The Geometry of Sisters
Page 18
The sticks began to crackle. A thin plume of smoke wafted into the heavy gray sky. The flames spread, and the smoke thickened. Ted and his wife called everyone over to a long table, to help themselves to hot cider and cinnamon doughnuts. Stephen called to Maura; she shook her head.
Katharine and Maura just stood there staring into the fire, arms touching. Katharine didn't want to move, or even breathe. She'd made peace with her feelings about J.D.; he wasn't between them anymore. She didn't want to take one step away from her sister. And it seemed that Maura felt the same way.
Travis waved to his mother. She was standing with his aunt, a woman he'd met only once in his life, at the funeral. Still, he'd have known her anywhere. She looked just like his mom, only a little older and bigger, with a long braid down her back. He started toward them, but Pell was suddenly there, her hand on his elbow.
She wore a navy blue pea coat and black watch cap. Her lips were pink, smiling, and her breath wisped out into the frosty air.
“Travis, my grandmother wants to meet you,” she said.
“Oh,” he said, flattered, not sure how to act in front of such an obviously rich and important lady, who stood nearby with Mr. Shannon. Pell pulled him into the small circle. He wanted to make a good impression for Pell, so he stood tall and faced her grandmother. Pell stood by his side, leaning into him slightly, the pressure of her body electric. He felt himself turning red, thrilled that she would want to introduce him to her only family here in Newport.
“Edith, may I present Travis Shaw,” Mr. Shannon said. “Travis, this is our wonderful benefactor, Mrs. Nicholson.” Pell's smile faltered slightly.
“Pleased to meet you,” Travis said, shaking the old woman's hand.
“Where is the other one?” she asked, craning her neck and looking around.
“The other one?” Travis asked. “Ma'am?”
“The other student, Mr. Shannon. Didn't you say he had a sister?”
“Yes, of course,” the headmaster said, smiling at Travis. “Where is Rebecca?”
“Beck?” Travis asked, confused. “She's over there, behind my mother.”
“Well, call her over,” Mrs. Nicholson said, smiling. “I want to meet her too!”
Travis started to go, but Pell pulled his coat to keep him where he was. Mr. Shannon went instead, returning an instant later with Beck, who gave Travis a look as she joined them and Mr. Shannon introduced her too. Travis glanced at Pell; she'd been radiant a moment ago, but now her eyes were downcast, as if she wanted to disappear. Smoke billowed up from the fire, swirling into the darkening sky.
“You're the child, the friend of Lucille's,” Mrs. Nicholson said thoughtfully. “Who didn't want to come aboard Sirocco.”
“I don't like water,” Beck said.
“My dear,” Mrs. Nicholson said, fixing Beck with a steely smile, “you've made an odd choice in secondary school… considering that Newport Academy is essentially surrounded by la mer.”
“La-Mare?” Beck asked, frowning.
“The sea, dear,” Mrs. Nicholson said, bemused. “Ted, aren't these children being taught proper French? Perhaps I should fund scholarships at St. George's instead!”
“Scholarships?” Beck asked.
“Grandmother…” Pell said warningly.
“Mrs. Nicholson wished to meet the student beneficiaries of her most generous scholarship gift,” Mr. Shannon said.
“We're not on scholarship,” Beck said. “Our mother teaches here.”
Mrs. Nicholson laughed lightly. “Dear, who do you think pays for the children of faculty to attend Newport Academy? Education costs money. Do you think the funds simply fall out of the sky?”
“Grandmother!”
“Pell,” she said, her eyes brightening and an indulgent tone entering her voice. “Learning manners is part of an excellent education. Throughout life, these children will need to know whom to thank and how to express gratitude. Manners are crucial. Now. As you are well aware, I fund these scholarships in memory of your father, a Newport Academy alumnus. I am certain that these commendable students would want to know that, and to remember him.”
