Dreams of Falling

by Karen White

  “You could have saved me a whole lot of trouble if you’d told me that little tidbit about your childhood. I won’t even get started on the whole Ellis thing. How could you not have told me that you were married to Bennett and Mabry’s uncle? Or that you threw a baby shower for Mabry and that they named the baby after your first husband?” She rubs her hands over her face with those beautiful slender hands that are just like mine. “But it’s the fire that makes me angriest. Do you remember all those years when you had the nightmares about fire and you’d wake up screaming? I thought it was my job to figure out why you’d be dreaming about fires so I could help you and make them stop. What a complete waste of time. You must have thought it so funny, all the things I came up with to explain it, hoping that one of them might make you better.”

  Larkin stands again, her idle hands worrying themselves as she looks for something useful to do. Even as a girl, she’d always been a busy little bee, and it’s not something she learned in New York. I think I’m mostly to blame.

  I want to tell her that I’d never told her about the fire because I didn’t remember it. Not until Mack had his affair. I’d always had a recurring nightmare about watching a house burn and knowing someone important to me was inside, burning with the walls and floors and furniture. But after I found out about Mack, the nightmares changed. It was like the pain and awareness of my own culpability in his infidelity were a key that turned a lock inside my head, waking up a part of my subconscious.

  In these nightmares, instead of standing outside and watching the house burn, I suddenly was inside the house. And I could remember the heat, and the intense orange light, and the sensation of being carried. In the dream, I’d look up at the face above me, but I couldn’t make out who it was, just a voice without a head telling me everything was going to be all right. Every time I had the nightmare, I’d stare into the place where the face should have been, and that was the part of the dream where I’d wake up screaming, as if I’d just seen something I shouldn’t have.

  So, no, Larkin, I didn’t tell you about the fire. It has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with me and my past and how very much I didn’t want to infect you with it. But it seems I’ve gone and done it anyway.

  Larkin plucks a tissue from the box by my bed and scrubs at her eyes before loudly blowing her nose. How many times have I told her to be careful with the delicate area around her eyes because that’s the first place that’ll show wrinkles? And to try not to sound like a flock of sick geese when she blows her nose? I used to think she did it on purpose, just to annoy me. Now I think that it’s just who she is, doing what needs to be done now without overthinking. How else could a person up and leave her home of eighteen years just like that, and never look back? As sad as it makes me, I’m so very proud of my baby girl.

  She tosses the used tissue into the garbage can and begins pacing the room. “I feel guilty about feeling angry with you. I can’t blame you for never telling me about your past, because I never bothered to ask about it. But I wish I’d known about Ellis. That would have explained so much. About you and Daddy. It doesn’t excuse him, but maybe I wouldn’t have been so angry with you. I’d always put you on such a pedestal—an example of a strong, independent woman that I wanted so badly to be. But then you stayed with him, even after he cheated on you. It made me mad. Or maybe I was just looking for an excuse to cut all ties when I left.”

  She stands and begins rearranging the flowers and plants on the deep windowsill, using a tissue to brush off the dust clinging to “get well” helium balloons. She leans down to smell the violet hydrangeas, closing her eyes for a moment and looking so beautiful silhouetted against the window that it makes my heart squeeze. Larkin looks at the card on the hydrangeas and smiles. They’re from Carol Anne, my best friend. I remembered how the twins and Larkin were born in the same week, and how excited Carol Anne and I were to be raising our children together. We’d secretly planned for Bennett and Larkin to fall in love and get married, even going as far as planning what music would be played and what color the bridesmaids would wear. But the heart isn’t so predictable.

  For the first eighteen years of their lives, Bennett, Mabry, and Larkin were never separated longer than the time it took to be asleep. And even that rarely separated them. Though they did not happen on school nights, sleepovers at Ceecee’s house and at Carol Anne’s were as frequent as rainstorms in July. The children rarely came to my house, as if they knew I didn’t want them there.

