“Poor Mother, to find her sisters like that. I can’t believe we never even guessed there was anything interesting in her past. Daddy was supposed to be the fascinating one.” She shook her head in amazement. “Did she tell you not to tell me?”
“No, not exactly,” I said. “She didn’t say one way or the other.”
“So, if her father didn’t die in the hurricane, then how did he die?” she asked.
I frowned. “I don’t know, actually. We mostly talked about her sisters.”
“You didn’t even ask?”
“I—well, no, I didn’t think to.”
“I’ll have to talk to her about it,” she said, slowly bringing a french fry to her mouth.
“You could come back with me,” I said. “We could ask her together.”
She immediately shook her head. “No, I couldn’t,” she said quickly, so quickly that it was obvious that the very idea horrified her. “I have an appointment. I can’t.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, astounded at how quickly the tides changed direction between us. “Relax, nobody’s going to force you to do anything. What’s the appointment for, though?”
Estella shook her head, looking at the table. “It’s nothing.”
“How can it be nothing, if you have to go?” I persisted.
“It’s nothing you need to worry about, okay?” she said, staring me down.
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
I called for the check.
We found the packing store, and Estella helped me haul the paintings in, stacking them against the high counter as the woman worked out the bill. It was astonishingly pricey, and when Estella pulled her wallet out I allowed her to pay for half without protest. As we left our ancestors there in a stack, I couldn’t help feeling as though we were abandoning them.
We wandered around Parachukla for a while, working off our beer and seafood, and I found myself enjoying the town. Verona was beautiful, but without the cultural history of Parachukla. That, combined with the influence of the nearby university in Grantsville, had developed Parachukla into a haven for artists, and the main street was lined with small galleries, shops, and cafes. There was plenty of money here, but it was quiet money, not desperate and ostentatious as it was in Verona.
The people in the galleries were friendly, and many even had their doors propped open to encourage browsers. If I had been here with my friends from Verona, we would have exclaimed over how quaint it was. Now, without my armor of jewelry and with my hair loose and curly from the humidity, I found it peaceful and beautiful.
We were both tired from the mid-afternoon beer, and we drove back to the island in silence, looking forward to our visit with Vanessa. I was even going ten miles an hour over the speed limit, eager to get back to the island, to breathe in the air and feel the sun. I slowed down. It would still be there. For three more weeks.
Vanessa greeted us wearing a bright blue-and-white batik muumuu and silver sandals. Her tan glowed against the blue, and she looked liked a Hawaiian postcard as she gracefully opened her arms to beckon us into the house. Like ours, it was arranged with the living area on the second floor, and we followed her up the stairs, glancing around us in wonder.
The walls were covered in bright watercolors—swimming, liquid shapes that it took me a moment to realize were flowers. Swaying hibiscus and gardenias wavered and flowed over the canvases, stretching their petals as fluidly as Vanessa stretched on the beach.
“Did you do these?” I asked when we reached the living room and saw more of them.
Vanessa nodded and smiled as she poured sangria into tall, icy glasses. “Yes, do you like them?” she asked, handing me a glass.
“They’re amazing. I have orchids,” I said before I could stop myself. “Well, actually I don’t anymore, but I used to.”
“I have a black thumb,” Vanessa said cheerfully. “Can’t grow them, so I paint them.”
“Do you work here?” Estella asked, sipping her sangria and wandering around the living room to inspect the unframed paintings.
“Upstairs,” Vanessa said. “The light is wonderful. Do either of you paint?”
“I can’t even draw a straight line,” I said with a laugh.
“Ah,” replied Vanessa, indicating her paintings, “nor can I, my dear. That never stopped me. After all, where is a straight line in Nature?”
“She’s a violinist,” Estella said. I blushed. It was never how I defined myself.
“I play a little,” I said. “Mostly I take care of my children.”
“Hmm, never a straight line in them either, is there?” Vanessa said. “My own took long, crooked paths to find their lives.”
