The Geometry of Sisters Page 9

  “What if I'm not?” she asked.

  The question sort of shocked me. It was like being asked “What if two wasn't a prime number?” She looked so disturbed, for a minute I thought she was going to throw up.

  I stood beside her, waited to see if she was okay. I wanted to put my hand on the back of her head, the way our mother always did when we got sick, and I wanted her to reassure me, tell me she was exaggerating everything. She gave me a look, letting me know she was all right.

  “Come on, Beck. Let's go out on the lake,” she said.

  “In the canoe? Do you feel well enough?”

  “Yes. Let's go to the lighthouse!”

  We ran down to the lake's bank, grabbed the canoe from under the bushes, and started to push it out. Overhead the sky was gauzy blue, covering us like a summer-weight blanket.

  Our father walked over. He passed me as if I weren't there.

  “Carrie?” he said.

  Instantly tears filled her eyes.

  “Sweetheart, let's go out on the lake,” he said. Then, looking at me, he smiled, gave me a big hug. “Be a sport, Beck? Let me take your sister for a spin in the canoe?”

  I shrugged, disappointed.

  “Carrie, okay?” he asked.

  She nodded, a little hesitantly. Why would she be reluctant about going in the canoe with our father?

  “I love you, honey,” he said to her, as if he'd never meant anything more. He said that to all of us, all the time. But something in his voice and eyes, and the way he said it right then, and in the way Carrie whispered back to him “I heard you fighting,” scared me.

  Sitting on the bank, I watched them paddle out. And I watched until they were just tiny specks getting smaller and smaller. They headed toward the lighthouse. Then the air grew still, and I heard low rumbling in the west. And I heard their voices rising, my father's and Carrie's—were they arguing? No, they never fought; that was thunder, it had to be. I couldn't let myself think otherwise, but now, honestly, I doubt myself. Still, clouds came in all of a sudden. The lighthouse was gone. It disappeared, and so did they.

  Mom and Travis called me to the cabin, made me take shelter. We stood by the window, the three of us, waiting. I was stiff, frozen. I wanted to ask my mother if she'd heard them, had that been them yelling?

  The storm blew up so fast—driving rain, leaves flipping over so their silvery undersides showed. A flock of geese flew in a V, right out of the clouds from the far side of the lake, over the water, landed right in front of us, and the waves were so big, the birds were hidden by their crests. The sky turned muddy, a terrible brown. The wind roared, blowing rain sideways.

  Suddenly the rain tapered off; the wind died down, and as the last breeze pushed the clouds away, the sky turned bright blue. Now it was the clearest day you've ever seen. No yelling, no fighting, no voices drifting across the water. The only sounds were rain dripping from the leaves, birds singing in the trees, the gentle lap, lap, lap of small rippling lake waves.

  We waited for them to come back, but they didn't. Cops came by in a patrol boat, to make sure we were okay, and my mother told them about my father and Carrie. They went straight out.

  They found the canoe floating overturned, in the middle of the lake, on the other side of the island from where the lighthouse stood, out of sight from where we were waiting and watching. Carrie had made it to the island, crawled up toward the lighthouse, half-frozen, in such shock she couldn't talk. My father wasn't with her.

  Things happened fast after that. They wrapped Carrie in blankets, radioed for the ambulance. My mother went nuts. She was crying for my father, all over Carrie the minute she hit dry land, hugging her, asking her about Dad, trying to figure out what happened. Carrie couldn't speak. The ambulance guy said she was in shock, and my mother climbed in to take her to the hospital. Carrie's skin was blue. I'm not even kidding.

  My father's body was recovered later that day, over by the beaver dam that Travis and I had found. His T-shirt got snagged on the fallen-tree bridge my brother and I had crossed. That's where the searchers found him. Travis and I stood on shore, watching them bring him back. We stayed, to be there when they brought him onto land. We did that for him.

  We thought Carrie was being cared for at the hospital. It gave us some comfort, thinking that she would be okay. We would all be together later that night, mourning Dad. Carrie could tell us what happened. We could know his last moments, help Carrie deal with it. That's how our family did things.

