“Now look, I thought we—”
“Just because I’m making this easy doesn’t mean that you haven’t done a horrible thing, to me and to our sons. I’m trying to make it easy for them. You’ve got a long way to go to make this up to both of them.”
“Well, it—it would be all right if he stayed with you, you know? I mean, I’ve got a lot to do, I have to start my life over too, and—”
“Good God,” I said, realization dawning on me. “You don’t even want Gib, do you? I know you have no interest in Car—”
“Stop right there, Connie,” he interrupted. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Feel free to explain yourself then.” I remained silent, listening to him fidget on the other end of the line.
“I’m just saying that it might be best if Gib—Gib and Carson, stayed with you at first.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way, Luke,” I said quietly. “But don’t blame me if it takes years for your sons to trust you again. Sons, Luke. Remember you have two of them. My lawyer will be in touch.”
I hung up and turned around to see Gib slipping away. I didn’t call him back—there was nothing I could say to him to cover for what he had heard.
Dinner was subdued. Tate never returned, Estella pleaded a headache and skipped it altogether, and both Gib and Carson were near silent the entire time. Only Mother tried to lighten the mood by asking Gib and Carson to walk through the house and choose anything they wanted to keep. Both of them passed on her offer, and we all floated off to our own devices after dinner.
I walked the beach, unwilling to return to the top floor until I was certain Estella was asleep. When I saw the light wink out I walked back up the boardwalk just in time to snatch the ringing phone up.
“Hi, Connie,” Paul said, his voice pleasant and soft, such a far cry from most of my recent conversations.
“Hello, Paul. How are you?”
“I’m doing all right. Missing Estella, though. Is she around?”
I hesitated. What did I care if I woke her up? But I said, “She went to bed early. Do you want me to see if she’s awake?”
“Is she feeling okay?” he asked.
“She probably had a headache,” I said, and I’m sure my irritation bled through in my voice, because he was silent for a moment.
“Is that happening a lot? Badly enough that she has to go to bed?” he asked.
“Sometimes she lies down, sometimes she doesn’t,” I said, not particularly bothered with what my sister did or didn’t do. “Do you want me to get her?”
“No, don’t wake her up, she needs her sleep. But can you please ask her to call me in the morning?” he asked.
I agreed, but when I woke the next morning she was already gone, swimming in the Gulf with Gib, reigniting my fury. I forgot to tell her that Paul called, but figured she knew when I saw her hanging the phone up that afternoon. She was agitated, flexing her fingers and blinking her eyes in that way I remembered so well.
She left for the beach when she saw me moving her things down to her old bedroom, transferring Gib to my old room, and moving Carson up to the library with me. She skipped meals and we stayed away from each other for the remainder of the week. The thunderstorms that returned didn’t make it any easier, but while being forced to stay indoors didn’t do much for our relationship, it helped with the house. We all worked. Mother gleefully threw things away, seeming to relish the task, and after Estella helped Gib with his algebra, they dove in too.
Carson stuck close to me. We practiced in the library in the mornings, when everyone else was down on the beach, then he helped me box and label in the afternoons. We made a couple of trips into town to ship things to Verona, but the boxes still piled up uncontrollably on the first floor. I didn’t bother asking Estella if she wanted to ship the books—she could make her own arrangements—and so those boxes never moved.
Vanessa came to eat dinner with us most nights, along with Tate, who was scarce during the day. Two nights before we were scheduled to leave, he brought fresh shrimp, lugging his big cooler up the stairs through the thunderstorm that had rolled in. He toweled off in the kitchen, and Gib looked at him anxiously.
“We’re still going to Little Dune, aren’t we?” he asked.
“Oh, Gib, I don’t think a campout is such a great idea now,” I said.
“Mom,” Gib protested. “You already said I could.”
“Why can’t I go?” Carson asked, for the twentieth time that week.
“Because you’re not invited,” Gib said.
