The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners

by Luanne Rice

  Seeing the seahorses was a mistake. It was a magical sight, gazing into that azure pool with Rafe, watching the tiny golden creatures swim around our hands. But the reason I’d loved them was because of my dad. His nicknames for us: Seahorse and Starfish, me and Lucy.

  I told Rafe I wanted to leave Il Faraglioni. The rock formations were mystical and poetic, as if the great rock islands had been shaped with an artist’s hand, but I couldn’t even appreciate their terrible and magnificent beauty; our family myth had been shattered, and all I could think about was getting home. My mother hadn’t “abandoned” us; my father had told her to leave.

  “Let’s go back to the dock,” Rafe said. I knew that he could see I was agitated, and I suppose he might have been concerned. He’d put his arm around me, and I’d let him. I felt terrible about that, and wanted to get to Travis.

  “I have to get to Sorrento,” I said. “I understand if you can’t take me. Just drop me off at the marina, and I’ll get the ferry.”

  “Of course I’ll take you,” he said. “If you really want to go.”

  I did and I didn’t. One regret was that I hadn’t said goodbye to Max.

  Blinding sunlight struck the water, bounced off the rocks. I was surrounded by so much beauty, and I just wanted to hide. I found myself wishing it would rain; during the weeks I’d been on Capri, other than morning mists and the occasional late-afternoon storms, I’d seen nothing but blue sky and sun. You’d think I’d be grateful, but suddenly I wanted clouds and gray, the sound of rain.

  Rafe set off toward the mainland. It wasn’t far. I had my backpack, plane ticket, passport. There would be a bus to the airport. I clutched the backpack to my chest. I had a picture of my father in an inside pocket. If I looked at it now, would I even recognize him?

  My dad. Now I knew. He was one of the “grownups,” the ones who’d decided it would be better for my mother to go. I suppose that, deep down, I’d suspected that all along. In all our years of therapy, there were certain specifics we never discussed. Our mother had been depressed, unable to care for us, and the focus had always been on us—not the whys of our mother’s leaving, but the hows of us surviving, getting along without her.

  Each year brought its own struggle: first we’d had to stop mutilating ourselves with wild, primal grief. We’d literally needed to heal the scratches self-inflicted on our arms and faces, the raw patches of scalp from torn-out hair. Next we’d needed help concentrating in school. Ways to pay attention to basic lessons, reading and arithmetic, without having our thoughts instantly, constantly go to her. Our father and doctors had worked with us through all that, giving encouragement, helping us.

  I was six when she left; twelve when my father got sick, thirteen when he died. Maybe if we’d had more time, if he were still here when I was more grown up, like now, the truth could have come out.

  All of a sudden I noticed the boat slowing down. Turning, I caught Rafe’s eye.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I can’t take you to the mainland,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “It’s the wrong thing to do.”

  “Give a friend a ride?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Not that. I’m talking about you. You should stay and talk it out with your mother.”

  “Rafe?” I asked. “Are you serious? You don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “And I don’t want to see you make a mistake like this before you tell me.”

  “I don’t want to tell you, I don’t want to talk about it, I just need to get to the airport!”

  “Then someone else will have to take you,” he said.

  The boat bobbed on small waves for a moment, and then he turned the wheel and we began heading back toward Anacapri. My heart was racing, and I felt hijacked. Still gripping my backpack, I watched the island of Capri slide by as we took the long boat ride home.

  When we approached our little cove, Rafe steered the boat into an unfamiliar inlet, a quarter mile or so from the dock. Rocks were everywhere, sticking out of the water on all sides as he piloted through a narrow channel. The shore was all rock, with a dark slit opening in the sheer cliff ahead. I held my breath as he drove us slowly through the aperture.

  We were in an almost-cave; I say “almost” because the rocks rose and curved around us, but instead of being closed at the top, there was a wide chimney reaching up to blue sky. Light streamed in, turning the water bright, dazzling, emerald green. This had to be one of the grottoes.

