The Geometry of Sisters

by Luanne Rice

  Not your classic “on the run” teenager, Carrie was a mystery to all who met her. The mere mention of the word “sister” brought tears to her eyes. Say “mother” or “father,” however, and she grew distant and distracted. She seemed to be immersed in a bottomless reservoir of grief. She haunted the hospital; the other girls whispered about the fact that her father was paralyzed, that Carrie couldn't leave Providence until she made sure he would be okay.

  Later, after Grace was born and Carrie had started working at the Half Moon, Dell had noticed her studying a photographer taking shots of the scenery. Carrie told Dell she used to love doing that. So Dell got her a camera. What was she in this for, if not to encourage a young person?

  Turned out Carrie had a talent. She'd hung around Hawthorne House, doing pictures of all the girls. Later, after the babies were born, she'd take birth portraits and give them to the girls for free. Some hung on the walls of the house.

  Then, this last September, a woman had shown up at the Half Moon, then Hawthorne House, asking about a girl named Carrie Shaw. Katharine O'Donnell, the sculptor. She had shown pictures around.

  “Your aunt is looking for you,” Dell said to Carrie.

  “What did she say?” Carrie asked, eyes welling. “Did she mention my mother?”

  Dell had narrowed her eyes. This didn't sound like a girl who didn't want her family to find her. The expression in her blue eyes was pure hope. That simple.

  “She said your family misses you.”

  Carrie nodded, wiped away tears.

  “Your father is in the hospital?”

  “I can't talk about it,” Carrie said. She'd asked Dell to keep hiding her, to not tell her aunt where she was. Dell had promised. No questions asked. But she'd seen the look in her eyes, and known it was just a matter of time.

  Hawthorne House girls had a lot to work out. That was a given. They had to get their stories straight. Not in the sense of lies, but of meaning—they had to figure out what everything in life meant to them, what mattered, what led them to carrying their babies and giving birth far from their families, in the arms of strangers.

  “Two turkey dinners with everything,” Carrie called now, standing at the stainless steel counter.

  Dell, sitting at the register, looked over at her. What a pretty girl she was, delicate and sweet. She'd thrived as a mother. She was one of Dell's best workers. One wall of Dell's living room at home was filled with the lovely photographs Carrie had taken of women and babies. Dell felt lucky to have such a good person working for her. She smiled at Carrie, ready to give her a proud, encouraging nod, when Carrie ran past her, leaving the turkey dinners behind.

  Turning toward the door, Dell saw a husky man with a drooping mustache pushing a younger man in a wheelchair. They were both bundled up; they didn't remove their jackets, just looked around the room as if searching for someone.

  “May I help you?” Dell asked, walking over with menus.

  “I was wondering if you know this girl,” the man in the wheelchair said, handing Dell a photo of Carrie.

  “Doesn't look familiar,” Dell said. “Why?”

  “Katharine O'Donnell told me Carrie might be working here,” the man said.

  “Lot of people work here, and lots of them quit,” Dell said. She stared at the man's handsome face, bright blue eyes; her gaze fell on his legs. She remembered what the girls had said, about Carrie's father being paralyzed.

  “Mind if we take a seat?” the other man asked. “Maybe she'll come by.”

  “Sure,” Dell said. “I've got a nice table by the window.”

  She led the men to the table, watched as the man in the wheelchair positioned himself to face the door. She handed them menus, knew Carrie wouldn't be back as long as they were here. It was a holiday, and Dell couldn't stand to lose the help. Maybe she should give Carrie a push. Tell her to get back to her station or forfeit her job. As a plus, she could connect with her father.

  Thanksgiving, a time of togetherness. Dell sighed, knowing she'd have to wait tables herself now. She couldn't fire Carrie, anyway. She just didn't have it in her heart to do that. But she hoped Carrie would figure this out soon. Glancing across the restaurant, she saw a curtain move. Someone was standing in the office.

  Hiding behind the curtain, watching the diner's customers eat their Thanksgiving meals, perfectly positioned to stare at the two men who had just come in, one of them with such love and purpose in his clear blue eyes.

