The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners (2 page)

“Ready?” he asked Pell.

“Ready,” she said.

He looked around, wanting help with the lines, but Rafe seemed to have disappeared. So Max climbed up on the wooden dock, and tied the boat fast.

Lyra braced her elbows on the wall, to steady them. She finally pressed the binoculars to her eyes. Max docking the boat. And up forward, in the bow, a lovely young girl. Shocking, stunning, take-your-breath-away beauty. Long dark hair tied back, tendrils blowing around her face. Pell stared straight up the hill, as if she could see Lyra behind the stone wall, and maybe she could. Even as a baby she’d had an intense, seeking gaze.

The sight of her daughter made every muscle in Lyra’s body jump, as if her skin had memories all its own. She felt pressure on, not in, her chest: a six-pound, seven-ounce weight. Pell, just born, wet and slippery, hot as a coal, bellowing. Lyra had held her daughter. Taylor was right there, standing beside them, but the moment was Lyra and Pell’s. It’s not every day you have a daughter, and as much as you might love her father, he’ll never know the wild electricity you have with her.

Standing in her Italian garden, Lyra Davis stared down at the small yellow boat and thought of that tiny baby. She pictured the six-year-old girl that baby had become. Pell had been six, Lucy four, when Lyra left—ten years since Lyra had seen either of her daughters.

Lyra gazed down, watched Max help Pell onto the deck, hardly able to hold herself back. Her daughter was smart; Lyra knew because she received all her grades, scores, reports from Newport Academy. She had a brilliant mind; several of her teachers said so. But she was so young. At sixteen, she might believe in hope, in redemption, in the possibility of forgiveness. Lyra knew Pell would try to forgive, understand, put herself in her mother’s shoes.

But the body remembered. Nothing could be done about that, about all the missed hugs and kisses, the neglected hair-brushing, the times Pell and her sister had needed comfort and their mother hadn’t been there to provide it. The cold winters, without Lyra to help them into their snow jackets, and that December day when she had taken Pell to the bridge.

Lyra knew those feelings were lodged in Pell, even if Pell didn’t admit them herself. This island was ancient, its mysteries millennia older than anything imaginable in America, and it had taught Lyra some cruel things about time, illusions, and hopeless wishes.

She walked through a break in the wall, onto the stairs. Built centuries ago, they led up to Max’s villa, and down to the dock. Thick pines, jasmine, and rosemary covered the steep rocky hillside. Orange blossoms, waxy and fragrant, bloomed behind glossy green leaves.

Lyra hurried down. The steps, chopped roughly into the rocks, formed a precipitous descent. An iron handrail, rusted away in places, provided the only barrier to a sheer abyss. Voices carried up from the water: Max’s, low and English-accented, and a girl’s.

Pell’s.

Lyra broke through the clearing, emerging from pines and vines, and stood at the top of the rock ledge. She saw Rafaele crouched in the shade by the boathouse, frozen in place; she walked right past him, and he ducked out of sight. Max and Pell were hoisting her bags off the boat onto the dock. Lyra hesitated for a second, watching them.

“Pell,” she said.

Had she even spoken, made a sound? Everything seemed lodged in her throat—words, her daughter’s name, her heart. Leaves rustled and waves lapped the rocks. Max and Pell looked in her direction.

“Pell,” Lyra said again.

Lyra took a slow step toward the dock. Her eyes drank in the young woman standing there, so close now: tall, slim, fine dark hair, creamy pale skin, and mysterious blue eyes. Lyra caught her breath. Raised her arms, held out in front, embracing the air.

Pell’s feet pounded down the dock—it seemed impossible that such a delicate girl could make such a racket. She bounded off the pier onto the sea-washed black rock, and only when she stood right there, inches away from Lyra, did she stop.

They stared into each other’s eyes, and it wasn’t easy, because Lyra’s vision was completely blurred with tears. Then, as if remembering what to do from the farthest, most-forgotten past, Pell leaned into her mother’s arms, and they held each other for a long time.

Two

I
n the Nicholson family, all occasions were commemorated with lunch. So, even though I was quivering, literally, from the shock and joy of hugging my mother, and I wanted it to last, and I wanted us to be alone to talk, to just take each other in, she told me that lunch would be served on the villa terrace at one-thirty.

“The villa?” I asked. I couldn’t take my eyes off my mother.

I wanted to touch her cheek. She and I had the same coloring—very dark hair and blue eyes. Her hair had a white streak in front, shocking and glamorous. There were lines around her eyes and mouth. The flawless skin I remembered was marred, and that made me love her even more, but then this awful cold wave washed over me—she’d been away from me so long. I had grown from a child into a young woman. What changes did she see in me?

“Yes,” she said. “Max’s villa, just up the hill. He has kindly offered.”

“Are you two … ?” I asked, uncharacteristically blunt; I chalk it up to jet lag.

