The Geometry of Sisters

by Luanne Rice

  “So,” she said. “Ally's back in Ohio?”

  He nodded.

  “When is she coming back?”

  “I'm not sure she is,” he said.

  “I'm sorry,” Pell said.

  “She knew Carrie,” he said. “They were friends. My sister wants to be a photographer. She has this theory about herself, about high school girls being really powerful but not believing it. So she tries to show it in her pictures. She took a lot of Ally.”

  “So Ally's a connection to Carrie,” she said. “I know how good it is to have that. Stephen, Ted, and J.D.—Mr. Campbell, Mr. Shannon, and J. D. Blackstone—were my dad's best friends. I couldn't live without them. I see them every day. Well, except for J.D.”

  “Why, where is he?”

  “In Newport. I visit, but he doesn't let Lucy see him much. He thinks it will upset her.”

  “Why would it?”

  “Because she—we—got our hopes up, that he would be better, and he's not.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He's paralyzed. Lucy and I love him no matter what. But he had surgery that was supposed to connect some very tiny nerve endings, an operation that had never been done before.”

  She paused, as if picturing J.D.

  “He's completely dauntless,” she continued. “He could have died. As it was, he got a staph infection, and they put him into a coma. He had to stay completely immobile for weeks. That whole time, we were worried he wouldn't come out of it.”

  “But he did?”

  “Yes, but the surgery didn't work. He believes there's still a chance, that the cells could regenerate, that connections could have been made that haven't quite taken yet. The doctors don't say it, but he does. That's why he doesn't want us to see him. He worries because we went through so many ups and downs with our father's illness. He wants to spare us that. And I think he feels he let us down.”

  “But you don't…”

  “Of course not!” she said.

  “How did he get paralyzed?”

  “Oh,” she said. “He was in love. A long time ago. He tried to climb up to a place he'd gone with her, that had been important to them; a bridge, where they'd been together. And he fell….” She closed her eyes.

  “I'm sorry,” Travis said.

  “Thank you,” she said. “My grandmother said people thought he'd tried to kill himself. The woman had broken up with him, so he tried to commit suicide. But I know that wasn't true; it was an accident.”

  “Did he ever talk to you about it?”

  She shook her head. “Not about the accident. But he'd talk some about the woman. He never stopped loving her. He told me that one night they'd stood on the bridge, looking out over Narragansett Bay, and they'd seen a lighthouse, and it always reminded him of their time together. So he built one for her. A beacon.”

  “A lighthouse? Wow—he built it himself?”

  “No, he couldn't. But he still owns an ironworking company, and he had his guys build it for her, near a place she would go.”

  “She must have loved that.”

  Pell smiled sadly. “She doesn't even know.”

  “He sounds badass.”

  “He is. My father always said he never did anything small, and he never held back. He loved him for it and believed he, and we, could do anything. J.D. went out to that lake with the workers, oversaw the project himself for an entire year.”

  Travis stared at Pell. Now he had to push her hair back, just brush it behind her ears, so he could see both eyes. Their bright blueness was so startling, especially in the fog.

  “He was in love,” he said, and the words coming out of his own lips made his skin tingle.

  Pell nodded. “Why isn't Ally coming back?” she asked after a minute.

  “She said some things,” he said. “To Beck. I… couldn't let her do that. I took Beck's side.”

  “You had to,” Pell said. “Beck is your sister.”

  “But Ally was Carrie's friend.”

  “You could let Ally know,” Pell said, staring at him. “That you forgive her. Tell her to come back.”

  But Travis wasn't thinking of Ally; he didn't want her back. Sitting so close to Pell, he felt the warmth of her body through their coats, through the cold fog. He felt as if he had a fever. He'd always been loyal. Even now, having these thoughts, he felt as if he was letting someone down. Ally, Carrie? He wasn't even sure.

  The class bell rang in Blackstone Hall, and the rest of the team headed toward the field. Their shapes were hulking and blurry in the fog. Travis hoped they wouldn't see him sitting there. He wished they'd just pass by on their way to the field house, leave him sitting with Pell, thinking about the kind of beacon a person could use to tell someone he was thinking of her, only her.

