The Geometry of Sisters (36 page)

“You know, I've had it,” Stephen said, his voice rising. “Your goddamn stupid obsession. You call it love, but that's not what you felt for Maura. She was married, she had a family….”

“She loved me,” J.D. said.

“You wanted to believe that. You tracked her down, you wasted
years of your own life thinking about what you couldn't have. You built that stupid goddamn lighthouse.”

“It was for Carrie, it was all I could do.”

“And what about Beck? Did you think about her? Or was it ‘all you could do’ to spill what Maura's kept hidden all this time? Wasn't it up to Maura to tell her?”

“Stephen, Jesus! She overheard me…. I never meant for that.”

“I don't care what you ‘meant.’ She's a kid, J.D. She's been through hell. How do you think she's going to take knowing you're Carrie's father?”

Stephen glared at his old friend, saw him a million miles away. Was he thinking of Carrie? Or Maura? Was he imagining the impact of what Beck had just overheard?

“Beck's a sensitive, fragile girl whose family has been devastated. Think of what Lucy and Pell were like after Taylor died, and you have a tiny fraction of what Beck's going through.”

“I didn't mean to tell her,” J.D. said.

“It doesn't matter what you meant to do,” Stephen said. “It's what you
did
do, J.D. How's Maura going to feel?”

“I know, I
know!”

Stephen tried to calm himself down; he and J.D. had gone to this school together, seen each other through a million scrapes and adventures.

Beck was Maura's daughter, and J.D. had just hurt her. That's all Stephen could think about. Leaving J.D. there in his chair, he left his office and strode down the hall to look for Beck and find Maura.

It was a shock and it wasn't a shock.

I didn't know, but I did know.

Mr. Campbell talked about the poetry of proofs, slicing away the extra material, cutting through what you don't need anymore. Denial is like padding, protecting you from the worst tumbles. It's
like you've been pushed out of a plane, and you need all those pillows, cushions, aluminum panels, Kevlar shields to keep you from breaking apart when you hit the ground at a million miles an hour.

So that guy J.D., yanked off all my protective gear with those words:
I'm Carrie's father
.

Okay, I get it. Now everything I've been wondering about, working around, makes sense. All the fights, the way my parents stopped getting along after Carrie's accident. Blood types had obviously come into play. You don't need a math whiz to realize that my dad's blood and Carrie's blood didn't match, that he added things up and 1 + 1 didn't = 2.

And my mother staring up at the fourth floor, and her wet hair. And going back in time, Aunt Katharine not speaking to her. Because she knew. Betrayals and hurt and lying.

And the lighthouse. Built for my sister by her father… That little island had been covered with trees, rocks, scrub, and brush, home to deer and beavers. That next year, there were still trees, but on the very shore stood that beautiful, perfect tower. It was something out of a fairy tale. I just hadn't realized how much of a fairy tale there really was, full of bewitchment.

I was under a spell.

Leaving Mr. Campbell's office, I thought I'd go find Travis. I didn't want to see my mother. Not just then—ever again. Then I realized I couldn't bear to see my brother either. I'd have to tell him the truth. This was a secret no family should keep from each other. But how could I tell him? Look him in the eyes, say the words? So I went home and wrote him a note. I put the truth right down in black and white, left it under his pillow.

I felt pretty sick. Almost as if I was coming down with a fever. Clammy, crazy. I wanted my mother, but not the way she really was—the way I
thought
she'd been. My ideas were jumbled, and that's not like me. Usually I am able to hack through the poison ivy of emotion and get to the point. But right at that moment, I was all
feelings, no logic. I forced myself to start thinking, and what came to mind were Redmond and Lucy. My only true friends. If only I could hold it together until Boston. Boston was the goal I had set for myself. To really turn the corner and start fresh. Put all the bad stuff out of my head for good. I
had
to go.

I imagined it like this: I'd go to the math competition, ace it, win a scholarship to the college of my choice, let Redmond show me around Boston.

