As I Close My Eyes

by Sarah DiCello

  Spinning in my desk chair, I spotted the handmade bookmark and Pride and Prejudice atop my nightstand. Each time I circled around, they were there, reminding me I had just lost the only person in this world who truly understood my life as Danielle Grayson and Caroline Marcum. I couldn’t bear to hide them in the drawer below, though. That would mean there was no going back and I wasn’t ready to commit to that yet, despite the letter I left for Ben.

  One day blended into the next, only signaling the arrival of another daunting 24-hours by the rise of the sun. Occasionally Mama would knock on my bedroom door, which would indicate a tray of food was outside waiting for me. She tried her best to cheer me up with a fresh vase of flowers accompanying each meal and a kind-hearted note expressing how much she loved me. I read every word and smelled every petal, but the flowers only reminded me of the bouquets Ben would bring me, and the notes made me think about how dispassionate my letter to Ben was. I hadn’t even had the decency to wake him that night and explain myself.

  The next few weeks passed without me returning Ben’s calls and without Eric returning mine. Eric was the only other person I could trust with the secret I had confidentially divulged to Ben, and I felt continents away from him. I wondered where Eric was and what he was doing. Did he like Boston? Did he think of me? I felt so lost without him to talk to. We never fought and it had been over a month without even a phone call.

  I had stopped talking to Eric and Ben, the two men in my life I cherished most. Occasionally I thought I saw Ben’s Audi parked outside and I pictured him sitting there watching the house, waiting for me to make an appearance so we could talk. I couldn’t imagine what he was going through, but I didn’t know what else to do. I needed to fix this before going back to Gainesville, which was only a week away.

  “Honey, you can’t stay up here for the rest of eternity,” said Mama through the door. “Why don’t you come downstairs and get something for dinner?”

  I came out with knotted hair and a pale complexion, ten pounds thinner than I was a week before.

  “Oh Danielle, honey,” said Mama, as she hugged me.

  I ate a slice of cold pizza and decided to call Shannon since I hadn’t talked to her in weeks, either. I needed to see what her plans were for driving back to school, anyway.

  “Dani, where the hell have you been?” Shannon asked.

  “Ben and I just didn’t work out. Sorry, I couldn’t really talk to anyone.”

  “Why did you break up?”

  “It’s complicated. It wasn’t really a breakup, but I don’t feel like getting into it. Hey, I was really calling to see when you were going back to school.”

  “Oh, we’re leaving tomorrow,” Shannon replied.

  “Tomorrow? Why so soon? We still have another week.”

  “Well, Brad and I got an apartment so we want to move in as soon as possible.”

  “You did? I thought you were going to be my roommate at the apartment we got together last year.” Now I was really annoyed.

  “Yeah, um. We just decided this, Dani. I was going to call you.”

  I hung up the phone before she could explain. There goes another person I had just cut out of my life.

  “Everything okay, sweetie?” asked Mama.

  “Fabulous,” I said as I slammed the phone down and ran upstairs.

  I frantically packed everything for school, throwing random clothes from my closet into suitcase after suitcase before I crumbled onto the floor. I fought the urge to call Ben. The comfort of his embrace was something I longed for, but I knew I had to accept the decisions I had made.

  Mama heard me crying and sat next to me on the floor. “Look, I’ll pack your clothes. Why don’t you go and take a bath to relax?” she said. “You’re fixin’ to get yourself locked up in an insane asylum with the way you’re lookin’ right now, Dani.”

  I followed her instructions and settled into the water, but this just made me think about the many times Ben and I had had intimate moments while submerged in the various lakes of the East Coast. I decided that I needed to get out of Georgia all together. Then it occurred to me - I hadn’t had any dreams since Ben’s party. I wondered if my plan worked and I hoped Ben would someday forgive me. It did, however, solidify my theory that Ben’s presence caused the dreams to become more prevalent.

  I didn’t spend too much time in the bathtub. Instead, I sat wrapped in my oversized ivory towel on the edge of the tub with my feet dipped delicately in the water.

  When I got back into my room, Mama had all of my clothes neatly folded into three suitcases with a note that said, “I love you!” on the inside of the biggest one.

  I got dressed into new clothes for the first time in three days and opened up the laptop on my desk to check for my sophomore schedule. I clicked through page after page and came upon a section advertising an international study trip to England with only one spot left for the coming semester. It was perfect. I could get out of Georgia altogether. If anything, I’d have the chance to just be me for a while.

  After making a few phone calls, I was all set up to go overseas. In a few days, I’d be on a plane to the U.K. Now I just needed to ask Mama and Bill for the money. It all seemed too coincidental that I had discovered this trip only a week before going back to Gainesville. Only one thing could get in my way - a certain southern lady who liked to keep me close to home.

  “Hey, Mama,” I yelled downstairs.

  “Yeah, honey,” she responded, already making her way up to my room.

  “What do you think about me going to England next semester?”

  “Where is this coming from? If this is about Ben, you really need to think about what you want. You can’t just run the other direction and fly all the way across the ocean, Dani,” she said.

