Page 2 of Dreams of Falling
I let my wrists rest on the edge of my desk but didn’t swivel my chair, hoping she’d take the hint. “You can Google it, you know. You can find out a lot about dreams on the Internet. It’s handy that way.” I kept my hands poised near the keyboard.
“Yes, I know, but I just thought it would be quicker if I asked you. Since you’re the expert.” She beamed a smile at me.
With a sigh, I turned around to face her. I wasn’t an expert—only well-read on the subject after years spent trying to analyze my mother’s dreams in an attempt to understand her better. As my delusional childhood self, I’d thought knowing what was in my mother’s head would help me unlock the reasons for the sadness and restlessness behind her eyes. I’d hoped she would be so grateful, she’d include me in her various quests for peace and beauty. I’d failed, but in the process, I’d discovered an avid interest in these windows into our subconscious. It gave me something to talk about at the rare parties I attended, a parlor trick I could pull out when conversation faltered.
“There are probably a million interpretations, but I think it might mean that some ambition in your life, like your career or love life, isn’t progressing as you’d like it to be, and you feel as if something is holding you back.”
Josephine blinked at me for several seconds, and I wasn’t sure whether she either didn’t understand or was in complete denial that anything could ever hold her back. “Thanks,” Josephine said, smiling brightly again, any self-doubt quickly erased. “You going with the group from sales to the Hamptons for the weekend?”
I shook my head, eager to get back to work. I was at the gym every afternoon at five thirty, meaning I had to leave at five. Though it kept me in shape, the habit didn’t allow for much after-hours socializing. Not that I didn’t like my coworkers—I did. They were a fun, creative, and young group, including a smattering of millennials who didn’t act too much like millennials. I just found that I preferred socializing with them in an office setting, making it easier to escape back to my desk if any question went beyond which apartment I lived in and whether I preferred the subway or cabbing it.
“No,” I said. “I think I’ll stay in the city.” It never ceased to amazeme that people who complained about the crowded city always seemed to gravitate toward the same beaches at the same time with the same people from whom they were trying to escape. “The water will be ice-cold, anyway. It’s still only April.”
Josephine scrunched up her nose, and I noticed how nothing else wrinkled. She said she used Botox only as a preventative measure, but from what I could tell, she was well on her way to looking like one of the gargoyle women I saw shopping in the high-end stores on Fifth Avenue. As Ceecee would say, it just wasn’t natural.
“Not any colder than usual,” Josephine insisted. “Come on. It’ll be fun. We’ve got a huge house in Montauk. There’re two queen beds in my room, if you don’t mind sharing with me. You could analyze everyone’s dreams.”
I was tempted. I’d never been part of a group or hung out with girls who rented houses together and took trips on the weekends. For a brief time in elementary school, I’d had a cluster of friends my age, but by the time we reached middle school, they’d formed their own smaller groups, none of which included me. I’d always had Mabry and her twin brother, Bennett, though. Our mothers were best friends, and we’d been bathed in the same bathtub when we were babies. That right there made us best friends, regardless of whether we ever acknowledged it. At least until our senior year in high school, when we’d stopped being friends at all.
The memory made it easier for me to shake my head. “Thanks for the invite, but I’ll stay home. I might rearrange my furniture. I’ve been thinking about it.”
Josephine gave me an odd look. “Sure. Oh, well, maybe it’s for the best. I don’t want to be the one standing next to you wearing a bikini—that’s for sure.”
“For the record, I don’t own a bikini.” I was more a T-shirt-and-boy-shorts type girl. “But thanks for asking. Maybe next time, okay?”
My cell phone buzzed where it lay faceup on my desk. I didn’t have a picture or a name stored in the directory, but I didn’t need to. It was the first cell phone number I’d ever memorized. When I didn’t moveto pick it up, Josephine pointed to it with her chin. “Aren’t you going to get that?”
It was oddly telling that she didn’t excuse herself to give me privacy. I reached over and silenced it. “No. I’ll call him back later.”
“Him?” she asked suggestively.
“My father.” I never took his calls, no matter how many times he tried. When I’d first come to New York, the calls were more frequent, but over the past year or so, they’d tapered down to about one per week—sprinkled across different days and times, as if he was trying to catch me off guard. He wasn’t giving up. And neither was I. I’d inherited the Lanier bullheadedness from him, after all.
“So, you have a father.” Josephine looked at me expectantly.
“Doesn’t everyone?”
The phone started buzzing again. I was about to toss it in my drawer when I noticed it was a different number, another number that I knew and received calls from frequently, but never when I was at work. It was Ceecee, the woman who’d raised my mother, who was pretty much my grandmother in standing. She was too in awe of my working in New York City to ever want to interrupt me during office hours. Unless there was a good reason.
I picked up the phone. “Please excuse me,” I said to Josephine. “I need to take this.”
“Fine,” Josephine said. “Just know that if your body is ever found behind some Dumpster in Queens, we won’t know who to call.”
Ignoring her, I turned my back to the cubicle opening. “Ceecee?” I spoke into the phone. “Is everything all right?”
“No, sweetheart. I’m afraid it’s not.” Her voice sounded thick, as if she had a cold. Or had been crying. “It’s your mama.”
I sat up straighter. “What’s wrong with Mama?” I tried to prepare myself for her answer. Ivy Lanier was anything but predictable. But anything I could have imagined couldn’t have prepared me for what Ceecee said next.
“She’s missing. Nobody’s seen her since yesterday morning. Your daddy said when he got home from work yesterday that she and hercar were gone. We’ve called all of her friends, but nobody’s seen her or heard from her.”
“Yesterday morning? Have you called the police?”
“Yes—the minute I heard. The sheriff has filed a report and he’s got people looking for her.”
My mind filled and emptied like the marsh at the turning of the tides, enough stray bits clinging that I could form my first question. “Where was she yesterday morning?”
A pause. “She was here. She’s been here just about every day for the last month, refinishing her daddy’s old desk out in the garage. She’d come inside—I only know that because she left the kitchen a mess, the drawers yanked out. Like she was looking for something.”
