The Geometry of Sisters

by Luanne Rice

  J.D. had tea with Taylor Davis's daughter Pell. They sat in his garage apartment, eating chocolate chip cookies she'd brought from school. He poured them cups of Earl Grey her favorite. Cold air swirled around, under the garage doors. He handed Pell a spare sweater, to make sure she was warm enough.

  “Thanks, J.D.,” she said.

  “I don't want you freezing,” he said. “Catching a cold or something.”

  “Don't worry about me,” she said. “You're the one I'm concerned about. Do you really plan to spend the whole winter in here?”

  “Sure,” he said. “It's the best of all worlds. Ted and Stephen know where to find me, and if we grab Angus we've got a built-in poker game. I'm within shouting distance of you and Lucy, if you ever need me. Plus, it's pretty handy for you to bring me these excellent cookies.”

  “I'm glad you like them,” she said. “We have the best cook at school.”

  “Mrs. McFadden, the same as when your dad and I went there.”

  She nodded and sipped her tea. For a long time he'd avoided mentioning Taylor to her or Lucy but he'd realized they liked it. Everyone wanted to know the people they loved most mattered.

  “So tell me,” he said, refilling her cup. “What's new at school?”

  “There's a new family there,” she said. “From the Midwest.”

  He put down the teapot.

  “Mrs. Shaw teaches English. She's really great, all the kids like her. Her daughter Beck is Lucy's best friend. And her son Travis plays football…. He's awfully nice.”

  J.D. wondered how bad it would be to wrangle details about Maura, to ask his goddaughter about English class and hope she'd say something about her teacher's life, state of mind. But he wanted to do right by Pell, and from the way she blushed just saying Travis's name, he figured that's what she wanted to talk about.

  “He's a friend of yours?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “We're becoming friends.”

  “Maybe more?” he asked. “Considering you have so much in common …”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, you said he's from the Midwest.”

  Her cheeks turned pinker. “He has a girlfriend back home,” she said.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “Maybe it's not serious.”

  “I'm sure,” she said. “I met her. He… well, he said they're not together anymore. She said something about his sister, and they broke up. But I don't know. It's all so new to him, moving out here. He's been through a lot. His dad died, and his sister ran away.”

  “That's a lot,” J.D. said, thinking of Carrie.

  “It is. And I don't want to get in the way, between him and his girlfriend if they decide to get back together.”

  J.D. stirred his tea. He wanted to look this young woman he loved so much square in the eye; he wanted to tell her that she should tell Travis how she felt, forget about the girlfriend in Ohio, take whatever chance she had to follow her feelings.

  “I made a mistake once,” he said slowly. “I let someone get away.”

  “The woman with the lighthouse,” she said, smiling.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I've told you about her….”

  “She's like a myth,” Pell said. “To me and Lucy. The woman our dear J.D. will always love.”

  “A myth,” he said, laughing, wondering how she'd feel to know this mythic woman was the school's new English teacher, the mother of her football player. “You can't help who you love.”

  J.D.'s hands were cold. He let the cup of tea warm his fingers. His own words echoed; he thought of seeing Maura after all this time. She'd spent eighteen years away from him, and now she was less than a mile away. He swore he felt the air move every time she took a step. But he had so little to give her. He was locked in his body, trapped in a wheelchair.

  “She's lucky, whoever she is,” Pell said, as if she could read his mind. “To have you love her so much.”

  “I don't know about that,” J.D. said. He smiled at his goddaughter, compassionate and wise. Taylor would have been so proud of her. He was about to say it, but he couldn't speak. Life had given him wonderful people, then taken them away—Maura, Taylor. Carrie. He shivered. One of the effects of his injury and infections was that he got cold so easily. Pell saw, slipped the extra sweater off and tucked it over his shoulders.

  “Hey,” he said. “That's for you.”

  “No,” she said. “Besides, I've got to go. I have homework, and I want to check on Lucy.”

  “How's she sleeping?” he asked.

  “Same,” she said.

  “Have you heard from your mother?”

  “Birthday cards,” Pell said, and smiled sadly.

