Catching Genius (35 page)

“Oh, my God,” I breathed.

“He was found guilty of manslaughter and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. He was transferred to upstate New York and that's where he was when I found out. He died three years later from cirrhosis. Now that's it. I've said as much as I'm going to, and there's nothing left to tell.”

She stood stiffly and went downstairs while Estella and I sat on the sofa in silence. When Estella finally turned to me, she said the last thing I expected her to say: “Would you play for me?”

“I—sure,” I said. “Sure. I'll lock up, okay?”

She nodded and walked slowly up the stairs, stopping only to grasp my violin case tightly and bring it with her. I turned out the lights and stayed in the darkened living room for a moment, listening to the Gulf pound outside, wondering what kind of legacy my sister and my child had inherited.

I bring Connie's violin case upstairs and fuss around the library waiting for her to come up, unable to concentrate on anything other than the music that is to come. The case is heavier than I expected, and I unzip it furtively. I'm nervous just touching it. I know that good violins are insanely expensive, and the only place I am not a klutz is in the water. I touch the wood, run my fingernail down a string, and then hear footsteps on the stairs—eleven of them.

Three facts about eleven:

Eleven is the smallest two-digit additive prime.

There are eleven stars in Van Gogh's
Starry Night
.

Half of the first sixty-four partition numbers are divisible by eleven.

I quickly zip the case back up, lay it next to her bed, and then busy myself with my bedclothes as she enters the room. She looks exhausted.

“Are you okay?” she asks, and I nod. I am. I am . . . okay. I am explained, anyway. I am here, in the family I am supposed to be in. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.

“No,” I say. “It makes sense. That's all I need. But Connie, we should talk about Carson.” She lowers herself to the mattress on the floor and crosses her legs, then bites her lip and says nothing.

“You're making a mistake.” I cannot help myself.

“But it's none of your business,” she responds, and I nod, acknowledging the truth of that.

“This is the last thing I'll say—”

“Good.”

“Okay. But you should know: Even if I'd known, even if she'd told Daddy, nothing could have kept me from the numbers.”

“No. But you could have been protected from Pretus.”

“But nothing could have kept me from the
numbers
, Connie.”

We are silent.

“So, you have to go back?” I finally ask.

She nods. “I can't let Alexander down. At least Mother's here to watch the boys.”

Of course. Because I wouldn't be able to. She might as well say it out loud.

She doesn't trust me with her children.

She pulls her violin case over and unzips it, pulls the violin out, and tightens the bow, rosins it, begins to tune. I love to watch her preparation. The look on her face is just as it was as a child. No matter how many times she'd done a task, she was always so careful, so studious.

My favorite memories of her are the ones in which she is pretending to play the little violin from Mittenwald. She was a tiny, perfect maestro, a wee prodigy even if not in the perfect sense of the word. Her talents were always so much more interesting than mine.

I loved that little violin. When I left for Atlanta, moved out of this house, my father magnanimously offered to let me have anything I wanted from the library. Considering the value of some of the books on these now-empty shelves it had been a generous offer.

But what I wanted was that baby violin.

I had my hands on it, I even picked it up, and then Daddy pulled out the first edition of Hemingway's
For Whom the Bell Tolls
he'd bought at Bauman's, in the collection—or so Daddy said—because of Donne's clod washed away by the sea, not because of Hemingway. His hands shook as he held it out to me.

What was I to do?

I put the violin down and accepted the book.

And now Connie begins to play, and she is wonderful. I close my eyes, remembering how I'd heard her though the walls, back when she didn't care if anyone was trying to sleep. I remember how it drove the patterns out of my head and filled it with music, just music, no numbers in it at all, just pure sound strung along, note to sweet note, ribbon unspooling, a Möbius strip, never ending.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

My heart was pounding as I pulled onto my street. The trip had been horrible. I couldn't get Carson's music out of my head; it was playing like a loop, driving me to distraction. Semis and massive RVs careened past me, buffeting the Escalade and making it difficult to steer. Stability and noise wasn't helped by the fact that I had the back hatch partially open the entire way so the huge damn Bokhara rug would fit.

