The Geometry of Sisters Page 11

  The students celebrated by taking over Truffles that night. The evening was chilly, but it didn't matter. Ally had worked on her tan, and she was showing it off no matter what. She wore a strapless blue silk dress, high-heeled sandals, the necklace he'd given her for her birthday. Travis would have rather gone somewhere private with her—stayed away from all the others, but Ally wanted the school to see them together.

  Everyone jammed into the bar area, where it was too loud to really talk. Truffles served drinks and fancy food. Travis saw kids handing over Platinum AmEx cards; all he had was twenty bucks. That was enough for two virgin frozen daiquiris. Some kids had fake IDs or knew the bartender and were drinking champagne.

  Ally pressed against his body, his arms around her. Her skin felt so soft and smooth, and she put her hand behind his neck to pull his mouth down to hers. They kissed, long and hot, in a way he'd been dreaming of since leaving Columbus. At the same time, he was embarrassed, and he hated himself for it.

  When he looked up, instead of gazing into Ally's eyes, he found himself scanning the crowd. Pell was by the door, standing with Logan, Cordelia, Chris, and Ty. They talked, leaning together, but Travis saw Pell watching him. Caught, she looked away.

  “You were amazing,” Ally said, stroking his hair. “Really … you showed these preps how we do it back home. Football done right!”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “So, who are your friends? I want to meet them. Come on, introduce me to all these people buying us drinks!”

  And Travis did. He made his way through the group, introducing Ally to all the team members near the bar, their girlfriends, kids from his classes. By the time he got to the door, his friends saw him coming and stepped toward him grinning. Except Pell. She hung back a little.

  “Hey man,” Travis said to Chris. “Great game.”

  “You did it for us,” Chris said.

  “We've got a good team,” Travis said. “So, everyone… this is Ally.”

  “Nice to meet you, Ally,” Chris said.

  “Hey, Ally…” “Good to have you here…” Everyone was chiming in.

  “Hi,” Ally said, her arm locked around Travis. She looked each person in the eye; he felt her taking everyone's measure. He thought he saw Logan flick a glance at her dress. Travis didn't know anything about fashion, but he knew that Ally's shiny blue silk had come from the mall and Logan's matte black satin had come from some fancy Beverly Hills boutique. He tightened his grip around Ally's shoulder.

  Two waitresses came over, one serving drinks and the other with a tray of miniature hot lobster rolls. Travis felt his stomach growl. He was starving, but he'd blown all his money on those two drinks.

  “Mmm, perfect,” Cordelia said, taking a plate.

  “What are they?” Ally said, reaching for one.

  Travis stopped her, his hand on her wrist. “We can't,” he said softly.

  “Lobster rolls, and of course you can,” Chris said.

  “Are those black things what I think they are?” Ally asked as she bent toward the fine china plate to examine the rolls' contents.

  “Truffles,” Logan said, deadpan. “As in the name of the restaurant.”

  “Yum,” Ally said. “My father's a doctor, and one of his patients gives him truffles every fall.”

  Travis reddened. He didn't want to have to explain his finances, not to all his friends. How much did truffles cost? If Ally took a lobster roll, the bill would come and he wouldn't be able to pay. “Hey Al,” he said sharply, just as Ally reached again.

  “What, I want to try it!” she said.

  “Better not, okay?”

  “This is on my grandmother,” Pell said quickly, stepping forward.

  “Excuse me?” Ally asked.

  “Please have one, Ally. My grandmother would like to treat us all in honor of Newport winning the game.”

  “Really?” Logan asked. “When did your grandmother start to care about football? Yachting, yes. Polo, bien sûr. But football… that doesn't sound like the Mrs. Nicholson we all know and—”

  “She insists,” Pell said to the group at large. But her cornflower blue eyes were looking straight at Travis. He hesitated, tried to smile. Her gaze was strong and steady. He couldn't look away.

  And Ally saw. Travis felt her stare, sweeping between him and Pell, as her hand gripped his.

  “Thank your grandmother,” Ally said, locking eyes with Pell. “That's so lovely of her.”