  “Give Lucy my love, okay?”

  “Okay” Pell said, kissing his cheek. J.D. stared at her, this strong, wonderful girl. He had to fight the urge to tell her to go back to school and grab Travis Shaw by the collar. Shake some sense into him. He wanted to tell her about Carrie. Tell her that if he and Katharine had their way, she'd be home soon. That a runaway sister would be one less reason for her to keep her distance from the boy she obviously cared about.

  But Katharine had called, said there was no news. J.D. wasn't going to let any hint about Carrie out, nothing that Maura could possibly hear. He wasn't going to risk hurting her that way. He knew how deadly a broken heart could be.

  13KATHARINE O'DONNELL HAD BEEN IN LOVE. IT seemed so sad to blame everything on that, on unrequited love, but the truth was the truth. As much as she'd have liked to change things around, come out seeming less ridiculous, she couldn't escape the real story. She loved someone who didn't have the same feelings. He'd loved her sister instead.

  She drove through the gates of Newport Academy. She was an artist, an accomplished sculptor, taught at one of the finest art colleges, she was well traveled and ridiculously independent, but knowing she was about to see her sister after all this time, she felt like a child on her first day of school.

  Her hands were shaking and she couldn't get a good breath. Her pickup truck bounced over a speed bump and she glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure none of the pumpkins had bounced out from under the tarp that covered the truck bed. Every year she donated pumpkins from her field, but this year her reason for coming to the academy had nothing to do with Halloween.

  Cruising around back, she stopped at the maintenance shed. Angus was there with his grounds crew. They'd just finished raking leaves, and had huge piles ready for the mulcher.

  “Thought you'd never get here,” Angus said as she climbed out of the truck, and his crew came around to unload it.

  “Well, I've been in Providence.”

  “On a mission, from what I hear.”

  “Enough of that,” she said. “I brought you the rest of the pumpkins. I trust Darcy delivered the first bunch just fine?”

  “Yeah, enough to whet the appetite for the fire. Kids are starting to ask. Including your niece.”

  “Beck,” Katharine said, trying to smile. “I'm heading over to their house right now. Where are you going to hide the pumpkins?”

  Angus smiled. “That's right, got to get them undercover so the kids don't figure out the timing.”

  “Should we put them inside?” Katharine asked.

  “Damn keys,” Angus said. “I lost them somewhere. Ted's making me copies of his, but until then I can't get into the shed. Let me borrow your tarp, Katharine.”

  “Sure thing,” she said, reaching back into the truck bed. “When's the blaze?”

  “Just before sunset tonight.”

  “Let me help you,” Katharine said, shaking out the big rectangular tarpaulin as the men stacked the pumpkins next to the shed. “No one will see. Pile some of those leaves over the canvas!”

  “Always ordering me around,” Angus grumbled. But she saw the smile under his big mustache. After they'd finished, Katharine punched his arm, climbed into the truck, and headed along the sweeping drive toward the carriage house.

  She parked under a hawtho
rne tree. When she climbed out of the truck, she saw her sister.

  Maura had stepped outside. Katharine's eyes took her in. But she didn't see the age, or the lines around her eyes, or the wisps of gray in her hair. She saw her little sister. Straight past the years and hurts, an arrow went through her heart and she saw the little girl she'd always loved, from the minute of Maura's birth.

  “Oh, Katharine!” Maura said.

  “Maura…” Katharine said, losing her breath.

  Maura walked over. They stared into each other's eyes for a long minute. Laughter started inside Katharine's chest: a sudden explosion of happiness. Maura clearly felt it too. She smiled and couldn't stop. Was it this easy? Suddenly nothing but this mattered. The pain was erased, chalk on a blackboard swept away.

  They kissed, and Maura grabbed her sister's hand as they walked into the house. Katharine glanced around the kitchen. The cottage was small, nothing like the big, airy house they'd grown up in. Set in a glade of mountain laurel, holly, and rhododendrons, the leaded-glass windows small and thick, the atmosphere was dark, slightly grim. The kitchen walls were hung with Carrie's beautiful photographs. Katharine watched Maura putting the kettle on just as their mother and grandmother would have done.