But then I would leave Newport Academy, get away from all this. Get away
now
. Carrie had had the right idea. We would be the runaway family. Sisters who'd had enough. I got what she'd done, why she'd left. I was with her now, with her in spirit. That's all I could think about.

I'd been so good lately. I'd given back all my stolen objects, or almost all. The other day I'd gone down to Bannister's Wharf, put that small ceramic pineapple back in the glass jar I'd taken it from. Had my newly discovered goodness, my desire to go straight, amounted to nothing? Was I too late, and was this punishment for being so wicked and stealing? I didn't believe in hell and damnation, but I did believe in a sort of karma: it's pure math, if you think about it. When you do bad, you bring badness your way. It's like the law of percentages.

I remembered the ride my mother had taken us on, me and Travis, one of our first days here at the academy. Through the Point section of Newport. She'd stopped in front of Hunter House, shown us the carved pineapple above the door, told us it was a symbol of welcome.

I'd loved that ride, thought my mother, in her poetic and geometric way, had been wanting me to connect the dots, realize that she was introducing us to our new life. That ride had been a sort of cosmic pineapple, a sign of greeting and fresh beginnings to me and Travis: welcome to our new world. But when I thought back now,
I remembered that she'd shown us where old James Desmond Blackstone had come from.

The founder of our school, the man with the same name as this guy J.D. Had my mother been in love with J.D. all these years, all the time she spent with my dad? Had she just been waiting for the moment to arrive when she could be with him again? She reminded me of girls with crushes, who secretly walk past the houses of the boys they like, who arrange fake reasons to stand near their lockers at school. My mother, my wonderful mother, was that what she'd done?

The thoughts felt like nettles stinging my skin. No more padding, remember? As I left my house and went out onto the campus, I felt lucky about one thing.

I hadn't yet returned Angus's keys. I had been waiting for the moment to arrive, when he was away from his desk and the security office, when I could just slip in unseen and put them somewhere he'd think he hadn't looked yet. I had them with me at all times— in my backpack, wrapped in a woolen scarf to keep them from clinking and rattling.

So I pulled them out now. I knew just where I was going: to Blackstone Hall, to the fourth floor. Mary's rooms. I knew she had a bedroom, and that she'd studied up there. That's where I needed to be, to think about all this, figure out my next move. Maybe I could stay there in secret for a while so I wouldn't have to see my mother.

I couldn't look her in the eye. And that reality was so terrible— not wanting to see her, the first time in my life I'd ever felt any such thing, almost as if I'd lost her already, lost my mother forever. It was like needles in my heart.

I started to run. Keys in my hand, I flew across campus. I guess I was crying. The more I ran, the thicker my tears got. The day was cold, and snow was in the air.

Mary. She had crashed off this horrible cliff, into the sea below. What a terrible way to die, and Beatrice had suffered along with her. The Langley sisters had had lies and pain in their family, and they had loved each other through all of it. They would understand.

The anniversary of Mary's death was coming up. The whole school commemorated the occasion. Deep down, I know Lucy and I had hoped to break through with our proofs of infinity by then. Mary had guided us; all those days we'd heard her, thought of her, felt her presence. In a way I felt we were doing our math for her too.

Mathematicians are logical, but I found myself praying to that lost sister as I ran toward the building, not knowing where else to go. She had helped me and Lucy before, given us strength and let us know we weren't alone. But it really is a sign of how crazy I was that I talked to her out loud just then.

“Help me, Mary,” I cried. “Help me, help me …”

And when I took one single key off Angus's key ring and slipped it into my pocket, I felt Mary's hand guiding me.

Everything happened so fast after that. The class bell rang, and kids started streaming out of the building, a little air between periods. My hands shook, holding the key ring. As I climbed the wide steps, I saw Redmond coming out, a big huge smile on his freckled face as he saw me. Then he noticed my tears and stopped short.

