Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Epigraph
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
PART TWO
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
READERS GUIDE for Catching Genius
“Kristy Kiernan bursts from the gate with this skillful rendering of a family’s reckoning with its painful past. Kiernan peels away the layers in a lilting and luminous voice, exposing strata after strata of family secrets made murkier by the passage of time. Kiernan proves she’s a writer to watch—find a comfortable spot, turn off the phone, and lose yourself in this gorgeous debut.”
—Sara Gruen, New York Times bestselling author of Water for Elephants, Riding Lessons, and Flying Changes
“Kristy Kiernan’s fluent storytelling and fully drawn, credible characters make for an affecting novel. With effortless grace, her lyrical prose drops the reader into scenes rich with details and powerful emotions. Catching Genius is a stunning debut that will leave readers of Jodi Picoult and Anita Shreve clamoring for more from this talented author.”
—Tasha Alexander, author of And Only to Deceive
“Catching Genius is the real thing: a rich, compelling, and deeply nuanced story delivered in language that’s as luminous as it is authoritative. To judge by this affecting first novel, I’d say Kiernan’s the real thing, too.” —Jon Clinch, author of FINN
“With precise and evocative prose, Kristy Kiernan weaves a story of family and history that is as nuanced and finely wrought as it is compelling. Catching Genius draws you in with its genuine characters, and it holds you there with its truthful exploration of the enduring bonds of love and family . . . This affecting novel shines a new light on the concept of genius—what it is and what it isn’t. And speaking of genius, Kristy Kiernan looks like a debut novelist who will be around for a long time to come.”
—Elizabeth Letts, author of Family Planning and Quality of Care
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This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
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Copyright © 2007 by Lisa Kristine Kiernan.
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PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley trade paperback edition / March 2007
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kiernan, Kristy.
Catching genius / Kristy Kiernan
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-0-425-21435-0
1. Sisters—Fiction. 2. Gifted children—Fiction. 3. House selling—Fiction.
4. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3611.I4455C’.6—dc22 2006050496
http://us.penguingroup.com
For my husband,
Richard W. Kiernan,
who makes everything right . . .
And in memory of the two finest women
I’ve ever had the honor of knowing:
Ruth P. Smith
and
Mary Ellen Kiernan
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The editor who originally bought this book remained largely unknown to me. Thank you, Leona Nevler, I will always remember that you gave me a shot.
Luckily for me, Catching Genius was bravely taken over by Jackie Cantor, whose wise and deftly expressed ideas were an education as well as an inspiration.
Thank you, Anne Hawkins, my agent, who makes me laugh, keeps me informed, is loyal, tough, and kind, and sent squeaky toys to my dog.
Reva Youngstein, flutist for the Gainsborough Trio based in New York, was incredibly generous with her knowledge and experience. Thank you.
Thanks to David Groisser, Associate Professor and Undergraduate Coordinator for the Department of Mathematics at the University of Florida, and to Janna Underhill, who put me in touch with him. Janna also has a lot of titles after her name, but for over twenty years I’ve been honored to simply call her friend.
My heartfelt gratitude to: my critique partner, Sara Gruen, who read more drafts than I’m sure she wants to remember; Tasha Tyska, who kept me sane with her sharp sense of humor and unflagging loyalty; Barb Meyers, who kept me fed and watered; Tanya Miller, who made me leave my house and be a human being at least once a month; and B.S.R., for the use of the most beautiful mountain cabin during the writing of this novel.
The following talented writers offered support in various forms, and I am eternally grateful: Zarina Docken, Jon Clinch, Sachin Waikar, Rachel Cole, Sandra Kring, Camille Kimball, Gail Konop Baker, Terez Rose, and Elizabeth Letts.
Thank you to The Debutantes: Tish Cohen, Mia King, Jennifer McMahon, Anna David, and Eileen Cook. They are an inspiration.
Thank you to my grandfather, Robert E. Smith, for setting a story-teller’s example and for being excited for me. Thanks to the Claiborne family for their interest and good wishes. The Kiernan family has been extraordinarily kind and s
upportive; a special thanks to Elizabeth Kiernan, my mother-in-law, for her countless everyday kindnesses.
