by Luanne Rice
“Well,” John said, nodding toward them. “Sounds as if things are going very well.”
“Looks that way,” Max said.
“David’s arrival has given me an idea for the title of your new play,” John said. “‘The Prodigal Father.’”
As much as Max would have liked to dismiss it, John’s title had the ring of truth and wisdom. But looking around the table, at the people who had so recently returned to one another, again he was struck by the danger of limitation, of making his story too small.
The Davis girls sat side by side, watching their mother with such interest and love; Travis seemed rapt with Pell, with the way she was focused on Lyra. Families sometimes went apart. Like ships lost at sea, they sent out mysterious signals and found their ways back to one another.
“Hmm,” John said, leaning very obviously toward Rafe and David. “Who’s Monica, do you suppose?”
“I have no idea,” Max said. “Why?”
“Seems she has called Rafe in New York,” John said. “Left several messages. David is giving him the phone number now.”
Max leaned over, watched David scrolling through his BlackBerry saw Rafe scribble the number down on the palm of his hand. Seconds later, Rafe excused himself, went tearing into the villa, obviously to make a call, as if he hadn’t just come home from the hospital.
“So?” John asked.
“So, what?”
“My title idea,” John said. “What do you think?”
“I like it,” Max said. “Very much. But with one small change. ‘The Prodigal Family’”
“Superb,” John said. “Much better. Don’t forget to mention the inspiration, though.”
“Of course not,” Max said. And then Lyra clinked her knife against her wineglass. And Max sat up straight, knowing she was finally ready to make her toast.
Twenty-Two
I shivered, but not because the air was cool. It was another warm, lovely, perfect Capri night. Warmth rose from the rocks, along with the scents of verbena, lavender, and lemons. No, the tingle under my skin came from the sight of my mother standing by the tripod, a look of such love in her eyes.
It brought back memories.
Sitting between Lucy and Travis, I felt them lean into me, our arms and shoulders touching, as if propping each other up, or keeping each other tied to earth. I felt I might rise, as if I had wings. I felt as if I might fly up to heaven to find my father, bring him back to earth just for this moment. So he could see us all together.
The strongest memory I was having was of my mother holding me. After she clinked her glass, she pulled the telescope out of her bag, started passing it around the table.
“I have a toast to make,” she said. “To my favorite constellation …”
People called out their guesses: “Orion!” “The Pleiades!” “Lyra!”
“You’re partly right,” she said. “But Lyra the star—also known as its Latin name, Vega. Along with Capella and Pollux.”
“Lyra, dear,” Nicolas said, laughing, “I am an old man of the sea. Many years on many decks, and I’ve used a sextant all that time, plotting courses by the stars. I do not want to tell you this, but those stars are not in the same constellation.”
“They’re far apart,” I said, suddenly remembering my first days on Capri, when my mother and I were first together. “Vega, Capella, and Pollux …” The three stars whose names were engraved on the telescope’s brass tube. The telescope came to me, and I felt the letters with my thumb.
“Let me see,” Lucy said, and I showed her. Seeing the names, gleaming in candlelight, I shivered again. My mother was holding me; it was winter, and cold. I heard the river rushing beneath our feet, down below the bridge. The night was even clearer than the one right now, so freezing we could see our breath. And we’d looked through the telescope, had it pointing at the sky when my father drove to find us, to rescue us both.
“Why those three stars?” I asked.
“Well, my father showed them to me long ago. I was a little girl, and we would take star walks, just as I did with my girls. He showed me Lyra, told me that’s where my name came from. And with Cappella and Pollux: they’re us,” my mother said.
“Us?” I asked.
“You, me, and Lucy.”
And I heard it then, my mother’s voice whispering in my ear as we’d stood on that icy bridge over the half-frozen river over half my lifetime ago. I love you, Capella, she’d said. My sweetheart, my star in the sky.
“Capella,” I said now.
