Page 9 of Dreams of Falling
As if I hadn’t spoken, both women were already opening their doors, rocking slightly to get the momentum to exit the car. “You wait here, Larkin, for your daddy and Bennett,” Ceecee said. “Bitty, you go to the tree, and I’ll go inside. If you see Ivy, give a shout.”
I’d opened my mouth to argue when I spotted my mother’s navy blue Cadillac. Ivy had always driven the same car, just a newer model each year. Daddy bought her one annually, on the same day as his dental exam. He always said both were important to his well-being—keeping his teeth in shape and knowing that Mama was safe out on theroad. If I hadn’t known any better, I might even have thought they had a good marriage.
The back end of the car protruded from the other side of the house, making me think she’d been on her way out before deciding to stop. Or maybe she’d thought she’d missed something.
“Mama!” I ran toward the car, knowing how it would smell (new leather and Mama’s Aqua Net hair spray) and how it would look (scrupulously clean, since Daddy vacuumed and washed it just about every day). “Mama,” I shouted again as I reached the car, running to the driver’s side to yank it open.
I stared inside, waiting for the sight of my mother’s purse on the passenger seat and her keys in the ignition to register. Then I looked in the backseat and popped the trunk, just in case.
“Is she here?” Bitty asked, panting with exertion, as she reached me, her face dewy with perspiration. Several yards behind her came Ceecee, pressing a tissue to her forehead and looking like she might pass out.
I shook my head. The panic I’d been pushing back ever since I’d received Ceecee’s phone call in New York was rising up in me. “Did you bring your phone?” I asked Ceecee as she caught up to us, wheezing.
She nodded.
“Good. Call Daddy. Tell him I found Mama’s car and that I’ve gone inside to find her. You two are going to wait right here.”
The brick steps, more holes now than bricks, led to a wooden door that might once have been painted black. The four window rectangles at the top were broken, and a hole gaped where the knob should have been.
Ceecee found her voice. “Where did you learn to be so bossy and opinionated?”
Without responding, I climbed the steps, carefully placing my feet on whichever brick looked more permanent than its neighbors.
“She was raised that way,” Bitty said, and I couldn’t tell whether her tone was full of admiration or condemnation. Not that it mattered. It had been the ruin of me and not something from which someone could easily recover.
I pushed open the door and listened as the hinges protested. Inside, it smelled of smoke, and damp wood, and the passage of time. Splinters of smudged light came in through broken windows, the remaining glass covered in grime. The room I’d entered was open, most likely a sunroom once, surrounded by windows and filled with plants, the view of the oak tree and the river the only art and window treatments. I moved forward carefully, stepping over moth-eaten rugs and broken furniture, and found myself in what must have once been an impressive central hallway.
A curved staircase crept up one side of the wall, its banister solid and elegant despite the mildew-covered wallpaper and the missing risers, the wood having long gone to termites. I looked up and saw a darkening sky, the edges of the ceiling peeled back in charred lines, the floor around me covered in old soot and ground-in ash.
“Mama?” I called, my voice too quiet, as if I were afraid to wake whatever was left there. “Mama!”
Only the scurry of unseen animals rippled through the dusty silence.What happened to you?I turned slowly, taking in the scorched and ruined house, wondering why my mother had come there. And why she’d brought me there when I was a girl.
Then I stopped, teetering off balance, and grabbed the banister to keep from falling into a gaping hole I’d thought was a shadow on the floor. The wood appeared fresh and dry, the pale blond color a garish smear against the blackened and soiled floorboards.
“Mama!” I shouted. I dropped to my knees and peered into the utter blackness beneath me. With shaking hands, I pulled out my cell phone and turned on the flashlight.
The circle of light illuminated the prone figure of a petite woman wearing purple sandals and a pair of jeans, her wavy blond hair matted with red and covering her face.
“She’s here, she’s here!” Not wanting to turn my attention away from my mother in case she moved, I yelled, “Call an ambulance—she’s hurt!”
But my mother wasn’t moving. Her eyes were closed, and one of her arms was bent the wrong way. I couldn’t hold the flashlight steadyenough to see if she was still breathing, and I was glad, because if she was dead, I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to believe that I wouldn’t have the chance to talk to her again, or that all of the years spent not talking had been filled with “laters” that wouldn’t ever get here.
I heard Ceecee and then my daddy’s voice telling her to stay back. Two sets of footsteps made their careful way toward me.
“I’m in the center hall—be careful,” I shouted. “Mama fell through the floor.” I still wasn’t crying, my brain somehow shifting to survival mode. But I could taste tears, hot and metallic at the back of my throat. Tempting me to be less of the person I wanted people to see.
Then my daddy’s hands were on my shoulders, dragging me backward, and another set of arms was holding me back.
“An ambulance is on the way, Larkin. It’s going to be okay.”
It was Bennett, and if it had been anybody else, I would have relaxed into his arms and let myself cry. But I couldn’t. Not then, not ever. I remained stiff, my gaze focused on the hole as we waited for the sound of an approaching siren.
I was led out of the house and stood with Ceecee and Bitty as we watched my mother being taken out on a stretcher and loaded into a waiting ambulance. I felt one knee buckle when Daddy told me she was alive but hurt real bad, that they were taking her to the hospital and I should meet them there.
I began walking toward my car, but Bennett pulled me back, forcing me to look at him. He was just as tall as I remembered, his face achingly familiar, his muddy green eyes as wary and unreadable as the last time I’d seen them on the banks of the Sampit River.
“You shouldn’t be driving. Leave your car here, and I’ll drive you all to the hospital.”
