The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners

by Luanne Rice

  Three

  The next morning, Lyra dressed in a sweater, khakis, and garden clogs and went outside at dawn. She paused for a minute, watching the moon set. Mist hovered over the sea, as if rising from the salt water. She had looked in on Pell a few minutes before and felt shocked to realize her daughter was really here, sleeping in her house. Lyra needed to clear her head, put her hands in the earth, connect with Christina’s good advice.

  Dew coated the grass; small cobwebs stretched between green blades. Back in Grosse Pointe, the girls had called them “fairy tablecloths.” Lyra remembered telling Christina about that one day when they were planting rosebushes. Her friend had knelt there in the dirt, listening. This was where Lyra had let herself think about her daughters most: outdoors, in the garden. For some reason, she could bear it here in a way she couldn’t in the house.

  Lyra pushed her wheelbarrow through a white gate set between stone posts. She had planted many flower beds on her property.

  “That’s how you’ll learn,” Christina once said. “Hibiscus and roses overwhelm each other; larkspur and delphinium are rich and delicate blue; use orange blossoms for scent, lavender for comfort. Finding out what pleases you will help when you start designing gardens for others.”

  Her landscape design business had started right here, during conversations with Christina.

  Lyra set a small suede cushion on the wet grass; it had been her friend’s, and made her feel close to her now. Kneeling, she used small clippers to cut through a tangle of overgrown coreopsis. She felt cool dew on the tough stems, smelled the freshness of early summer, tasted salt in the morning mist, heard finches singing wildly in the trees. The yellow flowers soothed her spirit. Every color in the garden came with a feeling that touched her soul.

  Working intently now, she didn’t hear the footsteps until Pell was standing right beside her.

  “Good morning, Mom,” Pell said.

  “Hi, Pell,” Lyra said. “You found me.”

  “Followed your footsteps in the dew. You’re gardening?”

  “Yes,” Lyra said.

  “I thought you had a gardener.”

  “No, I do it all myself. I garden for others, as well….”

  “You mean you work?”

  Lyra nodded. She saw the shock in Pell’s face.

  “People do work,” Lyra said.

  “Well, I know I’m going to,” Pell said. “It’s just that I thought you …”

  “Were a spoiled socialite?” Lyra asked.

  A slow smile came to Pell’s face. “I didn’t say that,” she said.

  “I guess there are a few things we have to learn about each other,” Lyra said.

  “Yes, there are,” Pell said.

  Lyra pushed herself off her knees, stood beside her daughter.

  Christina had been Lyra’s mentor; she’d mothered her in ways her own mother never had. Max was a love, endlessly supportive, but her relationship with him was different. Lyra had gotten pure, hands-on maternal care from her wonderful, beloved neighbor Christina; she missed her friend so much, and felt she needed her right now, to guide her with Pell.

  “Who is C.G.?” Pell asked, gesturing at the initials on the worn suede pillow.

  “Christina, Max’s wife.”

  “She lets you use it?”

  “Well, she gave it to me,” Lyra said. “Before she died.”

  Pell watched Lyra with solemn eyes, registering the still-present grief.

  “I’m sorry,” Pell said. She reached for her mother’s hand, held it warmly. Lyra teared up—she didn’t back away; she let the feeling of closeness grow and knew it was because Christina had taught her how.

  “Thank you,” Lyra said. “She was a wonderful friend. I wish you could have known her. She heard a lot about you.”

  “You talked about us?” Pell asked.

  “I did,” Lyra said.

  “When did she die?” Pell asked.

  “Two years ago,” Lyra said. “She developed Alzheimer’s … her mind started going, and it was really hard to watch. She was such an amazing woman.”

  At that, Pell pulled her hand away. Sharply, and with a sudden, cold look in her eyes. She stared down at the pile of clippings, stems and brown leaves, as if the garden had disappeared and all that was left was detritus, dead flowers.

  “What’s the matter?” Lyra asked, reaching for her.

