The Geometry of Sisters Page 7

  Amy sounded mad, like “that bitch is trying to take over,” especially on the bus. But the thing is, the seat Megan took is right next to Amy. And did Amy move or in any other way protest? No. And I asked, believe me. Is this how it goes? Megan's their new friend, they've embraced her as if she never talked badly about me, and here I am making new friends with Lucy and Camilla.

  But that's nothing like missing Carrie. We were each other's other half. I don't really exist without her. You love a person, and you can't imagine life without them. But suddenly something happens, and they're gone, and you just keep breathing, eating, sleeping, waking up.

  Her photographs are here, and she's not.

  September's heat lingered into the first week of October, making the kids restless and yearning to be outside. Maura was impressed with their ability to concentrate and read, connect with the material she assigned them. She was teaching four English classes: Composition, English Lit, and for AP students, the Art of Fiction, and Russian Literature. Each required extensive writing on the part of the students.

  Maura had bought blue notebooks for everyone, passed them out the first day, and told her students to write about their lives, just as her favorite professor had done.

  The Art of Fiction caught her every time. Fiction existed in life as well as literature: the ways people deceived themselves and those they loved most. Not always out of malice, but out of love and mysterious desperation. Maura understood that to her bones.

  Every story she assigned, each time she read about a family and the way it worked, the way people wove fictions into their lives and relationships, the more haunted she felt about her own life.

  People pretended. They fell in love inconveniently, tried to escape the consequences. They betrayed the ones they held most dear, struggled to hide the truth, hoping no one found out. They stole each other's loves, tried not to be caught, not to be punished. But what good were lies, when you had to live with them every day?

  Carrie, more than anyone, had borne the weight of what Maura had and hadn't been able to admit to herself. It was as if Carrie had always known.

  As a baby she'd gaze into Maura's face, as if trying to tell her it was all okay. And Maura had lied to herself, all through Carrie's growing up, that the truth didn't matter, wouldn't change anything. But it had mattered.

  Overwhelmed with work, trying to find her bearings, Maura had put off calling Katharine all through September. But teaching this class had only heightened her feelings, made them almost unbearable. She could lie to everyone else, even herself, but not her sister. She had never been able to: between her and Katharine, their emotions had all been right out in the open.

  She had taken another late-night drive, north to Portsmouth, past Katharine's farm. She'd seen the big yellow house, the old barn where Katharine did her work, and the enormous metal sculptures roaming the hayfields, extinct beasts brought back to life.

  Slowing down on the country road, she had almost stopped. The house lights were out—was Katharine home? Maura imagined her sister asleep. She could let herself in the rickety back door. That's how it used to be—Katharine had always expected Maura to walk in.

  Today at lunch, Maura went to a corner of the teachers' dining room and dialed her sister's phone number. The machine answered: “You've reached Katharine. Leave me a message.” And Maura did: “Hi, it's me. Maura. I'd … like to speak to you. Please call.” She left the number of her cell phone, knowing Katharine already had it, as well as the number at the carriage house; she wondered what her sister would think about the 401 area code.

  Something happens to sisters who've stopped talking to each other for any stretch of time. Once it has happened—once the pattern has been set, and months and years go by, they get used to it. The unthinkable becomes thinkable. They imagine they can live without each other—because that's what they're doing. Even if they make up, get back together, at the first sign of strife, they might revert to not speaking.

  The initial break is so wrong, such a crime against nature and love. They might tell themselves it's justified, that she did such-and-such, that she deserves so-and-so. Everyone knows that we're most hurt by the ones we love most. Drastic measures, turned backs, the buttoning of lips, the childish pronouncements—“I'll never speak to you again!”—might feel momentarily satisfying and righteous.

  But it burns deep. And if it lasts long, watch out. For every day sisters don't talk to each other, a day is taken from the end of their lives. It's that destructive. Their lives are shorter, because their anguish and bitterness destroys them from the inside out. It eats away at their veins, weakens the walls of their hearts.

