The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners

by Luanne Rice

  But either way …

  The base of all pain, the creation of ogres, the source of all that seemed evil in the world, was a lack of love. It drove people to hate themselves. If only Lyra could know what he saw in her. Christina had seen it first; perhaps it was his wife’s devotion to the younger woman that had first opened his eyes to her.

  Watching how Lyra had tended Christina in her decline, loved her even as everything slipped away, had caused Max’s feelings to grow. He closed his notebook, capped his fountain pen, and for the second time that day went down the steep, narrow stairs to the cove.

  Here he was on Capri, no escape. The whole island had once been Rafaele Gardiner’s playground, first when his parents would take him around, and then, after his mother’s death, when he grew up fast and basically owned the place himself, in the lawless days when he had no rules.

  He knew everyone. The locals, the fishermen, and the socialite summer people, the kids from wherever, he’d partied with them all on the waterfront, and in the caves, and on the mule tracks, and the hill paths, and in the Piazzetta right in front of their parents.

  Being the grandson of Max and Christina Gardiner opened every door on Capri, and he’d taken advantage of that. Not that he cared about social life, hanging with the glitterati douche bags or getting invited onto Prince Whoever’s yacht. He’d enjoyed the parties and the entrée because he’d liked getting fucked up.

  Those days were over. He was nineteen. The jury was in: he had wrecked his life and others’. Two years ago he’d gotten arrested in New York, kicked out of school. He’d come back here to do more damage, then spent over a year in rehab—his third, this one in Malibu. He’d been out for three weeks now.

  Rafe missed a girl he’d never see again, and now all he wanted to do was make everything up to his grandfather. Nicolas had torn some fishing nets, and it was Rafe’s job to repair them.

  The work was slow and took concentration. That was good, because it kept him busy, out of trouble. It kept him from feeling so empty, longing for Monica and wondering why she had disappeared the way she did, whether she was okay. She’d told him to pray to his grandmother to keep him clean, and he tried, but it was easier to ask for help for others, for Monica.

  Peering at the bay, he saw one of the tourist boats, hired to take people into the Grotta Azzurra. Low to the water to fit through the small rock opening, the wooden boat looked like a thin red line on the waves. Arturo drove it in a circle; Rafe ducked, but it was too late. The boat was empty; Arturo tied up at the dock and walked across the rock ledge.

  “Ciao,” Arturo said. “I thought it was you.”

  “It’s not me,” Rafe said. “Let’s just say it’s not the same me you knew.”

  “You owe me money.”

  “I’ll pay you.” Rafe sat still, stayed calm.

  “It’s been over a year,” Arturo said. “You have an outstanding debt. Do you think I don’t keep records?”

  Rafe stared into Arturo’s brown eyes. Wow, back only a week and his past had tracked him down. Still, he stayed cool, giving nothing away. He saw Arturo register the fact he couldn’t push him around.

  “You’re clean?” Arturo asked.

  Rafe nodded.

  “I lost a good customer.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’ll be back,” Arturo said.

  “No,” Rafe said. He thought of Monica. “I won’t.”

  Arturo shrugged as if he knew better. “They still talk about you on this island. You see your grandmother’s face, don’t you?” he asked. “I’ll give you something to chase it right out of your head.”

  “Get your boat off our dock,” Rafe said, standing. Arturo was big, but Rafe was younger and stronger. One thing about rehab, it had started him eating again, putting on muscle. The goodness of those talks with Monica had stayed with him. Working out helped him stay clean, and the idea of whatever they were saying about him made him want to kill Arturo.

  “Portando il nero,” Arturo said, backing away. “That’s good, to wear black. Because you made people mourn. Christina was beloved on Capri. That’s what everyone says.”

  Rafe couldn’t even argue with that. He just stood there, watching his old drug dealer climb into his crummy little boat and putter away. He stared at the wake, white ripples dissolving into nothing.

  “What did he want?” his grandfather asked, coming down the stairs behind him. Rafe didn’t want to turn around, have his grandfather see his face. But he stood out of respect and love.

  “Nothing, Grandpa,” Rafe said.

