The Geometry of Sisters (10 page)

“That's so sad,” Maura said, thinking of her own distant, missing daughter. Did Carrie ever talk about her? Of course, it was the opposite situation…. Carrie had left.

“Pell and Lucy live with their grandmother part-time, but that's a fate you wouldn't wish on anyone,” Amy continued. “Ted and Stephen do their best to watch out for the Davis sisters.”

“Is that why you say Stephen's pensive?”

“Not really. He's conscientious, smart, and he used to be incredibly funny. But he went through a nasty divorce himself, and he hasn't been the same since.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” Maura said, glancing across the room at the two men. “Was his wife someone from Newport?”

“Well, she was. Now she's living up the bay. In Bristol, I think.”

“But he met her here?”

“Yes,” Amy said. “This is such a small town, when you get right down to it. His ex-wife is Patricia Blackstone— great-granddaughter of James Desmond Blackstone….”

“The founder of Newport Academy,” Maura said. Stephen had been married to J.D.'s sister. Excusing herself, she left the lunchroom.

6
THE GENIE WAS OUT OF THE BOTTLE, AND BECK couldn't get it back in. Every chance she got, she put something else in her pocket. The school seemed not to believe in locking things up; they made it too easy for her. Silverware from the lunchroom, cello strings and violin rosin from the conservatory.

She stole an emerald earring.

The most expensive object she'd ever taken, almost too beautiful for words. It was delicate, it was old, it dangled. Holding it in her hand, she thought of the emerald as solid water, but not cold like ice. A square green pool. Water that had turned to stone.

They had been in Lucy's room, sprawled on the big blue and amber Oriental rug. She and Lucy were challenging each other, doing proofs for Mr. Campbell's class, making patterns of shapes, of motion and change, geometric diagrams that contained meanings and poetry that only mathematicians could understand.

“Hey,” Beck said, pointing at the page. “Check this out….” She tapped her pencil on the notation
f(x)g′(x) + g(x)f′(x)
.

“Stephen will love that one!”

“Why do you call him Stephen?”

Lucy's pencil made quick and spidery notations that reminded Beck of magic spells. “He was one of my father's closest friends,” Lucy said as she worked. “They went to this school together, along
with Mr. Shannon and their other best friend, J. D. Blackstone. After my father died, Stephen and the others became our protectors.”

“Protectors?”

“Like godfathers. They help us with things our grandmother can't.”

Beck put down her pencil. “How did your father die?”

“He had a brain tumor,” Lucy said. “One day he looked at Pell and called her ‘seahorse.’ He tucked me in with a blanket and said ‘starfish.’ He fell down and shook. We thought he was trying to be funny, so we stood there doubled over laughing.”

“He wasn't?”

“He was having a seizure.”

“Where was your mother?”

“She'd left,” Lucy said. “She was long gone. So we stared at our dad shaking, thinking it wasn't really very funny and wishing he'd get up, and then we saw blood from where he'd bitten through his tongue. So we called 911, and they took him to the hospital. He died less than a year later.”

“I'm sorry,” Beck said.

Lucy glanced over. “How did your father die?”

“He drowned,” Beck said. “He was in a canoe with my sister, and they capsized.”

“I'm sorry. Your sister…”

“She survived,” Beck said. “But she ran away.”

“Why?”

“We don't know, exactly.”

“Oh my God,” Lucy said. “I'm so sorry.”

Beck thanked her. Lucy asked a million questions, and Beck didn't even mind. Was Carrie unhappy? Did she have a boyfriend? Did she take drugs? No, she used to, and no. Beck loved having a friend who got it. Both girls had families whose hearts had been ripped out.

“Where did our fathers go?” Beck heard herself ask.

“After they died, you mean?”

Beck nodded.

Lucy looked up at the ceiling as if she could see through it, straight to the pool. “They become ghosts,” she said.

Beck stared at her.