  “Thank you, Pell,” Travis said, taking two lobster rolls from the tray, one for him and one for Ally. And he watched Ally bite into hers, melted butter glistening on her lips. He took a bite, tasted the crispy, toasted, buttered roll outside, the briny sea and rich earth of lobster and truffles inside. He looked over at Pell, to nod his appreciation, but she was whispering something to the waitress.

  “How are you enjoying Newport so far?” Cordelia asked Ally.

  “I love it,” she said. “Of course, seeing Travis win the game didn't hurt, but I wasn't surprised. He was always the greatest, even back home. Ohio breeds the best players!”

  Travis glanced over at Chris and Ty but they seemed not to get the slight, or to care. Ally asked Cordelia about her purple purse shaped like a bow, and Cordelia handed Ally another glass of champagne and was saying something about Prada, and Travis drifted toward Pell.

  “Your grandmother didn't treat us, did she?” Travis asked.

  Pell didn't speak. She just stared up at him with warmth in her eyes.

  “You did,” he said. “You took care of it.”

  “I wanted you and Ally to have lobster rolls,” she said.

  “We didn't need them,” he said.

  “Nobody needs them,” she said, smiling. “But I wanted you to have them anyway.”

  Suddenly Ally was right there, leaning into him. She was still nibbling the lobster roll. “These are good,” she said. “An East Coast specialty, I guess, right?”

  “Well, a Newport specialty,” Pell said.

  “Newport,” Ally said. “Back home we have specialties too. Right, Trav?”

  “Right,” he said, but he couldn't think of any. Then, feeling inane, he said, “Pell's from the Midwest too.”

  “Where?” Ally asked.

  “Grosse Pointe, Michigan,” she said.

  “My aunt's from Detroit,” Ally said. “She said that Grosse Pointe isn't the Midwest. She said it's just like Connecticut….”

  Pell tilted her head. “It felt Midwestern to me,” she said. “I think of it as home, and I miss it.”

  Ally frowned; he hugged her, but she pulled away, eyes on Pell. She emptied her champagne glass. Travis's pulse was racing. He felt confused and in between, and he knew he had to get out of there. Putting his arm around Ally, he said he wanted to take her somewhere special, just the two of them. When they got outside, Ally wheeled toward him.

  “Was I embarrassing you?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “I'm just all pumped up from the game, and it was getting too hot in there.”

  “Hot because of Pell!”

  “Al, no,” he said.

  She stalked ahead of him, arms wrapped around herself to stay warm. Wind blew off the harbor, damp and cold. While other students had spent twelve dollars to park in a lot, Travis had driven around and around until he'd found a free spot way down Thames Street. The walk to Truffles had seemed romantic, the way Ally had leaned into him, taking in the waterfront. But now she was mad, and he could tell her high heels hurt, and he was reeling with emotions he wanted to push away.

  They finally got into the car—the station wagon they'd spent so much time in back home. They had known each other since eighth grade, when Carrie had introduced them; Travis had seen Ally and her older sister Jill hanging out in their backyard, and he'd felt the bottom fall out.

  The way Ally looked, her streaked blonde hair and soft skin, the way she smiled, and later, the way she touched him. He'd lie awake at night thinking of her, wanting to be with her so
badly he couldn't stand it. He'd sweat so hard, and his head would throb, and sometimes he'd sneak out when his parents were asleep and drive to her house just to look at her window.

  He'd sat in this car, alone in the dark, parked on her street. He'd thought he was the only person alive ever to feel this way. Once he'd returned home, found his father waiting up. Travis's blood pounded as he waited for his father to go ballistic.

  But his father hadn't. He'd stood in the driveway, leaning against the garage. At the sight of Travis's face, his father had ducked his head slightly—a strange look in his eyes. Travis had seen it, wondered what he was thinking. All his father had said was, “I know.”

  “You know what?” Travis had asked.

  “How it feels.”

  “I was just taking a ride,” Travis said. “That's all.”