  12FOG BROUGHT COZINESS TO NEWPORT ACADEMY. Heat rumbled through the ancient pipes, making them rattle and hiss. The windows were shut tight against the cold, damp air, and everyone wore thick wool sweaters. Beck stayed close to Lucy, and one late afternoon they went to Pell's room to work on their math formulas by the fireplace.

  Seeing Pell at her desk, Lucy sprawled nearby on the floor by the fire, made Beck's throat ache. She watched Lucy absently kicking the rungs beneath Pell's chair, saw Pell reach down and gently stop the kicks with a hand around Lucy's ankle.

  “Okay” Lucy was saying to Beck, pushing her paper closer. Beck glanced down, saw a series of six thick, fat columns about a half-inch wide. “Limits and infinity, right? That's what we're dealing with. These big, ugly, clunky columns are limits.”

  “And these,” Beck said as beside them she drew six elegant, thin lines, “are infinity.”

  Everything clicked together in her mind. Mr. Campbell had shown them new formulas that seemed almost magical to Beck. He'd spoken of infinite divisibility, a theory that went beyond classical geometry. He had them read George Berkeley's The Analyst: A Discourse Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician, told them that Berkeley had lived and worked in Middletown, right near Third Beach.

  She'd read the book with the cats on her bed. The text was wild, strange, about math but somehow not. It seemed to be all about small, smaller, invisible. Beck worked as she read, examining how a tangent drawn to a parabola was performed by “evanescent increments.” How could you not love that?

  She read: “When x by flowing becomes x + 0, then xx + 2 x0 + 00: and the area ABC becomes ADH, and the increment of xx will be equal to BDHC, the increment of the area to BCFD + CFH.”

  The concepts and equations boggled her thoughts, but the odd and amazing part was, her pencil understood it right away—she wrote the notations, and her mind saw the puzzle and began moving the parts around. As long as she didn't worry, didn't tell herself it was too complicated, her hand moved swiftly over the page, working out the formula. It was like hearing a new language for the first time and being able to speak it fluently—as if she'd known it in another life. The language was geometry, and it brought her closer to Lucy and, somehow, to Carrie.

  “So,” Lucy was saying. “We're trying to move from the mass of those columns to the skinniness of the lines. With our proofs we just shrink and shrink and shrink them down to almost nothing, and then we'll…”

  Pell was listening too, holding Lucy's ankle. The sight of it was a sharp thorn poking Beck's eyes, making them water. Tears bubbled up, the bottomless longing to have her older sister here to do something so simple as grab her ankle. She saw where Lucy was going with the proof, but suddenly she didn't care.

  “They're just numbers on a page,” Beck choked the words out. “They can't bring anyone back.”

  Pell met Beck's gaze, and that was even worse. There were good older sisters and bad older sisters. The bad ones made fun of you. They would never let you borrow their sweaters. If they saw you doing something wrong, they told your parents. They laughed at you for being stupid. Carrie was one of the good ones, and obviously Pell was too.

  “Beck, I am in awe of your math skill—Lucy's too,” Pell
said carefully. “If only you could just let it be that—learning everything you can, and excelling. But I know what you two are trying to do. You're on a mission to …”

  “We're going to see Dad again,” Lucy said bluntly. “And Beck's going to see her father.”

  “I know you want that,” Pell said. “So do I. But darling, it's not going to happen … not the way you hope it will.”

  “You don't know,” Lucy said. She shook her head with resolution. Beck had seen her stubborn streak and admired it. But right now, watching her draw those spidery lines on the page, saying they were a way of finding infinity, a way to bring back their beloveds, she felt both she and Lucy were a little crazy.

  “You have your sister right here,” Beck said. “You're so lucky.”

  “But I want my father too,” Lucy said.

  “Of course you do,” Pell said. “I do too. The closest I ever come to feeling his presence is when I talk to Stephen and Ted. They and J.D. were like his brothers; they loved him so much, and they bring him back for me. Don't you feel that with Travis, Beck? When you talk to him, you feel Carrie?”

