Dreams of Falling

by Karen White

  “Good,” said Margaret, sliding off the side of the bed. “After we’ve thought long and hard, we need to paint our dreams on our ribbons. Whatever you want your life to be.”

  She smiled beatifically. Ceecee looked at the ribbon in her lap and frowned. Bitty’s parents were allowing her to study art after graduation, and Margaret had been bombarded with marriage proposals from eligible young men with pedigrees and social standing since her debut the previous season. She’d been accepted at Wellesley, too, but only because a senator’s wife (her goals at least were hand in hand with her parents’) needed a good education.

  But Ceecee’s future hadn’t been discussed. Not because it didn’t matter, but because it was a forgone conclusion. She would marry, hopefully someone she could tolerate, someone who wasn’t too hard on the eyes—and not the overeager, Brylcreem-slicked Will Harris, who was ten years older and already giving her meaningful glances during Sunday church services. But so far, he was the only potential candidate, any other possible suitors being shy of approaching the pastor’s daughter and passing muster under the hawkish eye of her mother.

  Margaret must have seen Ceecee’s frown. She leaned forward, put her hand over hers, and squeezed. Ceecee’s mother called Margaret superficial, but at times like this, Ceecee knew it wasn’t true. Just because a person was born perfect didn’t mean she didn’t see or sympathize with the imperfections in others. “Don’t think of the realities, Ceecee. Think of possibilities and dreams. Of things you can’t even imagine yet. And write those down.”

  “That’s easy,” Bitty said, uncapping a jar of red paint and settling herself on the wide-planked pine floor, a ribbon stretched out in front of her. They watched as the tip of her brush formed precise red letters: I dream of being a significant artist.

  “Don’t you mean a great artist?” Margaret asked, the bridge of her perfect nose wrinkling.

  “No,” Bitty said. She was never afraid to disagree with Margaret. Despite her stature, she’d been raised to have an opinion and not to be afraid to voice it. And Margaret was smart enough to realize that she needed someone like that in her life.

  Bitty continued. “‘Great’ is subjective, and I’d never know if it was true. But if my art has meaning to me and to others, then it will be significant.” She balled up two blank petticoat strips and slid them away from her. “That’s all I want.”

  Margaret turned to Ceecee. “Then it’s your turn. Think hard. Remember—consider the possibilities of the rest of your life.”

  Ceecee stared at her friend, pinpricks of anger tightening her jaw. It was so easy for Margaret. She was a Darlington. Their world was a tidal basin full of oysters, each containing a perfect pearl. Ceecee, no matter how much she might choose to dream, had been born into a life as predictable as the tides.

  With a smug burst of defiance, Ceecee began to paint the words with the brush Bitty handed her, keeping the letters only as big as her dreams allowed.

  I dream of marrying the perfect man—handsome, kind, and with good prospects, and my love for him will be endless.

  Ceecee placed the brush in the empty jar Bitty slid in front of her, then glanced up at Margaret. Her friend gave her an odd look but didn’t criticize. “It’s your turn,” Ceecee said.

  “I’ve already done mine,” Margaret said with a sly grin.

  She waited until Bitty and Ceecee were once more sitting on the side of the bed, the painted ribbons drying on the floor. When she was sure she had their full attention, she cleared her throat dramatically. “And now for my big graduation present for both of you.”

  She watched their faces with her bright blue eyes, until Ceecee couldn’t take the suspense anymore. When the three of them went to the movies, she was always the one with her hands over her eyes during the scary parts.

  “What, Margaret? Tell us!” she shouted.

  “I’ve gotten permission from Mama and Daddy and my aunt Dorothy for us to stay with my aunt and my uncle Milton for a whole two weeks at their house in Myrtle Beach the day after we graduate! Mama said she’ll smooth it over with your parents—you know how good she is at that—and we can take her Lincoln Cosmopolitan convertible!”