“I wanted there to be meaning,” she said. “I looked for it that night, in the sky. I should have been looking in your eyes. Yours and Lucy’s.”
I stood up. I carried the telescope over to my mother. She was crying, and I know she couldn’t see well enough to fix it to the tripod. I did it for her, then put my arms around her. The sound of water was everywhere. Instead of an ice-filled river, it was the warm rush of waves breaking on the rocky shore below. The tide was in. I thought of all the starfish, safely covered by the salt water, on black rocks washed by the flow of waves.
“That night is over,” I said to her. “We can’t erase it, but we’ve healed it. The ghosts of that night are gone.”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
I nodded, and bent to look through the telescope. I wanted her face next to mine, our cheeks pressing together. When I was little, and she’d take me stargazing, we’d look through the scope as if we could see at the same time. We were so close, I’d imagine she could see through my eye and I through hers. In some ways, living so many years apart, I realized that we had done just that.
“Do you have it, Lucy?” I asked.
“I do,” she said. “But it’s over at Mom’s house.”
“In your backpack?” Travis asked my sister. She said yes, and he said he’d get it. My football star boyfriend sprinted off Max’s terrace, and I heard him running through the yards, over to my mother’s house.
Stars swung overhead, down to the horizon. Everyone at the table took a turn looking through the scope, sighing at the strange beauty of our galaxy. Rafe came out of the house, smiling from ear to ear.
“She was home,” he said. “Waiting for my call. Somehow I forgot I’d told her I was from New York.”
“She’s a lucky girl,” I said. I had no idea who she was, but I could see that he was happy.
And then Travis was back. He carried Lucy’s backpack in both hands, as if it held something breakable, set it down carefully on the wooden table between my sister and me. Lucy unzipped the compartment, pulled out a stiff cardboard file folder. She set it on the rustic surface, and gave me a look. Sticking out of the corner of the file, I saw the point of one gold foil star.
I’d kept this folder in my bureau drawer in Grosse Pointe, took it to Newport after our father died. For a long time after our mother left, Lucy and I would open the file, spread the paper out, and study it with care—as if we might find some clue to where she’d gone, how we could find her. But it had been many years since Lucy and I had looked at it together; the last time, we’d re-glued some of the stars. Since then, I couldn’t even remember opening the folder.
Our first moment alone together, here in Capri, Lucy told me she’d brought it with her. At first I was unsure. This trip had had its rocky moments. I’d nearly left to return home. But Lucy explained to me that’s exactly why she’d packed it, carried it all this way. Because my visit had at times been so hard, because reuniting with my mother had had its ups and downs.
I told her I threw it out, I said to Lucy. And I told her we still had it, Lucy replied.
And so we did, still have it.
“What is that?” my mother asked.
We didn’t answer. Just pulled the old yellowed paper from the cardboard. The sheet had been folded so long, there were tears along the creases. Lucy unfolded it carefully, laid it on the table.
“Our map,” my mother said.
“Dorset,” I said, looking at the child
’s colored-in country and ocean. The land mass, drawn with green crayon by my mother, was irregularly shaped, vaguely circular, an island.
Blue water surrounded the island; I remembered leaning over the paper, carefully coloring in the sea, using all the blue crayons in the box. Midnight blue, periwinkle, thistle blue, turquoise, navy blue, cornflower, all blended on the page, my version of the deep blue sea. And there, all around the drawing’s border, were the bright foil stars Lucy had stuck on.
“Some of them were loose,” Lucy said. “Pell and I glued them back.”
The three of us stared at it for a long time. We’d made it during the last days our mother lived with us. Our father had watched us, knowing that she would be leaving soon. Perhaps he had realized, even more than she, how important this map would become to all of us.
“What is it?” Max asked.
“A map,” my mother said, wiping her eyes. “Of a place we all dreamed of. The three of us.”
“It was a country we made up,” I explained. “We called it Dorset, after the road we lived on.”
“It looks like Capri,” Rafe said, looking over my mother’s shoulder.