“Well, not ghosts like in scary movies, but spirits who are right here, who haven't left this earth. Their energy remains, and if they want to materialize, they do. But they can't unless we meet them partway.” She sat up and looked at Beck, waiting for her to help.

Beck blinked hard, the thoughts clicking into place. She forced herself to stay with it, concentrate. Just like someone trying to remember a dream, pulling the strange nonsense together and making it add up. “Wow,” Beck said, starting to get it.

“Do you think?” Lucy asked, eyes shining.

“It could be,” Beck said, her voice shaking as she reached for her paper. She'd heard the phrase so many times before, but suddenly it made real sense. Not just theory, but something she could count on. “‘Ghosts of departed quantities,’” she whispered.

“Adding up the infinitesimal,” Lucy said.

Beck hesitated, staring at the paper, then looked up. “The mathematics of change and loss,” she said.

“Because…”

“There's no such number as zero,” Beck said.

“Exactly!”

“So if we do proofs, work at proving infinity…”

“We'll understand where they went. What they are now… your dad and my dad. Our ghosts.”

“Easier to find ghosts than my sister,” Beck said.

Floorboards creaked overhead, then a splash, making Beck jump.

“You must hate hearing that,” Beck said.

“I love the sound of water. J.D. swims there. But so does Mary,” Lucy said.

“She's real.”

Lucy nodded. “And if Mary can walk the earth, so can my father. I'll see him again. You'll see your father too. We can do it together! Work on proofs, add up infinitely tiny pieces, so tiny they're almost not there, and find our way to them.”

“Yes,” Beck said, but her heart skipped at the idea of what Lucy was saying, what they'd thought up together. Could it be possible?

“We're going to do it,” Lucy said, her voice shaking as she clutched Beck's hand, making a pact. “We'll see our fathers again!”

Beck gazed at Lucy's open book and fine notations. She felt weak and light, about to faint. Just then Pell walked in. She lived in the room next door; had she heard her sister's voice rising? Lucy's eyes glistened, and Pell sat down and put her arms around her. Beck knew Lucy had her own problems: Grief kept her awake. She had a hard time sleeping.

Beck watched Pell murmur to Lucy, remembered all the times Carrie had comforted her when she was upset. She ached for her sister. The prospect of being able to see her father again, even for a minute, was too much to bear. She began to gather her books.

The Davis sisters seemed not to notice. Backing away, Beck stood by the mahogany dresser. Lucy's silver brush and comb, an oval hand mirror, a hand-tooled Moroccan leather jewelry case, and several tortoiseshell barrettes lay strewn across the surface. Then Beck spied the emerald earrings.

Cool green jewels. She was like a raven, attracted by the brightness. She didn't think, only reacted. Carrie in the water. Bright lake water sparkling, a million shattered emeralds, that summer day after the storm passed. Carrie's gold-flecked blue eyes. Beck's hand closed around one of the earrings. She glanced over at the sisters, saw Pell staring right at her.

Pell watched her slide the earring into her pocket and walk out of the room. In the hallway, through the open window, Beck heard the endless ocean waves curling, collapsing, hitting the rocky shore.

She ran down the hallways and stairs of the old school and dashed outside, just as Redmond was walking toward the entrance.

“Beck,” he said, smiling.

But she tore past him, around the side of the building, into the laurel grove, the woodland path that muffled the sounds of the sea, straight to the little house where she knew she'd find her mother and Travis.

Travis saw Beck come charging in, past their mother working on lesson plans in the kitchen, straight into her room. He'd been getting a bad feeling from his sister lately—some of the old secrecy and furtiveness that had gotten her in trouble back home—so he walked in right behind her, just in time to see her pull an earring out of her pocket.

“What's that?” he asked, shocked in spite of the fact he'd been expecting something like this. The old force of her stealing and getting caught back home came crashing in.

“Leave me alone,” she said.

“Give it to me,” he said, reaching for the earring. She hid it behind her back.

“I found it,” Beck said.

“Who'd you take it from?”

