The Yellow Braid

by Karen Coccioli

  “A lot’s happened this summer that’s been really upsetting. You finding out about Marcie and Dad brought it all up for me again, but at least, I knew about it already. I didn’t have to deal with it for the first time.”

  “Abby, one more thing. I’m wanting to make amends as much as I can given that you’re going to be thirty soon.”

  “Never too late, Mom,” Abby said.

  Caro heard the lift in Abby’s voice and she hoped that for a moment, at least, she was smiling. “Are you jealous of Livia?”

  “I tried to convince myself I wasn’t. I am though. Seems like she’s what you would’ve dreamed of in a perfect daughter,” Abby said.

  Caro wasn’t used to being honest with Abby and she struggled against reverting to her habit of prevarication. “In the beginning, yes, I sought her out as a daughter. The emotional distance between you and me seemed so great, and I saw an opportunity to make amends for my failings as your mother. She’s a poet and could easily relate, and she needed a sympathetic supporter in the absence of her own mother.”

  “And now?”

  “Believe me when I say with all of my heart, there is no need to be jealous. I have one daughter who is not perfect, but I’m not seeking perfection. Your dad’s affair was worth every second, if its discovery has opened up a new beginning between us. I never stopped loving you, Abby, not for an instant.”

  “I think I always knew that.”

  “I’m glad for that,” Caro said. “So now tell me what’s going on with Phillip.”

  “I called and asked him out on a date. We’re meeting for dinner tomorrow night.”

  “Good girl,” Caro said. “You let me know what happens. In the meantime, a big hug for you.”

  “Night, Mom. I love you too.”

  After Caro hung up from Abby, she felt an internal shudder, a loosening of nerves that had twisted around her stomach. At the same time, she had one very clear realization that made her clutch at her shirt with her fist. As much as her conversation with Abby reminded Caro of how much her daughter loved her, Caro was still alone in the matter of her heart regarding Livia.

  Even now Caro imagined Livia straddling the boogie board with her arms and thighs hard from surfing; her hair bleached by the sun; her skin weathered to a Caribbean brown. When Livia dove deep and rose up again, the Greek sea goddess Tethys could have looked no more beautiful or athletic.

  Caro had spent the summer seeking the solace of perfect love and learned along the way that Platonic love was for the gods. She was human.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing. ~Anais Nin

  When the phone rang the next morning, Caro saw that it was Gwen, the owner of the house. “Hello.”

  “I was looking over the lease,” Gwen said, “and forgotten I’d extended with you until the end of September. The problem is my situation has changed. I’m having to cut my holiday short and plan to be home in two weeks.”

  “But that’s Labor Day,” Caro said.

  “I realize that. It just happens that I met a woman who turned out to be the CEO of a marketing firm in Manhattan. It was a week-long tour and by the time we returned to Rome she offered me a job.”

  Caro lowered the handset and stared at it in disbelief. When she raised it to her ear again, she did so gingerly, hoping Gwen would be recanting her message. She heard the voice, but not the words she wanted to hear.

  Gwen was saying, “ … sorry, and of course, I’ll discount this month for your trouble.”

  Caro replied in high, stuttering tones. “I can’t go back early. I—I’ve made plans, commitments here on the Island. It’s not possible.”

  “I realize we have a lease. The only way I know how to honor it is if you stay on with me at the house. I just didn’t know if that was something you really wanted to do.”

  “No. Not at all,” Caro said firmly.

  There was a brief silence. “I don’t know what else to say except that I was hoping you would be agreeable.”

  Caro managed to collect herself and attempted an offensive line of argument. “It may seem like it to you because you’re not hearing what you want, but I’m not the one who’s being difficult. It’s not realistic to think I’d be okay with cutting my holiday short by three weeks based on a decision you made on a whim.”

  “You’re being ridiculously unreasonable, and there’s no excuse for it. It’s my house,” Gwen retorted.

  “And we have a contract. I’ll spend whatever money for a lawyer I have to, to see who stays and who goes in your house. Bitch!” Caro spat.

  “Attacking me is not helping,” Gwen said.

  “Neither is this conversation,” Caro said and threw the handset onto the divan.

  Even before Gwen’s phone call, Caro had begun to experience brief periods of sorrow when she realized that summer was coming to an end and with it, Carmen’s return from her honeymoon to get Livia. There was no way Caro would relinquish even a second of her time with Livia before that.

  ***

  Later that evening, Caro became suddenly aware of an absolute quiet that pervaded the house in spite of the fact that Livia and Beatrice were somewhere inside. It wasn’t yet eight o’clock. Yet no music blared and the forty-eight-inch TV mirrored her reflection darkly when she passed in front of it. She strained to catch any kind of noise, and heard nothing. She’d been in her bedroom, but assumed the girls would have called out to her had they left.

  She walked to the side of the house where their bedrooms were and without thinking pushed open Livia’s door, which was partly ajar, at the same time that she called her name.

  The girls were on the bed, half-dressed; Livia was on her side facing Beatrice, her hand on Beatrice’s stomach.

  “Livia! Beatrice! What are you doing?”

  The girls scrambled off the bed.