  “It’s not because of Ben. I really want to go and there’s only one spot left. They’re holding it for me, but I need to get them money by tomorrow. I have what I saved from Dairy Queen, but I need about two thousand more.”

  “Whoa! Two thousand dollars? Let me ask Bill about this one. Why do you really want to do this, Dani Bear?”

  “Because for once in my life, I want to do something for me and I think I need that right now.”

  “Okay, sweetie. I guess there's nothing I can say that will change your mind. I just hope you're honestly going for the right reasons,” she said as she left my room.

  Mama returned five minutes later with a check for the rest of the money.

  “Oh my God, thank you so much for this, Mama,” I said as I leapt off the bed and gave her a huge hug.

  “Thank Bill. He’s the one who thinks you should go. If at any time you want to hop back on a plane and come home, I’m just a phone call away.”

  “Thanks, Mama. It’s exactly what I need right now.”

  After giving Bill an equally large hug, I finished packing and decided to head up to Gainesville to talk to my landlord and file all of the needed paperwork to go to England. This trip would be the best decision I had ever made. I was sure of it.

  The drive back to school seemed very long. There was no one I could call to talk about the exciting adventure I had just booked. I wondered what Ben would think and it crossed my mind once again to call him, but I restrained myself. I had to follow through with my note and give myself some time.

  As I turned left off the exit ramp, I could see the campus up ahead. It looked deserted yet only a few of the students made their way back for the next year. The large brick buildings brought back memories of a time before the accident, when I was happy and content with my life. I pulled into the parking lot of the yellow colonial house I called home during the school year and glanced up at the third floor Shannon and I were supposed to occupy together. It really pissed me off that she didn't tell me she was moving out. Now, not only did I have to explain that I wouldn't be there for the first semester, but Shannon left me the job of doing the explaining for her as well. Our landlord lived in the first two floors of the house, so I took a deep brea
th and knocked on his front door.

  After my drawn-out synopsis of the situation, he said he would need some time to find someone to take over the apartment, but it shouldn’t be a problem. I agreed to pay him for the next week before my trip and only had to make one more drive home to get everything I needed. When I left the house earlier in the day, I didn’t plan on staying in Gainesville, but it made sense so that I could take care of the very rushed passport and everything else I needed for school in England. Soon I’d be on my first international flight, which meant I didn’t have to deal with Eric not calling me back, Robert and Caroline, or hanging out with Shannon and Brad. I could leave America and forget everything that had happened over the summer.

  Chapter 31

  Dear Ben,

  I love you so much. Please know that. I will be boarding a plane to England tomorrow and I had to let you know that I think about you every day. I feel lost without you, but with your absence, I’ve gained some clarity. I had to leave that night without you knowing because if I didn’t, I feared I never would. You deserve someone who can be there for you in a way I can’t yet. I’m not sure what’s happening to me and I need to figure it out. I’m going to England so I can try and solve this. I hope you’ll be there when I return in early December. I don’t expect you to wait for me, but I wanted you to know that I didn’t leave because of anything you did or didn’t do. It’s strictly because I love you too much to let you love someone like me.

  Dani

  I figured Ben would appreciate an actual letter rather than an impersonal e-mail from me, so I folded up the message written on purple notepaper I found in my desk at the apartment and sent it out. I hoped he’d open it and not throw it away as I feared. What I did to him wasn’t fair and it hurt me just as much to leave as it hurt him to find his bed empty the next morning. I wondered when he woke that day what he thought about my disappearance. I could just picture him sitting at the kitchen table with his hands in his head in disbelief that I left. I wanted so much to drive to Tallulah and run into his arms, but maybe those arms wouldn’t welcome me anymore. I sat in a corner of my bedroom, holding my knees in tight against my chest, rocking back and forth, unaware I was even moving. My thoughts smothered me like someone putting a plastic bag over my head, trying to suffocate the life from my body. I couldn’t move. What was I doing? I left the man I love, I basically crossed Shannon, Brad, and Eric off my list of acceptable friends, and I was about to get on a plane in a few days for somewhere thousands of miles away in a city I’ve never been in. But, this is what I do. My mama said it perfectly, “You can’t just run the other direction and fly all the way across the ocean.” And that’s precisely what I was doing - running.

  Three days later, I went to the front of the library on campus where buses were picking up all of the Gainesville students who were boarding the plane for the U.K. There were probably twenty people there, including two professors. Everyone around me had great big backpacks with the American flag stitched onto the outside while I was carrying a mismatched mess of baggage including a suitcase on wheels and two large duffle bags in navy blue and green. There wasn’t anyone I recognized, but I was happy about that because I didn’t want to talk to anyone on the long plane ride across the ocean. Some students were eating the breakfast they got at the closest Starbucks, but six a.m. was way too early for me to eat, so I packed some granola bars for the flight in case I got hungry.

  The airport was crowded for a Thursday morning, filled mostly with businessmen dressed in suits and families making one final summer trip before school started. I was seated next to an older man who wasn’t a part of our group and that made me relax a bit more because I had planned on reading Pride and Prejudice while the rest of the passengers slept. I didn’t want to sleep. If I slept, that meant I’d possibly have another dream, and if I had another dream, that would mean I left Ben for nothing. So far, my theory on Ben inadvertently causing more visions turned out to be the truth and I didn’t want to screw up the normalcy that had become my life for the past few weeks.

