Catching Genius (19 page)

Pearlescent oyster shells gleamed in their backdrop of white sand; underneath it all, the invasive, impossible-to-eradicate sticker plants scattered their vicious, dun-colored pods. Crab holes, some large enough to house a cat, freckled the dunes, hinting at unseen lives beneath the sand.

This untamed landscape was part of what had drawn our father to the island to begin with, perhaps thinking it would be a private haven from the hordes of homebuyers who had steadily moved in on his childhood property. He was only half right.

Big Dune Island was wild, but it was still beachfront, and by the time our father built our home there, seventeen other wealthy families had already staked their claim to its changeable shore. Thirty-two houses on the island, most built of coquina tabby and plopped directly on the sandy soil of the interior, were owned by natives and had been passed down by generations of fishermen.

The two groups avoided each other for as long as they could. As the island began to change with the advent of commercial fisheries, the hurricanes that reformed the shoreline, and the textile mill that polluted the bay, the natives saw what was happening long before the new families did. They saw the dead oysters, the sick fish, the ever-narrowing beach.

The wealthy families, prepped from years of community service, banded together with the natives and did what they did best: made powerful people listen. Len, Tate's father and caretaker of our property, had been unofficially elected to a leadership position representing the natives, and he found his counterpart in our father, a man with time on his hands and a desperate need to catch up to long-dead ancestors.

Big Dune Island—and uninhabited Little Dune Island to the north, where an old lighthouse was slowly making its way out to sea—were brought back in the spirit that Henry Sykes would have been proud of. Parachukla Bay, the body of water between Big Dune and the mainland, became officially protected by the government. The world-famous oysters thrived again; the dunes were rebuilt and their sea oats protected from housewives who would cut them to grace their family rooms; the sea turtle eggs were protected from poaching, curious tourists, and porch lights.

The lighthouse on Little Dune and its accompanying tender dwelling were shored up and stabilized, and the island became a popular day-trip destination. Canoes and kayaks regularly crossed the small inlet that separated the two islands, and though no homes could be built on Little Dune, braver souls occasionally set up tents and stayed overnight.

I cared nothing about Big Dune Island when we moved there. All I cared about was the fact that, once again, my sister's genius was changing my life in ways I had no control over. We could have gone anywhere after leaving the family home, but the college and Dr. Pretus, its esteemed mathematician, were in Grantsville, and since my father couldn't stand the bustle of living in a college town, to the island we went. I didn't blame the move on the lawsuits—those would have happened no matter what. I blamed it on Estella.

She ended our sisterhood, she took my father, she blazed a path impossible to follow or live up to, and then she took all I'd managed to build in our hometown and swept it away, just when I'd finally gotten a foothold in my own life, out of her shadow.

Though I'd had to start over, I eventually came to love the island. It just took me a long time to realize it. And now, as I gazed out at the dunes, I felt that open, raw feeling in the pit of my stomach again, the one that had started when Mother said she was going to sell.

“Miss it?” Tate asked, making me jump.

“I do,” I admitted. “I'm surprised, but I do.”

“Gets to everyone,” he said. “People don't even know what's missing until they come back.”

I turned away from him and cleared my throat. “That's Estella's,” I said, pointing to the duffel bag. Tate picked up the bag and headed toward Estella's room, while I went downstairs to unload the rest of our things. They were on my heels before I made it to the Escalade, and we all made two more trips before we dragged ourselves up to the second-floor living room.

Tate had turned the air-conditioning on before we'd arrived and the downstairs was cool, but the second floor hadn't lost the stifling heat of the day yet. I turned all the ceiling fans on, flopping down onto the sofa and allowing their breeze to chill me.

Estella walked over to the wall of sliding glass doors that ran across the beach side of the house and began to pull the curtains back. Tate started on the other side, and the wall soon became an expanse of glass. I squinted in the sun and rose to my feet, joining them as Tate opened a slider and walked out onto the screened porch.

