The Geometry of Sisters (29 page)

“You didn't have to do anything.”

“Maybe not for you. But for myself. And for her.”

“For Carrie?”

“Yes, Maura. For Carrie. My daughter. I built her a lighthouse.” He looked straight at her. “That night when we saw Beavertail Light from the bridge—that bridge, that light, that was us, Maura. I never forgot that. And I wanted whatever I did for Carrie to be part of that too, part of us. Her parents. So I bought the island across from where you went every summer, and I had it built.”

“How did you even know where we went?” Her stomach churned, her emotions ricocheting wildly.

“From Katharine.”

Maura took that in. How must it have been for Katharine?

“I never stopped thinking of you,” he said. “Either of you. She found me, and Maura, I swear I'll find her for you.”

“Oh, J.D.,” Maura said, reaching for him. She held him tight, the man who had given her her beautiful girl, and put her head on his shoulder and wept.

“Hello?” Katharine said, grabbing the phone when it rang late that night. There was silence on the line, and she wondered if she'd get another hang-up.

“It's me,” J.D. said.

“Hey, you,” she said. Her heart turned over.

“Maura came to see me,” he said.

“She had a big day; we went to Providence.”

“I promised her I'd find Carrie,” J.D. said. “I hate just staying here. Sitting by the phone waiting, even heading up there with Angus. I feel so fucking useless. Especially after seeing Maura…”

“I know,” Katharine said. “So do I.”

J.D. was silent on the line. Katharine held the phone to her ear, listening to him breathe. They'd been there for each other all this time, both missing the same person. She thought of him in his wheelchair, working so hard, never losing the dream that he could walk again. She knew he'd walk straight to Maura if he could.

“She's not shutting you out anymore,” Katharine said. “She came to see you, right?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Good,” Katharine said. Part of her felt so happy, and part of her broke. She'd had J.D. to herself all this time. She'd never been able to pretend he loved her the way he loved her sister, but she'd had him as her best friend.

“I promised her I'd find Carrie,” he said again.

“We'll keep looking until we do,” Katharine said.

“Tiger,” he said, piercing her heart with the nickname he'd given her so long ago, inspired by the extinct and beautiful saber-toothed tiger. “I've always been able to count on you.”

“That's what friends are for,” Katharine said. She held the receiver gently, as if it were J.D.'s hand. She'd always loved the impossible, extinct animals, creatures that were never meant to exist in this world. Just like her love for J.D.

17
I FOUND A SCRAPBOOK IN MY MOTHER'S ROOM. It's funny, because she taught me and Carrie to make them when we were young. She said she and Aunt Katharine had kept them when they were girls, and she showed us the fun of documenting our lives in such a visual way. Carrie and I went to the mall and picked out identical cream-colored scrap-books, except hers had a butterfly on the cover and mine had a cat.

We filled them with class pictures, our report cards, movie tickets, bead necklaces from the fair, brochures and pictures from our field trips to Thurber House. Even though our scrapbooks had certain things in common, you could tell that two different girls had made them. Mine had lots of math in it: quizzes, worksheets, tests where I'd gotten an A. And Carrie's was full of photographs, pictures of our family, the cats, our yard, her school, our town. We were sisters, but I saw the world through math, and she saw it through photography.

That's how I knew this scrapbook wasn't Mom's. How can I say this? It just wasn't her. Let me think about that, and I'll get back to you on how I knew. It showed up in her room the day Travis's team beat Lytton Hall. They're going to play Mooreland for the championship, the weekend before Thanksgiving.

Mom said we've both made her proud this fall—me going to the math tournament, and Travis leading the team to the ISL championship. In spite of all that, our family mood is not one of happiness.

I'd say the atmosphere in our small, dark house is filled with a sense of waiting. If I didn't believe the worst that could befall a family had already happened to us, I'd say it's a feeling of impending doom.

When no one's home but me and the cats, I drift through the house. I don't really snoop, but I see what's there. Travis's room: all his football stuff, his computer, Ally's letters, his Matchbox cars, the watch Dad gave him—it used to be our grandfather's, and it's made of gold and way too expensive for everyday—and a bunch of hats Dad used to wear.

You'd think, to a girl with my problem, the watch would be calling my name. You might imagine I'd reach for it almost by instinct, slip it into my pocket just to feel its weight, decide to keep it so I could have a valuable family heirloom. I'd hide it well, in my secret kleptomaniacal stash with the ceramic pineapple, the brass mouse, cello strings, a silver bracelet Logan left in the gym, a glass paperweight from Stephen's office, a button from Lucy's black cashmere jacket, and Angus's keys. But no—I didn't want the watch.

My father's hats—they're another story. He liked hats a lot, had a collection of them. Most were baseball caps, from his team and other schools around Ohio. He had baseball caps from all the stadiums he'd ever visited—he and Travis used to go to games together and come home with souvenirs.

But Dad had other hats as well. See, he was going a little bald. Well, more than a little. He tried to hide it. He wore a baseball cap almost all the time, and he had these cotton hats with bands and little brims to wear fishing and when he mowed the lawn, and he even had a cool safari hat his college roommate had brought back from Africa.

Here's something I don't want most people to know: it upset me, that my father was going bald. We all teased him about it, and everyone laughed, and that used to hurt me. Because if he thought
baldness was so great, why would he have to hide it under a hat? I know he didn't like it, and that made me feel embarrassed for him.

