The year She Fell

by Rasley, Alicia

  That wasn’t really what was bothering me, but it was a good enough alibi for my moodiness. So, even though I felt guilty for using my sister’s death, I nodded sadly. “It’s hard to escape the memories, you know, when I’m back in the old house.”

  Janie took one of my hands, and Linda the other, and they squeezed, and after a moment Linda started laughing. “Hey, Ellen, let’s give Janie a kiss too. That Swenson girl, the waitress, can then go start a rumor about the new principal and her best gal pals.”

  Janie glanced back at the counter girl and yanked her hand loose. “That’s all I need. I’ve already got parents calling me inviting me to go to their church, saying they’ve noticed I don’t seem to have anywhere to go Sunday mornings.”

  “Moralistic little town,” Linda muttered, sliding out of the booth and standing up. “I swear, as soon as the kids graduate, I’m heading back to Pittsburgh. But for now, I better get back to work.”

  We all kissed goodbye—over Janie’s shoulder, I caught a glimpse of the little waitress’s intrigued expression—and I left to go to Compuworld.

  As I went out the door, I looked back at Janie and Linda, their faces so familiar and so dear. Janie and Linda wouldn’t have slept with Tom, even after we broke up. I knew that. I wondered why I suspected my sorority sisters, but trusted my high school friends so implicitly.

  And why, trusting them so implicitly, I didn’t trust them with this secret.

  I felt the fury against Tom rise again. This was making me suspicious and secretive, and I hated being that way. I’d fought for so long against my natural middle-child negative tendencies, and now they were overwhelming me. I felt cheated and resentful and distrusting, just like I used to feel back in the bad moments of childhood, when it seemed like everyone else got to be special and I got to be ignored. I wasn’t like that anymore—but this made me feel that way again.

  I was opening the back of the laptop, watching with half-an-eye as the Pirates ended the 8th inning with a pop-up, when Mother came into the study and turned off the TV. “Someone must have left that on, and I’m sure it’s distracting you from your task.”

  I looked up from my awkward position on the floor, my mini-screwdriver slipping out of the tiny screw again. I decided not to tell her I’d been watching the game. “I have to install a new modem card.”

  “How interesting!” she replied. I was quite sure she wouldn’t know a modem from a mouse, but she did seem genuinely intrigued. “I can’t wait to—what do you call it? Surf? Surf the web again.”

  This girlish enthusiasm was another signal that something was wrong—or something was different. She didn’t even mention the morning’s meeting, or her decision to leave the house to the college. Just as well. I’d gone from feeling confused to feeling hurt and rejected, and I couldn’t in good conscience inflict that mood on anyone, even the mother responsible for it.

  Just after Mother left to go to the employment agency to meet another housekeeper candidate, Laura strolled in. She slid sinuously to the floor beside me, leaning against the side of the couch so she wouldn’t block my light. “A screwdriver. In your hand. Wow. I’m impressed.”

  “Yes, if this church gig doesn’t work out, I’m going to get a job at Computers R Us.” I glanced at the clock on the mantel. Time passes quickly when you’re screwing and unscrewing. “Did the dedication ceremony really last three hours?”

  “No. I just, you know, hung out there for awhile. Soaking up the local color. I must have seen a dozen former classmates.” She picked up one of the little screws and examined it closely. “Most of the women look great. Most of the men look old.”

  “Boredom and beer age men fast here in the mountains. So . . . did you speak to the guest of honor?”

  She misinterpreted me—deliberately. “The mayor? No— he was too busy giving speeches. Must be election time. I don’t know why he thought this would win votes, but he bragged that the lockup cells have more modern conveniences than most hotel rooms. I thought maybe I would move in there if Mother gets too annoying.”

  “And get regular bed checks from the police chief, huh?”

  This she just ignored. “I keep thinking that someday I’ll be able to write a screenplay about this, about growing up in a small mountain town, everyone so proud of the new lockup, the fire department’s spaghetti dinner benefit the biggest event of the month . . . But I can’t get a grip on it. I have the setting and characters, but no story.”

  I straightened up and arched my aching back. “How about . . . you know. A murder in a small town. Investigated by a good-looking young police chief with a checkered past. His old high school squeeze comes back for the summer—”

  “I think I’ve seen that one. Like ten times.”

  “Just means it’s a classic plot.” To tease her, I bumped her shoulder with mine. We were exactly the same height, I noticed. No need to compare weights, however. “The squeeze could be the murderer.”

  “Yeah. She murders a college president. And gets off for justifiable homicide.”

  “Now, now, Urich is just doing his job.” I yanked out the old modem and studied it. The jack end was bent almost at a right angle. “He’d be negligent if he didn’t take everything Mother wanted to give him.” With my free hand, I shoved the new modem box to Laura, who stared at it as if she wasn’t quite sure what she was supposed to do with it. “Open it,” I said impatiently. “Geez, did Jackson serve up moonshine at the police station opening ceremony? You don’t seem completely lucid.”

  Laura opened the package with quick, harsh motions. “Yeah. Chief McCain provided bit of the old homebrew.”