  They squealed with excitement and jumped around the room, avoiding the wet paint, their arms thrown around one another. This would be the trip to say good-bye to their girlhoods, Ceecee thought. To embrace the women they’d someday become. And maybe have some fun along the way.

  Margaret ran to her dresser drawer and pulled out a rolled-up ribbon. “Hurry, y’all. It’s going to rain, and we need to get this done before Mama makes her phone calls.” She stopped, facing them with a solemn expression. “This marks the beginning of the rest of our lives. I want you both to always remember this moment.”

  They raced down the curving front stairs, through the wide central hall to the back door, which had been left open, a screen filtering in the scent of rain and the tidal river at low tide. Angry clouds sat on the horizon, casting out the sun and dulling the colors of the river and marsh.

  As they ran, Ceecee looked back—just once. She loved seeing the great house of Carrowmore from a distance and never tired of its graceful lines and perfect symmetry. But the clouds had dimmed the vivid brightness of its white paint, making the old house and familiar landscape appear as a fading memory.

  Hollowed-out gourds hung from the limbs of the river birches, elms, and oaks that dotted the lawn past the formal gardens. It was near sunset, and a large flock of purple martins dipped and swirled as they returned to the gourds, their nests for the night. Ceecee stopped for a moment to look up, hearing the chirps and rattles. She realized she’d never hear them again without remembering right now, this threshold they were all crossing.

  The ancient oak tree, with its sweeping drapes of moss, waited at the end of the lawn near the river, its arms seemingly outstretched in welcome. Margaret walked right up to the opening in the trunk and stuck her ribbon inside.

  “Hurry—the rain’s going to start any minute, and I’ve just washed and set my hair.”

  “But won’t somebody be able to reach in and take ours out and read them?” Bitty said.

  Margaret shook her head. “The birds will come and take them and use them in their nests. Granddaddy used to say they were the go-betweens from this world and the next. You want them to take your words and bring them where they need to go.”

  “What does yours say?” Bitty said.

  As she spoke, a streak of lightning flitted across the sky, and a fat drop of rain landed on her cheek.

  “Hurry,” Margaret said, already taking two steps back toward the house.

  Bitty and Ceecee rolled up their ribbons and stuck them inside the tree, neither indicating how crazy this was. Margaret Darlington had the kind of power that made sane people do insane things.

  The sky opened up with a sudden, drenching downpour as they ran back across the lawn to the old white house.

  “What did you put on your ribbon?” Ceecee called again, her voice nearly drowned out by the loud bark of thunder above.

  Margaret laughed her laugh that always turned heads, throaty and melodic like a movie star’s. “The same thing you did!” Her long legs helped her overtake her two friends, so that she made it to the back porch first, her blond hair darkened by the rain to the color of sea oats in autumn.

  A strong wind pushed at Ceecee’s back, and an odd sound floated through the rain toward her. She stopped and turned, saw the birdhouse gourds swaying from their tethers, their round holes like tiny mouths opened in surprise as they keened in the wind.

  Shivering, Ceecee began to run again, spotting Margaret on the porch, dripping with water. She looked more beautiful than ever, her hair slicked back, revealing the fine bones of her face. Ceecee felt anger again, at the “more” Margaret always seemed to achieve without trying. Angry, too, that the wish she’d carefully written on the ribbon
had to be shared.

  It didn’t occur to Ceecee until much, much later that all legends and myths have a drop of truth in them. And that she should have listened to her mother about being careful what she wished for.

  four

  Larkin

  2010

  On the hour-and-a-half drive from the Charleston airport to Georgetown, I thought I’d get acclimated to being home. I listened to the radio, eventually settling on a station playing mixed rock hits, songs I could identify before the first chorus. There was something reassuring about that, a reminder that I hadn’t completely shed my skin.

  It had been nearly a year and a half since I’d been to South Carolina, having skipped the past Christmas visit. I’d said I had plans to go skiing with friends. It was a lie, but sitting home alone in my Brooklyn apartment was so much easier than returning to my childhood. Each visit was like slowly peeling off a Band-Aid, and my pattern of avoidance was now a habit.

