Dreams of Falling

by Karen White

“Of course it is. I think she’ll be as much comfort to me as I will be to her.”

  After a moment of silence, her mother said, “The Westons have decided to move to Summerville to be closer to their children. They’ve put that beautiful old house on River Street up for sale. I know it’s too soon after . . . after the fire, but I’ve mentioned it to Boyd. They’re asking a fair price, and I’m afraid someone will snatch it up if he waits. It’s a big one, right on the river. It’s not Carrowmore, but it’s still a good house for a single man and a little girl.”

  “Mama,” Ceecee said in a low, hushed voice, looking around to make sure no one could overhear. “Margaret hasn’t even been buried yet. Please let it be.”

  Her mother patted Ceecee’s knee and stood. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I won’t mention it again.” She kissed her forehead and left. Ceecee fell asleep and dreamed of fire and rain, of candy wrappers pressing against her leg as she flew across the lawn at Carrowmore, the flames bright against the storm-darkened sky.

  * * *

  • • •

  Life returned to normal after a while. Ceecee worked in her mother’s garden and organized the flowers for the services at her father’s church. Bitty graduated from art school and took a teaching position in Charleston. She called almost every day, and visited Ceecee and Ivy every chance she had.

  Everything stayed the same except that Margaret and the great house at Carrowmore were both gone. Ceecee went back with Boyd about a month after the fire, to see if anything could be salvaged. They managed to extract some pieces of art and furniture, even some of the Darlington sterling silverware, which had escaped the worst of the fire. But what remained was the shadow of a house.

  The martins had returned to those gourds strung from trees undamaged by the storm and the fire, and the Tree of Dreams remained. Standing under the branches, Boyd took Ceecee’s hand, and she knew they were both thinking of the ribbon he’d put inside the tree the day he’d told her he was marrying Margaret. I will love Sessalee Purnell until I die, and will hope every day that we will find a way to spend our lives together.

  “I would never have wished for this to happen,” he said quietly.

  “I know,” she said. “I couldn’t love you as much as I do and believe that you did.”

  His eyes brightened as he regarded her. “Does that mean there’s still hope for us?”

  Ceecee smiled, looking out at the autumn marsh, the Lowcountry’s only sure indicator of the change in season. The green spartina grass had mellowed to shades of gold and saffron, the color of the seeds the fall breezes would spread to ensure new grass in the spring. It was the only guarantee in life, the constant cycle of seasons, the ombré color scheme shifting from greens to golds to browns before going back to green.

  “Yes,” she said, meeting his eyes and remembering the day they’d met. How she felt about him hadn’t changed.

  “Good,” he said, squeezing her hand before leading her back to the car. She stared at the blackened hull of the house as they neared, her heart tightening with grief. She imagined it always would when she thought of Margaret. The old Margaret. The girl she’d grown up with and loved, not the bitter young woman who’d unexpectedly discovered life’s sharp edges, who’d learned that dreams and wishes weren’t guaranteed.

  As they approached the house, a ray of sun shone through a hole in the roof, illuminating a swath of the once-elegant staircase, now just a blackened skeleton. A flash of memory hit Ceecee—of Boyd, carrying Margaret up those stairs when she’d heard Reggie had enlisted, his strong arms around her, bearing her limp weight.

  Ceecee turned to say something to Boyd, to ask him why her face and hair didn’t have any soot on them that night of the fire, and why her feet and legs weren’t as dirty as they should have been. Why she’d found Tootsie Roll wrappers on the blanket.

  She opened her mouth, but then caught sight of the Tree of Dreams in her peripheral vision and remembered all of her hurts and losses. All the forgiving she had given to others while her own heart shriveled. She had always done everything she was supposed to. Had been a devoted friend, a good daughter. A woman with the strong moral compass her parents had raised her with. And look where it had left her.

  She studied Boyd as they walked, gazed at his strong profile, felt his steady grip on her hand, and knew she could never let him go again.

