Read The Geometry of Sisters Online
Authors: Luanne Rice
Her mother and Aunt Katharine's break had started as a crack. Little things. Long silences, then longer. A day had turned into a year, and into a lifetime. That's how Beck put it together. She knew neither of them had started out wanting that. She was positive.
She thought of Carrie. Her mother and aunt's estrangement had made it possible for Carrie to cut herself off. She had learned from them that silence was possible, that a person could leave her family.
Beck tapped her pencil, thought of how hard she and Lucy were working to find the formula to bring their fathers back. That was math, it was magic, it was just two lonely teenage girls desperately longing for their dead fathers. She thought of the notebook: what if it contained something real? Something that could help find Carrie?
Carrie had run away from the ER after the storm. Beck thought she knew why: her sister was pregnant, and if she stayed, the doctors would find out and tell her mother. Was she afraid now? Of coming home? Was she worried that no one would welcome her back? Did she think the damage was too great? She knew, from watching her mother and aunt, that disaffection had become part of their family.
But what Carrie didn't know, because she wasn't here right now, was that the estrangement was finished. It was
ended
.
Rolling over, Beck startled Grisby. The cat scooted off the bed, into the closet to hide behind a pile of laundry. Beck arched over the side of the bed, wriggled her hand under the quilt and sheets, wedged it as deeply between the mattresses as she could. Her fingers closed around the book's hard covers.
She eased it out and opened it. She gazed at the walking map of
Providence's East Side, a receipt for a cup of coffee and a corn muffin at the Half Moon Diner. She studied her aunt's sketch of the porch steps and railings of a big blue house, letters painted delicately above a rose-pink door:
Hawthorne House
.
When she had looked through the whole scrapbook, she tucked it under her arm, stood up straight, and left her bedroom.
This was the hardest walk she'd ever taken: down the small hallway, to the kitchen. Her mother and aunt were at the sink, washing dishes. The football game blared from the TV in the living room, and music played on the kitchen CD player: Carly Simon.
“Mom?” Beck said, her lips parched.
“Remember the concert at Foxwoods?” her aunt was saying.
But her mother wasn't hearing Carly now, she had turned to look at Beck and was waiting for the truth, the disaster.
“Mom,” Beck said again, her mouth drier than before. She could barely get the word out.
“Beck?” she asked.
Beck could have said she just found it. She'd gone looking in her mother's room, come upon the notebook in her drawer, or on the bookshelf, or under the night table. But she didn't say any of those things. Her whole body was trembling. She felt as if she had an evil force inside her, a terrible spirit, and she had to get it out.
“I took it, Mom,” she said.
“Oh, Beck …”
Beck screwed up her face with shame; she had disappointed her mother again. But when she brought the notebook out from behind her back, her mother didn't even take it. She just wrapped Beck in the biggest hug possible, rocked her back and forth.
“Why are you hugging me?” Beck asked. “I stole it.”
“I'm so proud that you've brought it to me, on your own.”
Beck realized: it was true. This was the first time she had done that. She buried her head in her mother's chest, eyes closed, feeling that she had finally done the right thing. And that made her think
of the other objects she'd stolen, and how she suddenly had a burning desire to return them all to their rightful owners.
“Thank you, Beck,” Aunt Katharine said.
“Will it help you find Carrie?” Beck asked.
Aunt Katharine didn't waste time in platitudes, in maybes or “we'll see's.” Beck saw in her eyes a woman who worked with numbers, formulas, math, and logic.
“Yes,” Aunt Katharine said. “I think it will.”
“Honey,” her mother said, “get your brother.”
Beck tore into the living room. “Hurry,” she said, and he did. They hustled back to the kitchen, stood staring at their mother and aunt. Beck could hardly breathe.
“What?” she said, shaking her mother's arm. “You have to tell us.”
“We don't know this for sure,” her mother said. “But it seems possible that Carrie is in Rhode Island. In Providence …”
“Mom!” Travis said.
