Catching Genius (8 page)

“Geek,” Gib muttered when Carson mentioned Benny Goodman for the eighth time in as many minutes.

“Knock it off,” I said.

“Mom, how many eight-year-olds even know who Benny Goodman is?” Gib asked. “I only know because he won't shut up about him. Seriously, Mom, you're turning him into a total geek.”

Carson fell silent, too hurt to continue, and I threw Gib an exasperated look. He raised his eyebrows at me, his arms crossed over his chest, daring me to do what? Something other than what I always did, I suppose. Which was nothing.

We rode the rest of the way to the school without a word, and Gib slammed his door shut as soon as he got out, forcing me to lean over the console to open it so that Carson could push the seat forward and slide out. He'd climbed into the front seat, settling himself into the area his older brother had just left, taking up so much less room that I suddenly felt the danger of all that extra space around my younger son. He pulled his seat belt on without waiting for me to ask, and I smiled to myself. He felt it too, the vacuum his big brother left.

We'd watched Gib retreat, waving to his friends, and I remembered how I felt when I watched Estella leave for college. I imagined that Carson must have been feeling much the same way, and I felt the sweet heartache of a bond that only two younger, left-behind siblings can feel. And then he'd turned to me with a relieved smile and asked, “So, can we go to the mall now?”

What did I know? I wasn't the genius in the family. I headed toward the mall.

“Can we go to The Gap first?” Carson asked, sliding a CD in the player. I glanced over at him with a distracted smile, still thinking of Estella leaving for college, nothing in her hands but a large leather satchel. My father was her proud chauffeur, my mother was in her rose garden, which she'd been trying to interest me in for years, and I'd stood on the front steps alone, swatting late summer mosquitoes and watching them drive away.

She was twelve years old.

“Sure,” I'd answered. I couldn't imagine Carson being mature enough to handle himself at camp, much less college, though it had been my decision, made without even consulting Luke.

Carson was mine and Gib was Luke's, and now I stood with the calamitous results of that decision in my hand, nearly convinced that Gib had sabotaged the test on purpose and wondering how I was going to leave him alone to go to Big Dune Island. I still hadn't broached the subject to Luke.

I heard a splash in the pool and looked out the window. Gib hadn't left, he'd simply decided to bother his little brother. I could see him holding Carson's head under the surface, water splashing up violently around them. I dropped the test results on the counter and slammed the sliding glass door open.

“Gib! Out of the pool and in the house. Now.”

I stalked back to the kitchen and pulled his report card out of my purse, placing it on the counter next to the test results. Gib came through the door with a grin on his face, toweling his hair off, his muscles still taking me by surprise.

“Mom, that kid's never going to learn how to defend—”

“Sit down.” I pointed to the stool across the counter from me. His eyes widened, but he sat, his gaze finally falling on the two pieces of evidence before him.

He started to speak but stopped when I slapped my hand down on his report card and pushed it toward him. “This came on Wednesday. Did you know you were failing algebra?”

He licked his lips and shook his head, but said, “Yeah, I guess.”

I pushed the PSAT results toward him. “And this came today. You want to explain it?”

He looked at the report card first, then inspected the test results. He read them and shrugged. “I guess I'm not good at math.”

“Really? When did this happen? Because you managed to pass every math course before this. You never indicated you were having a problem.”

His face settled into sullenness.

“Explain this to me, Gib.”

He rolled his eyes and sighed, but I continued to stare at him and he finally spoke. “Well, I didn't fail on purpose,” he said.

“Then what's the problem?”

“I don't get it,” he said simply, cutting his eyes toward the pool. I felt a sinking in my stomach when I realized that he was looking to make sure Carson didn't hear him. He was telling the truth. “I mean, I can do all the other stuff, but I don't get all the unknown numbers. You know, the x's and y's to the third power of pi, or whatever.”

“But Gib, why did you let it get this far? Why didn't you tell someone? We could have gotten you a tutor.”

He shrugged again, that maddening teenaged shrug. “I don't know.”

“Well, now you're going to have to go to summer school to make up for it. And I don't know if you'll be able to play football next year either, Gib.”

He gnawed his lip. “You going to tell Dad?”

“Of course. He already knows that you failed the class, we were just waiting for the test results.”

“Why?” he asked.

“He thought the teacher didn't like you. He thought your test scores would be good.”

“You didn't think that though, right?”

I said nothing, suddenly feeling naked, suddenly aware that Gib knew more than I realized about our roles when it came to parenting him. “No,” I said quietly, gathering the papers up and folding them together. “I didn't think that.”

Gib glanced out the window at Carson playing in the pool, his face sober and older than his years. I saw where his first wrinkles would show up, around his eyes, across his forehead, what he would look like when he was my age and had his own children to worry about, to make mistakes with and feel guilty over. I felt like crying suddenly, tears welling in my eyes and my throat closing, when I saw how much he looked like my father.

“What did you think?” he asked.

I couldn't tell him that I thought he was doing it just to anger me, just to force my hand somehow. “I don't know,” I finally said, realizing a second too late that it was the same nothing phrase I hated when it came out of his mouth. I shook my head and pushed my fingers against the back of my neck, working at the crackling knots from my violin practice. “We'll talk later, after your father gets home.”

His mouth twisted and he jerked his head, acknowledging the fact that I'd chickened out. “Yeah, well, Jamie's picking me up in an hour. I'll be home later.”

“No. Call Jamie and tell him you're not going anywhere. You have five minutes, then bring your cell phone and your keyboard down to me. Until we figure out what we're going to do, you can consider yourself grounded. No phone, no computer, no television.”

