Catching Genius (36 page)

“Luke,” I said, “I don't mind about the furniture. Everything will be added up in the end, and you picked most of it out anyway. You're obviously upset and you've been drink—”

“Oh, please,” he sneered. “Don't start the Saint Constance act with me.”

“Is that why you're with her?” I asked, unable to let it go, unable to resist jabbing him back. “She's willing to let you turn into your father? What a bargain she's getting. Expensive furniture and a drunk.”

“I'm not a drunk,” he said, emphasizing each word with another poke of my bow. “I just went out with a client for a few drinks, something
Deanna
understands.”

“That's great, Luke. Now please, we can talk about this after the performance. Let's be adults about this. Let's be fair. May I have my bow back? Please?”

Alexander had backed off, but I heard him on the phone in the dressing room.

“Be fair? Fair? I don't think it was
fair
of you to freeze the accounts, you bitch. And you've got nothing to say about the house. You don't need all that room. I got a good agent. We'll split the profit.”

“That's not the point,” I said evenly. “You didn't even talk to me about it. And
my
trust fund paid for that house.”

“I need . . .” Luke trailed off.

“What, Luke? What do you need?”

“That Escalade's in my name, and I let you take it,” he said.

“Do you need money? Is that it? Maybe you should have thought of that before you stole from your own sons.”

Alexander appeared at my back again. “The police are on their way,” he said. “I suggest you give her back that bow and get out of here.”

“You asshole,” Luke said. His fist clenched around the bow, stretching the hairs, making it quiver under the strain. I quickly put my hand on his arm.

“Luke, please, give me back my bow and we'll talk about the Escalade tomorrow.”

His stared at me, trying to focus. He was a stranger to me. An angry, volatile stranger. I wondered if I looked like a different person to him too. No longer his wife, just some woman who was trying to steal his rightfully earned money from him, preventing him from starting a new life with the woman he loved.

“If this is a trick I'm going to make your life miserable.”

“You've already managed that,” I said softly. It was the wrong thing to say. His jaw clenched, and then he held the bow up in front of my eyes and snapped it in half faster than I could flinch.

He dropped it on the floor, the two halves still held together by the hairs. I fell to my knees with a cry and gathered it up. He pointed a finger at Alexander but said nothing, and then turned on his heel and left, one hand trailing down the wall.

I slumped against the door frame, clutching my ruined bow, my hands trembling. Alexander pulled me into the room and shut the door before he took the bow from my hands and put his arms around me. I could feel his heart beating through his suit. I thought I might cry, but instead I just shook, and finally stepped away from him.

“Did you really call the police?” I asked. He shook his head.

“I called my house and left a message on my machine, so that if he killed me the police would know who did it.”

I had to laugh. “He wouldn't have touched you—or me, for that matter,” I said.

“Connie, he was drunk. There's no telling what someone is going to do when he's drunk and pissed off, and my neck's no thicker than that bow. Tell me you have your other one?”

I did, but it was of little comfort to me. It had been an expensive bow, my favorite, and from the way it had splintered I doubted it could be repaired. Alexander opened the door and looked around to make sure Luke was gone. Hannah appeared at the end of the hallway, checking her watch and rubbing her hands down her black skirt, working out her nerves and completely unaware of what had just happened.

“Are we ready?” she asked. I took a few deep breaths under Alexander's watchful gaze, and then nodded. I retrieved my other bow, quickly tightened and rosined it, and we tuned together.

“I guess so,” I said.

The second half went better than I would have expected, but I played the Telemann and Danzi by rote, the music never taking me back where I needed to be to play my best. We received a fair length and decibel level of applause, and Wiley was waiting for Alexander in the corridor after our final bows. He shook hands with all of us, and complimented Alexander, saying he was looking forward to his audition before he left.

Alexander was ecstatic, Hannah was jealous, and I was exhausted. I still had a long night of divorce talk ahead of me, and I wished for it to simply be over.

Angie was waiting in the driveway of my nearly empty house when I arrived. I didn't bother introducing her to Alexander, but rather kissed him quickly on the cheek and told him I would call him from Big Dune. Angie loomed over me—she certainly topped six feet—and I suppressed a little smile. Tall women had always intimidated Luke. We shook hands and I invited her inside, ready to begin the official decimation of my marriage.

 
 
To my surprise I slept well, and in the morning I walked through the house slowly, breathing in the familiar scents of memories and growing boys and cleaning products, of long-ago dinners and recent arguments and marriage. What it didn't smell of was me. I loved this home, but I loved it with a family in it. Without one it felt huge and sad and somehow reproachful. Perhaps I would feel differently when I brought the boys back.

I packed a few suitcases, throwing in clothes for the boys as well as their CDs and video games, and by the time I was ready to pack the car I'd felt something shift in me, some reckoning and acceptance. I checked all the locks, set the air-conditioning, and hoisted a suitcase in my hand. My other hand stilled on the doorknob as I breathed in one last bit of air from the house and set off to start a new life.

I opened the door to the garage, nearly expecting a ray of light, or perhaps a soundtrack of uplifting music. Instead, what I was confronted with was an empty garage. I stared into the emptiness, willing the Escalade to appear. But it did not.

I set the suitcase down gently and opened the garage door. As it rumbled up I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that when I opened them the Escalade would have somehow materialized in the driveway. But it did not.

I went back inside to call Angie.

 
 
An eight-hour drive in a rattling rental car provides plenty of time for thought, and my head was swimming when I arrived on Big Dune. Everyone was on the beach, and I took the opportunity to grab a snack, unpack, and take a shower. When I emerged, Carson was just coming in the door. He screamed, “Mommy!” and flung himself at me.