  “Is he giving you trouble?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Because if he is, I’ll talk to the police, and—”

  “That would make it worse for me,” Rafe said. “Okay, please? You have to trust me.”

  “I want to,” his grandfather said.

  “I know,” Rafe said. They stared at each other a few seconds, tense but trying to get past it.

  “How are the nets?” his grandfather asked, looking at the pile.

  “Pretty much got them mended,” Rafe said. “Nicolas can fish tonight.”

  “Would you like to go with us?”

  Rafe heard the “us,” looked at his grandfather with surprise. “You got up at the crack of dawn, to go to Sorrento,” he said. “I thought you’d want to be asleep early tonight.”

  “Life is short,” his grandfather said. “The less time I spend sleeping, the better.”

  Rafe smiled; he knew his grandfather’s embrace-life philosophy.

  “You could have come with me,” his grandfather said. “To pick up Pell.”

  “I, uh, slept late,” Rafe said. He didn’t want to go into the fact he knew Lyra Davis hated him, wouldn’t want him anywhere near her daughter. Or reveal that he’d been mending nets in the shadows when his grandfather and the girl had arrived, seen her step off the boat.

  Pell had long dark hair, blue eyes; Monica had a black pixie cut, green eyes. But this girl’s beauty and radiance, an intelligent sorrow she wore like a shawl, reminded him so much of the girl he knew he’d never see again. His grandfather was a strange, uncanny mind reader, and Rafe looked away so he wouldn’t show too much.

  Rafe happened to glance up, not at the villa, but the other way, toward Lyra’s cottage. And he saw the girl, Pell, looking down at him, over the terrace wall. Their eyes locked for a minute; he deliberately turned away.

  “I thought you invited them for lunch,” Rafe said. “Lyra and her daughter.”

  “Dinner tomorrow instead,” his grandfather said. “I thought the traveler might need some rest, and to spend time with her mother. And you’re invited too, of course.”

  “Looks as if she’s not resting,” Rafe said, glancing up and meeting her curious gaze again. He felt a shiver go through his bones. He had felt his last chance slipping away. Life, sobriety, hope; Monica had given him the feeling he wanted to live again, to grab onto this opportunity. With her gone, he’d been so alone.

  “Ah,” his grandfather said, following Rafe’s gaze. He saw Pell, smiled and gave her a big wave.

  “She’s like you,” Rafe said. “Likes to be awake.”

  “Life is a gift,” his grandfather said. “Every moment we are here. Fresh, beautiful. Siete buono come il mare.” Good as the sea.

  “Right,” Rafe said, looking up at the pretty girl. He had the feeling she was standing on the brink; that coming here was her own sort of last chance. His heart cracked open, knowing what that was like. In that moment, in honor of another girl who’d helped him, he knew he wanted to be a friend to Pell. She waved at his grandfather, as if they were lifelong friends, as if she had heard his words and agreed completely with his assessment of life.

  Good as the sea.

  That was something Rafe’s grandmother used to say. His throat ached. He had so much to make up for. If he could help someone else, maybe he could get through.

  And maybe Pell could too.

  Pell was really here.
Lyra could hardly believe it; she had started burying her feelings years ago, but how impossible. She had worked hard to stop being a mother—as if it were a switch she could throw. Walking through the olive orchard, she tried to breathe as emotions stormed through her.

  The light changed, diffusing the water from aquamarine to cobalt blue. The sky’s color deepened. She walked through the garden, trying to calm down. As she did, she thought of Grosse Pointe, the garden she’d kept at home, the statue of Hermes she’d set in the shady corner of the backyard.

  The marble statue of the god had originally come from Capri; Lyra had shipped him home the summer of her Grand Tour after college graduation. The trip, and relics from every city in Europe, had been her mother’s graduation gift.

  Edith Nicholson had mapped out Lyra’s life: debut, college, Europe, board membership at the Bellevue Garden Society, marriage. Lyra would be expected to marry someone who would summer in Newport, own an estate near the Nicholsons’ on Bellevue Avenue or on Ocean Drive, have the cabana beside her mother’s at Bailey’s Beach.

  Lyra had no doubt that her mother wished that while traveling she’d meet the heir to a British mining fortune, or an Italian manufacturing fortune, a titled-someone with a villa in Tuscany or a château in the Dordogne. But there could be no exotic European love, because there was Taylor Davis. Lyra knew her mother hoped she’d forget him that summer—not because he wasn’t kind, intelligent, or wealthy. Just because, in the eyes of Edith Nicholson, he wasn’t enough.

  Her mother had arranged for Lyra to be fitted for a Chanel suit in Paris, riding boots in Milan. She’d sent her to a glassblower on Murano, told her to choose the most exquisite chandelier in the studio, for her future home. Lyra had felt she was being trained to buy, to fill her heart with things instead of nature, spirit, poetry, ineffable beauty. She felt strangely unmoved by the whole trip—until secretly meeting Taylor in Rome.

  She had first met him during their prep school years; it was hard to pinpoint the exact moment they spotted each other. She went to Miss Porter’s, he to Newport Academy. She’d see him when she went home; they had mutual friends, and they would hang out at dances, parties, football games. He always seemed to be around, until the first time she noticed he wasn’t. That was the crazy thing about Taylor; she never really paid attention to him until he wasn’t there.

  Taylor. His face filled her mind now: angular features, sharp jaw, deep-set, thoughtful hazel eyes, warm smile. His light brown hair curled when he swam in salt water. He was a serious boy with an easy laugh; everyone said he’d be a lawyer like his father. Lyra liked him a lot, especially the way he seemed so uninterested in her family’s name or money. He talked about his parents as if he really enjoyed them, cared about them. Lyra noticed that.

  Midway through Taylor’s senior year of college, his parents died in a car accident. Lyra and several friends from Vassar had headed up to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, for the Princeton game. Without even admitting it to herself, Lyra was hoping to see Taylor. He was the quarterback, but he didn’t play that day. She heard the news about his parents—driving home late at night, wet leaves, a spinout into oncoming traffic, both killed instantly.

  The next day she flew to Detroit. She spent the night in Grosse Pointe, with the parents of a friend from Farmington. On Monday she went to the funeral, at an Anglican church that looked as if it belonged in the English countryside—built of stone, covered with ivy, cool light slanting through blue stained-glass windows.

  When Taylor saw her, he seemed surprised, but not half as shocked as Lyra herself was. She had never done anything like that in her life, but something had made her want to be present for him. She knew, deep down, even though they’d never been very close, that he would have done it for her. Seeing Taylor walk down the aisle behind his parents’ coffins, she’d wept and felt his loss as if it were her own.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said to her after the blessing at the graveside.

  “You’re welcome. I’m so sorry.”

  “We were close,” he said, looking over at the grave. “I was so lucky to have them as parents.”

  “They must have been wonderful people,” she said.

  He nodded, choked up. She saw that he couldn’t speak. He was filled with grief so penetrating it seemed to come from his bones, and the sight of it made her cry.

  She and Taylor had never dated, never even taken a walk alone together. But she’d seen something of his goodness already: kindness when a friend of theirs was sick in the hospital, care for a teammate who broke his wrist in a game. She had been drawn to him for his warmth, something she’d never gotten at home. Now, on the worst day of his life, he was tender to her.

  “I shouldn’t cry,” she said, taking his handkerchief. “I just wanted to come and be here with you.”

  “I’ll never forget it,” he said. “You don’t know what it means to me.”

  They began to see each other. On weekends he made her pancakes with raspberry jam instead of maple syrup. She took him into the middle of the football field one night and showed him Capella and the Pleiades. He read the comics on Sunday loved Calvin and Hobbes, wanted her to love it too. She did her best.

  Commitment came slowly. Her parents were divorced; she wasn’t sure she believed in marriage, because she’d never seen a way of loving that lasted. Taylor worked as a paralegal, wanting to be sure the law was for him. If so, there’d be law school, then the bar exam. Her mother thought he seemed nice, but she couldn’t comprehend Lyra even contemplating life in Michigan.

