Page 75 of A Theory of Dreaming
“Hello, Ms. Sayre?”
“Who is this?” her mother asked, naked irritation in her voice. It was around eight fifteen, which meant she was likely a glass or two deep into her gin. Effy felt her stomach flip; this was the worst possible time for her mother to be interrupted.
“It’s Preston—Preston Héloury. I’m your daughter’s—”
“Boyfriend?” her mother finished.
“Well, yes.” Preston was clinging to the receiver so tightly that his knuckles turned pale. “It’s nice to sp—”
“What’s Effy gotten herself into now?”
At that, Preston stiffened, his shoulders drawing up aroundhis ears. He was angled slightly away from her, so Effy couldn’t fully read the expression on his face. But she heard the barely restrained frustration in his tone when he replied, “Nothing. She hasn’t done anything wrong. She just needs the prescription for one of her medications refilled.”
Her mother let out a long, loud sigh, crackling through the receiver. Perhaps Preston’s indignation had been too palpable. Effy’s stomach knotted with worry. If her mother refused—
“And I suppose it’s anemergencynow, isn’t it?” She dragged out the word, her tone labored with annoyance. “Because she didn’t have the foresight to call sooner...” A pause. “Is she all right?”
Preston glanced at her for a long moment. Effy felt as if she were frozen, rooted to the ground.
“She’s fine,” Preston replied at last. “She just needs the prescription filled. Could you please give her doctor a call, or give me the number so I can—”
“Listen,” her mother cut in. “I can see that you care about her. It’s very kind. But Effy needs to learn how to take care of thingsherself. How to get betterherself. It’s not fair to you to take on this burden. It’s generous of you, to have even gone this far. But just because you love her doesn’t mean you can help her. It doesn’t mean you can save her.”
Preston fell silent. He did not speak for so long that Effy worried her mother would give another disgusted sigh and hang up, but there was noclickof the receiver. There was only the sound of the wind, beating at the glass of the telephone booth, making it shudder around them. Her damp hair had begun tofreeze in the cold, tiny crystals of ice forming like dewdrops on morning grass.
Effy remembered what it felt like, to be this cold. She remembered sitting on the riverbank, staring down at her hands as her fingertips grew redder and redder. Her pain then had been partially eclipsed by bewilderment, by a child’s dim understanding of the world. She had thought her mother would be back at any second.
And Effy remembered the exact moment she realized she would not. She looked up from her numbing fingers and out over the dark, surging water, iridescent under the moonlight, like a serpent’s tail. She had wished for another savior and then there he was, his crown of bones rising from the waves. His hand outstretched, reaching, reaching.
Effy squeezed her eyes shut, as if she might be able to trick herself into believing again. As if she could will the Fairy King back to her. But when she opened her eyes, there was only Preston, clutching the receiver in a white-knuckled grip.
“Just give me the number, please,” he said—hollowly, bitterly. “Then I won’t bother you again.”
Her mother said something in reply, but Effy could no longer make out any words. Her hearing had grown muffled; there was a hum of static in her ears, drowning it out, holding the world at a distance.
Free me, Antonia had written, and if Effy managed to speak, it was what she would have said, too.How much longer must I endure this posthumous existence?
Outside the telephone booth, the wind howled on and on.
Twenty-Six
There are versions of the story where you save her. You climb the ivy to her tower and she follows you down again—neither of you look back. When the waves drag at you and the storm beats down, you keep hold of her hand. You escape the flooding city moments before it crumbles into the sea. You kiss her and she wakes. You find a horse, a carriage, a ship, or even just a hatch in the floor.
But the versions where you lose her are the oldest stories in the world. The ones where you fall, where you drown, where you let go of her hand. Where you kiss her but she remains as cold and still as stone. There are no horses or carriages or ships to bear you away. There is no hatch in the floor.
—from “The Prophecy,” by Taylor Cardew, collected inThe Scribe Review: A New Journal for Creative Nonfiction, 210 AD
The nighttime sky was cloudy, charcoal gray and starless. As Preston hung up the phone and exited the booth behind Effy, he felt a slow sense of dread unfold from him. He was not naive enough to believe that Effy had not heard every word her mother had spoken.
He had managed to get the doctor’s number from her, eventually. Her mother’s voice had grown slightly slurred by the end—she was drunk, but what did it matter? Preston had been drunk enough times to know that honesty came most easily three glasses deep. He was also not naive enough to think that her mother had not meant everything she had said.
Just because you love her doesn’t mean you can save her.
Preston had stammered his way through the rest of the call, his tone low and unabashedly furious. If her mother noticed, she didn’t comment on his vitriol. Perhaps it had been too subtle after all. But what else should he have done? Cursed her? Slammed down the receiver in furious protest?
Maybe. He looked at Effy, standing still in the street, her lips nearly blue. He wanted her to know it wasn’t true. That he would never believe it. And yet when he tried to speak, he found the words strangled.
His vision suddenly blurred, as if from tears, though none were pricking his eyes. He wondered briefly if he had begun to need his glasses again after all. But it was merely the underwater world, surging up in place of the real one, marble walls rising around him, statues arranging themselves in their niches. In that world, Effy was safe. In this one—