  “Why did you come in here like that?” Livia shrieked.

  Caro’s grip on the door handle tightened. “I was looking for you…I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  “We were only messing around some,” Beatrice said as she drew her T-shirt over her head.

  “Can you leave now? Can you close the door, please,” Livia said, buttoning her blouse.

  Caro hurried out. When she got to her bathroom, she splashed water on her feverish face—the heat arising as much for her embarrassment at walking in on them as for her desire to have been lying on the bed with Livia in her arms instead of Beatrice’s.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Naturally, love’s the most distant possibility. ~Georges Bataille

  Fate intervened in the relationship between Beatrice and Livia. Beatrice’s grandmother got pneumonia, sending Beatrice and her mother to Tucson with a plan to stay through the Labor Day weekend. Sitting in Nina’s kitchen, Caro, barely concealing her glee, asked after the woman’s health.

  Nina poured tea. “Talking about stress, have you heard any more from Gwen?”

  “She’s arriving next Sunday, and staying at a friend’s house. Seems that when she checked with a lawyer friend, he told her that with me having a contract, by the time the case went to civil court, I’d be long gone from the house. Still, I can hardly believe the summer’s over.” She let her words hang like clothes strung out on a wash line.

  “Well, I have news from Carmen,” Nina said.

  Caro detected a slight hesitation in Nina’s voice and looked up from the magazine she’d been absently thumbing through as they talked.

  “Carmen wants Livia on a plane to Hong Kong on Thursday.”

  “Thursday! That’s—that’s in three days.” Caro jumped from her chair.

  “Livia’s been on a waiting list for a private American school. The headmaster contacted them for a personal interview. The semester starts next Monday.”

  A frightened child would not have appeared as lost as Caro did, with her eyes wide in dismay, her jaw trembling.

  “I know how close you’ve go
tten to her but you had to know this was coming soon,” Nina said, reaching for Caro’s hand.

  Caro backed away; she couldn’t stand Nina touching her. “How long do they plan on staying overseas?”

  “Two years. After that, her husband figures his company will be established to the point the family can return and then he’ll make intermittent trips over alone.”

  Caro turned and went out the back door, then fled down the catwalk to her own house. Once there, she collapsed onto the twin bed where Livia slept, and thrust her face into the pillow. She hadn’t done the linens since the last sleepover so that the smells of sea salt and the girl’s scented body wash made Caro inhale deep and long. Livia! It couldn’t be that in three days she would be gone. That Caro would lose her so prematurely. A low wail, in a voice she hardly recognized as her own, reverberated in her face and filled her ears.

  She longed for sleep. Every night in recent weeks the young beauty had drifted across Caro’s dreamscapes and metamorphosed her world. But now, even after the sun had risen toward zenith, sleep evaded her; she had to bear the full weight of Livia’s impending departure in full consciousness.

  At two o’clock Livia knocked at the door.

  Caro sneaked behind the panel of rattan blinds and peeked at Livia shifting her feet and twirling the tail of her braid, habits of impatience. How was she going to face Livia and not cry? But she must, or allow Livia to leave thinking she wasn’t home.

  Caro stepped outside, her emotions appeared like script across her face.

  “Aunt Nina told you.”

  Caro pulled the appropriate words up her throat one by one to keep from blurting out something she’d regret. “You must be … excited. Hong Kong will be so different for you.”

  Livia gave her a sidelong look. “Aunt Nina said you came home because you were sick.”

  Home. Caro turned her gaze to the ocean, the endless rotation of waves that she’d come almost to memorize. Such wasn’t the case with Livia. She would be gone from her home here, never to come back.

  Livia patted Caro’s shoulder. “We still have three more days.”

  ***

  That night Livia stayed over. They’d come in early from outside. A thick fog rolled in along with hot, humid weather that made their clothes stick to their skin. After Livia took a shower, she went into Caro’s bedroom to say good night. Her wet hair clung to her arms and back like slivers of gold lamé against the bronze patina of her scrubbed skin. When she flopped lengthwise on Caro’s bed wearing only bikini briefs and a tank top, Caro lost her breath.

  In the short space of a summer, she’d turned into the Magdalene of her poem: fallen woman, fallen to a higher crown. She saw her existence as a farce and yet, unable—no, unwilling—to disrupt the bliss her desire brought.

  Later, after Livia was in her own bed, asleep, Caro entered her room. Livia was on her back with the sheets kicked off and her arms flung over her head.

  All she knew and desired was Livia. Because if not with Livia, then with no one else. And so she knelt in Christ-like abjection, tears and sweat mingling.

  Livia came awake. Her face registered only mild surprise at Caro’s nearness. Even so, Caro’s hand came up to her chest, and she clutched her shirt, and began wrenching it, a physical indication of an inner conflict.

  “It’s okay,” Livia said. The soft, ambiguous words that dissolved the night space between them.

  Livia had given her permission, and Caro felt herself slipping into euphoria. Her movements were slow, almost dreamlike, she felt, as she lay alongside the sweet-scented body. She stroked the dampness from Livia’s forehead, the hairs along her cheekbone, then her chin, until her fingers settled on her lips.