“How do you know?” Beck asked.
“Someone saw her,” her mother said.
“Who?”
“Never mind… that part's not important,” her mother said, turning bright red. What was that about? Beck wondered, but she was too blown away by the thought of Carrie so close by. She'd felt her sister all this time, sensed her presence almost as if she was watching over her.
“We've been looking for her,” Aunt Katharine said. “Carrie and her…” She glanced at their mother.
“Her baby,” their mother said.
“Carrie did have a baby?” Travis asked.
“Yes,” their mother said. “We're pretty sure she did.”
“Is that why she's stayed away?” Travis asked, his voice breaking. “Does she think we wouldn't love her?”
“She knows we love her!” Beck said, scoffing. “No matter what.”
“I think she has other reasons for staying away,” their mother
said. “That have nothing to do with you two. They're between me and Carrie.”
“I don't believe that,” Travis said. “What could you have done?” “Who cares who did what, or anything like that?” Beck asked.
“Carrie is here! In Providence! And guess where I'm going for the math competition? That's right! I'm going to find my sister!”
In the days after Thanksgiving, I began to go straight. It was like waking up after a long, strange dream. Carrie was in Providence! I wouldn't have to miss her anymore. We'd run into each other's arms and be whole again. I wouldn't be missing half of myself. All the things I'd stolen arrayed before me, images that added up to a dark, nonsensical subconscious blur. Why had I taken such dumb things, as if they could fill the void left by my sister? A ceramic pineapple?
Really?
Between History and English, I returned the little brass mouse to its home, a glass-front bookcase in the second-floor reading room of Blackstone Hall. I had to wait for Logan Moore and Ty Cooper to finish snuggling on the chintz loveseat before making my move. They looked at me as if I was a perv, spying on their makeout session. I didn't care.
My months of stealing had given me practice in casing various joints. Only this time, I did it in reverse. Instead of waiting for the right moment to grab the goods, I bided my time for the precise opportunity to return them.
“There's a library, you know,” Logan said as I browsed through the books.
“I know,” I said, my back to her.
“What's your name, Becca?” Ty asked.
“Beck,” I said.
“You're Travis's sister.”
“Yeah,” I said, still not turning around. But I knew that made
me okay in Ty's eyes. Being my brother's sister had gotten me accepted by a lot of older boys and football players over the years. I was the squirt sister. There was a place for me in their universe. Deal with it, Logan.
“I just think, if you're looking for a book, there are more choices in the library,” Logan said.
“Thanks,” I said as I continued to peruse the shelves.
“This room is more for reading,” she said. “The library is for research.”
The thing is, in spite of the fact she was chewing face and not reading at all, she was right. Newport Academy had a great library. It was on the front of the building and faced east, over the sea. The tall windows had been specially tinted, to protect the thousands of volumes arranged over two levels, and the whole library was modeled after the Long Room in the Old Library at Trinity College, Dublin. Apparently old James Desmond Blackstone had worked there as a porter when he was a boy shelving books and doing general janitorial duties for the librarians, and to him a grand library like that was the sine qua non of a fine school. He wanted it to happen, and it did.
But I avoided our school library for the exact reason that others loved it: it faced the water. Water is still my downfall. I avoid it, even the sight of it, whenever possible. That's how I'd come to discover the reading room, this little star sapphire of a chamber. Blue shantung silk on the walls, three tall mahogany bookcases, one with a glass front, a seating area with loveseat and two armchairs, all covered in faded old chintz patterned with blue flowers—thistles and forget-me-nots.
Set in the middle of the second floor, between the boys' and girls' wings, it has no windows at all. There is a cozy fireplace for warmth, with a white Italian marble mantel carved with lilies; it was one of my favorite places to hide out and commune with trigonometric
functions. I waited for Logan and Ty to leave, to get tired of enacting their mad passion with me five feet away.