  “Remind me to tell you about the time I once took a ride in the middle of the night from here to Rhode Island,” his father said. “Look. Just take care. Of yourself, and Ally too. Okay?”

  “Okay” Travis said, not really knowing what his father had meant.

  But he remembered the words now, driving down Thames Street along the wharves, Ally sitting stiff in the passenger seat, not talking. Travis's mind raced. His dad had liked Ally. He'd given them his blessing, in a way. At least that's how Travis had always felt— his father would never know any woman in his life but Ally.

  And Ally had been Carrie's friend. Some of Carrie's best shots were of Ally—pictures she took at school, and at the field during one of Travis's games. Ally was bonded to their family, forever immortalized in Carrie's photography.

  Even before leaving Columbus, when he'd had doubts about her—about the way she'd come down on Beck, and other things, the way she always wanted to be with lots of people and he usually liked to be alone with her, and the way she always managed to tell people her father was a doctor—Travis had known he'd never break up with her, because she had known his father and Carrie. And because Carrie had taken such loving pictures of her.

  “What's wrong?” Travis asked now.

  “What do you think is wrong?”

  “I don't know, Al.”

  “You were all over her,” Ally said.

  “Who?”

  “Pell!”

  “I wasn't all over her! I was with you…. I want to be with you.”

  “You couldn't stop looking at each other. All through the game, even! Every time you scored, you'd smile at her. Don't say you didn't, because I was sitting right there, waiting for you to wave to me.”

  “I did wave to you,” he said.

  “Second, Travis. You looked at her first, then you waved at me. I followed your eyes, saw you staring straight at her. In fact, I even asked Beck who she was. She lied and said she had no idea what I was talking about.”

  Travis drove in silence. He wanted to take Ally somewhere dark and private, where he could hold her and soothe her, and make everything okay. She looked beautiful in her blue dress, her bare arms glistening in the streetlight, and he wanted to remind them both of how they'd felt about each other. He wanted to push Pell out of his mind, and he was grateful to Beck for covering for him, so things with Ally weren't worse than they already were.

  “I'm sorry,” he said, not wanting to lie and deny what he knew was true. He reached for her hand, tugging her closer to him.

  “I've been missing you every minute,” Ally said, her throat thick with tears.

  “Same for me,” he said. “I can't stand being away from you.”

  “But what about Pell?” she asked.

  “We're friends—that's all.”

  “She doesn't look at you like you're her friend,” Ally said.

  “I promise, that's all it is. She knows all about you,” Travis said. “She knows I couldn't wait for you to get here.”

  That seemed to relax Ally; she slipped over the console, wedged herself right next to Travis on the driver's seat. His arm was finally around her, and he felt her warm body snuggle into his chest. As he drove, she tilted her head up, kissed his neck, sending shivers all through his body.

  They headed toward Ocean Drive. Huge mansions lined the inland hills, their silver slate rooftops gleaming in the light of the moon. Travis rolled down the windows so Ally could hear the sea, feel its mystery. Pulling down a dirt road to a state fishing area, he parked the car in a patch of weeds.

  Their mouths were hot, and they fumbled with each other's clothes; he wanted to feel his skin against hers, to remember how they had been, how much he had always wanted her. He needed to convince himself he was wrong, that they were still good, that they weren't ending. He put up the windows to block out the cold air. She kissed him, whispering how well she knew him, saying no one knew him like her, no one could ever touch him the way she did.

  And he tried to be with her, right here in the car where they'd spent so many hours talking and holding each other. He fought the other thoughts pressing on him, making him feel he was doing the wrong thing now, being unfair to her, making out with her while he was so confused about them. His shirt was unbuttoned, and she was stroking his chest, and he'd slid the straps down off her shoulders, and he stopped.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I don't know,” he said, trying to breathe.

  “I don't like it here. It's the stupid sound,” she said. “Even with the windows closed it's like we're in the middle of a storm, or a wind tunnel.”

  “That's the ocean,” he said.

  “Can we move, go somewhere else?” she asked, her hand on his chest, tickling him with her long nails. Why did he feel as if all the air had been sucked out of the car, as if he might pass out?

