Catching Genius (23 page)

Most of Daddy's collection, easily triple what was currently in the room, had been put into storage before the estate had been auctioned off. He and Estella had spent weeks going through them, choosing which ones to take to the new house on Big Dune.

I'd watched from the doorway, consumed with jealousy, remembering that before he foisted me off on my mother he had told me that one day we would open a bookstore together. I held on to that fantasy for years after I'd given up on Daddy being my partner in it. I loved the feel of the books, loved the smell of them. Now, as I went through the list with Estella, I thought of it again, wondering how much it might take to set up, if it could be profitable enough, if people even bought rare books anymore.

It was the first time since my twenties that I considered what I might have done differently with my life. I fell into the fantasy the way I once imagined that Daddy and Estella would grow tired of each other and math and would return to being my ardent admirers and playmates.

“How did you and Daddy choose these?” I asked.

“It wasn't very scientific,” she said with a smile. “He made me choose three subjects. Every book that fit in them, I got to pull out. He chose three subjects too.”

“What were yours?” I asked.

She gave a nervous little laugh. “I hardly remember,” she said.

“Come on,” I pushed.

“Um, well, I remember I thought anything having to do with islands was appropriate. And math, of course.”

“And what was the third?”

“Music.”

“Really?” I asked, surprised. She shrugged and turned away from me.

“I thought you might like them sometime,” she said. My heart nearly stilled. I wasn't sure I believed her. But how I wanted to. She turned with three books in her hands. “Look,” she said, holding them out to me.

I looked at the titles:
Antonietta
,
Works
, and
The First Violin
. I'd never read any of them.

“Daddy said they all had something to do with violins, one way or another,” Estella said as I handed them back to her.

“What did Daddy pick?” I asked.

“The sea, in general—that's why
The Awakening
is here—astronomy, and the South. But he had pretty broad parameters. It didn't have to be about the South, exactly, he just had to remember something specific in the book about the subject. If he could remember it, we saved it.”

“And he remembered things in all of these?” I asked, impressed by my father. Over the years, I had developed a sense of how others had seen him, and his father before him, and it wasn't very flattering. When we were children and listened in on the parties, our father had seemed like the most influential of men, but once the estate was gone he had been diminished—not just in the eyes of society, but in my eyes as well.

He disappointed me, year after year, and I hardened my heart against more hurt by developing a weary, dismissive attitude toward him. It had been faked at first, but over time it had come to be a part of me. I was ashamed that I felt genuine surprise when faced with having to remember the things that had impressed me to begin with.

“He says he did, but he stopped opening them to find the passage he was looking for soon enough,” Estella said, betraying her own doubts about him. “I swear Mother knew more about his books than he did,” she continued, pulling an empty box from the back wall and heading for the first bookcase.

“Mother?” I asked.

“She knew where every one was. She had her own little Dewey Decimal System right in her head. He'd remember a title, but have no idea where it was. He was incredibly unorganized for a book collector. He'd call her in, and she'd point to the right shelf and just toss off
to the left
, or
in the middle
. And there it was, every time. I thought, even back then, that I got my number thing from her. Of course, I never said that. Daddy would have keeled over. To tell the truth, I really am sort of sorry she's not here. I would have liked to ask her about it, how she knew all that.”

“It's probably better that she's not,” I said. “We wouldn't get as much done.”

She stopped packing for a moment to look at me. “Did you two have a fight or something? Is that why she didn't come? Why won't you just tell me?”

I bit my bottom lip. “No, not exactly. I think she just didn't want to come back here.”

She shook her head. “There's something you're not telling me. Is it me? She acted like she wanted to see me. Did I do something?”

“No. No, it's not you.”

“Then what's the problem, Connie?”

I owed her. I owed her for last night. “Did Mother ever tell you about her parents?”

She shook her head. “Just that they died when she was young. A hurricane, right? They drowned? God, it's awful that I don't even remember,” she said, looking up at me in astonishment.

I checked my watch. “I'm starved,” I said. “You want to get cleaned up and go to the mainland for lunch?”

“Connie,” she said in exasperation. “What do you know?”

“I'm going to tell you, but it's too big a story to tell like this. Let's go to the Oyster Bed and eat oysters and drink beer till we pop.”

She stared at me speculatively for a moment and then looked around the library with a sigh. “We're never going to finish this.”

“Yeah, we will,” I said. “Besides, we can send Mother the paintings while we're over there.”

We loaded the paintings in the Escalade, carefully layering bubble wrap between them. By the time we arrived at the Oyster Bed we both felt as though we'd accomplished the first step of making the house ready for sale. Rather than feeling uplifted by it, though, I felt a profound sadness. It had truly begun.

I wished I had brought the boys. I wished I had turned around at the gates and marched back up to Mother's and carried her to the car, hatbox and all. It was hard for me to believe that this was it. The end of the beach house, the last place I had memories of Daddy. The end of my marriage, the end of my family as I knew it.

Estella seemed subdued too, and she didn't press me to tell her the story until after we'd ordered. The beer was cold, and the first one went down quickly, loosening my tongue. Estella was a perfect audience, and I stretched the story out, perhaps elaborating little details, but staying true to what Mother told me, ending with the feel of the little shoes in my palms.

“I can't believe it,” she said when I finally finished. She had stopped eating her shrimp roll halfway through the story, and now she looked at it as though unsure of how it had appeared in front of her. “When did she tell you this?”

“The week before I left,” I said.

“But what—I mean, why, after all this time?”

I thought about telling her. About Luke, about all of it. “Going back to the island,” I finally said. “I guess I should have realized that she was trying to tell me that she couldn't go.”

“I just can't believe it,” she repeated. “And Daddy never knew?”

