Page 105 of Dreams of Falling
The wind outside pushed at the trees, the loud rustling of the branches like a bristled brush being pulled through hair. Twice she got out of bed and headed toward the stairs. Twice she headed back to her bed without going farther than the top step. She tripped over her pocketbook the third time she rose from the bed, and she heard the bottle of pills hit the wood floor.
Ceecee sat on the edge of her bed, listening to the storm raging outside, and placed one pill on her palm. She saw Boyd’s face in his office as he’d asked her how she was, and heard him telling her that he loved her still. And she heard Margaret’s voice, saying she’d never give up meeting Reggie.
Desperation for an escape from heartache and the oblivion that only sleep could offer raged inside Ceecee. She wasn’t afraid of the storm—she was at Carrowmore, and if the storm got bad, Margaret would come get her. She stared at the pill in her hand for a long time, then placed it on the back of her tongue and swallowed it dry. When sleep still didn’t come, she took one more. After waiting another half hour, restless and wide-awake, the storm tossing itself against the windows and walls of the old house, she thought about taking half a pill. Maybe the original dosage hadn’t been right. Maybe she was more resistant than most. Either way, she needed to sleep.
Sighing, Ceecee shook out one more pill into her hand. She tried biting it in half, then considered going to the kitchen for a knife to cut it. Finally, in tired desperation, she put the whole pill in her mouth, lay back on the pillow, and closed her eyes, waiting for the blessed relief of sleep. It was only as she was finally drifting off that she thought of the candle on her bedside table, a single light in the interminable darkness, and was unable to remember whether she had doused the flickering flame.
thirty-four
Larkin
2010
Sitting at the dressing table in my bedroom and staring at my reflection in the mirror, I absently played with the small cigar box Gabriel had given me, releasing the hidden bottom again and again. I’d already torn two nails, and a third was getting ready to break off.
The yellow dress lay like a puddle of spent moonlight on the floor, its presence a glaring accusation of my stubborn inability to see things as they were. The gold charms on my necklace winked back at their reflection, seeming to mock my inability to figure out who I really was.
My growing-up years had been spent seeing only what I wanted. I’d believed everything Ceecee told me. With Bennett and Mabry in the cheering section, I never had any doubt that what I was seeing was real. Until that day on the boat when I saw everything unfiltered for the first time.
I’d run away because I didn’t see any other options. Besides being unwilling to relive my mortification every time I saw someone I knew from school, I’d lost my two best friends. I needed to start someplace new, to find my own way without effusive praise and blind encouragement. And I had. I’d graduated with honors and found a career I wasgood at. I’d become healthier in mind and body. I thought I’d forgotten the past, my need for applause. My craving for approval and admiration from the one person who didn’t deserve either one. I thought I’d changed.
Sometimes we think we’ve changed when really all we’ve done is grow into the person we were always meant to be.Mabry had said that. I needed to tell her she was wrong. That some people are too stupid and pathetic to change or grow. That some of us are simply destined to continue repeating the same mistakes until we die. Maybe the fantasy world I’d lived in for the first eighteen years of my life had robbed me of the ability to face reality.
I looked at my reflection again, and saw Margaret as she’d been on her trip with her two best friends to Myrtle Beach. She was an enigma to me, her story untold. Or hidden—I wasn’t sure which. Her daughter, my mother, lay in a coma from which there appeared to be no awakening. How disappointed they must be with me, their only living legacy.
I’d thought I’d be returning to Georgetown in glory, a newer and better version of myself. Out to prove something, to fulfill a perverse desire to show the likes of Jackson Porter that I was a woman to be admired, not mocked. That he was no longer out of my league. Of course, if I were really a new and improved version of myself, I would have realized long ago that Jackson was the unworthy one. But that’s the thing with self-denial. Nobody can tell you what an idiot you’re being except yourself.
I closed my eyes, once again feeling the shame and humiliation of the night. The feel of Jackson’s lips on mine. My fists pushing him away. Bennett pulling him from the car, and Mabry zipping up my dress and putting her arm around me as if I were a little child who needed protecting.
My gaze slipped across the floor to my suitcase. I’d decided it was time to go. I’d visit my mother in the hospital one more time, then drive to the airport and take the first flight to New York. I’d come back if there was any change in Mama’s condition, but I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t face Mabry and Bennett after what Jackson had said tonight,and with what they must think about me, knowing I’d willingly gone out with him despite their warnings. I knew I was running away again. At least everyone could agree that was the one thing I was very good at.
My phone buzzed, and I flipped it over to look at the screen. There were eight missed calls from Bennett, and he was in the process of leaving me a voice mail. I didn’t pick up. Every time I saw his name on my screen, all I could think of was the look on his face when I’d told him that everything Jackson had said was true.
I started to place the phone facedown but hesitated when I saw the missed 843 number under Bennett’s. The call had come in while Mabry and I had been getting dressed, which seemed like a million hours before, and whoever it was had left a voice mail.
Already realizing that sleep wouldn’t be an option tonight, I clicked on the icon and listened.
Hi, Larkin. This is Gabriel. I was rearranging the tables and chairs in the shop, and I pulled out the ones in front of your mama’s mural. I was able to get a real good look at all those tiny details she likes to add, and I think we missed one of them the last time you were here—something she painted in a bottom-floor window of the house. It’s another person—a man—staring out the window, and there’s fire behind him. The thing is, he’s carrying something. Looks like a child.So, thought you might want to know, maybe even come by to see. There’s a free cup of frozen yogurt in it for you.
I listened to the message once more, then replaced the phone on top of the dressing table, trying to recall the mural. I remembered the two women in one of the upstairs windows, and another downstairs. Now, according to Gabriel, there was another face inside the burning house. A man. And he was carrying a child. I recalled the mural my mother had painted in my bedroom at my parents’ house, the four martins flying overhead in the painted sky, each carrying a ribbon in its mouth, as if each were transporting a separate message to the thin place.
I stood to head toward the bathroom to shower and dress, butcaught sight of the alarm clock by my bed. It was just past midnight. I felt as if I’d lived a lifetime since I’d headed out for the dance at six thirty. I sat down on the bed, accepting that Gabriel’s shop would be closed and it was too early to visit the hospital. I was about to lie down, when I heard a familiar clattering on my window.
Bennett. I wanted to ignore it, to pretend I was asleep. But my lamp was on, and he’d already seen it. He was the last person—or second to last—I wanted to see, and I couldn’t imagine why he’d want to talk to me. The look on his face as he’d left had spoken volumes.
The sound came again, harder this time, as if he was using larger stones. Afraid he’d break the window, I reluctantly slid it open, then leaned out into the humid night air. Ceecee had left on the back-porch light, so even though his face was shadowed, I could make out Bennett’s tall form standing on the ground beneath my window.
“Did I wake you?” he asked.
Even though he couldn’t see, I rolled my eyes. After all that had happened, that was not what I’d expected to hear. “No, you didn’t. I had to get up to open my window anyway.”
“Funny,” he said. “I wanted to see if you were okay.”
Something wasn’t right about the way he sounded. It was almost like he had a sock in his mouth. “Have you been drinking?”
He stepped back into the light and looked up. “No. Although I’d like to start. Alcohol might sting my lip, though.”
I pressed my elbows into the sill and leaned over for a better look. His face was blotchy and shiny in parts, his mouth swollen. One of his eyes was completely shut. I jerked back, hitting my head on the bottom of the raised window. “Oh, my gosh—what happened to you?” Although I was pretty sure I already knew.