  “It was like that with Dad,” Pell said. “After the brain tumor. He’d ask for a glass of sunshine when he meant water. He forgot our names.”

  “Oh, Pell …”

  “Couldn’t remember my name was Pell, and Lucy’s was Lucy, just couldn’t bring them into his mind. He cried because he’d lost our names.”

  Pell’s eyes filled, as if remembering her father’s tears.

  “I’m so sorry,” Lyra said.

  “You said Lucy was so sweet and bright,” Pell said. “She’s not only that, you know. She’s … a wreck. She lost it after Dad died. We both did. We can’t stand that he’s gone.”

  “Oh, Pell,” Lyra said, reaching out.

  But Pell didn’t take her hand. She turned fast, strode back through the garden toward the house. Lyra knew Christina would have told her to go after her, but she couldn’t move. She thought of Taylor, the best father in the world, forgetting their daughters’ names. She sank onto the wet grass and covered her eyes.

  I couldn’t get away from my mother fast enough. The place is strange, with a crazy, dangerous beauty. Cliffs everywhere. My mother’s house is open but cozy, filled with things I remember from childhood. Comforting, but a reminder of how goodness gets yanked away. And my feelings are out of control.

  The grounds are magical, and to find out my mother cares for the gardens herself, instead of hiring someone—an expert, a horticulturist, the Miss Miller of flowers—was the hugest, most wonderful surprise. Then to have her talk about this neighbor Christina, her good friend, an “amazing woman,” with such love and respect, turned me into a snarling beast. I could have ripped out her throat.

  I wanted to leave. The island, I mean. True, I’d been there only one full day. Get back to Lucy, my little sister, my other half. Already my emotions had run the gamut. I’d been feeling strong, happy to be with my mother, compassionate about her path in life, the one that had led her away from us and into her expatriate existence. But talking about Christina’s diminished mental capacity made me think of my dad, and I went straight back to being thirteen.

  Thirteen, the world’s worst age. Especially when your mother’s gone and your father, whom you loved more than anyone, has just died. I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. It’s just that I’d like you to have the whole picture. Our dad had to be both father and mother to me and Lucy. And he did it so well; he never made us feel it was hard on him, or that he’d rather be doing anything else.

  My mother left ten years ago, June of the year I turned six. When fathers leave, it’s bad, but society just calls them “deadbeat dads.” When mothers leave, people act as if it’s a crime against nature. There are no words. People don’t talk about it, because it’s so disturbing: not just to the kids, but to anyone who hears about it.

  That first year Lucy and I missed her so much. We couldn’t eat or sleep, we developed weird tics. I pulled out my eyelashes and a circle of hair on the top of my head, gave myself a half-dollar-sized bald spot. Lucy sucked her thumb all the time, even at school. She scratched her face. Kids made fun of us both, but we barely noticed. We were too crazed, missing our mother.

  Our nanny, Miss Miller, loved our mother, having raised her herself, and must have been brokenhearted in her own way. She told us everything was lovely, our mother was on a wonderful trip. If we cried, she told us to stop, that it would hurt our mother if she could see us. Once I said that was silly, our mother couldn’t see us because she wasn’t there anymore, she’d left us, she didn’t love us. Miss Miller slapped me, then instantly grabbed me in a huge hug, weeping and saying she was sorry but she could
n’t let me say such things about my mother, who loved us more than anything.

  Poor Nanny. Talk about a rock and a hard place. The truth was, we knew nothing. My mother never said a definite goodbye. She told my father that she was going to Newport for a week to see my grandmother. I think my father was relieved at first.

  See, my mother had had a breakdown that winter. Lying in bed one night, I’d heard her shrieking, “This is killing me!” Death of the soul, don’t you know? A severe depression that had required hospitalization. Months at McLean, in Massachusetts, one of the best places. She finally came out of the hospital, but she wasn’t herself.

  That’s what Nanny told us. “Your mother’s not herself.”