If the view downstairs had made me nostalgic, this one nearly made me cry aloud with its beauty. I couldn't keep the grin from my face as I looked out over the deserted beach and the Gulf of Mexico stretching before me. The expanse of army green seen from the bridge became a hundred different colors this close: deep blues, light grays, jade, emerald, teal.

I no longer cared that I was there to work. I no longer cared that I wasn't sure Estella and I could speak civilly for more than ten minutes. And, for just a moment, I didn't care that Bob McNarey was probably at that very second finding out some horrible new truth about my marriage. All I cared about was that I was there.

Estella, with her arms crossed in front of her and keeping a distance from Tate, stared down at the water as Tate bustled around, checking the tracks of the hurricane shutters, jiggling the loose handle of the screen door.

“It's beautiful, isn't it?” I asked. “I'd forgotten. I don't know how, but I had.”

Estella didn't look at me when she surprised me with her answer. “It is,” she said. “It really is. I think maybe I'll go for a swim tomorrow.”

“Well, right now I think we'd better get to the store and get some provisions,” I said. “I'm already hungry for some shrimp.”

“I brought dinner,” Tate said. “Shrimp's in the fridge, oysters too. I picked up some beer, hope you don't mind,” he said, shooting a glance at us. Both Estella and I shook our heads. “And I picked up some supplies to get you started,” he continued, “so if you want to wait until tomorrow, you can.”

Estella and I looked at each other and smiled. It could wait. At that miraculous moment we were in agreement.

 
 
We ate on the screened porch, greedily slurping fresh oysters from their rough shells and moaning in delight over the three pounds of Gulf shrimp Tate dumped, steaming, across the newspaper-covered table.

I leaned back in my chair and propped my feet up on the table supports, one hand on my satisfied belly and an icy beer in the other. Estella had leaned back too, her eyes closed, and I watched a smile play about her lips.

“So how's your father, Tate?” I asked.

Tate frowned. “As well as can be expected, I suppose,” he said. “He doesn't recognize me anymore. He thinks I'm still in Kuwait. Tells me all about myself when I go see him. I'm evidently quite a hero.”

Tate's mother had died of leukemia when he was only four. Len raised Tate by himself, taking him out on his trawler every day and teaching him the secrets of the island and the Gulf. A jaded veteran of Korea, Len was furious when Tate joined the Marines at the ripe age of twenty-five. Old enough to know better, Len told anyone who would listen.

At twenty-nine, one year away from getting out and taking advantage of the GI bill to finally go to college, war broke out in the Gulf, far from our own peaceful Gulf of Mexico. Tate went to Kuwait, and two weeks before his return Len had a heart attack while winching up a net full of shrimp. The heart attack was quickly followed by the heartbreaking diagnosis of Alzheimer's. Tate took over the shrimp boat and the caretaking business for absent homeowners while taking care of his rapidly deteriorating father, before finally admitting defeat and placing him in an assisted-living facility on the mainland.

I had good memories of Len, a gruff bear of a man, a Hemingway figure even to the island natives. Stories of him filled the nights around beach bonfires, and Tate had always been his most ardent fan. I couldn't imagine the pain it must have caused him to place him in the facility, and worse, to not be recognized by him.

“Do you still have
Jessica
?” I asked, remembering scanning the Gulf before dawn, picking out the ghostly outlines of trawlers heading out, their mast lights glowing dimly over the water, trying to imagine which was theirs. Tate shook his head.

“Nah. I was never the shrimper Dad was,” he said. “I sold it a few years back, fixed the house up. I make enough to stay afloat. Don't need much.”

“Leonard Tobias could bring in more shrimp than any five shrimpers combined,” Estella intoned, her eyes still shut, and we all burst out laughing. It was the way most of the stories about Len began.

“He could,” Tate said, “he really could. What about you, Estella? How's the genius gig going?”

She slowly opened her eyes and stared at him. “About as well as the shrimping gig for you, Tate. I'm a tutor, not a genius.”