  I wanted to ask her more about Jackson, but the clipped way she said his name told me it wasn’t the time to pursue the topic. “Dr. Urich annoyed you, did he?”

  Moodily Laura popped the protective plastic modem envelope and withdrew the card. “Did you see the excitement in his eyes as he contemplated taking up residence here in the Wakefield mansion? Excuse me, the Catherine Wakefield Memorial Hall? He was thinking, ‘The president of WVU doesn’t have a house this big.’“

  “Don’t take it out on my modem. Those things are fragile.” Tenderly I took the modem out of her outstretched hand, and slid it into the tiny slot in the motherboard. “Maybe Mother will change her mind and give us the house after all, when I let her use this modem even after she broke the last one.”

  Laura was quiet while I went about the delicate task of fastening the tiny screws. Then, as I closed the cover, she said, “That was weird, wasn’t it? Her ripping the cord out like that.”

  “I know.”

  She glanced back at the archway. Mother was long gone. Still she lowered her voice to a whisper. “I think she did it deliberately.”

  I didn’t want to contemplate it. “Why would she want to break my computer?”

  “I don’t know. But if she did—well, either there is something wrong with her, or she’s, I don’t know. Trying to keep you from emailing someone?”

  “I can’t imagine why. And if so, she wouldn’t be so happy that I am fixing the modem.” I pushed the power button and watched the screen come to life. “Maybe she just didn’t want me to see the website she was viewing.”

  “So check the cache.”

  I debated this for a minute. “You don’t think it’s, you know, an invasion of privacy?”

  Characteristically, Laura had no use for such niceties. “If she wants privacy, she shouldn’t use your computer.”

  So I plugged in the phone cord, and she crawled under Daddy’s desk and attached the other end to the wall jack. “I miss my broadband connection,” I said with a sigh as the modem went through the laborious process of dialing up. It was several minutes before I got the browser up and running, and Laura peered over my shoulder as I pulled up the cache.

  “Well, that’s pretty disappointing,” she said, surveying the list. “West Virginia history site. Loudon College homepage and chat.”

  “And the Wakefield Police Department
website. That’s kind of interesting.” I clicked on the link. “Hey, there’s a picture of Chief McCain. A good picture. I’m beginning to understand the appeal of a man in uniform.”

  Laura couldn’t help it—she took a quick glance at the screen, and just for a second, her eyes softened. Then she looked away. “No clues there. Mother’s just doing her loyal West Virginia citizen routine.”

  I gave in again to the urge to tease her. “Sure it wasn’t you prowling the WPD website, hoping to grab that .jpg picture of the new police chief?”

  She gave me a look of annoyance. “I don’t need a picture.”

  “That’s right. You just saw him at the jail dedication, didn’t you?”

  Now she smiled, the sort of sly smile that would have marked her as the villainess in any movie. “Yes, but you know who else I saw?”

  I knew she was just trying to change the subject, but still it made me nervous. “Who?”

  “Your husband. I’m sure it was him. He was leaning on a black Jeep and watching the show. I tried to get over there to say hi, but by then he was gone.” She frowned. “I shouldn’t have told you. I figured he was planning to surprise you, and now I’ve spoiled it.”

  I shrugged, feigning unconcern. “You didn’t spoil it. I knew he was here.”

  “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  Lots. “Like what?”

  “Like why you’re here, and Tom’s here, but he’s not here.”

  “He’s staying out at the Super-8. And I don’t really want to get into it.”

  She gave a half-laugh and pulled the rest of the cellophane from the modem box. “Please don’t tell me he’s moved out. I swear, you’re the only couple I know that I really believe in. You have to stay together, or disillusionment will overwhelm me.”

  I set the laptop on the coffee-table and used the couch to lever myself to a standing position. “He hasn’t moved out. I’m just—needing some time without him, and I guess that made him nervous.”

  “Time without him? I would have thought you’d had enough of that years ago, when he was in Tehran.” When I didn’t answer, she added, “Well, maybe making him nervous is a good thing, huh?”

  “No. When Tom is nervous, he grips tighter. I don’t need that now.” I forestalled more questions by heading to the door. “Mother gave me the papers on our trusts, and I’m going to look through them to make sure she hasn’t made more drastic changes.”

  “Okay. Hey, maybe we should go out to dinner. Try that steakhouse over on the bypass.”

  Somehow I doubted that white-meat-only Laura had a serious hankering for a porterhouse. She must have remembered that the steakhouse was the closest restaurant to the Super-8. “No, thanks. I’ll go out later and get some groceries.”

  Laura kept her gaze on me as I shut the laptop’s lid and unplugged the power cord. “Ellen, really. I’m here, if you want to talk.”

  I softened just a bit. “I know. But there’s nothing to talk about now.”

  I walked upstairs to my room, wondering why I had echoed Tom’s defensive words. I guessed I was still trying to protect him—or at least Laura’s rosy view of our life together.

  The trust documents were so dull I found myself nodding off somewhere between the boilerplate and the legalese. I leaned back against my pillows, hand still clutching the trust forms, and closed my eyes. Did I really want this old house, or did I just want to be the sort of person who could treasure all it represented? I’d spent the first half of my life here, in this very room, and the second half roaming the world. Neither felt right to me.