  Caro’s mind no longer dictated her actions. Her heart and her desire gave her the courage to take Livia into her arms. She cradled her, and when Livia showed no resistance, she kissed her, a long and gentle kiss on the mouth that for weeks she had longed to touch.

  When Caro finally drew back, she wept openly in the knowledge that for the duration of a single kiss she had found perfection. For that one long moment, she’d felt the heat of Livia’s youth. She’d lost herself in the possibility of their being together and her life a yet-to-be written story instead of one already finished and critiqued.

  But in the moment before, and after, she knew she had to let her go.

  As if instinctively, Livia grabbed her, begging her to stay. “Please, don’t leave me,” she whispered, her cheek flush against Caro’s. “I feel safe with you. I’ll do anything you want.”

  “I believe you would,” Caro whispered back. She began kissing Livia’s head, and her face, and then caressed her body one last time before easing out of Livia’s grip. A steady withdrawal was made possible only by an image Caro maintained in her mind’s eye, like a rendering in one of Nina’s photographs: the shoe-polish hair and liver-spotted skin, harsh reminders of her age.

  “I love you, Caro.” Livia’s face plumped up with tears that drowned her eyes and turned her skin the color of pale ash. “Just tell me what I did wrong and I’ll fix it.”

  “Livia, you did nothing wrong. It’s me,” Caro said.

  “I’ll write a poem for you. You like my poems …” Livia’s words seemed to fall into a deep canyon; Caro seemed implacable. Her eyes grew large with sudden passion and she lashed out in turn: “I hate you! I hate you!”

  There was a brief, startling silence between them until Livia ran out of the room. Caro heard the glass door rattle in its frame when it hit the wall. She went to the window, and in the starlight, saw Livia dash down to the beach.

  She waited, calculating the time for Livia to reach home, and then dialed Nina’s number.

  Tommy answered. “What happened? She’s a mess, but she won’t say anything except that she hates you. What the hell is going on?”

  “Goodbye, Tommy.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The armored cars of dreams, contrived to let us do so many a dangerous thing. ~Elizabeth Bishop

  Caro shivered in the night air despite the heavy humidity that smudged the horizon like a dowdy gray banner, a density so powerful it hid the ocean. She trudged toward the shoreline, passing through the smoky vapors like a ghost through walls.

  As she approached the water’s edge, the ocean seemed to reappear, and she gazed into its boundlessness. A wave broke, steeping her feet in foam. The flood tide collected, pushing itself up the beach. In a couple of hours its level would reach high tide.

  Caro lowered herself onto the sand and made figures with her fingertips in the packed wetness. She was trying to figure how she got to where she was that night: a middle-aged woman star-crossed by a child whose beauty—and very existence—could make her weep.

  Except for the brief words she’d had with Tommy the night Livia ran out of her house, she hadn’t spoken to anyone. Nina had come knocking at her door several times and then given up. Caro only knew the details of Livia’s departure from a voicemail that Tommy left.

  Caro didn’t regret her actions—not the kiss, not any part of her life with Livia that summer. She’d gone in search of ideal love, and she’d found it. Not the Platonic kind that was measured only by degrees of beauty or knowledge, but rather one that acknowledged and allowed its carnal counterpart—the heat beneath the cool skin of intellect. She’d discovered that transcendent love sparkled and shone precisely because of the touch and the kiss that preceded it.

  Such a complex word, desire. With Livia, desire was a blunt blow to Caro’s being.

  Caro regretted not completing her poem to Livia. Whenever she sat with it, she felt trapped in her own tongue, felt the impenetrability of language when language doesn’t suffice. She’d written how many poems throughout the years? And this one … this, the most treasured of all … she’d been unable to resolve. A posy from a sea of verse, a weave of harvest dust, the sonnet dark its lyrics terse... Those were the last lines she’d composed.

  The night sea roiled against the sti
ffening wind. A gasp escaped Caro’s lips as a rush of cold foam hit hard against her, and she scampered to higher ground. A star dipped from the high reaches of the sky and with it a vision of Livia, the tip of her braid brushing Caro’s cheek. Caro closed her eyes from the sheer joy of imagining her so near. She wanted to speak, to say Livia’s name aloud one last time. Instead, the last line of the poem fell from her lips in graceful brevity. And go she says, I must.

  Caro contemplated the simple perfection of the words for only a moment before she felt her heart open to an unexpected clarity. She’d taken emotionally from Livia, but not without giving. Throughout the weeks, she’d helped Livia through the pain of mother loss and her aunt’s artistic demands. She’d shored up the girl’s sense of self as a young adult and a blossoming poet. Finally, in spite of, and because of her deep love for the girl, she’d turned her away.

  And go she says, I must. Caro recited the verse again and again until the words seemed to spin circles of seaweed, green and blue, wreathing their heads and linking them as one. For a time, Caro had been everything to Livia—a mother to a daughter. A mentor to a student. A lover to her beloved.

  After a long while Caro rose, her limbs shaking and stiff. She paused to get her balance. As she did, she gazed backward upon the sea that she was leaving, and then forward up the beach to the house. The distance and journey of love lost with Livia seemed interminable. But in the end, she had to believe, not impossible.

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  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE