The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners (3 page)

“Well, you’re right, but how can you know she’s extraordinary after one boat ride?” Lyra asked.

“I knew it even before meeting her,” he said.

“Don’t say something sappy,” she said. “Like because she’s my daughter.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. He teased her regularly, and she lapped up their banter as if he were her uncle or an old family friend.

“Then how can you tell?” she asked.

“Because she is here,” he said. “She came all this way to see you. She is loyal.”

“I don’t deserve it,” Lyra said.

“I didn’t say that,” Max said.

“You don’t have to,” she said, rising. “I’ll say it myself. So, why did you really cancel lunch? Are you okay? I had to come up and make sure.”

“I’m fine,” he said, touched by her concern.

“Does it have to do with Rafaele? I saw him twice today … down by the boathouse this morning, when you brought Pell in. And just a few minutes ago, from the terrace. He was still down at the water, just sitting there. Pell saw him too. She asked about him.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Nothing.” The single word said it all.

Max stared at her. How could he love someone so different from Christina? From him, for that matter? Christina would have embraced Rafaele and his problems, just as Max did. She would have loved and nurtured him, tried to understand him, just as she had when he was a young boy Rafe had always intrigued her in every way; she would have spent every possible moment with him, drawing close to him and his demons, loving them equally.

“I know he’s your grandson,” Lyra said, “and I know he just arrived last week. But I don’t feel good about him roaming the hillside.”

“Roaming,” Max said. “Is that what he does? I would have said ‘contemplating.’ Because mostly he works on the nets, the boat-house, and the boat.”

“Max, you see the good in everyone,” Lyra said. “That doesn’t mean you’re right. Christina always said you were such an innocent. Someone has to protect you from yourself.”

“From Rafe, you mean?”

“Max, how can you let him stay with you, after what he did? I don’t understand.”

“He’s my grandson. And Christina’s. She would have him stay nowhere but here.”

“I can’t forget what he did; I don’t see how you can either. I’m going to be honest with you—I don’t want him around Pell. You did say he wouldn’t be at lunch today….”

“When it comes to socializing, you don’t have to worry. It’s his choice not to join the group,” Max said. “As he told me when he arrived, he’s in hermit mode.”

“Well, is he the reason you canceled lunch?” Lyra asked.

Max gazed at her. Why was she so obtuse? He saw in Lyra Davis all that she could not see in herself. He’d watched her prepare the house for Pell: pull all the family silver out of storage, polish the black tarnish away, obviously hoping Pell would remember their tea parties in Grosse Pointe, their times together. She’d ordered brand-new luxurious bedding in colors Pell had loved as a child—nursery shades of pale pink and blue.

Things won’t do it, my darling
, Max wanted to say.
Objects are inadequate to the task. Throw the silver off the cliff. Wrap your child in your arms, not linens from Rome
.

“No, it has nothing to do with Rafe,” he said, staring into her lovely eyes, bluer than sea or sky, wanting her to get it herself.

“Then why did you cancel?” she asked after a long moment, forcing him to tell her.

“So you and Pell could be alone,” he said finally. “So you could spend time with your daughter her first day here.”

That did it, as he’d known it would, that she would be ashamed for not realizing. Her face flushed, clearly furious, she turned and walked off the terrace. He watched her go, moving swiftly through the lemon trees toward the stairs to her own house. His heart cracked, knowing her rage wasn’t really at him, but at herself.

As he often did, watching Lyra Davis’s extreme pain and occasional slow-motion self-destruction with regard to her two daughters, he found himself thinking about Lyra’s own mother. Max had met her only once, early in Lyra’s stay here on Capri. They’d all had drinks at the Hotel Quisisana, and Christina had left saying Edith Nicholson was a monster. Max had thought her more a caricature of a certain style of American grande dame.

But either way …

The base of all pain, the creation of ogres, the source of all that seemed evil in the world, was a lack of love. It drove people to hate themselves. If only Lyra could know what he saw in her. Christina had seen it first; perhaps it was his wife’s devotion to the younger woman that had first opened his eyes to her.

Watching how Lyra had tended Christina in her decline, loved her even as everything slipped away, had caused Max’s feelings to grow. He closed his notebook, capped his fountain pen, and for the second time that day went down the steep, narrow stairs to the cove.

Here he was on Capri, no escape. The whole island had once been Rafaele Gardiner’s playground, first when his parents would take him around, and then, after his mother’s death, when he grew up fast and basically owned the place himself, in the lawless days when he had no rules.

He knew everyone. The locals, the fishermen, and the socialite summer people, the kids from wherever, he’d partied with them all on the waterfront, and in the caves, and on the mule tracks, and the hill paths, and in the Piazzetta right in front of their parents.

Being the grandson of Max and Christina Gardiner opened every door on Capri, and he’d taken advantage of that. Not that he cared about social life, hanging with the glitterati douche bags or getting invited onto Prince Whoever’s yacht. He’d enjoyed the parties and the entrée because he’d liked getting fucked up.

Those days were over. He was nineteen. The jury was in: he had wrecked his life and others’. Two years ago he’d gotten arrested in New York, kicked out of school. He’d come back here to do more damage, then spent over a year in rehab—his third, this one in Malibu. He’d been out for three weeks now.

Rafe missed a girl he’d never see again, and now all he wanted to do was make everything up to his grandfather. Nicolas had torn some fishing nets, and it was Rafe’s job to repair them.