“Travis, Rebecca,” Mr. Shannon said nervously, his hand on each of their shoulders. “Please thank Mrs. Nicholson for her generosity.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Nicholson,” Travis said, nudging Beck. She stood perfectly still, cheeks bright red the way they always got when she was humiliated.
“The scholarships are in memory of Pell and Lucy's father?” Beck asked finally.
“Yes,” Mrs. Nicholson said. “Taylor Davis.”
“Beck,” Travis said, watching his sister stare at the old woman. “Thank her.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Nicholson,” Beck said, standing tall. “I'll think of Taylor Davis as I study.”
Now it was Mrs. Nicholson's turn to be silent. She stared at Beck for a long moment, then cleared her throat. “That would please me,” she said. She glanced very quickly at Pell. Then she linked arms with Mr. Shannon and walked away. Travis stared at her back, disappearing into the smoky dusk of a cold evening. When he glanced down at Beck to tell her she'd done a good job, she had already run away. He stood alone with Pell.
“That was embarrassing,” she said. “I'm so sorry. I thought she wanted to meet you because you're my friend, and because you've made the team win so many games this year.”
“That's okay,” he said.
“Sometimes I can't believe the way she acts. She doesn't mean to be so awful. She's just not used to regular people.”
“It didn't turn out so bad,” he said.
“She has no idea how she comes across. She surrounds herself with people who only tell her what she wants to hear.”
The fire roared. Everyone stood back, but still close enough to feel the strong heat. He wanted to tell Pell that people weren't responsible for what their families did. Everyone made their own choices. His father had taught him that, to stand up for himself.
“I'm sorry, Travis,” Pell said again. “I didn't know her wanting to meet you had anything to do with scholarships….”
“You don't have to be sorry,” he said. “She's right. Beck and I are here because she's paying our tuition. We're grateful, and I won't forget. I'll pay her back, every penny.”
“She doesn't need the money.”
“I'll pay her back,” Travis repeated slowly, more sharply, his eyes burning into Pell's. “Every penny.”
“I believe you mean that,” Pell whispered.
He couldn't help himself; he touched her face with his bare hand, traced the line of cheekbone down to her chin. She reached up, took his hand in hers. They leaned close together, feeling the fire's warmth surround them. He wanted to tell her the blaze was nothing compared to what he felt for her.
“Pell!” The voice wafted through the air, and they turned to see her grandmother gesturing. “You are coming to dinner with me and the Shannons!”
“Oh, great,” Pell said to Travis, waving back at her grandmother.
“You're not staying for the rest of the bonfire?” Travis asked.
“There were no dinner plans until just now. I shouldn't have let her see us together,” Pell said.
“She has nothing to say about it,” Travis said, standing an inch away from her, staring into her eyes and having to hold himself back from pulling her tight.
“You don't know my grandmother,” Pell said.
“And she doesn't know me,” Travis said as Pell turned to join Mrs. Nicholson and the Shannons.
14MAURA HAD A FREE PERIOD, SPENT IT ON THE phone with Tim Marcus, the private detective she'd hired to find Carrie. He'd traced a postcard she'd sent from Minneapolis, learned she'd bought it on eBay.
“She left the lot number right there on the back,” Tim said. “I called the seller out in Phoenix, and it seems she bought ten postcards, various cities west of the Mississippi. That's what the lot was called—‘Western Cities’—and…”
“Why would she do that?”
“Carrie wasn't really in Minneapolis?”
“No, or Santa Fe or Billings, from what I can see.”
“She tried that hard to keep me from finding her?” Maura asked, feeling despair.
“Well, that's what runaways do,” he said. “But I have to tell you, I think she wants to be found. She's a smart girl, and if she went to all the trouble of using a postmark service, I'd expect her to erase the eBay lot number. It's pretty unmistakable, and contains the seller's ID.”
“Does the seller keep records?” Maura asked, hope starting to build.
“Yes, he does,” Tim said, sounding pleased. “He's checking to see where he sent the lot containing those three cards. He sells everything from postcards to old cell phones and all kinds of things in between, so he's got a lot of invoices to go through.”