Thank you to my mother, Judy Claiborne. There is no doubt that I wouldn’t have become a writer without having developed a love of books, and she is solely responsible for that. I love you. I miss you. Be well.
And finally, because, yeah, I am the sort of writer who thanks her dog, thank you to Niko, who is convinced that I am the perfect companion, when it is quite clearly the other way around.
If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
PROLOGUE
Constance Belle Sykes
1969
Our real lives were lived in the dark. Late at night, every night, we met in the music room, stealthily avoiding the scarred legs of the piano, the stringless harp, the 1⁄8-size Mittenwald balanced upon the violin stand as if waiting for a musically inclined fairy. No childish night-light cast shadows across the wallpaper; only the moon, streaming through the skylight to glow upon the yellowed piano keys, lit our play.
Some nights there was no moon at all—though Estella patiently explained to me that it was still there, we just couldn’t see it because Earth had shoved its wide, round self between the moon and the sun, a social bully forcing its way into an ancient conversation—and we would reluctantly crack the door to allow the light of our parents’ downstairs lives in.
We were precocious children, promising children, healthy children. At seven, Estella was tall enough to reach everything we’d ever need and smart enough to know what we could get away with. And I, younger by two years, was quick enough to flee, small enough to hide, and beguiling enough to lie convincingly.
And though we didn’t know it at the time, we were wealthy children, the great-great-grandchildren of lumber baron Nathaniel Austin Sykes. A sound track of important conversation accompanied those nights we left the door cracked for light. Illustrious people: politicians, university presidents, eminent board members of museums and cultural centers, all came looking for that old, rapidly dwindling money. They laughed too loudly at our father’s jokes, exclaimed over our mother’s beauty, greedily ran their eyes over the volumes of rare books filling the library shelves, and scuffed their shoes against the tight nap of the Bokhara rugs.
We had the run of the upstairs on those nights. The nanny, pressed into service in the kitchen, left us alone, and the noise of the dinner covered the drumroll of our feet as we rushed from the music room to the top of the stairs and back as proof of our daring.
Sometimes we eavesdropped, glancing at each other with big eyes when we heard our father swear or our mother tell a bawdy joke. And we heard things our parents did not, like remarks about our father’s age and thinning hair, and our mother’s youth and lush figure. The men were as guilty as the women, and we even heard our own names in those catty conversations, about how spoiled we were and how we would grow up without ever learning to appreciate hard work.
I knew what spoiled was. Kimmy Kay Watson down the street was spoiled. She got not one, but two ponies for her sixth birthday, one for her friends to ride and one that she never had to share. I asked for a pony for my fifth birthday and got a tattered first edition of Little Women instead. So I knew I was not spoiled.
Our eavesdropping never lasted for long; we had our own rituals to attend to. We always danced first, a childish shag that our mother taught us, twining our hands together and awkwardly flinging ourselves away and then toward each other, tethered by fingers gone numb. When we finally broke apart, panting, I followed her lead, as I had ever since I could crawl after her. Sometimes we played Alligators in the Carpet, sometimes The Witch in the Attic, sometimes Schoolteacher and Brilliant Pupil or, when I got my way, Superhero Twins.
As we tired, we drew apart, to play our own favorite games. Sometimes I picked up my tiny, dilapidated violin with its fallen bridge and collapsed sound post and pretended I could play, but my stuffed animals commanded my attention more often. I arranged them in order of height, rearranged them in order of affection, or color of fur or eyes. I conducted wild animal chorales, and sometimes there was a vicious mauling and one animal would be punished while I gently nursed the victim back to life. Most often, I simply watched my restless sister at her game.
Estella loved numbers the way I loved my stuffed animals, and she arranged them in her own fashion the way I arranged my bears and elephants and monkeys. She always started at the door and stepped precisely along the baseboard on the outsides of her soles, her big toes tilted into the air, counting under her breath, always getting the same number when she reached the windows. And then her real fun began.
