The Yellow Braid

by Karen Coccioli

  “Stuff,” Livia said curtly.

  “Nothing you can share?”

  “Not today.”

  “Another time, maybe,” Caro said.

  Livia handed Caro the half-empty bottle. “I’ve gotta go.”

  “You’ll come back,” Caro urged, inching forward with each word so that by the time Livia was standing outside the cabana, Caro’s chin jutted out of the opening.

  Livia glanced over her shoulder, shrugged, and then took off through the human netting of beach-goers who had settled to within a couple of yards of her tent.

  Caro dropped back onto the squat canvas seat. “Well, I’ll be,” she muttered, and wondered what caused Livia’s sudden turn-a-round in her mood. Did she bore the girl or maybe she expected too much from her? Thinking back to herself at that age, Caro remembered she’d kept her writing private.

  She smiled to herself, and wondered what else she might have had in common with Livia at twelve years old. Caro recalled one time slinking out of the local record store with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in a brown bag. She made it home without meeting any of her friends, but upon opening the back door, her younger sister, Rose, ambushed her. Pulling the record from its paper sleeve she flapped it in the air and scuttled into the kitchen where Tereza was helping their mother prepare supper.

  “Looky, looky,” Rose sniggered and brandished the record under Caro’s nose. “You’re such a weirdo. Everyone at school thinks so.”

  Caro lunged for the record and missed.

  Rose pranced around the kitchen.

  “You’re such a dork,” Tereza said to Rose. “When are you going to act like a normal person?” She shook her head in condemnation, then resumed setting the table.

  Caro’s mother split her loyalty depending on the kind of day she had at work: on occasion she defended Caro; other times, she took her frustrations out on her middle child, about whom she once remarked that her odd features and pleading mouth reminded her of the guppies in the fish bowl next to her daughter’s bed.

  That evening, her mother shook her ladle at Rose in disapproval. “Give the record back right now,” she ordered.

  “Here,” Rose said, and flung the disc in Caro’s direction.

  The record slid passed Caro on the linoleum floor. Stumbling to retrieve it, Caro mis-stepped and the record cracked under the weight of her heel. “Look what you made me do,” she screeched. “That was all the money I had.”

  “Sor-ry,” Rose said, jutting her chin out at Caro.

  “No you’re not. You’re happy it broke,” Caro yelled.

  “Shut up, Caro,” her mother warned. “Rose said she was sorry. I’m sick of the two of you always bickering. Just shut up. You’re giving me a headache.”

  “No! I saved for three months, and now I have nothing. Make her pay for it!”

  Her mother stomped across the room to Caro. “I’m not warning you again.”

  Caro grabbed the wooden spoon from her mother and dropping onto the floor, she began smashing the cracked record. “I hate you,” she screamed. “I hate all of you.”

  ***

  Caro had been in the house for about an hour, potting a basil plant when Livia climbed the steps to the deck and hesitantly held out a sheet of paper. “Here.”

  Caro saw in the nervous lines around Livia’s mouth how difficult it was for her to have come. She accepted the proffered poem. “Sit over there if you want.”

  Livia sat on her hands on the edge of the divan.

  The script was clean for a pre-teen, and bold enough that Caro didn’t need her glasses. “Clock Shop,” she read and began to recite:

  Time is harsh outside the walls of the clock shop

  where the occasional passerby takes out her watch to see

  where she has to be, reminding me of my mother

  looking at her watch in some foreign city far away from me.

  Centuries of history reign inside the clock shop where chimes

  and gongs keep track of time like a fisherman trawling for his catch,

  too busy to take notice of the minutes passing or the correct time

  and no one takes out their watch because clocks are all around you.

  In a world where time can be an enemy and where the hour

  is often spent waiting for a woman to check her watch

  I embrace time when I am in the clock shop.

  Livia didn’t wait for Caro’s response. She asked, “Do you believe in wishes coming true?”

  “I do. I know they don’t come true all the time, but I believe in the power of thoughts to turn wishes into realities.”

