The Yellow Braid

by Karen Coccioli

  “One of my concessions. No family pictures unless pre-approved.” Nina coiled her hair in a tail and threw it over her shoulder in a gesture of dismissal. “Guess we’ve had enough for a while anyway.”

  Nina set about lighting the fire and putting the lobster pot to boil while Caro dug in the food hamper for the condiments and tableware. “I might have an offer from someone to buy the “Growing Up” series. The gallery owner I contracted with got in touch this afternoon with the news.”

  “Full asking price?” Caro asked.

  “Incredible, but yes. Six thousand for the individual portraits and thirty-six for each series. John says it’s a steal. Can you imagine? My lighthouse series in total brought in one-tenth of that.”

  “Does Livia know they’re up for sale?” Caro asked?

  “She said good riddance or some such thing,” Nina said as she fanned the fire.

  Livia squealed in delight and the women looked over to where Tommy was waving a crab at her. Livia started to retreat and kicked at the surf, until she fell and came up laughing.

  “Think she means what she says?” Caro asked.

  “I guess so. Why?”

  Caro moved around to stand next to Nina. “I want to put in an offer for all three series.”

  Nina screwed up her shoulders. “What did you say? Never mind, I heard you. But why?”

  Caro wished she could tell Nina the whole truth…confess to her how she could dally over each fragment of feature that made up Livia’s face, or the dip and line of muscles and bone that composed her body. How when Caro lay in bed she dreamed of having Livia wrapped in her arms.

  Caro said, “She’s become very special to me, and I want to do something special in return.”

  “I can appreciate your motives, Caro. A lot of money is involved though. I mean, to be blunt, can you afford it?”

  “I’m rich enough.”

  Nina’s eyes widened. “Wow! I never figured. Then I guess we have a deal.”

  “We have a deal!” Caro cried. “Thank you, Nina.”

  “This means the world to me, you know that,” Nina said, and after a moment of silent exchange of gratitude with their eyes, they embraced.

  Nina asked, “What are your plans for them?”

  “I want to talk to Carmen about eventually putting them in a trust for Livia. In the short term, I don’t know yet. We’ll figure something out together. As for telling Livia, I realize how sensitive she is about the photos. I’d still like her to know.”

  Nina nodded. “I’ll talk to Tommy tonight. Unless he has an objection, come for supper tomorrow and we’ll make it a low-key affair.”

  ***

  That evening at Caro’s house, Livia popped Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets into the DVD player. “It’s the rage of the literary world,” Livia had told her when Caro balked. “You’re the only person alive not to have watched at least one Harry Potter movie.”

  Having seen both its predecessors twice, Livia explained the necessary plot details to Caro, who was surprised by how much she enjoyed the ingenuity of the story.

  “No wonder Rowling’s a billionaire,” Caro said afterward.

  Caro was on the sofa. Livia was lying on her back on the floor, snug in an oversized sweatshirt against the cool breezes coming in through the opened windows.

  Livia spread her arms. “It’s hard to even imagine that much money.”

  “I agree. She’s the only woman in literary history to reach those numbers.”

  “Do poets get rich?” Livia asked.

  “Not usually.” Caro’s serenity in the pale light of the sconces made her look almost pretty, the way the shadows danced across her features. She smiled at Livia’s fiscal naiveté at the same time that she recalled her own literary ambitions when she was a teen.

  They couldn’t see the ocean from where they were but they heard the roiling waves tumble into shore and retreat. There was a sense of assurance in the sound of the ocean. Its movement was reliable, always present, unchanging.

  From her lowered position Livia said, “Did you ever write a poem that might hurt someone you cared about?”

  Unprepared for the question, Caro nonetheless had an immediate answer, although it took her a few moments to gather the courage to be truthful. The incident occurred when she was first famous and still believed she had moral justice on her side, though that wasn’t the case anymore.

  Caro said, “Once I wrote a poem about the shortcomings of growing up in the house of Italian immigrant parents. It didn’t dawn on me how hurtful the words were until my father made me read it aloud to the family.”

