Page 73 of Dreams of Falling
“What?” Bennett shouted, cupping his ear as if he hadn’t heard. Despite the sound from the motor, I knew he’d either heard or read my lips, because he kept grinning like the village idiot. He leaned forward and flipped on the sound system, then looked at me expectantly.
“‘Bad Man.’ Pitbull.” I rolled my eyes.
“You never disappoint,” he said before turning to Jackson. “Does she?”
“What?” Jackson shouted. He pointed to his ear. “I can’t hear.”
I shook my head, then looked away from Bennett to watch the water spray up from the sides of the boat. I wasn’t sure what made me look back a few minutes later. Maybe it was the sense of Ellis turning around in his seat, or the feeling of Bennett hopping up very quickly, but by the time I realized what was happening, Ellis had thrown up all over the seat, the floor, and me.
“Aw, man,” Jackson shouted, carefully turning the boat around and heading back to the dock.
Ellis didn’t seem to hear and was now beaming happily, despite his uncle wiping him down with paper towels from a roll he’d found inside an armrest. “I feel good now.”
I smiled at the little boy, glad he was no worse for wear, although I couldn’t say the same for myself. I sat in stony silence, listening to more Pitbull on the stereo until Jackson brought the boat up to the dock again. I ignored Bennett’s offer of the paper towel roll.
Bennett got out first and reached for Ellis, then me. I was about toprotest when I realized that there was nothing salvageable about my outfit and that the smell was beginning to make me feel sick, too.
“I’m sorry, Jackson. Can we try this again?”
He managed a smile. “Of course. Just give me time to clean and deodorize the boat. I’ll call you, okay?”
I nodded and almost leaned in for a kiss before I remembered I was covered in vomit. Bennett’s hand was outstretched for me to take and I wanted so badly to ignore it, but I couldn’t get out of the boat in my maxi dress without help, so I grudgingly took it and allowed him to pull me up onto the dock.
“See you later, Jackson. Sorry about the boat,” Bennett called as Jackson pulled away, waving a hand in either good-bye or resignation— I couldn’t tell which.
I knelt in front of Ellis, trying to ignore the odor emanating from both of us. “You sure you’re feeling better?”
He smiled and nodded.
“Great,” I said, rubbing the top of his head and standing. “Your uncle Bennett is going to hose you off in the outdoor shower at the side of the house. I’ll bring you a towel, and then you can come inside and have one of Ceecee’s brownies if you’re still feeling better, all right?”
“What about me? Don’t I get a brownie?” Bennett asked, his eyes wide and innocent.
“No,” I said, unable to hide the anger in my voice even though Ellis was there. “What is your game here, Bennett?”
His face became suddenly serious. “It’s no game. I just don’t want to see you hurt again.”
I stepped closer to him. “What I do and with whom is none of your business. Stay out of it.”
“And allow you to revert to your adolescence?”
My hand lifted involuntarily, and I would have slapped him if Ellis hadn’t been there watching with wide eyes that were just like his uncle’s.
Without a word, I turned on my heel and marched back to the house, smelling cigarette smoke wafting from the screened porch.
twenty-five
Ceecee
1951
The night before the funeral for Margaret’s parents, Ceecee dreamed of a burial, but she was the one in the coffin lowered into the dark earth. She’d awakened, still smelling the pungent aroma of freshly dug dirt. Despite the predawn hour, she’d been unable to go back to sleep, the lingering sense of helplessness crowding her bones and making them press against her skin. Even fully awake, she’d gasped for air, searching desperately for a way out of the dark hole in which she’d been buried. The dream’s meaning tapped at her brain, its message hidden from her as she struggled to breathe, the sense of something terrible about to happen as real as looking up from the grave and seeing a shovelful of dirt slowly sliding its way into the hole.
Now Ceecee stood in the churchyard at Prince George Winyah Episcopal Cemetery and lifted the black netting on her hat in an attempt to get it to stop making her nose itch. At the Darlington plot, the two freshly dug graves stood out like dark scars on the patchy grass and dried earth of the ancient cemetery, where generations of Darlingtons had been laid to rest for nearly three hundred years.
Ceecee pressed her handkerchief against her cheeks to dab away theperspiration, giving the appearance of wiping her tears. It was a funeral, after all, and they wouldn’t have been out of place. And she’d known Mr. and Mrs. Darlington practically her whole life. The way they’d died had been a tragedy, everyone in Georgetown kept whispering, as if Margaret might shatter should they say it loudly enough.
But Ceecee couldn’t cry. She was too hot and miserable in her black wool dress that already seemed as heavy as armor in the humid air of late May. And her emotions were frayed to a point that seemed beyond tears.
