The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners

by Luanne Rice

  Dinner parties are strange. Life with my grandmother has trained me for the peculiar hostility that can occur at a seemingly friendly table. Perhaps it’s an “upper-class” emotion, and I say that with quotation marks and irony.

  I wished Travis were with me. My boyfriend is sensitive, sweet, and funny. We’d be standing out here on Max’s terrace, trying to figure it all out. He would have enjoyed Nicolas: salt-of-the-earth, weathered from a life on the sea, a true fisherman. He has a gold tooth right in front; from that and his frayed collar, and by shaking his rough hand, I can tell he’s a workman. It makes me respect Max all the more, to think of him including Nicolas with all the fancy expatriate types.

  We all gathered on the terrace, where Bella served espresso and pastries. My mother pointed out the different types to me.

  “That one’s delicious,” my mother said. “Made from figs that grow right here at the villa. Oh, and that one is stuffed with pine nuts and wild thyme honey, bought from the market, and the lemon zest came from fruit in my orchard …”

  I tasted the lemon tart; it was so delicious, both sweet and tart, bittersweet to think of her tending an orchard while Lucy and I went on without her. We sipped coffee; Bella came around with anisette; we both passed. John and Stefan seemed to be doing it up, after-dinner-drink-wise. They were arguing about a Times of London review of some friend’s memoirs, Stefan saying the criticism was unwarranted and John railing that the reviewer let the author off easy.

  “John seems a little full of himself,” I said to my mother.

  “Perhaps a bit,” she said, smiling like a conspirator.

  We laughed, and it was nice. The sky was ink-dark, glittering with stars. I thought of her telescope, her invented constellation, and nearly asked her to show me Vega, Capella, and Pollux. But I couldn’t give her that. I felt bad about it, but my heart was very tight with her. I knew it would make her too happy to share a star-watching moment, and I guess I wasn’t ready for it.

  “Lyra,” Amanda said, walking over with Renata. “We love your sketches for the moon garden! So dreamy and wonderful. Pell, your mother’s the island’s best gardener.”

  “That’s right,” Renata said. “Learned from the master. Will you plant us an herb garden too? How did you and Christina manage the giardino di erbe in that shady section behind the villa?”

  I saw my mother hesitate; she could talk gardens with Amanda and Renata, or continue our bonding moment. She must have registered the tension in my shoulders—I felt them hike up to my ears—at the mention of Christina’s name. Christina, who’d gardened with my mother, given her the suede kneeling pillow, lost her mental faculties while my mother mourned. She’d probably been a wonderful person, but she was a gigantic thorn in my motherless side. I grabbed a pastry and left my mother talking to the women.

  Stepping off the main terrace, I strolled through the vine-draped loggia. I ate the pastry, tiny seeds crunching, the good flavor filling me with comfort. There’s something about eating food that’s been grown within sight that made me feel as if all, or almost all, would eventually be okay.

  I smelled cigarette smoke, and saw the glow. Someone was sitting on a rock, close to the precipice just beneath the villa’s overhanging terrace. I headed over; even before I could see his face, I knew it was Rafe.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  He thought I meant I wanted a cigarette and started to tap one out of his pack. I shook my head and sat on the rock next to him. We stared down at the water, sparkling under the stars and reflecting the lights of Capri.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “I didn’t think I’d see you here tonight,” I said.

  He glanced at me. “You didn’t think my grandfather would invite me to his dinner party?”

  “I didn’t think dinner parties were your kind of thing.”

  “You’re right about that. Especially this crowd.”

  “Older people?”

  “Assholes,” he said. He gave me a wry smile. “My grandfather, Nicolas, and present company excepted.”

  “My mother?”

  “No comment.”

  I let that hang in the air. I’d been feeling conflicted about her, but hearing him clump her with the others made my back go up. Nobody talks about my family. How would he feel if I attacked his parents? I focused on boats down below, their running lights red and green, forced myself to breathe, and thought of Travis on a trawler out of Newport. Thoughts of Travis always soothed my spirit and made me feel more reasonable.