  “What happened?” Livia crept on to the couch next to Caro.

  “My mother and grandmother sobbed. My sole aunt, a dozen years younger than my mother and born in New York, scolded me in Italian for an hour and then didn’t let me forget the incident for three days. ‘As many days as Christ was in the tomb,’ she’d said. My Aunt Francesca was very religious.”

  “Were you sorry then that you wrote it?”

  “Yes and no. I felt bad I hurt their feelings. At the same time, it’s just what came out of me naturally.”

  “Were you born in Italy too?”

  “New Jersey,” Caro said.

  “Hmmm, just like me.” Livia drew her knees up under the hem of the sweatshirt and rested her head on Caro’s shoulder.

  Caro, in turn, smoothed Livia’s bangs with her fingers in a repetitive motion. Livia’s action reminded Caro of her daughter snuggling against her hip as a toddler. When Abby had reached Livia’s age, she no longer bowed to such juvenile intimacies. Caro had missed her daughter’s nearness after that.

  Caro could almost taste the sea salt that glinted on Livia’s skin. She inhaled the lingering scent of lavender soap she had used from Caro’s bathroom. The smell mingled with the traces of it on her own body—a metaphorical blending of the flesh.

  Only that morning, worn down by Livia’s nagging and the high temperatures, Caro had ventured into the ocean. She didn’t like the open water, fearful of the marine life that she imagined rising from the depths, circling her. She understood that shark attacks were rare. However, jellyfish, crabs, sea anemones, and lionfish were all dangerous each in their own way. Even the slime and tangle of seaweed, while not harmful, made her slap the water’s surface in distaste.

  Swimming alongside Livia was sweet recompense for her apprehension, and Caro relished in the sight of the pull and press of the girl’s muscles, the full extension of her body. Her arms arced toward the sun, then down and through the water again, propelling her forward. Buoyed by salt water and exhilaration, her motion was effortless.

  When Caro rotated and lifted her head out of the water for air, she caught snatches of Livia: the crinkle across the bridge of her nose, a sign of exertion; the fresh triangle of freckles on her cheeks; the faint trace of a scar along her jawbone, which Caro had never seen before, but now felt drawn to touch.

  In shallower waters, Caro boosted Livia onto her shoulders only to let her somersault backwards with a splash. She dove underwater and came up on Livia from below, tackling her by her legs and her waist. They kicked and thrashed about, inadvertently making brief contact with body parts that were otherwise off limits, but the sensation of which Caro stored in her subconscious.

  Now, the sensual recollections of her afternoon in the surf, combined with Livia’s intimate repose—nestled with her head resting in the hollow of Caro’s bosom—immersed Caro’s face in a deep red flush. Like Alice in Wonderland, she was cascading uncontrollably down the rabbit hole.

  She’d schemed to be Livia’s mentor––her Socrates––guiding her in her path of true knowledge and along the journey happening upon total, perfect, and platonic love. At this moment, though, she felt no nearer to ideal love than any other kind of lust. Yet she was powerless to pull away.

  Suddenly Caro felt exhausted, as if she’d engaged in some kind of strenuous activity. She glanced down at Livia, who had dozed off. A
chill shot through Caro and huddling closer to the young, sweat-shirted body, she closed her eyes, her hands trembling above her, millimeters short of physical contact.

  After a long while fighting against a blinding craving to kiss the soft curve of Livia’s jaw line, she awakened her and took her to bed. When she went to her own room, Caro pushed open the French doors to the crash of ocean and opened her mouth, but the scream stayed inside her. She stood in the night dampness until her insides lurched with discomfort, as if she believed the chill could numb her heart-sick feelings. Nothing could save her, and she retreated to her bed, a piece of her emotional stability forever shipwrecked.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Some there are who say that the fairest thing seen on the black earth is an array of horsemen; some, men marching; some would say ships… ~Sappho

  “…but I say / she whom one loves best / is the loveliest…”

  Caro let the last word sit on her tongue, enjoying the feel of it in her mouth. “Loveliest.” The word made her think of skinned peaches cut into sweet morsels, or honeydew melon spooned fresh from the hollow of the fruit. They were tastes that made her mouth water and ache for more.