  “What is this?” I asked, my voice echoing through the chamber.

  He didn’t answer right away, motoring slowly over to the grotto wall. Just when I thought we were going to hit it, I heard a slight crunching sound and felt the boat slide onto a ledge. Looking over the side, I saw we were beached on a black sandy bottom. Rafe jumped out, walked through shallow water to the bow, and made the bowline fast to an iron ring bolted to the rock wall. Now we were all tied up, but where?

  “You might want to take off your shoes,” Rafe said.

  “What is this?”

  “A grotto on my grandfather’s property.”

  “What’s wrong with the dock?” I asked.

  “Look,” he said. “My grandfather keeps pretty close watch on me. He and your mom are close, and if you two are fighting, or whatever this is, odds are she’ll talk to him about it. He’s seen the boat is gone; if he spots it at the dock, you won’t have time to figure things out before your mom’s all over you.”

  “So, you’re going to help me figure things out?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Yep,” he said.

  I kicked off my flip-flops, and stepped over the side of the boat into cool salt water. The waves lapped our ankles as we walked along the grotto’s rock, out the opening, into bright daylight. I glanced up, saw thin cirrus clouds, long, swooping ribbons: mare’s tails.

  Rafe and I walked around the rocky point, just at the very base of the steep hill. We kept to the shadows, and I knew he was trying to stay out of sight of the houses up above. The whitewashed boat-house lay ahead, set on concrete piers to allow the tide to flow beneath. Just beyond were the stone steps up to my mother’s house and the villa.

  Unlocking the door, Rafe let me in. I felt surrounded by the sea: the sound of waves was everywhere, coming through the windows, through the floorboards. The place was sparely furnished: a single bed, a desk, two wooden chairs. Outside, the cry of mournful seabirds.

  My skin tingled. Not just from the surging sea, the breeze, and feeling wrecked about my dad, but something else: Rafe stood so close to me. He stared, his blue eyes so wide-open.

  “What am I doing here?” I asked.

  “You can talk to me,” he said. “It was noisy in the boat, but it’s quiet here. Tell me how I can help you.”

  “No one can help,” I said. “It has to do with me and my father. He’s the one I need to talk to, but he died three years ago.”

  “I get that,” he said. “Same with my grandmother. She’s the only one I want to talk to about what happened, but I can’t. In a way, it’s worse, because it’s my fault she died.”

  He was right: at least I couldn’t blame myself for my father’s brain tumor. I’m almost seventeen, pretty young in some ways, but older than my time in others. My father’s death, and all that had gone before, had made me grow up fast.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said.

  And he kissed me.

  Travis was known for getting things done. At Newport Academy, after just one season, he’d been elected captain of the football team for the coming year. Workouts started in mid-August; he’d been in touch with all his teammates, making sure they were good to go.

  Even on the trawler, his first summer as a commercial fisherman, the captain gave him a lot of responsibility. When the insurance company had refused to reconsider raising the rates, Captain Zeke had thrown his cell phone ac
ross the wheelhouse. Travis had been the one to call the agent back, calmly go over the policy, talk her into getting more quotes—and she had, and Zeke wound up with lower rates than before.

  Zeke had no problem with giving Travis a long weekend off—Thursday through Tuesday—to reward him for great fishing, and taking care of business. It seemed incredible to Travis, the idea of flying to Italy for such a short time, but that’s how much he needed to go. Lucy had called her mother back, and still there was no sign of Pell. The main problem was airfare.

  “Just do it,” Beck advised, when he got home from work that day. “Who cares what it costs? There’s no price tag on love.”

  “You’re fourteen,” Travis said. “You might be a genius, but you don’t get it. I’m saving up for school.”

  “You’re worried about Pell, and you’re putting tuition before her? You’re right, I don’t get it.”

  His sister made him think. Travis excused himself, went into his room. He looked through the Newport Academy directory, looked up Ty’s number in New York. He lived on Park Avenue; it sounded rich. The maid answered, gave Travis a different number to call, 516 area code.