“Did you tell him it's about a missing girl?” Maura asked, her eyes filling with tears. To think that some stranger had records that might lead her to Carrie made her want to jump in her car and drive to Arizona.
“I did,” Tim said. “He was sympathetic, and what's more, he doesn't want the law to come looking into his business, what he's shipped where.”
“Maybe they should,” Maura said.
“I'm working on him,” Tim said. “Hang in there, Maura. This is the best lead we've had. Once we find out where he shipped those postcards, we're going to find her.”
“Thanks, Tim,” she said. She hung up the phone and wondered if that place would be Columbus, Ohio. She'd always wondered if after Carrie had run away from the hospital up north, she had returned to Columbus. Carrie had always been such a loving daughter and sister; Maura used to dream she'd stayed close by, staying silent for her own reasons, but within sight of her family.
A knock interrupted her, and she glanced up to see Stephen.
“Take a walk with me?” he asked.
She hesitated, then agreed. They pulled on coats, headed outside into the chilly air. A west wind had blown all the clouds away; the sky was blue, tinged with the gold light of autumn. Pumpkins were everywhere on campus, balanced on boulders, lining the marble steps, wedged into the crook of branches on maple trees. Some were already carved into grimacing jack-o'-lanterns.
“J.D.'s great-grandfather started that tradition a hundred years ago,” Stephen said. “The school buys pumpkins from local farmers, and the kids carve them. The idea is to make them look even scarier than the gargoyles.” He gestured up to the roofline of Blackstone Hall. Maura glanced up, looking for J.D. in the window, but he wasn't there today.
“What's the purpose?” she asked.
“For a shipbuilder, he was a pretty sensitive guy. He thought it would give the kids power over their fear.”
“Fear of what?”
“The ghosts,” he said. “Mary and Beatrice.”
“Beatrice…”
“Mary's sister,” Stephen said. “She was four years older. They say she never got over Mary's death….”
Maura walked along, thinking of one sister losing another, tugged by thoughts of her daughters missing each other, of Carrie sending postcards from places she'd never been. And of Katharine, missing her own sister all this time. How could sisters do without each other? She mulled over Tim's news, thinking again and again of the possibility of Carrie in Columbus.
“I wonder if we've made a mistake coming here,” Maura said, stopping at the top of the ledge. “I uprooted Travis and Beck. She's having such a hard time. Last night Lucy and Pell's grandmother embarrassed her….”
“Ted was furious at her,” he said. “Everyone knows tuition for teachers' children is included in the compensation package.”
“As Mrs. Nicholson said, ‘Someone has to pay for it.’”
“She's a dragon,” he said. “Don't take her seriously.”
“Beck ran home in the middle of the bonfire,” Maura said. “Today she woke up with a stomachache. I had a hard time getting her to eat some breakfast, get dressed…. I had to walk her to school, to her first class. I want to take my kids out of here, back home.”
“Maura, we'd miss you,” he said. “You and your kids have already become an important part of Newport Academy.”
“My other daughter,” Maura said, the words spilling out. “I just heard something about her that makes me wonder if she could still be back home, somewhere in Columbus. I want to go there, be near her.”
“What if,” Stephen said quietly, “she was here instead?”
“Here, you mean Newport?”
“Why not?” he asked. “If you don't know her exact location, couldn't it as easily be Rhode Island as Ohio?”
Maura's mind raced with images of that young mother at the football game. She had known it was Carrie: her posture, the way she'd leaned toward Maura, then run away. Maura's body ached, remembering.
“Her father is here, after all,” Stephen continued.
“But she doesn't know about J.D.,” Maura said. “And even if she did, I'm not sure she'd want anything to do with him—or with me, once she figured out the truth.”