“How many children do you have?” I asked.
“Two daughters in New York City,” she said, “and a son in Alaska. I worry about him, but my girls, they have each other.”
Estella and I avoided each other’s eyes.
“The sangria is delicious,” I said, changing the subject.
“Cinnamon,” she said with a conspiratorial wink. “Shall we go upstairs?”
We followed her to her third-floor studio, so different from the dark library at the top of our home. Here, there wasn’t a single blind or drape on the windows, and all of them were thrown wide open. The rich gold of the waning sun flooded the space, illuminating her easels and canvases like torches. Brushes in glass pots stood at attention, as though patiently waiting their turn to be ignited and held aloft.
The clean, fresh smell of paint and sunlight woke my senses, and I breathed deeply, feeling a little dizzy. Estella was taking it all in too, turning her face to the rays coming through the windows. Her hair, short and choppy, lit up in pieces like a mirror mosaic, bouncing light about her head.
“It’s wonderful in here,” I said.
“Yes,” Vanessa said. “I come here every day whether I’m working or not. It’s good for the soul to get closer to the sky, don’t you think?”
Estella turned and smiled at her. “Yes, I do,” she said to my surprise.
Vanessa’s comment, indeed, her very personality—vaguely spiritual, slightly eccentric—seemed exactly the sort of thing that I’d always imagined Estella had little patience for.
“Well then, let’s get a bit closer,” Vanessa said, leading us to the widow’s walk. The stairs to the walk consisted of two short flights, the top one doubling back on the first to save room. Halfway up the second flight, Vanessa turned the handle of the door, which was set into the ceiling like a trapdoor, and pushed it up on sliding brackets until it locked in place.
She set her sangria over the high lip of the doorway and then somehow, even in her muumuu, managed to climb out onto the roof gracefully. Estella and I handed our glasses to her, and then hauled ourselves over the deep lip, neither of us able to mimic Vanessa’s skill. The roof was flat and painted a cool white, as were the railing and long benches built into the sides.
Vanessa left the door open and beckoned us to the front rail, where the roof fell away at a steep angle. It was dizzying to be up so high, and I turned around in a slow circle, the astonishing view making me catch my breath. Estella was doing the same thing, and she caught my eye and said, “We are opening the widow’s walk.”
“Yes we are,” I agreed emphatically. “I can’t believe we could have had a view like this and Daddy kept it locked up.”
The island was visible from its south end to its north, from the bridge in the east to the expanse of Gulf in the west. Little Dune was clear, the lighthouse like a thumbtack, skewering the island to the earth, though the tender dwelling remained hidden under the greenery. If I stayed long enough I could count every home on Big Dune and every boat in the bay.
A flock of pelicans, so improbable looking, soared over our heads, close enough to reach out and poke their fat gray-brown bellies, their massive wings. I tilted my head back and saw the bright yellow eyes of the last bird, the leathery folds under its long bill, and I laughed out loud.
&n
bsp; When Estella and I had had our fill of the view, the three of us settled onto the west-facing bench and watched the sun set. Vanessa was right, I did feel closer to the sky. The orange and pink rays of the sun fell upon the edge of the roof, lighting the white railings like fire, and I played my fingers through it, held my glass of watery sangria up to it, making purplish rainbows against my skin.
A sliver of a new moon appeared like a ghost in the sky before the sun dipped beneath the horizon. Venus was already shining. We stayed as long as we could, pointing out new stars as they became visible, only climbing back over the lip of the doorway when the bugs drove us in. My head felt stuffy as we descended the stairs, as though the air became thicker with each step down, and I was sorry to say good-bye to Vanessa.
I couldn’t wait to open our widow’s walk and imbue our house with that magical light. If getting closer to the sky was good for the soul, being held up in those rays of the sun was good for my entire being. I was suffused with the light, and Estella’s dreamy look told me she was too.
