Catching Genius (22 page)

The first time I went under, I swallowed a bit of water and panicked, plunging my arms down in a sweeping motion, raising my head above water for a moment, long enough to draw a lungful of air. But I slipped back down so fast that water immediately followed the air down my throat. I swallowed and felt it rise back up in my throat. The football hit my left cheek and I gasped, inhaling more water.

I called for Estella, I saw her coming, I knew she would save me. I saw her eyes, the exact same green as the Gulf water that was swallowing me, and I knew that I would be okay. Her eyes comforted me so assuredly that I relaxed and gently went under the waves in slow motion.

And then everything sped up, a choppy, spluttering fast-forward in which everything was a confused mass of churning water and limbs. Somehow Tate got to me first, and then Estella was there, and together they hauled me onto the beach, where I collapsed to my elbows and knees, my back bowed like an old mare's. My hair hung like seaweed in my face, and I choked water out and gasped air in before finally vomiting a humiliating gush of seawater and beer onto the sand.

The party was over. Tate and Estella half-dragged, half-carried me into the house, where Estella, sobbing, helped me shower and then installed me in our parents' bed. She closed the house to everyone except Tate and refused to allow me out of bed for two days.

Tate came to see me every day, but it was the end of our childish romance. We became closer friends, and I've never forgotten the fact that he and my sister saved my life. I bought him a new football for Christmas that year to replace the one that disappeared.

When our parents returned, we told them nothing of our month except that we'd had a nice time, and neither of them ever found out. I knew Estella felt responsible, but I was the one who had gone beyond my capabilities, and I knew it. I'd been behaving like a fool and had been punished for it by nearly drowning, and then by Estella's determined renewal of the chasm between us. She spent the rest of that summer with Dr. Pretus and his wife, and the next year she graduated from college and left for Atlanta without spending another day at Big Dune.

I shuddered, remembering how hot and salty the water had been in my throat, how thick and grasping the current. I felt Estella stir beside me. She reached out her hand and I took it. We both leaned back against the dune and gazed at the stars, and I felt that sense of friendship with her again for the first time in a long time.

“So Robbie Deckers wasn't your first love, then,” I said, anxious to relegate the memory of the water back where it belonged.

“Hardly,” she answered.

I rolled over on my stomach and propped my head on my hands. “Who was your first love, Estella? I've never known a thing about your love life.”

“Paul was my first love,” she said, keeping her gaze on the Milky Way.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “Give me something. Was Robbie your first kiss? Or was it a college boy? I always wondered if you met a lot of frat boys.”

“I met a lot of college boys,” she admitted. “But they weren't interested in a fourteen-year-old weirdo like me.”

“Stop, Estella,” I said.

“Anyway, no, Robbie wasn't my first kiss.”

“I knew it! Come on, tell,” I demanded.

She was silent for a long time, and I finally prodded her side, making her yelp and wiggle away from my finger. She looked at me and worried her lip with her teeth. “All right, yeah, it was a college guy.”

“I knew it! Come on, details, I want details.”

“No, you don't,” she said quietly.

“Jeez, Estella.” I sighed. “What's the big deal?”

“It was Pretus,” she finally said.

Pretus? I'd only met him a few times: a middle-aged man balding early, prone to wearing bow ties, and startlingly dismissive of anyone who wasn't in his daily math-driven world.

“Not that kind of kiss, your first
real
kiss,” I said. She looked at me, and when I saw her face, still and serious, I realized in horror what she was telling me.

“No,” I said.

“Yes.”

“My God, Estella. What happened? When?”

“He came into my room at night,” she said. “He just talked to me at first. He kissed me for the first time right after my fifteenth birthday.”

“Jesus,” I breathed. “Did you say anything?”

“To who?”

“Daddy? Mother? Anyone?”

“Daddy was caught up in the island. All he wanted to hear was how well I was doing. Pretus told me we had to keep it a secret.”

“But—Estella,” I started, afraid to voice the question. “Did he ever try . . . anything else?”

“Not until I was sixteen,” she said.

“Oh no, Estella, no. That bastard, that sick bastard.” My voice shook with the enormity of it. Estella, so vulnerable and shy, thrown into college too young, given over to the protective care of the brilliant professor and his wife. “What about his wife?” I asked.

“I didn't think she knew at the time,” she said thoughtfully. “But I do now. I think she knew.”

“How?” I whispered. “How could it happen? How long did it go on?”

“It stopped that last summer,” she said.

“But you stayed with them after that, before you graduated.”

She nodded. “I had to graduate. I couldn't leave, not that close to getting out of here. I threatened to tell, he threatened—”

“What?” I asked, incredulous that Pretus could possibly threaten anything.

She was silent a moment, and then propped herself up. “Connie?” she finally said, looking at me hard, searching out my eyes in the starlight. “Could we drop it? It was a long time ago.”

“But—”

“We can talk about it again, just not tonight, all right?”

I couldn't help it, I opened my mouth to protest. But the words died on my lips. The clouds slid away from the moon, and in its light I saw the pain in her eyes, the muddled gray of a churning Gulf.

“Please,” she said.

I was disappointed, but nodded, thinking of all the things I wasn't telling her, thinking of Luke and his twenty-four-year-old barista, of the life Estella thought was so perfect that was actually out of control and on the verge of collapse. Perhaps this was enough disclosure for the night. At least we'd both seemed to agree that Carson was off-limits.

I felt closer to her than I had since we were children, and to my astonishment, it was because of her. I had always thought it would be up to me, that I would have to lay myself bare and beg her friendship. It was a start, made by her, and I was grateful for that much.

“Thank you,” she said quietly and lay back against the dune. I flopped over with a sigh and joined her in gazing into the night sky, desperately searching for something to take her mind off Pretus.