  Beck didn't reply. She sat by the fire, knees drawn up, staring into the flames. The mention of Stephen, Mr. Campbell, made her feel confused. Her thoughts raced with troubling images. Her mother had gone on that walk with him and she had been quiet and distant ever since. A knock sounded at the door, and Pell jumped to answer. Angus stood there with a big cart filled with logs.

  “Need more firewood?” he asked.

  “Yes, Angus, thanks,” Pell said, letting him in.

  He hefted two armloads of wood, carried them in, dumped them into the wicker basket by the hearth. Then he went back, returned with a bundle of kindling. As he bent over in front of Beck, she saw a bunch of keys dangling from his belt. Her spine started to tingle; she felt the bad feeling begin to glow in her bones, and she tried to clench her hands into fists to stop them from doing what they wanted to do.

  The fire crackled, sparks spitting up the chimney then twinkling down, little orange stars of fire, back into the flames. Angus crouched, trying to fit more kindling into the iron pot beside the fireplace tools. Pell asked how J.D. was, and Angus grunted that he was fine, just fine.

  Beck was in a bubble. It shimmered and wobbled, and she thought of her mother, that day they'd sat at the kitchen table talking about Dr. Mallory about trust. Then, with the picture of her mother crystal clear in her head, the worry in her eyes so visible, Beck hated herself even more as she reached forward, gently unclipping Angus's keys.

  Before anyone noticed, she'd shoved them under the pillow she was sitting on. Pretending to be focused on her math work, she was actually hypersensitive to every detail going on around her. She felt as if she was watching her life on-screen. Girls studying by the fire, friends being nice to the gruff but kindly old school worker, school worker sweeping up bark and twigs before getting to his feet. Bitch of a loser Beck Shaw stealing, stealing.

  “When is the Pumpkin Carve this year?” Pell asked.

  “Same as every October… you'll find out at the Blackstone Blaze,” Angus said.

  He brushed his hands off, said good night, and continued on down the hall delivering firewood. With Pell and Lucy still distracted, Beck transferred the keys to her backpack.

  “Okay you have to tell us about Pumpkin Carve and the Blackstone Blaze,” Beck said, blackout mode coming on. Wipe the slate clean, feel the lovely numbness of post-thievery “Being as you're an older sister and upperclassman and all.”

  “I'm not allowed,” Pell said, smiling. “They're secret school traditions.”

  Traditions. Beck had heard about them, had yet to experience one. Private schools like Newport Academy handed lore and rituals down through the ages. To Beck, they sounded so far-off and unattainable, more for the blue bloods like Lucy, Pell, Logan, Camilla, and Redmond than her and Travis … but at least her brother was a football star. They reminded her of when she used to lisp. Everyone had belonged but her, and maybe it was still that way.

  She felt a jab of loneliness for home. She'd been thinking of Columbus that way—her friends, school, routines. But what she really missed was her family the way it used to be—her parents, brother, and sister, all together.

  Beck turned her attention back to their math. She felt horrible to have swiped the keys, but at the same time, having them made her feel calm. Safe.

  She almost relaxed in front of the fire and concentrated on velocities of the evanescent, working to find the magic formula to bring her family together again.

  Providence wasn't a huge city, but there were plenty of places to hide if you didn't want to be found, especially when you had someone like Dell helping. Carrie knew how lucky she was to have found her. Dell Harwood was like a guardian angel, or the best housemother possible. After leaving Hawthorne House, Carrie had needed a place to live. Dell had helped her get this room with good light, a sliver of a water view, and peace and quiet.

  “Well, she came around again,” Dell said, showing up at Carrie's door with a paper bag full of hand-me-down baby clothes for Gracie. The baby was asleep, so Carrie put her finger to her lips.

  “What did she say?” Carrie whispered, and the two women walked to the far side of the studio, away from Gracie's crib.

  “Same as before. Showed your picture, wanted to know if you'd been at Hawthorne House.”

  “And you told her no?”

