carefully everywhere descending

by L. B. Bedford

  With a great exhale, I throw open the door.

  “You scared me half to death!” I tell Scarlett. “Get in, you’re getting soaked.”

  She steps inside, carefully staying to the old, dirty rug that never gets cleaned beyond a superficial swipe of the vacuum. She isn’t that damp; there are dark spots speckling her dress, dark patches on the sheer fabric on her shoulders, and her hair is gleaming in places, but that’s it. Her hair got the worst of it, falling out of its fancy updo in soaked bits. She seems slightly unsteady on her feet.

  “Are you okay? Did something happen?” I ask. “Let me get you a towel.”

  I go to the kitchen and fetch a hand towel from the drawer. I turn around and jump to see that she’s followed me and is standing close behind. I hand her the towel, which has a reindeer print.

  “Here, for your hair.”

  She takes it, looks at it studiously, and then starts drying her hair with light pats.

  “I took off my shoes,” she announces, pausing to point at her feet. I look down and see that, indeed, she is only in her bare feet.

  “Thank you,” I say. “Are you okay, Scarlett? Why are you here? Where is Carolina?”

  “She asked to go home,” she says, dropping her arms, the saturated towel dangling limply. The reindeer look a little drowned. “She thought she started coming down with something after we saw you at the store. She’s kind of a hypochondriac.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, not sure how this connects with her ending up on my doorstep.

  “No, I’m sorry,” she says, dropping heavily into a wooden chair by our pockmarked table. “For earlier… with Chad. I knew he was a bit of a prick, but I didn’t think he’d grab you like that.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I reply, pulling up a chair to sit across from her. Our knees are nearly touching. She carefully sets the towel on the table, pulls a pin from her hair, and scratches her scalp. She pulls off the light wrap she had draped over her shoulders and tosses it carelessly behind her over the top of her chair. So now she’s disheveled and sitting barefoot in my house. I try to swallow, but my mouth and throat have trouble functioning.

  “I didn’t even really want to go with them all,” she says. “Carolina and Serhan, sure, and Irina’s fine, but she’s friends with Gabby, and with Gabby comes Chad…. And it just wasn’t fun, you know? Everything was built-up, and everyone started putting so much pressure on everything to be the best night of our lives…. They got a dumb band too,” she says suddenly. “Either get a great band, or get a DJ, you know?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “And everything was just loud and crowded, and people were pushing each other, and all I kept thinking was, ‘I wonder what Audrey is doing right now?’”

  I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. Especially considering I wasn’t doing anything particularly interesting.

  “It was unexpected, seeing you in the store,” she continues. “I keep thinking I see you places, and I then finally do, and I’m with Chad and Carolina…. I don’t even see you in school that much anymore. It’s like I miss you, but we never really hung out. Why’s that?”

  She slurs the last couple of sentences.

  “Scarlett,” I say gently. “Are you drunk?”

  “Noooo,” she says, shaking her head. “I promised my parents. All I’ve had is punch.”

  I lean forward and sniff a little. It smells sweet, and a little like the stringent way my dad or mom sometimes smells after a beer or harder drink.

  “I think that punch may have been spiked, Scarlett,” I say, still soft. It feels like a separate world in the kitchen, like this. The sound of the rain seems to draw a curtain around us.

  Her head drops forward. “Oh, man. That’s what Jacob meant when he said it would be better than I expected. That’s why my head feels like this. I’m so stupid.”

  “No, you aren’t.” I’m surprised by the anger I feel at her statement. She slumps to the side and rests her forehead against the table.

  “I am, I’m not smart like you. I always knew it. My older brother too, he’s so smart. He skipped grades and got into Princeton. My parents know I’m stupid too.”

  “Scarlett,” I say.

