The Geometry of Sisters

by Luanne Rice

  “We're not supposed to say who's here,” one girl said.

  “I'm sure Carrie's moved on,” Katharine said. “She would have had her baby seven or eight months ago.”

  “We weren't here then,” another girl said.

  “Well, I was,” the first girl said. “But we have a code. Privacy first.”

  “Does that mean you've seen her?” Katharine asked.

  “Please,” Maura said. “I love her so much—I have to find her. She needs me and her brother and sister, and we need her.”

  The three girls stared at Carrie's pictures. Something about their silence felt sweet and sad, as if they knew that Maura's words were true. Maybe they were apart from their families for reasons of their own, but they knew real love when they saw it. Still, their code was too important to break, or maybe they'd never seen Carrie before. In any case, no one said a word. After a few moments, an older woman stepped out onto the porch.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “We're looking…” Maura began, then saw the woman's gaze settle on Katharine.

  “Oh, hello,” the woman said.

  “Maura, this is Dell Harwood,” Katharine said. “I left my card with her before, in case she ran across Carrie.”

  “Yep, that's true,” Dell said.

  “I'm her mother,” Maura said, walking toward her. “Was she here? Can you please tell me? I miss her more than you can ever imagine. Please, are you a mother? You take care of all these girls, you look after them, help them while they have their babies … she was my baby. Please, Dell…”

  Was it Maura's imagination, or did Dell's eyes flood with tears? The light was dying, the air shimmering with October clarity. Maura's own eyes were streaming as she stared at the woman standing over her three charges, so protective, like a mother herself.

  Dell blinked, folded her arms, hardened her stance. Maura stared at her, knew that Dell wouldn't give anything away. She felt her spirit break in half, just snap like a twig, and she heard herself sob.

  “I'm very sorry,” Dell said. “Many young women come through here. We have to provide a safe haven for them. Not everyone who arrives looking for them has good intentions.”

  “I want my daughter,” Maura wept.

  “Come on, Maura,” Katharine said, putting her arm around her. Maura leaned into her sister, feeling her legs might give out. Those girls on the steps … if she and Katharine had arrived eight months ago, might they have found Carrie? She remembered being young, pregnant, confused about who she loved, and she cried harder.

  Katharine eased her into the car. Started it up, began to drive. Instead of heading for the highway south, they cruised the local streets. Maura tried to look at people passing by, walking on the sidewalk, but her eyes kept blurring.

  She thought of Carrie. Could she really be in this city? Had she lived at Hawthorne House? What made her come looking for her Rhode Island roots? She glanced down at Katharine's big black book, wondered if the answers were in there. “You met that woman, Dell, before?” she asked finally.

  “I did,” Katharine said. “I've made a pest of myself there.”

  “Don't you think she'd tell you, give you some kind of sign, if Carrie had really been there?”

  “I think it's her job not to.”

  “How, why, do you think Carrie was here? What if J.D.'s wrong, and it wasn't her at the hospital? How would she have found him, anyway? How would she even know he exists?”

  “J.D. had the strongest feeling she wanted to make sure he had survived the surgery and was recovering. The only way I can imagine she even knew of his existence, since you never told her, was that Andy must have.”

  “How would she—did she—trace him to Providence?”

  “He's listed in the phone book,” Katharine said. “And he always left detailed messages on his answering machine when he was away. He left the hospital information on there.”

  Maura just stared. She thought of the times she'd opened the Newport directory, stared at his name.

  “In case you or Carrie ever called him,” Katharine went on. “And she must have—it was right after the lake that she was first spotted here.”

  “But she's out there, alone with a baby … why won't she come home?” Maura whispered. “My daughter, and a grandchild. Why won't she come home to me? Does she hate me so much?”

  “Maura, she's been through a trauma …” Katharine began.

  “She has,” Maura said. “And I just want to help her.”