  “Even if they seem impossible?”

  “That just means having stronger faith.” Caro noticed that Livia was staring at the tower of her aunt’s house. “I noticed you spend a lot of time up there.”

  “I feel like I can see to the other side of the ocean. Uncle Tommy said he’s seen sharks and dolphins with his telescope.”

  “Have you seen anything yet?”

  “Not much, but he said I will as long as I’m patient.” Livia puffed up her mouth and blew out a stream of air; she seemed to deflate.

  “It’s hard to be patient though, isn’t it?” Caro remarked.

  Livia gave a slow nod.

  “Livia, there you are. I kind of thought so.” Nina rounded the corner of the catwalk and joined them. She said to Caro, “I told you she was shy and now it turns out that she likes coming over. I didn’t fully realize what I was doing when I told her you were a poet.”

  “I’m happy you did. I enjoy her company.” Caro folded Livia’s poem in quarters and tucked it under her coaster, hidden from Nina’s view.

  Nina cupped Livia’s chin. “I need for her to realize that photography is as important to me as poetry is to her.”

  “I do,” Livia said. “I just don’t like to pose for your art.”

  “Anyway,” Nina clucked in dismissal. “And how are you faring,” she asked Caro.

  “Better than I thought I would. It’s been so many years since I vacationed for any length of time. So having you and Tommy and Livia next door is turning out to be really nice.”

  “Then I know you’ll feel free to come knocking any time. In fact, come for breakfast tomorrow about ten. Sundays at our house are long and leisurely and I make a bakery or crepe surprise. Right, kiddo?”

  Livia gave a quick toss of her head.

  “Sounds delicious,” Caro said.

  Standing behind Livia, Nina pulled the length of her niece’s braid through her hand. “In the meantime, Tommy is waiting for his girls, so we need to leave.”

  Livia sucked in her bottom lip as she peered at Caro and then at her poem.

  Caro patted the coaster, indicating its safekeeping.

  Later, with thoughts of Livia still alive, Caro booted up her computer. Her gaze fixed on a spider building a web in the corner of the ceiling. She studied the miniscule black body releasing centimeters of thread for its design until her focus dissipated and she stepped into the obscure world of creation.

  Fantasy liberated Caro from the constraints and rigors of reality. It was where she was her most uncensored self, a place she disappeared to almost daily, if even for seconds. It was where the stuff of her poetry came from.

  She began to type—a halting cadence of her fingers on the keyboard.

  A golden twist of nouns and verbs

  in mute and mock displaywith flying curls of metaphors in costumed disarray.A buried mix of hidden rhymesso seldom sought to hear…

  Caro waited for further inspiration in stillness, her fingers resting in place on the keys. She typed and deleted several times, all false starts. An hour later, after numerous permutations she began to grumble. “Hear what?” She sucked in her breath and stared at the emerging poem for several minutes as a dread rose from her belly.

  No matter how many poems she’d written, beginning a new work produced such fear that the taste in her mouth made her throat close. And it was only with gre
at effort she reassured herself that after the piece settled for a day or so she’d add and revise until the flow and melody of the words revealed the truths she intended.

  Caro believed that writing in any genre was an exercise in excavating truths, so she tried always to go inward as far as she could. For example, she used to write poems about Abby during her growing-up years. But once Abby was in high school, trying to find the truth about their relationship became increasingly difficult as her daughter began to distance herself from Caro emotionally, talking more to Zach than to her.

  Caro thought it was a developmental stage Abby was going through and so she gave her daughter space. In retrospect, Caro concluded that Abby took her mother’s silence as not caring because by the time Abby entered college she confided almost exclusively in Zach. The few times Caro tried to talk to Abby, her daughter’s standard reply was, “Thanks anyway, Mom. Dad has it covered,” or for topics about the men in her life, it was “My friends understand better.”

  Caro could not—dare not—define what her relationship was with Livia. Did she now even utter the word, love, aloud? Even as she repeated it to herself, the notion of loving Livia both frightened and excited her.