“So. Tate, huh? How was he?” I asked, and she laughed.

“You don't know?”

“No,” I said, surprised she had to ask. “No, that summer, that was it.”

“Well, I wouldn't know either. He stopped it. It was pretty humiliating, actually. I went back to Atlanta the next day. This is the first time I've seen him since.”

I suddenly understood the tension between them.

“Yeah, well,” she continued. “I guess it all came back, being here.” She glanced at me quickly. “Don't worry. I'll get over it.”

“I hope so, because we're going to Little Dune with him on Saturday,” I said, rolling toward her again.

She groaned. “Give me back my city,” she said. “You two can have all this nature stuff. What're we going to do on Little Dune? Wrestle gators? Admire Tate while he rows us manfully across the cut?”

“Maybe he'll take his shirt off,” I suggested with a leer, and she laughed before she pushed me over with her legs, covering me in sand and memories. “Come on,” I said, jumping up, pulling her with me despite her protesting groan. We stood with our opposite hands clasped and I pushed her away and then pulled her toward me, and just like that we fell back into it. We danced in the soft sand, stumbling and giggling and reacquainting our adult bodies with the easy rhythm of the surf and each other.

We worked our way back to the house tethered to each other with our fingers, never breaking contact as we twirled under and around, and followed the moonlight home.

I feel cleansed with telling her, as though my lungs had been filled with sand and now had finally been blown out. My head is not pounding now, the way it had been since we crossed the bridge. But when I look past the relief, I know we have not talked about what we should.

Connie makes jokes and dances, but it lies between us like the cut between Big Dune and Little Dune. It is a cut itself. It pains me, slit open again like it is. I want to take stitches to it. Scars can be prevented when sewn up with care, but I've not been taught that particular skill. My stitches will be ragged, clumsily done. How many will it take?

We have been here for all of three days, and I have to keep pulling them out and starting again. Connie doesn't even know how I've bungled it. She is the patient, out on the table, sedated with her perfect life in Verona.

My head begins to throb again. It is back. I hear the faraway thunks of the front door dead bolts again, hear Connie climb the stairs, thirteen of them.

I close my eyes.
Thirteen.

Three facts about thirteen:

The first prime gap of thirteen occurs between one hundred thirteen and one hundred twenty-seven.

A Chinese abacus has thirteen columns.

Thirteen is the smallest permutable prime.

The three facts won't be enough tonight. I could keep going:

Thirteen is the smallest prime that can't be part of a Sophie German pair.

The olive branch on the back of a dollar bill has thirteen leaves.

Ptolemy's treatise,
Almagest
, is thirteen volumes.

Thirteen is the concatenation of the first two triangular numbers.

I think about Connie and me dancing in front of the dunes and fall asleep.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Estella obviously had a better night's sleep than I did. I heard her climb the stairs in the morning while I was still trying to stop my mind from racing around her confessions of the night before. My hands felt branded from her touch, as though she'd communicated as much through her sand-covered palms as she had with her words.

She was on the phone when I finally pulled myself out of bed and arrived upstairs. She grinned when she saw me, and I knew the previous night had been real. She pointed to the phone and mouthed
Mother
.

“So you're getting caught up on all your work then?” she said, her voice all honey and concern.

I shook my head at her with a smile.

“I'm sorry too,” she said. “She's right here, hang on.” She covered the mouthpiece. “She's still under a bit of pressure, poor thing.”

I took the phone. “Hello, Mother.”

“Hello, dear. Is everything going okay up there?”

“Everything's fine,” I said. “We haven't gotten much done yet, but we're going to head upstairs as soon as I get off the phone.”

“Has Bob called?”

“No. Why? Do you know something?”

“No, he won't discuss it with me,” she said, sounding miffed.

I felt a bit of grudging respect for Bob, though I didn't doubt that he would let plenty slip in the coming weeks.

“And how are you two getting along?” she asked, lowering her voice as though Estella might hear.

I could have said,
We're as different as we always were.
I could have said,
I have no idea, it changes every hour, but last night gives me hope.
Instead, I said, “Fine, just fine.”

“I'm so pleased to hear that, Connie. Have you spoken to the boys?”

“Carson called from camp last night. He seems to be very happy. I tried to catch Gib, but nobody was home.”

“Well, that's how teenagers are, I suppose, always out with their friends.”

“I suppose. We'll call you later in the week, Mother. Love you,” I said. She reminded me once again that she wanted the oil paintings and finally allowed me to hang up. Estella slid a mug across the counter and poured me a cup of coffee.

“I'm going for a swim,” she said. “Do you want to come?”

I looked out the sliders and saw the next-door neighbor warming up on the beach. “Sure,” I said. “No swimming for me, but maybe I'll talk to your friend. And then we have to get to work.”

“Her name's Vanessa,” she said. “And she's from New Zealand.”

Vanessa had a charming accent, and she was considerably older than I had thought. She stretched and swayed while I sat nearby with my coffee and watched my sister struggling in the Gulf. By the time Estella flopped down next to me, sending little droplets of water showering to the sand, I had made plans for the two of us to watch the sunset from Vanessa's widow's walk that night. Estella was breathing heavily, and I looked at her chest heaving up and down in concern.

“Are you all right?” I asked her as Vanessa carefully rotated an invisible ball and set it on the sand in front of her.

Estella flapped her hand at me. “Fine,” she panted. “I'm fine, just out of shape.”

When she finally caught her breath we headed back to the house, showered, and with twin grimaces climbed the stairs to the library. Estella started with Daddy's desk while I pulled paintings off the wall and stacked them downstairs. My calves were screaming by the time I got all eleven of them. Estella hauled down a few bags of trash from the desk, and then we spent the rest of the afternoon checking off books on Daddy's records. There were almost seven hundred volumes, filling six bookcases.