Catching Genius

by Kristy Kiernan

  He stopped for a moment, and I sneaked a look at him in the fading sun.

  “It’s like it’s my own secret, you know?” he finally said. “This is magic time, and they don’t even know it. There’s a different feel to the air, the dolphins come out to feed, the birds can eat without being bothered. Everything sounds different, even the waves sound different, like it’s new again.”

  “How do you explain that?” Estella asked dryly, pointing toward the row of houses behind the dunes. Two new ones were under construction side by side, shotgun houses, thin and deep in order to fit as many as possible on a small expanse of beachfront. A construction crane stood between the houses, ready to haul trusses up to the roof, looking as out of place as an airliner.

  Tate, walking between us, veered toward Estella and nudged her shoulder with his own, making her stumble for footing. “Well, don’t look that way,” he said. “Look this way.”

  We kept our gaze to the beach and the water, and we reached the cut just as the sun began its descent at the edge of the water. I leaned back against a small dune and felt my eyes grow heavy with the warmth of the sun on my cheeks. Tate and Estella continued to try to bait each other, but mildly. I listened to them without hearing their individual words, and eventually they grew quiet as the waves smoothed their prickly edges.

  “Green flash time,” Tate said when the sun was just a sliver on top of the water.

  “Never seen it. Have you?” I asked. I’d stared, unblinking, into more sunsets than I cared to remember waiting for it. Most people I knew claimed to have seen it, including both my parents.

  “Oh, sure,” Tate said with a sly smile. “Twice.”

  “I haven’t,” Estella said, and gave me a conspiratorial smile.

  “Blue eyes are weak,” Tate said serenely. Estella punched him on the shoulder as I laughed.

  “Connie hasn’t seen it, and she’s got the Sykes eyes,” Estella said dramatically.

  We all flopped back against the dune and laughed like kids, giddy with wine and the pretentiousness of our father. It was only when the no-see-ums started biting that we hauled ourselves up and headed back to the house for our scallop dinner.

  Just as we finished eating, to my delight, Carson called from camp. He sounded excited and babbled about the friends he’d made in his cabin. I told him about the dolphins and the birds, and felt that longing for him again. I watched Tate and Estella on the patio as I talked to him, and wondered that neither of them had ever had children.

  Especially now, especially being apart from them, they seemed like the only decent thing I’d done in my life. I was feeling so sentimental by the time we hung up that I called home again, hoping to talk to Gib, even if I had to talk to Luke to do it. But there was no answer.

  Tate and Estella came in from the porch with their hands full of dishes, and Estella refused to allow us to help as she cleaned the kitchen, an unvoiced apology for the night before. Tate and I took coffee to the living room, and I sat on the sofa while he meandered through the room, shuffling through the old albums on the shelves under the stereo.

  “Hey,” he said, sliding an album out, “want to listen to some music?”

  “Sure. What’d you find?”

  He grinned and flashed the album cover at me after slipping the record out. Ray Charles smiled in profile, his head tilted up as though on the verge of praising the sky. Tate fiddled with the arm of the record player, and then carefully closed the lid as “Early in the Morning” started, coming from the tall speakers like an old whiskey-and-cigarette-voiced friend.

  I settled back into the sofa. Tate sat beside me, propping his bare feet on the low coffee table. The sounds of Estella washing dishes mingled nicely with the music, and I had a sudden flash of what my life might have been like if Tate and I had married. Sitting in the beach house, listening to Ray Charles, the Gulf, and our child cleaning the kitchen. I laughed out loud and Tate looked at me quizzically.

  “Oh, nothing,” I said to his unasked question, sobering up and taking a sip of my coffee.

  “So, what’s going on, Connie?” Tate asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “You’re . . . quiet. You seem awfully guarded. I’ve never thought of you that way.”

  “Getting philosophical with me?” I teased, but he merely looked at me and I felt a blush on my cheeks. I twisted my rings. “My husband is having an affair,” I said abruptly. “I’m thinking of leaving him.”

