Catching Genius (15 page)

“So, Paul, where is Estella?” I asked.

The group of students quieted and began to excuse themselves, moving out of the living room and into the front hall. I heard a swinging door and then silence. Paul shrugged, a sharp, quick movement of his shoulders.

“I don't know,” he said. “She was on the front porch watching for you, and when I brought her a glass of wine, she was gone. I was about to go look for her when you arrived. She couldn't have gone far, she didn't even have shoes on.”

I felt loathsome tears at my eyes. Maybe I hadn't been crazy about seeing her, but to think that she'd run away from home rather than face me hurt more than I thought possible. I suddenly felt like a child again, pushed away from the one person I wanted most to be near. The fact that she didn't have shoes on struck me.

“What was she wearing?” I asked Paul, who was tying the laces of his boots, preparing to go search for Estella.

He didn't look up at me. “Long skirt, short-sleeved shirt, that's about it.”

“Long blue skirt, sort of full, gauzy?”

That got his attention. He looked up at me in surprise. “Yeah, did you see her? Where?”

“Close,” I said, placing my hand on his arm. “Paul, would you mind if I went to get her? Maybe she'd be more comfortable if I saw her alone first.”

He cleared his throat and finished lacing his boots. “No offense, Connie, but why do you think all these people are here? If you'll just tell me where you saw her—”

“But she left,” I interrupted. “So maybe she didn't feel as comfortable as she thought she would.”

I walked past him and out the door without waiting for his permission and heard him follow me. To my surprise, he stayed on the front porch while I walked down the steps and turned toward the big magnolia tree on the corner.

Had we waited a few more moments we wouldn't have had to go through the little power struggle. A few houses from the corner I saw the blue skirt and white top slowly coming toward me, their owner's arms filled with creamy magnolias glowing in the half-light. She stopped when she saw me, her features still indistinguishable, but she recognized me, and I was crying even before she dropped the flowers and ran toward me, like a child, her arms crooked at her sides. I started a half-jog too, and then her arms were around me, and mine were around her, and we were both crying, whispering each other's names in the magnolia-scented air.

She felt tiny in my arms, so much smaller than I remembered her. It was like hugging a child. I loosened my hold, just a bit, afraid I was hurting her. We slowly let go of each other and stepped back without saying a word. Her hair was short, shorter than I'd ever seen it. But it suited her, framing her thin face, making her into a pixie of a forty-three-year-old.

She reached out to run a hand over my own long hair. “Still so pretty,” she said with a smile, and I laughed out loud.

“Well, it is getting dark,” I said, “and obviously your eyesight's failing.”

As our laughter faded I felt a distance, a shyness come between us again, and Estella backed up a few paces as if she felt it too. She turned suddenly with a cry.

“I was bringing these for you,” she said, running back toward the magnolias scattered across the sidewalk. We gathered them together, avoiding each other's eyes.

Her face was flushed when she stood upright, and she smiled warily at me before she glanced down the block. Paul was on the sidewalk outside their home, turned toward us, watching intently. She raised her arm, waving a magnolia at him, and he turned and disappeared into the shadows.

“He was worried about you,” I said as we began to walk back to the house.

“Yeah,” she said. “Sorry about that. I got—a little nervous.”

“I know,” I said softly.

When we walked into the house it was as though Estella had been gone for days. The students rushed her, but she batted them away with her thin arms and laughter. I watched in wonder. I'd never seen my sister so easy in the presence of others, and I'd never seen a group of people so obviously enamored of her either.

I stood to the side, with the scratchy magnolia branches in my arms, and felt as out of place as she must have around my friends. But then she turned to me, inclining her head toward the swinging door beyond a long dining table, and said, “Come on, let's get these flowers in something.”