  I would have loved the sound of running children or laughing teenagers and even the occasional slam of a door. But there was too much of Ellis in Bennett. It was there in the cowlick at the back of his head, and in the creases on his cheeks when he smiled, and the shape of his eyebrows. And, as they grew older, in the way he looked at Larkin. How when they walked, he’d stay close to her, and place his hand on the small of her back before going through a doorway. It was in the way he’d tilt his head close to hers so he wouldn’t miss a word when she was talking.

  But Larkin was always looking past him, or through him, really, as if he weren’t there. I probably taught her how to do that, too. Maybe Carol Anne and I shouldn’t have thrown them together so much so that he’d become invisible to Larkin. Or maybe she’d spent her whole life studying me, a woman who was just about an expert in being completely oblivious to what was right in front of her face, believing something better lay just beyond.

  Larkin heads toward the bathroom and fills the vase of Ceecee’s roses with water and replaces it by my bedside before sitting down again, her eyes worried. The heels of her shoes are bouncing up and down beneath her chair, sounding like crabs clicking out a warning. “I found the two ribbons in the Tree of Dreams. You put them there, didn’t you? I’m thinking it was you, because they both looked pretty new, and you had another one in your hand when we found you after your accident.”

  She stands again and starts pacing the room, rearranging chairs and restacking unread magazines on my bedside table. “I don’t know what they mean, Mama. I need you to wake up and tell me. Who were you wanting to read those messages? Was it me? Or Ceecee?” She turns to face me, throwing her hands out like she used to when losing a game of Go Fish with Bennett and Mabry, like she couldn’t believe she wasn’t the undisputed winner.

  “And why were you trying to remove Ceecee as trustee? Did you think she’d do something against my well-being? As for the insurance policy, you were the beneficiary, and it was all put in the trust. I hope you can hear this. I hope it can put your mind at rest a bit.” She steps to the foot of my bed. “You know, if you’d ever called me in New York, you could have told me everything. And maybe you wouldn’t be lying here in this bed, and I wouldn’t be sick with worry over you. Over everything we’ve never said. I never knew what caring so much about a person was like, but I miss it now as if I did.”

  But you wouldn’t have answered your phone. It was true, and it was yet another thing I couldn’t blame her for, because she’d learned it from me. My decision to make her self-reliant and independent backfired, and I have no one to blame but myself.

  I feel something warm trickling down my cheek, and when I look closely, I see that I’m crying. There is so much she doesn’t know, so much I don’t want her to know. I feel myself slipping back down into the body on the bed, a reminder that I’m still bound here, and for the first time, I feel as if I have to earn the right to leave. Only, I have no idea how I’m supposed to do that while I’m stuck here in this hospital bed.

  A bell beeps somewhere, and several nurses rush in as Larkin jumps up and is forced to stand at the back of the room as they begin to fiddle with the machines that are connected to me with a hundred tubes. My chest feels like it’s split apart, worse, maybe, than it did the day I got the news about Ellis. Right before the crumbling edges of the room fold in on themselves, I think of something Larkin just said. Something about finding two ribbons in the tree. My eyes flutter b
riefly, and I see the ugly ceiling overhead just as I remember that there should have been only one.

  fifteen

  Larkin

  2010

  I sat up in bed with a start, wondering what had awakened me. It was still dark, but pale light crept through the plantation shutters like pink spider legs scurrying across the wood floor and then crawling up the wall opposite my bed.

  Tap. Tap. I heard the noise again, unsure what it was or where it was coming from. Still half-asleep, I slid from the high four-poster bed and stumbled to the door. I remembered the scare I’d had at the hospital earlier with my mother, and I felt a stiff chill invade my bones as I threw open my door, fully expecting to find Ceecee and Bitty standing there with sad faces.

  Instead, I found the hallway completely empty except for the night-light Ceecee always turned on when I visited so I could find my way to the bathroom at night without tripping on anything.