  “I noticed you didn’t have wine tonight,” I said, changing the subject.

  “Nope,” he said.

  “You don’t drink?”

  “I used to,” he said. “I used to do a lot of things I don’t anymore.”

  “Is that why my mother doesn’t like you? Drinking and other assorted bad behaviors?”

  “Part of it,” he said.

  “You’re that terrible,” I said.

  “Don’t joke about what you don’t understand,” he said.

  “You know, I defended you earlier,” I said, and almost immediately felt bad, for opening my mother up to Rafe: letting him know that she had said something about him that had required defending.

  “Thanks,” he said, taking a drag and exhaling a long, angry plume of smoke. Then he calmed down. “What’d you say?”

  “That you really couldn’t be that bad, considering you look after the sea creatures the way you do.”

  He nodded. “Well, again—thank you. Not that Lyra would listen.”

  That might be true; I’d seen the look in her eyes. “What did you do that’s so awful?”

  He didn’t reply; he stared into the sea so intently, he might not even have heard the question. Then he looked at me. “Want to see the seahorses?” he asked. “You asked about them. I could take you out on the boat, over to the Faraglioni, if you’d like.”

  “I’d love to,” I said. “When?”

  “How about Monday? There won’t be so many tourists then.”

  “Okay good,” I said. I heard the party breaking up, decided I’d better get back before my mother began to worry. Standing, I brushed off the back of my white pants. I started walking up the short gravel path to the loggia.

  “Maybe you should know something before you decide for sure,” he said. “Whether or not you head out in the boat with me. Your mother has her reasons for not wanting you near me.”

  I felt like telling him I’d lived ten years without my mother’s participation, but I didn’t want to seem to be siding with him against her. I also wanted to ask about his mother—how long he’d lived without her—but didn’t feel the question would be welcome. So I just stared at him. “I don’t need her permission to go in your boat,” I said.

  “You asked me before why your mother hates me.”

  “No, I asked what you did that was so awful.”

  “Same thing,” he said.

  “Okay” I said. “What is it?”

  “I let my grandmother die,” he said.

  The words sizzled in the air. Electricity crackled all around as if he’d stripped a live wire of its insulation. Crickets rasped in the bushes, cicadas hummed overhead in the olive trees. I felt a slight breeze on my skin, and I saw Rafe stub his cigarette out on the rock. He stared up at me, his eyes filled with sorrow and self-hating, waiting for the next question.

  I didn’t have any. Something made me put my hand on his shoulder. In comfort, with pity, I’m not sure. I knew it’s what Travis would have done. I didn’t have anything else to ask or even say. So I left him sitting there.

  Something about the dinner party: Lyra’s first time in public with Pell since she’d left home. Watching her nearly grown-up child, Lyra saw traces of herself and, especially, flashes of Taylor. Pell had extraordinary bearing: the seriousness of purpose, the gravity, just like her father.

&nb
sp; Lyra sat alone on the balcony. She heard Pell let herself into the house, go straight to her room. Lyra was glad for the chance to be alone. She closed her eyes and thought of Taylor.

  Months after they’d broken up, he’d flown to Newport to see her. Her mother had arranged a season of parties, excursions for the garden society, even the New York Yacht Club cruise aboard Sirocco. She’d spent weeks dating Alexander, feeling as if he was impeccably right for her, and insufferably boring. Taylor showed up one rainy day, came straight from the airport, found Lyra on the porch of her mother’s house.

  She sat in a white wicker rocking chair, dressed in a coral sundress, waiting for her ride to the Vanderbilt tea. Staring at the rented Ford, she wondered what had happened to Alexander’s Bentley And then Taylor had climbed out.

  The short walk from the driveway to the curved porch drenched him. He stood on the stone path, gazing up at her, waiting for her to say something. She felt frozen, seeing him there.

  “Taylor,” she said.

  “This isn’t what you want,” he said. Rain drove out of the east, rattling leaves and soaking every inch of him. His brown hair hung in his face, dripping into his eyes; he didn’t bother brushing it away.