“She's your daughter, Beck's sister,” Stephen said. “That means she's smart. You don't know what she's learned, where it's leading her. I haven't known you long, but I've been friends with J.D. our whole lives. He's a good man. I'll bet anything that his daughter, whether she grew up with him or not, has his best qualities. I know she's smart and good, and I bet you anything she knows more than you think she does.”
“Why is she staying away? She was always so close to us.”
“People have their own mysteries to solve. Think of yourself at Carrie's age. Maybe her case is more extreme, but did you tell your family, the people you loved, everything you were doing? Were you always careful, did you always do the right, predictable thing?”
Maura turned silent. No, she hadn't—far from it. She'd kept one secret after another. She thought of one night with J.D., the night Carrie was conceived, she was sure of it. Carrie's life began out of love and recklessness, wild magic and luminous beauty, her mother stepping far off her normal path of life.
That night, J.D. had pulled up to Katharine's studio on his motorcycle. The air was still and muggy; barely any breeze came up from the harbor. Maura wore shorts and a sleeveless shirt, but she was sweltering.
He didn't even have to ask her. She walked across the cobblestone alley and climbed on the back of his bike. J.D. grabbed her hands, pulled her arms around him. Only one word was spoken.
“Tighter,” he said.
She grabbed on as hard as she could, her hands laced across his hard, flat stomach, her breasts pressing into his hot back.
He drove her through town, across the Newport Bridge. The bridge's lamplight had glimmered on the surface of Narragansett Bay a hundred feet below. High above the water, hair blowing out behind her, she'd never felt like this before. Precarious, dangerous, her body welded to J.D.'s.
Lights of ships at sea glinted all the way out to Block Island, a dark wedge on the horizon. Newport and Jamestown sparkled to the east and west. They cruised around Jamestown, and J.D. found a deserted lane bordered by a field and woods.
Maura had shivered with excitement, ready to lie down with him right there, in the field's soft green grass. But no: J.D. had taken her hand, led her through the woods. Bats darted overhead; the sound of traffic seemed to come from the sky. She realized they were just beneath a second suspension bridge—the Jamestown Bridge. He showed her a narrow iron ladder. Arm tight around her waist, lips to her ear, he said, “Climb up. I'll be right behind you. You won't fall.”
“I don't like heights.”
“You're afraid of them?”
“Yes,” she said.
&nb
sp; “Don't be. You want to do this—you know you do.”
What she wanted was dangerous, and had nothing to do with the bridge. She felt his arms around her, leaned back into his body.
“You want to experience everything, don't you?” he asked.
“Everything?” she asked.
He nodded, his blue eyes bright, teasing, seducing her past the point of any return. She had blocked Andy from her mind, but she thought of him now, waiting for her at home. Their home. He was always so careful, protective. He would never ride a motorcycle; he'd never break the rules and climb a bridge. He'd never ask her to do something reckless. She thought of Andy's bridge, the covered bridge, as safe and pretty as a Currier and Ives print.
“Dare to be great,” J.D. said.
And Maura put her foot on the first rung and climbed. She barely noticed the thin metal, the fact there was nothing to break a fall—one misstep and she'd tumble a hundred feet down to the ground.
Studying history, she'd used her imagination to travel back in time to every exploration, each siege, the bloodiest battle. Reading literature, she'd wanted to fall in love like Anna Karenina, like Madame Bovary She'd wanted to want to die for love. No one could have this with Mr. Sisson.
She felt wild; pressure in her throat, racing heart, not caring what happened next, as long as she got to feel this way, feel J.D.'s fingers brush her ankles, reminding her he was right behind her, close enough to touch.
And they got to the top of the ladder—not to the road surface where all the cars and trucks whizzed past, but the catwalk just below. Narrow and rickety, made of the same metal as the ladder, it ran the length of the Jamestown Bridge. She hauled herself up and turned to give him a hand.
What she saw took her breath away—he had looped one leg through the ladder rungs, was leaning back without holding on— just arching into the wide-open as if he wished he could fly, his wavy brown hair ruffling in the summer wind. It was a moment of sheer joy, pure abandon.