“Mother says he didn't. He just plucked her up, swallowed their story, and never gave it a second thought.”

She crunched into her shrimp roll and chewed, swallowing before she spoke. “He really loved her though, didn't he?”

I nodded. “I think he did.”

“Poor Mother, to find her sisters like that. I can't believe we never even guessed there was anything interesting in her past. Daddy was supposed to be the fascinating one.” She shook her head in amazement. “Did she tell you not to tell me?”

“No, not exactly,” I said. “She didn't say one way or the other.”

“So, if her father didn't die in the hurricane, then how did he die?” she asked.

I frowned. “I don't know, actually. We mostly talked about her sisters.”

“You didn't even ask?”

“I—well, no, I didn't think to.”

“I'll have to talk to her about it,” she said, slowly bringing a french fry to her mouth.

“You could come back with me,” I said. “We could ask her together.”

She immediately shook her head. “No, I couldn't,” she said quickly, so quickly that it was obvious that the very idea horrified her. “I have an appointment. I can't.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, astounded at how quickly the tides changed direction between us. “Relax, nobody's going to force you to do anything. What's the appointment for, though?”

Estella shook her head, looking at the table. “It's nothing.”

“How can it be nothing, if you have to go?” I persisted.

“It's nothing you need to worry about, okay?” she said, staring me down.

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

I called for the check.

We found the packing store, and Estella helped me haul the paintings in, stacking them against the high counter as the woman worked out the bill. It was astonishingly pricey, and when Estella pulled her wallet out I allowed her to pay for half without protest. As we left our ancestors there in a stack, I couldn't help feeling as though we were abandoning them.

We wandered around Parachukla for a while, working off our beer and seafood, and I found myself enjoying the town. Verona was beautiful, but without the cultural history of Parachukla. That, combined with the influence of the nearby university in Grantsville, had developed Parachukla into a haven for artists, and the main street was lined with small galleries, shops, and cafes. There was plenty of money here, but it was quiet money, not desperate and ostentatious as it was in Verona.

The people in the galleries were friendly, and many even had their doors propped open to encourage browsers. If I had been here with my friends from Verona, we would have exclaimed over how quaint it was. Now, without my armor of jewelry and with my hair loose and curly from the humidity, I found it peaceful and beautiful.

We were both tired from the mid-afternoon beer, and we drove back to the island in silence, looking forward to our visit with Vanessa. I was even going ten miles an hour over the speed limit, eager to get back to the island, to breathe in the air and feel the sun. I slowed down. It would still be there. For three more weeks.

Vanessa greeted us wearing a bright blue-and-white batik muumuu and silver sandals. Her tan glowed against the blue, and she looked liked a Hawaiian postcard as she gracefully opened her arms to beckon us into the house. Like ours, it was arranged with the living area on the second floor, and we followed her up the stairs, glancing around us in wonder.

The walls were covered in bright watercolors—swimming, liquid shapes that it took me a moment to realize were flowers. Swaying hibiscus and gardenias wavered and flowed over the canvases, stretching their petals as fluidly as Vanessa stretched on the beach.

“Did you do these?” I asked when we reached the living room and saw more of them.

Vanessa nodded and smiled as she poured sangria into tall, icy glasses. “Yes, do you like them?” she asked, handing me a glass.

“They're amazing. I have orchids,” I said before I could stop myself. “Well, actually I don't anymore, but I used to.”

“I have a black thumb,” Vanessa said cheerfully. “Can't grow them, so I paint them.”

“Do you work here?” Estella asked, sipping her sangria and wandering around the living room to inspect the unframed paintings.

“Upstairs,” Vanessa said. “The light is wonderful. Do either of you paint?”

“I can't even draw a straight line,” I said with a laugh.

“Ah,” replied Vanessa, indicating her paintings, “nor can I, my dear. That never stopped me. After all, where is a straight line in Nature?”

“She's a violinist,” Estella said. I blushed. It was never how I defined myself.

“I play a little,” I said. “Mostly I take care of my children.”

“Hmm, never a straight line in them either, is there?” Vanessa said. “My own took long, crooked paths to find their lives.”

“How many children do you have?” I asked.

“Two daughters in New York City,” she said, “and a son in Alaska. I worry about him, but my girls, they have each other.”

Estella and I avoided each other's eyes.

“The sangria is delicious,” I said, changing the subject.

“Cinnamon,” she said with a conspiratorial wink. “Shall we go upstairs?”

We followed her to her third-floor studio, so different from the dark library at the top of our home. Here, there wasn't a single blind or drape on the windows, and all of them were thrown wide open. The rich gold of the waning sun flooded the space, illuminating her easels and canvases like torches. Brushes in glass pots stood at attention, as though patiently waiting their turn to be ignited and held aloft.

The clean, fresh smell of paint and sunlight woke my senses, and I breathed deeply, feeling a little dizzy. Estella was taking it all in too, turning her face to the rays coming through the windows. Her hair, short and choppy, lit up in pieces like a mirror mosaic, bouncing light about her head.

“It's wonderful in here,” I said.

“Yes,” Vanessa said. “I come here every day whether I'm working or not. It's good for the soul to get closer to the sky, don't you think?”

Estella turned and smiled at her. “Yes, I do,” she said to my surprise.

Vanessa's comment, indeed, her very personality—vaguely spiritual, slightly eccentric—seemed exactly the sort of thing that I'd always imagined Estella had little patience for.

“Well then, let's get a bit closer,” Vanessa said, leading us to the widow's walk. The stairs to the walk consisted of two short flights, the top one doubling back on the first to save room. Halfway up the second flight, Vanessa turned the handle of the door, which was set into the ceiling like a trapdoor, and pushed it up on sliding brackets until it locked in place.