  “Come out of the rain,” she said.

  He did. He climbed the curved white steps, his jaw set, his expression serious—not angry, hurt, none of the emotions Lyra had expected him to feel. She sat there, staring up at him, noticing he kept his distance; she felt herself quivering, and wanted to hold him.

  “Thank you for the statue,” he said. “Hermes.”

  She almost laughed. “You came all the way to say that?”

  “No,” he said. “I came all the way to tell you I love you.”

  “Taylor, I’m with someone else now.”

  “No, you’re not,” he said. “I know you, Lyra. You’re trying your best to do it your mother’s way. Whoever the guy is, I’m sure he’s perfect.”

  Lyra pictured Alexander’s tan, his car, his gold crest ring. She thought of his Christmas in Gstaad, his New Year’s at Palm Beach. His memberships in the Reading Room and Bailey’s Beach. She stared at Taylor’s salt-marsh hazel eyes, his dripping hair, the frayed collar on his blue shirt.

  “Yeah,” Lyra said. “He is. Perfect.”

  “Honey, you don’t want that,” Taylor said.

  Her eyes filled with tears, and she shook her head. “No. I don’t.”

  Something about the storm enclosed them and made it impossible to lie. Her mother’s wishes for wealth and status and the right kind of lineage suddenly seemed both funny and sad, like a very old novel with characters quaint and antiquated.

  Lyra stood, faced him. The wind was blowing hard, but it felt warm—tropical air, up from the islands. She knew there’d be white-caps in the harbor, and huge breakers at the beach, and she was glad Taylor’s flight had made it in before the airport was shut down.

  “What can we do?” she asked.

  “Do?” he asked, smiling as if the answer was so obvious. But to Lyra it wasn’t—this was her dilemma, and always had been. She wondered why she didn’t feel she could really exist with this man she still loved. Her true feelings seemed impossible to support; it would be easier to construct a life from her mother’s specifications than to follow her own heart.

  “I’m afraid it won’t last,” she said.

  “But you don’t know that,” he said. “You can’t know if you don’t try.”

  “Why would you want me?” she asked.

  “You’re an idiot to even ask.”

  He hadn’t touched her yet. There was a foot of air between them. That gravity in his eyes—it pulled her straight toward him, as if she were a falling leaf and he was the earth. She crushed into him, soaking her coral silk sundress. They kissed, surrounded by hurricane energy. Raindrops tapped the roof and the leaves on all the trees, and the wind swirled through the porch.

  Alexander’s tires crunched on the driveway. Lyra heard, and couldn’t look. She buried her face in Taylor’s shirt.

  “Lyra?” Alexander asked.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, turning finally. He hadn’t gotten out of his car; he sat in the driver’s seat, window rolled down, staring up at her and Taylor.

  Not another word. All the anger she might have once expected to see in Taylor’s face showed up in Alexander’s as he shifted into reverse and backed out of the driveway. Lyra wondered why she didn’t feel triumphant, joyous—she was with the man she loved, not her mother’s Mr. Right.

  “You sent me a statue for the garden,” he said. “But there’s no garden without you. There never was. Please come home with me, Lyra. Marry me.”

  “What if it goes wrong?” she asked, looking up at Taylor.

  “And what if it doesn’t?” he asked, kissing her again.

  Now, sitting on the balcony of her house on Capri, she pictured Pell. The expression she’d seen in her eyes last night, that extraordinary seriousness, had come straight from Taylor. Two people who trusted themselves, who took charge of life, who knew a little rough weather couldn’t keep them from what needed to be done.

  Lyra stared at the stars over the Bay of Naples, closed her eyes, saw Taylor gazing back at her. In the end, he’d been the one to flinch. His steadiness hadn’t held. Everyone had a breaking point, even someone filled with as much love as Taylor Davis.

  Seven

  Sitting outside for breakfast, Lyra served fresh-squeezed orange juice to Pell. They both drank espresso. Lyra watched her daughter butter her toast, add some wild strawberry jam, take the first bite. It felt so simple and regular, so everyday, nothing momentous, but somehow the best summer morning Lyra had had in over ten years.

