Read Online The Girl With the Jade Green Eyes by John Boyd - Free Book Online Page B

Matilda was putting a few finishing fluffs into her hair when the family filed in. Then the artist flung back the cape to reveal her creation and accept the compliments of her family. The father’s praise was directed toward the subject, the mother’s to the artist, and the son stood mute.
    Silvery blond, he assumed, would appear as exotic to his eyes as green, but Kyra’s hair looked natural. The color altered the hue of her complexion until it too appeared normal, although nothing could have been done to make her inconspicuous. Now framed by the platinum hair, her green eyes looked depthless, and they were focusing on him with growing trepidation as he stood silent.
    “What’s the word from Breedlove?”
    “You look mystic, twice mystic,” he said, trying to find the words to communicate his admiration. “Your beauty, it’s as near and shimmering as moonlight on Lake Chelan, yet as remote and as glittering as the Northern Lights. If I were king of earth, I’d make you queen, and you’d have a crown for your curls made of the stars.”
    He had blown the fragile moment sky-high, he thought, with his rococo metaphors. He should have tried Keats or Shelley. His voice had trembled when he spoke, he had given his mother more reason to be disturbed, and he had only confused Kyra, who was looking at Matilda questioningly.
    “Translated that means you look smarmy and romantic.”
    “What’s smarmy and romantic?”
    “It’s the dreamy feeling a boy and girl get when they fall in love,” Matilda explained. “Usually it lasts for a week or two after they’re married.”
    “Who told you that, young lady?” Mrs. Breedlove asked.
    “My sex-education teacher.”
    “You’d better drop that course. Romance in marriage can last a lifetime, and don’t you dare contradict me, John.”
    “Then romance has to do with marriage,” Kyra said.
    “Don’t you have romance and marriage on your planet, dear?” Mrs. Breedlove asked, a slight strain in her voice.
    Kyra deliberated for a moment before she answered, “After a fashion, yes. Our men were attracted to us, and they were self-sacrificing. But the custom of romance seems like a terrific idea. Does an earth girl have a wide choice of suitors?”
    “A girl like Matty, no,” Matilda answered. “A girl like Kyra, yes.”
    “Nonsense, Matty.” Kyra turned to her. “You are charming.”
    Mrs. Breedlove would not be diverted. “Is there divorce on your planet?”
    “There was no divorce on Kanab. When a man mated with a woman on our planet it was forever, but there is no more Kanab.”
    She had answered with an almost painful hesitancy, and sensing that she was moved to sadness by her memories, Breedlove interjected a question, “Will the dye interfere with the light-absorption qualities of your hair?”
    Looking sideways into the mirror Matilda held for her and fluffing her hair, Kyra answered absently, “Yes, but Matty tells me it will wash out, and in the interval my body will compensate. If I can find a place to sunbathe in Seattle, my pussy hair will spread like crabgrass.”
    A brittle silence fell over the kitchen. There was only one source from which the curious Kyra could have learned the taboo word. Mrs. Breedlove fixed accusing eyes on her daughter, who avoided the gaze by glancing with sprightly innocence toward her brother and saying, “Tom, I’ve made up my mind about a career. I’m going to become a beauty-school technician.”
    In a blue knit dress fitted snugly against her waist and revealing the lift and cleavage of her unhampered breasts, Kyra stood beside the green-uniformed Breedlove at eight-thirty the next morning, watching a long black limousine nose hesitantly into the lane and drive toward the Breedlove farm.
    “Here comes Kelly,” he said.
    He walked onto the porch and watched the car approach.
    It pulled to a stop and a uniformed chauffeur emerged and opened the rear door. The man who got out wore a dark suit, white shirt, tie, a