  Caro had first come to appreciate the appeal to the senses Sappho’s words held when she taught the ancient poet’s writings in a workshop. She’d explained to her students how the individual words were common enough, but that how Sappho strung them together was what gave them their texture and body, and sensuality.

  Nina’s photographs of Livia had the same kind of rapture. She had managed to capture glimmerings of Livia’s various moods: bookish seriousness, petulance, curiosity, and her athleticism, alongside her unmistakable sensuousness.

  Caro recalled watching Tommy’s nephew, Alex, teach Livia how to body surf. He’d come to Westhampton to visit friends but when he saw Livia get consistently dumped from her boogie board he offered his help.

  A strong swimmer and surfer, Alex demonstrated the knack of determining which was the best wave to ride in on. He showed Livia how to position the board in the middle of her midriff and how to use her arms like oars and her hands like rudders.

  He showed her the technique of staying on the board and riding over the crest of the wave as it rolled toward shore and then how to prevent getting hit by the board when she was thrown off.

  Livia caught on quickly. After Alex went back to his friends she continued to practice, whooping and waving toward shore when she rode a wave in successfully; laughing even more when she toppled off and emerged from the surf spitting out ocean water and unwrapping seaweed from her ankles.

  When Livia paddled away from shore her golden hair split her back like a brilliant shaft of light cutting a room of darkness in half. Her blonde braid came to be a symbol for the beauty and innocence that was hers; Caro named the poem she’d been writing for Livia, “The Yellow Braid.” She had a wide back and well-defined shoulders for one so small-boned. It was that ocean-bound image of Livia riding the surf that inspired the beginnings of the third stanza.A golden twist of nouns and verbsin mute and mock displaywith flying curls of metaphors in costumed disarray.A buried mix of hidden rhymesso seldom sought to heara drawstring bag of adjectivesso difficult to bear.A posy from a sea of versea weave of harvest dustthe sonnet dark, its lyrics terse…

  It was curious to Caro how this poem trickled out over the summer. Usually, her verse came in a flood of words and images. She would spend days, even weeks reworking a poem, but she rarely strayed far from the initial outpouring. This poem had forced a different writing pattern on her. She concluded why after writing what she knew to be the last stanza.

  Her poetry was always about trying to reveal the truth of a matter. With Livia, the deep shame that shadowed every thought of love, made it impossible for Caro to write plainly about her. And so she wrote in rhyme and metaphor, in stuttering starts and stops, with no one the wiser to her lust, but herself.

  ***

  “There’s no harm in experimenting.” Caro snapped the color chart closed and handed it back to Tommy. She didn’t care what he thought. The culture of beauty in contemporary society was of youth. It wasn’t anything she’d created. Nor was there anything she could do about it.

  Tommy returned the bowl of dye to his assistant, “Mix up a new batch.” To Caro he said, “You are forewarned, right?”

  “Yes,” she said impatiently.

  Half an hour later, with the stain of chestnut seeping along her forehead and neckline, Caro’s cell phone rang. “Hello,” she said, holding it inches away from her ear so as not to smudge it with dye.

  “Mom? Are you there?”

  “Abby, I can’t talk now. I’ll call you back.”

  “No, I’m afraid you won’t. I thought we were okay with each other, but since you got back from the city you haven’t returned any of my calls.”

  “We are okay, really. It’s me and has nothing to do with you.” Caro shut her eyes and sighed in frustration at having to be so guarded with her words. “It’s been harder than I would’ve expected to come to terms with everything that’s happened since Marcie’s death.”

  “Maybe I should fly over to see you—” Abby said.

  “No, of course, you shouldn’t. I’m fine,” Caro said. She tried for assurance in her voice. “Abby, I’m in the beauty parlor packed in hair color.”

