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"What do you think we should do?" Helena asked, suddenly looking as young as she was.
"I think you should work. I haven't been here long, and I was planning to stay for a bit longer. If we make some money, we can buy food and supplies, then set sail. My plan is to leave Madagascar, sail around the southern tip of Africa, up the west coast, and on to Europe. We could dock in Portugal or Spain and go from there, but I'd like to make it to France. That's where we'll need all the money we can save up."
Helena watched the kids splashing in the water. The sun was high overhead and the whole scene was warm and sun-dappled. "What will we do in France?"
"Be on dry land, for one. Trust me, after all that time on a boat you'll want nothing more than tonotbe on a boat. However, we'll pass some islands on our journey and we'll hug the coastline, so theoretically we could stop if we needed a break or more provisions."
"When we get to France I could call my parents..." Helena said, though she looked hesitant.
"Let's see how you feel when we get there." Molly dug her bare feet into the soft, warm sand and wiggled her toes. "I'd like to spend some time in Europe exploring, so I'd be happy to see you all the way home, if necessary."
Helena was silent for a long while, and she stopped eating. "This is a long way for you to go to find a stray dog's owners," she finally said. "I feel like I'll owe you something."
"You'll owe me nothing," Molly reassured her, reaching out and putting a hand lightly on her shoulder. Helena startled even at that small touch, and Molly removed her hand. "I'm going that way anyway, and it'll be good for me to have company." She watched Helena as the younger girl processed everything. "So what do you say?"
"I say yes," Helena said. "Let's do it. Where do you think I can find work?"
"I can ask at the resort to see if they need more housekeepers, but I'm sure we'll find something."
In the end, Faniry found Helena work with her sisters at the pre-school near the resort as a classroom assistant. She came home to their shared apartment each evening tired and happy, and brought her pay directly to Molly for safe keeping in the mattress. After working and living this way for nearly two months--two happy months, filled with dinner parties with neighbors in the courtyard of their apartment building, days off spent at the beach, and short trips out on Molly's boat so that Helena could learn the ropes--they'd saved up eight hundred dollars and Molly felt that they would have enough to make their way once they got to Europe.
It was late July by the time they had the boat shipshape and seaworthy again, the decks mopped and cleaned, the sleeping arrangements sorted. Because the boat was not terribly spacious they'd agreed that they'd sleep head-to-foot on the bed, but in the event that this didn't work there was a small couch that was just long enough for Helena, who was shorter than Molly by about six inches. They cleaned the kitchen, purified gallon after gallon of water, and made sure that the tiny bathroom was stocked with soap and toilet paper. Molly filled the kitchen cupboards with canned goods, pasta noodles, rice, coffee, tea, and other non-perishables. At the last minute she stopped in at the market in town and bought as much fresh fruit and vegetables as she thought they could reasonably eat before the produce went bad, and she bought them several loaves of fresh bread and a few pastries for a treat.
Helena looked strong and solid as they made their last minute preparations, and Molly watched her with pride, knowing that her protection and big sisterly guidance had given the girl the kind of self-confidence that she'd lost when she'd made the choice to leave home with a stranger and ended up in Madagascar, alone and frightened.
"I think we're good to go," Molly said, standing at the bow of the boat and watching the horizon from under the hand that shielded her eyes from the sun. "The weather is perfect and the wind is steady. It's now or never."
The two women stood there for a moment, looking back at the shore of the island that had been their home for several months, each thinking their private thoughts about the people and the things they'd encountered there. For Molly, it was Faniry's jubilant smile and laugh, the hours spent cleaning on her hands and knees at the resort, watching the men train the lemurs in her courtyard, buying hot dinners from the husband and wife at the corner store, and the way Madagascar was a tropical and exotic paradise in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
She'd traveled to the west coast of Madagascar to a reserve with Helena one weekend and left a handful of Rodney's ashes along the Avenue of the Baobabs at sunset, letting her late husband trickle from her hand as she walked along the ochre-colored sandy lane beneath the dozen or so baobab trees that lined the avenue. These 800-year-old trees, some of which towered nearly 100 feet overhead--stood proudly against the pink and orange evening sky, vast meadows running out in either direction from the lane. The natural beauty of the reserve and the regal baobab trees felt like the perfect place for Rodney, and Molly thought of him and of how much he would have loved Africa if only he could have come with her--reallycome with her.
Now Molly jumped down from the bow and stood next to Helena as the wind swept through their hair. "We should head out," she said, laying a gentle hand on Helena's shoulder. It had taken time, but Helena no longer startled at an unexpected touch.
"Let's do this." Helena nodded resolutely. "I'm ready."
They pushed off the dock and raised the sails together, smiling at one another with satisfaction as they sailed out of the harbor on a downwind run.
They were off--bound for Cape Town as a pit stop, and ready to carry on to Europe. Home for Helena was on the horizon.
Ruby
"She can certainly spin a yarn," Patty says, sitting in Ruby's kitchen in a royal blue satin robe and hair curlers. Her toes are painted coral, and her coffee is sitting at her elbow as she watches her daughter move around the kitchen island in workout clothes. "I guess there's no way to fact check it, so all you can do is just enjoy it."
Ruby stops moving, a carton of eggs in one hand, the other hand poised on the handle to the giant stainless steel refrigerator. "Oh, I believe every word of it," Ruby assures her. "Molly is no-nonsense, and there's no reason to believe shedidn'tsail around the world and have all these adventures."
Patty shrugs like she couldn't care less whether the whole thing is true or a mess of lies. "Like I said, she spins a good yarn."
"Let's talk about you, Mom." Ruby puts the eggs in the fridge and closes it. She's making them each an omelette with cheese and spinach. Harlow and Athena are still upstairs in their rooms--most likely sleeping--but Ruby wants to spend a bit of time alone with her mother anyway. "How are things going back home?"
Patty frowns at her like a child who has just been asked whether or not she did her homework before going outside to play. "Things are fine," she says defensively. "I don't have a mortgage anymore and I can afford to pay for people to do all the things I can't do myself. Isn't that what you're asking?"
"No, not really." Ruby sounds distracted. "I know you have someone to take care of the lawn, and you get someone in to clean the house and polish the silver, but what about the rest of it?"
"I have a hairstylist, a salon I prefer for manicures and pedicures, an accountant, and a financial advisor." Patty picks up her coffee mug and holds it between her hands. Her short, filed fingernails are the same shiny coral as her toes. "What else do I need, Ruby?"
"Companionship," Ruby says simply, cracking an egg into a bowl and then tossing the shell into the trash. "Someone to go to dinner with. A man around to watch television with in the evenings."
"First of all, the pot needs to stop calling the kettle black. Secondly, who says I don't have those things?"
