Strong Like the Sea, стр. 12
We used to have problems with B-52 roaches and everything else, but since we started Sunday jelly dinners for the league, there are way less. Like yesterday, we still see one now and then, but it’s only one. Anymore, we mostly keep an eye out for nasty centipedes under damp leaves. Dad says a big one at the farm on the mainland might be as long as my pinkie finger, but way skinnier, but here, a big one can be longer than my foot! Mean too, with a wicked bite—I’ve got a scar on my ankle to prove it.
“Alex?” Dad pads across the lawn while Auntie waves goodbye and carries Uncle’s plate to her car.
He rubs the shell necklace he always wears and clears his throat. “Can we talk a minute?”
I shrug. “Okay.”
“Are you worried you won’t figure out Mom’s challenge?”
“A little.” Or a lot. Or maybe a really, really, lotta lot.
A fly lands on the jelly and three geckos strike for it at once, but only one gets to chomp the extra treat. The lucky gecko swallows and gulps, little fly legs and a wing sticking out the side of its mouth.
“So, you’re worried about the challenge, and you don’t like the schedule.” It’s not a question, more like Dad’s confirming what he already knows.
My shoulders hunch. “Sorry.”
Dad squeezes me in a one-armed hug and kisses the top of my head. “Hey, you got this. You’ll do great. I know it.”
I nod, but don’t mean it.
Dad slips his hand in mine and leads me under the lanai to a plastic chair beside our old round glass table. “Hmm. Maybe we do need to talk story.”
He sits across from me. “Help me understand why the schedule bothers you. Truthfully.”
Truthfully? The word hangs between us.
With Mom gone, Dad does his best. He works two jobs—teaching at Kahuku and dive lessons after school. He never complains, even though I know he’s tired. He’s cheerful, he does dishes, and—if I asked—he would add me to his schedule almost anytime.
How can I complain? Gee Dad, sorry, but I’m having an anxiety attack because I don’t like the way you put colors on the calendar. Where’s the logic in that? I look away. “It’s stupid.”
“The calendar is stupid?” He carefully keeps his eyes on the gecko stump.
“No—” My fingers tap on my knee, and I fight to drag better words out of the muck inside my head. “Not the calendar. Me. Just me.”
Dad frowns. “I’ll be right back. Don’t move.” He jogs up the steps and into the house. A minute later, he comes back with November’s schedule. “Have I ever showed you how to fold an origami gecko?”
I shake my head. What’s he gonna do? Fold the schedule into one enormous gecko? It’d be as long as my arm.
He folds the schedule in half, creases it, then does it again several more times. But when he pulls the scissors out of his back pocket, I gasp!
“Wait!” I reach to stop him, but he leans away and snips along creases until several small perfect squares sit in a neat pile on the small glass table between us.
“It’s just paper, Alex. And if it stresses you out, then it needs to change. So, what do you say we change some of it into geckos?” He passes me a square of what used to be his precious calendar.
Slipping another paper from the pile, Dad smooths it flat on the table and folds each corner toward the center. “When I met your mother, I thought she was the smartest person I’d ever met—that’s probably still true. She’s . . .”
His finger traces the lines of his paper as if the right words might be hiding in the creases.
“I’d never met anyone like her. Funny, kind, beautiful inside and out—and brilliant. I was so nervous at first, I got tongue-tied, while your mom spoke more languages than I could ever hope to learn. I gave her an origami butterfly on our first date, and amazingly enough, she liked it. Turns out, she loves origami like I do, with its clean, precise lines that turn a square of paper into something new.”
Flipping the paper over, he reopens the first folds and makes new ones until his square looks more like a kite than a box, then waits for me to catch up.
“She already had an important job. Top-secret things she couldn’t talk about, not even with me. But I fell in love, and—lucky for me—so did she.”
My paper isn’t as perfectly straight as his, but he nods like it’s good enough.
“It wasn’t so hard when we both worked overseas—me, enlisted in the navy, and your mom contracting with different forces—but then we found out about you.”
I watch his clever fingers crease and fold the kite shape into something like a paper airplane.
“Make no mistake, we wanted you. Wanted you so much that we moved here to be near Auntie and Uncle. Your Mom had the better job, so I got out and became a teacher so I could stay with you when she had to go off-island for a job.”
He reaches over to help straighten a flap on my paper.
“Know what’s the hardest thing for me? I mean, besides being away from your mom in the first place?”
“What?” I follow along as he pinches and folds, and the new gecko begins to emerge.
“My total lack of control.”
I jerk my head up. He feels that way too?
“I like order, problems that have solutions I can count on. It’s beautiful to me—like this.” He lifts his necklace with the bone carving of a nautilus shell. “You’ve seen the spirals and shells I collect. They all follow the golden ratio.” He traces the curved line of the shell. “Mathematically, it follows the Fibonacci sequence as it expands using an irrational number that never repeats.” He glances at me and smiles like I have a clue what he just said.