“It does,” Lucy said, and staring at it now, I realized my mother had drawn the shape of Capri. She had known where she was going; it was her way of telling us where she would be. The knowledge pierced my heart; to go back ten years, remembering what our family was about to go through … how had she been able to bear it? How had any of us?
“Sometimes,” Max said, “when parents and children are far apart, they have to reach for what is there. A map, a telescope … even the stars in the sky. It’s not perfect, because it’s not the person. But it holds their place, until the family can come back together.”
“Like us,” Lucy said.
“Yes,” Max said, smiling at her.
“And us,” David said. He had come from the far end of the table to stand by Rafe and look at the map. Everyone turned to look at him. He was angular and handsome, just like his father and son; he’d said very little up to that point. He had a very reserved British manner. But just then, putting his hand on Rafe’s shoulder, we all saw his chin wobbling. Rafe nodded.
“Thank you, Dad,” Rafe said, and I knew everyone at the table was wondering what objects and symbols—what map, telescope, stars—they’d used to stay connected. Perhaps, of all of us, only Max and I knew for sure, had seen him walking the beach every single day, saving starfish as he had with his father, when he was a little boy.
“I have one more toast to make,” my mother said.
We all reached for our glasses, raised them high. My mother looked straight up, as if to toast the stars.
“Here’s to Taylor,” she said.
“Dad!” Lucy and I said, gazing up into the Milky Way, sending love and kisses to our wonderful father. Travis stood beside me; we held hands, and I sent a silent prayer to his father too.
“And,” my mother continued, still looking heavenward, “to Christina.”
“To Christina!” we all said.
And we stood there in a half-circle facing out to sea, looking up at the constellations. Down below, waves rolled in, breaking on the rocks, covering the starfish, reflecting the stars. We were each separate, and we were all together.
We had made such mistakes, over and over again. But somehow, miraculously, with clumsy and heartbreaking effort, we managed to fix them and just keep going. Life and love required advanced skill and we were all, even the oldest among us, just beginners. But standing on Max’s terrace overlooking the sea, I knew we’d all keep trying.
Epilogue
Il Faraglioni towered out of the ocean, white rocks sparkling in the morning light, one an arched formation with a keyhole opening that boats could drive through, made from thousands of years of wind and waves. Seagulls, terns, and long-legged waders roosted on flat surfaces, and tufts of grass and flowers took root in every shallow crevice.
“Here we are,” Pell called, driving the boat, slowing it down.
Lucy reclined in the stern. Their mother sat beside her, head tilted back as the breeze blew her hair out behind. They all wore bathing suits, knowing that a swim was part of the day’s plan. But for now, they stared up at the rocks, austere and eternal.
It was just the three of them. Travis had stayed in Anacapri, to tour the island with Rafe and Max. David had flown back to London. Lucy knew Travis had offered to come and serve as skipper, but Pell had spent many summers on the water, knew her way around boats. She wanted this trip to be just for the girls.
Lucy gazed at the islands. Max had told her that they were home to the lucertola azzurra, a rare blue lizard, the only place it existed in the world. When she’d asked Pell if they could explore the islands, Pell had nodded. This was their time—just for the three of them.
Now Pell cut the engine. She signaled for Lucy to drop the anchor. It went over the side with a splash; Lucy watched it speed down to the bottom, sparkling metal shooting through clear water.
Pell reached into the cabinet under the console, pulled out three net bags filled with masks, snorkels, and fins. Rafe had spoken to Nicolas, helped her find a dive shop, and they’d gotten the gear they needed.
“In all the years I’ve lived here, I’ve never snorkeled,” their mother said.
“Well, you have the garden and sky covered,” Pell said. “Time to check out the ocean.”
“What will we see?” Lucy asked. “Is it like a coral reef, with angelfish, grouper, eels … ?”
“You’ll see,” Pell said. “Starfish.”
