The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners (5 page)

When my father was at work, Miss Miller tried to smooth everything out. She defended our mother, saying she had her reasons for leaving, and that we would understand when we were older. Finally, one afternoon she promised our mother was coming back, would definitely be on her way home soon, and that she would bring us lovely presents. Lucy and I bolted ourselves to the front steps.

Was there any reality to the rumor? Had Miss Miller talked to her, was my mother having misgivings? Lucy sucked her thumb so hard, she drew blood. Miss Miller painted it with iodine to make it taste bad. Lucy didn’t care, just sat on the steps beside me, sucking her poor sore thumb while I twirled my hair out, both of us staring down the street for someone who wasn’t coming. When my father got home, after dark, we were still sitting there.

My father fired Miss Miller and took us to therapy. Ah, the joys. He found two highly recommended clinical psychologists. I had Dr. Robertson, Lucy had Dr. Milhauser, and we had individual sessions, then group sessions, each of us alone, then with our father, then all three of us, with both doctors.

We let it all out, believe me, and nobody medicated us. No Ritalin, no antidepressants. Just being heard, allowed to weep over things that hurt, that are terrible, beyond comprehension—and, with Miss Miller gone, not being told everything was okay, no lies that our mother would come back. There were no panaceas, no empty promises. That’s how our father and the doctors helped us survive losing her.

The only reason I’m here right now is because I was allowed to hate her. The irony is, being permitted such dark feelings kept me from having them. I’ve never hated my mother. I grieve what she did, even though I know she—supposedly—had her reasons. Miss Miller wasn’t wrong about that.

We are fine, Lucy and I. We are strong. She’s had setbacks, the sleeping stuff. She once asked me how people know the difference between sleep and death. I told her they didn’t have to—their bodies took care of it for them. Being her older sister has made me grow up fast. Sometimes I sound off with such weird wisdom, I wonder where it comes from.

While my father was sick, he tried to tell me something. I was thirteen, and suddenly he was talking to me as if I was an adult.

“It was my fault, Pell. She never wanted—” He stopped himself.

“Wanted what, Dad?” I asked.

“She didn’t mean to hurt you.”

By leaving us? Was he kidding? He was on heavy pain medication. Radiation, chemo, the aftereffects, and then the tumor came back anyway. He was getting morphine; it took him away, he’d fall asleep in the middle of a sentence. And it made him think crazy things. I sat by his bed that day, waiting for him to wake up and finish his thoughts.

When he opened his eyes, he started right in again.

“She left you,” he said.

“Mom.”

He nodded. “River. Stars,” he said.

Was this like seahorse, starfish, sunshine in a glass?

“You could have died,” he said.

“Dad?” I said, scared. Did he know who I was?

“I told her,” he said, and then he began to cry. He was so upset, I wanted to call for the nurse, to give him more medicine, but he grabbed my wrist, looked into my eyes in a pleading way. “Sweet heart. At the river, I want you to know, she never would have done it. Never.”

If only I could translate what he was trying to say to me. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I tried to guess and get it right. “It’s okay, Dad,” I said, trying to calm him.

“Your mother,” he said.

“What about her, Dad?”

He was trying to tell me something; he must have thought I was thirteen, ready to know. It had to do with my mother, and if only I could unlock my father’s language, the way at the end his words became like secret code, maybe I could understand. I never did; he died soon after that.

Learning the details of why she left is sort of beside the point, although I admit there are times I would like to know. The truth is, I am on Capri because I want my mother to come home. Time is running out. Of course it always has been, life being so short and uncertain and all. But this is different, and it’s real. The timetable will become more acute in September.

That’s when I become a senior at Newport Academy, my father’s alma mater. It’s a boarding school, and now Lucy attends as well. Our rooms are side-by-side. My grandmother, Edith Nicholson, lives in Newport; we spend holidays and, except for this one, summers with her.

But trust me when I tell you, my grandmother is not the sweet, kindly grandma you might be picturing. She lives on the society page. Literally. She goes to the best parties, moves in the swankiest circles, and first thing every morning she looks online for Google alerts about herself. High society in the Internet age.

In September I start applying to colleges. Next year I’m off to who knows where. I do well at school; I’m a National Merit Scholar. I want to be a psychologist, and my advisor thinks I should apply to Harvard. I’m leaning toward Berkeley, where Dr. Robertson went. It’s far from Newport and Lucy, all the way across the country. But once I leave for college, no matter where the campus is located, Lucy will be alone.

