The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners

by Luanne Rice

  I backed away from my mother, then turned and pushed through a crowd of tourists walking up the path. I felt dizzy, surrounded by all the sightseers, and beauty, and history. My own history. Tearing through Tiberius’s grounds, I had a stitch in my side, and I could hardly catch a breath. I stopped near the edge of the cliff, heard people talking, a cluster of American college-aged kids.

  “Pushed them off, right here,” one boy said, hands on his girlfriend’s waist.

  “Don’t,” she squealed, wrenching away.

  “You think he just shoved them?” another boy asked. “They fucked up, he marched them to the edge and tossed them?”

  “Man, I’d fight,” the first boy said. “Someone tried to do that to me. Long way down.”

  “Very long way down,” his girlfriend said, and now it was her turn to give him a pretend shove.

  “Whoa,” he said, turning to hug her.

  I kept walking, my heart pounding. I thought of what Rafe had said at Max’s that first dinner: that Tiberius had been misunderstood, vilified. He hadn’t killed people here, thrown them to their deaths. “Tiberius’s Leap” was just a marketing tool, invented to create a stir. Tiberius had come here to contemplate, that’s all.

  People aren’t as bad as others want them to be. That is what I told myself. My mother had just come out and said she’d tried to kill herself. That had been a great fear of mine, one of the bad ones. I’d asked my father, Dr. Robertson, even Lucy if they’d thought she was suicidal. What a word: suicidal. It sounds clean and scientific. It’s just a word. But hearing it from my mother, knowing she felt that pain.

  Mom, what happened? How badly did it hurt for you to get to that point? The part I couldn’t bear was what she’d said next: I took you with me. What did that mean? Was she bad? Was she one of the terrible mothers you read about? They kill themselves, kill their children.

  Down in the depths: memory, memory. Should I go for it? Should I look deeper? I don’t want to. I want to go back to what I don’t know. But it’s there, staring up at me, the skeleton of what happened that night.

  I suddenly felt like a little girl, as if I’d lost years. I stumbled along, wanting my mother. I needed her to take care of me. I wanted her. Could she please tell me this new/old memory was wrong, that I had misunderstood, that these fragments of night and stars and the river were just a bad dream?

  Please tell me I’m wrong, I thought as I turned to go back to the observatory. Please just say you loved me then and you love me now and let’s go home. You’re a good person, a good person, no matter what you’re a good person. I walked back the way I’d come, and saw my mother there, waiting. She hadn’t moved. She looked pale, and I knew.

  I hadn’t been wrong.

  Lyra’s heart was racing as she watched Pell approach. If she could have erased this moment, she would have: from the past, where it had started. But she had seen memory dawning on her daughter’s face. Pell had started to put it together. Blue sky surrounded them; they stood in the ruined observatory, on the edge of Capri, floating above the azure sea.

  “Are you okay?” Lyra asked.

  “Mom, you’re good,” Pell said. Her voice was high, imploring; she sounded six years old.

  Why had she said that? Lyra gazed at her, stricken, wanting to understand; she reached for Pell, but her daughter inched away.

  “Tell me the rest,” Pell said.

  “Pell, are you sure?”

  “You took me with you?” Pell asked. “To kill yourself?”

  Lyra’s eyes flooded with tears. “I couldn’t leave you behind,” she said. Pell let out a soft cry, covered her mouth.

  They had been together on the bridge, Lyra holding Pell. They’d looked through the telescope, and Pell had named the stars. The river was frozen in parts, but there was a turbulent stretch under the bridge, rushing white water.

  “You weren’t going to kill us both,” Pell said. It was a strong statement, as if she was sure of something Lyra never had been.

  Even now, Lyra couldn’t be certain. She wanted to affirm Pell, say of course she never would have. She had left the car running to keep it warm; she told herself she would have placed Pell inside, bundled her with a blanket, kept the window cracked open for fresh air, to save her from carbon monoxide. But Lyra had long been haunted by memories of those minutes at the bridge’s rail, grasping her daughter and hearing the call of the rough water down below.

