by Luanne Rice
“That doesn't matter,” she said. “It's just that I know how hard it's been, moving here. And everything else …”
By “everything else,” I knew she meant Dad and Carrie. I nodded. I didn't really want to talk about it.
“I know that in the past you've tried other ways to manage stress and sadness,” she said. “Even here, a few weeks ago.”
“I know.”
“I haven't wanted to push you. But I've seen you working so hard, pouring so much of your energy into math. Does it help with the impulses? Is it easier not to take things?”
I nodded. If I didn't speak, was it still a lie?
“I just want you to know how proud I am that you've found this new, better way—working hard and building your math skills. Making friends with Lucy. Focusing on the positive.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I said. I tried to smile, but my mouth wouldn't turn up. My eyes darted to the hiding place—under the pillow of Desdemona's cat bed—where I kept Angus's keys. I was sorry I had taken them almost the moment I slipped them off his belt. But I couldn't seem to give them back either.
She hugged me again, a little harder than before. My face pressed into her shoulder; I didn't want her to let go. But she had to make dinner. I tried to get back to my proofs. Instead I went over to Desdemona's little bed—plush, covered with a zippered green cushion with her name embroidered in pink thread. She almost never actually slept on it. I unzipped the cover, reached my hand inside.
Angus's keys were there, thirty or so on a big brass ring. Some of them were old-fashioned, and obviously worked in the school's ancient keyholes. Others were modern, common, and a few more were magnetized. I carried them over to my bed, careful to keep them from clanking. Then I was able to work again. I don't know why, but having all the keys to the school helped.
I bent over my paper and got lost in infinity.
15“HEY,” REDMOND SAID. “I HEAR YOU'RE GOING TO Boston.”
Beck looked up from carving a tall, narrow pump kin. She held a sharp knife in her hand and thought it brave of Redmond to come so close.
“Dude, let's not jump the gun. Providence first.”
“You're gonna ace those regionals,” he said.
She grunted as if he'd just said the most ridiculous thing in the world, went back to gouging triangles for eyes.
“You mind if I carve with you?” he asked.
“Sure,” Beck said as he picked up a blade. “Just keep that knife away from me.”
“Ha, ha,” he said.
They sat on the back steps of the dining room, beside the loading dock. Concentrating on their pumpkins, they didn't speak. A food service truck pulled in, offloaded boxes of lettuce, carrots, parsnips, and beans. Then the dairy came by, wheeling in crates of milk and cream.
After thirty minutes, Redmond had carved the jaunty face of an old sailor—unmistakable with lines, jowls, and a squinty eye; he'd hollowed a spot on his lip for a corncob pipe. Beck watched as he ran out to the lawn, found a twig and an acorn, and made the pipe.
“That looks pretty good,” she said.
“My dad taught me how to do it,” he said.
“Carve pumpkins?” she asked.
“Make things. Acorn pipes, reed whistles, clamshell daggers.”
“Wow,” she said, sounding as sarcastic as possible. “If I'm ever marooned on a desert island, you're the man.”
“You'd want to be stuck on a desert island with me?” he asked, beaming and turning as red as a maple leaf.
“Uh, no one would ever want that,” she said. Then, getting flustered, “I mean, it wouldn't be a good thing, the desert island part….”
“When you go to Providence, I could show you around.”
She dropped her knife; it fell to the step below with a metallic clang. Bending over, she retrieved it, her face down so he wouldn't see the blush. It sounded as if he was asking her for a date.
“I thought you were from Boston.”
“I am. But my mother's from Providence. We visit her family for holidays.”
“I don't know…. I probably won't have time.”
“You mean you'll be solving math problems every minute, 24/7?”
“Probably.”
“Have you ever been to Providence before?”
“Nope,” she said.
“Well, you'll need a tour guide so you know where you're going. I'll show you India Point, where my mother's family first got off the boat from Ireland. And I can show you the Van Wickle Gates at Brown University, and the Green, and this cool pizza place.” He sounded so excited, nodding his head, his bright red hair bobbing.