  He continued to look at me, his shoulders drooped, a picture of sympathy I wasn’t sure I could stand. “Aw, shit, Connie. Are you sure?”

  “Sure about leaving him, or sure he’s cheating?”

  He shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know. Both?”

  “I’m definitely sure he’s cheating. It’s not the first time, not even the second time.”

  “Well, then I suppose you should leave him.”

  “It’s not that easy,” I said, looking toward the kitchen, careful to keep my voice low.

  “Why not?”

  “We have a long history. We have two kids, two great kids who don’t deserve the upheaval it’s going to cause.”

  “What about what you deserve?”

  “It’s different when you have children, Tate,” I said. “Things aren’t so cut and dried.”

  “Hmm,” he said, leaning back in the sofa, cupping his coffee against his chest. “Well, I’m real sorry, Connie. Anything I can do?”

  I shook my head. “Mother’s got her lawyer looking into some things. It looks like Luke has been spending money, or losing money, I don’t know. Maybe he’s just hiding it. He bought me that Escalade downstairs, but I think it was just a diversionary tactic.”

  “How’s that?” he asked.

  I told him about the gifts, the jewelry, the appliances. He grinned when I listed them by name, but his smile faltered when I told him about Deanna’s new yellow Beetle.

  “She know?” he asked, inclining his head toward the kitchen, where it had grown quiet. I shook my head in warning just as Estella walked in, bearing a plate of sugar cookies. She slowed and then stood still.

  “Am I interrupting something?” she asked.

  “Not at all,” I said quickly. “We were just talking about the albums. Mother didn’t mention them. Do you want them?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said, placing the cookies on the table and then sitting cross-legged on the floor and flipping through one of the stacks. “People pay a lot of money for these now, though. Hey, what about Carson?”

  I shot her a look full of warning, and she looked pointedly away.

  “Carson likes music?” Tate asked, sitting on the floor beside Estella to peruse the albums.

  I nodded, trying to keep my voice steady. “Sure, music, swimming, he’s into all sorts of things.”

  “What about Gib?” he asked. “What’s he interested in?”

  “Other than football, Gib is mostly interested in Gib,” I answered, and Tate raised his eyebrows at me.

  “How old is he now?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Tough age,” Tate said.

  “I don’t remember it being so tough,” I replied.

  Estella and Tate looked at each other and burst out laughing.

  “What?”

  “Oh, yeah, you were a regular little teen angel,” Estella said, still laughing.

  “What are you talking about? I was a good kid!”

  Estella snorted, and Tate scanned the ceiling innocently.

  “You, my dear sister, were a pain in the ass,” Estella said.

  “She was a cute pain in the ass, though,” Tate said, as though that might mollify me. I threw a piece of my cookie at him, which he caught and popped in his mouth.

  “You don’t have anything to complain about,” I said to Estella. “Watching you mope around was no picnic either, I can tell you that.”

  “I think I had a little more to worry about than you did, Connie,” Estella said.r />
  “Please. What were your big worries? If Daddy loved a sand dune more than you? Whether you were going to graduate from college at sixteen or seventeen?” I jabbed back.

  “As usual, you have no idea what you’re talking about,” Estella said, getting to her feet, leaving the stack of records on the floor.

  “Hey, hey, come on,” Tate said, placing a hand on Estella’s calf. She shook him off and stalked out of the living room and down the stairs.

  “See? Just like when she was sixteen,” I said. The sugar cookie tasted like chalk, and I put the other half back on the plate, feeling slightly sick to my stomach.

  Tate shook his head at me. “No, it’s like you’re both sixteen again,” he said.

  “Sorry,” I muttered.

  “Don’t tell me,” he said. “Let her cool off for a while. But I think the evening’s over.” He straightened the albums and slid them back on the shelf and then stood and stretched. His shirt rose over the waistband of his jeans, and I could see that his stomach was as flat as it had been as a teenager. I averted my eyes.