  Carrie ran away. My mother saw them take her into an exam room, right there in the ER. How much safer can you get than an ER? My mother was showing the receptionist her insurance card, looking at paperwork, trying to get someone to call the cops and find out what was going on at the lake, and in those ten minutes, Carrie disappeared. Off the gurney, back into her wet clothes, out the door.

  No one knows why. Of course I have my theories.

  One, the most obvious, is that she was pregnant. All that holding her stomach, feeling sick, crying. Justin, that loser, had gotten her pregnant. And Carrie, our perfect girl (and what an idiot I feel like for actually saying it to her, that very day) couldn't take the shame.

  Still, that doesn't completely ring true to me. Because how bad, in this day and age, is getting pregnant, even at sixteen? I'm not saying everyone does it, but it's not exactly unheard of. My mother would have been fine about it. And I know Travis and I would have too. So it must be something else.

  That's why it's wrong to be here in Newport. Because once Carrie is on her own with her baby for a while, and gets tired of hiding, how will she find us? I know my mother left all these messages, and has the detective guy looking, but why hasn't any of it worked yet? I left a note at home. Not in the house, because the new owners would be there, and Carrie wouldn't be welcome. But out back, in the potting shed behind the garage, where we used to play. That was our place, and we'd put big flowerpots upside down and use them for seats.

  I left Carrie a note there, under one of the flowerpots. She'd look, if ever she returned to our house in Columbus. And she will, I know.

  We are sisters forever. Nothing can ever take that away. It's what we are, as certain as any prime number. We are each other's blood, we are each other's life.

  Carrie is coming back to me. She has to.

  Maura noticed the tension between Travis and Beck, and she instantly knew: Beck was stealing again. She felt it in the way Travis watched her, with cool, worried eyes. And she saw it now in Beck's defensiveness, the way her shoulders hunched up to her ears, the scowl on her face as she bent over her schoolbook at the kitchen table.

  “Hi, honey,” she said, coming in one afternoon after classes.

  “Hi,” Beck said without looking up.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Fine,” Beck said.

  “Where's your brother?”

  “I don't know. Football practice.”

  Good. Maura sat down across from Beck. Travis was attentive and involved, but Maura didn't want to bring this up in front of him.

  “Is there anything you want to talk about?”

  “Mom, I'm studying.”

  “I know. But stop for a minute, okay?”

  Beck lowered her pencil. She took her time looking up, the tops of her ears fiery red.

  “Have you been having trouble?” Maura asked.

  Beck shook her head. Then she twirled her hair. Then she bit her lip.

  “I think it's time to call Dr. Mallory. She said you could have phone sessions if you want. Or she'd refer us to a therapist here in Newport.”

  “No!” Beck said. “I'm doing fine here, making friends. I don't want anyone to know about me!”

  “No one will know.”

  “They found out back home. ‘She’s crazy, she steals, she goes to a shrink.' They'll see me going to the office, those little one-hour disappearing acts I made all last year, and everyone wondered where I was, and then they found out, and it's not like I had something oth
er kids have, like ADD or ADHD or whatever. It's bad enough being how I am, but I don't want to be known for it, and teased for it.”

  “I love how you are,” Maura said.

  “You love that I steal?”

  “Are you doing that again?” Maura asked.

  Beck's eyes flooded. “Behaviors,” they were called: stealing, lying, acting out. They stemmed from grief, depression, stubborn anger. Maura reached for her hand, and Beck grabbed it. They sat there together, not speaking.

  Maura imagined a wise mother. Someone who would cock her head, smile sadly, say I want to be able to trust you again; you have to earn people's trust. Outside, the breeze blew, and golden leaves floated from the trees down to the ground. The wise mother would gesture, say something about seasons changing, the passage of time. We don't steal. People die, people run away, but still we don't steal.

  “It sucks,” Beck said.

  “It does,” Maura said.

