The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners

by Luanne Rice

  “That isn’t funny,” Beck said, and Lucy knew she was thinking of the time Lucy had walked down to the beach in her sleep, strolled right into the rolling surf, nightgown and all.

  “I know,” Lucy said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Dude, don’t apologize. Just, no swimming to Italy. How would you feel about a plane?”

  “It’s a thought,” Lucy said.

  “Works for many people,” Beck said. “Air travel. It could get you there fast. Do you feel up to it?”

  “Totally,” Lucy said.

  “You do seem a little better lately,” Beck said, peering at Lucy’s eyes. “The circles aren’t quite so deep. You’ve been getting some sleep, right?”

  “Yes,” Lucy said, thinking of her mother’s call, how it had soothed her more than warm milk and honey.

  “Except around 2:01,” Beck said.

  “The bad time,” Lucy said.

  “It’ll be less bad once you really have your mother in your life,” Beck said.

  “Really?” Lucy asked, staring straight into her best friend’s bright hazel, green-gold eyes. She thought of Mrs. Shaw, Beck’s mom, of how close they were.

  Beck nodded, but with a tiny apology in her eyes, as if she didn’t want to be too thoughtless in pointing out what Lucy didn’t have.

  “Yeah,” Beck said, giving Lucy’s hand a gentle shake. “Yeah, Luce. There’s nothing like it. I want it for you.”

  Twelve

  It’s Wednesday now—five days since Da Vincenzo, and two days since I was supposed to go to see the seahorses with Rafe. I canceled. I’ve been gardening with my mother. Working hard, right by her side, not too much talking. I think we’re both afraid of what we might say.

  Well, it hit me over the head, sitting at dinner the other night. Max loves my mother. And I don’t mean as her kindly old neighbor, watching over her in a benevolent, elderly way from the villa—I mean, he’s in love with her. Sitting at a table in candlelight, watching the way he gazed at her, I saw it all. And the way he’d acted on our walk: he had seemed so full of longing. I’d seen it instantly, the way he’d spoken about my mother finding solace in the garden. But I’d doubted my perceptions then.

  No longer. Da Vincenzo was one of the most romantic places I’ve ever been. The candles’ warm glow surrounded us, held us together, kept us from having any secrets from one another. I saw everything at that dinner.

  Max’s love for my mother, my mother’s doubts about herself, Rafe’s … okay, this is where it gets upsetting. Rafe’s feelings for me, are what I have to face. I do see them. What’s more frightening, I’m having some of my own for him. He is a little older than I, but in many ways seems younger. Loss toughened me—not in a hard way but in a realistic way. I know how life works, and I don’t try to fight it. I try to accept what comes my way go with the flow. Not Rafe.

  He is really sensitive. When he lost his mother, he didn’t have someone like my father to hold him, rock him, tell him it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t have a dad who’d sit on the edge of his bed when he had nightmares.

  From the sound of things, David Gardiner isn’t a bad guy—he’s just a believer in the stiff-upper-lip, get-on-with-it-old-boy way of parenting. Rafe responded by needing to hide—to protect himself from the agony of his mother’s death. Drugs and drinking provide a buffer. They’re a really effective shield against the worst feelings a person can have.

  I know all of the above without Rafe even telling me. This is the strange thing about me: I take in people’s stories through my skin. Please don’t freak out. It’s just how I am. I see someone crying, and I feel the pain too. With just a little information, I figure out who the person is, what caused their grief; it seeps into me, into my heart. That’s what’s been going on with Rafe.

  In the boat, on our way back from town the day we wound up in San Costanzo, we were silent pretty much the whole ride. When we got to the dock, I watched him scan the shore for starfish. He found one, silently threw it into the deep water. I asked one question.

  “How old were you?”

  I didn’t have to say “when your mother died”—he just knew.

  “Seven,” he said.

  Then we walked up the long stairs; I was transformed by what had happened during the afternoon, in the church, and could barely speak. But Rafe seemed to want to put it behind him, his show of vulnerability.

