“We have to make room for Mother and Gib anyway,” Estella said, looking almost embarrassed.
“It's wonderful,” I said. I fell upon the closest mattress and crawled beneath the covers. The pillow felt heavenly.
“I'll come by tomorrow to see how she is,” Tate said. He sounded like he was in another room, his voice far away and deep. Estella said something, I didn't know what, I didn't care; then I heard footsteps going down the stairs. Estella slid under the comforter on the other mattress, and I turned on my side toward her, drawing my knees to my chest and smiling at her across the short space.
She turned on her side too, and reached her hand out. I touched her finger with mine and then drew it back under the covers.
“We're having a sleepover,” I said, inordinately, drunkenly happy about it.
She nodded. “Yeah, sorry I don't have any pot or anything.”
For a moment, I had no idea what she was talking about, and I stared at her blankly. Then I remembered Chelsea and Lisa from her house in Atlanta, and shame flooded me.
“You knew about that?” I asked.
“It's okay,” she said.
But it wasn't, and I knew it. I should have gone and gotten her that night. Or I should have skipped the girls' room and gone and gotten her anyway.
“Sorry,” I said. “I just couldn't sleep. I didn't want to bother you.”
“You wouldn't have bothered meâand I said it's okay.”
She turned over on her back and folded her hands beneath her head. She had a beautiful profile, and I stared at her, trying to see the girl in the woman's face. It was there, especially in the worried brow, the teeth nibbling her top lip.
“It's going to be weird being here with Mother,” I said. Estella turned on her side again, and I could see her eyes shining in the dark.
“How are you doing, Connie?” she asked.
“I don't know,” I said.
“So, this Deanna, you think she's at your house right now?”
I considered it. I didn't see why she wouldn't be, wrapped around Luke in our bed, maybe wearing something of mine, more likely wearing nothing. “Probably,” I said.
“Who's Alexander?” she asked, and I sat upright, then fell back down just as quickly as a wave of nausea washed over me.
“Damn, I forgot all about Alex. What did he say?”
“He just wanted you to call him. Is he involved in this?”
“I don't think so,” I said. “He's the cello player in the trio. He probably just wants to make sure I'm practicing.”
“You're not,” she pointed out.
“How do you know?” I asked, annoyed. “Maybe I'm practicing while you swim.”
“Your case hasn't moved from under the staircase since we got here,” she said.
“Oh. Well, I'll practice soon.”
“So his call was just coincidence?”
“It must be. He knows about Deannaâin fact, he's the one who told me that Luke was still seeing her. But I don't see how he could know about any of this.”
“Why do you keep turning your rings?”
“What?” I asked, startled at her sudden shift and realizing in embarrassment that I was indeed twisting my rings. I quickly put my hands back under the covers.
“Your wedding rings. Tonight, whenever you set your glass down, you turned your rings, and you were just doing it again.”
“I don't know what you're talking about.” I could feel myself blushing and was grateful for the dark. Now it was my turn to flip over onto my back, avoiding her eyes, but she wasn't ready to let it go.
“You turn them in groups of three. I saw you. Three times, each time. Why do you do it?”
“Why do you hate it when anyone calls you a genius?”
“I'll tell you if you'll tell me.”
“You go first.”
“No, you go. I swear I'll tell you.”
“Okay, but it's stupid. I used to do it all the time after we got married. It was just a habit. I don't know, a superstition, I guess.”
“But for what? If you turn them around three times your marriage is safe?”
I hadn't thought of it in those terms. It was simply something that had become natural in times of stress. I thought I'd broken myself of it years ago, when I developed an irritation on my ring finger. “I'm not sure,” I finally said. “If that's what it was, it didn't seem to work, did it?”
“What else do you do?” she asked, raising herself on her elbow to look at me.
“What do you mean?”
“I've seen how you load the dishwasher. You won't put a fork in with another fork unless there's no choice. You divide them all up.”
“What are you doing? Studying me?”
“No, they're just things I notice, that's all. Paul touches his knuckles to the door handle before he opens a door.”
I laughed. “Why does he do that?”
Estella lay back down and laughed too. “I don't know. He doesn't know.”
“What do you do?” I asked.
She snorted. “What
don't
I do?”
“Really? Tell me,” I said eagerly.
“Well, I count stepsâ”
“I remember that,” I said.
“You do?”
“You used to count the steps to the windows in the music room.”
She smiled. “That's right. I'd forgotten about that.”
“What else?”
“I check for a dial tone after I hang up the phone. After I lock the front door dead bolt, I try to open the door three times. I won't use liquid soap unless it's in a clear bottle.”
We were both laughing out loud as she recited her list, and I realized that I had my own things to add. “I can't watch anything cook in the microwave,” I said.
She laughed. “Why?”
“Because I'm quite sure I can feel my eyes vibrating from escaping microwaves,” I said.
“I can't step on grout lines,” she said.
I drew in my breath in sudden understanding. “That's why you walk funny.”
“I don't walk funny!”
“You do! I mean, I noticed that there was something different about the way you walked around your houseâEstella! Your house, why would you tile your whole downstairs?”
She started giggling again. “I was trying to break myself of it. It works sometimes, but if I have a single glass of wine, or I'm up too late and get tired, that's it. I'm steppin' mighty careful.”
“Oh, Estella, that's awful,” I said, unable now to stop laughing. “But why? What does it feel like when you step on the grout?”
“Like nothing.”
“I don't get it.”