She went back to carving her pumpkin. Her heart seemed to be crashing around her chest, banging into her bones. It made it hard to breathe. Why did he seem to care so much? She felt him looking at her with sweet golden-retriever eyes. She actually had to hold herself back from patting him on the head.
“Stop watching me,” she said.
“I can't help it,” he said.
“Why?” She looked up.
He grinned. “I don't know. Watching your face is like watching a movie. Something big's gonna happen.”
She scowled, but she wondered how it would feel to see the sights with Redmond. She worked on the pumpkin's mouth. “Say you did decide to go to Providence when I was there. How would you even get there, anyway? It's not as if the whole school is going.”
“Kids go to away football games, haven't you noticed? The school gets a bus for them. I'm gonna ask Mr. Campbell for transportation. You're the Newport Academy Math Team. The least they can do is let you have a cheering squad.”
Beck grunted, and turned back to her jack-o'-lantern. Redmond wanted to root for her. He sat right there on the step beside her, the pile of scooped-out sticky pumpkin seeds between them. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him clean a smooth oval seed off, put it in his pocket. He was taking a souvenir of this moment—she knew exactly how that felt, and suddenly her heart tumbled over and over, a somersault of strange happiness.
She gave her jack-o'-lantern a great big toothy smile.
“Your pumpkin looks like me,” Redmond said, his smile huge and his brown eyes alight.
“Yeah?” she asked, hiding a smile of her own.
Newport Academy had won the second-to-last regular season football game on the road against Middlebridge, with Travis scoring the winning touchdown, making a championship berth almost definite. Maura had invited her sister to come watch that game, and this one at home, the last of the regular season, versus Lytton Hall.
They sat in the stands, bundled up, cheering for Travis. As girls they'd never been wild about sports. They'd never really followed their school's teams, except for a brief period when Maura had had a crush on a basketball player in her junior class. Katharine, in art school by that time, had teased her then—and even more when she'd fallen in love with Andy, who wanted to coach.
Arms touching as they watched the game, they were knitting their relationship back together. It wasn't easy, and that was a shock. The girls who had grown up finishing each other's sentences now found it hard to even start them. Katharine knew they were walking on their own private minefield; Katharine's hurt over J.D. was still so deep, ridiculous, embarrassing. She couldn't believe she'd lost nearly twenty years with her sister over a man who'd never even known she was in love with him.
Huddled in the bleachers after halftime, they stared at the field instead of each other. Katharine felt Maura lean into her. She wanted to put her arm around her, tell her how badly she wanted to make up for lost time. Her satchel practically glowed, as if the black book was radioactive. Katharine would show Maura after the game ended, and she could barely wait.
“Wow, it's cold,” Katharine said. Then, hearing herself, “I mean, I don't mind. I'm not saying it's too cold.”
“Well, it is pretty freezing. Would you like to go inside?”
“And miss the end half? No, no … this is great,” Katharine said. “Mom woul
d have been proud of Travis. Both of them… Beck too.”
“Thank you,” Maura said.
Mentioning their mother melted some of the ice. In spite of her haiku/watercolor distance, their mother had adored her daughters, called them “my girls.” She'd died of lymphoma just one year after their father had died of the same disease, Maura's junior year of college. Such a coincidence, everyone said. Cancer's not catching. Painful love was no less real than easy love—if there was any such thing.
“I miss Mom,” Maura heard herself say.
“So do I,” Katharine said. “Every day… it was hard when we were in our twenties, but I think I miss her even more now, as I get older. I want to share everything with her, ask what she thinks about…”
“Carrie,” Maura said. “I miss Carrie.”
Katharine didn't even think; she reached for Maura's hand. They laced fingers through their thick gloves.
“Take a walk with me?”
Maura nodded. They climbed down from the stands past people they knew. Katharine led the way, along the path to the school's back gates, onto a side street. The row of poplars threw long shadows, and the brightly painted maples scattered falling leaves at their feet.