  They kept holding hands, even though there wasn't anything more to say.

  Providence was made up of worlds. College Hill, home of Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design, campuses and gracious old houses; Federal Hill, the heart of Rhode Island's Little Italy; Fox Point, where the Portuguese fishermen lived.

  Carrie lived on Fox Point, in a pink rooming house filled with Azoreans and Cape Verdeans. She'd moved there from Hawthorne House, a haven for girls like her. She had come east over a year ago, traveled far away from her family in Ohio; in a strange way, she'd traveled to Rhode Island to get closer to them.

  Sometimes she thought of things she could have done differently. She could have swum stronger, tried harder to stay with her father. She could have lied when he'd asked her about being pregnant, avoided the fight. Or she could have not gotten pregnant in the first place. She'd loved Justin, but getting pregnant was an accident. And somehow she hadn't realized how that fact would destroy her family.

  She loved Gracie, more than anything. She was overwhelmed with huge questions—if she hadn't gotten pregnant, hadn't had that fight with her father, maybe he would still be alive. But then she wouldn't have Gracie, right? Was everything in this world so confusing?

  The storm had killed her father. Sometimes she wished she had died too. But if she had, Gracie would have as well. Carrie worked all day at the diner, sometimes the dinner shift, counting the minutes before she could get home to her daughter. But the hard, mindless work gave her plenty of time to miss her mother, sister, and brother. Her only comfort came from knowing they had no idea of what had happened between her and her father out on the water.

  Her family was in Newport now. Carrie kept track. She'd called home in Columbus a few times over the last year, hung up when her mother answered. The sound of her mother's voice was like a dream from another world. Carrie both wanted it so badly and felt so ashamed to imagine the words she'd have to say, she'd hung up fast, as if the receiver burned her fingers. Then one day in August she called, and got a recording with a new phone number.

  A Rhode Island number. Carrie could hardly believe it. She went to the Providence Public Library, used the Internet for reverse lookup. The phone number had a Newport exchange. She Googled everyone's names, found out that Travis would be playing football for Newport Academy. Carrie hardly knew what to think about that: her mother relocating the family near Aunt Katharine and also near J.D. Carrie had been pulled by the same gravity.

  Death changed everything. Every single thing. Carrie was young to know that fact, but she did. Her father had died, and her family had fallen apart. She wiped tables, served coffee, felt as if she was in a nightmare.

  She had made her way to Providence after the accident. She had had Gracie, and then Dell had helped her get this job at the diner closest to Rhode Island Hospital. J.D. was being treated there.

  His sister Patricia had come into the diner one day when she was working. Carrie had seen her around J.D.'s room, so she kept her coffee cup filled and listened to what she and her friend were saying. She learned more in that single hour than she had haunting the waiting rooms, trying to befriend J.D.'s nurses, even sneaking into his room, standing at the foot of his bed.

  For one thing, she found out that medically induced comas were not as dangerous as she might have thought. She learned that dreams went on, deeply and darkly, just as they did during sleep.

  She had found out on her own that his doctor at Rhode Island Hospital was a renowned leader in research and healing in traumatic spinal cord injuries. He had isolated a protein that encouraged cells to “communicate” with each other, trying to heal. That's what J.D. was there for.

  When it came time to pay the check, the friend tried to grab it, but Patricia pulled out her credit card and beat her to it. The friend argued, saying, “I want to treat you.” But Patricia held tight to the check. Taking the credit card, Carrie ran it. When she returned to the table, she met Patricia's eyes.

  “Do you have someone in the hospital?” Carrie asked.

  “My brother,” Patricia said.

  “I hope he's okay.”

  “That's very kind of you,” Patricia said, warmth filling her eyes. She had dark hair with a gray streak, wore a navy blue suit and tall boots of soft black leather. A few minutes later, she went to the rest-room, and Carrie spoke to her friend.

  “Will her brother get better?” she asked.

  “He had a bad injury,” the friend said.

  “What happened?”

