Page 16 of Dreams of Falling
Feeling emboldened by her lipstick, Ceecee stepped around him. “Excuse me,” she said, wiggling the small silver lever. After a brief moment, the machine rumbled. A slight clicking noise announced that the small door had been unlatched, and he could take his bottle of Coke.
“Well, don’t that beat all,” the man said, retrieving his beverage. He turned to look at Ceecee with deep blue-green eyes she was sure a girl could drown in. She thought she’d just smile and walk away, leaving him wondering who this enigmatic girl might be, but she wasn’t that comfortable yet with the new Ceecee.
Instead, she said, “My younger brother showed me how to do that. He’s real smart.”
He smiled, and his smile was as beautiful as his eyes, with perfect teeth and a cleft in his chin. “I’m guessing brains run in the family.”
She found herself staring at him, her cheeks heating as she tried to think of something to say. She wished Margaret were there. She couldtalk to anyone. But she was also glad Margaret wasn’t there, because Ceecee was pretty sure this man wouldn’t have been speaking to her if she were.
He held out a hand. “My name’s Boyd. I’m from Charleston, but I’m on my way home from medical school at the University of Virginia, having just finished a full-year internship in family medicine. Stopping in Myrtle Beach with my younger brother for a few days. He just graduated with a law degree. Guess we both need a break—don’t think I’ve had one of those since I got out of the army in ’forty-five.”
His smile lost some of its brightness. “Sorry to go on and on. I can’t seem to stop myself when I’m around a pretty woman.”
Ceecee blushed. “It’s nice to meet you, Boyd.” His fingers wrapped around hers, and she couldn’t breathe. She pulled away.
He was looking at her closely, as if he could see beyond the lipstick and wild hair and still liked what he saw. “We’re staying at a guesthouse for a couple of weeks on North Ocean Boulevard. Maybe you could grab a friend and meet us tonight to go dancing.”
She felt suddenly shy and out of her league. Her parents would never have let her go dancing with a boy she’d just met at a gas station, especially if they had never met his parents. “I don’t...”
“I understand,” he said, his voice kind. “You’ve been raised right, and you don’t know me. But I fought in the Pacific, which kind of makes a person forget how they were raised, and I only know one person here in Myrtle Beach, so I’m wondering why I’m here at all. Then I see this beautiful girl, and I lose all my sense. How about I stop by your house and come meet your parents?”
Ceecee thought about him coming to the house and Margaret opening the door. Or about him finding out that they were there unchaperoned. Either way, it would be a disaster.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That won’t be possible.” She stepped back. “Enjoy your Coca-Cola. And good luck to you.”
Ceecee hurried back to the car, turning once, expecting to see him bending down to the bottle opener to open the cap of his Coke. Instead, he was staring back at her with that smile, his blue-green eyes squinting a bit in the sun, but following her just the same.
When Ceecee got back to the car, Bitty looked at her empty hands. “Where’d you put the Cokes?”
“Machine was broken,” Ceecee said, sliding into the seat and taking her time arranging her dress so she wouldn’t have to look at her friend. Bitty always knew when she was lying. “Let’s get to Aunt Dot’s house and figure out what we’re going to do for supper. I’m assuming none of her help will be there, and we’ll have to do for ourselves.”
Margaret punched the gas pedal. “Good plan,” she said. “As long as it’s food my mama won’t allow me to eat at home.”
As Bitty laughed, Ceecee looked back toward the station, hoping to get a glimpse of Boyd, but he was already gone.
seven
Larkin
2010
Before I moved to New York, I’d spent my whole life within one square mile of the historic district of Georgetown, South Carolina, split between my parents’ on Duke Street and Ceecee’s on River Street. They were both older homes, Ceecee’s built around the time of the Civil War and my parents’ around 1900, with lots of creaky floors and nooks and crannies perfect for a little girl playing hide-and-seek. I had my own room in each house; both had walls painted in soft yellow—my favorite color—and had tall canopy beds.
But Ceecee’s house was my favorite. It was where I’d go after school for a snack and to do my homework. It was where I brought my friends, mostly Mabry and Bennett, even though they lived on Prince Street, closer to my parents, and where I went whenever my mama was going through one of her self-improvement phases and decided it was time to try something new. These were the times when she’d turn inside herself and forget things like cooking supper or attending my dance recital. It would make Ceecee mad, but I always knew that Mama was chasing her dreams, and I was okay with it. Because one day I knew she was going to show me how to chase my own.
Mama’s phases were sometimes easy to live with, like when sheturned the library into an art studio and painted still lifes, or when she took sewing lessons and made new curtains for the living room. Her violin phase had been short-lived, mostly because my daddy said her practicing gave him a headache. He didn’t hear the music Mama and I heard beneath the mistakes, the lovely melody hiding just behind her unpracticed fingers. So she’d quit, but it was enough to know that she and I had heard the music anyway.
With no updates about my mother, and none expected for at least another day, I left the hospital and went home with Ceecee and Bitty, despite my father’s hopeful glances and Bitty’s pointed suggestion that I stay with him.
As a consolation, Ceecee invited him for dinner and fixed a large supper of fried chicken, butter beans, and biscuits that nobody had any appetite for, and set the dining room table with her best china and heirloom silver. She and Bitty kept the conversation rolling. Considering the talk was all about my life in New York and I answered mostly in single sentences, it didn’t take long before we were staring at our still-full plates in silence, moving the food around with the occasional scrape of a fork or knife against Ceecee’s Limoges.
Finally, I pushed my plate away after just a few bites, my appetite gone while my stomach twisted with worry over my mother. “Who’s Ellis?” Out of habit, I addressed the question to Bitty. Of the three, she would answer the most directly.
But nobody spoke. My father looked down at his plate; Bitty shared a long glance with Ceecee, and I knew that I had just inserted a pin in the fragile eggshell of my mother’s past. The past I’d selfishly been blissfully ignorant about until I’d seen my mother lying broken beneath a hole in the floor at Carrowmore.
“You really should eat some more,” Ceecee said, standing and retrieving the bowl of potato salad. She scooped out a large spoonful and dumped it on top of the untouched pile already on my plate. “I know how much you love my potato salad. And there’s my mud brownies—the ones you used to eat a whole plate of, remember? I always make sure I have a batch in the freezer, just in case you ever decide on a last-minute visit.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Ceecee always used food to make things better, to soothe me, like a thick grout to cover the cracks in my life. But grout gets old and crumbles, and the cracks are still there, showing themselves when you least expect them. Like now.