Lucy smiled at the nickname. She tugged on her fins, eager to jump over the side. Pell helped her adjust the strap on her mask. Their mother took out her camera, snapped pictures. Lucy was beaming so wide, her cheeks ached. If the trip ended right this minute, she would be the happiest girl on earth.
She gazed at her mother and older sister. They looked so much alike, with identical blue eyes. Lucy leaned over the side, to look at her own reflection in the water and see if she matched up. It was too blurry, but she really didn’t care—she already knew. She was one of them, a Davis woman through and through.
They had come together—a mother and her two daughters—and they would go apart again. When Lucy and Pell returned to Newport, their mother would stay on Capri. It wasn’t life the way anyone would have dreamed it. But people were who they were.
All of Lucy’s 2:01 a.m. sleepless nights had taught her that. She was only fourteen, but she knew things couldn’t be forced. Life had unfolded for her family differently than it had for others. There was so much about it that seemed unfair, cruel, beyond belief. She thought back to Grosse Pointe, to the earliest days, when they’d all been together. If someone had told Lucy that her mother would leave, her father be taken by death, Lucy would have thought it was a wicked fairy tale. Such events were too unthinkable to be real.
Life was a tide, spun by forces too great to be questioned, sweeping in and out. It might be easier to build a seawall of sand, circle the castle, protect the ramparts, than try to alter or affect the tide of life. Lucy’s mother had to stay on Capri. It’s where she gardened, where she lived. Staying here would keep her happy and sane, so she and her daughters could go on. Who knew what the future would bring? Maybe someday they would all live in the same place again.
And maybe not.
Lucy glanced around the boat. Pell was checking the anchor line; their mother was staring at her with such boundless love Lucy thought her own heart might burst. Then her mother looked at Lucy with the same light in her eyes, and Lucy smiled at her. This trip had made them a family.
They might do things differently than other people, but they belonged to one another. They always had, but this summer they’d realized it in a new way. Somewhere in the world it might be 2:01 a.m., but Lucy had a mother. She and Pell had their family back. It was as if Lucy’s mother read her mind: she nodded, resolutely, as if nothing could ever shake her from what she felt, what they all had.
“Ready?” Pell asked.
“Ready,” Lucy and their mother said.
They stood up on the rail, and one by one jumped in, hit the water with a shock. It felt cold at first, but Lucy got used to it right away. They swam in a line, from the yellow boat toward the eroded arch. Sunlight slanted through the rock opening, turning the turquoise water jade green.
Through her mask, Lucy saw sparkles of gold—as if particles of the sun had fallen into the sea, drifting downward. No, they were swimming. Tiny fish! So excited, Lucy pointed. She saw bubbles escape Pell’s mouth, and through the mask her sister’s eyes were smiling.
The three of them swam toward the school of fish. Underwater, Lucy heard her heart beating in her ears; the sound of her breathing was steady. Otherwise the world was silent as they advanced in a line, Lucy between her mother and Pell. They approached the creatures, which were not the fish Lucy had first thought.
“Seahorses!” she said, the word dissolving in laughter and bubbles.
Pell nodded, and their mother stopped swimming. The two girls reached out their hands, and the tiny seahorses swam closer, their fins beating like miniature wings, and they wrapped their long tails around the sisters’ fingers. When Lucy turned, to make sure her mother felt the seahorses too, she saw her mother holding back, just watching.
Lucy looked at Pell, and Pell at her mother. It wouldn’t do for her to be so far away, so the two girls reached out their hands. The seahorses scattered, and Lyra took her daughters’ hands. They held tight for a minute, just treading water. Bubbles drifted up to the surface; maybe into the sky, maybe up to Taylor.
“I love you, I love you, I love you,” Lucy said underwater, talking to her father, mother, and sister.
Then Lucy, Pell, and their mother turned seaward. Still holding hands, they swam in a straight line through the blue water, surrounded by glints of gold, by a thousand seahorses. The tide came in, and the family swam.
