Page 20 of Dreams of Falling
“Only if you promise to go at a safe speed. I still haven’t recovered from yesterday. And we don’t need to pick up your daddy. He called me earlier and said he was already there. No news,” she added, in anticipation of their question.
They made the drive in silence. Ceecee’s tight grip on the door handle had nothing to do with Larkin’s relatively sedate pace. She was thinking instead of the ribbon they’d found in Ivy’s hand when she fell, and of Larkin asking what it meant. Ceecee closed her eyes and sent a desperate prayer to a God she hoped had a short memory. She needed Ivy to wake up, to be okay. To listen to her story, to understand. To forgive.
For the first time in her life, Ceecee could feel her age, could sense the tightening of her joints and the slowing of her steps. Every so often, when she’d see a gray hair or another wrinkle, she’d have the disloyal thought that Margaret would have hated getting old.
Of course, Margaret would have found ways to still be beautiful and vibrant. If things had turned out differently, she’d have been dancing on all of their graves. Over the past week, the three of them and Mack had taken turns sitting with Ivy, talking to her, or reading articles from magazines, watching a steady flow of trauma nurses and doctors check her vital signs and change her position in the bed. It comforted Ceecee, knowing that even if Ivy hadn’t opened her eyes or squeezed a finger or wiggled a toe, things were being done to make her better.
She closed her eyes even tighter, making another bargain with God. If Ivy woke up, she would tell her everything. Of course, the fact that Ivy had been found at Carrowmore with that ribbon in her hand meant that she already knew.But how? And what?
Had Ivy been angry when she’d gone to Carrowmore? Angry at Ceecee over what she’d somehow discovered about Margaret? The thought made it so much worse.
At the hospital, when it was Ceecee’s turn to sit with Ivy, she set the vase of flowers on the table next to the bed, then pulled out her knitting. It was a skill she’d learned during one of Ivy’s phases, when Ivy had wanted to make sweaters for Larkin, living up in New York. Ivy had never made it past one long sleeve, and Ceecee had thought she’d hang up her own knitting needles for good, too. Yet here she was, working on Ivy’s unfinished sweater, pretending to be calm enough to remember how to knit one, purl two.
After the nurses left them alone, Ceecee pulled her chair closer to Ivy. “Mama’s here, baby girl. Everything is going to be all right, I promise. I brought you some of my tea roses.” She slid the vase closer to the edge of the side table so Ivy could smell them. “They just bloomed in the last couple of days. Open your eyes, Ivy, so you can see them. Please. Please open your eyes.”
She waited for a response, but Ivy remained still, her skin waxlike and stretched taut over the fine bones of her face. Tubes ran in and out of her, helping her breathe and eat. She looked more like the little girl she’d been, and Ceecee’s heart squeezed in her chest, wringing out memories of this child she’d always loved as if she were her own.
Sitting back in her chair, Ceecee let the ball of yellow yarn rest on her lap. “You probably have questions for me. Questions about your mother.” Ceecee touched Ivy’s hand, the skin cool under her fingers. Leaning closer, she whispered, “Please wake up, Ivy. Please. I need you to look at me and tell me you forgive me.”
She sat back again and picked up the yarn and her knitting needles while she thought for a moment of a good place to start.
•••
Ceecee
MAY 1951
Ceecee leaned into the mirror, picked up the red lipstick Margaret had given her, and applied it to her lips, just the way Margaret had shown her. Carefully, she closed the lid and placed it inside the small clutch bag Margaret had loaned her, then smiled at her reflection. She didn’tfeel like Ceecee Purnell anymore. She was the young, wild woman who’d spoken to a man she didn’t know at a gas station and swung her hips as she’d walked back to the car.
“You look divine, Ceecee. You really do,” Margaret said, admiring her handiwork. She’d styled Ceecee’s hair in shiny, thick waves and loaned her a pale blue eyelet-embroidered batiste dress with a becoming draped bodice and matching shoes. It was the most beautiful dress Ceecee had ever worn, and even with the short bolero thrown over her bare shoulders, she still felt a little scandalous.