As we walked into the front entry of our house she said, “I think I’m going to call Paul,” and walked down the hall to her bedroom while I went upstairs to make us dinner.
I waited for her for almost an hour, and finally ate my pork chops and zucchini alone, making a plate for her and putting it in the oven to keep it warm, jealous that she had someone to talk about the widow’s walk and sunset to, a confidant.
I couldn’t look to Estella to be that for me. I wondered if this was how Mother felt, hiding her life from everyone, even her own family. My aloneness took on a sheen of nobility for a moment, and then was just as quickly gone.
Estella
“So your mother had this whole life you girls knew nothing about?” Paul asks.
“Can you believe she never said a word?”
“You haven’t exactly been up-front with her either,” he says, his voice empty of rebuke, simply stating a fact.
I say nothing.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
“Fine,” I lie. I don’t tell him about the headaches, or the number games that have filled my mind again. It is coming back, I can feel it, but Paul does not trust intuition. Paul trusts doctors, and scientists, and modern medicine.
“I miss you, Estella,” he says, and I can hear in his voice how much he does miss me, and my heart swells with ache for him. I wonder if this is how Connie feels about Luke, if this is how Daddy felt about Mother.
“I miss you too,” I whisper.
We hang up, but I stay in my room, willing my headache away. I think that perhaps I’ll go for a swim, but it is fully dark out, and the water is a different thing at night. The swimming has been good for me. I can feel my body becoming stronger even while my mind weakens. Edison didn’t believe in exercise. He believed that the body was merely something to cart his brain around in.
But while my brain has betrayed me, my body hasn’t.
And I am no Edison.
I am looking forward to opening the widow’s walk. Connie seemed so content up there. I would very much like to see that again. She is constantly on edge. She had always been so relaxed that I had been envious of her easy ways. I hate that I make her so nervous and defensive.
If I go back to Atlanta without resolving this, I never will. Thinking of it is not helping my head, but I know what will. I stare at the ceiling and count the vents in the ceiling fan motorcase. There are seventeen. Just as there always have been.
Three facts about seventeen:
The Parthenon is seventeen columns long.
This makes me pause. Paul says he will take me there on our honeymoon.
Three facts about seventeen:
The square root of seventeen is irrational.
Seventeen is the smallest Trotter prime.
Seventeen is the age I was when I got pregnant.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I was sweating. Despite the air-conditioning, the little double-backed staircase leading to the widow’s walk trapped heat, and I was crouched as close as I could get to the door, wielding a flathead screwdriver and a dinner knife in an attempt to slice away the foam sealant piped around the door’s edge. It was slow going, and old, crusty bits of yellow foam were caught in my hair and clinging to my shirt.
Estella took a turn while I packed books, and we had succeeded in working almost all of the sealant off. Now Estella was packing while I grunted and sweated on the staircase. I finally managed to dig the last of it out.
“I think this is it,” I called to Estella. She appeared at the half-point landing, and I handed her the knife and screwdriver. The key to the padlock slid in and turned easily, a triumph after the nightmare of the sealant, but we weren’t home free yet. The door handle wouldn’t turn, and I finally banged on it, bruising the heel of my hand.
“Let me try,” Estella said, and I gratefully switched places with her. She banged on it too, but she persevered, and it finally turned. She pushed. Nothing happened. She scrabbled for purchase on the stairs, and finally bent over at the waist, pushing her back against the door, and pushed up, her legs doing all the work. She looked like Atlas, lifting a flat, silver world on her shoulders, thigh muscles quivering.
The door popped without warning, and Estella shot up like a bottle rocket, banging the back of her head into the door, sending her stumbling down the steps. I caught her just before she plunged head-first into the wall facing the top flight, and we panted there for a moment, our hearts beating wildly. Estella began to laugh, and I couldn’t help but join her.
“God,” she said, pulling away from me and rubbing the back of her head with her hand. “We’re going to be lucky to get out of this place alive.”