  Our grandmother pretended it hadn’t happened. She would have preferred to send my mother on a yacht through the Greek Islands than to a locked ward where she might actually get help. I think that’s where the adultery rumor started: it was easier for my grandmother to imagine my mother was in love with another man than to think the marriage was falling apart because of mental problems.

  We’d been worried about her all that spring; our father tried to ease our fears, saying it took time, but she was healing. She left for Newport in June; we expected her back by the Fourth of July, but she never came. Panic filled our dreams; Lucy would wake up sobbing for her. And one day at the end of July, my father sat the two of us on his knees.

  His eyes: hazel, green, and gold. Filled with more sadness than I’ve ever seen on this earth. Even forgetting our names seemed easier than the day he told us about our mother. How had he decided when to have the talk with us? He must have weighed the benefits of truth against those of letting us continue to hope. Because our anxiety was exploding.

  “She loves you both,” he said. “But she has to go away for a while.”

  “Go away? She just got home,” I said. She’d been in the hospital for some of the winter and all of the spring. “Is she sick again?”

  “No, Pell,” he said. “She’s better. But we want her to stay that way. So she’s going to take care of herself….”

  “We’ll take care of her,” I said, feeling stubborn and starting to panic.

  “We can’t, not the way she needs,” he said. “She’s going to a special place to live, and we’ll be staying here at home.”

  “We live with you, and we live with her,” Lucy said, nervous but still almost-happy the truth not dawning. “We live with you both!”

  “That’s how it’s been,” he said.

  “How it is,” Lucy said stubbornly, wanting him to get it right.

  “What special place?” I asked.

  “Italy,” he said.

  “Who says she has to go there?” I asked.

  “The grownups talked about it,” he said. “And decided it was the best idea.”

  The grownups! Who were these people?

  “She’s not coming back,” I said. I shook, quivering uncontrollably. I felt the truth in my fingers, toes, the top of my head, the way I imagine a diviner must sense water. I stared at my father, watching his eyes. All he had to do was contradict me. Just say I was wrong. But he couldn’t. He didn’t have to.

  “She has to come home now, right now,” Lucy said, immediately starting to sob. “I want her! I miss her!”

  “Lucy, she loves you. She told me—”

  “I love her, I need her, get her for me!” Lucy shrieked, a four-year-old with the ferocity of a bobcat.

  She tried to squirm off his lap, and I tried to grab her, but my father took care of it. He held us both, so tightly, letting us scream our lungs out, our throats raw and sore. Lucy raked her own face, and I tore at my hair. Our father held us, rocked us, tried to keep us from hurting ourselves more. When he set us down, much later, his shirt was streaked with our blood.

  He gave us baths, washed us off. We sat on the back porch and felt a cool breeze coming through the screens. Lucy cried softly, sucking her thumb. The sound of crickets was loud in the trees. That night he tucked us in and slept on the floor of our room, between our twin beds.

  He didn’t give us any more details that night. They trickled in, over time, with her letters. By September, she was in Italy. She lived in a place that reminded her of Newport. She could see the ocean from her house. There were gray mists on the shore. We were shocked, beside ourselves in a whole new way. Our mother had moved to Europe, a different continent. An ocean separated us from her. Our longing made us sick. We had fevers, we threw up.

  When my father was at work, Miss Miller tried to smooth everything out. She defended our mother, saying she had her reasons for leaving, and that we would understand when we were older. Finally, one afternoon she promised our mother was coming back, would definitely be on her way home soon, and that she would bring us lovely presents. Lucy and I bolted ourselves to the front steps.

  Was there any reality to the rumor? Had Miss Miller talked to her, was my mother having misgivings? Lucy sucked her thumb so hard, she drew blood. Miss Miller painted it with iodine to make it taste bad. Lucy didn’t care, just sat on the steps beside me, sucking her poor sore thumb while I twirled my hair out, both of us staring down the street for someone who wasn’t coming. When my father got home, after dark, we were still sitting there.

