Kendra’s mother and Isabel’s mom, Jesse, were already best buddies by then, soldiers in the battle against suburbia. They’d started the vacation club to get the girls out of Conformia every summer. Kendra smiled. She was old enough to understand that both mothers secretly loved the celebrity status afforded them by the Conformia of the conservative little burb outside of Washington, D.C. Jesse got to brag about being a supermodel, and flaunt her taste for leopard print. But her mother? Kendra hadn’t quite figured out what made Lynette Jones so wary of the picture-perfect neighborhood, though she was sure it had to do with her father, a civil rights lawyer in D.C.
Kendra set down the picture. It wasn’t fair to worry them. She grabbed her BlackBerry and sent a group text:
Swamped with work. Wish I was there.
One lie and one truth. Kendra looked back at the photo, but this time she saw her reflection in the glass of the frame, her frizzy hair and sallow skin illuminated by the streetlight seeping through the window. Kendra stood up slowly and shuffled over to a full-length mirror. She stood stiller than a sentry, a judging scowl on her face. What was she guarding?
All my sacred plans, she answered the reflection wryly. Career. Wedding. Family. In that order.
Guarding them against whom?
“Against you,” she whispered at the unkempt woman in the mirror.
She stared down the imposter, eyes narrowed and chin up as though she could reshape the image by force of will. But she couldn’t. The frazzled, disheveled lady continued to glare back at her. Kendra let her nightgown slip to the floor. She saw a woman that was no longer the youngest, prettiest girl in every business meeting.
Stretch marks scurried around her nipples. Her stomach was soft and fleshy. Her waist was narrow but flared into wide dimply hips. The woman’s face was a Picasso of curves and shadows, but with lips as full as marshmallows.
“Kendra?” Michael called gruffly from the bedroom.
The woman’s eyes filled with tears. She put her hand out to Kendra, until their fingers touched on the surface of the glass.
CHAPTER
10
“ROAD TRIP! GET UP! COME ON, UP. UP!” JESSE stood over me, completely dressed. I sat up on the air mattress next to Isabel. She opened one eye when I poked her. Jesse kissed my forehead and then Isabel’s. “Get your little butts up. We gotta hit the road, girls.”
We were driving to the beach house I’d rented in Tela. It was an all-day affair and Jesse was right—if we didn’t get a move on it, we’d end up driving in the dark, which was a very bad idea on a Honduran highway.
I got ready in a hurry, nudging Isabel along every step of the way. Lynette and Cornell had almost everything packed and ready. I’d never seen anything like those two. Lynette had always been our organizer, but to see her and Cornell work in tandem was a lesson in harmony.
“Arshan, you’re with us.” Lynette was doling out seating arrangements. “Jesse, you drive the girls.”
I caught Jesse give Lynette a look. Why wouldn’t she want to drive with us? Well, fine, then. “Jesse, you can go with Lynette, I can drive.” I picked up the last bag of groceries. “Actually, I would prefer to drive.”
Jesse caught herself and smiled. “Samantha, darling, good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.”
“What in the hell does that mean?” Isabel asked.
“It means I’m drivin’. Let’s go.”
So, twenty minutes later, a canary-yellow Honda and a tan Ford climbed the mountainous snake-shaped highway above the congested city, en route to Tela on the eastern coast.
In the Honda, Isabel was in the back and I was up front in the passenger seat. I gave Jesse a crash course on Honduran highway driving, best summarized as follows: throw out every rule you’ve ever learned and drive like a madwoman in a high-speed chase.
There were two speeds on any Honduran highway: chicken truck creep along may break down any minute and speed demon passing uphill on hairpin turn. There was no in-between. In-between was deadly. In-between would get you rear-ended into a pickup truck carrying five relatives, a dog and a chicken. At all times, you watched for stray dogs, small children carrying water jugs, old men with canes or cows, sudden rains that made the edge of the mountain invisible, and potholes big enough to swallow the front end of your car.
Isabel had the best seat. It was best not to look.
I had the worst seat. A complete view with a complete lack of control.
The road climbed and twisted, each new curve revealing a cluster of fresh sights. Cement-block shacks opened to supersize hammocks strung in the main room. Vegetable stands sported men in cowboy hats with crossed arms, posing against a bull. Rickety roadside stands sold dark watery honey in dusty reused bottles with dirty screw tops.
Jesse pulled over at a produce stand to add to our cache of groceries. Our place in Tela was outside town—better to stock up in advance. We parked in the ditches and haggled over bananas and mangos. Jesse made us buy one of every fruit or vegetable we’d never seen before, which amounted to a lot of strange-looking potato-ish and pear-ish items among the plantains. And of course, we bought mango verde as a snack. Unripe mango, doused in lime, salt and chili, was a seasonal treat sold by women alongside men brandishing puppies for sale. I sucked on the sour pieces of fruit and watched the scenery.
“There it is! Stop, Jesse! Pull over, quick,” I yelled when we came upon a roadside shack with a line of cars out front.
Jesse whipped the car into a dirt patch out front, nearly getting clipped by a tailgating utility truck.
“My God, Sammy, what?” Jesse looked unimpressed by the one-room store.
“Queso petacon!” Lucky I saw the sign. “Cheese! No trip to Honduras would be complete without it,” I proclaimed like an expert, quoting Ana Maria. I hopped out of the car and spotted an outhouse around back. “If you have to pee, looks like there’s a…bathroom around back. I think I’ll wait for the next Texaco.”
Isabel groaned and headed for the outhouse, as Jesse turned toward the road, leaning against the dusty car to smoke a cigarette.
When I came out with the cheese, I saw Jesse hadn’t moved a hair, still perched against the car with three inches of ash hovering precariously at the end of her cigarette. “You didn’t see the others?”
Jesse jumped like a lizard had slithered into her jeans. She took a look at her cigarette and laughed. “Did you get a closer look at that outhouse, kiddo? Nah, don’t tell me. If you gotta go, you gotta go. Better to approach life without knowing what’s comin’.”
“Jesse?” Something about her face bothered me.
Jesse dropped the cigarette on the ground. She fiddled with her purse and then her belt. Then she stood up straight to face me. “Oh, sugar, it’s just that ever since I found out about that marriage proposal of yours, I keep remembering things that ain’t worth remembering.”
I knew from experience that Jesse wouldn’t answer probing questions about Isabel’s father. But she was still looking at me expectantly, so I gave it a go. “You mean remembering things about your marriage?”
Jesse didn’t move or say anything. Then she nodded, just once, slow as refrigerated honey. I looked behind me to see if Isabel was coming. She would want to hear this, I knew.
By the time I turned back to Jesse, the look was gone. She clapped her hands together and clasped them. “Oh, now everybody knows how I feel about the institution of marriage, Sammy girl.” She looked up as we heard the door slam and Isabel curse. “About the same as that outhouse.” Jesse wrinkled her nose. “I know better.”
Arshan drove with both hands in perfect safety position, eyes straight ahead,