  “Sure,” he said, starting the car again. “We can go back to the house, get warmer jackets, maybe walk over to the playing fields.”

  Travis put his arm around Ally as he drove and knew he had never felt so far from her, from Columbus, in his life.

  “Why don't you come back home?” she said, as if she could feel him pulling away. “The coach would let you stay with his family. Or you could stay with Robbie or Jack. My mom would probably even let you stay with us! You could go back and forth between there and my dad's with me.”

  He tried to smile. “Your father would love that.”

  “He wouldn't mind,” she said, kissing him again. “He just wants me to be happy.”

  Travis held the wheel. “I'm not sure how my mother and Beck would take it.”

  “Beck,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Thanks for sitting with her at the game,” Travis said. “She looked as if she was having a blast.”

  “Everyone has to do their duty sometime,” Ally said.

  He gave her a look, but she didn't elaborate. Beck came to the door as he pulled into their narrow drive. “Where were you?” she asked.

  “Down at Truffles,” Travis said.

  “Oh, cool,” Beck said.

  “I'll go get our coats,” Travis said. He ran inside, and he started to grab some warm jackets and a blanket. Beck's voice drifted in from the back step.

  “Ally, did you have fun today? I liked sitting with you.”

  Ally's reply was too quiet for him to hear. He paused, listening. And then he realized she wasn't saying anything at all. His sister's statement hung in the cold air.

  Travis leaned against the wall, trying to push down feelings he didn't want to be having.

  8THE NEXT MORNING MAURA LOOKED INTO THE kids' rooms, saw Travis burrowed under the covers, Ally sleeping in the extra bed in Beck's room, and Beck wide awake and doing homework. Desdemona and Grisby lay sprawled across Beck's desk as she tried to write on the paper between their two backs.

  “What are you studying this early?” Maura whispered, not wanting to wake Ally.

  “Just something,” Beck whispered back.

  “Do you have a test tomorrow?”

  “No,” Beck said.

  “Everything okay?” Maura asked, holding Beck's gaze a few seconds.

/>   “Mom…”

  “Okay” Maura said. She smiled. “I have a few errands. See you when I get back. Bye, honey.”

  “Bye, Mom…”

  Maura pulled on her jacket, the lost pacifier still in her pocket. She drove out the school gates and headed toward Portsmouth. The October morning was bright and cold. Driving past Easton's Beach, she saw long rollers rumbling in over the tidal flats, the wave edges laced white, hard sand steel-gray. Turning left, she passed the salt pond, took a right on East Main Road, and looked for her sister's farm.

  The dirt road ran through a field. Her earlier drive here had been at night; she hadn't seen the haystacks, pumpkins on the vine. Katharine's sculptures dotted the hill sloping down to the Sakonnet River. Arcs of bright metal welded together, a menagerie of lost creatures.

  Maura saw Katharine's old green truck under an overhang by the yellow farmhouse. Parking under a scarlet maple tree, she saw a hand part the white curtains in the front parlor. She walked up the wide front steps, across the big porch, and knocked on the door. Hearing footsteps inside, she stood straighter.

  A young woman answered. Tall, slender, with dark hair pulled into a loose ponytail, paint streaking her hands and oversized blue work shirt, she wiped her hand on a rag and smiled.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “You must be Kate's sister.”

  Kate? Maura wondered when she'd started using the nickname. “Yes,” she said.

  “You look exactly like her. It's unbelievable!”

  Maura tried to reply, but normal words, conversation, wouldn't come. She had always wanted to look like her older sister: tall, strong, capable, brave enough to let her eccentricities show. But right now she couldn't handle the small talk. “Is she here?” she managed.

  “No,” the woman said. “I'm sorry, she's not.”

  Maura must have groaned—or at least looked so bereft, the woman took pity on her.

  “Come on in,” she said. “I'd shake your hand, but I'm covered with paint and linseed oil. I'm Darcy her assistant.”

  “Nice to meet you.”