He stopped for a moment and then walked on, refusing to look back at me. My lunch forgotten, I watched Carson swimming circles in the pool, his hand held straight up in front of his head like a shark fin. Both the kids were terrific swimmers, but I couldn't help watching them anxiously whenever they were in the water.

Swimming was a skill that not only had I never mastered, but that left me with vague feelings of dread I didn't want to fully explore. I could stay afloat, could paddle about with determination, but it frightened me more than anything else ever had, especially in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It was more than the fear of sharks, more than the unknowable depth; it was the living water itself. It twined around my legs, its currents slipping their fingers about my calves, tugging at my ankles. It felt fat between my toes and fingers, as though its molecules weren't willing to slide apart for me as easily as they did for everyone else.

Estella was the swimmer. When we moved to Big Dune Island, my parents worked out an arrangement with Dr. Pretus that Estella would stay with him and his wife four days a week, something that would never be allowed in this day and age I'm sure, and would come home for long weekends. With an atypical bow to her age, she was forbidden to bring work home with her, and she spent most of those days locked in her room or exhausting herself swimming in the Gulf.

Estella was transformed by the water, a mermaid worthy of her own fairy tale when she came up for air, her lips parted and her eyes half-lidded with exertion. Her slicked-back hair revealed beautifully arched eyebrows, her eyelashes spiked together as if she were wearing mascara, and water droplets clung perfectly to her lips. I would never have told her how beautiful, how sensual, she looked in the water. All I had in my family was my prettiness, and I wasn't about to give that up to Estella too.

When she retreated to her room, I imagined that she pulled out pencil and paper and devised her own mathematics course, because she would often go in wild-eyed and emerge serene, as though she'd gotten her fix.

The doctors initially put her on a medication to calm her constant agitation, but our father felt that it dulled her genius, made her less agile-minded, and discontinued it himself. I don't know what my sister thought of her medicated days, but I do know that I saw her smile more, and saw less of the rapid blinking and teeth clenching that made other people stare.

Had our parents ever wanted to punish her for anything they could have easily found the method. Take away math and swimming at the same time and she'd be desperate in days. I wished Gib were so easy to figure out. Taking away the phone, the computer, the television—it had all been done before.

I glanced at the clock again. Fifteen minutes had passed. With a sigh I headed upstairs and could hear him talking as I neared his room.

“Gib, let's go. Off the phone.”

He glanced up as I reached the door and held the receiver out to me. “Gram called while I was talking to Jamie. She wants to talk to you. Why didn't you tell me we were going to Big Dune?”

I took the phone without answering him and pointed to his keyboard before I greeted my mother. She was already talking as I raised the phone to my ear.

“. . . had the courtesy to at least call me back.”

“Hi, Mom,” I said, pretending I hadn't heard her. “Sorry. Are we still on for Monday?”

She was silent for a moment, mollified.

“Yes. I take it you don't want Gib to come? He hadn't heard a thing about it. And what's this about him being grounded?”

“He failed algebra without telling us he was having a problem, and he stole notification about the PSAT test from the mail.”

“I thought he just took those tests.”

“That was a makeup test, which we were lucky enough to find out about.”

“Well, it's not as if he robbed a bank, Connie—”

“Thanks, Mother. So, I'll see you Monday?”

“I spoke with Estella yesterday.”

I was surprised into silence. Two conversations in one month. It was surely a record. “And?” I finally asked.

“She's looking forward to seeing you,” she said.

“She said that?” I didn't believe her. She was just trying to soften us up before we saw each other. She'd probably told Estella the exact same thing.

“Yes, she did. And this is a perfect time for the two of you—”

“I get it, Mother,” I interrupted. “I'll talk to Luke.”

When I hung up I gathered Gib's keyboard and cell phone and stashed them in my closet just as I heard the garage door rumble up. I met Luke in the kitchen and held the test results out to him as he walked in the door. He put his briefcase on the counter as he read them and then looked at the report card again.

“So he takes summer school,” he finally said, shrugging.

“But don't you see that this is a bigger problem than just taking summer school?”

He sighed. “No, I don't. What's the problem?”

“He's hiding things, Luke. Even from you.”

He looked startled. “All kids hide things from their parents when they become teenagers,” he said, but he sounded less certain. “I'll talk to him.”

“He's in his room. I took his phone and keyboard and told him no television.”

“Damn, Connie,” Luke protested. “You should have waited until I got home so we could decide what to do about this together.”

“I'm his mother. I did what I felt I had to do, and you weren't here, were you?”

I remembered Bob's advice, remembered the paperwork I'd been gathering, the trips I'd made to a new bank, the jewelry I'd hidden there. We both had our secrets, and my questions went unasked.

He shook his head at me and walked out of the kitchen. Carson came in, wrapped in a big towel, and I made him a snack while Luke talked to Gib. When Luke came back downstairs his face was sober.

“Hey, buddy,” he said absently to Carson. “Want to give me and your mom a few minutes alone?”

Without a word, Carson picked up his plate of fruit and gathered his towel around him again, heading for the sunroom to eat among the orchids.

“I don't think it's quite as bad as you've made it out,” Luke started, putting his hand up to stop me when I began to interrupt. “We'll sign him up for summer school and get a tutor if he still doesn't get it. He's got this last week of school and then I told him I wanted him to get a job.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Really?”

“Well, if you're going to Big Dune with your mother—”

“I was going to talk to you about that,” I said quickly.

He shrugged. “It's fine, Gib told me. He doesn't want to go, and I'm not going to have time to baby-sit him. Summer school gets out early—he can work after school and we'll get home around the same time. We'll be bachelors. It'll be fun.”

“All right,” I said. “I'll plan to go to Big Dune right after Carson leaves for camp, but Luke, you're responsible for making sure he's going to school. I don't want to get back here to find out that it didn't happen and you never knew about it.”