  “I know you do,” Katharine said, taking Maura's hand. Maura laced fingers with her older sister and let her drive her around, up and down the streets, knowing she'd been here before, knowing she'd done what sisters were supposed to do: look after, take care, be with, love….

  16MAURA COULDN'T BEAR TO LEAVE PROVIDENCE. She'd wanted to drive the streets, knock on the doors, never leave until she found Carrie. The East Side was filled with college kids. Maura had had Katharine park the car, and she'd walked down Thayer Street, gazing into every young face. That night, instead of going straight home, Maura asked Katharine to drop her off at J.D.'s apartment.

  “Thank you for today,” Maura said before she got out of the car.

  “You're welcome.” Katharine tried to smile, but neither one of them could. They leaned across the seat to kiss, and Katharine made sure Maura took the black book with her. Maura had felt Katharine's gaze, charged and full of emotion, seeing her go to J.D.

  Now, walking up the driveway, Maura tried to catch her breath. She knocked on the heavy garage door, heard him call “Come in.” So she clicked the wrought-iron latch, let herself in.

  “You have to explain things to me,” she said. “Right now.”

  He'd been working out with weights, and he lowered them to the ground and wheeled closer to her. His arms and blue T-shirt were soaked with sweat. The room felt stifling, and she weaved in place.

  “Here,” he said, grabbing her hand. He held her firmly while she caught her balance.

  “I'm fine,” she said. She stared into his wide blue eyes, so light and clear. Carrie's eyes.

  “What's wrong?” he asked.

  “I need to know everything,” she said. “Every single thing that makes you think Carrie visited you.” She watched his gaze flicker, his eyes cast down at his knees. He took a deep breath.

  “You talked to Katharine?”

  “Yes. We just got back from Providence.”

  “Maura, I don't know what to say. I was so out of it, I might have been dreaming. I didn't want to start something that would only hurt you more. I wanted to protect you by being sure.”

  “But the nurses saw her too, right?”

  “They saw a girl who looked like Carrie,” he said. “That's true. She visited me, even when I wasn't awake. At first I thought she might have been a volunteer, a high school kid. They sometimes read to the patients, deliver mail, things like that. But I don't think that anymore.”

  “What do you think now?”

  “One nurse asked what she was doing there, and she said she had to make sure ‘at least one of them survived.’”

  “One of them'?” Maura asked.

  “Her fathers,” J.D. said. “That's what she said when the nurse asked.”

  “She was talking about Andy… she saw him die,” Maura said, tears flooding.

  “I think so.” He held her hand. “Once I came out of it, and heard about the girl, put it together and realized Carrie had been there, I called Katharine.”

  “Carrie found you….”

  “All those years,” he said, “I left messages on my answering machine, hoping you or she would call. And finally she did.”

  “She's really here,” Maura said. She bowed her head and started to weep. “Why won't she come home?”

  “Maybe she has to figure some things out first,” he said.

  “If Andy told her about you… or she heard us arguing…” she said, going over the fight she and Andy had had just before he and Carrie had
gone out on the lake. “He was so angry, so hurt. He was going to leave me.” She stared at J.D. for his reaction, saw only sadness.

  “I'm sorry,” he said.

  Maura thought of the storm. She saw the dark green canoe out on the lake. She heard Andy's and Carrie's voices floating across the water, then the low rumble of thunder in the distance. When she turned to look west, she saw the dark wall of low pressure coming fast across the water. The wind had just picked up hard—trees were shaking, leaves flying everywhere, and the smooth blue lake turning dark gray and whipped into whitecaps. The canoe was heading toward the lighthouse. Were they trying to make it there before the storm hit? She had never had the chance to ask Carrie.

  “You built her the lighthouse?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “It's not going to come out right,” he said.

  “I don't care. Just tell me.”

  “I wanted to be near you, do things for you, be part of your life, and hers,” he said. “I always have. I never gave up. A couple of years back, I had this idea. I don't write songs, or paint pictures. But I fabricate metal.”