She snatched numbers out of the air—the date, or the number of the month, or the year, sometimes her age or mine, or all these things combined—until she reached some sort of critical mass in her mind, and then she searched for zero. She added and subtracted, or multiplied and divided, or otherwise manipulated the numbers, quickly, under her breath, eyes closed, until she got there. Sometimes it took her longer than others, and I would watch her face shining in the moonlight, her mouth working, until her eyelids finally stopped jumping, her shoulders relaxed, and a smile slid across her mouth.
Zero.
The windows that framed her looked out on the nature preserve named for our paternal great-grandfather, Henry Louis Sykes, black sheep son of Nathaniel Sykes, the man who had gathered his bootstraps in his callused hands and hauled himself, tree by tree, to the great heights that only oil tycoons and land barons could reach. Henry spent his life dedicated to replacing every tree his father felled from New England to Florida. They reconciled just before the elder Sykes’ death at age ninety-four. Just in time for the will to be changed, bedeviling the other Sykes children by cutting them out completely and leaving the bulk of the wealth to Henry.
We were told this story night after night by Sebastian Henry Sykes, our father, in the beautiful language of a genteel South, liquid words and phrases that seemed born of some golden mother tongue. I loved to listen to him speak, loved that he used words that he naturally assumed I knew the meanings of, that caressed my ear with soft, multiple syllables and near-mythical imagery. As he spoke, he would point toward the land Henry had fought to preserve, the slash pines and live oaks and palms that signaled the end of civilization. Beyond them was the Everglades, where swamp took over and the alligators of our imaginations grew to preposterous lengths and water moccasins, thick as mangrove roots, lay in wait for careless children.
Then our father would gesture toward the old cracked oil painting of Nathaniel, pointing out how firm his mouth was, how proud his nose and strong his jaw. But it was his eyes that he always came back to, the same light brown that both he and I had inherited. They were Sykes eyes, the eyes that said I belonged to him and that divided our family down the middle. My mother and Estella shared the changeable blue-green of the Gulf of Mexico. My father teased that he could tell their moods by their eyes: anger showed as clear green, joy as blue, sadness a cloudy mix of the two. I often searched my sister’s eyes, pleased to have this barometer of her soul that she could not hide behind numbers.
The Sykes eyes took everything in and gave nothing away, and Nathaniel’s looked down upon us sternly every night in the music room, the same way I imagined he’d looked at Henry, until his disapproval turned to admiration.
My father’s sensuous Southern outpourings of respect would end later, when the money and land slipped out of his too-little, too-late grasp, but there were many professions of admiration for our forefathers in those days.
I knew that he was passing down our history, trying to instill respect for our brilliant ancestors, but I enjoyed the stories simply for the sound of the language and for the intimacy it generated among the three of us. My father and Estella were my world, and when she left for school and my father went on one of his book-buying trips, I faded away like the moon when the sun rose, leaving me a tiny scra
p of silver at my mother’s side. I was only fully formed when snuggled on my father’s lap or when watching Estella searching for zero in the music room.
Long before the moon gave way I began to nod off and my sister’s agitated mind finally exhausted itself. We came together in the center of the back wall where a long pink velvet sofa stood, covered in an immense, moth-eaten shawl our father bought in Spain from a down-on-her-luck marchioness. Sometimes I dragged a stuffed animal with me; sometimes she brought hard little magnetic numbers from the slant-top desk in her room. We would curl together, me sucking my thumb, Estella clutching sharp-edged sevens and fours, and fall asleep.
One night, a night when our parents did not have a party but rather met across the long dining table under the stairs, everything changed. Suddenly, we might no longer be healthy. For two weeks we had been taken to doctors’ offices, had dutifully filled out tests, had waited alone in chill rooms while our parents were spoken to in plush offices with closed doors. The only solace was that we were not stuck with needles, though that fact in itself did not reassure me of anything. The people had names with a Doctor prefix, and that was enough for me. But once home the worry slid from me as easily as I slid down our blue pool slide.
We met in the music room that night, but as I began to close the door, the moon bright as a half-dollar in our skylight, Estella stopped me. We did not dance. Instead, I pulled at the fluted hem of her nightgown as she listened just outside the door. She flapped her hand, quieting me as she strained to hear our parents’ muted words over the clink and clatter of silverware. Hurt, I turned away. The doctor visits were over and we never got a shot. What else could possibly matter?
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