  “I won’t be around much this week, but y’all want to go to Little Dune Saturday? We can bring lunch and spend the day.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “We have so much work to do here.”

  “Oh, come on. You’ve got four days before Saturday—you have to take a break sometime. A day’s not going to set you back. I’ll help the next day to make up for it. Ask Estella. I’ll be going whether you do or not.”

  “All right,” I agreed. “Thanks, Tate.”

  I stayed upstairs when he left, and just after I heard the front door close I heard the porch door open and shut, and then felt the vibration of someone on the boardwalk. I peered out the sliders. Estella was walking down to the beach. I sighed and slowly walked downstairs and followed her.

  The moon was hidden behind a bank of clouds, and I considered turning on the boardwalk lights. I’d taken a few headers off the side as a child, sending crabs skittering and driving those maddening stickers into various tender parts of my body. But I left the lights off and felt my way until my eyes became used to the dark. I caught up with Estella at the water’s edge.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Taking a walk,” she answered.

  “Mind some company?”

  “Whatever you want to do, Connie.”

  We walked along silently, allowing the warm water to lap our feet, stepping over tiny phosphorescent jellyfish.

  “We’ve got a lot of work to do,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  We were silent for another moment.

  “We have to figure out a way to get through this,” I finally said.

  “I know,” she replied quietly. “Sorry.”

  “Me too.”

  She tugged my arm and I followed her up to the dry sand, collapsing beside her in front of a dune.

  “It’s me,” she said, holding up a hand as I started to protest. “No, let me finish. I think it’s Tate. Did you know I had a terrible crush on him when we were younger?”

  “Lord, who didn’t have a crush on him, Estella? But I don’t remember you mooning over him, no. I mean, it’s not really the sort of thing we talked about, anyway.”

  “No, we didn’t, did we? I think I kept it hidden pretty well. I tried to seduce him once.”

  I gaped at her and then burst into disbelieving laughter. “When? What happened?”

  “When Mother and Daddy went to New Mexico. I stayed in the house, and when Tate came over to check on the place I tried to—well, you know.”

  “What did he do?” I asked. I couldn’t see it, couldn’t fit the mental image of the two of them into any sort of romantic situation.

  “Nothing,” she said, bitterness flavoring the single word. “Besides, he didn’t really like me at all, even as a friend.”

  “Tate likes everyone, Estella. You were just . . . different. Maybe he didn’t know how to be friends with you.”

  “No. It would have been laughable,” Estella said, and I heard real pain in her voice. “He was interested in you, not me, not the math geek.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” I said, feeling inadequate, remembering what she was like as a teenager. The last year Estella had spent any time at the beach house was the year before she graduated. That summer was the last time we spent any time together at all. Daddy had surprised Mother with a European tour for their anniversary, and after much debate they decided that Estella, seventeen and more mature than most thirty-year-olds, could be trusted to watch me for the month they would be gone.

  I’m sure Estella had been mortified, but I was thrilled. I assumed she would spend all of her time swimming or in her room, and I would be free to roam the island. But to my surprise, Estella had not been interested in her math books. She seemed to want to stick close to me for the first time since she went to college. And now, with her confession about having had a crush on Tate, I saw why.

  “So that’s why you wanted to hang around that summer?” I asked, oddly hurt by it.

  “Part of it, maybe,” she said. “I did want to be friends with you, Connie. It seemed like maybe we were starting to, and then . . .” She trailed off.

  I knew the then she was referring to. Then I had gotten in trouble, big trouble, in the water. We’d never talked about it. In fact, I didn’t even like to think about it now, more than twenty years later.

  It had been a heady two weeks without our parents. For the first time, Estella wasn’t restricted to the fringes of society. She spent time on the beach in my borrowed bikini and her pale skin turned golden in the sun. She had developed a woman’s body, with hips and breasts, actual round melon breasts that bounced and jiggled just like those of the women on television. They were astonishing. The boys, especially Robbie Deckers, hadn’t been able to take their eyes off her. She’d seemed to blossom overnight, lush as a hibiscus bloom.