Lucy and I have been together since the day she was born. We’ve had nights, weekends, even weeks apart. Sleepovers, camp, things like that. But these are real emotional problems that my little sister suffers.

My sister and Beck, Travis’s sister, talked to ghosts, attempted a mathematical connection to the spirit world. My sister is very smart and creative, brilliant in math. But can you imagine how that made me worry? She craves nothing more than connection. She has it with me, but she needs more than that. She cries in a way I don’t—high, wild, keening, helpless, and despairing. I don’t know what to do.

I’ve felt almost like her mother, and sometimes it’s too much. I am her person here on earth. She comes to me, leans on me, for everything. I love that, and want it to continue. But it’s more than I can handle. She needs someone else too.

Is there a strain of despair that will grip me and Lucy the way it did our mother? What if I’m like my mother? I’m in love with Travis Shaw; we’re young, but he’s wonderful, and we really know and get each other. What if we have children, make a life, and I realize I can’t stay?

Is there a name for the disorder that drove our mother away from us? I want to understand, but that’s not the primary reason I’m here. It’s simple: Lucy and I want our mother in our lives. I’ve come to ask her to come home, so the three of us can have this year before I go to college. Lucy needs a mother, a real one. We both do.

After leaving the garden, I went back to the house. It was six a.m. Italian time, which made it midnight in Newport. I thought about calling Travis, but I figured he was fishing in the middle of Block Island Sound. Besides, the person I really wanted to talk to was Lucy. I have an international plan on my iPhone, so I dialed her number, and she answered.

“Seahorse!” she said, obviously seeing my number on the screen.

“Starfish!” I said.

We basked in silence, just knowing the other was on the line. Peace, the ultimate connection, being together.

“How is it there?” she asked finally.

“It’s quite beautiful,” I said. Brave, stoic me.

“How is
she?
Is she completely crazy?”

“She doesn’t seem to be.”

“That’s a relief. How are the playboys?”

The men my grandmother had always alluded to, as if my mother lived on a mad, never-ending treadmill of dating the rich and famous.

“I haven’t seen one yet.”

“Well, the summer is young,” my sister said.

“Here’s something,” I said. “She
gardens.…
”

“You mean, in the
dirt?”
Lucy asked, giggling with delight.

“Yep.”

“What you’re saying is she deadheads the marigolds,” Lucy said. “Right? She wears Chanel garden gloves and pays some poor Capri person to hold the perfect Martha Stewart basket while she goes snip, snip, and the flower heads fall oh-so-quaintly into the basket, and it’s going to be a feature story in Italian
Vogue?”

I laughed because Lucy is droll and hilarious and because I could just picture the look on her face as she imitated our grandmother’s manufactured idea of our mother.

“Shades of Edie,” Lucy went on, again referring to our grandmother. “Like mother, like daughter, right? Is Lyra exactly the same as Edie?”

“Surprisingly, not very much at all,” I said.

“I knew it!” she said, sounding more delighted than before. “Tell me more!”

“Well, for one thing, she works. She actually does garden—that’s her job. Her own garden is beautiful, and she does it for other people too.”

“Holy shit,” Lucy said. “Employment!”

“Yes,” I said, feeling proud. “Our mother.”

“What’s her house like? Did she blow through the trust fund? Does she have manic episodes where she gives everything away? Is she strapped financially? Was one of the playboys a con-man gigolo who drained her accounts? Did she have to pawn the silver?”

“Doesn’t look it,” I said, glancing onto the terrace at the brass telescope, around the living room at the mahogany tables, the cashmere throws, a marble bust, a bronze monkey, a Meissen bowl in the Thousand and One Nights pattern, the oil paintings, the silver tea set. “She still has the wild rose teapot. Do you remember?”

“Mmm,” Lucy said, and fell silent.

That’s the thing with us sisters. We remember everything. We have Velcro brains. I could just imagine Lucy spinning back, all the way to when she was three and I was five, having a tea party with our mother on the floor of our sunroom in Grosse Pointe. Back when we were all together, before the winter when she fell apart.

“Are you glad you’re there?” Lucy asked.

“I think so,” I said.

“Hmm,” she said. “Do you love her?”

“What do you think?”

“Yeah, you do.”

“And you?”

“More than anything,” Lucy said.

The sands and dust, powerful feelings, began to swirl. The sirocco. It came up sometimes when we talked about our mother. We were silent a moment, getting the lumps out of our throats. We had to face facts, the person we loved most in the world, now that our dad was dead, was the woman who’d walked out on us.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I just miss you,” she said. “It’s hard with you away. But …”

“Tell me.”