“Hey, knock it off or I’ll cancel it altogether,” Tate said mildly. “Gib, if your mom says you can’t go, you can’t go. And Carson, you certainly would be invited, but your mom thinks that you might be a little young. You come up next year and I promise we’ll go camping, okay?”
Carson was not appeased and stomped down the stairs to his bedroom. Gib glared at me, waiting for a decision. I looked out the sliders at the storm.
“Why don’t you go downstairs and be nice to your brother,” Tate said to Gib. “I’ll talk to your mom.”
Gib left reluctantly, casting dark glances over his shoulder, and I slumped down onto the cooler with a sigh. There were no chairs left in the house, and we’d been eating picnic style, cross-legged on the floor, wherever we felt most comfortable.
“Hey, Connie,” Tate said. “It’s almost over. You’ll be back home soon.”
I looked around at the empty house. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know if I want to go back yet.”
He followed my gaze and laughed. “Well, it’s a little late to decide that now.”
I shrugged. I’d come to like the bare house, full of possibilities, emptied of tangible reminders of things I would now rather forget. “I guess so. What about this camping trip?”
“If you don’t want him to go, he won’t go,” he said.
“What if it storms?” I asked.
“I’ve camped in a lot worse weather than this. I think Gib’s hoping it will storm. Hell, it’ll be good for him. Sort of a rite of passage, you know? He’s learned a lot, and he really likes all this outdoors stuff. From what I gather, he’s not that interested in much at home except football.”
“That’s true,” I admitted. “It’s been so nice of you to take an interest in him.”
“No problem; he’s a good kid. I’d be doing all that stuff by myself anyway, so he’s company for me. If the rain gets bad we’ll sleep in the lighthouse. He’d probably like that better anyway.”
“You don’t think it’s dangerous?”
He laughed again. “God, Connie, when did you turn into such a wimp?”
“When I gave birth,” I answered sharply, and then caught myself. “I’m sorry, Tate. I’m just so tired. I want to get all of this over with.”
“I know,” he said softly. “He’ll be with me, Connie. He’ll be safe. I promise. It’s just rain.”
“All right. We’ll see you tomorrow then.”
He winked at me and dropped a light kiss on top of my head before joining the boys downstairs. Mother came up and we shelled shrimp for dinner in companionable silence.
“Your sister’s still not feeling well,” she said. I grunted in reply and dropped another cleaned shrimp into the bowl. “She told me what happened,” Mother continued.
“And I’m still not interested in talking about it, Mother,” I said.
Mother sighed, a heavy, pitiful sigh. I turned to her, my hands dripping shrimp water on the floor. I wiped them on my shorts, not caring that I’d smell like shrimp for the night. “Why are you selling this house?” I asked. She looked startled, and I was a little startled myself at the vehemence in my voice.
“I’ve told you that,” she answered. “It’s quite simple. Nobody uses it and it costs too much to keep.”
“I want it,” I said, and it took the words coming out of my mouth for me to know it was true, the same way I’d known that Estella was too different to ever come back to m
e, the same way I’d known when I fell in love with Luke.
“You can’t be serious,” Mother said, her face incredulous.
“I am. Yes, I am. I want this house. This is where I want to be. I’ll sell the house in Verona and buy it from you.”
“Connie, this is ridiculous.”
“This is the first thing I’ve known for sure in years, Mother.”
“You can’t afford it.”
“Then don’t try to make a killing off me.”
“Well, that’s—that’s not fair. I would have to ask the fair market price, Connie.”
“Then rent it to me, leave it to me and Estella, and when you die, I’ll buy her out.” The wheels were turning furiously now. Mother wasn’t keeping up; she looked flustered.
“Connie, this is a big decision. At the very least, please think about this for a while. Sleep on it. And what about the boys? They won’t want to be that far from Luke.”
“For your information, Luke says he’s starting a new life, and he’s not interested in the boys being a part of it.”