Tate seemed unfazed, but I jumped to my feet and got busy, folding the wet newspaper over the piles of empty shrimp and oyster shells, holding the entire soggy mess as far away from my clothes as I could. Tate opened the slider for me and Estella closed her eyes again, leaning her head back against the seat and allowing us to clean up.

As Tate and I dried our hands on the same towel after the kitchen had been put to rights, Estella walked by, placed her empty beer bottle on the counter, and muttered a terse good night before heading down the stairs without a look at either of us. Tate looked at me and raised his eyebrows. I shrugged.

I followed Tate downstairs and stood on the front porch as he backed his pickup out the driveway and drove away. As I locked the door, Estella's light went out, and I stood in the dark corridor, listening to the hum of the air-conditioning and the swish of the Gulf, wishing I had come alone after all.

I leave them alone, the way they prefer it, and head to my room. I thought I had stopped embarrassing myself over Tate long ago. I love Paul desperately, and I cannot figure out why the perpetual beach rat can still affect me like this. The thought that I am simply still competing with Connie enters my mind, but I will it away.

I listen to her lock up and quickly turn out my light so that she will not be tempted to knock on my door. I am too mortified to face her.

My head hurts.

I blame it on the beer, and then wonder if I should have eaten raw oysters. I lie on the bed and gently probe my stomach with my fingertips, searching for pangs, forewarnings of a contaminated oyster, but feel nothing amiss. I ache to hear Paul's voice but don't reach for the phone.

Instead, I remember pulling Tate toward the sofa upstairs by the front of his T-shirt. His protests and my insistence. Connie had been off with Luke, our parents were in New Mexico, and I'd arrived on Big Dune with a plan.

He left me there on the sofa, untouched and humiliated. He'd been kind, apologetic, and that made it even worse. I can feel the shame of it even now, twenty years later, creeping up my neck and making my face warm. My stomach cramps, and I gasp and turn on my side, curling around the pain as the tears roll down to the pillow.

I didn't get a bad oyster.

I got a bad memory, and more are on their way.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I slept later than I intended the next day, my dreams a mixture of memories and strange, watery visions of Estella and Tate. When I finally arrived upstairs Estella was already gone. I made myself some coffee and took it out to the porch. A couple was walking their dog on the beach, and I watched the mutt bound up to a woman who was stretching in front of the boardwalk next door. She patted it and it frolicked around her for a moment before racing back to its masters.

She continued her stretch, and as I watched her I recognized the movements of tai chi. She looked as if she were swatting at no-see-ums in exquisitely slow motion. It was mesmerizing. I watched until Estella caught my eye.

She was in the water, swimming, but her strokes weren't fluid or elegant as they had been years ago. I didn't know how long she had been at it, but it seemed to me that she was struggling.

She chose that moment to stop her stroke and head for the beach, hauling herself up the gentle slope as if truly exhausted. I watched her flop herself down on the sand and could see the heaving of her shoulders as she caught her breath. She turned her head and watched the tai chi woman bend and turn. In a moment she rose, and, slapping sand off her rear, slowly approached the woman, who stopped for a moment and then shook Estella's hand. I wondered again at this Estella, an Estella who walked right up to strangers and shook their hands.

Estella pointed up toward our house and the woman turned, her hand over her eyes, and looked up. I shrank back into the chair, although I knew she couldn't see me behind the screen at that distance. Then they both turned and looked at the house next door. The woman nodded, and I was surprised to see Estella take up a stance next to her and carefully follow the woman's movements as she began again.

Estella was like a naturally graceful dancer trying out a new routine. Her movements were fluid but imprecise as she tried to follow along. Occasionally the woman stood in front of her and adjusted Estella's arms, or showed her with her own movements what she was doing wrong. My coffee grew cold as I watched.

Estella finally stopped and gave a little bow to the woman, who bowed in return, and then Estella started toward the house. I could feel the vibration of her steps as she came up the boardwalk, and called out to her when I heard the door open.