  “I hate bringing home my grades to them,” she continues, still slurred. “I always have. When I got summer school, they weren’t that angry. It was worse, disappointed. No.” Her brow furrows. “Resigned. Like they never expected better.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say again, around a lump in my throat. I only have a second to wonder if, feeling as I do toward her right now, at this moment, I would have said yes when she asked me to help her cheat. She snaps upright before I get too deep into that thought, startling me into reaching out to brace her shoulders and keep her from toppling over.

  “No!” she says earnestly. “You were right. It’s like, you’re always right. I didn’t want to do the work. I was afraid of it, scared I couldn’t figure it out, so I decided not to bother trying. I just wanted the easy way out. Summer school sucked, but at least I’m not behind as I would be if I didn’t take it and learn the… the stuff.”

  Her ability to articulate wavers, and she flaps a hand around to encompass everything meant by “stuff.”

  I realize how close I am to her, my hands still folded over the dips of her shoulders between the sockets and her neck. I can feel the strength and realness of her muscles and bones under my fingers, especially as they bunch when she reaches up one hand to scrub over her eyes. Our arms drop at the same time, and I move back. My heart is racing.

  “Let me drive you home,” I say. “I can’t believe you drove here without getting into an accident.”

  “I didn’t know I was drunk,” she protests.

  “Yes, well, that explanation wouldn’t have held up with a cop. Or a ditch,” I say. I’m suddenly terrified for her. I want to touch her again. “You’re lucky, Scarlett, this could have been very, very bad.”

  She looks at me with that same look she gave me before, during our first session together. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s almost like affection, but with something more.

  “You get these furrows when you’re very serious, right here,” she says, reaching out. She gently smooths a finger over my forehead, between my eyebrows. She lightly traces a line, the pad of her finger soft against my skin.

  I don’t move. I barely breathe.

  Scarlett leans forward, smile gone and face serious. The hand against my face moves so the palm is pressed against my cheek and her fingers slip into my hair.

  Before she can move closer, before she can… I pull back.

  “Scarlett,” I say, my voice shaking. “What are you doing? What about Carolina?”

  Scarlett blinks rapidly but doesn’t look away from me.

  “She’s not you,” she says. Unlike me, her voice is firm.

  I’m overwhelmed by her, by her nearness, by the weight of everything she carries with her: a girlfriend who still believes in her and the potential of a kiss. I stand up and turn away, tears in my eyes for no reason I can explain. I’m trying to get them under control when the side door behind Scarlett and to my right opens and Jimmy enters.

  I look at him. He pauses for a moment to take in the scene, hand still on the doorknob.

  “What did you do to her?” he demands. In a few steps he’s gone from the door and is in front of Scarlett. He looms above her in her prom dress and puts his fists on either side of the chair. “Well? What did you do to her?”

  “Jimmy!” I yell. “Stop! What are you doing? She didn’t do anything!”

  Scarlett seems to be having difficulty processing this new development. She squints unresistingly up at him. She tries to push herself up toward him to respond but has trouble getting her hands positioned on the chair’s arms.

  “She’s drunk,” Jimmy says in disgust, moving back from Scarlett. She falls back to the chair, knocking it back on the two back legs for a perilous moment before crashing forward.

  “I know!�
� I say. “She didn’t mean to be. The punch at prom was spiked.”

  Jimmy looks at Scarlett like she’s an idiot. Scarlett flushes and her jaw tenses.

  “But why is she here?” Jimmy asks, not looking away from Scarlett, who attempts to drape her wrap again. Her left arm keeps missing the end.

  “Forget it,” Scarlett says, staggering to her feet. The wrap finally gets on. “I’m leaving.”

  “Let me drive you,” I say.

  “No,” says Jimmy, in a voice that says he’s not going to allow for an argument. “I will. We can talk about responsibility.”

  Both Scarlett and I blanch.

  “Seriously, Jimmy,” I start, but Scarlett pushes past him and skirts me to get to her shoes.

  “No one has to drive me,” she says, muffled as she bends over to messily work her feet into her shiny heels.