“Hey, baby,” I cried, hugging him to me. He was followed in by Estella and Mother, and they both greeted me almost as enthusiastically as Carson had. While Carson showered, Estella and Mother followed me up to the library to hear about the weekend. Their wide-eyed shock was as comforting as their embraces.

“Where's Gib?” I asked once their questions had been answered.

“You can't peel him off Tate,” Mother answered. “They're fishing down at the cut. Carson was down there with them, but I think he and Gib had words. He came back looking pretty down in the mouth.”

“I'll have to talk to Gib,” I said with a sigh.

“Every little sibling tiff doesn't need a
talk
, Connie,” Mother said.

She was probably right. Without Luke around to keep things even in our family, Carson and Gib were going to have to work out a new relationship. And as much as I might want to help, they were old enough that much of it was going to have to get worked out without me.

It was an oddly satisfying realization. It stayed my hand from buttoning my shirt for a moment, and I stared at Mother. She gave me a puzzled smile, but I couldn't explain it.

“Estella,” I said, “feel like walking down to the cut with me?”

“Yeah, sure,” she answered.

We walked slowly, the destination only an excuse to get out of the house with my sister. The feeling I'd had in the library was expanding in my chest, and what I'd wanted to talk about for so many years could no longer be contained. It was suddenly greater than myself, and yet, it also seemed less important than ever. I understood, and now I needed to let her know.

“You know Mother thinks we got along growing up,” I said as we walked through the surf. Estella glanced at me, and then looked out to the Gulf. She raised her hand to her temple and massaged it.

“Well, we didn't really fight the way most sisters do,” she said. It was an answer I might have given before today, a safe, evasive answer, and I was having none of it. I stopped and put my hand on her arm to stop her too.

“No,” I said slowly. I'd rehearsed a lot of speeches over the past thirty years, but none of them was right, none of them fit now, and I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to say. “It was worse. And it wasn't all their fault. It wasn't. At first, maybe, yes, definitely. We were young, but later we should have made it better ourselves.”

“Connie,” Estella said, “we didn't have a chance—”

“But we did,” I protested. “We did. Especially that summer, remember? When Daddy took Mother to Europe. I thought we were really getting closer. But we lost it, and . . . and I don't know what happened. We just never tried to get it back. Why? Why didn't we try?”

She shook her head and started walking again, looking down at the sand, moving fast now. I stared after her for a moment and then ran to catch up, matching her pace. “What, Estella?”

“It was my fault,” she said, her words strangling in her throat.

“But no, it wasn't,” I said. “That's what I'm getting at. It was
our
fault, because that's what we'd done for so long, but—”

“Connie!” she shouted, stopping and turning toward me sharply enough to send a small spray of sand over my feet. “Why won't you just say it? I almost let you drown. That was my fault. And then I couldn't stand to look at you, I couldn't stand to see all that forgiveness in your face. Always looking at me like that,
Jesus
, since we were kids. You exhausted me. I loved you, but I couldn't live up to it.”

“What?” I whispered. “What are you talking about? We were friends, we
were
.”

Estella covered her mouth with her hand as though afraid to say anything else. She stood there, her short hair gold in the sun, and she seemed vulnerable, ethereal, as though I could pass my hand right through her and she would disintegrate and disappear into the sand. I reached out, but she backed up a step.

“Connie, don't you remember what happened?”

“When?” I asked, shuffling through memories to find the one she felt so strongly. “You mean Daddy? Graciela?”

“No, Connie. That summer.”

“That wasn't your fault, Estella. It was mine. I was the one who was drinking, you couldn't have stopped me. I was the one who got in over my head, quite literally. If it weren't for you, I would have drowned.”

Estella slowly shook her head. “No, Connie,” she said quietly. “No. If it weren't for
Tate
, you would have drowned.”

“He got to me a second before you did,” I said. “I don't blame you, Estella, I really don't, I never have. I know you did the best you could.”

“No, I didn't do the best I could. You must remember, Connie,” she pressed me, stepping toward me, her eyes intense. I took a step back, feeling the waves splash up my calves.

I remembered her eyes. I remembered seeing her green eyes. I remembered the relief of knowing she was going to save me, that my protector was there.

I remembered wondering what was taking so long.

“I
didn't
do the best I could. I was going to let you drown, Connie,” she finally said, enunciating each word carefully. It was as though all the air on the beach had been sucked away, leaving only the echo of those words.

“No.”

“I'm sorry, Connie—yes.”

“But why?” I asked, beginning to cry, feeling as sick as I had that day, as sick as Carson had been in the car. “Why, Estella? Why did you hate me so much?”

“I didn't hate you,” she said, not reaching toward me, not even trying. “I wanted to
be
you.”

“I don't believe you,” I said. “You wouldn't let me—let me die. Oh, no.” I turned away from her, unable to look at her face, and saw Gib and Tate coming down the beach. I couldn't let them see me like that, see us like that. Estella turned and saw them too.

“Tate knows, Tate remembers,” she said. “I sickened him. Why do you think he wouldn't sleep with me? I threw myself at him. He couldn't stand to see me.”

“I—I can't—” I stuttered, unable to form a coherent thought, unable to stop the memory of her green eyes above the water, calmly watching me, clinically watching me as I swallowed water and went under. I stepped out of the surf, scuttled past her like a crab in a wide arc, and achieved the safety of the dry sand before Gib and Tate reached us.

“Hey, Mom,” Gib said with a grin, genuinely happy to see me, his arms full of fishing equipment, his face open and sunburned, a tiny yellowish smudge of a bruise under his left eye. “Tate said we could camp overnight on Little Dune before we went home.”

“Gib,” I said, looking up at him miserably. His eyes widened and he took a step toward me. Estella stopped him.

“Gib, your mom and I are talking. Could you go back to the house?”