They headed to Bellevue Avenue. The Newport Casino and Tennis Hall of Fame stood at the top of Memorial Boulevard. The Victorian shingle-style building had always been one of Maura's favorite Newport sights, but Katharine steered her past. She felt pulled to a certain address, the one place in Newport she knew Maura would hear her out.
Walking down Spring Street, they came to Trinity Church, the lovely old wooden Georgian church with the tall white steeple. To the right was the churchyard, filled with graves.
“Our old apartment,” Maura said, gazing at the three-story house across the street; they'd lived on the third floor the summer Maura had met J.D.
Katharine led her to the front steps. Someone else lived there now. But this was where she knew they had to be for this conversation. This was the house Maura had come home to through all those tumultuous weeks. Katharine remembered walking up the hill one afternoon in a torrential downpour, and seeing Maura and J.D. kissing on these steps, not noticing the rain. She'd felt insane, needing to watch, to torture herself by imagining J.D. holding her instead.
Gesturing for Maura to sit, Katharine lowered herself beside her. They stared at the busy one-way street for a few moments, watching cars head toward the Newport Bridge and out of town. Through the graveyard, down the hill, they saw the wharves, the dark gray water in the harbor.
“I sat here with J.D.,” Maura said. “So many times.”
“Sometimes he'd come upstairs with you,” Katharine said. “Other nights you spent at the warehouse. From the time you met, you were barely apart.”
“I know,” she said. “I never wanted an inch of space between us.”
“Neither did he,” Katharine said.
Maura nodded. “He gave me a welder's mask so I could sit next to him and watch him work. It was ninety degrees outside, probably a hundred and twenty in the warehouse, but I didn't care. I just wanted to be with him.”
“He couldn't let you out of his sight,” Katharine said. She glanced at Maura now. “I used to be so jealous of both of you. He was my best friend. But to have that kind of love… I wanted to feel it too.”
“You could have had it with someone,” Maura said.
“Maybe so,” Katharine said, controlling her emotions; she wanted the words to come out right. “But it wouldn't have been the way you and J.D. were. Nothing was.”
“I know,” Maura said, staring across Spring Street into the churchyard.
“And it never ended,” Katharine said.
“Well, it did,” Maura said. “When I married Andy.”
“Not for J.D. it didn't.”
Maura gave her a look. This was the moment: the door was open, all Katharine had to do was step through. The truth of all this had crushed her for so long, but she was ready.
“He never lost sight of you,” she said. “Ever.”
“But he was here, and I was there….”
“He kept track of you,” Katharine said. “He knew when Carrie was born, and when the other kids came along. He knew when you started graduate school, and when you finished. He was waiting all that time.”
“For what?” Maura asked, looking shocked.
“I don't think he knew. For you to come to your senses, for you to leave Andy. I don't know. Don't forget, the world pretty much stopped for him after the accident. It wasn't completely sane.”
“Stephen said there was someone….”
Katharine nodded. “He saw a woman in Jamestown. She lived right on the bay, not far from the bridge. It lasted a few years … but he wouldn't marry her.”
“He talked to you?” Maura asked.
“We stayed close,” Katharine said. “He couldn't really do his work anymore, not the way he wanted to anyway, but he always wanted to know about mine. And sometimes he'd ask me if I'd heard from you, or tell me something he'd found out. He thought about you and Carrie all the time; that's what really drove Linda, his girlfriend, away.”
“Why?” Maura asked. “He knew I wasn't coming back.”
“He didn't believe that.”
“I never gave him any sign there could be …”
“The only ‘sign’ he needed was the way you felt about each other when you were together. He didn't need anything else.”
“He should have,” Maura said. “That's crazy.”
“Maybe so,” Katharine said, her heart pounding. “Love is crazy, after all.”
“Doesn't have to be,” Maura said.