  He began talking about New York, about school—he’d gone to St. David’s, on the Upper East Side, with Ty Cooper, a boy who now attends Newport Academy—and I had to ask myself why he was telling me such mundane things. He must have wanted me to see him as “normal,” with an untroubled past, a life I could relate to. He wanted to erase the image I had of him holding Arturo’s envelope, of the wild look in his eyes. He’d wanted to use, and I saw, and he knew I saw.

  And it touched me even more deeply, to think of him wanting to manage my thoughts and feelings about him. As if he thought he wasn’t good enough just the way he was, as if he had to pretend he was different.

  If there’s one thing I’ve learned, through the ten years of missing my mother, and especially after our last deep talk, it’s that people are exactly the way they are. You can’t change anyone, you can’t alter the past. What is, is. And you have to go on from there. I’m grappling with an idea that I hate. I mean despise. And that’s that my father was so good, so wonderful, my mother felt she couldn’t live up to him.

  With all her flaws, doubts, insecurities about motherhood, he’d filled in the blanks so easily. Maybe she really thought she could leave us with him, no repercussions. I wish I had pictures to show her, of my bald spot, Lucy’s bleeding face, our fingernails bitten down to the quick. Maybe she’d realize there really is a place for a mother in every kid’s life, no matter how inadequate she might feel.

  When we got to the restaurant that night, I felt a little frantic inside. The skin on my hand prickled, sense memory from holding Rafe’s hand in the church. I hadn’t yet called Travis that day—I planned to later, after dinner—but he was foremost in my mind. I was in a relationship with someone I knew well and really loved. But I was having such intense feelings for Rafe. Just sitting next to him at the table made my heart beat in this very violent, thrashing, scary way.

  Rafe is sexy. He’s dangerous, because he hasn’t yet realized he’s not in control—of life, even of himself. He is tall and lean, with wavy dark hair that falls into his ice blue eyes. He lives in Max’s boathouse, not up at the villa, and doesn’t shower that often—his hair’s kind of stringy, in a dissipated-poet kind of way. He smokes constantly; along with the way he drank and drugged, it’s as if he’s committing slow suicide. Something’s going to kill him.

  He’s not the one for me. I know that. Travis is. Rafe is every mother’s nightmare—I have only to look at my mother’s disapproving face to know that. I’m psychologically in tune enough to question my own motives—am I attracted to Rafe just to get back at my mother? The answer to that is no. He pulls me in all on his own, without any help from her.

  During dinner, when we went upstairs at Da Vincenzo to look for Max’s old room, something happened. I can barely write it—not out of shame or guilt, I don’t think, but out of not wanting to let it into the air, the world, take the steam out of it, take the power away. I think about it, and the top of my head nearly flies off.

  We climbed the wooden stairs—narrow, crooked, dark. The second-floor hallway was lit only by one dim lamp on a table. There were doors on either side of the hall, close together because the rooms were so small.

  Because it was so dark, we had to stand close to the medallions—ovals of wood, delicately and intricately painted with characters from books, a yellowing protective layer of varnish glinting in the low light, nailed to each door at eye level—to try to find Beatrice.

  There she was, all the way at the end. I knew her instantly, by the romantic way the artist had depicted her, running through the garden, holding Dante’s hand as if she’d never let
it go. Trees bearing both fruits and flowers arched overhead, the garden in full bloom.

  “How do you know it’s Beatrice?” Rafe asked, flicking his lighter so we could see better.

  “The garden,” I said.

  “Huh,” he said.

  “Did you read it in school?” I asked. “The Divine Comedy?”

  “I might have,” he said. “That’s the thing about the way I went through school. Not remembering much …”

  I nodded, and the lighter went out, and he turned away. I could tell that this was at odds with what had happened earlier, him talking about St. David’s and school life. He stood there in the dark, looking at me.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “Not really,” he said. “I’ve fucked up my life. And everyone else’s.”