“I want you to be there,” she said, choking up. “For her.”

“For her?”

“If I feel this way,” she said, “think of how she feels. We all need each other. Does she have anyone? A good friend, anything like that?”

“She has Max. He’s her neighbor, and he picked me up in Sorrento yesterday, and he’s a dream and if it weren’t for Travis I might consider falling in love with him myself. But he’s pretty old, and she was best friends with his wife, who died of Alzheimer’s.”

“God bless,” Lucy said, because we both have a tender spot for anyone with any kind of dementia.

I was still thinking of Max, and I drifted over to the doorway, carrying the phone out onto the terrace. The sun hadn’t yet crested over Monte Solaro, and the rocks and tide pools down below were deep in shadow. The Bay of Naples was layered with morning haze, a film of white gauze over dark blue. In the cliff’s shadow I saw a figure, walking along the rocks above the tide line, bending down, picking something up, and flinging it into the sea.

“Are you sleeping?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the person.

“Sort of. I’m staying at Beck’s.”

“Good,” I said. I’d told Travis everything, so he and his mother would be looking out for her. “How’s the sleepwalking?”

“I don’t think I’ve done any,” she said. “Pell, can I speak to her?”

“She’s not here this second, but yes, of course. Why don’t you get some sleep now, and we’ll call you in the morning?”

“Listen,” Lucy said. “I’m not really tired. What I’ll do is lie down right now, get some shut-eye, and call you there in one hour.”

“Lucy, tomorrow.”

“No,” she said stubbornly. “I’m calling you back in one hour. I need to, okay?”

“Okay I love you,” I said.

“I love you,” Lucy said.

That’s how we always said goodbye. Now it was Lucy’s night and my morning. We kissed each other through the phone line, hung up. I stood on the terrace, staring down at the rocks. The sun inched around the mountain, casting bright yellow light, and suddenly I saw more clearly. It was that young man from yesterday, the one I’d seen talking to Max.

He was scouring the rocks, just above the waves’ reach, intent on searching the rocks and wrack and tidal pools. I watched as he’d find what he was looking for, pick it up, and throw it into the water. This happened over and over. I couldn’t see what he was throwing, but I swear it looked like starfish.

I tore into the walled garden, through the pine trees, and down the steep stairs that led to the rock beach, compelled to see what he was doing, but I knew I had to be back in an hour. For Lucy’s call.

I hoped my mother would be too.

Four

M
ornings were good. Yesterday Rafe had told his grandfather that he slept late, but that wasn’t true. He just hadn’t been up for a discussion about Pell, why he hadn’t wanted to go pick her up. His grandfather wanted so badly for him to do well, to have a nice, normal nineteen-year-old life. He was trying to show Rafe that he’d moved on, moved past, so Rafe would too.

Rafe had been doing his best. Since arriving on Capri, he lived in the boathouse, instead of up in the villa. If he had to be on the island at all, it was better that he not spend time in the flat shadows of his worst moments. Besides, the boathouse was good. No heat, no electricity. A hard cot. But windows open to the sky, and the constant sound and feel of waves.

He walked along the rocks, staring down. He and his dad used to take tide walks. Right now the tide was far out, as low as it ever got. Above the tide line, he found a tiny octopus hiding in an abandoned cockleshell. Its skin was already drying out. He carried it to the water’s edge, lowered it down, watched the cephalopod jet away. Then back to the top of the rocks, where the suffering was greatest.

There, a starfish stranded on a rock that wouldn’t be underwater again until the new moon. He peeled it off, winged it as far as he could into the deep water. He wondered whether any of this was worth it; the things he saved would die eventually anyway.

“Way to be negative,” he said out loud to himself. It was called stinking thinking, and no one did it better.

At rehab they told him he had choices. Every thought he had, every act he took, was leading him either toward or away from relapse. He’d thought he was doing well, getting up early, meditating, working on his college admissions package, trying to be disciplined, but seeing Arturo yesterday was messing him up. The desire for chemical relief had come flooding back along with the negativity. He spotted another doomed starfish, held it in his hand, and prepared to throw.

“Buongiorno.”

He recognized the voice from yesterday. Stopping mid-throw, he turned and saw Pell Davis.

“Good morning,” he said.

“You speak English,” she said. “Does everyone on Capri? I haven’t met an Italian yet.”

“You’re in expat central. Didn’t your mother tell you?”

“You know my mother?”

He nodded. Did this mean Lyra hadn’t warned her about him? “Yeah,” he said. “I’m Rafaele Gardiner. Max’s grandson.”