She looked stricken. “Surely he didn’t say that,” she said.
“Not exactly, but that was the impression he gave me. Mother, look at Gib. Have you ever seen him interested in doing anything other than playing video games and football? He’s even changing his attitude toward Carson. I think I could be happy here, Mother. And I think the boys could too. Doesn’t that matter to you?”
“Of course it does, Connie. I have to think about this. I am not at all convinced. And I think once you’ve had some time to think, you won’t be either.”
But she was wrong. As I lay in the dark that night, listening to my son sleep beside me, I knew that it was exactly what I wanted.
Estella
For the first time in my life I don’t know what I want. I vacillate on the hour. Tough, then tearful, then angry, and moving on to desperate in less time than it takes me to recite the Millennium Prize problems. But it is worse than any math, it is family, and I am reminded once again that it is often simply easier to opt out of it altogether.
Gib watches me and Connie, darting his eyes back and forth between us like a spectator at a telepathic tennis match, as though we are volleying arguments back and forth without saying a word. And perhaps we are. I know I am sending her plenty of topspin-loaded thoughts, alternating between pleas for leniency and angry declarations of disinterest.
But I don’t feel anything coming back.
When Gib splashed into the Gulf beside me this morning I almost walked out, but he simply began to swim, and after a moment I did too. I only have a few days left here. I only have a few more times to feel this exquisite weightlessness. I counted my strokes, divided and multiplied and factored on my flip, and then counted strokes again.
I’ve been swimming in numbers all day. I have stopped fighting it. There is no use in it; it is what I was meant to do, what I was born for, and no doctor can cut it all out of me after all. It is something of a relief to know where it came from. Daddy tried so hard to make us connect with his ancestors, but it was always a tenuous, counterfeit bond. I never really felt it.
But now I am connected to my mother’s father, a cardsharp, a con man, a man who died because he encouraged the numbers to swim and play in his head. I wonder if he ever tried to make them stop, or whether he simply accepted it. Did he blame the numbers when he killed that man, when he heard his sentence read, when he died in some cell in upstate New York?
I blame them for everything.
“Estella?” I hear Connie call, and my heart jitters. “Paul’s on the phone.”
I walk upstairs listening to her make small talk with Paul, cringe when I hear her politely lie, “Sure, we’re having a good time.”
I pull the phone from her grasp, and her eyes widen. I say, “Hi, Paul, hang on a second,” then hold the phone down at my side and stare at her until she turns away and goes upstairs, shaking her head.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Paul, I’m fine,” I heard Estella say. I hung back, listening, unable to help myself. She listened for a minute, and then continued, “A few days isn’t going to make a difference.”
Silence, and then, “You should be at your show.”
Silence again. Then, “I miss you too. Yes, fine. I’ll see you then.”
She hung up, and I tried to look casual as I came back downstairs.
“Don’t worry, Connie,” she said. “I’ll be out of your hair tomorrow. Paul’s coming to pick me up.”
It surprised me enough that I momentarily forgot my standoff. “What? Why?”
“Because he is,” she said irritably. She shoved the telephone back against the wall and left the kitchen, heading downstairs and passing Mother in the stairwell.
“I’m leaving tomorrow. Paul’s coming to pick me up,” I heard her say.
“Whatever for?” Mother asked. “I thought Connie was taking you home on Saturday.”
“Connie doesn’t want to be anywhere near me, Mother, so I don’t imagine that’s a problem.”
“But, Estella, what about the books?”
“Burn them,” she said. Then I heard her race down the stairs; the beachside door slammed.
Mother arrived upstairs looking dazed, as if she couldn’t understand how everything had gotten away from her so quickly. “What was that all about?” she asked me, as though it were my fault.
I shrugged. “She’s a grown woman, Mother, you can’t stop her.”