  She turned again to see the Tree of Dreams. “Forgive me,” she whispered, not sure for what or to whom she was speaking.

  thirty-six

  Larkin

  2010

  “Stop.” Ceecee reached across the table and put her hand on the letter. “That belongs to Ivy.”

  “Yes,” I said gently. “But Mama wanted me to see it. She said she’d found out something about the fire and wanted to show it to me.”

  Ceecee pulled the letter toward her, then carefully folded it before laying her hands on top. I studied her hands for a moment, the neat fingernails with pale pink polish; her hands were perfect for gardening, or making comfort food in her kitchen, or soothing babies. She’d done all of those things for me and my mother. I needed to remember that. From the look on her face when she saw the letter, I knew I would need to remember.

  “But how do you know this is it?” she asked, the stubborn jut of her chin just like when she’d told the softball coach he should let me play even though I’d yet to prove that I could make contact between bat and ball.

  Bennett covered my hand with his, understanding everything that was going on inside my head and heart without a word spoken between us. I glanced at him, hoping to show my appreciation, and in a sudden flash of insight I became aware that what I felt for him was so much more. He gave me a lopsided grin with his ruined mouth, then winked with his good eye, making me realize that mind reading wasn’t necessarily always a good thing.

  I faced Ceecee again, struggling to recall what I’d been about to say. “In the e-mail, Mama mentioned she’d found photos of me as a little girl—and I found those, too, with the letter. It’s not definitive, but I think it’s likely that this letter is what she wanted to show me, don’t you?”

  “I need a cigarette,” Bitty announced, pulling one from her housecoat pocket. She stood to retrieve an ashtray she apparently kept hidden in the pantry, then sat back down at the table and lit up. Ceecee didn’t say a word about Bitty smoking in the house, and that worried me most of all.

  “You’re right, Larkin,” Ceecee said. “It’s not definitive. I’d rather wait and ask Ivy.”

  Bennett squeezed my hand, giving me the courage to say what I needed to say next. “She might never wake up, Ceecee. I think we all should prepare ourselves, just in case.”

  “Or she could wake up tomorrow.” Ceecee’s voice was thick with tears.

  “She could,” I agreed. “That’s what we’re all hoping and praying for. But before her accident, she wanted me to know something, and I think it’s in this letter. Wouldn’t reading it be a way to honor her even in her absence?”

  We sat in silence, listening to the grandfather clock in the hall chime one o’clock. Bitty blew a ring of smoke up to the ceiling, like a protective halo above us, then rested her cigarette in the ashtray. She picked up the wedding photo in the frame, and the loose photograph of the two young men. “We should probably tell her,” she said. “About Reggie. And Margaret.”

  Ceecee closed her eyes as if deciding between the lesser of two evils. “It’s not like it matters anymore. There’s nobody left who could be hurt. Except perhaps Ivy.” She gave a little shrug. “But I don’t think even she would care now. Boyd loved her so much.”

  I opened my mouth to state the obvious, that of course her father loved her. But then I remembered my thoughts when I first saw the Myrtle Beach photograph, and my mother’s silly expression in the photograph of the two of us. It so resembled one of the boys in the first photo. “Oh,” I said as I lo
oked at the wedding photograph of Ceecee and my grandfather Boyd, then compared it to the one of the young men behind the fake bars. One of them was definitely the man I’d called Granddaddy, with glossy dark hair and bright eyes, his warmth and strength apparent even in the photo of him as a young man.

  “Your mother has the same eyes.” Bennett tapped on the image of the man standing next to Boyd. He had lighter hair and was several years younger than the other young man in the photo, but they shared a resemblance.

  “So, who was Reggie?” I asked, unable to tear my gaze away from his photograph. “Besides apparently being my mother’s biological father.”

  Ceecee drew a deep breath. “Reggie was Boyd’s younger brother. They were very close, despite their age difference. Reggie saved Boyd’s life one summer. From drowning.”

  I shifted in my chair, uncomfortable with my guess as to where this was headed. “That’s a huge debt to have hanging over your head.”

