircut. I couldn't believe it. Lila treated him like
any other customer and didn't mention the gun.

While Lila and I were walking home,
I said, "Do you have a gun, Grandma?"

"No, Cassandra, I don't,"
she said. "But I have owned guns before. Idaho is like here that way. Lots
of people hunt or come from farms where it is normal to have guns. I was raised
with guns."

"They scare me," I said.
"Like that time in your shop when the guy brought the gun in, I thought he
was going to rob you."

"I guess he could have,
huh?" She laughed, but I didn't see anything funny in it. "Maybe
that's why people carry guns around," she said, "to scare the rest of
us or make us think they are powerful, that they could do anything they want because
they have a gun and we don't."

"Doesn't that scare you?"
I asked.

"No,” she said. “They could
kill me or threaten to kill me, but that's all they could do. Since I'm bound
to die anyway, why should that scare me?"

"Well it scares me."

"Actually, I feel sorry for
them," she said. "I got rid of my guns because I learned they made me
more afraid, not less afraid. The more paranoid a person is, the more he needs
weapons and shields, and the more dangerous he is to himself and others. The
most courageous among us need no weapons, no shields."

We were getting close to Lila's
house now, and the sun was bouncing brilliant lights from the surface of the
ocean, like wet diamonds flashing in all directions.

We stood and watched the sea
together a few minutes from the porch, and soon Chloe and Zoe joined us there,
weaving in and out around our ankles in a complicated dance that seemed to
please them because they purred so loudly we could hear them over the roar of
the surf.

When we went inside, I asked,
"Are you going to write about it?"

"I don't know yet. I need to
pray about it. I'm not sure I'm in the frame of mind where I could be
objective, honest, and kind. I'd rather make peace than war. Especially with
paranoid folks who love guns."

When she put it that way, I prayed
her prayers would tell her, No, don't write anything, stay out of it.

Alas, the Dream Mother had other
plans for us.

Janice called the next morning,
just as we got back from a long walk on the beach. Lila was in the kitchen, so
I answered.

"Mom," I said, genuinely
happy to hear her voice. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," she said.
"Is Lila there?"

"Yes, she's making coffee in
the kitchen. Do you want to talk to her?"

"Well, I can talk to you
first," she said, but the way she said it made me think she'd really
called to talk with Lila and I was just an afterthought.