Vacations from Hell

Mrs. Palmer straightens, and reaches to flip over the hanging picture frame on the wall. It is a mirror, its surface strangely dull. She returns her gaze to Evan; the white smoke rising from his mouth has become a plume, and as it rises, the surface of the mirror begins softly to shimmer. She bends over Evan once again—



My hands lose their grip on the sill of the window and I fall, my ankle bending awkwardly under me, almost tipping me into the sand. My breath comes out in a whimpering gasp.



“Who is it?” I hear Mrs. Palmer call, her voice oddly thick. “Is someone there?”



I run.



My heart is pounding when I reach the villa, the soles of my feet burning. I duck into the kitchen through the back door, around the side of the villa where dusty flowers bloom in the shade. Damaris is not there; the kitchen is empty, plates and dishes stacked on a colorful kitchen cloth next to the sink. I turn on the water and rinse my dusty hands, my heart still pounding. She is not a good woman. She likes the strong ones and the pretty, young ones. She takes them and then they never come back.



I go out onto the deck; my mother is lying there in a lounger, half in and half out of the shade. She has a book open on her lap, the same one she’s been reading all week. I don’t think she’s advanced more than a few pages into it. She looks up, sees me, and gestures for me to come over.



I sit down at the foot of the lounger, and my mom smiles at me faintly. “Are you having a good time, Violet?”



My mouth is dry; I want to tell my mother about what I’ve seen, about Evan, but she looks so distant, as if she’s drifting away on a high sea. I try to remember the last time I felt like my mom was really concentrating on anything, especially me. “Sure.”



“I feel like I’ve hardly seen you,” she frets. “Still, I suppose it’s better, you and Evan having fun together….”



I think of Evan lying limp and gray-faced on the couch. “I’m worried about Evan, Mom.”



“Worried?” Her gray eyes are vague behind her sunglasses. “You shouldn’t worry while you’re on vacation.”



“No, I mean, I think there might be something wrong with him…like, really wrong.”



She sighs. “Teenage boys can be sort of moody and cranky, Vi. Hormones coursing through them and all that. Just don’t pay attention to his sulks. He has to get adjusted to this new family situation, just like you do.”



“Mom,” I say slowly, gathering up my courage. “Mom, are you happy?”



She sits up, looking surprised. “Of course I am! I mean, look where we are.” She gestures widely, her arm taking in the sea, the sky, the beach. “Even with me working both jobs we could never have afforded this nice vacation before.”



But it’s not nice. It’s on the tip of my tongue to say it, but the look on my mom’s face stops me. It’s like she’s standing in front of me in a brand-new dress begging me to tell her she looks great and I can’t bring myself to tell her the truth: that the dress is ugly, cheap-looking, stained, and tacky. Because I love her, I bite back the words.



She slips off her sunglasses and for a moment I think she’s really looking at me, really seeing me. “I know Phillip seems short-tempered,” she tells me at last. “But he’s just tired. His job is so demanding. Really, he loves us. I can see the kindness in him. In his eyes. You know?” She goes on without waiting for my response. “It’s what’s in someone’s eyes that’s important. Like the saying goes, eyes are the mirrors of the soul.”



“Windows,” I say.



She blinks. “What?”



“Eyes are the windows to the soul. Not mirrors.”



She reaches forward and puts her hand over mine. It feels thin, her fingers hard and dry as twigs. “You’re so smart,” she says. “You know everything.”



The front garden of the villa borders on a dusty unpaved road that stretches from here to Black River. A fence of bamboo blocks the house off from the occasional traffic, hiding us from the world. The garden itself is full of flowers: purple jacaranda, pink orchids, red bougainvillea. Damon is there, in the shade, a white hat tipped back on his head. He is inspecting one of the sprinklers. It all seems so normal that I feel foolish when I walk up to him and say, “I need to talk to your sister.”



He looks at me, his dark eyes fathomless. “My sister?”



“Damaris,” I say. “Please.”



After a moment he flips open his cell phone, dials, and speaks into it in such a hasty dialect that I can’t understand any of what he’s saying. After a moment he shuts the phone and turns to me with a curt nod. “She say wait for her under the flame tree.” He gestures toward the big twisted tree with its red-brown blossoms. “Over there.”