  “He was paralyzed in a fall a long time ago. They're trying some new things,” she said.

  “Is it… helping at all?”

  “It doesn't seem so.”

  “I'm sorry.”

  The friend nodded. Then she smiled a little. “Being so close to the hospital, you must serve lots of people who need comfort.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Everyone does.”

  And then Patricia returned and the two women left.

  That was six months ago. Carrie still worked at the diner. J.D. had long been discharged, but Carrie often thought of that lunch, of serving Patricia Blackstone. And for some reason the phrase she had used floated back to her now.

  Everyone does.

  Everyone needs comfort.

  Carrie knew she did. Why was she still here? J.D. had gone back to Newport. She had done her best, looked over him the best she could, did for him what she couldn't for her father. She would never stop thinking of Andy Shaw as her father. Now she sat in the rocking chair of her small room, holding Gracie. These quiet times were when she missed her mother the most.

  What if Carrie took the bus to Newport? She could show up at Travis's game on Saturday. Her family would be so shocked. And happy, right? To meet Gracie? Wouldn't her family be thrilled to know Carrie had a daughter, that they'd come home?

  But how could Carrie explain why she'd left in the first place? Why her only option, pregnant and in shock after seeing her father die, had been to leave her mother waiting in the ER? Blackout trauma, it was something she wouldn't wish on her worst enemy. Dream, nightmare, dream, nightmare. Shock, the flashback of seeing her father's white face, seeing him drowning in the storm. And later, trying to make sense of what he'd said about her mother, about her.

  Gracie stretched. She clutched Carrie's finger, her tiny daughter who needed her. Carrie stared into her big eyes. She wondered if her mother had loved her this much. Somehow, she knew she had.

  Carrie had been raised in a house full of so much love. The story of her parents' proposal was so cool. Carrie had made them tell her over and over when she was little, just because she loved it so much.

  Maura O'Donnell and Andy Shaw had seen each other throughout college. The spring of senior year, they'd gone to the Lost Glen bluegrass festival. Lilacs were in bloom, sweet banjo music played, and they strolled the grounds past the antique car show, the quilt exhibit, and the draft horse pull. They picnicked by the river, by a covered bridge, in the shade of old maple trees.

  Lying on the blanket, they'd s
tared up at the rustic bridge. Dark red, ramshackle, about eighty feet long, it crossed the river on private property owned by a family who'd leased their land for the festival, a tradition in Knox County for the past twenty years. Swallows nested inside and flew out through splintered boards.

  “How old do you think it is?” Maura asked.

  “It was built in 1893,” Andy said.

  Maura smiled, surprised and impressed. “How do you know?”

  “I came here when I was a kid,” he said. “Sixth grade on a field trip. My teacher, Mrs. Heller, told us about the old bridge, then told us her husband proposed to her right here on the riverbank, during the festival.”

  “I love that your teacher told you that! Did she tell you what song the band was playing? Did he get down on one knee?”

  “She didn't tell us the song,” Andy said, sitting up, brushing himself off as he raised himself on one knee. Maura laughed, thinking he was imitating his teacher's husband.

  “Will you marry me?” he asked.

  She stared at him. Everything stopped. Her thoughts, her feelings, the birds, the music, the river. And they both even admitted this, even when they told the story years later to their kids: she wasn't ready to say yes, but she did anyway. Because Andy was such a good man, and after the way her father had been, Maura needed someone like that.

  Maura said yes. And at the end of the summer, pregnant with Carrie, she'd married Andy. But their marriage had been based on a lie. Carrie knew that now, and she tried not to blame her mother. But she couldn't help thinking that none of the bad things would have happened if her mother had told him the truth right from the beginning.

  Carrie reached for the newspaper and opened to the sports page. She read about the big rivalry between Newport Academy and St. George's. She knew her mother and sister would be in the stands. She wondered if J.D. might too.

  If she and Gracie showed up, they could all be one big happy family. Or at least she could catch a glimpse of the people she loved and missed so much… maybe she could take a picture of them.