Catching Genius (18 page)

“You're making this about you, Connie. And what do you know about classifying genius, anyway? What is he, then? Talented? Gifted? An ordinary genius? A magician?”

“What the hell are you talking about? An ordinary genius? A magician? You're not making any sense, and I'll remind you that Carson is
my
son, not yours.”

“Look, Connie, you need to figure out what's going on with
your
son, and you're going to have to let some people into your life to do that. Maybe he's just talented, maybe he just has a knack. But if he has genius and a passion for it, then you won't be able to control it. And if you try to keep him from it, he'll just wind up hating you.”

My breath was coming hard. This was not at all what I had expected from her. “And how am I supposed to do that, Estella? This isn't a Harry Potter world. There's no magician school to send him to.”

“No, it's not like that. Look, there are ordinary geniuses, people who sort of follow a logical path to doing something, something that other ordinary geniuses—really smart people—could do if they'd been so inclined, had the right tools, education, and so on. But then there are the magicians, people who just
know
. Their process isn't clear; we don't know how they manage to learn what they learn, produce what they produce. How their minds work is just . . . incomprehensible to the rest of us, no matter how smart we are.”

“Is that you? A magician?”

“You can't be serious,” she said, and I saw at a glance that she was utterly taken aback by the question.

“You did sort of seem to just know things,” I said.

“That's completely untrue. I had a knack, that's all. I played number games.”

“Estella, please; people with just a
knack
don't go to college at twelve.”

“Sometimes they do.”

“Well, don't worry,” I snapped. “I have no intention of disrupting my entire family just to further one child's
knack
.”

I could feel her staring at me, but I kept my eyes on the road and we passed the halfway mark without another word between us. After another silent hour passed, the previous night and the argument started to catch up with me, and I began to yawn. When Estella finally spoke her tone was soft, but it was still startling.

“We only have a couple of hours left,” Estella said. “Why don't you let me drive the rest of the way?”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, I'm a genius, right? I guess I can figure out the gas and brake pedals if you can.”

“Fine,” I said, heading for the approaching exit.
Let her run us off the road,
I thought.
At least it would put an end to this.

I topped off the tank at a gas station and when I climbed into the passenger side, I made sure she knew where the directions were, then leaned back and pretended to sleep.

But my pretense got the better of me, and I actually fell into a deep, surprisingly restful nap. Estella woke me gently, turning the music up a bit and placing her hand lightly on my knee. I opened my eyes and stretched, luxuriating in the space the Cadillac afforded. I popped the seat up and took a drink of water as I tried to figure out where we were.

“We'll be making the turn to the bridge soon,” she said.

“You want to switch?”

“No, I'm fine.”

“Can you drive over the bridge?” I asked in surprise.

“Sure,” she answered. “Why wouldn't I?”

“Your inner ear thing,” I said, pointing to my own ear.

“That's altitude that affects it,” she said. “And besides, it doesn't bother me anymore.”

“Hmm,” I said, pressing my lips into a thin line. I knew it.

We made the turn, and I could see the bridge stretching out in front of us, almost four miles of gentle slope. A curve to the right brought it to the island, but it was hazy and I couldn't see the land on the opposite side.

“Remember the bridge?” Estella asked, and I knew she was asking about the old bridge. Of course I remembered it. The original bridge to Big Dune had really been two bridges. Both had two lanes; one led to the island, while the other led off. They had been constructed close together, low over the water, and ran parallel to each other on barnacle-covered concrete pilings.

The year before we moved to Big Dune a barge hit the off-island bridge, collapsing the center of it for almost two miles, sending concrete and cars filled with islanders into the water below. Eleven people died, and a year later the boat's captain took his own life.

During the construction of the new bridge, island traffic was forced to use the one remaining bridge—one lane on, one lane off—and that, combined with the new, horrific view of the damaged bridge, made traffic often slow to a crawl. It took three years for the new bridge to open, and the sight of the old bridge gave children more nightmares than the stories of pirate ghosts on Little Dune Island.

Each end of the damaged bridge had survived, but their seemingly stable lanes led to nowhere. They were left as they'd been on the day of the accident, with huge slabs of concrete hanging from the rusty rebar embedded in the center of the bridge. Pilings that hadn't collapsed entirely had been left standing, jutting out of the water at varying heights, holding up nothing but the salt-laden air.

After the initial shock had worn away, the barricaded bridge became a favorite haunt for fishermen and pelicans. During the summer, teens with more time on their hands than sense daredeviled on the bridge, crawling over the end and shimmying down the rebar like circus performers, hand over hand, bare feet scrabbling for purchase, until they were standing on the chunks of concrete that swayed over the water. Some stopped there, paralyzed by fear, while others were brave enough—or stupid enough—to dive off the concrete into the dark water below.

I remembered getting my first “real” kiss there, from Tate, the taste of beer and cigarettes foreign in my mouth, but the shape of his mouth perfect and familiar. I looked over at Estella, wondering if she remembered the one night she'd been there, but Estella was concentrating on the gradual climb up the new bridge and didn't look my way.

Once the new bridge was complete, they'd collapsed the center of the other span, removed the pilings, and turned both old bridges into fishing piers, complete with steel guardrails and a little bait shop. I could see people fishing out at the ends, and I rolled down my window to breathe in the air.

It was tangier than the air of the Gulf farther south, redolent with the metallic scent of oysters and shrimp, and my mouth practically watered at the thought of popping a cold boiled shrimp, fresh off the boats and dripping with more horseradish than ketchup, into my mouth. A tingling joy rose up in me when we crested the top of the bridge and were greeted with a wave of dragonflies flowing around the car, taking me completely by surprise.

