The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners Read Online Free PDF Page B

Detroit. She spent the night in Grosse Pointe, with the parents of a friend from Farmington. On Monday she went to the funeral, at an Anglican church that looked as if it belonged in the English countryside—built of stone, covered with ivy, cool light slanting through blue stained-glass windows.
    When Taylor saw her, he seemed surprised, but not half as shocked as Lyra herself was. She had never done anything like that in her life, but something had made her want to be present for him. She knew, deep down, even though they’d never been very close, that he would have done it for her. Seeing Taylor walk down the aisle behind his parents’ coffins, she’d wept and felt his loss as if it were her own.
    “Thank you for coming,” he said to her after the blessing at the graveside.
    “You’re welcome. I’m so sorry.”
    “We were close,” he said, looking over at the grave. “I was so lucky to have them as parents.”
    “They must have been wonderful people,” she said.
    He nodded, choked up. She saw that he couldn’t speak. He was filled with grief so penetrating it seemed to come from his bones, and the sight of it made her cry.
    She and Taylor had never dated, never even taken a walk alone together. But she’d seen something of his goodness already: kindness when a friend of theirs was sick in the hospital, care for a teammate who broke his wrist in a game. She had been drawn to him for his warmth, something she’d never gotten at home. Now, on the worst day of his life, he was tender to her.
    “I shouldn’t cry,” she said, taking his handkerchief. “I just wanted to come and be here with you.”
    “I’ll never forget it,” he said. “You don’t know what it means to me.”
    They began to see each other. On weekends he made her pancakes with raspberry jam instead of maple syrup. She took him into the middle of the football field one night and showed him Capella and the Pleiades. He read the comics on Sunday loved Calvin and Hobbes, wanted her to love it too. She did her best.
    Commitment came slowly. Her parents were divorced; she wasn’t sure she believed in marriage, because she’d never seen a way of loving that lasted. Taylor worked as a paralegal, wanting to be sure the law was for him. If so, there’d be law school, then the bar exam. Her mother thought he seemed nice, but she couldn’t comprehend Lyra even contemplating life in Michigan.
    On the summer trip after college graduation, Lyra and Taylor planned a rendezvous in Rome. He and his best friends had family money, but they were taking this trip on their own: backpacking, staying in hostels. She didn’t tell her mother and met Taylor in Trastevere, in a romantic old ostello overlooking the square. They’d lived on his budget—the hostel, spaghetti, cheap bars, long walks, and lots of espresso—instead of hers: the Hotel Hassler, dinner at La Rosetta, shopping on the Via Veneto.
    Her mother’s life felt soulless to Lyra. She swore she’d ditch the fancy ways as soon as she could leave home. Visiting Capri after parting from Taylor, she vowed to have a one-year plan: she’d go home, let Taylor figure out whether the law was right for him or not, then move out of Newport, join him in Michigan.
    Her mother wanted one thing, Taylor another. But what about Lyra? On that trip, Capri’s bright sunlight and morning mists surrounded and enchanted her, made her moods swing wildly, made her feel so alive and at home. The Italian island grabbed her, captivated her as no place on earth ever had. The wild beauty, the damp sea haze, the dazzling blue sea, the riotous flowers, and the English and American émigrés both soothed her soul and fed a strange sense of melancholy. This place was hers alone. She could imagine never leaving, avoiding all strife. She’d stood on a cliff not far from where she now lived, and the way she felt outside matched the way she felt inside.
    Staring out at the intense blue sea, into the unfathomable depths,