  Maura felt all that, sitting at the cafeteria table. She reached up, placed her hand on her chest, needing to see if her heart was really beating. How had this happened? How could such a rift have formed between her and Katharine? She felt trapped by the situation the two of them had created so recklessly. Something else: did it contribute to Carrie staying away? Had she learned from her mother and aunt how not to talk to her family?

  When Maura looked up, she saw Amy Bramwell, a biology teacher, standing by the table with her brown bag.

  “Are you finished with your call?” she asked. “I don't want to disturb you if you're not…”

  “Please,” Maura said, clearing space on the table.

  “Lunch hour's when I always catch up on the million things I have to do,” Amy said, unwrapping her sandwich. Maura nodded; her pulse had spiked at the sound of Katharine's voice, and it still wasn't back to normal.

  Stephen Campbell walked in with Ted Shannon. Maura's gaze followed them as they headed across the room. Was it her imagination, or was Stephen watching her out of the corner of his eye?

  “He was asking about you,” Amy said.

  “Who?”

  “Stephen.”

  “Our paths keep crossing,” Maura said. “At very odd times.”

  “Really?” Amy asked.

  Maura nodded. “We're both night owls, and for a while I kept seeing him out by the cliff.”

  “He's a pensive sort,” Amy said.

  “What's his story?”

  “Oh, he grew up in Newport and went here as a kid. He and Ted were in the same class,” Amy said. “They were really good friends with Taylor Davis.”

  “Why does that name sound familiar?”

  “He was Pell and Lucy Davis's father.”

  Maura nodded.

  “Anyway, Taylor was a wonderful guy, from everything I've heard,” Amy said. “He came from Michigan, went to the academy, met the daughter of a socialite—in fact, the über-socialite, Edie Nicholson—and never quite fit into Newport life. He played football at Brown, and saw Lyra when she was home from Vassar. When he went back to Michigan, he took Lyra with him.”

  “I did that,” Maura said. “Moved from the East Coast to the Midwest…”

  “Yes, but you weren't debutante of the year, with all that goes with it. Lyra didn't take to the move,” Amy said. “She married Taylor, had two daughters before she realized she wasn't cut out for that life. She left him with the kids, came back east, wound up moving to Italy, I think.”

  “But the girls board here?”

  “Yes,” Amy said. “They have to. Taylor died a few years ago.”

  “How awful,” Maura said. “Do they ever see their mother?”

  “No,” Amy said. “And they don't talk about her.”

  “That's so sad,” Maura said, thinking of her own distant, missing daughter. Did Carrie ever talk about her? Of course, it was the opposite situation…. Carrie had left.

  “Pell and Lucy live with their grandmother part-time, but that's a fate you wouldn't wish on anyone,” Amy continued. “Ted and Stephen do their best to watch out for the Davis sisters.”

  “Is that why you say Stephen's pensive?”

  “Not really. He's conscientious, smart, and he used to be incredibly funny. But he went through a nasty divorce himself, and he hasn't been the same si
nce.”

  “I'm sorry to hear that,” Maura said, glancing across the room at the two men. “Was his wife someone from Newport?”

  “Well, she was. Now she's living up the bay. In Bristol, I think.”

  “But he met her here?”

  “Yes,” Amy said. “This is such a small town, when you get right down to it. His ex-wife is Patricia Blackstone— great-granddaughter of James Desmond Blackstone….”

  “The founder of Newport Academy,” Maura said. Stephen had been married to J.D.'s sister. Excusing herself, she left the lunchroom.

  6THE GENIE WAS OUT OF THE BOTTLE, AND BECK couldn't get it back in. Every chance she got, she put something else in her pocket. The school seemed not to believe in locking things up; they made it too easy for her. Silverware from the lunchroom, cello strings and violin rosin from the conservatory.

  She stole an emerald earring.