We could see the island now, and the Gulf beyond it, calm and green, with the unmistakable silhouettes of trawlers coming in. The grin on my face was uncontrollable, the muscles stretched taut, and again I looked over at my sister, certain that nobody could possibly keep the smile from her face when confronted by the beauty of Big Dune. But I was wrong.

Estella looked just as she had as a teenager, coming home to the island on the weekends. She looked like someone had taken her math away.

I can still see the old bridge as we drive over the new one. And in my mind, I can still see the rough edges of the concrete glowing in the moonlight as I'd hung my head over the edge of the shattered bridge. I can still see Connie and Tate walking toward the deeper shadows, bent toward each other. I never knew for sure if they'd actually become lovers; no one detail had revealed itself to me as the final clue. And she'd certainly never told me.

But my imagination had been merciless.

Connie draws her breath in as we crest the bridge, and I am thankful to have the excuse of keeping my eyes on the road when I feel her looking at me. She rolls her window down, and as soon as that gamy air hits my nose, my head begins to throb and my mind begins methodically picking its way through Zorn's Lemma, equivalent to the Axiom of Choice and the well-ordering theorem. It soothes me for a moment.

I grip the steering wheel tightly and feel the bottom of my stomach drop when the island comes into view, the Gulf backing it like an escape route, spreading green to the horizon, vast, so many places to swim out and disappear. A swarm of dragonflies engulfs the car like hundreds of hostile, iridescent dive-bombers and I almost panic, certain I will be blinded and will drive over the guardrail and plunge into the water below, but they clear almost immediately.

The panic remains.

I want to go back. To Atlanta, to Paul, even to the college students I'd been so disappointed in last night. I would marry Paul tomorrow if he could somehow transport me from this ridiculous behemoth of a vehicle back to my flawed but suddenly desperately beloved life.

Connie is wearing the demented grin of a homecoming queen, and I cannot quite believe that she could possibly be looking forward to being here again.

With me.

PART TWO

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Tate met us at the end of the driveway, his near-white hair and tan the only recognizable reminders of the teenager he'd once been. Estella braked hard, and I leapt out of the passenger door and ran to him with a joyful scream. He caught me under the arms and swung me around. My flip-flops flew off, and when he set me down, none too gently, my feet sank into the sand and oyster shells that made up the path to the house.

We both laughed out loud, barely audible over the waves, and I pushed my hair off my face to inspect him. He was no longer a child, that was for sure. The years had hardened him in places, softened him in others, as I supposed they did to all of us.

“Well,” he said, drawing it out with his thick accent, “Connie Sykes, you get better every year, don't you?”

“Flirt.” I laughed, hitting him on the chest. Estella glided up behind us in the Escalade, and we moved out of the way as she maneuvered between the pilings and eased the car under the house.

Tate raised his eyebrows over his sunglasses as the Cadillac passed. “Guess Estella's done all right then.”

I was embarrassed to admit that it was mine, but he merely appraised me again and nodded.

“So how'd you know we were here?” I asked as we waited for Estella to pop the hatch.

“Your mom called,” he said. “I missed her, but she left a message.”

I laughed. “Dodged a bullet,” I quipped, expecting him to laugh with me, but he looked at me askance and shrugged.

“I like talking to June all right,” he said.

“Well, yeah,” I said, embarrassed. I turned away from him and rapped my knuckles on the back window. What was taking her so long?

“What do I hit to open the back?” she asked, opening the door and leaning out. I walked up to the front and she got out. Rather than walking to the back to greet Tate, she leaned in with me and watched while I punched the button to release the back hatch, and then followed behind me.

“Hello, Tate,” she said, stretching her arm out from a distance, as though afraid to get too close. He took her hand and pumped it once.

“How you doin', Estella?” Tate asked. It was an easy question, as easy as Tate himself was, but a forced current underneath it caught my attention and my hands stalled on the bag I was reaching for.

“Good, and you?”

“I do all right.”

Tate reached out for a duffel bag at the same time Estella reached for a suitcase, and they both looked relieved to have something to do. I groaned as we struggled up the stairs to the front door. The house, built on stilts like most of the houses on Big Dune, was a nightmare of stairs. Six separate flights in all: from the ground to the first floor, where all the bedrooms were, then to the second floor with the living areas and kitchen, and then the third-floor library, another flight from the library to the widow's walk—never used because the humidity might damage the books—and then two separate flights outside on the beachfront side of the house, leading down to the boardwalk that skimmed over the dunes to the beach.

Estella was breathing heavily when we reached the first floor. She turned away from me and headed down the hall toward her old bedroom. I watched her retreating back for a moment and then turned toward my bedroom with Tate following me.

He dropped the bag on the bed and opened the curtains of my sliders. The room flooded with the golden light of the late afternoon sun, and I smiled as I took in the familiar view. When I came here with Luke we'd stayed in the master bedroom, but it was this room, the room of my teenage years, that could make me happy just walking into it.

Gib had refused to stay in the girlish, lemon-yellow and white room, preferring the severe white walls and plain furniture of Estella's old bedroom. Carson, by younger brother default, stayed in my room without complaint.

The house was set behind the dunes and I couldn't see the Gulf from this floor, but the strange, stark beauty of the dunes was as arresting a view in its own way. The porch, wide slats of unpainted wood, stopped at a waist-high railing; beyond that, great mounds of sand and oyster shells anchored a wild profusion of vegetation that would have horrified the average Verona homeowner.

There were no manicured lawns here, no splashy rows of impatiens and hibiscus, no orderly ficus hedges for privacy or stately royal palms. Instead, pale yellow beach roses spread their runners through clumps of scrub and sharp-edged cabbage palms. Sprinkled throughout, sea oats tried to gain a hold, gracefully arching their grasses over everything, slender stalks topped with plumes shooting toward the sun.