  Tap. Tap. I turned around, more awake now, the sound coming from the window. I strode across the room, threw open the shutters, and peered down at the lawn. Bennett stood there with a handful of pebbles, looking up at me with a wide grin.

  I shimmied the old window open, its swollen sash and wavy antique glass forcing me to go slowly. When I finally got it open high enough, I stuck the top half of my body through the opening. “What are you doing?” I asked, feigning annoyance.

  I had every right to be annoyed. After tossing and turning throughout the night, constantly checking my phone to see if I’d missed a call from the hospital, I’d finally fallen asleep only an hour before. But there was Bennett, as familiar to me as the river, looking up at me with the smile that hadn’t changed since he was a boy.

  “I thought you might like to see the sunrise over the marsh before you leave. You once told me it was the most beautiful thing in the world.”

  He twisted his mouth slightly, as if waiting for me to say something. When I didn’t, he reached down and picked up a Thermos from the ground next to him. “I brought coffee. And Mabry made mimosas that I have in the cooler on my johnboat. She had the early shift today, or else . . .”

  I held my hand out to stop him. “You don’t need to sell me anymore. You had me at coffee. Be down in ten.”

  I ducked back inside, closed the window, and slid the oversized T-shirt I slept in over my head. I tossed it on the floor in front of my opened and unpacked suitcase and grabbed a pair of running shorts and a running bra before heading to the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth. I considered for two whole seconds swiping on mascara and lipstick, but then I remembered it was only Bennett, who’d seen me looking far worse. I took a pair of old flip-flops from my closet, a pair I remembered from high school, then quietly descended the stairs while scraping my hair back into a ponytail. My feet automatically found the nonsqueaky spots on the old staircase, the movements embedded in my memory from many predawn adventures with Bennett and Mabry when we were younger. When we were still friends.

  I let myself out the back door, waiting a moment for my eyes to adjust to the predawn light that transformed the wax myrtles and palmettos into spindly predators emerging from the river.

  “You ready?”

  Bennett’s voice brought my attention to the path leading down toward our dock. I walked carefully toward him, watching my step on the uneven terrain. When I reached him, he held out his hand, and I took it without looking up. When we got to the boat, he set down the Thermos. “You remember how to get in without tipping the boat over?”

  I wanted to give him some sharp remark, but when I finally looked up at him to speak, I’d completely forgotten what I was about to say. He was staring at me. Not exactly at me, but at the part of me below my neck that was wearing only skimpy shorts and a ratty running bra.

  “I thought we were only going on the boat—if we’re going someplace fancy, I can go change.”

  He opened his mouth, but when no words emerged, he just shook his head, then grabbed my hand tighter as I stepped into the johnboat and stood on the bottom of the boat instead of on one of the seats like a beginner would.

  He set the Thermos inside the boat, before untethering it from the dock and settling into the seat behind me. I heard him clear his throat before speaking. “I, uh, it’s a little chilly out on the water. You might want a T-shirt.”

  I turned around to see him rustling through a duffel bag and pulling out a red cotton T-shirt. “Sorry if it smells like fish—I keep it on the boat just in case I need a clean shirt, and then it sort of absorbs the smell of the boat.”

  I reached for it, noticing he wasn’t meeting my gaze. “Yeah, you’re probably right. It’s been a while since I’ve done this.” I slid the shirt over my head; it had a logo of a fish silhouette on the front, the words I have to hold mine with both hands written beneath it. “Nice shirt,” I said, laughing.

  For what was probably the first time in my life, I saw Bennett blush. He averted his head and began to dig into the bag again. “Mabry gave it to me.” He pulled out a USC baseball hat and a matching visor. “Once the sun comes up, you’re going to need it. I’ve got sunscreen, too.”