  “Tea,” Katharine said, smiling hesitantly.

  “Of course…”

  Katharine looked at the box: Red Rose, the kind their grandmother had used. Maura took teacups from the cupboard.

  “Where have you been?” Maura asked. “In Providence all this time?”

  “Yes,” Katharine said, wanting to tell her sister everything, show her what she had accumulated in the black notebook. It wasn't time, she knew. She needed to tread carefully. “RISD sculpture students are brilliant, and they know it. They remind me of how invincible I used to feel. How is it being in Newport?”

  “Where do I even start?” Maura asked.

  “Wherever you want,” Katharine said, and smiled.

  “I met Darcy when I went looking for you. She seems nice.”

  “She's great. Like a little—” She stopped herself.

  “Like a little sister?” Maura asked, giving a curious, guarded glance.

  “You've been gone a long time,” Katharine reminded her.

  “You haven't wanted much to do with me,” Maura replied.

  The kettle whistled. Maura busied herself making the tea, putting milk and sugar on the table. Katharine heard the words hanging in the air. They had been true at one time. Back when they were in their twenties, when life had seemed so long and expendable, she had cut her sister out of her life. It was the worst, most terrible mistake she'd ever made.

  “I saw J.D. last week,” Maura said.

  Katharine kept her face neutral. She had prepared herself to hear about it from Maura; she already had from J.D. They were all so much older now, had been through so much. Maura and J.D. had a child together; Katharine would give anything to find Carrie for them. But her feelings were as deep as they'd always been, and to hear her sister say his name still cut to the bone.

  “Seeing him in a wheelchair was so hard,” Maura said.

  “I know,” Katharine said.

  “All I could think of was how physical he used to be. I can't imagine how it must be for him now.”

  Katharine watched Maura wrap her arms around her chest, as if to hold herself together. She remembered the first time she'd seen him lying still, knowing he couldn't walk. She'd promised herself she'd be strong, not cry, stay positive, but she'd broken down anyway.

  “It's been so long,” Katharine said. “I think he's made peace with it.”

  But Maura looked haunted by how J.D. used to be: in motion, running, riding his motorcycle, swimming. His efficient, purposeful movements in his workshop.

  That summer, Katharine and Maura had gone to Cat Island in the middle of Narragansett Bay, under the Newport Bridge. Katharine had borrowed a boat and wanted to salvage metal off a wreck that had washed up in a storm. They had waited for low tide, and were climbing down the rocks when Katharine saw J.D. swimming out from shore.

  His head looked like a seal in the harbor. He was moving fast, swimming against a strong current. She'd watched as he reached the island's far end, where it sloped gradually and made it easy to climb out of the waves. He hauled himself up and ran straight toward them. It was a sprint, it might have been speed trials. His eyes were on Maura the whole way.

  And Katharine had understood, and in that moment let something go. It had always been so hard to think about it, or examine too far: some hidden hope, buried wish, that that look in J.D.'s eyes could have been for her.

  “He can't walk,” Maura said. “Because of me.”

  Yes, Katharine wanted to say. Yes. There had been so many times she'd wanted to scream at her sister, shove her face into the reality of what she'd done. She'd taken something precious and then thrown it away, ruined it. But now, seeing Maura sit there so pale and drawn, seeing tears pooling in her eyes, and realizing all she'd lost, Katharine felt only compassion.

  “You took care of him?” Maura asked.

  “Only as much as he'd let me,” Katharine said. “Which wasn't much.”

  “But you went to Providence,” Maura said. “You were with him for the surgery?”

  Katharine heard the question with a start. Was that what Maura thought about her time there? Teaching at RISD, staying at J.D.'s bedside. She nodded, a white lie, realizing it was better than having to explain the reality just yet.

  “Just afterward,” she said. “He went into a coma, and we didn't think he was going to make it.” Even saying those words, remembering how afraid she'd been, Katharine choked up.

  “I'm glad he did,” Maura said, seeing the tears in Katharine's eyes.