  “Start over,” I said. “That’s what you’re doing right now, isn’t it? You have a new life. You threw out the pills.”

  “You have no idea how badly I wanted to take them,” he said, finally admitting the truth to me and, possibly, himself.

  “But you didn’t,” I said.

  He didn’t reply, but knocked lightly on the door. No one answered; he turned the crystal knob, and we went in. The room was tiny, my idea of a monk’s cell, but without the religion, other than the holiness of books and writing: single bed, small dresser, bookcase overflowing with old volumes, scarred desk, and straight-backed chair. I touched the chair, thinking that Max had once sat there.

  Rafe looked through the room, a museum to his grandfather’s early days. He did this funny thing—trailed his fingers over every surface. It was as if he were blind, had to see through touch. And maybe that’s not entirely wrong—it’s how we do so much in life, absorb the most important things through our skin. Or at least I do, as I mentioned earlier.

  When he’d made a full circuit of the small room, he came back to stand beside me. We faced the window, which overlooked a narrow alleyway leading to the main square. Darkness leading into light: trees in the town center were illuminated, hung with strands of tiny white lights.

  Both Rafe and I happened to look down at the exact same moment, and there, in the aged wooden windowsill (and covered with the same protecting shellac as the door painting) was Max’s signature. Of course I didn’t recognize it, but Rafe did, and pulled me closer.

  “Look,” he said, pointing. “That’s my grandfather!”

  “Who are these?” I said, looking at other signatures.

  “Must be other people who stayed in this room at different times,” Rafe said. “Look at them all.”

  The window was open. A slight breeze blew in, and happy voices drifted in from the square. I heard the rustle of wind in the leaves and branches. The lights swayed, casting moving shadows in the room. I shivered, not because it was cold, but from something else.

  Rafe saw. He turned to me. It seemed he was about to embrace me. He held his hands so close to my bare arms, I literally felt heat pouring off his palms. But he didn’t touch me. He must have known he shouldn’t—he could see in my eyes that I wouldn’t welcome it. I wanted it, but I wouldn’t let it happen.

  A minute later, we left the room and went downstairs to rejoin my mother and Max. That’s when I saw the look in Max’s eyes, and instantly knew how he felt about my mother. Love was in the air. I’d carried with me vestiges of what had just almost happened upstairs. My blood was racing; I knew I had to call Travis.

  Days passed before Travis and I actually spoke. He was out on the boat; the fishing had been so good, they’d stayed out longer than usual. By the time he called me back, I was so churned up. I felt as if the world was falling apart. My attraction to Rafe made me hate myself, and this is weird: it made me fear my mother. Her instability, the way she had left our family. Thrown away everything good and wonderful, and for what?

  Paradoxically, that fear made me stick closer to my mother than ever. I went to work with her. Helped her prepare the flower beds for the moon garden. I kept an eye on her while Gregorio flirted with her unmercifully. I had the feeling he wished I’d leave them alone so he could really pour it on. As it was, he kept giving me smarmy compliments, then telling my mother he saw so much of her in me.

  Getting through to Travis became my obsession. That plus staying away from Rafe. I never once went down to the water; from the terrace I looked only upward—at Monte Solaro and the clouds, at night the stars and the moon—instead of down toward the shore, the boathouse, and the tide line.

  I’d left Travis several messages—both on his cell phone and with his family. Even though his mother told me what was going on, that the trawler was out past Block Island and not returning till the hold was full, I wondered why he wasn’t calling—there’s decent cell reception out there. I know, because I’ve gone out so many times on my grandmother’s yacht. Sirocco has often cruised the New England waters with Lucy and me aboard, and we always called our friends from sea.

  “Why didn’t you pick up?” I asked Travis when he finally called me.

  “I was ankle-deep in cod,” he said. “Pollack too. My hands were slimy, and the fish kept coming.”

  “Oh,” I said. “But couldn’t you have called me back on one of your breaks?”