  “You can’t—”

  “I won’t,” she says, interrupting my distressed objection, twisting her head to peer up at me. She straightens and shakes her wrap so it lies smooth and neat over her. She carefully adjusts the knot in front of her chest, putting herself back together piece-by-piece. “I’ll walk. It’s not that far, and it’s not raining that hard.”

  “What about your car?” Jimmy asks.

  “I’ll pick it up tomorrow.” She puts a hand on the doorknob, then pauses and looks back at me. “We’ll talk then.”

  “What will your parents say?” I ask. How will these faceless people react to her arriving home from prom drunk and vehicle-less?

  She shrugs, a look of bitter humor twisting her mouth. “They probably won’t be that surprised.”

  The sound of the rain intensifies as she opens our sad excuse for a door, and she leaves. Jimmy goes through the kitchen and closes the side door, which he had left open. He takes a breath to preach at me, probably.

  “Don’t even,” I say and go to my room.

  Jimmy leaves me alone, except to announce through my door fifteen minutes after it shuts that Mom texted him, and he’s going to pick her and Sam up from the hospital. I say fine and get ready for bed while the house is still empty. Then I lie in bed, listening to first the silence, and then the murmurs and movements of my family as they come home and go to their beds for the remainder of the night.

  For my own part, I don’t sleep much, and when I do it’s disjointed and uneasy. I’m by turns relieved and dissatisfied I stopped her before she could kiss me. (I’m almost positive that’s what she was going to do. Wasn’t it? What else could it have been? Why would she have touched my face, and cradled it if not as a prelude to a kiss?) After all, she is still officially with Carolina until she breaks up with her, and she was intoxicated. It would have been taking advantage of both to have let it continue. But how wonderful it would have been to have been kissed by Scarlett West!

  I wake after a dream-fantasy reliving the moment in the kitchen turns into a dream where I wander around the house and show it to Scarlett, trying to shove things like dirty clothes and beer bottles under the couch or into a closet before she can see them. I can’t get comfortable and flop around, seeking a restful position. I try to picture what she’ll say tomorrow—no, today, I realize as I pull up my phone to check the time. It’s almost 3:00 a.m. I put my phone away and punch up my pillow behind my head. When will she get here? Will she have broken up with Carolina, or will she ask me to wait until she can tell her in person? And then what? I imagine her hand, warm, strong, and soft, wrapped around mine. I think through where I’d like to go for dates and this soon lulls me to sleep.

  Scarlett doesn’t arrive the next morning. Everything’s still gray from yesterday’s rain, but the skies are clear, if cloudy. I try to engage myself in various activities, but nothing holds any appeal. I’m restless, and my skin feels itchy and too tight as I wander the house, peering out the windows at the slightest sound. Jimmy scowls at me, and Sam sleeps off his sickness in his room. My parents seem not to notice my antsiness, chatting mildly about chores and leaving to get groceries and some home-repair supplies that may likely never be used. The afternoon starts to slip by, and I debate e-mailing her. I don’t have her number to call or text.

  I’ve almost broken and decided to pull up a blank e-mail when, passing a window on one of my perambulations, I spot her slowly approaching our house, head down so her hair is falling forward and hands in the back pockets of her jeans. I don’t know what to do and hover at the window in my uncertainty.

  I’m about to let her come up and ring the doorbell, so as not to appear overeager, when I see Jimmy go into his and Sam’s room. I take a second to fully appreciate just how mortifying him chaperoning this talk would be. Then I sneak to the door and silently open it and slip outside as Scarlett rounds our driveway. I soundlessly close the front door, releasing the handle in centimeters so it won’t alert Jimmy that I’ve left.

  I meet Scarlett by her car. “Hi.”

  She looks pretty bad. Not only is she wan and tired, but she doesn’t immediately look at me. A sick, niggling feeling settles in my stomach.

  I clear my throat. “How are you feeling?”

  She snorts, though the sound carries no amusement. “Like I’ve got the flu. It’s not pleasant, Audrey.”

  She finally raises her head and meets my eyes. Hers are bloodshot, but I think they’re still beautiful, lined with those lashes. The features I’d spent so long analyzing I now adore. It amazes me.