  “You didn't have to do anything.”

  “Maybe not for you. But for myself. And for her.”

  “For Carrie?”

  “Yes, Maura. For Carrie. My daughter. I built her a lighthouse.” He looked straight at her. “That night when we saw Beavertail Light from the bridge—that bridge, that light, that was us, Maura. I never forgot that. And I wanted whatever I did for Carrie to be part of that too, part of us. Her parents. So I bought the island across from where you went every summer, and I had it built.”

  “How did you even know where we went?” Her stomach churned, her emotions ricocheting wildly.

  “From Katharine.”

  Maura took that in. How must it have been for Katharine?

  “I never stopped thinking of you,” he said. “Either of you. She found me, and Maura, I swear I'll find her for you.”

  “Oh, J.D.,” Maura said, reaching for him. She held him tight, the man who had given her her beautiful girl, and put her head on his shoulder and wept.

  “Hello?” Katharine said, grabbing the phone when it rang late that night. There was silence on the line, and she wondered if she'd get another hang-up.

  “It's me,” J.D. said.

  “Hey, you,” she said. Her heart turned over.

  “Maura came to see me,” he said.

  “She had a big day; we went to Providence.”

  “I promised her I'd find Carrie,” J.D. said. “I hate just staying here. Sitting by the phone waiting, even heading up there with Angus. I feel so fucking useless. Especially after seeing Maura…”

  “I know,” Katharine said. “So do I.”

  J.D. was silent on the line. Katharine held the phone to her ear, listening to him breathe. They'd been there for each other all this time, both missing the same person. She thought of him in his wheelchair, working so hard, never losing the dream that he could walk again. She knew he'd walk straight to Maura if he could.

  “She's not shutting you out anymore,” Katharine said. “She came to see you, right?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Good,” Katharine said. Part of her felt so happy, and part of her broke. She'd had J.D. to herself all this time. She'd never been able to pretend he loved her the way he loved her sister, but she'd had him as her best friend.

  “I promised her I'd find Carrie,” he said again.

  “We'll keep looking until we do,” Katharine said.

  “Tiger,” he said, piercing her heart with the nickname he'd given her so long ago, inspired by the extinct and beautiful saber-toothed tiger. “I've always been able to count on you.”

  “That's what friends are for,” Katharine said. She held the receiver gently, as if it were J.D.'s hand. She'd always loved the impossible, extinct animals, creatures that were never meant to exist in this world. Just like her love for J.D.

  17I FOUND A SCRAPBOOK IN MY MOTHER'S ROOM. It's funny, because she taught me and Carrie to make them when we were young. She said she and Aunt Katharine had kept them when they were girls, and she showed us the fun of documenting our lives in such a visual way. Carrie and I went to the mall and picked out identical cream-colored scrap-books, except hers had a butterfly on the cover and mine had a cat.

  We filled them with class pictures, our report cards, movie tickets, bead necklaces from the fair, brochures and pictures from our field trips to Thurber House. Even though our scrapbooks had certain things in common, you could tell that two different girls had made them. Mine had lots of math in it: quizzes, worksheets, tests where I'd gotten an A. And Carrie's was full of photographs, pictures of our family, the cats, our yard, her school, our town. We were sisters, but I saw the world through math, and she saw it through photography.

  That's how I knew this scrapbook wasn't Mom's. How can I say this? It just wasn't her. Let me think about that, and I'll get back to you on how I knew. It showed up in her room the day Travis's team beat Lytton Hall. They're going to play Mooreland for the championship, the weekend before Thanksgiving.

  Mom said we've both made her proud this fall—me going to the math tournament, and Travis leading the team to the ISL championship. In spite of all that, our family mood is not one of happiness.

  I'd say the atmosphere in our small, dark house is filled with a sense of waiting. If I didn't believe the worst that could befall a family had already happened to us, I'd say it's a feeling of impending doom.