“Take it from?” Beck asked, outraged. “No one! Stop accusing me!”

Travis opened his mouth, found he couldn't speak. Didn't Beck know that she was the reason they'd moved east? Hadn't she learned her lesson? But staring into her hot, guilty eyes, he could see that she had not.

“You're lying,” he said. “Again.”

“Shut up.”

“And stealing. When did you start back up?”

“You don't know what you're talking about.”

“Stealing doesn't help. You know that,” he said. “It's not going to bring them back.”

“Stop,” she said.

“Look,” he said. “I'm not going to tell Mom. Just tell me where you got it, and we'll leave her out of it. Okay? Do you really want to hurt Mom this way? I know you don't. So just come clean with me and it stops here with us. Try again: where'd you get the earring?”

Beck struggled with herself. Travis focused on staying calm. He stared at her hard, not letting her off the hook.

“I found it,” Beck said finally, her lower lip wobbling. She was starting to break.

“Where?”

“On … in Lucy's room.”

“Fine,” Travis said, taking the earring from her. He looked at it, the deep green jewel set in fine gold. A row of tiny diamonds dangled from beneath the large square emerald. “Beck. This isn't like a pack of gum from Jenny Drew's backpack. What's going on?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I swear, it won't happen again.”

“Where have I heard that before?” he asked.

He slipped out the front door. The October night was brisk, and when he started to jog, he saw his breath. Ally would be coming to Newport this weekend. He wanted to have a great game for her, push away the doubts he'd been having about their relationship. But right now he felt weighted down, as if his sneakers were filled with water.

Halfway across the grounds, between his family's cottage and the main building, he tried to figure out what he'd say to Lucy. How could he even get into the girls' wing of the dorm? Maybe he could just wrap the earring up in notepaper, leave it by the dorm master's door asking that it be returned. Just then, he saw Angus patrolling the cliff path on his cart. Ducking behind some rhododendron bushes, Travis saw a shadow. Right there—through the glossy green leaves. He jumped, scared out of his wits. Someone else was hiding in the same bush.

“This is very strange,” a voice said. “I was just on my way to your house…”

“Pell?” he asked.

“Yeah…”

He inched left, branches and leaves rattling, to get closer to her. When they were side-by-side, he saw her wide blue eyes glowing, a big smile on her face.

“What were you coming over for?” he asked.

“It's a delicate matter,” she said.

“This?” he asked, reaching into his pocket, holding up the earring.

“So you know?” Pell asked.

“Yes,” he said. “How do
you
know?”

“I saw her do it,” Pell said. “And she saw me see. It was almost as if she was sleepwalking. And I know sleepwalkers—my sister does it. It was as if Beck couldn't help herself.”

“That's what the shrink said,” Travis said.

“The shrink?”

So Travis told her. Their mother had taken them to family therapy, and Dr. Mallory had explained that the trauma of being onshore while their father drowned, the inability to stop Carrie running away, had caused such despair in Beck, made her feel so helpless, that she was afraid of losing everything. She started stealing to make herself feel safe, surround herself with “things” because she'd lost what really mattered to her.

Pell listened intently. Once Angus was out of sight, Travis and Pell began to walk. Travis poured out the story. Why was it so easy? Most of his friends hadn't heard a fraction of the details; it was private, and they wouldn't understand. Even Ally had judged Beck. But Pell, who'd actually witnessed her stealing, just walked silently beside him, her arm touching his, listening to the whole thing.

“She stopped, we thought,” Travis said. “Back in Columbus, before we left. She got caught. Not just once, but a few times. Taking
stuff from a mall, books from school, but also things from her friends' houses. People started turning against her. After she lost one of her best friends, she seemed to get it. And stop… or so we thought.”

“She steals from her friends?” Pell asked. But the question didn't seem sharp, or accusatory. Travis could tell she cared.

“Yeah,” he said. “That's the worst part. She sees people who have what she wants, and they're the ones she takes from.”