  Platonic love was not, as Caro previously understood, confined to its contemplative aspects of beauty and knowledge. Rather, homosexual relations were acknowledged as long as the coming together helped to produce greater virtue in each partner. A way, Caro thought sardonically—just as today—of making same-sex love morally digestible.

  CHAPTER SIX

  When I look on you a moment, then I can speak no more, but my tongue falls silent, and at once a delicate flame courses beneath my skin, and with my eyes I see nothing, and my ears hum, and a wet sweat bathes me, and a trembling seizes me all over. ~Sappho

  Caro exited Westhampton Bakery holding a large cappuccino. She had her sights on a vacant bench and hurried toward it, keeping watch for anyone ready to challenge her. The town was always full of activity at mid-afternoon, when the bathers and sated sun-worshippers cruised the shops along Main Street.

  Caro typically avoided the crowds but after happening upon a letter from Marcie that she’d found inside the cover of her planner, she found the bungalow too quiet, and drove to town.

  She was just sitting down outside the bakery when—

  “Caro!”

  Caro’s head snapped in the direction of the voice at the same moment she heard the automatic clicking of a camera shutter. Instinctively covering her face, she jerked her hand upward and coffee spilled, splattering on to her pants. “What are you doing?”

  Nina lowered the camera. “Thought you might like to have a souvenir.”

  Caro flicked the dripping liquid from her fingers. “Don’t do that again.”

  Nina handed her a rumpled wad of tissues. “Sorry.”

  Caro blotted the wet spots. “I don’t like having my picture taken.”

  A few awkward moments passed. “Can I buy you another?” Nina offered.

  Caro unclenched her jaw. “This one’s fine.”

  It was only when they sat that Caro saw Livia on the other side of the street in front of the confectionary. A boy came out carrying two ice cream cones and handed one to her.

  “Tommy’s nephew, Alex,” Nina explained. “He’s like her big brother.”

  Caro crossed her legs in an attempt at a casual posture even though her stomach twittered with delight at Livia’s presence. “Is he from around here?”

  “About thirty minutes west, near Bayport.”

  Livia reared her head back in laughter as Alex jerked on her braid. She punched him playfully on the arm when he pulled her hair a second time.

  “It worries me how immature she is,” Nina confided. “She’s going into high school in September and the kids are going to tear her apart. Almost fourteen and she acts like someone half her age.”

  Caro kept quiet. To her, Livia’s naiveté elevated her beauty and made her worthy of deeper introspection, and Caro would resent any alterations that would modify her behavior or appearance.

  “Not too long ago I tried saying something, but the idea of makeup, hard rock, and boys has absolutely no attraction for her.” Nina’s words came out like a lament. And then out of frustration she uttered, “Sometimes I feel like yelling at her to wake up!”

  “On the contrary, I sympathize with her because I was the same way,” Caro said. “I never felt that I fit in as a teenager.”

  “When did you start becoming interested in boys?”

  “I wouldn’t dare tell you that, you’d laugh. But I was…older.”

  Nina grimaced and shook her head.

  Caro pondered how Livia shouldn’t have to be made to grow up before she was ready. Nina was an artist. Why couldn’t she recognize the rarity of Livia’s innocence and her potential to develop intellectually and creatively?

  Livia propped her feet against the base of a parking meter, and with one hand secured on the coin deposit and her body tilted outward, swung around the pole. Her madras blouse and pony tail held high in a bright red scrunchie reflected her youthful character.

  “Was Abby a late bloomer?” Nina asked.

  Caro shook her head emphatically. “She matured very early and liked all the supposedly normal teen things…” Caro noticed Nina scowl as she turned her camera over in her hands.

  Nina gave a small sigh and gazed across the street at Livia. “Do you think Abby would have liked posing for me?”

  “Audiences of any kind or number exhilarate her. And she inherited her father’s magnetic presence, the kind that prompted people to look around when he walked into a room even though he was quite ordinary looking.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been nice then if Abby was my niece and Livia your daughter?”