Katharine took a deep breath, hiding her own feelings, pushing them down. “I think he was living through you all these years, wanting to be a part of your lives, even from a distance. He built something for you. And for Carrie.”
“What are you talking about?” Maura asked.
“The lighthouse,” Katharine said.
“What lighthouse?”
“On Lake Michigan, where you took your vacations.”
Maura's eyes widened. A cold wind was blowing off the harbor, and her cheeks had been bright pink, but Katharine watched the color draining out of her face.
“On the island, across from our cabin?” Maura asked, disbelieving.
“He bought the land, and designed the lighthouse,” Katharine said. “He had it built for you, to remind you of what could be, if you reached for it. And for Carrie. He wanted her to see the beam of light, to feel someone watching over her.”
“But he didn't know her! And she didn't even know he was her father. She thought Andy was.” She closed her eyes, and Katharine knew she was seeing the lake, Andy and Carrie paddling out toward the lighthouse, the violent storm rolling in.
Katharine took a deep breath. “I love you, Maura,” she said. “From the minute I heard that Andy had died, that Carrie had run away, all I've been able to think about is you, what you must be going through.”
“I can't believe any of this. He built her a lighthouse?”
“He did,” Katharine said. “And somehow, I'm not sure how, it has guided Carrie right here.”
“Right here? What are you talking about?”
“To Rhode Island,” Katharine said. She reached into her satchel, pulled out the large black notebook filled with pictures, drawings, clippings—images she'd accumulated on her days in Providence, unfolding like a dream sequence—and handed it gently to her sister.
“That's where I was when you first arrived in Newport,” Katharine said.
“I know, teaching at RISD,” Maura said, pure white. “But what does that have to do with Carrie?”
“Maura,” Katharine said. “J.D. thinks Carrie went to see him in the hospital last year. And I went to Providence to find her.”
Maura jumped up from the step, clutching the scrapbook. Her eyes burned into Katharine's. “She's there? She's still there?”
“We think so,” Katharine said
, standing up beside her.
“Oh my God—I knew there was something. Where is she? Why hasn't she called me? You're in touch with her, and you weren't going to tell me?”
“No, sweetheart,” Katharine said, trying to grab her sister. “I would never do that to you. I haven't been in touch with her, haven't found her … we're not even sure it's her….”
“I had a crazy feeling—like a dream—I saw her at a football game,” Maura said. “Across the parking lot, watching me. A girl with a baby. Did Carrie have a child?”
“J.D. said the girl who visited him was pregnant.”
“It was Carrie?”
“We're working backward, but we think so. J.D. was in a coma, had an impression of a girl watching over him. He thought it was a dream, but when he went in for a checkup recently, a nurse asked him about her. There were lots of calls to the nurses' station last year, someone asking about his condition. Eventually she showed up at the hospital; I showed the nurses Carrie's picture—J.D. too. They think it was her.”
“How far along was she?”
“The nurse said she looked about to deliver. I checked with family services, found a place called Hawthorne House. They wouldn't tell me anything about the girls who live there, but people in the neighborhood said they used to see a girl who looked like her.”
“We have to go there,” Maura said. “Now.”
“Okay” Katharine said. “Let's go.”
And they did. Katharine drove. They headed north, up Narragansett Bay, across the Mount Hope Bridge into Bristol. Maura could hardly breathe. They pulled into Providence just as the light was dying, the granite buildings soft gray and the brick houses of College Hill faded rose-brown.
Katharine drove straight to Hawthorne House, a rambling blue Victorian at the head of Wickenden Street. In spite of the cold, three girls sat on the top step, each in a different stage of pregnancy. Katharine parked in the lot beside the house, and Maura fumbled in her purse for pictures of Carrie.
“I've been here before,” Katharine said, gentle warning in her voice. “Nothing has come of it….”
“We have to try again,” Maura said, climbing out of the car. She practically ran to the house, gave the girls her pictures, explained that she was looking for her daughter Carrie.