  “Hey, man,” Travis said when Ty picked up.

  “How’s it going?” Ty asked.

  “Great. Where are you, anyway?”

  “Southampton,” Ty said. “At our summer place. What’s going on? You calling an early practice?”

  “Not exactly,” Travis said. “I wanted to ask you about someone.”

  “Who?”

  “Rafe Gardiner.”

  Long silence. Travis had time to think about the difference between him and his school- and teammates. Most people who attended Newport Academy had money. They came from families who could afford fancy Manhattan apartments, big houses in the Hamptons; they didn’t have to rely on grants, loans, and the largesse of their girlfriend’s grandmother to get through school. Mrs. Nicholson endowed his and Beck’s scholarships, and it burned him thinking she saw his family as a charity case. It gave her a chance to look down on him.

  “Rafaele,” Ty said after a minute. “He lives, or lived, a floor below us. We went to St. David’s, but, man—that was a long time ago. And that incident, that only happened once. Who the fuck told you, anyway?”

  “Told me?” Travis asked.

  “What, some asshole who wants my position on the team told you about Central Park? The charges were dropped, Trav….”

  “Hey,” Travis said, his heart starting to thump. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re team captain,” Ty said. “I assumed you were getting all hard-ass about past infractions of the honor code. Is that why you’re asking about him?”

  “No,” Travis said. “I don’t care what you did in Central Park—it won’t affect you being on the team. But I’d really appreciate it if you told me, if it has anything to do with Rafe—Rafaele—Gardiner.”

  “Okay” Ty said, taking a deep breath. “I’m trusting you, man. I don’t want to fuck up my senior year with getting kicked off the team for something that went down two years ago.”

  “You won’t. Tell me, okay?”

  “We were smoking a joint in the park. Cops came along, we got busted. I got out of it, no problem—good lawyer, first arrest. But Rafe had coke on him. And oxycodone, enough so they said he was dealing.”

  “He’s a drug dealer?”

  “No, not like that. He’s just fucked up, can’t stay out of trouble. He got out of jail time by enrolling in a rehab. Too bad he didn’t go straight there—I heard he went to Italy and some weird shit went down, and his grandmother wound up dying.”

  Travis froze. “He killed her?”

  “I don’t know the details, but yeah. It was an accident, but still. My parents know his dad, and he’s pretty much washed his hands of old Rafe. Why are you asking all this?”

  “You mentioned Italy,” Travis said. “Capri, right?”

  “Yeah,” Ty said. “How do you know?”

  “Pell’s there,” Travis said. “Her mother lives next door to his grandfather, and he’s around this summer.”

  “Keep her away from him,” Ty said. “She’s a sweet girl.”

  “Would he hurt her?”

  “He hurts everyone,” Ty said. “I kind of feel bad for him. He was best friends with my brother when they were little, but then his mother died, and he just lost it. He became the kid no one wanted to play with. Long story, but he kind of went bad. His dad’s a big deal in a British bank, never around. Rafe just basically ran wild. He always had a girlfriend, usually some nice girl who goes for the bad-boy thing. Pell wouldn’t, but some of them got into coke with him.”

  “You’re right, Pell wouldn’t,” Travis said.

  “Still, keep her away from him,” Ty said.

  “Thanks, Ty,” Travis said.

  “You sure this won’t affect me on the team?”

  “It won’t,” Travis said. “See you in August.”

  He hung up and dialed Pell. What was he going to say to her? He felt like a dad about to deliver a lecture, or someone in a horror movie yelling “Get out of the house, the madman’s about to strike!” Straight to voicemail. He’d already left so many messages, he didn’t even bother. Sitting on the side of his bed, he stared at the wall and knew what he had to do.

  Lucy’s grandmother hadn’t liked the plan, but Lucy wasn’t really asking her permission. At fourteen, she was obviously a minor, and there were many decisions she could not make on her own. To access her money, for example, or to leave the country, she needed the permission of her guardian. That person was not Edith Nicholson. It was Stephen Campbell, one of her father’s best friends. Lucy had explained the situation to Stephen, and he had put in a call to her trustee—William Crawford of United Stonington Trust.