  19MAURA ANSWERED THE DOOR. KATHARINE STOOD there in jeans and a maroon chamois shirt. She handed Maura a pumpkin pie; she was smiling, but her face was pale; she had dark circles under her eyes. Her cheeks looked more sharply lined than Maura had noticed before.

  “Happy Thanksgiving,” Maura said, placing the pie on the counter.

  “And to you too,” Katharine said.

  The sisters faced each other. Maura felt as wildly emotional as Katharine looked. Her chin was wobbling; she had to force it not to shake just so she could get the words out.

  “What is it?” Katharine asked.

  “I've been feeling there's nothing to be thankful for,” Maura said. “With Andy and Carrie gone. But seeing you here …”

  “That's how I feel,” Katharine said.

  “Our first Thanksgiving in so long,” Maura said, reaching for her.

  “Oh, Maura,” Katharine said, her eyes filling with tears. “I'm so sorry….”

  “So am I. I don't know how I've done without you all this time. I really don't.”

  The sisters hugged a long time. Holidays had always reminded them of each other, even when they hadn't been together. Their mother had taught them wonderful traditions, expected they'd share them forever.

  “It smells good,” Katharine said.

  “I made Mom's stuffing.”

  “Creamed onions too?”

  “Of course!”

  “I brought this,” Katharine said, digging into her satchel, taking out a sealed container. “Cranberry-orange relish.”

  “We'll have lots of it,” Maura said, opening the refrigerator and showing Katharine the bowl she and Beck had made. It was an O'Donnell sister favorite, taught to Maura by Mrs. Sisson, her beacon of domestic happiness.

  The sisters laughed. They stood still, staring at each other. Their first holiday together in eighteen years. The reality was both huge and small, just like all the time that had passed.

  “What can I do to help?” Katharine asked.

  “Mash the potatoes?”

  “Do you use a hand masher or an electric mixer?”

  Maura gave her a look. “Hand masher, of course!”

  “How could I have thought otherwise?”

  Maura handed her an apron, led her over to the stove, gave her another hug. “I do have a question, though,” Maura said. “You know that scrapbook you showed me …”

  “Have you seen a black notebook?” Beck's mother asked after they had finished dinner, after the turkey was eaten and the dishes cleared, and a second piece of pie offered. Beck, standing in the kitchen, spooned whipped cream out of a metal mixing bowl and tried to keep a neutral expression.

  “What notebook?” Travis asked.

  “It's really more of a scrapbook,” Aunt Katharine said. “It's filled with clippings and receipts, things like that.”

  “Is it from a trip you took?” Travis asked.

  “Sort of,” Aunt Katharine said. “But a very short trip—to Providence.”

  Beck raised her eyes just slightly, enough to see her mother and aunt exchange a look. The way their eyes connected gave her goose bumps. But Travis didn't notice. He said he hadn't seen the notebook and asked if anyone minded if he watched the football game.

  “Beck?” her mother asked as Travis headed for the living room.

  “Mmm?” Beck said, working studiously on the remnants in the bowl.

  “Have you seen it? The scrapbook?”

  “No,” she said. But she must have said it too quickly, because suddenly the h
ouse got quiet in the exact same way it had last spring, after the principal called to say she'd gotten caught stealing.

  “Beck?” her mother said, walking straight over, hand on the stainless steel bowl, taking it firmly away. The look in her mother's eyes: pure betrayal.

  Beck felt herself blushing as red as she would ever get. She was either going to have to lie or admit she'd taken the book.

  The worst thing was hurting her mother in the trust department; the second-worst thing, she wasn't ready to give the scrap-book back. Looking through it last night, she'd gotten lost in a story: the Half Moon Diner, the Hawthorne House, babies in cribs.

  “I have math to do,” Beck said.

  “No,” her mother said. “You have to tell me the truth. Did you take the book?”

  “The competition is in a week!” Beck said, as if she hadn't heard. “I have to get ready. Lucy told me to call her right after dinner, and I can't keep her waiting!”

