Page 77 of Dreams of Falling
Before I had opened the album’s cover, the doorbell rang and the front door opened. I froze. Only a few people I knew would walk into Ceecee’s house without waiting for the door to be answered, and one of them was someone I really didn’t want to see ever again.
“Larkin? Are you here?”
It was Mabry, not Bennett, and I let out a sigh of relief. “I’m in the dining room.”
She appeared in the doorway, holding two lidded cups with the nameGabriel’s Heavenly Ice Cream & Sodaand the logo printed on the side, two pink plastic spoons and napkins clenched in her other hand. “I’ve come to apologize.”
“For Bennett?” I asked.
She looked surprised. “No—although from your expression, it looks like maybe he owes you one, too. We’ll talk about that later.” She held up the ice cream. “This is an apology for Ellis. He would have come himself, but Grandpa said he needed Ellis’s help painting the shed out back.”
“An apology? For what?”
“For throwing up on you. He did say it was an ugly black dress, so it didn’t matter, but I think he could have just been repeating something Bennett said.”
Mabry sat down at the table and placed a cup, spoon, and napkin in front of me. “It’s sea salt caramel and pecan—your favorite. But only one scoop and in a cup, instead of a giant waffle cone like we used to eat.” She made a face. “The older I get, the less my stomach can handle that kind of sugar overload.” Leaning over, she popped open the lids on both cups. “It got kind of soft on the walk over here, but I remember that you like it almost like pudding.”
“Thanks,” I said, grinning. Slipping back into our friendship was like finding a favorite pair of sweatpants that had been shoved into the back of a drawer and forgotten. If only it were possible to eradicate some memories and past experiences that hovered over us like a storm cloud.
I took a big spoonful and put it in my mouth, letting it slide over my tongue and drip down my throat. “Oh. My. Gosh. Just as amazing as I remember. Not that Ellis is the one who should be apologizing, but thank you. Perfect timing, too.”
She sat in the chair next to mine. “What’s all this?”
“Old photographs. Of Ceecee, Bitty, and my grandmother Margaret when they were younger. And a bunch of Mama when she was growing up. They’ve been in the attic this whole time. I guess it’s not entirely my fault that I never asked about my grandmother. No one ever mentioned her. I barely knew she existed.”
Mabry raised both eyebrows but didn’t say anything. I pulled the album in front of me, the dark brown leather dry and cracked around the edges, the spine flap stretched almost to capacity. Seeing my hesitation, Mabry reached over and flipped open the front cover.
“It’s Carrowmore,” I said. Not the ruined Carrowmore that I knew, but the way it once was. The photograph was black-and-white, but the columns gleamed in the sunlight, the trees and grass trimmed and manicured. Glass-paned windows reflected sky and tree limbs, and intact brick steps led invitingly up to the front porch and massive front door.
“Look,” Mabry said, pointing a finger at something on the porch.
I followed her finger to the porch swing, the collapsed and rottenone I’d noticed before on what was left of the porch. Except in the photo, the swing still hung, and the figures of three young girls, not much older than seven or eight, sat on it, the frilly crinolines of their dresses smashed together. It must have been a birthday party, because there were balloons tied to the back of the swing, and the girls all wore ribbons in their hair, and black patent leather Mary Janes with ankle socks on their feet.
“I bet that’s Margaret,” Mabry said, pointing to the girl in the middle. It was impossible to see her features clearly from where the photographer would have been standing, but the girl’s hair shone like spun gold. She eclipsed the two girls sitting on either side so that at first glance, it appeared there was only her.
“And Ceecee,” I said, pointing to a girl with light hair that was clearly blond but not as bright as Margaret’s. Her hands were folded demurely in her lap, whereas Margaret’s were held tightly together and pressed against her chest as if she were full of love and joy and everything good in the world.
“And Bitty,” Mabry said, indicating the other girl. She was putting something in her mouth, and her gaze was facing the photographer. Her hair, though longer than it was now, was shorter than that of her two friends, the bow hanging haphazardly over her ear as if getting ready to abandon ship.
“I bet that’s a Tootsie Roll she’s eating,” I said. “But only because she’s a little too young to be smoking.”
I turned the page. More pictures of apparently the same party, including several other children all wearing party hats and holding balloons, but in the photos of Margaret, she always had the other two girls at her side. Even in the posed photos of Margaret with her parents—my great-grandparents, whose names I didn’t even know—Ceecee and Bitty stood at the edge of the picture, waiting to return to their rightful places at Margaret’s side.
I flipped slowly, eating my ice cream as it melted, as Mabry and I pointed and commented on pictures of the three friends growing up together from elementary school to high school graduation and beyond. There were more pictures at Carrowmore, with a large numbercentered on a white room that looked like a wedding cake. It was for more formal gatherings, such as one where Margaret was dressed as a debutante, the brilliant white of her dress almost blending into the exquisite trim and moldings of the wall behind her.
There were photos from the grounds, too, of the three girls sunbathing on a dock of which there was no trace now, and sitting on the back-porch steps, painting their toenails. There were photos of them by the Tree of Dreams, too, a look of conspiracy gracing the face of each girl.
My favorite photo was of the three of them piled into the front bench seat of an old-fashioned convertible, with Margaret at the wheel, wearing a nearly sheer scarf over her hair and enormous dark sunglasses. She was breathtaking in her elegance and style, her poise and sophistication in direct contrast to her two friends.
“Want me to go get more?” Mabry asked, indicating my empty ice-cream cup. “You’ve been scraping the paper bottom for a while now.”
I glanced down at my empty cup with surprise. “Thanks, but no. I’m good.”
“Look at this one,” Mabry said, stacking our cups in the middle of the table. “If I didn’t know better, I could swear this was you.”
It was a photograph of Margaret in the driver’s seat of the convertible. She was looking out over the door at the camera, her sunglasses off and her hair uncovered. Mabry was right. It could have been me. But I had never in my life worn such an expression. It told the world this was a woman who knew she was beautiful. And knew how to use that beauty to get what she wanted. I sat back in my chair as if I’d been stung.
“I know what you mean,” Mabry said, even though I hadn’t said anything. “Kind of full of herself, you know?”
