Page 5 of Dreams of Falling
“Come on,” Ceecee said, grabbing her flip phone and the keys to her Cadillac off the counter. “We’ll tell you about it on the way.”
“On the way where?” Larkin plucked the keys from her hand. “I’ll drive—you talk. Just tell me where we’re going, and I’ll get us there as fast as I can.”
•••
Ceecee
APRIL 1951
The three girls—or “women,” as Ceecee’s mother insisted on calling them now that they were all eighteen—sat on top of the eyelet bedspread on Margaret’s four-poster rice bed, a fluffy tulle petticoat and three manicure scissors between them. Graduation from Winyah High School was only a month away, and Margaret had invited Ceecee and Bitty to Carrowmore for the weekend, promising a big surprise.
“Won’t your mama mind?” Ceecee asked, knowing with her whole heart thathermother would mind—very much. As the wife of the Methodist church’s pastor, Mrs. Tilden Purnell was all about doing her best to be an example of piety, propriety, and poverty. Not that they lived in poverty—Ceecee’s father never would have allowed that—but Ceecee and her two younger brothers knew their mother took frugalness to a level her Scottish ancestors would have admired greatly. Her proudest achievement was reusing the same soup base for an entire week, adding scraps from previous meals each day. Lloyd, the older of Ceecee’s brothers, insisted that only their father’s position with God allowed all five Purnells to get through that particular week without dying of food poisoning.
Her frugalness extended to her shows of affection toward her children, although Ceecee and her brothers never doubted that their mother loved them fiercely. She simply had a quiet way of showing it—a squeeze of the hand, a smile behind their father’s back as he wassermonizing after some small infraction, an extra slice of cake when no one was looking.
Margaret arched her left eyebrow—she was the only one of the three best friends to accomplish that feat. They’d practiced for hours in a mirror after watchingGone with the Wind. It made her appear even more regal and aristocratic than usual. “Mother wants me to do whatever makes me happiest. Even if it means cutting up a petticoat I haven’t worn yet so we have something to send to the Tree of Dreams.”
Ceecee and Bitty exchanged glances, then picked up their scissors and began cutting the undergarment into strips. Nobody—including Margaret—knew when or how a narrow opening in the trunk of an old oak tree on the river at the edge of the property had become known as a special place for storing dreams, a kind of thin place that acted as a conduit to the other side. All Margaret knew was that it had been called that since the Revolutionary War, when the first Mrs. Darlington had placed a ribbon with messages for her absent soldier husband in a small opening in the tree’s trunk. It had been used in the Civil War—their history teacher refused to let them refer to it by any other name, even if thiswasSouth Carolina and Margaret’s recently passed grandmother had refused to call it anything besides the “Late Unpleasantness”—and ostensibly for any crisis in which the Darlingtons had found themselves since.
Margaret’s mother called the tree divine, placed on the property as a gift from their Creator, a symbol of the family’s good fortune. After all, the Revolutionary War ancestor had come home to father fourteen children, and the family and property had seen nothing but good health and good fortune ever since, even being spared during the Civil War because the Darlington owner at the time was a Mason.
Ceecee’s father called it pagan, this writing notes on ribbons as a sort of good luck token, instead of good on-your-knees prayer. But Margaret stubbornly called it the Tree of Dreams, the place she went when she needed some of the Darlington good fortune to shine on her.
Whatever people called it, it seemed to work. Everything the Darlingtons touched turned to gold. Their men were handsome, their women beautiful, their children brilliant. They were always a little bitmorethan others. If Ceecee hadn’t loved Margaret so much, she might have hated her.
And Ceecee’s mother knew that, and that was why she’d tried to discourage their friendship. Jealousy was one of the seven deadly sins, and even if you disguised the green-eyed monster with admiration or friendship, it would always be a sharp-toothed beast waiting to pounce.
“I brought my paints and brushes like you asked,” Bitty said. Her father was the school principal, and her mother the art teacher. Ceecee was pretty sure that neither her parents nor Margaret’s approved of their friendship with a girl whose mother worked, but the bond that had formed in first grade couldn’t be broken, no matter how much their parents tried.
“Good,” said Margaret, sliding off the side of the bed. “After we’ve thought long and hard, we need to paint our dreams on our ribbons. Whatever you want your life to be.”
She smiled beatifically. Ceecee looked at the ribbon in her lap and frowned. Bitty’s parents were allowing her to study art after graduation, and Margaret had been bombarded with marriage proposals from eligible young men with pedigrees and social standing since her debut the previous season. She’d been accepted at Wellesley, too, but only because a senator’s wife (her goals at least were hand in hand with her parents’) needed a good education.
But Ceecee’s future hadn’t been discussed. Not because it didn’t matter, but because it was a forgone conclusion. She would marry, hopefully someone she could tolerate, someone who wasn’t too hard on the eyes—and not the overeager, Brylcreem-slicked Will Harris, who was ten years older and already giving her meaningful glances during Sunday church services. But so far, he was the only potential candidate, any other possible suitors being shy of approaching the pastor’s daughter and passing muster under the hawkish eye of her mother.
Margaret must have seen Ceecee’s frown. She leaned forward, put her hand over hers, and squeezed. Ceecee’s mother called Margaret superficial, but at times like this, Ceecee knew it wasn’t true. Justbecause a person was born perfect didn’t mean she didn’t see or sympathize with the imperfections in others. “Don’t think of the realities, Ceecee. Think of possibilities and dreams. Of things you can’t even imagine yet. And write those down.”
“That’s easy,” Bitty said, uncapping a jar of red paint and settling herself on the wide-planked pine floor, a ribbon stretched out in front of her. They watched as the tip of her brush formed precise red letters:I dream of being a significant artist.
“Don’t you mean agreatartist?” Margaret asked, the bridge of her perfect nose wrinkling.
“No,” Bitty said. She was never afraid to disagree with Margaret. Despite her stature, she’d been raised to have an opinion and not to be afraid to voice it. And Margaret was smart enough to realize that she needed someone like that in her life.
Bitty continued. “‘Great’ is subjective, and I’d never know if it was true. But if my art has meaning to me and to others, then it will be significant.” She balled up two blank petticoat strips and slid them away from her. “That’s all I want.”
Margaret turned to Ceecee. “Then it’s your turn. Think hard. Remember—consider the possibilities of the rest of your life.”
Ceecee stared at her friend, pinpricks of anger tightening her jaw. It was so easy for Margaret. She was a Darlington. Their world was a tidal basin full of oysters, each containing a perfect pearl. Ceecee, no matter how much she might choose to dream, had been born into a life as predictable as the tides.
With a smug burst of defiance, Ceecee began to paint the words with the brush Bitty handed her, keeping the letters only as big as her dreams allowed.
I dream of marrying the perfect man—handsome, kind, and with good prospects, and my love for him will be endless.
Ceecee placed the brush in the empty jar Bitty slid in front of her, then glanced up at Margaret. Her friend gave her an odd look but didn’t criticize. “It’s your turn,” Ceecee said.
“I’ve already done mine,” Margaret said with a sly grin.
She waited until Bitty and Ceecee were once more sitting on theside of the bed, the painted ribbons drying on the floor. When she was sure she had their full attention, she cleared her throat dramatically. “And now for my big graduation present for both of you.”