“Beck, what's wrong?”

“Everything,” I wept. “The whole world is ending.”

“Come on,” he said, grabbing my hand, the one without the keys. “We'll go up to the reading room. We can talk there….”

I was just about to relent. He knew the reading room was my favorite place. There'd probably be a fire blazing. My favorite little book would be there, the one about the Hawthorne girl, right beside Mary's diary. We could sit on the loveseat, and maybe I could tell him a little of what was wrong.

“Okay” I said. But the keys were the fruits of my last bad act. I had to return them right away. All but the one to Mary's pool.

We entered Blackstone Hall, stood in the huge marble entry hall. It was dark outside, the weather bringing clouds across the sea from the east, so the enormous crystal chandelier glowed overhead. Just then a group of fancily dressed people came down the curved staircase. The men wore dark business suits, the women wore dresses and pearls. One wore a mink: Mrs. Nicholson. Angus walked behind them, laden down with a stack of reports.

“It's the academy board,” Redmond said.
Bawd
. “The trustees are here for the annual meeting.”
Heah
. His accent made me smile, reminded me that some of life was good; maybe things would turn out okay. He held my arm to ease me back so they could pass. And just then I lost my grip on the keys. They fell to the marble floor with a metallic, musical
clinkety-clink
, and Angus turned around.

“My keys,” he said.

“I know,” I said, meeting his eyes as the board members stopped to wait for him. He stared at me, perplexed.

“Where did you get them?” he asked.

I don't know why I didn't lie. Well, yeah; I do. I guess when my padding went away, so did my ability to squirm out of a jam. And I was so sick of lies, and what they did to people, what they'd done to my family. The longer I stood there, feeling his disappointed and accusing glare on me, the more I actually wanted to confess.

“I took them,” I said.

Angus's face fell. Oh, he looked so stricken, as if I'd hurt him on purpose. I stepped toward him, wanting to take back what I'd done. “I'm so sorry, Angus,” I said. “I was going to give them back.” At that I crouched down and picked them up, handed them to him.

“Took them?” asked Mrs. Nicholson, stepping out of the crowd. She stood above me, her white hair coiffed and gleaming, her cherry red wool dress setting off the luminous pearls around her throat.

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you mean,” she asked, looking at me intently, as if she was honestly trying to understand, “that you borrowed them?”

A conundrum. I was quivering, knowing that I could lie and get out of it. Or I could be honest, come clean, continue on with my fresh start in life. I have to admit, the despair over my mother was clouding my mind slightly. “No,” I said. “I
took
them.”

To my shock, she looked hurt—as if this was a personal affront.

“Is that…” she asked, her mouth a straight line. “Is that another way of saying you
stole
them?”

“Grandmother!” Lucy said. I looked up, saw her standing on the landing above. She seemed frozen in place.

“It's okay, Luce,” I said. “She's right.”

“Goodness, this is a shock,” Mrs. Nicholson said. “A girl right here at Newport Academy admitting to such—”

“Edie,” Mr. Campbell said, striding up. He seemed out of breath, and I knew he'd been trying to find me after I'd left his office. I couldn't bear to look at him. Even worse, my mother was with him.

“Stephen,” Mrs. Nicholson said. “What can be done about such behavior? Do you realize this scholarship student has just admitted stealing?”

“Mrs. Nicholson, try to understand, my daughter has…” my mother said, and Mrs. Nicholson gazed at her with sympathy.

“I am so sorry, Mrs. Shaw. This must cause you such heartache.”

“Please, Mrs. Nicholson—” my mother said, but this time it was Mr. Campbell who cut her off.

“Edie,” he said, “Mrs. Shaw is right—there are extenuating circumstances, which I'll explain to you and the board in private. I know Beck will apologize, and I'm sure an appropriate detention can be imposed. But let me tell you something that will make the board very proud. Beck will be representing Newport Academy at the Mathematical Society's national competition, one of only—”