  Bitty and Ceecee shared a glance; then Ceecee spoke again. “You could say that.”

  Bitty continued. “We three girls—Margaret, Ceecee, and I—met Reggie and Boyd the summer we graduated from high school.”

  “In Myrtle Beach,” I supplied.

  Bitty nodded. “Reggie and Margaret fell in love at first sight. It was a match made in heaven. She was smart, beautiful, and rich, and he was handsome and smart with big ambitions. The first time he met her, he introduced himself as a future president of the United States.” She took another drag from her cigarette. “They weren’t the only ones to fall in love. So did Ceecee and Boyd.” She looked pointedly at me.

  Bennett squeezed my hand again as the implications of this bombshell settled on me like so much fallout. “Oh,” I said, amazing myself again at my clever use of vocabulary. Except there really wasn’t anything I could say that would adequately express my surprise.

  “What happened to Reggie?” I finally managed.

  “He died before your mother was born, and before he could marry your grandmother, although he wanted to.” Bitty stabbed her cigarette into the ashtray for punctuation.

  “So Boyd married Margaret, who was pregnant with his brother’s child, claiming the baby was his own,” I said slowly. “And then Margaret died in a fire two years later.” Suspicious. I saw the word on the fire chief’s report, underlined in blue ink. The mural my mother had painted that showed all three women, a child, and a man inside the burning house. And I saw the ribbon I’d pulled from the tree with the words forgive me written down its length. My voice sounded brittle enough to break. “When did you marry Granddaddy?”

  Ceecee’s fingers were gripped tightly together, still imprisoning the letter. “A year later. It was the decent thing to do, to wait a year.”

  Bennett didn’t let go of my hand as I nodded repeatedly, trying to process my rampant thoughts. “So, he was in love with you when he married Margaret, and then after his wife dies in a fire, he marries you, and the two of you raise Margaret’s daughter as if she were yours.”

  “She was mine!” Ceecee said, her voice raised, but not yet a shout. “I helped bring her into this world, right there in the hallway at Carrowmore. Ivy never lacked for love. Boyd and I raised her as if she were our beloved daughter because she was. We’d hoped for more children, but it wasn’t to be. So our lives revolved around Ivy, to make up for both of her parents being gone.”

  My jaw felt as if it had been wired shut as I asked my next question. “Did you have anything to do with the fire that killed Margaret?”

  Ceecee raised her hands to her face, just as Bitty reached over and snatched up the letter. “I think we’ve all heard enough for the time being,” she said. “I’ll take this for safekeeping, and we can look at it together tomorrow. I think our emotions are a little too raw right now.”

  I started to stand, to reach over and grab the letter, but Bennett held me back. “That’s a good idea, Bitty. But to be fair, you’re not exactly an uninvolved bystander. Why don’t you give me the letter until the morning, when we can discuss this with clear heads?”

  My gaze moved from Ceecee to Bitty, two women who’d always loved me, even at my most unlovable. They’d raised me, made me the woman I was. There was something in the letter, something grave, something they weren’t ready to share. I owed them at least this.

  Bennett looked around the table, waiting for each of us to nod our head. Bitty looked down at the letter for a long moment, then handed it to Bennett. “I trust you, young man. Don’t disappoint me.” She focused on me. “And don’t use any of your powers of persuasion on him, either. He’s a good man, but I’ve seen what a man can do in the name of love.”

  Without stopping to explain, she slid her chair back from the table and stood, making Bennett stand, too. “I’m going to bed. I’ll see you all in the morning.”

  Ceecee turned to watch her go, then faced me again. “We put a ribbon in the tree—the three of us together: Margaret, Bitty, and me. It said, ‘Friends forever, come what may.’” She frowned. “I don’t think we understood then that even dreams and wishes have to survive in the real world. I don’t think Margaret ever understood that. She never had to live in the real world until Reggie died.”

  Bennett pulled out her chair and helped her stand, then led her to the stairs. To my surprise, she leaned up and kissed his cheek. “You remind me of my Boyd in so many ways. I’m glad Larkin has you.”