  William was cool. He’d been a friend of Lucy’s dad, too, and he’d known her mother back in their prep school and college days. He’d listened to Lucy and Stephen, agreed to approve the trip. Normally it wouldn’t have taken such a powwow to plan a visit to Lucy’s sister and mother, but there was one complication that had to be addressed.

  Stephen had picked Lucy up at her grandmother’s estate; they drove straight to Beck’s house, and Stephen waited in the car while Lucy ran to the door.

  “Is he here?” Lucy asked when Beck answered.

  “Yes,” Beck said. “He’s in his room, filled with angst.”

  The two girls hurried through the small house; Lucy checked her watch—there wasn’t much time to lose. When they got to Travis’s door, Beck knocked hard.

  “I’m busy!” he called.

  Beck and Lucy exchanged glances, and Beck rapped again.

  “Open up now! It’s urgent!”

  “Come in.”

  Beck threw open the door, and Lucy saw Travis sitting at his computer, scrolling through some travel website. He had pulled up discount flights to Rome, and she saw he’d been making notes on a pad.

  “Hi, Lucy,” he said. “You on your way?”

  “You should know,” she said. Travis had reserved the flight for her; he’d wanted to get a seat for himself, too, but it was full price, beyond his budget.

  “Well, I’ll try to catch up with you,” he said. “If I can find—”

  “No,” Lucy said. “You’re coming with me now.”

  “I want to, you have no idea. And I would—Beck, you were right, what else is money for? But I don’t have enough; even if I use all my savings from fishing so far, I can’t afford the full-price fare. I have to—”

  “It’s all taken care of,” Lucy said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Remember what I told you, about emergencies? I explained it to my trust officer, and he agreed—you are needed, Travis.”

  “Lucy, you’re the second-most-capable fourteen-year-old I know,” Travis said, with a glance at Beck. “You don’t need a chaperone.”

  “No,” she said. “But Pell needs you.”

  Travis took that in; h
e couldn’t argue with her, didn’t even seem to want to try.

  “I’ll pay as much as I can, owe you the rest,” he said.

  “It’s a done deal—you don’t owe me anything. Just hurry,” Lucy said. “Stephen’s giving us a ride to the airport. He’s waiting outside now. Pack your stuff, and let’s go!”

  “Take a shower, dude,” Beck said. “You don’t want to arrive in Capri smelling like codfish. I’ll pack for you.”

  Travis ran into the bathroom, and they heard the shower running. It was just noon, and the flight left New York at eight that night. Lucy and Beck grinned at each other, taking the opportunity to turn Lucy’s watch and Beck’s clock radio six hours ahead, sync them to Italy time.

  Seventeen

  By twilight, high clouds covered the sky, obscuring Monte Solaro in mist. Pell hadn’t returned home all day. Lyra and Max had looked all over the island, then he had dropped her off at home to wait. She’d walked through the garden, thinking maybe Pell had gone somewhere quiet to think. But she knew, and so did Max, that Pell was with Rafe, that they had gone somewhere in the boat.

  Lyra sat on the terrace, watching weather move in. Dampness surrounded her, and clouds were settling, vast and gray. A sharp breeze picked up, blowing through the trees. How quickly the azure water lost its blue, drained of brightness. No lights sparkled across the bay; haze enfolded the mainland.

  The dock was barely visible down below. Lyra kept her eyes on it, waiting for the yellow boat to return. Max had called Nicolas and John, Stefan, and all his other friends, asked them to watch out for Rafe and Pell. Nicolas had accosted Arturo, threatened him with the loss of his boat slip if he didn’t tell him where Rafe was. Arturo defensively said he’d seen him heading toward Il Faraglioni hours ago, and Nicolas had taken a boat over to look. Max was still searching Capri, going to the places his grandson had been known to go.