My father's hair was a reddish, sandy color—like mine, but lighter, not so brown. From the front, he looked as if he had plenty of it, except for parabolic inlets going back from his temples. Then, in the back, he had lost a circle of hair about the circumference of a coffee mug. And it was increasing in diameter.

So when I go into Travis's room, I always look at my father's hats. Travis has them hanging on a rack behind his closet door. I look inside them, and sometimes find a hair or two—those I take. I keep my father's stray hairs with my other necessary treasures. Travis won't miss those.

Then into my mother's room, where there's a true mother lode. That's a pun, but it's the reality. My mother has so many good things to pick up, look at, think about. Even the anonymous pacifier. I don't have to take anything, because her room is always overflowing with mementos and I can always find them there.

You can't imagine what my mother saves: our baby shoes, our baby teeth, locks of our hair, every drawing we ever made, the first shoelace Travis ever learned to tie, the pink-checked bib Carrie was wearing when she said her first word (“Da!”), finger paintings I made in nursery school.

So discovering a black notebook that was really a scrapbook was both a shock and to be expected. Because my mother is definitely the scrapbook type; but if this was hers, where has it been all along? I would have found it before now. And why is it filled with items about Rhode Island, Providence to be precise?

Open the black cover. Inside, a parking ticket issued on Wickenden Street. Turn the page: a drawing of the waterfront. Precise, almost architectural renderings of buildings and houses: a Victorian house, some two-family dwellings, all under the words
Fox Point
. On another page, Rhode Island Hospital, zooming in on
it. A bed. A man sleeping in the bed, and a pregnant girl standing at the foot.

Then a nursery filled with cribs. Inside one crib, a sleeping baby. A watercolor of pink booties, another of a pacifier. The menu from a family restaurant: the Half Moon. Then a sketch of the Half Moon Diner, again the words
Fox Point
.

The book was filled with things like that. I could have spent all day at it. To most people, it would have been a mystery. But not me. I've been at this too long. I pick up belongings and feel a complete connection to the person who owns them. Maybe that's why I like “things” so much: they all come with a story. Unfortunately, no matter who they belong to, the story is usually mine.

But this black scrapbook was different. I knew it was Aunt Katharine's. She's a sculptor, but her work begins on the page. There's a mathematical elegance to her large constructions; she has to spend time with a paper and pencil to get the dimensions, angles, mass, and stability right.

As I looked through the pages, I saw my aunt's future sculptures coming to life. It was like having a mystical vision: someday we'd drive to her house, and in the field, instead of dodo birds and mastodons, there would be an installation of a man sleeping in a hospital bed. We'd go to an art opening, and she'd have a show full of cribs filled with pink-bootied baby dolls.

That's what I told myself. I could see this notebook being the basis for Aunt Katharine's sculpture. Art and math aren't so different. They come from ideas, from a way logic and magic combust. My working with Lucy on formulas to bring us close to our fathers was not so different from Aunt Katharine starting with ideas of Providence and turning them into art.

But the more I stared at the pages, the stranger my feelings got. My gut churned as I saw things that made no sense. And why would my mother have this book? Wouldn't Aunt Katharine need it to complete her projects? Paging slowly through, I heard wind in the
laurel leaves outside our cottage. The wind was saying my sister's name:
Carrie, Carrie, Carrie
.

Never have I taken an object from my mother. Money in the past, but not lately. Because she is such a part of me and I of her, I haven't needed any mementos. But this book burned in my hands. It made my skin scream: I felt blisters forming on my heart. My throat closed so tightly, I couldn't breathe. I felt as if the black cover was melting into me, or I was draining into it. Either way, I couldn't put the book down.

I carried it into my bedroom. Because it was too big to fit into my special hiding place, I slid it under my mattress—all the way to the center of the bed, where no one changing the sheets could reach without really trying. The instant I let it out of my hands, the burning stopped.

I kissed the cats; they seemed skittish, as if they could hear the wind talking too. It was time for math lab with Lucy. I grabbed my backpack and ran out of the house, letting the cold and salty November air drench my scorched self.

Practice intensified in the week before the championship game, with Travis pouring everything he had into the workouts. He hadn't let himself want this, or even acknowledge what he was doing. But every game, every yard gained, every touchdown scored—he was doing it for his dad.

He couldn't explain it, didn't even want to try. For him, football had always been fun, discipline, playing the best game, doing it for his team. He'd never given the sport a cosmic purpose, never thought it had much meaning beyond a drive to win.

But this season, that had changed. Coming to a new school, losing his old girlfriend, trying to put together an accumulation of time without his father and older sister, had all seemed like challenge enough. He'd never expected to arrive in Newport and ignite
their football program. He'd always played hard, to win. His father had taught him rigor, but had reminded him not to lose sight of the fun. That had made Travis a really good player. But nothing before this season had led him or anyone to believe he could be a football star.

The only difference he could think of was his father. He'd started talking to him, on the way to practice, and out on the field. Between plays, after the huddle, he'd face his opponent and hear his father's words:
Truer than true, faster than fast
. He'd hear his dad's voice:
Do it with grace
. His father had coached many winning baseball teams with that spirit; Travis was only now discovering how lucky he'd been to have those words coming at him from his dad, any time of the day or night, no matter what the game, no matter what the obstacle.