I followed her into the kitchen where Paul was stirring a huge pot of spaghetti sauce. A few of the students followed us in while the rest scattered around the living and dining room, as comfortable in Estella's home as if it were their own. I felt a pang of jealousy for the easy feel of it. Estella dropped her flowers in the sink and then went to Paul, who bent down and whispered something in her ear. I studiously avoided looking at them as I dropped my flowers in the sink too, and moved out of the way when one of the college students nudged me with her hands full of containers for the blooms.

I looked around for something to do, but within seconds Estella had broken away from Paul, who glanced at me over her head and smiled. It was the first real smile I'd received from him, and I felt a warm blush of approval, as though I had been looking for it all along.

“Let me show you your room,” Estella said. I followed her out the swinging door and through the dining room, where two of the high school students were setting the table. Now that I wasn't surrounded by students or worried about Estella, I finally noticed my sister's home. The dining table was made out of one long, narrow slab of golden, highly figured wood, and a single wide shelf ringed the entire room, holding books and polished wood bowls, sculptures, and picture frames.

The floor throughout the downstairs was tile. Not surprising in South Florida, but a surprise to me here in Georgia, especially considering the age and style of the house. It was lovely, though, rustic terracotta with little animal pawprints every few tiles. Estella led me up the stairs, pointing out doors to me as we walked down the hall.

“This is Paul's finishing room. You'll get used to the smell. He put in a ventilation system and plastic around the door, so it's not nearly as bad as before.”

I did catch a whiff of something pervasive—varnish? sawdust?—but not altogether unpleasant.

“And Lisa is bunking in with Chelsea for the night, so here's your room,” Estella said, turning into a room toward the end of the hall. My bag was on the bed, and Estella walked around nervously, straightening a lamp, pulling at the comforter.

“It's beautiful,” I said, trying to put her at ease, and she flashed a smile at me.

“Well, be sure to tell Lisa, it's all her stuff. We let them do whatever they want with the rooms. Would you like to freshen up before dinner? Nothing fancy, I'm afraid, just spaghetti and salad.”

“That would be nice,” I said, nervous now that we were in it, now that the rush of being greeted, inspected, acknowledged was over. I moved out of her way as she left the room and followed her to the bathroom.

“You'll have to share with the girls,” she said apologetically as she handed me a stack of towels, but I waved her off.
The girls.
I still couldn't process this Estella.

“I'll be fine,” I said, and then we fell silent. She moved first, suddenly, as though shocked back to life.

“Okay, then. Take your time, dinner's easy to put together. We'll be waiting for you downstairs.”

“Great,” I said, a smile stiff on my lips. “I'll be down as soon as I can.”

She was already walking down the hall. “No rush,” she called back to me as her head bobbed out of sight down the stairs.

Oh, God. I am clutching the banister, stuck between the upstairs and downstairs, between childhood and real life. I know I'm out of Connie's sight, and I haven't been noticed by the students or Paul yet. I wonder how long I can stand here in limbo, clutching this railing. I sink to the steps and just sit there. I would say that I was catching my breath, but my breath is caught just fine.

It's my mind that's racing.

I need to catch my brain,
I think, and a manic giggle piles up in my throat.

She is as beautiful as she always was, those light brown eyes and dark lashes so striking with that thick sheaf of blond hair. But there is something different. Maybe it's just age, or maybe it was that unguarded moment when we first saw each other. Maybe that stamped her with temporary uncertainty.

She flinched when she saw my hair, and I felt her draw away when she hugged me. I take a deep breath and let it out.

Three weeks of this.

Paul comes around the corner before my mind can begin to reconfigure this into a formula, and his foot hits the first step before he sees me. I grin at his look of surprise, the way he has to stop his long body from continuing the climb before he folds his legs beneath him and sits on the step below me.

“How you doing?” he asks.

“Oh, I'm fine,” I say, and I realize that I am. In fact, I realize that I haven't felt this rush, this crazy mix of emotions, in over a year, and I feel strong with it. I lean down and kiss Paul on his beautiful lips, surprising him. I am surprised too. The numbers have fled my brain and for a moment he is all I need.