  On the summer trip after college graduation, Lyra and Taylor planned a rendezvous in Rome. He and his best friends had family money, but they were taking this trip on their own: backpacking, staying in hostels. She didn’t tell her mother and met Taylor in Trastevere, in a romantic old ostello overlooking the square. They’d lived on his budget—the hostel, spaghetti, cheap bars, long walks, and lots of espresso—instead of hers: the Hotel Hassler, dinner at La Rosetta, shopping on the Via Veneto.

  Her mother’s life felt soulless to Lyra. She swore she’d ditch the fancy ways as soon as she could leave home. Visiting Capri after parting from Taylor, she vowed to have a one-year plan: she’d go home, let Taylor figure out whether the law was right for him or not, then move out of Newport, join him in Michigan.

  Her mother wanted one thing, Taylor another. But what about Lyra? On that trip, Capri’s bright sunlight and morning mists surrounded and enchanted her, made her moods swing wildly, made her feel so alive and at home. The Italian island grabbed her, captivated her as no place on earth ever had. The wild beauty, the damp sea haze, the dazzling blue sea, the riotous flowers, and the English and American émigrés both soothed her soul and fed a strange sense of melancholy. This place was hers alone. She could imagine never leaving, avoiding all strife. She’d stood on a cliff not far from where she now lived, and the way she felt outside matched the way she felt inside.

  Staring out at the intense blue sea, into the unfathomable depths, she’d felt both sad and peaceful. Pure nature, far from her mother’s expectations. The lonely apartness touched her soul. For the first time in her entire life, Lyra felt as if she belonged, and as if she knew who she was.

  She found the statue of Hermes—chipped, darkened with moss and time—at an antiques dealer near the Piazzetta. The piece wasn’t rare or valuable, except to her; she had it shipped home, a souvenir of Italy, and a reminder of the way Capri had made her feel. Time went by. She became more involved with the garden society, and Taylor threw himself into the law.

  They broke up. It seemed inevitable. Lyra tried things her mother’s way. Living in Newport, she dated the sons of society mavens. Alexander Baker, a playboy with a year-round tan, a house in Newport and one in Palm Beach, asked her to marry him. In that moment, she realized how crazy it was, living someone else’s life. She’d felt despair closing in.

  She shipped Hermes to Taylor with a letter telling him she’d bought the statue duri
ng their Italian summer, dreamed of putting it in their garden. She said she knew she’d missed her chance with him but wanted him to have Hermes anyway. Deep inside, she had the sense of taking care of her affairs, tying up loose ends.

  Taylor showed up on her doorstep in Newport shortly after he’d received the statue. Sent Alexander packing, looked Lyra in the eye.

  “You sent me a statue for the garden,” he said, “but there’s no garden without you. There never was. Please come home with me, Lyra. Marry me.”

  And she did, in one of the biggest weddings Newport had ever seen. Taylor might not have been her mother’s first choice, but if Edith’s only daughter was getting married, the wedding would be something the town would never forget. Lyra had felt so bleak with Alexander; she prayed that he was the reason, that Newport was the problem, that marrying Taylor would fix everything.

  Taylor and Lyra honeymooned in Bermuda, and then they began their life. Lyra had expected love to heal everything, to make her feel as if she was all right. They placed Hermes in their backyard, and Lyra made great plans to cultivate beautiful gardens all around him.

  It didn’t quite work out that way.

  Vines and dampness and her own demons took over. As time went on, the children were born, and the statue scared Pell. It was as tall as she, covered with moss. The marble god had a distant, yearning look in his eyes. Pell called him “that gone man.” When Lyra asked what she meant, Pell said, “It looks as if he’s gone. He’s not really here.”

  Sensitive, prescient child. Did Pell see the same look in her mother’s eyes? Because by that night ten years ago, when she took Pell into the backyard to look through the telescope at the stars, Lyra knew she was leaving the next day.

  Leaving home, her husband, her two daughters.

  She’d made her choice, and closed the door behind her. More than that: she’d locked and sealed it, thrown away the key. What kind of mother stays in touch with her children only through Christmas and birthday cards, occasional letters? Lyra had tried to save her own skin, thought she could protect everyone from the worst of herself. She had told herself it was better for everyone. What had she done?