“Oh, no,” she said. “Not at all. We’re just very good friends. He’s kind of a father figure.”

That was true. I’d noticed Max’s age when we were in the boat. But he had some kind of sparkle one rarely saw—not just in his eyes, but in his very being. As if everything in him, every molecule, was interested in the world around him. He reminded me of someone very young, full of curiosity. Even more, and this is a strange thing to say about a man I’d just met, but it seemed he’d never ever been disappointed by life. He exuded hope and the expectation that all would be well. I liked him.

My mother showed me around. The wonderful, bowled-over expression of, I’ll call it love, that she showed on the dock had been put back in its box. Now she was correct, measured, as if we were near-strangers; which, in fact, we were. Speaking carefully, inches of space between us. If this was her default mode, at least with visitors, it reminded me of my grandmother.

“This is my house,” she said. “I had an apartment in Capri when I first came to the island, but that only lasted a few months. I’ve lived here, in Anacapri, since then. The more remote town on the island. Higher up the mountain, harder to get to.”

I nodded, saying nothing, but feeling surprised. I knew her address, of course, but until now had no context for what Anacapri was. My mother choosing the town less traveled? That seemed so unlike what my grandmother said about her. When she’d left us, my father, sister, and I, my grandmother said she’d gone straight for “the action.” And of course hordes of men.

We walked around the small white house. The walls were thick, the arched windows facing out to sea. A large terrace hung over the precipice, looking straight down the cliff. Six chairs surrounded a table; the cushions were bright blue; I wondered if my mother ate out here a lot, and who joined her. Pots of flowers were everywhere, and vines of japonica, clematis, and bougainvillea clung to the walls. I imagined she must have quite a gardener.

An antique brass telescope, set up on a tripod with spindly legs, faced the bay. The scope drew me over; I stood beside it, wondering why it made me feel strange. She noticed me looking at it; the expression in her eyes made me feel I should back away. Maybe the telescope was really valuable, and she was afraid I’d knock it over.

Inside, the living room had been sponge-painted faded coral pink; it made me feel I was in a seashell. The furniture was covered with white slipcovers. The Nicholson touches, straight from my grandmother, were apparent all through the room: portraits and landscapes in gilded frames, sterling silver everywhere.

A letter opener on the desk, engraved picture frames on the piano, and there, on the sideboard, the familiar, beloved wild-rose tea set with flowers, leaves, and thorns deeply tooled into the heavy silver along with my great-grandmother’s monogram. I went straight to it, my heart pounding.

“You remember?” she asked.

“How could I forget?” I picked up the milk pitcher. When I was little, before she left, I used to pretend the pitcher was the teapot, the real pot being too heavy for me to lift. “We had tea parties,” I said now.

“With real tea,” she said.

“Yes.” Other mothers might have given their young children apple or orange juice, but Lucy and I got the real thing, Earl Grey smoky and delicate. She, Lucy, and I would sit cross-legged on the floor, drinking from translucent Haviland china painted with flowers and butterflies, ladybugs hidden in the blossoms. When my mother left us, we kept that china. But staring at the tea set, I realized my father had shipped her the silver.

“Are you tired from your flight?” she asked as I turned away from the sideboard, composing myself.

“A little,” I said.

“The best way to overcome jet lag is to take a short nap—very brief, less than an hour. More than that, and you’re done for. Then you take a long walk … we can do that after lunch at Max’s.”

“Okay” I said.

“Do you … are you …,” she began, and color drained from her face as she stopped.

“What?” I asked, trying to smile. I felt a gulf opening in my chest.

“I have so many questions,” she said. “So much I want to know about you. Are you and Lucy close?”

“The closest,” I said. “She’s the best sister in the world.”

“She was always so sweet and bright,” my mother said.

Should I tell her now? How the sweet and bright one has gone rather dark? Over the winter, she tried to contact our father’s ghost. He didn’t appear to her, of course. She is brave, but I worry she takes it as rejection. Both parents have left her!

That reality has affected her sleep. When her eyes finally close, and dreams come, she climbs out of bed. Her movements are graceful, as if she can see just where she’s going. But she can’t; she is asleep. She is sleepwalking. There could be worse problems, but lately it seems to be getting more serious….

“Well,” my mother said awkwardly, when I didn’t say anything more about Lucy. “Would you like to take that rest?”

“Yes,” I said. Suddenly I needed air. I walked onto the terrace. Looking down the stairs toward the cove, I saw the guy again. The one dressed in black, who’d been lurking in the shadows when we came in on the boat, and now he was sitting halfway down the steep stone steps, staring at the bay. He looked not much older than I. “Who’s that?” I asked.

“I don’t see anyone,” my mother said, not even glancing into the thick foliage. The phone rang. She went in to answer it, and when I looked back, the young man in black was gone. I’d gotten barely a look at him but registered danger, furtiveness. I have a good imagination, but also fine instincts. I was sure my mother had seen him, just didn’t want to admit it. I wondered if he was her lover.

