The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners by Luanne Rice

some poor Capri person to hold the perfect Martha Stewart basket while she goes snip, snip, and the flower heads fall oh-so-quaintly into the basket, and it’s going to be a feature story in Italian Vogue?”
    I laughed because Lucy is droll and hilarious and because I could just picture the look on her face as she imitated our grandmother’s manufactured idea of our mother.
    “Shades of Edie,” Lucy went on, again referring to our grandmother. “Like mother, like daughter, right? Is Lyra exactly the same as Edie?”
    “Surprisingly, not very much at all,” I said.
    “I knew it!” she said, sounding more delighted than before. “Tell me more!”
    “Well, for one thing, she works. She actually does garden—that’s her job. Her own garden is beautiful, and she does it for other people too.”
    “Holy shit,” Lucy said. “Employment!”
    “Yes,” I said, feeling proud. “Our mother.”
    “What’s her house like? Did she blow through the trust fund? Does she have manic episodes where she gives everything away? Is she strapped financially? Was one of the playboys a con-man gigolo who drained her accounts? Did she have to pawn the silver?”
    “Doesn’t look it,” I said, glancing onto the terrace at the brass telescope, around the living room at the mahogany tables, the cashmere throws, a marble bust, a bronze monkey, a Meissen bowl in the Thousand and One Nights pattern, the oil paintings, the silver tea set. “She still has the wild rose teapot. Do you remember?”
    “Mmm,” Lucy said, and fell silent.
    That’s the thing with us sisters. We remember everything. We have Velcro brains. I could just imagine Lucy spinning back, all the way to when she was three and I was five, having a tea party with our mother on the floor of our sunroom in Grosse Pointe. Back when we were all together, before the winter when she fell apart.
    “Are you glad you’re there?” Lucy asked.
    “I think so,” I said.
    “Hmm,” she said. “Do you love her?”
    “What do you think?”
    “Yeah, you do.”
    “And you?”
    “More than anything,” Lucy said.
    The sands and dust, powerful feelings, began to swirl. The sirocco. It came up sometimes when we talked about our mother. We were silent a moment, getting the lumps out of our throats. We had to face facts, the person we loved most in the world, now that our dad was dead, was the woman who’d walked out on us.
    “Are you okay?” I asked.
    “I just miss you,” she said. “It’s hard with you away. But …”
    “Tell me.”
    “I want you to be there,” she said, choking up. “For her.”
    “For her?”
    “If I feel this way,” she said, “think of how she feels. We all need each other. Does she have anyone? A good friend, anything like that?”
    “She has Max. He’s her neighbor, and he picked me up in Sorrento yesterday, and he’s a dream and if it weren’t for Travis I might consider falling in love with him myself. But he’s pretty old, and she was best friends with his wife, who died of Alzheimer’s.”
    “God bless,” Lucy said, because we both have a tender spot for anyone with any kind of dementia.
    I was still thinking of Max, and I drifted over to the doorway, carrying the phone out onto the terrace. The sun hadn’t yet crested over Monte Solaro, and the rocks and tide pools down below were deep in shadow. The Bay of Naples was layered with morning haze, a film of white gauze over dark blue. In the cliff’s shadow I saw a figure, walking along the rocks above the tide line, bending down, picking something up, and flinging it into the sea.
    “Are you sleeping?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the person.
    “Sort of. I’m staying at Beck’s.”
    “Good,” I said. I’d told Travis everything, so he and his mother would be looking out for her. “How’s the sleepwalking?”
    “I don’t think I’ve done any,” she said. “Pell, can I speak to her?”
    “She’s not here this second, but yes, of course. Why don’t you get some