  The most expensive object she'd ever taken, almost too beautiful for words. It was delicate, it was old, it dangled. Holding it in her hand, she thought of the emerald as solid water, but not cold like ice. A square green pool. Water that had turned to stone.

  They had been in Lucy's room, sprawled on the big blue and amber Oriental rug. She and Lucy were challenging each other, doing proofs for Mr. Campbell's class, making patterns of shapes, of motion and change, geometric diagrams that contained meanings and poetry that only mathematicians could understand.

  “Hey,” Beck said, pointing at the page. “Check this out….” She tapped her pencil on the notation f(x)g′(x) + g(x)f′(x).

  “Stephen will love that one!”

  “Why do you call him Stephen?”

  Lucy's pencil made quick and spidery notations that reminded Beck of magic spells. “He was one of my father's closest friends,” Lucy said as she worked. “They went to this school together, along with Mr. Shannon and their other best friend, J. D. Blackstone. After my father died, Stephen and the others became our protectors.”

  “Protectors?”

  “Like godfathers. They help us with things our grandmother can't.”

  Beck put down her pencil. “How did your father die?”

  “He had a brain tumor,” Lucy said. “One day he looked at Pell and called her ‘seahorse.’ He tucked me in with a blanket and said ‘starfish.’ He fell down and shook. We thought he was trying to be funny, so we stood there doubled over laughing.”

  “He wasn't?”

  “He was having a seizure.”

  “Where was your mother?”

  “She'd left,” Lucy said. “She was long gone. So we stared at our dad shaking, thinking it wasn't really very funny and wishing he'd get up, and then we saw blood from where he'd bitten through his tongue. So we called 911, and they took him to the hospital. He died less than a year later.”

  “I'm sorry,” Beck said.

  Lucy glanced over. “How did your father die?”

  “He drowned,” Beck said. “He was in a canoe with my sister, and they capsized.”

  “I'm sorry. Your sister…”

  “She survived,” Beck said. “But she ran away.”

  “Why?”

  “We don't know, exactly.”

  “Oh my God,” Lucy said. “I'm so sorry.”

  Beck thanked her. Lucy asked a million questions, and Beck didn't even mind. Was Carrie unhappy? Did she have a boyfriend? Did she take drugs? No, she used to, and no. Beck loved having a friend who got it. Both girls had families whose hearts had been ripped out.

  “Where did our fathers go?” Beck heard herself ask.

  “After they died, you mean?”

  Beck nodded.

  Lucy looked up at the ceiling as if she could see through it, straight to the pool. “They become ghosts,” she said.

  Beck stared at her.

  “Well, not ghosts like in scary movies, but spirits who are right here, who haven't left this earth. Their energy remains, and if they want to materialize, they do. But they can't unless we meet them partway.” She sat up and looked at Beck, waiting for her to help.

  Beck blinked hard, the thoughts clicking into place. She forced herself to stay with it, concentrate. Just like someone trying to remember a dream, pulling the strange nonsense together and making it add up. “Wow,” Beck said, starting to get it.

  “Do you think?” Lucy asked, eyes shining.

  “It could be,” Beck said, her voice shaking as she reached for her paper. She'd heard the phrase so many times before, but suddenly it made real sense. Not just theory, but something she could count on. “‘Ghosts of departed quantities,’” she whispered.

  “Adding up the infinitesimal,” Lucy said.

  Beck hesitated, staring at the paper, then looked up. “The mathematics of change and loss,” she said.

  “Because…”

  “There's no such number as zero,” Beck said.

  “Exactly!”

  “So if we do proofs, work at proving infinity…”

  “We'll understand where they went. What they are now… your dad and my dad. Our ghosts.”

  “Easier to find ghosts than my sister,” Beck said.

  Floorboards creaked overhead, then a splash, making Beck jump.

  “You must hate hearing that,” Beck said.

  “I love the sound of water. J.D. swims there. But so does Mary,” Lucy said.

  “She's real.”