  I wanted to tell her that I didn’t technically have him, but I stopped, realizing that wasn’t completely true.

  “There are pillows and blankets in the chest behind the sofa, and I’ll put fresh towels for you in the upstairs-hall bath. New toothbrushes under the sink. You’re on your own for a razor, though.”

  “Thank you, Ceecee. I’ll be fine,” Bennett said.

  “She sleeps like the dead, so she won’t hear you if you come up the stairs,” Bitty called over the railing.

  I wanted to laugh, or roll my eyes, but I couldn’t. I kept imagining the mural in my bedroom, the four martins, each carrying a ribbon in its beak. Did Mama imagine them to be Boyd and the three friends, each carrying a separate message to the Tree of Dreams?

  “Good night,” Ceecee said, and waited.

  But I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d learned. How so many secrets had been kept from me my entire life. How the man I’d always considered my grandfather, who’d raised my mother, was my grandfather in name only. Not that it really mattered. He’d been my grandfather in all the ways that counted. He’d been kind and loving, and let me sit on his shoulders during the annual Fourth of July parade so that I was the tallest person there. He was the one who’d taught me how to bait a hook, and how to step into a johnboat without tipping it over. In my usual oblivious way, I’d never asked for the details, but I’d always known that the man I’d called my grandfather had been married to my grandmother and then married Ceecee. It had never occurred to me to ask how that had come about. Or how my grandmother had died. I felt a stab of guilt and shame, and wanted to ask Ceecee to tell me everything.

  But when I lifted my head to say good night to Ceecee, the words froze in the back of my throat. I remembered the other mural in the ice-cream shop, of the three adults inside the house, the man carrying a child. Without a doubt, my grandfather’s identity hadn’t been the only truth kept from me.

  Ceecee turned, and I listened to her slow progress up the steps, not moving until I heard the snap of her door as it closed. I went into the living room and pulled a pillow and blanket out and began to make up Bennett’s bed on the sofa. I felt him beside me before he took hold of the bedding and gently pried it from my hands.

  “Sit down,” he said gently.

  Too tired to argue, I sat, and he settled next to me. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said.

  “Do you?”

  He gave me a look. “Yeah, I do. There are a
lot of puzzle pieces here, with several possible solutions, some of them easier to swallow than others.”

  “Would you consider showing me the letter now?”

  He didn’t dignify my question with an answer. Instead, he said, “Regardless of what’s in the letter, there are a handful of givens you need to remember. First is that you have had the undying devotion of Ceecee and Bitty your whole life. They’re not perfect, and I’d question some of their mothering skills, but there’s never been any doubt that they have always wanted the best life for you, in spite of where you think their motivation comes from.

  “Second, I can’t see either one of those ladies engaging in a malicious act toward anyone. That’s not who they are, even if circumstances might tempt them. Third, I never knew Boyd, but he was my parents’ and grandparents’ family doctor, and they’re full of stories about his generosity and kindness. How he made house calls for the elderly long after most doctors stopped, and how he’d accept eggs or produce from those who couldn’t afford to pay. He delivered Mabry and me—did you know that?”

  I shook my head. I hadn’t. Like so much else I hadn’t known, and not all of it because of Ceecee holding back.

  “Last, but not least, look at who you are now. You’re an amazing woman, and it’s all because of how you were raised. If you’re brave and fearless, it’s because they showed you how.” He took a deep breath. “What I’m trying to say is that how devastating—or not—whatever is in that letter might be, those things won’t change.”

  Tears pricked at the backs of my eyes, but I wasn’t ready to cry. I had a feeling there would be an opportunity in the coming days. For now, I had to pretend to be strong and see if I liked it enough to keep pretending until I believed it. “Thanks, Bennett.” I tilted my head. “How’d you get to be so smart?”

  He shrugged, wincing a little bit at the movement and reminding me of what he’d done for me. “It’s amazing what years of practice can do.” His face sobered. “We’re not all born knowing everything. Most of us have to grow into who we’re meant to be.”