Just as an aside: it's kind of weird watching super-attractive people make out. It's like watching a movie, everyone's features so chiseled, and their bodies nothing like yours or mine. Even the spit in the corner of Ty's mouth as he shoved his tongue into Logan's was kind of mesmerizing. I turned away, stared through the glass-paneled doors on the one bookcase.
There were six shelves. Five were filled with books—obviously the oldest volumes, bound in red or green leather, the titles in delicate gold. The sixth shelf was filled with small objects: a crystal globe, a pressed shamrock, dry and brown, in a small frame, silver-framed photos of distinguished-looking men and women, a framed clipping from the local paper about the swimming pool on the fourth floor, the first of its kind in the whole United States. And two brass mice—I had the third in my pocket.
A title caught my eye:
Rose Hawthorne: A Life
.
I knew nothing of her, whoever she was, and biographies are far from my favorite reading material. I prefer anything on mathematics, books by Bertrand Russell, or even Bishop George Berkeley. But the name shimmered:
Hawthorne
. Hawthorne House. Carrie, my aunt's scrapbook. So I took the old red leather-bound book down from the center of the shelf.
Sitting in a chair kitty-corner to Logan and Ty, feeling the fire's warmth on my legs, I read a page. Rose was the second daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Her father had called her “Rosebud.” She had lived from 1851 to 1926. The family had spent time in Italy; she'd had a spiritual conversion, become a Catholic, founded a religious order, and opened a hospital for the poor. She was saintly.
I was lost in thought. Could there be some connection with the Hawthorne House Aunt Katharine had discovered in Providence? With Carrie? When I looked up, Logan and Ty were gone; they had
slipped out without my noticing. But Redmond had come looking for me. He stood in the doorway, his corkscrew red hair zinging all over the place. He looked at me with a goofy grin.
“Guess what?” he asked.
“Uh, you have a new freckle?”
“I got the word from Mr. Campbell. I can go to Providence with the math team.”
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Yeah. I can carry your books for you.”
“I have to tell you something,” I heard myself say. “My sister is in Providence. She ran away a year ago. I haven't seen her since then. I don't even care about math anymore. I just want to find my sister.”
“Thanks for telling me that,” Redmond said. “It…”
He turned so red, he matched the fire. I waited for him to finish.
“It makes me feel close to you,” he said.
“Me too,” I said. “Close to you.”
I smiled at him and put the Rose Hawthorne biography back on the shelf. Next to it was another book, a smaller one I hadn't noticed before. Its cover was tattered and the words
Love
and
Sorrow
were written on it in ink, in a delicate script. The words might have been written just for me, to describe the way I felt.
That's when Redmond held my hand. Just held it, standing there by the fire, thinking of going to Providence.
20
MAURA AND KATHARINE GOT TOGETHER EVERY night after work. The first few nights after Thanks giving they huddled at the kitchen table, talking about Carrie and what they could do. Together they went through the details, Katharine using the notebook to remind her of everything she'd learned.
They talked to Tim Marcus, who said he'd finally gotten the eBay guy to tell him what they already knew: that he had sent the lot of western postcards to a postbox in Providence, Rhode Island.
They cooked dinner together. Chopping vegetables, seasoning the sauce, setting the table. Travis and Beck pulled up chairs to the kitchen table, asked everything about Carrie. Maura filled them in the best she could, leaving out the parts about J.D. Katharine told them about her drives through Fox Point, the people she'd talked to and given Carrie's picture to.
Maura loved watching her kids interact with her sister. It seemed both so simple and so extraordinary. Why had this seemed so hard? How could they have messed up so many years? It was difficult for Maura to not blame herself, think of ways she might have made things better, reached out, invited Katharine to more family events—holidays, graduations, spring concerts. She'd catch herself feeling the old bitterness, regretting her own actions, wishing Katharine hadn't shut her out for so long, wishing she herself hadn't made so many mistakes.