“Let's do this thing,” I say, inclining my head down the stairs, and he grins at me, feeling my strength. He stands and pulls me forward and I join my downstairs life, accepting a glass of wine and looking forward to dinner.

With my sister.

CHAPTER NINE

Halfway down the staircase, I faltered and considered turning around and burrowing into my borrowed bed. But I heard laughter filtering from the kitchen, and then music, and knew that for this house, the night was just getting started. I took a deep breath and found myself walking through the swinging door into the kitchen.

“Hey,” Paul said, “there she is.”

They all turned to look at me. Estella sat at the kitchen table, drawing something on graph paper for one of the students, and she motioned me over, startling me again with her ease among so many vibrant young people.

“Let her through,” she said, and the students parted and Chelsea pulled a chair out for me. I murmured a thank-you as I sat, and nodded another thank-you as Paul poured me a new glass of wine.

“Lisa?” I asked, looking around, and the blond young woman with the startling blue eyes lifted a hand in a little wave. “Thank you so much for giving up your room. It's lovely.”

“No problem,” she said with a grin. “Chelsea and I will have a sleepover, just like high school. It'll be fun.”

“Can I come too?” Steve piped up, and Lisa slapped him lightly on the arm. I sat back and relaxed a little, looking over at Estella. Her head was bent close to Chris's, the two of them inspecting something on the graph paper.

Chelsea leaned over them, pointing with a pencil and saying something about a devil's curve and polar equations while Phil watched quietly, his lower lip caught in his teeth. I felt another pang, and realized with a start that it was jealousy. We'd had nights like this at our house, before Gib perfected his distance, before Luke started screwing baristas, before we seemed to want to be anywhere but in the same room together.

“Soup's on,” Paul announced, and everyone grabbed something to bring to the dining room. A breadbasket was placed in my hands, and I followed Estella, who was carrying a huge wooden bowl of salad, out to the table. Julia, one of the high school students, smiled shyly at me and patted the seat next to her. “You can sit over here, Connie.”

“Thank you,” I said, and took the chair. The usual flutter of passing bowls and plates commenced amid good-natured banter, and I realized with surprise that I was hungry. I took a good helping of everything and was about to raise my fork to my lips when Paul stood, his glass of wine raised.

“A toast, please, quiet down,” he said, and everyone found a glass of wine or soda. “A thank-you to our family for being here tonight to welcome Connie to our home. We've provided sustenance so you won't eat her, a Go board in the living room so you won't force her to dance for your entertainment, and wine, except for you poor underage folk, so that she may see us all through the fuzzy haze of liquor and won't speak too badly of us when she returns home.”

Everyone stood and leaned in to clink glasses and I said, “Thank you,” touched by such hospitality from Paul, who'd looked anything but hospitable when I'd arrived on the porch. As the serious eating got under way the conversation turned naturally toward classes and teachers. I stayed silent, listening to the foreign math terms and the gossip about professors, and much of the humor flew completely over my head.

I saw the looks that passed between Paul and Estella and found myself reassessing Paul. I'd always thought of him in a rather vague
Estella's friend
way, but it was obvious that they were still deeply in love after more than ten years together. In fact, everyone seemed solicitous of Estella. She was less, I realized, like a popular friend and more like a protected mother figure. For the first time, I wondered if she was sorry that she hadn't had children.

The wood pieces around the room caught my eye. I'd never seen any of Paul's work up close before, though Mother had shown me pictures of his bowls and sculptures. The pictures hadn't done them justice. The bowls were exquisite, shaped out of the burls of trees, and highly polished so that the grain was revealed in stark contrast.

The sculptures were all free-form, and many had blackened centers, with pieces of the wood flowing up like flames around them, as though he'd burned right down to their hearts and then carved them from there. My gaze froze on a picture frame. Most were empty, but this one was filled. I recognized the photo, and I glanced at Estella, looking for something I couldn't define.