Where the Stars Still Shine(18)

“Kidnapping is a federal offense,” the fat one says, with such certainty that I wonder if she’s right. “She’s going to jail for a long, long time, and I can’t say she doesn’t deserve it.”

“If you ask me, she should be committed,” the second woman says. “If it wasn’t for the crazy disease, she would have never done what she did.”

Crazy disease?

“I’ll never understand what Greg saw in that girl.”

The first one snorts. “He was thinking with his poutsa.”

I don’t need to understand Greek to understand what she means, and I want to tell them that it wasn’t about sex. That Greg saw what other people didn’t. But my mind snags on the words “crazy disease,” and I remember what Ancilla said about Mom getting the help she needs. And the words the man in the leather jacket yelled after me when I ran away from him. I’ve lived with her my whole life. Wouldn’t I know if my own mother was really crazy?

I deposit my plate and soda on an end table and seek out Greg. He’s drinking a beer and talking to Theo, the cousin who runs the gift shop at the docks.

“We need to talk,” I say.

Greg looks as if he’s going to protest at first—because we’re in the middle of a party—but I guess he sees the seriousness on my face because he nods. “Sure.”

Outside on the porch, I ask, “Is my mom crazy?”

“No.”

Greg levels his index finger at me. Defensively. As if he’s had this conversation one too many times. “Veronica suffers from borderline personality disorder, Callie. It affects her moods, and can be treated with therapy and medication, but she’s not crazy.”

I remember an amber prescription bottle in her purse, but there were no pills in it. Just coins. Quarters fit in it just right and she’d let me put them in whenever we got change. “I never saw her take any medication.”

“You probably wouldn’t have,” he says. “Her doctor had her on a mix of antidepressants and antianxiety medications, but she complained they turned her into a zombie. She said they made her feel as if she was made of nothing. But without the meds she’d swing from one extreme to another. One day everything would be fine, and the very next day she’d accuse me of not loving her enough and try to bait me into telling her I wanted to break up with her. She’d cut friends out of her life for no apparent reason. She’d get unreasonably angry about the smallest offenses. And she absolutely hated being alone.”

Like the last number on a combination lock, the tumblers of my life fall into place, and all the different mothers my mother has been finally make sense. The anger inside me makes my skin feel too tight and I need to get away from here. I start down the front-porch steps.

“Callie, where are you going?” Greg asks.

“I just—I’ll be back.”

My sandals are too slow, so I take them off. The sidewalk is warm as I run and I don’t mind the sharp bite of tiny stones against my soles. How could my mom be so selfish? Taking the pills would have kept us here. Taking the pills would have kept her from hooking up with Frank. All she had to do was take the goddamn pills and her life, my life, would have been ordinary. Happy.

I end up at the sponge docks. Mostly because it’s beautiful so near the water, but also because I don’t know any other places to go. The place where Alex Kosta’s boat should be is empty, but so is the bench where I met Kat. Around me, sightseers study brochures and discuss what they want to do next. The sponge-diving tour boat pulls away from the dock with a load of tourists aboard. An old couple wearing sandals with socks take turns photographing each other in front of a bronze statue of a man wearing an old-fashioned sponge-diving suit.

I reach the bench and try to sit quietly, but my head is too loud. It takes me to the Super Wash, where the tall man with the leather jacket said Mom and I were both crazy, and a brand-new fear overtakes me. What if I am just like her? Is borderline personality disorder hereditary? Am I crazy, too? And if I am, how would I know for sure?

The sound of an engine rumbles into my thoughts, disrupting them and making me look up. A white boat with the name Evgenia painted on the side in blue slides into the empty spot, Alex Kosta behind the wheel. Today, his sweaty shirt is faded green, his bandanna is red, and his face is as perfect as I remember. There is another guy with him, shorter and rounder than Alex, who helps him tie off the boat. They stand beside the boat for a minute and talk before they shake hands, and the shorter guy heads off toward Athens Street.

“If I’d have known you were going to wait for me …” Alex closes the distance between his boat and my bench. His eyes, I notice, aren’t really dark at all. They’re on the greenish side of hazel, and a tattoo wends its way down his right forearm from his elbow to his wrist, a banner carried in the beak of an old-school swallow that reads rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventures. Thoreau. “… I’d have told you I was going to be gone a few days.”

“I wasn’t waiting,” I say, but now that I see him again, it feels like a lie. “You just got lucky.”

“Yes, I did.” He grins and it feels as if my bones have liquefied. If he has this effect on me, I can only imagine what he must do to female tourists. I feel an inexplicable flicker of jealousy at all those imaginary girls. Silly, because he is Danny. He is Matt. He is another name on my hit-and-run list.