  “Your father found us,” she said. “I’d phoned him at the office, and something in my voice … I had mentioned the bridge to him once, as a place to end my life. He drove straight there, as if he knew where I was going.”

  “Or as if you wanted him to know,” Pell said. “You wanted him to stop you.”

  Lyra stared at her. “Maybe … but it doesn’t matter. He took us both home. I never even knew what happened to my car; I went straight to the hospital, and was there for months.”

  “And you came home, and we drew our map, and you left,” Pell said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I didn’t want you to leave,” Pell said, her voice low.

  “Pell,” Lyra said, reaching for her. “I left because … he wasn’t sure—I wasn’t sure—of what I might have done.”

  “But you didn’t do it!” Pell said. “You stopped yourself!”

  “Your father got there in time,” Lyra said. “But if there was a next time—that’s why I had to move away; he was afraid—I was afraid—that it could happen again.”

  “Why do you keep saying ‘he’?” Pell asked.

  “I was the one,” Lyra said. “Who decided I had to leave. Because what if I tried again? And what if I couldn’t keep myself from succeeding, from killing myself?”

  “No, you wouldn’t have,” Pell said stubbornly.

  “He was afraid,” Lyra said, making herself be direct, look straight into Pell’s cornflower blue eyes. “So I had to leave.”

  “‘He’?” Pell asked. “You’re saying it again! I mean, I’m sure Dad was worried about you, and wanted to make sure you were okay but don’t say it in relation to your leaving.”

  Lyra was sweating. She shook her head hard; why was she making this mistake? Her heart was racing as she saw Pell’s expression change. The truth was right here on the cliff with them.

  “You would have been fine,” Pell said. “You learned an awful lesson. Besides, you didn’t really want to kill yourself in the first place. Because you gave Dad whatever hint he needed to stop you—to get to the bridge and save you.”

  “I think he was most worried about you,” Lyra said quietly. “That I could hurt you.”

  “No, you wouldn’t have! He had to know that!”

  “It’s so complicated,” Lyra said, seeing Pell’s panic. “Being that depressed is like having the lights turned out. You can’t see anything, trust your reactions. The despair is total. So even though the hospital helped me, I can’t blame your father for not trusting that I’d never try it again.”

  “My father?”

  “I told him that suicide was no longer an option. That I was certain I’d never hurt you. Ever. But he wasn’t so sure.”

  “Don’t tell me this,” Pell said, starting to pace. “It can’t be true, it can’t. I won’t believe you.”

  “Okay Pell,” Lyra said. She would have stopped there. No more words had to be spoken. But knowledge is a boulder, and once it’s dislodged, nothing can wedge it back into the mountainside, keep it from rolling down the slope, gaining speed. Staring into Pell’s eyes, Lyra saw that she knew.

  “He’s the reason?” Pell asked, planting her feet and facing Lyra.

  “We talked about it,” Lyra said, wanting to start slow.

  “Tell me!” Pell shrieked.

  “I swore to him I was fine; my doctor did as well. But he couldn’t take the chance. He loved you so much, and he was afraid of what I’d done, taking you to the river. What I might do again.”

  They stood alone in the old observatory, no one else
around, water and sky gleaming as far as they could see, the blue crisscrossed by boat wakes and jet trails. “You’re our mother, he knew we needed you! And he loved you too,” Pell said. “So much, more than you can imagine.”

  “He did love me,” Lyra said. “But he loved you more, don’t you see? He couldn’t take the chance.”

  “Dad,” Pell said, turning away. And Lyra knew that Pell was speaking to her father. Addressing Taylor, asking him how he could have done it. Lyra wanted to hold their daughter, try to explain how it had been, how Taylor’s feelings had changed, how Lyra had made him worry enough to want her to leave.