  After landing in Charleston, I sped up Highway 17, worry over my mother pressing my foot a little harder on the gas pedal. I made the mistake of rolling down the windows. As soon as I caught the redolent scent of the marsh and saw the first roadside sign advertising butter beans and bait, I knew I’d traveled much farther than the six hundred or so miles separating me from New York. Whoever said you could always go home again had never met my family.

  Both Bennett and my daddy called twice while I drove, but I didn’t answer, citing road safety as my reason. Like I needed one. At least by the time I pulled into Ceecee’s front drive, I’d managed to stop crying and pretend I had it all together. I’d had a lot of years to practice.

  Now, not ten minutes after I’d arrived, I was heading down Ceecee’s driveway again. Ceecee had promised to tell me where we were going while I drove, but she and Bitty were too busy interrupting each other for much of the story to emerge intact.

  “One at a time,” I shouted, the long travel day and my lack of coffee catching up with me. “You first,” I said to Ceecee, knowing she’d expect that.

  “We’re going to your grandmama’s old house. The place where your mama was born.”

  “Carrowmore? I thought it burned years ago.”

  Ceecee shared a look with Bitty. “It did. But the ruins are still there.”

  I glanced at Bitty in the rearview mirror. “I don’t understand. The land was given to the state before I was born. We don’t even own it anymore. Why would my mother be there?”

  Bitty’s eyes went wide. In the passenger seat, Ceecee bent her head, studying her hands. The nails were clipped sensibly short, but she wore pale pink polish on them, the same shade she’d worn ever since I could remember. It never ceased to amaze me how little things changed.

  “What?” I said. “What am I missing?”

  Bitty leaned forward and placed her hand on my shoulder. “Your family still owns Carrowmore and all the property down to the river. It’s a dangerous place, so everyone agreed we’d make sure you understood it wasn’t a place for you to go.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said again, the shock of Bitty’s words hitting me. Not for the first time, I found myself wishing that my family wasn’t so complicated. That I wasn’t so ignorant. That I was the orphan I pretended to be in my new life in New York.

  “I wish I hadn’t come back,” I said under my breath, the way a child does when scolded.

  Ceecee frowned at me, and I saw her as the old woman she was, seventy-seven, her face lined and sun-spotted from too many years on the beach and in her garden. “Don’t talk like that, Larkin. Your mama could be hurt and needing you. Or worse.”

  Bitty squeezed my shoulder. “And if she is hurt, just tell yourself that there will be a better day, honey. Don’t you forget that.”

  She’d said that before—the day I’d left Georgetown for good and she’d given me the gold chain necklace with a thin circle from which dangled three gold charms: a quill pen, a palmetto tree, and a pointed arrow. Bitty had told me that she was proud of me for embarking on this new adventure, but she wanted to give me something to always remind me of my dreams and of the place I’d always call home, whether I believed it or not. When I’d asked her about the arrow, she’d just said that I’d have to figure that one out. I hadn’t taken off the necklace since and wore it tucked securely under my clothes so no one would ask me about it.

  “Your mama is special, Larkin,” Ceecee said. “Just like you. She’ll get through this, like she’s gotten through everything else in her life.”

  I stole a glance at Ceecee, all anger and tenderness rolled up together like a sweet gum tree seedball, impossible to separate. She’d let me, from an early age, plow through my life with the belief that my Darlington birthright meant I was without flaws, that I was the smartest, the most talented, and the most beautiful. That despite all evidence to the contrary, I was destined to be a star.

  My desire to be like my free-spirited mother, who was never afraid to try something new and who never worried what other people thought, fueled the illusion. For most of my growing-up years, I thought that running roughshod over my peers and loved ones could be excused because I was on the path to greatness.

  My attitude actually won me friends at first, girls who wanted to be swept up into the stratosphere of stardom, until they tired of my false air of superiority and my mastery of the humble brag. Everyone except for Bennett and Mabry. They’d stuck with me up until the moment I discovered they were just like everybody else.

