Page 39 of Dreams of Falling
In these nightmares, instead of standing outside and watching the house burn, I suddenly was inside the house. And I could remember the heat, and the intense orange light, and the sensation of being carried. In the dream, I’d look up at the face above me, but I couldn’t make out who it was, just a voice without a head telling me everything was going to be all right. Every time I had the nightmare, I’d stare into the place where the face should have been, and that was the part of the dream where I’d wake up screaming, as if I’d just seen something I shouldn’t have.
So, no, Larkin, I didn’t tell you about the fire. It has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with me and my past and how very much I didn’t want to infect you with it. But it seems I’ve gone and done it anyway.
Larkin plucks a tissue from the box by my bed and scrubs at her eyes before loudly blowing her nose. How many times have I told her to becareful with the delicate area around her eyes because that’s the first place that’ll show wrinkles? And to try not to sound like a flock of sick geese when she blows her nose? I used to think she did it on purpose, just to annoy me. Now I think that it’s just who she is, doing what needs to be done now without overthinking. How else could a person up and leave her home of eighteen years just like that, and never look back? As sad as it makes me, I’m so very proud of my baby girl.
She tosses the used tissue into the garbage can and begins pacing the room. “I feel guilty about feeling angry with you. I can’t blame you for never telling me about your past, because I never bothered to ask about it. But I wish I’d known about Ellis. That would have explained so much. About you and Daddy. It doesn’t excuse him, but maybe I wouldn’t have been so angry with you. I’d always put you on such a pedestal—an example of a strong, independent woman that I wanted so badly to be. But then you stayed with him, even after he cheated on you. It made me mad. Or maybe I was just looking for an excuse to cut all ties when I left.”
She stands and begins rearranging the flowers and plants on the deep windowsill, using a tissue to brush off the dust clinging to “get well” helium balloons. She leans down to smell the violet hydrangeas, closing her eyes for a moment and looking so beautiful silhouetted against the window that it makes my heart squeeze. Larkin looks at the card on the hydrangeas and smiles. They’re from Carol Anne, my best friend. I remembered how the twins and Larkin were born in the same week, and how excited Carol Anne and I were to be raising our children together. We’d secretly planned for Bennett and Larkin to fall in love and get married, even going as far as planning what music would be played and what color the bridesmaids would wear. But the heart isn’t so predictable.
For the first eighteen years of their lives, Bennett, Mabry, and Larkin were never separated longer than the time it took to be asleep. And even that rarely separated them. Though they did not happen on school nights, sleepovers at Ceecee’s house and at Carol Anne’s were as frequent as rainstorms in July. The children rarely came to my house, as if they knew I didn’t want them there.
I would have loved the sound of running children or laughing teenagers and even the occasional slam of a door. But there was too much of Ellis in Bennett. It was there in the cowlick at the back of his head, and in the creases on his cheeks when he smiled, and the shape of his eyebrows. And, as they grew older, in the way he looked at Larkin. How when they walked, he’d stay close to her, and place his hand on the small of her back before going through a doorway. It was in the way he’d tilt his head close to hers so he wouldn’t miss a word when she was talking.
But Larkin was always looking past him, or through him, really, as if he weren’t there. I probably taught her how to do that, too. Maybe Carol Anne and I shouldn’t have thrown them together so much so that he’d become invisible to Larkin. Or maybe she’d spent her whole life studying me, a woman who was just about an expert in being completely oblivious to what was right in front of her face, believing something better lay just beyond.
Larkin heads toward the bathroom and fills the vase of Ceecee’s roses with water and replaces it by my bedside before sitting down again, her eyes worried. The heels of her shoes are bouncing up and down beneath her chair, sounding like crabs clicking out a warning. “I found the two ribbons in the Tree of Dreams. You put them there, didn’t you? I’m thinking it was you, because they both looked pretty new, and you had another one in your hand when we found you after your accident.”
She stands again and starts pacing the room, rearranging chairs and restacking unread magazines on my bedside table. “I don’t know what they mean, Mama. I need you to wake up and tell me. Who were you wanting to read those messages? Was it me? Or Ceecee?” She turns to face me, throwing her hands out like she used to when losing a game of Go Fish with Bennett and Mabry, like she couldn’t believe she wasn’t the undisputed winner.