I squinted up the staircase into the rectangle of sunlight. “Shall we get closer to the sky?” I asked breathlessly, flinging my arms out.
“Don’t you dare make fun of her,” Estella said, still laughing. “She’s a lovely woman.”
“Yes, she is,” I agreed. “I’m sure I’m going straight to hell. Come on.” I led the way up the stairs and crawled over the lip, cautiously getting to my feet. Estella clambered after me and we stood close to the door, nervous about the condition of the roof.
The widow’s walk was the twin to Vanessa’s, with a white railing and built-in benches, but they couldn’t have looked more different. Years of neglect had left the white coating peeling in patches, and bird-poop stains freckled the roof, railing, and benches.
I slid my foot forward, slowly putting weight on it, testing, but the roof felt solid. Estella took one half, I took the other, and we walked across every foot of it, finally satisfied that it was perfectly safe, if disgusting. We spent the rest of the afternoon scrubbing it down, hauling buckets up and sloshing water about until the walk gleamed.
It was hot, dirty, exhausting work. Storm clouds gathered in the late afternoon, obscuring the sunset. We finally shut the door behind us just as the rain hit, grumbling about the waste of water we’d carried up.
The thunderstorms continued for the rest of the week, trapping us inside. We made grimly cheerful comments about how it was a good thing because it forced us to work, and work we did, silently and carefully, skirting around anything more serious than what was for dinner. By Friday almost thirty boxes of books were stacked against the wall on the first floor.
I had carefully wrapped my violins and packed them, clearly labeling the box and placing it in my room. We rolled the rugs up, carrying the small ones down together, but we nearly killed ourselves with the large Bokhara. Pulling it out the door didn’t work; we had no leverage. Pushing it didn’t work either; it was too ungainly.
We finally left it, hoping that Tate might have an answer, or a willing pair of strong arms and a stubborn back. Friday night we leaned against the windowsills, watching the rain lash the beach, lightning splintering the night in gorgeous displays over the water, followed by house-shivering thunder.
Our father had loved thunderstorms. He often woke
us up to watch the lightning show while Mother snugged herself under the comforter in their bedroom. All three of us had laughed at her fear. Now I felt shame for the things we said, the superiority act of our father’s that we’d readily bought into and emulated.
If I’d had the choice between her and our father, I would have chosen him every time. He led us to believe that Mother was base—not stupid exactly, but certainly not brilliant the way his family was. His sense of self had been tied up in oil paintings on a wall, not the imperfect flesh-and-blood people our mother had been born of.
“Remember Daddy and his storms?” Estella asked quietly. Her face lit up with a flash of lightning.
“Yeah,” I admitted. “I was thinking about Mother too. I never gave her enough credit—”
“And we gave him entirely too much,” Estella finished for me. I nodded.
“I’m sorry she didn’t come,” I said.
“She’d never have allowed us to open the widow’s walk.”
“Like that did us a lot of good,” I said. We hadn’t been able to watch a single sunset since we’d pried it open and scrubbed it down. I turned slowly around, surveying the room. “If I lived here I’d make this my bedroom,” I said.
“It is beautiful,” Estella agreed, looking around. “It seems so different now, so much bigger.”
“I’d paint the bookcases white and leave the windows bare,” I continued.
“Paint the bookcases,” Estella repeated, sounding horrified. “Don’t let Paul hear you say that. He’s morally opposed to painting wood.”
“Did you ever bring him here?”
She shook her head. “No. He suggested coming a few times, but it was just never convenient.”
“I wish the boys had been able to come,” I said. “They’d have loved the widow’s walk. What a shame we did all that work for nothing.”
Estella shrugged. “It’s supposed to be clear tomorrow.”
“Tate’s coming in the morning,” I reminded her.
“Do I have to go?”
I laughed. “You sound like my boys.”
Catching Genius Page 18