  Tearing out of the room, she left her mother standing there. Beck hated seeing her like that. They'd had that talk about trust just before Ally came. Her mother had asked about therapy, about setting up calls to Dr. Mallory. Beck could have asked for help, but had she? Of course not.

  At least she hadn't lied. Lying felt worse than anything, and the only reason she ever did it was to protect her necessary thefts.

  That's how she thought of them: survival behaviors much like breathing, eating, drinking water. Without stealing, the pressure of loss would have built up in Beck, and she would have exploded like an overfilled helium balloon. She'd known that way before the doctor said it.

  What a sad truth. She despised the reality. Fortunately, math pushed it all away. She grabbed her pencil and tablet, began her work, and wrote: AB+aB+bA+ab.

  With math, she was able to think about other things. The thoughts drifted like clouds in a blue sky. What had Aunt Katharine been doing in Providence that needed documenting? What did it have to do with Carrie? She knew, somehow, that it was all related. If she wasn't afraid of being further interrogated, she would try to eavesdrop on her mother and aunt right now. But they wouldn't say much anyway; Travis was there in the next room, watching some game. Beck could hear the cheering and commentary from here.

  She tried to concentrate, found that she couldn't push the notebook from her mind. Why had she taken it? She wanted to reach under her mattress, pull it out, march into the living room, and hand it to her mother. But wouldn't that be proving to everyone that she was a thief, a bad person?

  Grisby, Carrie's cat, stretched out beside her on the bed. Beck absently stroked her fur. She tried to breathe calmly, focus on (A + a) × (B + b).

  But the notebook was just like the pea under the mile-high stack of mattresses: she felt it there beneath her and couldn't concentrate.

  Out in the kitchen were her mother and aunt. It was their first holiday together since long before Beck's birth. The sisters were back together. Something had made them remember their love. They were thankful for each other. They had love that went back as far as it could go.

  All these years there'd been a jagged rift in their family, between her mother and aunt. Beck remembered geography class, fourth grade. The teacher, Mrs. Newton, had said, “Canyons start with a crack. A very fine fault in the rock. Remember this, class: if you're ever camping, lost in the wilderness, and you come upon a tiny fissure in the rock, follow it. Within ten minutes, you will be standing in a canyon. And water flows into canyons.”

  Her mother and Aunt Katharine's break had started as a crack. Little things. Long silences, then longer. A day had turned into a year, and into a lifetime. That's how Beck put it together. She knew neither of them had started out wanting that. She was positive.

  She thought of Carrie. Her mother and aunt's estrangement had made it possible for Carrie to cut herself off. She had learned from them that silence was possible, that a person could leave her family.

  Beck tapped her pencil, thought of how hard she and Lucy were working to find the formula to bring their fathers back. That was math, it was magic, it was just two lonely teenage girls desperately longing for their dead fathers. She thought of the notebook: what if it contained something real? Something that could help find Carrie?

  Carrie had run away from the ER after the storm. Beck thought she knew why: her sister was pregnant, and if she stayed, the doctors would find out and tell her mother. Was she afraid now? Of coming home? Was she worried that no one would welcome her back? Did she think the damage was too great? She knew, from watching her mother and aunt, that disaffection had become part of their family.

  But what Carrie didn't know, because she wasn't here right now, was that the estrangement was finished. It was ended.

  Rolling over, Beck startled Grisby. The cat scooted off the bed, into the closet to hide behind a pile of laundry. Beck arched over the side of the bed, wriggled her hand under the quilt and sheets, wedged it as deeply between the mattresses as she could. Her fingers closed around the book's hard covers.

  She eased it out and opened it. She gazed at the walking map of Providence's East Side, a receipt for a cup of coffee and a corn muffin at the Half Moon Diner. She studied her aunt's sketch of the porch steps and railings of a big blue house, letters painted delicately above a rose-pink door: Hawthorne House.

  When she had looked through the whole scrapbook, she tucked it under her arm, stood up straight, and left her bedroom.