“And why were you trying to remove Ceecee as trustee? Did you think she’d do something against my well-being? As for the insurance policy, you were the beneficiary, and it was all put in the trust. I hope you can hear this. I hope it can put your mind at rest a bit.” She stepsto the foot of my bed. “You know, if you’d ever called me in New York, you could have told me everything. And maybe you wouldn’t be lying here in this bed, and I wouldn’t be sick with worry over you. Over everything we’ve never said. I never knew what caring so much about a person was like, but I miss it now as if I did.”
But you wouldn’t have answered your phone.It was true, and it was yet another thing I couldn’t blame her for, because she’d learned it from me. My decision to make her self-reliant and independent backfired, and I have no one to blame but myself.
I feel something warm trickling down my cheek, and when I look closely, I see that I’m crying. There is so much she doesn’t know, so much I don’t want her to know. I feel myself slipping back down into the body on the bed, a reminder that I’m still bound here, and for the first time, I feel as if I have to earn the right to leave. Only, I have no idea how I’m supposed to do that while I’m stuck here in this hospital bed.
A bell beeps somewhere, and several nurses rush in as Larkin jumps up and is forced to stand at the back of the room as they begin to fiddle with the machines that are connected to me with a hundred tubes. My chest feels like it’s split apart, worse, maybe, than it did the day I got the news about Ellis. Right before the crumbling edges of the room fold in on themselves, I think of something Larkin just said. Something about finding two ribbons in the tree. My eyes flutter briefly, and I see the ugly ceiling overhead just as I remember that there should have been only one.
fifteen
Larkin
2010
I sat up in bed with a start, wondering what had awakened me. It was still dark, but pale light crept through the plantation shutters like pink spider legs scurrying across the wood floor and then crawling up the wall opposite my bed.
Tap. Tap.I heard the noise again, unsure what it was or where it was coming from. Still half-asleep, I slid from the high four-poster bed and stumbled to the door. I remembered the scare I’d had at the hospital earlier with my mother, and I felt a stiff chill invade my bones as I threw open my door, fully expecting to find Ceecee and Bitty standing there with sad faces.
Instead, I found the hallway completely empty except for the night-light Ceecee always turned on when I visited so I could find my way to the bathroom at night without tripping on anything.
Tap. Tap.I turned around, more awake now, the sound coming from the window. I strode across the room, threw open the shutters, and peered down at the lawn. Bennett stood there with a handful of pebbles, looking up at me with a wide grin.
I shimmied the old window open, its swollen sash and wavy antique glass forcing me to go slowly. When I finally got it open highenough, I stuck the top half of my body through the opening. “What are you doing?” I asked, feigning annoyance.
I had every right to be annoyed. After tossing and turning throughout the night, constantly checking my phone to see if I’d missed a call from the hospital, I’d finally fallen asleep only an hour before. But there was Bennett, as familiar to me as the river, looking up at me with the smile that hadn’t changed since he was a boy.
“I thought you might like to see the sunrise over the marsh before you leave. You once told me it was the most beautiful thing in the world.”
He twisted his mouth slightly, as if waiting for me to say something. When I didn’t, he reached down and picked up a Thermos from the ground next to him. “I brought coffee. And Mabry made mimosas that I have in the cooler on my johnboat. She had the early shift today, or else...”
I held my hand out to stop him. “You don’t need to sell me anymore. You had me at coffee. Be down in ten.”
I ducked back inside, closed the window, and slid the oversized T-shirt I slept in over my head. I tossed it on the floor in front of my opened and unpacked suitcase and grabbed a pair of running shorts and a running bra before heading to the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth. I considered for two whole seconds swiping on mascara and lipstick, but then I remembered it was only Bennett, who’d seen me looking far worse. I took a pair of old flip-flops from my closet, a pair I remembered from high school, then quietly descended the stairs while scraping my hair back into a ponytail. My feet automatically found the nonsqueaky spots on the old staircase, the movements embedded in my memory from many predawn adventures with Bennett and Mabry when we were younger. When we were still friends.
I let myself out the back door, waiting a moment for my eyes to adjust to the predawn light that transformed the wax myrtles and palmettos into spindly predators emerging from the river.
“You ready?”
Bennett’s voice brought my attention to the path leading downtoward our dock. I walked carefully toward him, watching my step on the uneven terrain. When I reached him, he held out his hand, and I took it without looking up. When we got to the boat, he set down the Thermos. “You remember how to get in without tipping the boat over?”