  “Thanks,” I said, accepting the visor. “Remember how we used to get burned to a crisp when we’d go out fishing? I cringe, thinking about all that skin damage.” I turned around to face him and pulled up the shirt to reveal my abdomen. “I have a tiny mole here that I get checked by a dermatologist once a year because of that horrible burn I got that time we went to North Island and I fell asleep lying on the beach.”

  When he didn’t say anything, I looked up to see an odd expression on his face. “Are you all right?”

  He nodded. “Fine. Just fine.” He fiddled with the motor for a minute, and when it hummed to life, he headed out into the water without another word, looking more normal as he steered the boat away from the dock. I glanced back toward the marina and the hulking shapes of shrimp boats and sailboats and fishing boats, all bobbing sleepily on the gentle waves of the Sampit, unaware of the sun beginning its laborious rise behind them.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as he headed toward the smaller creeks and waterways that couldn’t be navigated by larger boats.

  “I thought we’d go to one of the old flooded rice plantations. I spotted an osprey nest last time I was there. It’s on a man-made platform right on the edge of the marsh, and I saw a single adult there. Probably the male, since he’s the one who prepares the nest so it’s all perfect for his mate when she returns from their winter retreat.”

  “Nice,” I said. I’d never paid much attention to the shorebirds of my home, knowing I’d never be tested on my knowledge, or be expected to know anything about them except maybe for a bar trivia contest. Besides, Bennett and I had made a long-ago pact that if we ever did a trivia contest, we’d do it together so I could answer all the music questions, and he could answer all the bird trivia. Mabry would fill in on all the general stuff she knew from reading every magazine and newspaper.

  Holding on to my visor, I tipped my face up toward the brightening sky, filling my lungs with the tangy salt air and feeling my ponytail tease my cheeks and the back of my neck. A large slender bird with a white chest and underwings, and a dark brown stripe at the edges, soared above us. “Look,” I said, pointing at the familiar bird.

  “An osprey,” Bennett said. “When I saw that nest, I did a little research and came to the conclusion that Mabry should be thankful we’re not ospreys.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Without knowing much about ospreys, I could probably fill a page with reasons as to why she’d be thankful, but which one in particular are you thinking of?”

  I could tell he was trying very hard not to smile, forcing a bored know-it-all expression to freeze his face. It was so familiar, and so “Bennett,” that I could only feel enormously grateful that things weren’t feeling odd between us anymore.

  “Well, since you asked, osp
rey babies don’t all hatch at the same time. There’s usually about a five-day span between the oldest one hatching and the youngest. The oldest hatchling then pretty much lords it over his or her younger siblings. If there’s plenty of food, it’s not a problem, since there’s enough to go around. But if there isn’t, the oldest one will make sure that he gets the lion’s share, and sometimes the younger ones will starve to death.”

  “Nice,” I said. “Because you’re what—five minutes older than Mabry?”

  “Seven.” He grinned at me, his familiar Bennett grin, and I relaxed. “And she’d better not forget it.”

  We grew silent as he made his way upriver, steering through small creeks and tributaries. I’d once known these waterways like the veins on my wrists, the curves and intersections altering only with the oncoming tide and returning when the water trickled back to the ocean. It had been so long, I wasn’t sure I could navigate without losing my way, and I wondered how it had happened that I’d lost that important part of my childhood. I sat up, trying to pay attention to where Bennett was going as we passed through the black needlerush and spartina grass that rustled against the sides of the boat. We sped by tupelo trees and wide-hipped cypress draped with Spanish moss, cormorants preening on the dead branches, and it was as if I were traveling back in time to the Larkin I’d once been. A sharp twist of grief pulled at my heart. I sucked in a deep breath of marsh air, briny and moist, trying to clear my head.

  I loved who I’d become. I did. Almost as much as I hated the old me. But not, I suddenly realized, all of the old me. I missed the girl who’d known these secret alleyways into the marshes and who could recognize the sounds of the different birds and open an oyster faster than anyone she knew. But I’d gotten rid of her along with the rest of me, and the grief I felt was raw and open.