  “Pell,” he said, laughing, “I’m calling now. You seriously have no idea what it’s like out there. We’re either fishing, or gutting the fish, or icing the fish, or setting the nets, or trying to figure out why the trawl doors are stuck, or crashing for a two-hour nap. No such thing as real sleep out there. And another reason I didn’t call was because there are always a bunch of guys hanging around, listening in.”

  “I’m sorry for being this way,” I said, trying to laugh at myself. But the fact was, I’d been desperate to hear his voice, be reminded of who he was, and what we had, and how much I loved him.

  “You can be any way you want,” he said. “You’re my Pell.”

  “I am?”

  “Of course you are. Are you okay?”

  “Oh, Travis. Better now, talking to you.” I closed my eyes, relaxed into the sound of his voice, the connection between us. I could almost feel him holding me.

  “How are things going with your mother?”

  “Pretty well,” I said.

  “Have you laid it out for her?” he asked. “How you want her home with you and Lucy?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “How’s Lucy?”

  “She seems better. My mom said she’s slept through most nights since that last call with you and your mother.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.” I took a deep breath. “It would be so good to not have to worry about Lucy.”

  “She’s your sister,” Travis said, sounding sharp. “Of course you’re going to worry about her.”

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. Why was he attacking me?

  “When are you bringing your mother home?” he asked. “Wasn’t that the point of you going over there?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Of course it is.”

  Seething silence; I could hear the anger in everything he wasn’t saying. I felt massively steamed up myself. Didn’t he know how hard this was? I thought about my mother leaving us so consciously; I didn’t want to put Lucy and me in a vulnerable position with her again. She’d known what she was doing, leaving us. Instead, and lamely, I found myself offering up excuses for her.

  “It’s a little trickier than I’d first thought,” I said. “Getting her to come home. She has a real life here. She’s working, has a gardening business. And her neighbor …”

  “Max.”

  “Yes. Max—Travis, I’m pretty sure Max is in love with her.”

  “Really? I thought you said he was really old.” Travis sounded warm again, as if he wanted the chance to make up as much as I did.

  “He’s seventy-something. I know this sounds strange, but to me he’s not old at all. In some ways, he’s the youngest, most hopeful person I know.”

  “Does your mother know how he feels?”

  “I don’t think s
he has a clue.”

  “There’s no other guy in her life?”

  I thought of Gregorio, the way he practically draped himself over her as they worked on the moon gate. It had almost made me wish Lucy had held back on the calculations; I wanted the project to just go away. I didn’t like the way it reminded me of my father, of their honeymoon in Bermuda, of when my parents had been trying to be happy.

  “There’s one,” I said, “but he’s more interested in her than she is in him. I hope, anyway.”

  “You don’t like him?”

  “No. I like Max. But she …” I’d been about to say, She always throws what’s good away. My father, my sister and me, our family. Now, possibly, she’d follow her pattern and choose Gregorio over Max.

  “Maybe things with Max will work out,” he said.

  I didn’t answer right away. I was really in a state; nothing felt right to me. If things with my mother and Max did work out, it might mean she would never leave Capri; instead of giving the idea of returning home to me and Lucy a chance, she might lock into staying right here.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “What about his grandson?”

  “What about him?” I asked.

  “What’s his name again?”

  “Rafe Gardiner.”

  “Is he behaving himself?”

  “Yes,” I said. “He seems fine.”

  “He’s not too—what did you say the other day—troubled?”

  “No,” I said.

  I held my phone, closed my eyes, thinking of how terribly I’d wanted to talk to Travis the last few days. If I’d gotten him that first night, I might have spilled the whole story—the hand-holding, the almost-embrace. But time had passed, and I’d been avoiding Rafe.

  We had planned to go to Il Faraglioni on Monday, but I’d left a message with Max that I was helping my mother garden and had to cancel with Rafe. That was true: I helped her plant Renata and Amanda’s herb garden, partly as a way of keeping an eye on Gregorio. Now the idea of telling Travis the truth about something that hadn’t gone anywhere seemed needlessly hurtful.

  “He grew up with Ty” I said instead.