  My father fired Miss Miller and took us to therapy. Ah, the joys. He found two highly recommended clinical psychologists. I had Dr. Robertson, Lucy had Dr. Milhauser, and we had individual sessions, then group sessions, each of us alone, then with our father, then all three of us, with both doctors.

  We let it all out, believe me, and nobody medicated us. No Ritalin, no antidepressants. Just being heard, allowed to weep over things that hurt, that are terrible, beyond comprehension—and, with Miss Miller gone, not being told everything was okay, no lies that our mother would come back. There were no panaceas, no empty promises. That’s how our father and the doctors helped us survive losing her.

  The only reason I’m here right now is because I was allowed to hate her. The irony is, being permitted such dark feelings kept me from having them. I’ve never hated my mother. I grieve what she did, even though I know she—supposedly—had her reasons. Miss Miller wasn’t wrong about that.

  We are fine, Lucy and I. We are strong. She’s had setbacks, the sleeping stuff. She once asked me how people know the difference between sleep and death. I told her they didn’t have to—their bodies took care of it for them. Being her older sister has made me grow up fast. Sometimes I sound off with such weird wisdom, I wonder where it comes from.

  While my father was sick, he tried to tell me something. I was thirteen, and suddenly he was talking to me as if I was an adult.

  “It was my fault, Pell. She never wanted—” He stopped himself.

  “Wanted what, Dad?” I asked.

  “She didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  By leaving us? Was he kidding? He was on heavy pain medication. Radiation, chemo, the aftereffects, and then the tumor came back anyway. He was getting morphine; it took him away, he’d fall asleep in the middle of a sentence. And it made him think crazy things. I sat by his bed that day, waiting for him to wake up and finish his thoughts.

  When he opened his eyes, he started right in again.

  “She left you,” he said.

  “Mom.”

  He nodded. “River. Stars,” he said.

  Was this like seahorse, starfish, sunshine in a glass?

  “You could have died,” he said.

  “Dad?” I said, scared. Did he know who I was?

  “I told her,” he said, and then he began to cry. He was so upset, I wanted to call for the nurse, to give him more medicine, but he grabbed my wrist, looked into my eyes in a pleading way. “Sweet heart. At the river, I want you to know, she never would have done it. Never.”

  If only I could translate what he was trying to say to me. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I tried to guess and get it right. “It’s okay, Dad,” I said, trying to calm him.

  “Your mother,” he said.r />
  “What about her, Dad?”

  He was trying to tell me something; he must have thought I was thirteen, ready to know. It had to do with my mother, and if only I could unlock my father’s language, the way at the end his words became like secret code, maybe I could understand. I never did; he died soon after that.

  Learning the details of why she left is sort of beside the point, although I admit there are times I would like to know. The truth is, I am on Capri because I want my mother to come home. Time is running out. Of course it always has been, life being so short and uncertain and all. But this is different, and it’s real. The timetable will become more acute in September.

  That’s when I become a senior at Newport Academy, my father’s alma mater. It’s a boarding school, and now Lucy attends as well. Our rooms are side-by-side. My grandmother, Edith Nicholson, lives in Newport; we spend holidays and, except for this one, summers with her.

  But trust me when I tell you, my grandmother is not the sweet, kindly grandma you might be picturing. She lives on the society page. Literally. She goes to the best parties, moves in the swankiest circles, and first thing every morning she looks online for Google alerts about herself. High society in the Internet age.

  In September I start applying to colleges. Next year I’m off to who knows where. I do well at school; I’m a National Merit Scholar. I want to be a psychologist, and my advisor thinks I should apply to Harvard. I’m leaning toward Berkeley, where Dr. Robertson went. It’s far from Newport and Lucy, all the way across the country. But once I leave for college, no matter where the campus is located, Lucy will be alone.

  Lucy and I have been together since the day she was born. We’ve had nights, weekends, even weeks apart. Sleepovers, camp, things like that. But these are real emotional problems that my little sister suffers.