“Pell Davis,” she said. “Pleased to meet you. I know Max is English, but you sound American.”

“Born in London, grew up in New York. My father’s job …” he said, and shrugged.

“Ah,” she said, as if she understood overseas posting, British companies with Manhattan offices. “But your first name is Italian.”

“It is. My mother was born in Naples, came here to work. My parents met at the marina. I’m called ‘Rafe,’ mostly. It went over better in New York than ‘Rafaele.’”

She laughed. “Do you mind if I ask what you were doing just now?”

“Walking the beach,” he said.

“No, I mean with that. It’s a starfish, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he said, holding his hand out, as she seemed to want to see. She bent close, touching one spiny arm with her finger. Morning light glinted on her ebony hair. When she glanced up, he saw electric blue eyes.

“What are you doing with it?”

“Saving its life,” he said, flinging the starfish as hard as he could into the deep water.

“Why do you have to?” she asked. “Won’t it take care of itself?”

He glared at her. Was she kidding? “I guess you don’t hang around the sea much. There are these things called tides. They come in and go out every six hours. Starfish can usually make it between normal tides if seagulls don’t get them, if the sun doesn’t dry them out.”

“But the moon’s full, so the tides are more extreme, and the starfish get stranded. I get it.”

She sounded so nice, calm, even in spite of his nasty sarcasm. In rehab he’d learned that his character defects came out full-force when he felt like using. He gave her an apologetic look.

“Sorry for being a jerk.”

“Sorry you’re having a bad day,” she said. She gave him a smile tinged with irony, then started walking away.

“You came all the way down to make sure I wasn’t doing something evil to the starfish?”

“I kind of have a thing for them,” she said. “Seahorses too. Are there any of those around?”

“Not on Capri, but nearby,” he said. “A whole colony on the Faraglioni.”

“Where’s that?”

“You don’t know?” he asked. “Wow.”

“I just got here,” she said.

“Man. The Faraglioni. Limestone colossi, cool islands off the other side of Capri. They’re on every other postcard.”

“Seahorses are there, really?”

He nodded.

“I would love to see them,” she said, sounding wistful. He glanced at the boat tied at the end of the dock. He could take her himself, but her mother would probably kill him when they returned.

“Lots to see around here,” he said, steering away from the idea.

“I know,” she said. “Tiberius’s Leap, the Villa Jovis, Rock of the Sirens. I’ve been reading guidebooks about Capri my whole life.”

“You left out the Grotta Azzurra,” he said.

“Of course, how could I? The Blue Grotto.”

“I was kidding. You know it’s a tourist trap, right? There are better, unspoiled caves all along the coast. We have some right here on the property.”

“I live in Newport, Rhode Island. We invented tourist places.”

“Newport?” he asked. “Do you know Ty Cooper?”

“He goes to my school,” she said. “Plays football with my boyfriend.”

“Weird,” Rafe said. “He lived in my building in the city. So, you grew up in Newport.”

“I grew up in Michigan, but I’ve lived in Newport the last few years,” she said. “Look, another starfish.”

“Good eyes,” he said, crouching down. Then he turned to her. “Why don’t you take care of this one?”

“Okay” she said.

He watched her bend down, carefully remove the starfish from the black rock. She walked to the water’s edge, wound up, and gave a really respectable throw. The starfish landed between waves with a light splash.

“Starfish and seahorses,” he said, giving her a quizzical look.

“It’s a long story,” she said. “You?”

“Also a long story.”

“Hmm,” she said, gazing at him. For a minute he thought of asking her to sit on the dock, so they could exchange personal tales about sea creatures. But again he thought of Lyra, didn’t feel like rocking that boat.

“I’d better go,” Pell said. “My sister is calling soon.”

“Okay” he said.

They said goodbye, and Rafe watched her walk slowly along the shore. He turned to continue his quest. He didn’t want to see her head up the stairs; he liked having her on the beach.

As he walked along, he found himself moving faster. He threw the starfish farther, and had more hope that they wouldn’t strand again, that they wouldn’t meet up with a predator, that they’d live awhile longer. He also noticed he didn’t feel like using anymore. The desire to get high had left him.

He glanced back, feeling a strange impulse to thank Pell, but she had already disappeared up the stairs.

Lucy Davis lay in bed, thinking, watching the clock, wishing the time would pass faster. Her heart was skittering with excitement and anxiety. She hadn’t spoken to her mother in a long time. Years had added up.