  “Would you like anything to drink, Miss?” asked a very pretty stewardess. Why were they always so perfect? Every time I got on a plane, the stewardesses had their hair done just right, their make-up flawless, and these bright white smiles. Was it a requirement to be gorgeous?

  “Maybe just a water. Thank you,” I responded with a bit of a growl of jealousy. Ben deserved to be with someone like her. Someone who kept up with themselves as much as his mom did. Not someone like me who only occasionally appeared to care about what I looked like.

  I went back to reading my book, but drifted off to sleep despite my best efforts to stay awake. I awoke to the sounds of the seatbelt signal going on as we descended onto the runway of Heathrow Airport. Most of the people on the plane were waking up from a slumber as well, but someone in the back yelled in their best English accent, “Bugger off, America and cheerio, England!” Although annoying, it made me laugh because I could relate.

  I apparently missed lunch being served and was starved by the time I woke up. Realizing I hadn’t eaten anything all day, I went into my carry-on bag and opened the granola bar I brought. It was another twenty-five minutes before people began vacating the cabin of the plane but the stewardess announced that all Gainesville students should meet at the end of the jetway to the airport.

  “Everyone, gather over here. We have some agenda items to go over,” said the masculine-looking woman who wore no make-up and very plain clothes. “We’ll be boarding two vans outside and heading to the campus. Please stay in a group as we exit the airport so we don’t lose anyone.” She began to count heads, making sure all students were present.

  Getting out of the airport was a feat in itself. Heathrow was the largest airport I had ever been in and staying together was easier said than done. Somehow we all managed to get into the vans outside without leaving anyone behind. While driving, the professor assigned to our van handed out sheets with contact information for all of our classmates and itineraries with room assignments. We were paired up with students from England so we had someone used to living in the city. My roommate turned out to be somewhat of a loner, so aside from the occasional “Hello,” I didn’t get much use out of the partnership.

  Our dorm rooms were all on the same floor and were about the size of my bedroom in Sugar Hill. Mine was particularly peculiar since Jessie, the girl I was paired with, was into heavy metal and strange, dark art. Large tapestries covered the walls and black sheets were draped over the windows. I wondered if she thought she was a vampire and the sheets were her attempt to keep out the light.

  I spent most of the first night in England unpacking and trying to start a conversation with Jessie, to no avail. Her stoic nature made me think students here had to volunteer to take in Americans in order to gain some sort of scholarship to go to school. She certainly didn't welcome me with open arms.

  London quickly became my favorite city on the planet. After only a few days, I felt like I had something in common with Ben and could hold myself to the higher standards that Ben and his family silently commanded. It only took about a week to settle into life overseas. Everyone was so hospitable and friendly. I could see why Ben loved it so much.

  Mama and I kept in touch through email and Shannon even sent a few messages, but I wasn’t ready to return them yet. She had found out I had left the country from my mama and wanted to know if I needed any visitors during fall break. For now, I enjoyed the comfort of me, myself, and I. I explored all of the major landmarks - Windsor Castle, The Tower of London and, of course, Big Ben, which obviously reminded me of the love of my life. How ironic that I’d come to England to get away from everything I knew only to visit a place with his name in it.

  I had four months to experience one of the greatest cities in the world and had planned on traveling to many more when time allowed. It would have to be mostly on the weekends since my coursework was much harder than any of the classes I took in Georgia.

 
The thing that astounded me the most about London was the fact that roads were constructed around buildings that were demolished in World War II. Instead of clearing away the rubble, they just built a road around it. In America, a home built in the 1800s was considered to be old, but in England, someone could live in a house built before our Declaration of Independence was even signed. The history of this great city made me feel proud to be a resident, even if it was only for a semester.

  Four months was a long time to be away from Mama and Bill, but it seemed like an eternity to be without Ben. I wished he was with me. He could have shown me Windsor Castle and Big Ben himself. I suspected he would have understood if I had only talked to him about how I felt instead of leaving a short note on his kitchen island. I had to stop beating myself up about it, but I couldn’t. What I did was cold-hearted and just plain mean. If he never spoke to me again, I’d understand. Then I got the email.

  Dani,

  I was falling in love with you and you just up and left in the middle of the night. I called your mom and found out where you went. You should have just talked to me instead of making up your own mind and leaving. I understand that you need your space. I don’t understand what’s going on with you either, but I love you and I would have worked it out if you had only let me in.

  I hope you’re enjoying England. Check out The Key to the Past on Old Pye St. It’s the store I modeled my bookstore after.

  Please let me know you’re okay. I can’t go on without knowing that you’re fine.

  I’ll always love you,

  Ben

  What an ass I’d been. I could have handled the situation much better, but instead, I acted like a coward. Ben was right. I should have talked to him and we could have worked it out together. But I couldn’t worry about that now since I had a major paper due for Art History. I had to get my mind off Ben, which became harder and harder to do.