Estella and Gib swam, with me keeping a careful eye on them from the patio, while Vanessa did her tai chi and Mother sat in the sand. The house was finally empty, and I had little to do but wait for Gib to go on his camping trip and give the house a final cleaning.
By that afternoon the house looked very nearly ready to place on the market. I walked through the living room and leaned my shoulder against the slider casement, gazing out at the thunderheads that had started to roll in over the Gulf.
Everything was gray: the water, the sky, even the white sand looked dingy and used. I wanted to drag my weary self upstairs, crawl onto my mattress, and sleep for days while rain lashed against the windows. I closed my eyes and listened to the muffled sounds of the surf, allowing it to lull me. Had Carson not run up the stairs, thumping a bulging backpack behind him, I might have drifted off standing up like a horse.
“I want to go camping!” he yelled at me, having worked himself up to confront me. He was red-faced and breathless, clutching his backpack straps in one hand and already near tears.
I shook my head to clear the fuzziness. “Carson, lower your voice. I’ve already told you that you can’t go. And besides, look, it’s getting ready to storm. You’re afraid of lightning and thunder.”
It was the wrong thing to say.
“I am not! And if Gib gets to go then I do too—”
“No, that’s not how it works. When you’re older you can go, and I’m not arguing with you about this anymore. Now take your backpack upstairs and stay there until you can calm down.”
He stared up at me, his chin trembling. “I’m not staying with you anymore,” he said, stomping off, dragging his backpack behind him. He pushed it off the top stair and it hit the landing with a thud. He took off up the next flight of stairs. Soon his clothes and pillows were flying down. It was a good old-fashioned tantrum, and I decided to ignore it.
As he sullenly moved all his things downstairs, I began packing food for the campout. Mother watched Carson in amusement.
“Don’t you dare laugh,” I murmured to her when Carson tripped over a stray tennis shoe.
“Why don’t you just let him go?” she asked under her breath as he shot us a murderous glare and threw the shoe downstairs.
“I’d think you of all people would understand that children don’t belong out in a storm.”
She looked stricken, and I was horrified at myself. Everything was coming apart now. We were leaving Big Dune less of a family than we’d come to it. I reached my hand ou
t and touched her arm, but she pulled away from me and followed Carson down the stairs.
By the time Tate arrived, nobody in the house was speaking to me.
“You in exile up here?” he asked as he reached the top of the stairs, raising his eyebrows at me.
I shoved a bag of sandwiches and chips across the counter at him. “So what else is new? Somebody has to be the responsible one.”
He laughed, and I suddenly felt like crying. I turned away from him and dug in the refrigerator, pulling out a soda I didn’t want and taking a long drink. Tate moved behind me and I fell against him as soon as his hand touched my back.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey, come on, Connie, it’s okay.”
I shook my head and allowed him to hold me, fighting against tears. “No it’s not,” I mumbled against his shirt, breathing in the scent of the Gulf.
“Are we going or what?”
I jumped away from Tate as soon as I heard Gib’s voice, but it was too late, and in fact, that guilty move only made things worse. He stared at both of us in fury. Tate wasn’t as easily cowed by my son, and he took his time leaving the kitchen.
“You all ready?” he asked.
“I’m ready,” Gib replied tightly, refusing to glance my way.
“Okay, here, thank your mom for making us sandwiches and take them downstairs. I’ll be right there.”
Gib grabbed the bag Tate held out, muttered something that sounded vaguely like a thank-you to me, and then whirled around and went downstairs.
“You know, it seems pretty natural that he’d be feeling protective of you right now,” Tate said.
I snorted. “He’s more worried that I’ll take you away from him.”
Tate cocked his head to one side, gave me a quizzical look. “I think you underestimate the kid, Connie.”
I had no answer for him, and I turned away, clutching my soda.
“We’ll get going then,” he said lightly. “You want to walk down to the cut with us?”
I didn’t, but Mother was at the stairs by then and she answered for both of us.
Catching Genius Page 29