  “Did you have a good time last night?” Lyra asked.

  “It was great. I love Max,” Pell said.

  Pell finished her coffee, and Lyra went inside to make some more. She paused in the living room, watching Pell as she thought herself unobserved: sitting in the shade, staring out at the water, lost in a dream.

  “May I ask you something?” Pell asked when Lyra walked out, refilled their cups.

  “Of course,” Lyra said.

  “Is the reason you hate Rafe,” Pell asked, “because of how you felt about Christina?”

  “I don’t hate him,” Lyra said.

  “He told me what happened,” Pell said. “He said he let his grandmother die. What did he mean by that?”

  Lyra set down her coffee cup. A pair of hummingbirds darted into the bougainvillea cascading down the terrace wall. She watched them hover and feed. The morning had been so sweet; she didn’t want to upset it with this.

  “Max left him with Christina one day,” Lyra said. “Rafe was supposed to watch her, keep her safe. But he didn’t, and she wandered away.”

  “Where?”

  “Just into the yard,” Lyra said. She closed her eyes, remembering the day. “She was so frail. She fell in the garden, and broke her hip. And she never recovered. The doctor said the fall shortened her life.”

  “What was he doing when she fell?” Pell asked, her voice soft with shock.

  “He was high,” she said.

  “On what?”

  “Her medication, among other things. But other drugs too. He bought them from someone down at the marina. He’d been kicked out of school. That’s how he wound up here—his father couldn’t handle him anymore. David thought if he got out of New York, away from his friends there, things might get better.”

  Pell seemed to take that in. Lyra had a bucking feeling inside, just saying the words: his father couldn’t handle him anymore. Was Pell thinking of herself, that Lyra had done the same to her as Rafe’s father had to him? Lyra knew that was one reason she couldn’t stand even seeing the boy. He reminded her so much of her own failure.

  “What’s his father like?” Pell asked.

  “He’s got a very demanding job,” Lyra said. “High finance, Bank of Kensington, that kind of thing. He runs the New York office, flies back and for
th to London a lot. Other countries too. He’s a director of the bank, and they have offices around the world.”

  Pell stared at her, so many things going on in her eyes. Lyra wished she could read her mind.

  “And Rafe’s mother died when he was young?”

  “Yes,” Lyra said. “I know how hard that must have been for him. But David did his best; he certainly made sure Rafe had everything he needed.”

  “He had his own Miss Miller?”

  “He had a governess, yes. But David loved him. He would bring Rafe here each summer, and they’d spend a month together. I’d see them swimming and boating, playing on the beach, picking up shells, identifying sea creatures. Max and Christina would dote on Rafe … he was such a sweet young boy.”

  Pell stood up, walked across the terrace. Lyra watched her look down at the beach. She knew Rafe was down there, scouring the rocks as he always did.

  “I feel bad for him,” Pell said.

  “He was being selfish,” Lyra said. “Not looking after someone so vulnerable.”

  “I’m sure he’s punishing himself now,” Pell said. “Is that why he spends all his time alone?”

  “I wouldn’t give him that much credit,” Lyra said, and Pell shot her a look.

  “People suffer, Mom,” Pell said. “They stay alone, they sleepwalk, there are lots of ways.”

  Lyra sensed her daughter’s great heart, but she wanted to set her straight. “Pell, I found Christina after she fell,” Lyra said.

  “That must have been terrible,” Pell said.

  Lyra nodded. “She was a wonderful woman. So strong when I first knew her, but by then, so frail and dependent. Max was completely devoted to her, never left her alone. He had stepped out for just a short while; he left Rafe with her, thinking he could trust him.”

  “What did Rafe say happened?”

  Lyra stared at Pell. “What does it matter? It’s what he did, and didn’t do, that counts.”

  The day had been clear and bright. Lyra had been standing right here, on the terrace. She’d heard a cry; at first she’d thought it was a seagull. But the crying continued, and she ran in search of the sound. She found Christina crumpled on the ground.