  “Promise you’ll get back to me,” Abby said.

  “Later,” she said. “I promise.”

  In reality, Caro didn’t know what she was going to do. She felt like she didn’t know anything anymore. Coming to the beauty parlor was a mistake; she didn’t have the patience to sit quietly for any length of time so cluttered was her mind with random fears: afraid of letting something slip that might tip Abby off to her feelings about Livia, afraid that she’ll lose her composure with Livia and do something—a touch or kiss that might frighten the girl away. Caro knew she’d be devastated losing Livia because of a character weakness within herself.

  These thoughts made Caro pull at the neck of her robe and fidget in her seat. Her skin began to itch from the heat lamp. She waved over Tommy’s assistant to find out how much more she had to endure.

  Tommy himself answered when he held up his opened hand and mouthed, “Five more minutes.”

  Caro blew out her cheeks and huffed. All around her women sat docilely reading Vogue or gossiping with their neighbor. In contrast, Caro’s discomfiture caused a sudden feeling of doom. Or perhaps, not suddenly. Maybe her repeated visits to Tommy’s salon and attempts at beautification and youth had been fated from the beginning.

  She started to cry, first, from the inside. When the assistant settled her in the shampoo chair with her head tilted back over the rim of the sink, the tears collected on her eyelashes and rolled off her face, mixing with the lather that smelled of apricots and tangerines.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice. ~Marquis de Sade

  Caro returned home, hooded and wearing sunglasses. After locking herself in and letting down the blinds, she went into her bedroom, closing the door behind her, even though no one was in the house.

  The bathroom mirror confirmed her stunned reaction in the beauty salon. She’d hoped that after Tommy had washed the excess dye out and had styled her hair, the heavy coloring would have appeared less garish. It hadn’t, and she was the same caricature here at home that she’d seen in his mirrors.

  Beside herself with the anxiety of what she’d done despite Tommy’s warning, she sent a three-word text to her daughter: I need you.

  Almost immediately, Abby was on the phone. “Mom, I knew something’s going on.”

  Caro sat hunched on the floor against the door. “I’m not used to this, Abby. I used to confide in Marcie. If she were here, I wouldn’t be where I am in my head, ready to explode.”

  “Try telling me. I’m not Marcie, but at least I’m here,” Abby said.

  Caro took a breath. “I got my hair dyed and I look ugly
and I don’t know what to do about it. I’m scared because it’s like…like the ugliness of my hair and my face is who I’ve become on the inside. Can someone have a pure heart and black soul?”

  “Mom, you’re talking crazy.”

  “I’m trying to explain,” Caro said. She held her hand to her mouth, and then to the side of her face. “I made a pattern for myself this summer, going to the same places to eat, sitting on the same beach…repeating the same things because I felt too bereaved of love without Marcie to go or do differently. My way seemed safe, and all with very little effort. And then I met Livia, and she completed my narrow world. She was satisfied to stay in it with me.”

  There was a level of distress in her mother’s voice Abby didn’t recognize. “But that’s good then.”

  “No, because I still wasn’t content. I tried to be young again, look younger…to be more appealing,” Caro said. “I couldn’t afford to be old.”

  “For who?” Abby asked.

  “For Livia—” A pocket of sudden nerves seemed to burst inside of Caro for mentioning Livia’s name.

  “Mom, she’s not going to care what you look like. From the little you’ve said about her, she sees you as a mother figure. I’m confused why you’d be this upset. She’s only a young girl, for God’s sake. I would think she’d be more interested in boys than with someone who’s like her mother. Besides which, you’re not ugly, and I’m sure your hair is not as bad as you think.”

  Caro wiped at her tears and tried not to cry aloud, but couldn’t hold back a small eruption of sobs.

  “Mom…” was all Abby said, a reminder that she was there for her mother.

  When Caro sniffled away the last of her tears, she said, “Sorry for being so melodramatic about this. I got overwhelmed.”