  Just then the kitchen door opened, and Beck burst in. “Mom,” she said, before she even registered Katharine's presence. “Angus piled up firewood near the football field. It's the Blackstone Blaze!”

  “Beck, we have a visitor. Aunt Katharine came to see us,” Maura said, and Beck stopped in her tracks and stared.

  Katharine wiped away her tears, smiled at her niece. Beck was small with strong shoulders, freckles everywhere, hazel eyes, a tumble of reddish brown hair. She wore a hunter green fleece jacket, a red plaid skirt, and navy blue knee socks, one inching down her calf. She looked like her mother at the same age.

  “Oh my God. Beck,” Katharine said.

  “Hi, Aunt Katharine,” she answered.

  “It's so wonderful to see you,” Katharine said.

  “Thank you. You too.” Beck smiled.

  Katharine tried to smile. This was only her second time meeting her niece; the first had been at Andy's funeral. During the years Katharine and Maura had stayed apart, the kids' childhoods had disappeared.

  Two cats stalked into the kitchen, went straight to Beck's ankles. She crouched down to pet them.

  “You're in high school,” Katharine said.

  “Yep.”

  “Do you like Newport Academy?”

  “I miss home,” Beck replied.

  “I can understand that,” Katharine said.

  The conversation seemed to make Maura uncomfortable. She fidgeted, went to the window. “Travis should be along soon. He has football practice, but…”

  “No, Mom,” Beck said. “Practice was canceled. I told you—the Blackstone Blaze is starting! We have to go….”

  And just like that, Katharine was swept up into family life. Grabbing coats and mittens, checking to make sure the stove was off—Katharine smiled, felt a pang to see Maura run back; it was just what their mother, and before her their grandmother, used to do—locked the doors, made sure the cats didn't escape outdoors.

  The three of them hurried across campus, joining a wave of students and teachers. Katharine spotted Ted Shannon, who gave her a big wave. “Good to see you!” he called as she waved back. Katharine's neck burned, feeling Maura's eyes on her.

  “You gave him my address, didn't you?” Maura asked as
they strode along. “In Columbus? That's how he knew where to find me?”

  “Yes,” Katharine said.

  They kept walking without another word. She thought back to when they were children, when Maura was feeling insecure about schoolwork, or a sport, or a boy. Katharine had understood her older-sister role right down to her bones. She was there to encourage, lead, guide. She'd loved praising her little sister. And she'd grown up wanting to be there for her all through life. It was a huge blessing to be having that chance right now.

  There was no wind. Katharine knew Angus always waited for a calm evening, when no breeze stirred the nearly bare branches, no danger of spreading the fire. Students ran over. Beck's friends gathered around her. The football team came out of the field house.

  Katharine saw Stephen Campbell staring at her and Maura, and they exchanged nods. She recognized teachers, staff, kids who lived in town. There was Edith Nicholson, the old bat who dominated Newport society: regal, dressed in fur and pearls, and the huge Nicholson diamond, a blonde blue blood who belonged to the school of thought that said rich women could and should stay looking young forever.

  She had purchased two of Katharine's pieces and donated them to museums. Katharine had learned through the years that when Edith possessed art, she believed she also owned the artist. She gestured for Katharine to come over, but Katharine didn't move.

  She stood right by her sister. Ted Shannon made a speech, thanking Mrs. Nicholson for her generosity in sponsoring the Blackstone Blaze, reminding everyone of the school's long history, the weaving of traditions and academic excellence. He mentioned the winning football season, the upcoming Middlebridge away game on Saturday.

  “That's because of Travis,” Maura said proudly. Then, “He's right over there.” She gestured at a tall, handsome boy, standing with his friends.

  “I'd love to see him play,” Katharine said.

  Maura nodded. “You will.”

  An invitation. Katharine felt a lump in her throat. She watched Ted light the torch and present it to Edith, who handed it with a flourish to a beautiful young woman with glossy dark hair. Katharine's gaze was drawn again to Travis, staring at the girl as she ignited the pile of wood.