I wasn't sure how I was going to get it inside the house. It had nearly killed Tate and Gib to get it downstairs, but Alexander said he would meet me so I didn't have to go in the house alone, and I thought I might be able to guilt him into helping. He was actually on time, standing in the street, watching me drive up. I grinned at him, but the look on his face made it fall away. I pulled next to him and rolled my window down.

“Hi, honey,” he said. “Do you know about this?”

That's when I saw the sign pounded into my front yard.

 
FOR SALE
By Appointment Only

 
I forgot to breathe and drove past Alexander without a word. I pulled into the driveway, searching the windows for signs of activity. There were none, and the garage was empty. I pulled in, noting that Gib's golf clubs were still leaning against the wall, but Luke's three sets and their expensive stand were gone.

Alexander followed me into the garage and held my door open as I slid out. He leaned down to lightly kiss my cheek, and I absently patted him on his waist. I needed to see the house.

Luke hadn't turned the air-conditioning off when he'd left, and my arms broke out in goose bumps when I entered through the laundry room off the garage. I adjusted the thermostat a few degrees as I entered the kitchen, where everything appeared intact. My cookbooks were still neatly lined up, the blue Kitchen-Aid mixer stood where it had since Luke had given it to me.

I trailed my fingers along the island's marble top on my way into the living room. The big plasma TV was gone. As were the leather sofas, the coffee table, both end tables, and the surround sound system. He'd left all the plants—thirsting for water—and window treatments, as well as the art on the walls. No. There were some empty spots. The O'Keeffes. He'd taken those, of course.

Alexander whistled under his breath. “I take it you weren't expecting this,” he said.

“Not exactly,” I replied, walking through the living room to the sunporch. The patio set was gone, but the wrought-iron tables I'd used for the orchids had been left behind. The grill was gone. I reentered the house through the dining room doors. The table, chairs, and china cabinet were gone. The china itself was stacked in the middle of the room, positioned directly underneath the chandelier.

The rest of the house told a similar tale. The boys' rooms were untouched, as was one guest room, but every other room had been stripped of its major components.

The master bedroom furniture was gone, with the exception of the box spring, mattress, and comforter set. My clothes had been piled against the wall. Luke's side of the closet was empty. Everything of his in the bathroom was gone.

Alexander stood in the doorway of the bedroom and watched as I threw myself onto the mattress and stared, dry-eyed, up at the tray ceiling. Luke had left the fan. He probably hadn't known how to disconnect it. Alexander sat down next to me, making me roll slightly toward him like a rag doll.

Thank God I hadn't brought either of the boys. Alexander rubbed my shoulder, and I finally sat up and let my breath out like a leaky tire.

“Well, looks like this is it,” I said.

“What about the for sale sign?” Alexander asked. In the shock of my denuded house, I'd almost forgotten about that.

“This is
my
house,” I said, getting to my feet. I marched down the stairs, out the front door, and yanked the sign out of the lawn, leaving two gaping holes. I left the sign in the garage and pulled out one of the information packets for the agent's phone number, intending to call him immediately, but I changed my mind and called Angie instead.

We'd planned to have drinks after the performance, and when I couldn't reach her in person I just left a message confirming our appointment. I couldn't get the agent's lockbox off our front door, so I had to leave it, risking potential buyers showing up at any time.

I scrawled a note and taped it to the door:
This house is not for sale. I am the rightful owner, and you do not have permission to enter. Constance Sykes Wilder
.

Alexander helped me drag the rug out of the Escalade; we left it in the middle of the living room. I didn't bother bringing anything else in. I transferred my music, violin, and clothes to Alexander's car, and we went to his apartment to get ready. I took my rings off, as I always did, but this time I knew I would not be putting them back on. I rode to the library in silence, obsessively running the pad of my thumb across the dents in my ring finger until it was painful.