  This was the hardest walk she'd ever taken: down the small hallway, to the kitchen. Her mother and aunt were at the sink, washing dishes. The football game blared from the TV in the living room, and music played on the kitchen CD player: Carly Simon.

  “Mom?” Beck said, her lips parched.

  “Remember the concert at Foxwoods?” her aunt was saying.

  But her mother wasn't hearing Carly now, she had turned to look at Beck and was waiting for the truth, the disaster.

  “Mom,” Beck said again, her mouth drier than before. She could barely get the word out.

  “Beck?” she asked.

  Beck could have said she just found it. She'd gone looking in her mother's room, come upon the notebook in her drawer, or on the bookshelf, or under the night table. But she didn't say any of those things. Her whole body was trembling. She felt as if she had an evil force inside her, a terrible spirit, and she had to get it out.

  “I took it, Mom,” she said.

  “Oh, Beck …”

  Beck screwed up her face with shame; she had disappointed her mother again. But when she brought the notebook out from behind her back, her mother didn't even take it. She just wrapped Beck in the biggest hug possible, rocked her back and forth.

  “Why are you hugging me?” Beck asked. “I stole it.”

  “I'm so proud that you've brought it to me, on your own.”

  Beck realized: it was true. This was the first time she had done that. She buried her head in her mother's chest, eyes closed, feeling that she had finally done the right thing. And that made her think of the other objects she'd stolen, and how she suddenly had a burning desire to return them all to their rightful owners.

  “Thank you, Beck,” Aunt Katharine said.

  “Will it help you find Carrie?” Beck asked.

  Aunt Katharine didn't waste time in platitudes, in maybes or “we'll see's.” Beck saw in her eyes a woman who worked with numbers, formulas, math, and logic.

  “Yes,” Aunt Katharine said. “I think it will.”

  “Honey,” her mother said, “get your brother.”

  Beck tore into the living room. “Hurry,” she said, and he did. They hustled back to the kitchen, stood staring at their mother and aunt. Beck could hardly breathe.

  “What?” she said, shaking her mother's arm. “You have to tell us.”

  “We don't know this for sure,” her mother said. “But it seems possible that Carrie is in Rhode Island. In Providence …”

  “Mom!” Travis said.

  “How do you know?” Beck asked. />
  “Someone saw her,” her mother said.

  “Who?”

  “Never mind… that part's not important,” her mother said, turning bright red. What was that about? Beck wondered, but she was too blown away by the thought of Carrie so close by. She'd felt her sister all this time, sensed her presence almost as if she was watching over her.

  “We've been looking for her,” Aunt Katharine said. “Carrie and her…” She glanced at their mother.

  “Her baby,” their mother said.

  “Carrie did have a baby?” Travis asked.

  “Yes,” their mother said. “We're pretty sure she did.”

  “Is that why she's stayed away?” Travis asked, his voice breaking. “Does she think we wouldn't love her?”

  “She knows we love her!” Beck said, scoffing. “No matter what.”

  “I think she has other reasons for staying away,” their mother said. “That have nothing to do with you two. They're between me and Carrie.”

  “I don't believe that,” Travis said. “What could you have done?” “Who cares who did what, or anything like that?” Beck asked.

  “Carrie is here! In Providence! And guess where I'm going for the math competition? That's right! I'm going to find my sister!”

  In the days after Thanksgiving, I began to go straight. It was like waking up after a long, strange dream. Carrie was in Providence! I wouldn't have to miss her anymore. We'd run into each other's arms and be whole again. I wouldn't be missing half of myself. All the things I'd stolen arrayed before me, images that added up to a dark, nonsensical subconscious blur. Why had I taken such dumb things, as if they could fill the void left by my sister? A ceramic pineapple? Really?

  Between History and English, I returned the little brass mouse to its home, a glass-front bookcase in the second-floor reading room of Blackstone Hall. I had to wait for Logan Moore and Ty Cooper to finish snuggling on the chintz loveseat before making my move. They looked at me as if I was a perv, spying on their makeout session. I didn't care.