  When no one's home but me and the cats, I drift through the house. I don't really snoop, but I see what's there. Travis's room: all his football stuff, his computer, Ally's letters, his Matchbox cars, the watch Dad gave him—it used to be our grandfather's, and it's made of gold and way too expensive for everyday—and a bunch of hats Dad used to wear.

  You'd think, to a girl with my problem, the watch would be calling my name. You might imagine I'd reach for it almost by instinct, slip it into my pocket just to feel its weight, decide to keep it so I could have a valuable family heirloom. I'd hide it well, in my secret kleptomaniacal stash with the ceramic pineapple, the brass mouse, cello strings, a silver bracelet Logan left in the gym, a glass paperweight from Stephen's office, a button from Lucy's black cashmere jacket, and Angus's keys. But no—I didn't want the watch.

  My father's hats—they're another story. He liked hats a lot, had a collection of them. Most were baseball caps, from his team and other schools around Ohio. He had baseball caps from all the stadiums he'd ever visited—he and Travis used to go to games together and come home with souvenirs.

  But Dad had other hats as well. See, he was going a little bald. Well, more than a little. He tried to hide it. He wore a baseball cap almost all the time, and he had these cotton hats with bands and little brims to wear fishing and when he mowed the lawn, and he even had a cool safari hat his college roommate had brought back from Africa.

  Here's something I don't want most people to know: it upset me, that my father was going bald. We all teased him about it, and everyone laughed, and that used to hurt me. Because if he thought baldness was so great, why would he have to hide it under a hat? I know he didn't like it, and that made me feel embarrassed for him.

  My father's hair was a reddish, sandy color—like mine, but lighter, not so brown. From the front, he looked as if he had plenty of it, except for parabolic inlets going back from his temples. Then, in the back, he had lost a circle of hair about the circumference of a coffee mug. And it was increasing in diameter.

  So when I go into Travis's room, I always look at my father's hats. Travis has them hanging on a rack behind his closet door. I look inside them, and sometimes find a hair or two—those I take. I keep my father's stray hairs with my other necessary treasures. Travis won't miss those.

  Then into my mother's room, where there's a true mother lode. That's a pun, but it's the reality. My mother has so many good things to pick up, look at, think about.
Even the anonymous pacifier. I don't have to take anything, because her room is always overflowing with mementos and I can always find them there.

  You can't imagine what my mother saves: our baby shoes, our baby teeth, locks of our hair, every drawing we ever made, the first shoelace Travis ever learned to tie, the pink-checked bib Carrie was wearing when she said her first word (“Da!”), finger paintings I made in nursery school.

  So discovering a black notebook that was really a scrapbook was both a shock and to be expected. Because my mother is definitely the scrapbook type; but if this was hers, where has it been all along? I would have found it before now. And why is it filled with items about Rhode Island, Providence to be precise?

  Open the black cover. Inside, a parking ticket issued on Wickenden Street. Turn the page: a drawing of the waterfront. Precise, almost architectural renderings of buildings and houses: a Victorian house, some two-family dwellings, all under the words Fox Point. On another page, Rhode Island Hospital, zooming in on it. A bed. A man sleeping in the bed, and a pregnant girl standing at the foot.

  Then a nursery filled with cribs. Inside one crib, a sleeping baby. A watercolor of pink booties, another of a pacifier. The menu from a family restaurant: the Half Moon. Then a sketch of the Half Moon Diner, again the words Fox Point.

  The book was filled with things like that. I could have spent all day at it. To most people, it would have been a mystery. But not me. I've been at this too long. I pick up belongings and feel a complete connection to the person who owns them. Maybe that's why I like “things” so much: they all come with a story. Unfortunately, no matter who they belong to, the story is usually mine.

  But this black scrapbook was different. I knew it was Aunt Katharine's. She's a sculptor, but her work begins on the page. There's a mathematical elegance to her large constructions; she has to spend time with a paper and pencil to get the dimensions, angles, mass, and stability right.