Hannah was already playing Waldteufel to warm up when we arrived, and as we joined her she kept glancing at me, concentrating on me just long enough to lag behind, making Alexander furious. He finally stopped playing and waited for her to notice.

“Hannah,” he snapped. “Come on, could you concentrate, please?”

“Are you okay, Connie?” she asked, ignoring him.

“I'm fine,” I assured her. “Really. I just want to help Alexander get through tonight. I'll catch you up afterward.”

She didn't look convinced, but we got through the warmup, and when the director knocked on the door we were ready. The auditorium was filled to capacity, the lights low. As we walked onto the stage, silence fell before polite applause broke out. We nodded to the audience and got settled, breaking into Tartini perfectly.

I hit every note, my violin stayed in tune, Hannah kept up; by the time we'd moved on to Beethoven my only thoughts were of the music. My phrasing turned liquid, my fingers moving of their own accord, my bow arm lifting and falling, bringing first the frog to the bridge and then the tip, again and again and again, each note pushing bits of my life out of my mind, as if they were closing doors on the empty rooms of my house.

Hannah escaped to the bathroom at intermission to avoid Alexander's chatter, so he talked to me while he tuned, throwing my routine off. We were all touchy at intermission, full of music looking for an outlet, building up pressure, ready for the steam valve of the second set. Alexander used talk to relieve his nerves, and I was used to it. But tonight I couldn't stand it, and I envied Hannah hiding in the bathroom.

“More wine?” he asked.

“Huh-uh,” I muttered, shaking my head, willing him to be quiet.

“Wiley's out there, I saw him,” he said. Jason Wiley was the orchestra personnel manager he was hoping to impress.

“Hmmm.”

“David's here too. Did you see who he's with?”

“No.”

“Bethy Simmons, that skanky pianist. You think they're actually dat—”

“Alexander,
please
.” I turned away from him with a sigh.

“Oh, yeah, yeah, okay.” He went back to tuning his cello. “But really—”

“You've got to let me be for a few minutes, Alex,” I said, walking out the door with my violin tucked under my arm, my tuning fork and bow gripped in my hand, nearly running into Luke, who'd been about to knock on the door.

“What on earth are you doing here?” I asked. The sight of him, here, in this world, threw me off. I involuntarily took a step back. He looked like hell, his forehead shining with sweat and a three-day stubble turning his face into the dispirited, haggard face of his father. It looked as though he hadn't washed his hair, and his clothes—clothes I'd never seen before—were rumpled and gave off the odor of alcohol. I heard Alexander gasp and put his bow down.

“What the hell do you think you're doing? I just got a call from the agent saying he couldn't bring somebody in to look at the house.” He swept his hand across his brow and into his hair, his signature gesture of stress.

“How dare you,” I said through clenched teeth, pointing at him with my bow, not thinking. He grabbed it, hard, and I gasped as he wrenched it out of my hand. He held it captive, like a hostage, which indeed it was. I watched as he ran his greasy, sweaty palm up the length of its hairs. He knew exactly what he was doing. I held my hand out—it was ruined for the night but much too expensive to relinquish—but he ignored it. I felt Alexander behind me.

“Please give me back my bow,” I said. “You've already got all the furniture.”

“You're the one who left the house, Connie,” he said with a shrug, clumsily flipping the bow in the air and catching it by the other end. “Your lawyer should have coached you better.”

“Luke—” Alexander started, but Luke didn't let him finish.

“Back off, faggot,” he said, jabbing the bow at him. I heard Alexander gasp and felt my knees weaken. Luke had never been a bigot, but he was unpredictable when he was drinking. He didn't drink often, and the memory of his broken-down father kept him sober but for a few episodes a year. And he hated himself on those occasions, knowing how his behavior—loving one moment, surly the next, and then suddenly asleep wherever he landed—would affect his children.