“That was Max on the phone,” my mother said, returning to the terrace. “Lunch is off….”

“Off?” I asked.

“Something came up, and he asked if we would join him for dinner tomorrow night instead.”

“Is he okay?” I asked.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” she said, giving a low laugh that sent shivers down the back of my neck. I knew it so well, and hadn’t heard it in ten years. Suddenly I needed to be alone, as much as I’d ever needed anything.

“I’m a little tired,” I said, staring at the sea.

“Let me show you your room,” she said.

She led me through the loggia, through French doors into a cozy bedroom. The walls were white, the bed covered with a shell-pink silk coverlet and a mountain of pale blue pillows. She had already placed my luggage by the closet. All except for my backpack, which I hadn’t set down since arriving.

“Have a good rest,” she said. “I’ll wake you up in a little while.”

I nodded. She left the room. My heart was pounding, or was that the sound of the sea crashing on rocks below? Sun poured through the open doors, scaldingly bright. It hurt my eyes. I wanted darkness, and to crawl under the covers. I pulled the shutters closed, blocking the light. It was all I could do to yank down the silk spread, climb into the soft featherbed.

Tears began to pour down my cheeks. I missed Lucy and Travis, wanted them both, wanted to know Lucy was safe.

Not long ago, one early morning, before the sun came up and the stars were still in the sky, I found Lucy swimming. In the cold water, out past the surf break, in her nightgown.

My sister was fast asleep, and when I led her back to shore, she had no memory of how she got there. Before she woke up, both of us treading water in the bay, she looked straight at me and said, “Mom!” Later she told me she dreamed she had swum to Italy to find our mother.

My mother abandoned us. One day ten years ago she left our house in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and never came back. That is the single fact that rules my life. Everything else—that I have a sister, that I had a great father, that I love Travis, that I get good grades at school—is by necessity secondary.

Because a mother leaving shapes her daughters in deep and inescapable ways. It is the absence of our mother, the death of our father, that keeps my sister from resting.

Capri felt so far away from Newport. But then the person I really missed, more than anyone, filled my mind. My father. Taylor Davis. His curly brown hair and warm hazel eyes, his sharp cheekbones and great smile. I wanted to take his picture out of my backpack and look at it, but I felt like I was swooning and practically hallucinating with jet lag, and I was crying too hard to move.

“How could you have left us, how could you have left us?” I whispered, weeping, as pathetic as you could possibly get, and the crazy thing was, I’m not sure whether I was talking to my mother or my father.

The Villa Andria was a massive, crumbling, secluded repository of history and beauty, love and joy. It sat at the crest of the hill, within sight of the ruins of Tiberius’s palace. Built of stone, columns greened and blackened from salt air, the villa was surrounded by lemon groves, olive orchards, walled gardens, and seemed to hang in the air over the Bay of Naples.

The villa’s rooms had once seen countless celebrations, soirees, assignations, and salons. They had once welcomed creativity, given Max and his wife a space to make their art. But that time and this place belonged to youth, his and Christina’s, and she’d been gone years now. Senile dementia had begun stealing her away three years before she died. Her paintings were gathering dust. And he no longer felt he had a play in him; they’d all been written.

Sitting on the large terrace, shaded by pines clinging to the rock, Max bent over the table. He wrote in a black notebook, the latest in a long line. He ordered them from a stationer in Florence, the son of the man who’d first supplied him. When Max found someone he enjoyed working with, or simply liked, or in any way became attached to, he stuck with that person forever. He prized loyalty above all other qualities. His father had taught him that.

“Well, this is what ‘came up’?”

At the sound of Lyra’s voice, his heart kicked his ribs. But he merely lifted his fountain pen from the paper and looked up slowly. She stood on the terrace, arms crossed tightly across her chest; but for the white streak in her black hair, she looked like a miffed college girl. He noted with concern her skinniness; she’d been losing weight all spring, as the idea of her daughter’s visit became more real.

“Why aren’t you with Pell?” he asked.

“She’s resting.”

“Ah,” he said, turning back to his notebook. No more plays, but plenty of thoughts. He wanted to finish the paragraph he’d been writing; oddly, or perhaps not, it concerned Lyra.

“You canceled lunch,” she said. “Are you mad at me?”

“Of course not.”

“You don’t like Pell?” she asked.

The tone in her voice sent a shiver down Max’s neck. That’s the spirit, he thought, hiding a smile. It pleased him, to hear Lyra defensive on her daughter’s behalf.

“On the contrary,” he said. “I find her extraordinary.”

Lyra sat on the stone bench, her favorite place, as it had been Christina’s—she used to sit there for hours, easel set up, painting the bay. Christina had done all of her cloud studies, her oils of the fishing boats, her watercolors of the pines and cypress trees, from that very spot. He felt Lyra’s gaze, looked up from the page to meet her eyes.