  Lyra reached out, but Pell gave a violent twist and pulled away. She began to walk fast, then run. She tore down the path, out of sight. Lyra felt as if she’d just stabbed Pell, taken everything from her. She’d ruined the most important illusion of all: that her father was perfect, that he wouldn’t have sent her mother away. Lyra sank down on the spot from where Tiberius had once gazed at the stars, and cried for what she’d just done to her daughter.

  The river, the stars, the river, the stars.

  My father in his hospital bed. She never would have done it, she never would have done it.

  He was trying to tell me, as he was dying, the truth about my mother. Our whole family story contained in those few words. My mother had taken me to the river to see the stars that frozen night. I remembered now. Freezing cold, hands aching, the brass telescope as cold as if it were made of ice. My mother’s breath on my ear as she’d pointed up at the stars.

  “Capella, Pollux, Vega, never forget,” she’d said.

  “Which one is which?” I’d asked. I was shivering, but in her arms I didn’t care.

  “The three stars closest together,” she’d said. “Even when they’re not.”

  I’d laughed because what she’d said was a riddle. There were so many stars in the sky, and some looked so close, nearly touching one another. The Milky Way was a film of white sparks. The river tore beneath the high bridge, and even in the dark I could see chunks of white ice swirling in violent whirlpools, but I wasn’t afraid. My mother was holding me.

  Headlights came toward us, and my father got out of the car. He came so slowly, not saying a word, white breath puffing from his mouth. I remember my mother starting to cry. That scared me—not the river, not the ice, not the strangeness of being on a bridge on a winter night. Her tears at the sight of my father.

  “I’m sorry, Taylor,” she said.

  “Give her to me,” he said.

  “I never would have …”

  She never would have what? I wanted to know, but my father rushed at us then, yanked me out of her arms. He carried me roughly—no kisses, no hugs—to his car, buckled me into the back seat without a word, as if I’d done something wrong. I started to cry myself, upset with the way he was acting. Through hot, blurry tears, I saw him run back to my mother, grab her in both arms.

  My father wrestled her into the car, and she howled. Oh, God, that sound. You’re killing me, killing me, I’m dying. In school we studied Inuit religion, native people who believe behind every human face is a wild animal. You might have a fox inside you, or a wolverine, or a mouse. That night my mother had a wolf inside her. Wild, unbridled, filled with terror and hunger. The sound was not human.

  That’s where the memory stops. I know he must have driven us home. I know for certain she went to McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, and stayed for several months. My father never once discussed the bridge, or what almost happened there. He and Dr. Robertson helped me deal with my mother’s leaving. But he never told me—or my doctor, as far as I know—that he believed my mother had intended to kill herself and me that icy cold night.

  When I returned home from the strange and haunted ruins of Villa Jovis, from that devastated observatory, I tore off my sweaty shirt—I’d just run a mile in the heat—and put on a new one.

  I grabbed my cell phone and my wallet, passport, and return airline ticket. I jammed them and a few clothes into my backpack. I didn’t want to be there when my mother returned.

  I dashed out the door and straight down the steep, shady stairs toward the beach. The impulse felt primal.

  Halfway down the stairs I stopped, sat on a step. My head was spinning, my throat raw from emotion. I was desperate to talk to someone. I dialed Lucy first. I wanted to tell her what had just happened, what I’d just learned. But the second she answered, I hung up. The sound of her voice was so dear, and she loved our father so much, I couldn’t bear the idea of telling her the horrible truth.

  I sat there on the cool stone step, shaded by pines and cypress trees, hiding in the shadows. I stared at my phone, wanting to call Travis, hear his voice, tell him I was coming home. But that didn’t seem right either. I had a huge, cosmic rock in my chest, and to get it out, I needed blood family. I dialed my grandmother.

  It was early in Newport, barely dawn. Her maid, Heloise, answered, and said my grandmother was still asleep.

  “Wake her up, please,” I said.

  “Miss Pell, you know your grandmother doesn’t like to be disturbed before—”

  “Get her, Heloise. Right now.”

  Sometimes, when necessary, I can be not only persuasive, but quite imposing. It comes naturally, from spending the years immediately following my father’s death with Edith Nicholson. Several minutes later, I heard her voice on the line.