People—Lucy’s grandmother—criticized her mother unmercifully. Said she was selfish, uncaring, asked what kind of woman could leave her children. Those comments hurt Lucy. She always wanted to defend her mother—sometimes felt a physical desire to strike whoever talked against her—because no one understood her. No one except Lucy and Pell. Lucy didn’t know what had made her mother leave, but she was sure of one thing—her mother had had a good reason.

Lucy knew love. Pell and she had it in their bones for each other, for their father. And for their mother. And Lucy was sure their mother had it for them too. Love that powerful was the only explanation for their mother’s long silence. For as completely as love could bond and heal, so could it tear people apart. Lucy was sure her mother hadn’t gone to that mental hospital for the fun of it. No, she’d been in some kind of terrible trouble. And it had driven her away.

Pell was hoping to convince their mother to come home. Lucy was sure of it. Even though Pell hadn’t spelled it out, this had all started last winter, after Beck and Travis’s sister, Carrie, returned to the family, with her baby daughter. Split families were familiar to the Davis girls. They knew it was hard for some people to stay, for reasons all their own.

A squawk sounded from down the hall—Carrie’s daughter Gracie having a dream. Lucy pushed back the covers, tiptoed through the Shaws’ house—a newer, larger faculty house than the small cottage they’d first moved in to when Mrs. Shaw began teaching at Newport Academy. Lucy felt glad for the distraction, ready to lean over Gracie’s crib rail and whisper to her.

She met Carrie in the hallway, rubbing sleep from her eyes as she left her daughter’s room.

“Hi, Lucy,” Carrie said. “Everything okay?”

“Just thought I’d check on Gracie,” Lucy said.

“That’s sweet of you,” Carrie said, trying to hide a yawn. “She’s fine. I think she knows it’s going to be a beach day tomorrow, and she was dreaming of playing in the sand.”

“Did she tell you?” Lucy asked.

Carrie just smiled. Gracie didn’t really talk yet. But Lucy stood there, wanting the young mother’s secret to understanding and communication with her child. How had Carrie understood what Gracie was dreaming? Had Lucy’s mother known Lucy’s dreams?

“Did she tell you?” Lucy asked again.

“She can’t talk yet,” Carrie said, touching her shoulder. “I was just imagining.”

Lucy nodded, checked her watch. Still not time to call.

“Want some milk?” Carrie asked. “I was just going to fix Gracie a bottle.”

“That’s okay,” Lucy said. She had to hug herself. A bottle; her mother used to heat up warm milk for her. Lucy knew her mother had often looked in on her and Pell and tried to soothe them back to sleep. Had she ever imagined their dreams, like Carrie did with Gracie?

Of course she had.

“Carrie?” Lucy whispered, stopping suddenly.

“Yes?”

Lucy stared down the dimly lit hall. What would it take for Carrie to leave Gracie? Lucy saw them together all the time; it was hard for Carrie to go to work at the library, even knowing Gracie was being well looked after by Mrs. Shaw, or Beck and Lucy, or Travis.

Carrie herself had run away, the day her father died. She had left her family—brother, sister, mother who loved her. She had left a hole in their lives, made them worry about her. Lucy understood that. See, when a parent died or left, all bets were off. Carrie had gone daughter-crazy. There’s a sort of madness all children who’ve lost a parent understand. Their lives are divided into before and after; the “after” part is not pretty.

“Are you okay?” Carrie asked, still standing in the near-dark hall.

Lucy kept staring at her. She knew her late nights, the times she sleepwalked, caused people to worry. She wanted to tell Carrie not to, that this was different. The reality was hitting her: she was about to hear her mother’s voice. Knowing she was about to speak to her mother after so many years made Lucy’s stomach flip.

“I’m fine,” Lucy said, and she started to beam. “Good night.”

“Good night,” Carrie said.

Lucy walked into her room, closed the door behind her. One a.m. Newport time was close, and then it was here, and then, her fingers trembling, Lucy picked up her cell phone and dialed.

“Hello?” came Pell’s voice.

“Hi,” Lucy said. “Am I on time?”

“Yes, perfectly.”

“Oh, good,” Lucy said, her heart kicking like mad. “Is she there? With you now?”

“I’m giving the phone to her,” Pell said.

Silence for three seconds. Then, “Lucy?”

Yikes. Tears in Lucy’s eyes. Her mother’s voice, for real, right now in the middle of the night.

“Yep, it’s me,” Lucy said.

“Oh, my gosh,” her mother said. “Oh, my gosh.”

Lucy held the phone.