  We were all growing up that summer. I’d gotten my first real kiss from Tate, and we had been sneaking plenty of time away from the group to practice. I was looking forward to more of the same when he arrived with most our friends in tow that morning, and we pulled a cooler full of beer down to the beach.

  I had more to drink than I should have. Estella tried to slow me down, but I ignored her and she went swimming in a sulk while the boys started a game of football, prompting the girls to steal the ball. It was thrown to me, and I took off into the water, boys in hot pursuit.

  I had enough of a head start to feel confident and was floating easily, buoyed by beer and infatuation. Kissing made me lighter, made me effervescent and dreamy, and I harbored fantasies of Tate and me twirling about in the water as his mouth moved on mine. The other boys gave up, and to my disappointment, Tate did too. Once he was back on the beach I no longer felt so effervescent. In fact, I was tiring quickly. I felt the current brush the bottoms of my feet, a tickle, a warning.

  I let go of the football, stroking for the beach. But suddenly the current wasn’t just at my feet but was pulsing up my ankles and then my calves. The waves, gentle and rolling just moments before, had turned choppy and disorganized, and the football bobbed in front of my face, startling me.

  The first time I went under, I swallowed a bit of water and panicked, plunging my arms down in a sweeping motion, raising my head above water for a moment, long enough to draw a lungful of air. But I slipped back down so fast that water immediately followed the air down my throat. I swallowed and felt it rise back up in my throat. The football hit my left cheek and I gasped, inhaling more water.

  I called for Estella, I saw her coming, I knew she would save me. I saw her eyes, the exact same green as the Gulf water that was swallowing me, and I knew that I would be okay. Her eyes comforted me so assuredly that I relaxed and gently went under the waves in slow motion.

  And then everything sped up, a choppy, spluttering fast-forward in which everything was a confused mass of churning water and limbs. Somehow Tate got to me
first, and then Estella was there, and together they hauled me onto the beach, where I collapsed to my elbows and knees, my back bowed like an old mare’s. My hair hung like seaweed in my face, and I choked water out and gasped air in before finally vomiting a humiliating gush of seawater and beer onto the sand.

  The party was over. Tate and Estella half-dragged, half-carried me into the house, where Estella, sobbing, helped me shower and then installed me in our parents’ bed. She closed the house to everyone except Tate and refused to allow me out of bed for two days.

  Tate came to see me every day, but it was the end of our childish romance. We became closer friends, and I’ve never forgotten the fact that he and my sister saved my life. I bought him a new football for Christmas that year to replace the one that disappeared.

  When our parents returned, we told them nothing of our month except that we’d had a nice time, and neither of them ever found out. I knew Estella felt responsible, but I was the one who had gone beyond my capabilities, and I knew it. I’d been behaving like a fool and had been punished for it by nearly drowning, and then by Estella’s determined renewal of the chasm between us. She spent the rest of that summer with Dr. Pretus and his wife, and the next year she graduated from college and left for Atlanta without spending another day at Big Dune.

  I shuddered, remembering how hot and salty the water had been in my throat, how thick and grasping the current. I felt Estella stir beside me. She reached out her hand and I took it. We both leaned back against the dune and gazed at the stars, and I felt that sense of friendship with her again for the first time in a long time.

  “So Robbie Deckers wasn’t your first love, then,” I said, anxious to relegate the memory of the water back where it belonged.

  “Hardly,” she answered.

  I rolled over on my stomach and propped my head on my hands. “Who was your first love, Estella? I’ve never known a thing about your love life.”

  “Paul was my first love,” she said, keeping her gaze on the Milky Way.

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “Give me something. Was Robbie your first kiss? Or was it a college boy? I always wondered if you met a lot of frat boys.”