Page 11 of Dreams of Falling
My therapist in New York had once asked me if I believed my mother loved me. I’d said yes immediately. Of course she did. I’d always felt it, and she’d told me often, usually right before leaving the house for a class or event or art show. She never took me with her, no matter how much I begged, telling me to find my own dreams, that hers were too sad to share. It made her even more irresistible to me, more mysterious. At least until my therapist asked me what it was in my mother’s past that made her so sad, and I couldn’t answer. I still couldn’t.
But I never doubted that she loved me, any more than I doubted that Ceecee and Bitty did, too. I was still working with my therapist to understand how three such women could love me and still mother me into the disaster I’d become.
“Larkin?”
I jerked my head up.
“It is you!” Mabry was still a head taller than I was, just as slender, her hair just as dark, her skin a golden tan.
I considered ducking back into my mother’s room, but that would have been postponing the inevitable. Mabry was never able to resist a challenge. Instead, I attempted a smile and raised a hand in a stupid little wave.
Ignoring my hand, Mabry enveloped me in an unexpected hug, my face pressed against her green scrub top. I remembered my father telling me she was an operating room nurse now, but it hadn’t occurred to me that I might run into her here. She pulled back to hold me at arm’s length, just like Ceecee, her green eyes scrutinizing me. “You look great,” she said, dropping her hands.
“So do you,” I said, looking away, embarrassed by her close examination.
“I’m sorry to hear about your mother.”
I nodded, wondering when she was going to mention the apologyI owed her. I was nine years too late. I found myself looking at the side of her head for evidence of a scar.
She laughed, realizing what I was doing. “Don’t worry. My hair hides it.”
“I came by the hospital to see you. After... Afterward. To see how you were. But you’d already been released and sent home.”
Mabry reached out a hand and squeezed mine. “I know. I understand. I just wish that sometime in the past nine years you’d have thought to call or write or come visit. I have a son, now. He’s four and looks just like Bennett, poor kid.” She let go of my hand, her face serious. “I never expected what happened to drive a permanent wedge between us. I don’t hold on to grudges, you know. They’re like expired milk in the fridge.”
But I do.I looked at her, so content in her green scrubs, her life as perfect as she’d always planned, and the old resentment curdled inside me. I wasn’t the only one who needed to apologize for events she’d moved on from and for which I’d had to rearrange my life.
I jerked my thumb in what I hoped was the direction of the waiting room. “I’ve got to go. We’re still waiting to hear from Mama’s doctor...” I let my voice trail off, unable to explain that the biggest grudge I held was against my younger self, the girl I’d been trying to bury for almost a decade.
“Sure. Despite the circumstances, it’s good seeing you. If you need anything, please let me know. I live on Prince Street—next to my parents. Nothing so exotic as New York for me.” Mabry smiled again, and I wanted to cry for the little girls we’d been before the world’s glaring spotlight eradicated our childish imaginations.
I began to walk away, but Mabry called me back.
“Have you finished your Pulitzer-winning novel yet? I’ve been keeping my eye out for my red-carpet dress. Remember, you said I could go with you to the ceremony.”
I thought I might be sick right there on the hospital linoleum, the emotions of the last twenty-four hours finally catching up to me. I wondered why other people’s minds chose to remember the most obscure and awful things, the ones you’d prefer they forget. Like ayounger version of myself practicing an acceptance speech that would never be given.
“I’ve got to go,” I said without answering, and ran down the hall toward the waiting room sign. I entered without thinking, and both my daddy and Bennett spotted me before I could back out again. Both men stood, making an exit even more impossible, but reminding me, too, of something I’d missed while in New York.
I started to say that I needed coffee, to give me a reason for an immediate retreat, but the doctor who was overseeing my mother’s care exited the room, having apparently spoken to my father. I considered rushing down the hallway to ask him to repeat what he’d said, but I decided against it. It was something the old me would have done. The girl who’d thought that being demanding and rude was the same thing as being assertive. I’d been raised on it, and it had been one of the hardest lessons for me to unlearn.
Instead, I sat down across from the two men. Avoiding Bennett’s eyes and focusing on my father, I asked, “What did the doctor say?”
My father looked older than his fifty-eight years, his suntan beneath the harsh fluorescent hospital lighting making him look yellow. He actually looked like a man worried about his wife, someone he loved. Yet we both knew that wasn’t true.
He cleared his throat. “He told us we need to wait and see. She has a fractured skull, a broken pelvis, and a shattered arm and foot. It’s too early to tell what kind of outcome we can expect. I want to move her to an advanced trauma care center, but her surgeon said we should wait. They’ve got the technology they need here, and the staff is trained to care for trauma victims.”
The words hit me like dull darts, finding their target, then falling to the ground. I wished Ceecee or Bitty were there to guide me. But they’d retreated to the cafeteria. Ceecee had pressed a Little Debbie cake from the vending machine into my hands before she left, telling me I should eat something. Some things never changed.
Daddy cleared his throat. “The doctor said he didn’t expect anything new before tomorrow and that we should go home and rest.” He rubbed the back of his neck like he’d always done when he wanted toavoid meeting my eyes. “I think I’ll go home, take a quick shower. I’m not hungry, but I don’t think I’ve eaten since sometime yesterday.” He forced himself to look at me. “Why don’t you come with me?”
I was shaking my head before he’d finished speaking. “I think I’ll stay here—just in case there’s any change.” I held up the packaged cake. “I have this if I get hungry.”
He stood, shoved his hands into the pockets of his khaki pants. “All right. Call me if you need anything.” For a moment, I thought he’d come over and kiss my forehead, but to my relief he didn’t. He glanced over at Bennett. “You coming?”
Bennett shook his head. “Mabry’s almost done with her shift. I’ll hitch a ride home with her.” He pulled out his car keys and tossed them to my father. “I’ll come by later to get my car.”
Daddy nodded, then with another good-bye directed somewhere over my head, he left the room.