  Caro’s immediate reaction was to say, Very nice indeed. She didn’t know Livia well enough to know for sure, but so far Livia was easy to be with, expected little in the way of entertainment, and wanted nothing more than an attentive ear to her verse, unlike Caro’s daughter, who navigated life blinkered and unbending. Nevertheless, wasn’t it wrong for a mother to want to trade off her daughter for another more genial model? To Nina she said, “I think Abby would like you a lot.”

  “Do you get over to London often to see her?” Nina asked.

  “Time has a way of flying by,” Caro said. She was embarrassed to admit that in the year and a half Abby had lived in London, she had yet to visit. She kept telling herself she loved her daughter—it was just such hard work being with her. Abby was her daddy’s girl, and it seemed that the only common thing they had in common was their DNA.

  “Isn’t that the truth,” Nina said. “With myself I can hardly believe where the years went. I’m going to be forty-three next birthday and my accomplishments are a husband and a house in the Hamptons.”

  “You sound disappointed,” Caro said.

  Nina was about to reply when Tommy jogged across the street toward them with Livia and Alex tagging behind.

  “How about an early supper and a movie tonight? Harry Potter for us,” Tommy said, indicating Livia and Alex along with himself. “Julie and Julia for you two?”

  “Caro?” Nina asked.

  “Sounds great,” Caro said and tugged lightly at Livia’s braid.

  ***

  Caro mounted her bike on her car and went next door.

  Livia was sitting on the porch steps, her face smothered in her palms. The twin tufts of baby-fine hair that were her eyebrows rose above her fingertips at Caro’s unexpected appearance.

  “Hello.” Caro noticed a faint crease across the bridge of Livia’s nose, the beginning of a glower behind her hands.

  When Livia didn’t respond, Caro sat down next to her. “You’ve got quite a frown for such a beautiful, sunny day.”

  “So…”

  “So what’s wrong?” Caro asked.

  “I’m lonely. And I’m bored, that’s what’s wrong.”

  “We can do things together,” Caro bl
urted. “That’s why I came over today.”

  “It’s different. Aunt Nina understands. She felt really bad,” Livia said.

  “About what?”

  “About that my cousin had to cancel her visit because she got mono and has to stay in for six weeks. That’s half the summer!”

  “How long was she planning to stay?” Caro asked.

  “Two weeks. We get together every summer. Either I go to her house in Maryland or she comes to me. This year she was coming here to be at the beach.”

  Two weeks without Livia alone! Caro exhaled in relief. “I think what I planned for us today is especially, exactly what you need now.”

  Caro saw a subtle rise in Livia’s expression. “Your aunt told me you like to bird-watch so I thought we’d go over to Shelter Island. Interested?”

  “I guess,” Livia said, and took off to look for her aunt.Caro and Livia boarded the ferry at Sag Harbor for the ten-minute ride across Noyack Bay, one of three deep harbors along the twenty-five-mile coastline. An eight-thousand acre windswept island town tucked between the twin forks of eastern Long Island—the rural northern fork with its horse farms and apple orchards and its posh southern counterpart, the Hamptons—Shelter Island was known for its mist-laden bluffs, vast tracts of salt marsh, and pebbled beaches.

  As they drove off the ferry, Caro headed toward the Visitors Center at the Mashomack Preserve, which was to be their starting point. “I went online and downloaded the bird-watching trails. But I thought you might want to first bike along the coast and check out the boats in the marinas. Your Aunt Nina said—”

  Livia interrupted. “You talk a lot to Aunt Nina.”

  “Guess I do. Is that a bad thing?”

  Livia shrugged and focused on unfastening her bike from the trunk rack.

  Before long, Caro’s car was left in the distance as they pedaled toward Coecles Inlet on North Ferry Road. She’d estimated the nine-mile ride to take about an hour, given the hilly terrain, and praised herself for having stayed in shape over the years. In the city she bicycled often. It was so much easier than hailing a taxi or fighting the elbowing throngs in the subways.