  “What is it, Pell?” she asked. “I’m very cross with you, waking me—”

  “My father told my mother to leave?” I asked.

  “What nonsense is this? Do you have any idea what time—”

  “Tell me right now, Grandmother. Did my mother leave us because my father kicked her out?”

  The sound of bedclothes rustling. I could almost see her slipping off her black satin eye mask, rearranging pillows, pushing back her summer-weight monogrammed coverlet.

  “There was no ‘kicking out,’” she said, as if I’d just used objectionable language. “He simply needed to find a solution based on your welfare. He was in a dreadful dilemma; she really left him no choice.”

  “Then it’s true? It was his decision, not hers?”

  “Lyra is my daughter,” my grandmother said. “It pains me unutterably to see the absolute mess she has made of her life. From the day she married your father and moved to Michigan, I knew it was a terrible mistake.”

  That meant I was a mistake. “Grandmother …,” I began, staring out at the menacing silhouette of Mount Vesuvius, feeling volcanic.

  “She was fragile. Emotionally and mentally. Your father told me what she did—he described every detail.”

  “She told him she wanted to kill me too?”

  “No,” she said, her tone somber. “Only herself. But she took you with her. Your father discovered her standing with you on the very edge of the tallest bridge, over an absolutely treacherous beat of river.” She fell silent.

  “So when she returned from the hospital, he was afraid she might try again. And he told her to leave?” I asked.

  “It was a discussion between them. However, ultimately, yes. He did.”

  “But she must have been better. The hospital wouldn’t have let her out if they’d thought she was a danger to herself or us.”

  “Your father couldn’t take that chance.”

  I took that in. My father, whom I’d loved and trusted my whole life, had sent my mother away. He’d been the grownups. He’d been judge and jury and neither she nor Lucy and I had had any recourse. Had he wrestled with the decision during the months she was in the hospital? Lucy and I had been so worried about her, missed her so much, we’d had fevers. He had comforted us. I pictured him sitting on the edge of my bed, reading The Jungle Book to us. His voice had been so calm. Was he, even then, thinking that he didn’t want her home?

  The grownups decided.

  “How could he have let us think she wanted to leave?” I asked my grandmother. “Why did he trick us?”

  “He didn’
t, Pell,” my grandmother said. “I don’t know what your mother told you, but this was a shared decision. He merely suggested it, quite strongly, I’ll grant you, as a solution. She was desperate; you’re too young to understand how frightening it was to see her falling apart. He was terrified for you and Lucy.”

  “You let us think she had affairs.”

  “Darling, would you rather have known your mother nearly took your life?”

  How could I even answer that? I felt scalding emotion starting in my toes; I really was a volcano. Hot fury overtook me; I pictured my grandmother in her perfect bed in her limestone mansion, and knew that she had helped my father hide every important truth from me and Lucy. He was dead, and I’d never get to confront him. I had enough rage for everyone.

  “I was so alarmed for Lyra and you. So afraid for her health, and so ashamed of what the truth could do if it got out. I have never wanted to speak of this with you or anyone.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “Were you really afraid it would hurt us? Or just make you look bad to your friends?”

  “Do not speak to me that way, Pell. I love you and Lucy. You can’t doubt that, I won’t have it!” my grandmother said in her most imperious and unshakable tone, and I didn’t stop to listen. I knew that what she said and what was true were two different things.

  “Our family is in pieces,” I said.

  “Darling, Lyra wasn’t meant to be a mother,” she said.

  My mother wasn’t meant to be a mother. Oh, wow. Those words would ring in my ears for a long time. They weren’t unlike what she’d told me herself, that day at the moon gate. I just hadn’t wanted to hear them.

  I ended the call. My cell phone instantly rang—it was Lucy ringing me back, after missing my last call. I didn’t answer it. I picked up my backpack, slung it over my shoulder, and ran down the rest of the stairs toward the rock beach.