The work was slow and took concentration. That was good, because it kept him busy, out of trouble. It kept him from feeling so empty, longing for Monica and wondering why she had disappeared the way she did, whether she was okay. She’d told him to pray to his grandmother to keep him clean, and he tried, but it was easier to ask for help for others, for Monica.

Peering at the bay, he saw one of the tourist boats, hired to take people into the Grotta Azzurra. Low to the water to fit through the small rock opening, the wooden boat looked like a thin red line on the waves. Arturo drove it in a circle; Rafe ducked, but it was too late. The boat was empty; Arturo tied up at the dock and walked across the rock ledge.

“Ciao,” Arturo said. “I thought it was you.”

“It’s not me,” Rafe said. “Let’s just say it’s not the same me you knew.”

“You owe me money.”

“I’ll pay you.” Rafe sat still, stayed calm.

“It’s been over a year,” Arturo said. “You have an outstanding debt. Do you think I don’t keep records?”

Rafe stared into Arturo’s brown eyes. Wow, back only a week and his past had tracked him down. Still, he stayed cool, giving nothing away. He saw Arturo register the fact he couldn’t push him around.

“You’re clean?” Arturo asked.

Rafe nodded.

“I lost a good customer.”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll be back,” Arturo said.

“No,” Rafe said. He thought of Monica. “I won’t.”

Arturo shrugged as if he knew better. “They still talk about you on this island. You see your grandmother’s face, don’t you?” he asked. “I’ll give you something to chase it right out of your head.”

“Get your boat off our dock,” Rafe said, standing. Arturo was big, but Rafe was younger and stronger. One thing about rehab, it had started him eating again, putting on muscle. The goodness of those talks with Monica had stayed with him. Working out helped him stay clean, and the idea of whatever they were saying about him made him want to kill Arturo.

“Portando il nero,”
Arturo said, backing away. “That’s good, to wear black. Because you made people mourn. Christina was beloved on Capri. That’s what everyone says.”

Rafe couldn’t even argue with that. He just stood there, watching his old drug dealer climb into his crummy little boat and putter away. He stared at the wake, white ripples dissolving into nothing.

“What did he want?” his grandfather asked, coming down the stairs behind him. Rafe didn’t want to turn around, have his grandfather see his face. But he stood out of respect and love.

“Nothing, Grandpa,” Rafe said.

“Is he giving you trouble?”

“No, not really.”

“Because if he is, I’ll talk to the police, and—”

“That would make it worse for me,” Rafe said. “Okay, please? You have to trust me.”

“I want to,” his grandfather said.

“I know,” Rafe said. They stared at each other a few seconds, tense but trying to get past it.

“How are the nets?” his grandfather asked, looking at the pile.

“Pretty much got them mended,” Rafe said. “Nicolas can fish tonight.”

“Would you like to go with us?”

Rafe heard the “us,” looked at his grandfather with surprise. “You got up at the crack of dawn, to go to Sorrento,” he said. “I thought you’d want to be asleep early tonight.”

“Life is short,” his grandfather said. “The less time I spend sleeping, the better.”

Rafe smiled; he knew his grandfather’s embrace-life philosophy.

“You could have come with me,” his grandfather said. “To pick up Pell.”

“I, uh, slept late,” Rafe said. He didn’t want to go into the fact he knew Lyra Davis hated him, wouldn’t want him anywhere near her daughter. Or reveal that he’d been mending nets in the shadows when his grandfather and the girl had arrived, seen her step off the boat.

Pell had long dark hair, blue eyes; Monica had a black pixie cut, green eyes. But this girl’s beauty and radiance, an intelligent sorrow she wore like a shawl, reminded him so much of the girl he knew he’d never see again. His grandfather was a strange, uncanny mind reader, and Rafe looked away so he wouldn’t show too much.

Rafe happened to glance up, not at the villa, but the other way, toward Lyra’s cottage. And he saw the girl, Pell, looking down at him, over the terrace wall. Their eyes locked for a minute; he deliberately turned away.

“I thought you invited them for lunch,” Rafe said. “Lyra and her daughter.”

“Dinner tomorrow instead,” his grandfather said. “I thought the traveler might need some rest, and to spend time with her mother. And you’re invited too, of course.”

“Looks as if she’s not resting,” Rafe said, glancing up and meeting her curious gaze again. He felt a shiver go through his bones. He had felt his last chance slipping away. Life, sobriety, hope; Monica had given him the feeling he wanted to live again, to grab onto this opportunity. With her gone, he’d been so alone.

“Ah,” his grandfather said, following Rafe’s gaze. He saw Pell, smiled and gave her a big wave.

“She’s like you,” Rafe said. “Likes to be awake.”

“Life is a gift,” his grandfather said. “Every moment we are here. Fresh, beautiful.
Siete buono come il mare.”
Good as the sea.

“Right,” Rafe said, looking up at the pretty girl. He had the feeling she was standing on the brink; that coming here was her own sort of last chance. His heart cracked open, knowing what that was like. In that moment, in honor of another girl who’d helped him, he knew he wanted to be a friend to Pell. She waved at his grandfather, as if they were lifelong friends, as if she had heard his words and agreed completely with his assessment of life.

Good as the sea.

That was something Rafe’s grandmother used to say. His throat ached. He had so much to make up for. If he could help someone else, maybe he could get through.

And maybe Pell could too.

Pell was really here. Lyra could hardly believe it; she had started burying her feelings years ago, but how impossible. She had worked hard to stop being a mother—as if it were a switch she could throw. Walking through the olive orchard, she tried to breathe as emotions stormed through her.