“Aunt Dottie says things are a lot more casual at the Ocean Forest than they were before the war, so we don’t have to wear long gowns, but I think we look glamorous,” Margaret said. “And you really do look lovely, Ceecee. Now, when all the handsome gentlemen ask me who is that divine woman I’m with, I’m going to tell them your name is Sessalee. You look too regal to be just a Ceecee.”
Bitty, standing next to Margaret, nodded her agreement. “I agree. And here, take one of these. When one of them approaches, put it between your lips so they’ll light it.” She took a pack of Lucky Strikes out of her purse and handed one to Ceecee. “Cigarettes make everyone look more sophisticated.”
Ceecee frowned at the cigarette a moment before accepting it, trying not to think of what her mother would say. “Thank you, Bitty. I’ll try to remember. But from what Margaret has told me about how to sit and smile and flirt, I think my head is almost too full for one more thing.”
She giggled, partly on account of the champagne—Margaret had found a bottle in her uncle’s basement crawl space, which Margaret said he called his wine cellar. She promised he wouldn’t miss it, and if he did, he’d give her a conspiratorial wink and never tell her mother.
“Will they be playing any of that ‘dirty dancing’ music?” Ceecee asked, half hoping the answer would be yes. She’d overheard her parents talking in the parlor one night about the music some young people were now dancing to, and how some jurisdictions were threatening arrest of any person found dancing to it. Bitty had taught her and Margaret how to jitterbug, but apparently the new dance stepsinvolved “mimicking the act of procreation.” Her father had used the word “lascivious,” a word he usually saved for sermons involving fornication and adultery. It had sent her right to Bitty, whose family had a library full of books and their own dictionary on account of her father being the principal of the school, where’d they’d learned what “lascivious” meant.
“I certainly hope so,” Bitty said, taking a drag from her cigarette and blowing a smoke ring—something she’d spent a lot of time practicing. Her parents allowed her to smoke at home; they considered her an adult and old enough to make her own decisions. Ceecee hoped no one ever mentioned that to her mother, or she’d be forbidden to see Bitty ever again.
“At the Ocean Forest Hotel?” Margaret asked, crooking her eyebrow Scarlett O’Hara style. “I sincerely doubt it.” She dabbed some of her aunt’s Joy perfume behind her ears before handing the bottle to Ceecee. “They’re still strictly old-school. There was a joint on the colored side of town called Charlie’s Place where they played all the new music, but the KKK raided it just last year. I’m sure there are other places we can find new music, but it won’t be at the Ocean Forest.”
“Have you been before?” Ceecee asked, trying not to feel guilty about the perfume. She placed a tiny dab behind one ear before handing it back.
“When we visit my aunt and uncle, we go there all the time. It’s very upscale and elegant—they called it the ‘million-dollar hotel’ when it was built in the thirties.” Margaret angled her eyebrow again. “Maybe we’ll see a movie star or two. Aunt Dorothy was pretty sure she saw John Wayne in the lobby last season. But he stepped into an elevator, and it closed before she could reach it. She wouldn’t even run for a movie star.”
Bitty crushed her cigarette in a crystal ashtray. “I say it’s time to go. I’m famished, and I want to make sure we have time to eat before the dancing begins. I heard that couples can dance under the moonlight on the Marine Patio, and I swear if nobody asks me to dance, I’m going to do the asking.”
Ceecee stared at her friend, the champagne taking the edge off hershock. “Surely you wouldn’t, Bitty! That’s what fast girls do. And your behavior will reflect on us, too.”
Before Bitty could reply, Margaret placed her hand on Ceecee’s shoulder. “Ceecee’s right, Bitty. Which means when you want to ask a boy to dance, whisper it in his ear instead of shouting it across the table.”
Bitty and Margaret laughed, and Ceecee, unsure what to do, picked up her champagne glass and took a long sip. Then she picked up her Canon camera, a graduation gift from her grandparents, and took a picture of Margaret and Bitty. It was the first photograph of the trip, and she hoped she’d brought enough film, because she imagined filling an album.
The Ocean Forest Hotel was exactly what Ceecee had envisioned, with its impressive white-painted brick façade and red roof, a tall tower in the center surrounded on both sides by long wings filled with arched windows. A Federal portico protruded from the front of the building, as gracious as any mansion Ceecee had ever seen.