  Lucy nodded. “And if Mary can walk the earth, so can my father. I'll see him again. You'll see your father too. We can do it together! Work on proofs, add up infinitely tiny pieces, so tiny they're almost not there, and find our way to them.”

  “Yes,” Beck said, but her heart skipped at the idea of what Lucy was saying, what they'd thought up together. Could it be possible?

  “We're going to do it,” Lucy said, her voice shaking as she clutched Beck's hand, making a pact. “We'll see our fathers again!”

  Beck gazed at Lucy's open book and fine notations. She felt weak and light, about to faint. Just then Pell walked in. She lived in the room next door; had she heard her sister's voice rising? Lucy's eyes glistened, and Pell sat down and put her arms around her. Beck knew Lucy had her own problems: Grief kept her awake. She had a hard time sleeping.

  Beck watched Pell murmur to Lucy, remembered all the times Carrie had comforted her when she was upset. She ached for her sister. The prospect of being able to see her father again, even for a minute, was too much to bear. She began to gather her books.

  The Davis sisters seemed not to notice. Backing away, Beck stood by the mahogany dresser. Lucy's silver brush and comb, an oval hand mirror, a hand-tooled Moroccan leather jewelry case, and several tortoiseshell barrettes lay strewn across the surface. Then Beck spied the emerald earrings.

  Cool green jewels. She was like a raven, attracted by the brightness. She didn't think, only reacted. Carrie in the water. Bright lake water sparkling, a million shattered emeralds, that summer day after the storm passed. Carrie's gold-flecked blue eyes. Beck's hand closed around one of the earrings. She glanced over at the sisters, saw Pell staring right at her.

  Pell watched her slide the earring into her pocket and walk out of the room. In the hallway, through the open window, Beck heard the endless ocean waves curling, collapsing, hitting the rocky shore.

  She ran down the hallways and stairs of the old school and dashed outside, just as Redmond was walking toward the entrance.

  “Beck,” he said, smiling.

  But she tore past him, around the side of the building, into the laurel grove, the woodland path that muffled the sounds of the sea, straight to the little house where she knew she'd find her mother and Travis.

  Travis saw Beck come charging in, past their mother working on lesson plans in the kitchen, straight into her room. He'd been getting a bad feeling from his sister lately—some of the old secrecy and furtiveness that had gotten her in trouble back home—so he walked in right behind her, just in time to see her pull an earring out of her pocket.

  “What's t
hat?” he asked, shocked in spite of the fact he'd been expecting something like this. The old force of her stealing and getting caught back home came crashing in.

  “Leave me alone,” she said.

  “Give it to me,” he said, reaching for the earring. She hid it behind her back.

  “I found it,” Beck said.

  “Who'd you take it from?”

  “Take it from?” Beck asked, outraged. “No one! Stop accusing me!”

  Travis opened his mouth, found he couldn't speak. Didn't Beck know that she was the reason they'd moved east? Hadn't she learned her lesson? But staring into her hot, guilty eyes, he could see that she had not.

  “You're lying,” he said. “Again.”

  “Shut up.”

  “And stealing. When did you start back up?”

  “You don't know what you're talking about.”

  “Stealing doesn't help. You know that,” he said. “It's not going to bring them back.”

  “Stop,” she said.

  “Look,” he said. “I'm not going to tell Mom. Just tell me where you got it, and we'll leave her out of it. Okay? Do you really want to hurt Mom this way? I know you don't. So just come clean with me and it stops here with us. Try again: where'd you get the earring?”

  Beck struggled with herself. Travis focused on staying calm. He stared at her hard, not letting her off the hook.

  “I found it,” Beck said finally, her lower lip wobbling. She was starting to break.

  “Where?”

  “On … in Lucy's room.”

  “Fine,” Travis said, taking the earring from her. He looked at it, the deep green jewel set in fine gold. A row of tiny diamonds dangled from beneath the large square emerald. “Beck. This isn't like a pack of gum from Jenny Drew's backpack. What's going on?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I swear, it won't happen again.”