  She doesn’t look happy. I tell myself it might be because she already broke up with Carolina.

  But that feeling in my stomach won’t let me believe it.

  Tears prickle my eyes. “You’ve changed your mind.”

  She lifts a hand and rubs the skin between her mouth and nose.

  “There’s nothing to change, really,” she says in a dead tone. I think I know what she means. Nothing happened after all, did it? Did she promise me anything?

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Why what?”

  “Last night, you said Carolina wasn’t me,” I say.

  She flinches. I’m being brutal, but to myself as well as her. Maybe I could just turn and walk inside and ignore her, but my brain doesn’t work like that. I can’t turn it off and on, or will myself to forget something that I know is true. Last night she almost kissed me, I’m suddenly positive of this. I would swear to it in a court of law. Last night, she wanted me.

  “What changed?” I ask.

  She returns her hand to her back pocket, puts her head back to look up at the slate-gray, clouded sky. She sighs, seemingly from the depths of her soul.

  “I like Carolina,” she says. “I like her a lot. I might love her. We’ve been going out for nearly seven months. We’ve even talked about what would happen if we both get into colleges. Which ones we’re interested in, where they would be, how far apart. That’s a lot, Audrey. I can’t just… walk away from a relationship like that.”

  “And last night, everything you said—you were just drunk, I suppose.”

  “I was!”

  “How convenient.”

  She glares at me with acute fury. “Yes, very convenient. Very convenient I almost cheated on my girlfriend with you. Very convenient my head feels like someone’s hammering at it, and my stomach feels like it’s going to climb out my throat and mouth any moment. This is all so convenient for me.”

  At that, all the fight goes from me and I just nod to myself. Maybe I never really believed her last night. It was all too good to be true, after all. I’d never had anything as good as her in my life. It was only keeping with the course of my existence that I would not be enough to hold someone like Scarlett West.

  “You should get home,” I say dully. “Drink lots of water. Eat something, if you haven’t yet. My dad always has toast when he feels hungover. It seems to help. I’ll see you around, Scarlett.”

  I turn and this time I leave her. Every step back to the house is agony, and when I close the door, not caring about sound this time, the click of the latch sounds like a
knell.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  JIMMY IS standing awkwardly in the middle of the living room, fumbling with the remote control. I get the impression he just bolted there after standing at the window, watching me talk with Scarlett. I’m too sore and aching from what just happened to feel any outrage about the invasion of privacy or his nosiness.

  “Can I have the keys to the car?” I ask. We also have a 2002 Mercury Sable that Jimmy primarily uses for work, but I drive if I desperately need a car for something.

  I feel pretty desperate right now.

  “Please, Jimmy, I won’t go far or anything. I just need to get out for a while and be by myself.”

  He looks at me sympathetically, but to my gratitude, doesn’t bring up Scarlett.

  “Sure, bean,” he says. He hasn’t called me that in years. “I’ll get them.”

  He disappears into his room and returns with the keys held aloft, dangling from his thumb and index finger.

  “It’s got a full tank of gas,” he says as he hands them over. “Just… don’t use up the whole thing, okay? I can’t refill it until Friday. And I really need it this week.” He has a job interview tomorrow for shipper/receiver in a supplies warehouse, and one Thursday for a sales position for a furniture company. He’d hate both.

  “I won’t,” I say.

  Scarlett’s car is long gone as I leave by the side door, but I still look warily around for her before opening the driver’s door and getting into the forest-green car.

  I back out of the driveway and keep it under the speed limit until I’m at the edge of the city. Then I push in the gas pedal and just drive, the houses and people fading behind me and the fields of grain spreading open and clear in every direction.

  I let the speed of driving take over my mind until my thoughts are looser, and I’m not thinking about any one thing in particular. I remember Scarlett’s face from last night; I remember the way her eyes squint when she laughs. I spend my time in memories and not thinking about anything else.