  I turned my head to focus on the road, feeling the weight of Bitty’s hand on my shoulder. It was as if she were helping me hold in the words that threatened to spill out of me.

  As we drove, Ceecee spoke about Carrowmore and the origins of its name. There was an oak they called the Tree of Dreams, and once, when Ivy was a little girl, her father had brought her to Carrowmore to put her own ribbon inside the ancient tree.

  “Just that once?” I gripped the steering wheel tightly, frustrated and angry. “Just that once, and you think for whatever reason that that’s where she must be now?”

  Bitty spoke up from the backseat. “She went more than once—quite frequently, actually, as soon as she learned to drive and could get there by herself.”

  Ceecee looked sharply at her old friend. “How do you know that?”

  “Ivy told me. She said she went there to feel closer to her mother. To Margaret.”

  Crossing her arms over her chest tightly, Ceecee said, “She never told me that.”

  “She didn’t want to sound disloyal to you.”

  I sensed Ceecee stiffen beside me. She leaned forward, bracing both hands on the dash. “Slow down—you need to take the next right. It’s a small road and easy to miss.”

  “I’m surprised you remember how to get here,” Bitty said softly.

  “Maybe Ivy’s not the only one who visits.”

  Scrubby pines crowded together on each side of the two-lane highway, blocking from sight everything that lay beyond. It had never occurred to me before that parts of the Lowcountry preferred to remain hidden from outsiders, keeping their secrets like an evening primrose before dusk.

  “Turn here,” Ceecee said.

  “I know.” I’d already begun to turn the car, knowing this road, this break in the trees. The crunch of car tires over sand and loose rocks brought back memories I hadn’t known I had. I felt both of the older women watching me, and said, “I’ve been here before. Not in recent memory, but I’ve been here.”

  Without being told, I curved left at a Y in the road, noticing how the trees and undergrowth huddled closer, like children whispering.

  I want to show you a secret. It was my mother’s voice. I could see her in the driver’s seat, and me as a little girl, sitting next to her, the shoulder strap of the seat belt digging into my neck as I strained to see over the dashboard.

  “I’ve been here before,” I said
with conviction now, unable to determine whether the recalled scents of an overgrown garden were remembered or real.

  Two brick posts stood sentry on either side of the narrowed road, appearing to hold back the vegetation. Large black iron hinges clung to them, ghosts of a once-imposing entrance. Missing mortar and broken bricks told of a losing battle with the elements.

  The sun dipped behind a cloud, casting us in shadow. My cell phone rang. I glanced at it in the cup holder. “It’s Daddy. Please answer it, Ceecee. Tell him where we are just in case we lose our signal.”

  As she did, I pressed my foot harder on the accelerator, hearing the rocks spit out behind us. Mama was here. I knew it. I felt it. I was back in my dream again and falling, waiting to hit bottom.

  “He’s on his way,” Ceecee said. “He’s bringing Bennett.”

  I almost slammed on the brakes. “Why?”

  She gave me a sidelong glance. “Because we might need help.”

  I pressed harder on the accelerator, the car lurching forward. The overgrowth moved away from the road, now two strips of sand with a grassy line between them, and then the pines and Chinaberry trees gave way to a long line of elderly oaks, their arthritic backs hunched over the road while their geriatric shawls of moss hung listless in the humidity.

  I wanted to ask why Bennett would be with my father, or why both had been trying to reach me. But I was distracted by what seemed to be hundreds of gourds hanging from poles and tree branches, their man-made holes appearing to stare at me with rounded eyes and mouths of surprise. I remembered them. I remembered being afraid and my mother telling me about the purple martins and how they relied on humans for their homes, because after hundreds of years of human intervention, the little birds had forgotten how to build their own nests.

  And I remembered my small hand tucked into my mother’s as we headed toward the oldest tree, down by the river, its trunk wider than our car. I hadn’t forgotten, and the sight of the gourds brought it all back.