“It feels like there's nothing there. You know how your feet feel when you're looking a long way down, from the top of a tall building, or over the edge of something? They sort of tickle? It feels like that. That's how I fell in love with Paul,” she said, her laughter fading away.
“He grouted your tile?”
“No, smart-ass,” she said, reaching out to poke my shoulder. “He dances with me.”
“What do you mean?”
“We started dating just before I had the downstairs done, and I could barely walk to my kitchen, and here he was, trying to get me to waltz around the living room on my new tile. I was hopping around, trying to get my feet in the middle, and he finally just lifted me up onto his feet, and that's how we dance.”
“That's beautiful,” I whispered. She was silent for a moment and then burst out laughing. It was impossible not to join her.
“Okay, your turn,” I said. “Why do you hate it when people call you a genius?”
She sighed. “Because it's a stupid term. It was based on an IQ test, and that's just too much pressure, especially for a kid.”
“But, Estella, you
are
a genius.”
“What do you think I'm a genius at, Connie?”
She had me completely confused. “At math, right?”
“I had a facility for numbers, for games. What I did was arithmetic, not mathematics, Connie. There's a difference. Don't you realize that you turning your rings and me playing number games are the same? Or they come from the same place, anyway.”
“Well, now I really do feel stupid, because I have no idea what you're talking about, Estella. Some little obsessive-compulsive trait certainly doesn't make me a genius.”
“That's my point. Yes, I was smartâI had a high capacity to learn and the number games led everyone to believe that it meant I must be a math genius.”
“Well, aren't you?”
“Yes and no.”
“Oh, God, Estella, you're killing me here.”
“My IQ is over 140 and that labels me a genius, that's it. Like you having big boobs labels you a D-cup.”
We started laughing again.
“Okay, bad analogy,” she admitted. “A genius is someone capable of new ideas, of an ability to think differently about an old problem, not just learn them. There is nothing that I've ever done that could be considered new or unique. I've never come up with an answer to an unsolvable problem, I've never invented anything.”
“But Estella, you went to college when you were twelve.
Twelve
.”
“Why do you think that means anything? Ever notice that NASA wasn't exactly beating my door down? Connie, didn't you ever think about the fact that Daddy gave most of his book collection to the college?”
I was bewildered. “What are you saying? He didn't
buy
your degree. Did he?”
She sighed heavily. “Not exactly. When I first went, I had something, I'll admit that. But I plateaued, I evened outâhell, Connie, I lost it, okay? It went away.”
“But when?” I asked. “Why?”
“I don't know. I had headaches. I wasn't concentrating. I don't know.”
“But how were you able to stay? How did you graduate?”
Estella was silent.
“Estella?”
“I guess it was partly the book collection,” she finally said. “And nobody wanted to admit they'd been wrong. Not Dr. Pretus, and definitely not Daddy.”
At the mention of Pretus' name I shuddered. “Estella, what really happened?”
“Pretus told me that he would keep me in school, would keep the secret as long asâ”
“As long as you had sex with him?”
“Something like that. I wasn't ready for that environment. Everyone treated me like I was an adult. I wasn't old enough to realize that I could have gotten Pretus in a lot more trouble than he could get me in. I had leverage. I just didn't realize it until much later.”
“So, did Daddy know or not?”
“About Pretus, or about me losing it?”
“Either.”
“He never found out about Pretus. But he knew my âtalents' went away. Pretus told him. Daddy donated more books and Pretus got the credit for it.”
“So Pretus was, in effect, blackmailing both you and Daddy?”
“If you want to look at it that way, yeah.”
“God, Estella, how else could you look at it?”
“Don't forget that Daddy really wanted this; I did too, or I thought I did. Daddy didn't see it as blackmail; I think he just thought of it as extra tuition. And, to be fair, he never made me feel as though I had done anything wrong.”
“So, when you say it went away, you mean your IQ went down?”
“No, not exactly. It was more like my mind stopped seeing the relationships between things in new ways. See, it was all about connections. People see connections all the time, I just did it at a faster rate, and I could figure out how they fit the theories and equations that were being taught, so it looked impressive. And then the connections just weren't there anymore. Like something had flipped a switch in my mind.”
“That sounds scary,” I said.
“It was at first,” she admitted. “It was a relief too. Some people see patterns all the time, and sometimes they're authentic, like in mathematics, and when one of those people finds math they can concentrate all that extra energy on authentic patterns and connections. The problem is when those patterns aren't authentic; because if they can't stop their minds from making those constant connections, they come to believe that some cosmic revelation is coming to them, when there is no revelation. It's enough to drive someone mad.”
“You thought you were going crazy?”
“I think I was confused. Between what was authentic, and what wasn't. Numbers will always make connections, patterns, because that's their nature. If a thing exists, it can be counted. Even invisible thingsâtime, distance, space. Our entire universe can be broken down to numbers. That's a powerful concept for somebody who sees patterns.”
“And you don't know why you stopped seeing them?”
“I have my theories.”
“Like what?”
“Nothing I can prove. I went to see a doctor. I went to see more than one. They said it was psychosomatic. That I was under so much stress that I turned it off myself. I'm glad it stopped.”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“Totally serious. I never want it to come back,” she said fiercely.
“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I didn't know.”
“I'm not, not anymore. It was a long time ago, Connie, and none of it was your fault.”
The rum and the day caught up with me, and I fell asleep on the crest of her absolution.
Â
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I called Alexander as soon as I woke in the morning. Estella was already in the Gulf, doing a strong, fluid crawl, and I watched Vanessa doing tai chi as I waited for him to answer.