  “I told her ‘no comment.’ Confidentiality! We're a home for unwed mothers, we don't give out any information. Nice picture of you, though.”

  “Which one?”

  “Looked like a school portrait. You were wearing a blue sweater, matched your eyes. Very pretty.”

  Carrie's mother had always helped her get ready on school picture days. She'd brush her hair, help her pick out earrings, tell her how beautiful she looked. Then, when the photos were ready, her mother would always frame one and hang it on the kitchen wall with years' worth of other school pictures—hers, Trav's, and Beck's. She sent copies to Aunt Katharine.

  “What else did she ask?” Carrie asked. “Or say about me?”

  “Just that your family loves and misses you, and hopes you'll come home. They're in Rhode Island,” Dell said with a sideways look. Carrie nodded. “You know that, then?” Dell asked.

  “I figured it out for myself,” Carrie said.

  “Hmmm,” Dell said, starting to unpack the bag of baby things. “Most runaways don't keep such careful track of the family they've left behind.”

  Left behind. The words stabbed her. Carrie could never do that.

  “Did my aunt say my mother sent her? Are they in touch?”

  “What do you think, I had lunch with her? My job is to protect your privacy. If you want to know that, why wouldn't you just ask her yourself? She did leave this card for you.” Dell handed it over, and Carrie saw it was from the Rhode Island School of Design. “She's teaching a seminar at RISD, staying in a house on Benefit Street through the end of this week. After that, you can call her at home in Portsmouth.”

  Carrie stuck the card in a book, slid it onto the shelf. She felt Dell watching her as she started to sort Gracie's new clothes. Carrie reached for a pair of little red corduroys.

  “Why wouldn't your mother and aunt be in touch?”

  “Something happened between them,” Carrie said. “A long time ago. And they stopped speaking.”

  “That's very sad,” Dell said. “Life is so short. Well, maybe your mother and aunt will get together again someday. People do forgive each other, you know.”

  “Sometimes,” Carrie said.

  “Maybe things are already better,” Dell said. “Considering your aunt is wearing out her shoe leather looking for you. How do you think she knows you're in Providence?”

  Carrie shrugged, although she knew. She'd been spotted at the hospital, watching over J.D. Either he'd really been awake that time and called Aunt Katharine, or one of the nurses had described her to him, and he'd pu
t it all together. She'd been more careless than she should have been.

  “I guess you came to Rhode Island for a reason,” Dell said. She stood by the small dresser, folding Gracie's new clothes and placing them into the open drawer. Propped up on it, in a cheap frame Carrie had bought on Wickenden Street, was a print of the photo she'd snapped of her mother at Travis's game. Carrie saw Dell notice, but she took care not to stare.

  “Hawthorne House was a good place to stay while I waited to have Gracie,” Carrie said, drifting over to the crib.

  “You could have had your baby anywhere, but you came here.”

  “Rhode Island is pretty.”

  “I don't think you came for the scenery. Family ties are deep. Just the way a root system sustains the biggest oak, family roots spread out and keep a person going when she's far from home. Your aunt has lived here a long time, hasn't she?”

  “Yes. And my mother lived here before I was born,” Carrie said. “I was conceived here.”

  “Well,” Dell said, as if her point had been made. Carrie stared at her, wondering how it could all be so painful and mysterious, how she could have come to this place, so filled with roots and personal history, yet be hiding from her family. And she knew: she'd had to replace death with life.

  “I came to visit someone in the hospital,” Carrie said.

  “Yes,” Dell said. “And he's long since been discharged. I wonder how long it will take your aunt to bump into you at the diner. She's been there twice, but not your shift. The Half Moon diner doesn't have the same confidentiality that Hawthorne House does.”

  “You own the Half Moon diner,” Carrie reminded her.

  “I do,” Dell agreed, folding the last tiny sweater. “I guess you're lucky I know how to keep a secret.”

  “I'm very lucky,” Carrie said, and she watched Dell pick up the framed photo of her mother, stare at the image as if looking for a resemblance between her and Carrie, and Gracie, and maybe even Katharine, the aunt who had been looking for her all this time.