  With a sigh, I returned to that other issue. I went to the little desk and fired up the laptop. Once I got to a map site, I typed in the name of the county in Pennsylvania where Brian’s birth was recorded. It was halfway between the state line and Pittsburgh. The name of the hospital escaped me, but there were only three in the county. I bookmarked their sites, and sat there unsure of my next step. Would there still be records of the birth? I could call—it was so dispiriting. Here I was, making like Nancy Drew, when the details didn’t actually matter, did they? No matter what, the essential truth was that Tom had deceived me, to protect himself and the woman who had put my name down on that birth certificate.

  I copied the hospitals’ phone numbers and pasted them into my address program. But I was just going through the motions.

  The clump of footsteps outside my door interrupted me. Not Laura— she moved too gracefully in those little Kate Spade sandals. Not Mother, who had a deliberate, stately tread. Theresa, by process of elimination. I listened as the steps faded, and fell back into my drowse.

  More footsteps, from above, roused me. I sat up, the pages falling from my hand. Theresa was up in the attic.

  All I could think of was that box of journals shoved into the corner . . . and no doubt my footprints in the dust leading right to it.

  I didn’t bother to put my shoes back on. I just headed up the steep attic stairs, the old oaken treads cool and smooth under my bare feet.

  To warn her, I made more noise than necessary clambering up the last couple steps. She whirled around, clutching something to her chest. It was a child’s dress, or rather jumper—navy blue and severely cut.

  “Oh, it’s you,” I said heartily. “I’m glad. I heard movement up here, and thought it might be rats.”

  “Just me.” She turned back to the trunk, and stood there staring down into it. Finally she shook out the little dress. Without looking at me, she said, “Do you know what this is?”

  “Your—your school uniform.”

  “From first grade. St. Edward’s.” She touched the school patch on the bodice.

  I stared at the navy blue uniform and memory flooded back—a little girl in the front hall downstairs, holding Mother’s hand. “You wore that the first day—when you came here to live.”

  She looked up, but she wasn’t seeing me. “I’d forgotten that. You’re right. I had to wear it. It was the only dress I had. My other clothes were mostly jeans and t-shirts, hand-me-downs from Ronnie.”

  “Ronnie?” I echoed.

  “My—my brother.”

  For a moment, I thought she might be crying. But no. I don’t think I’d ever seen Theresa cry, even at Cathy’s funeral. Suddenly I understood why that might be, why she might have stopped crying long ago.

  I must have been so oblivious back then. I didn’t even know she had a brother in her birth family. I did remember her adoption, and Mrs. Price, her birthmother, but I was getting ready to go off to college that year, and regarded Theresa mostly as something to distract my mother from her grief over Daddy’s death—and from nagging at me to apply to Loudon College instead of “those Virginia schools.” If I thought about it at all, I probably thought Mother was being very kind to take over the care of that sullen little girl when her family fell apart.

  Unwillingly I thought of that other adoption—Brian. Tom’s son. That boy felt an emptiness, a loss, and he had never even known Tom and his birthmother, whoever she was. How much greater a loss it must have been for Theresa, taken from parents and a sibling she loved. I know there was a reason for the adoption—her father was dying, or so Mother had told us, and Mrs. Price couldn’t handle that and Theresa too. But still—

  I climbed up the last step, and crossed the dusty floor. Theresa regarded me warily, but this once, at least, I determined to be her big sister, an intrusive, helpful big sister. I knelt down beside her and looked into the trunk. “What else did you find in there?”

  She edged a few inches away, but she didn’t leave. Instead, silently, she folded the uniform and set it on the floor. Then she reached in and pulled out another little dress—a red plaid winter dress, with velvet cuffs. The waist was about as wide as a coffee can. “Mother gave me that for my first Christmas here.”

  “It’s so cute. Isn’t it hard to imagine you were ever so small?”

  The trunk contents were neatly organized, the clothes on the left and a stack of books
squared into one corner. In the middle was a pair of white ice skates. “Cathy gave me those.”

  “I remember. She was training you for the Olympics.”

  She shook her head. “I wasn’t very good. I learned to skate backwards, but that was all.”

  “Well, if it’s any comfort, she also failed to make me an Olympic skier.”

  It was a rare moment of connection between us. But it couldn’t last. Theresa put the skates and the books back into the trunk, all except for one little plastic photo album, which she shoved into her pocket. Then she laid the velvet dress on top, and the uniform over that, and closed the trunk. “You go ahead on down. I’ll turn off the lights.”

  It was a dismissal, polite but clear. I knew better than to push further. We had touched, if only for that moment. She knew I cared. And I knew—what? That she was thinking of the distant past, of what she had lost when she became one of us.

  All that dust dried my throat, and I went down the backstairs into the kitchen for a glass of iced tea. Laura was already in there, talking on the phone, and as soon as I saw her face, I knew something was wrong.

  She hung up and turned to me. “That was Jackson. He said one of his men found Mother sitting in her car out by the highway. The car had gone off the road and hit the guardrail. Mother didn’t seem hurt, but she was dazed, so they took her to the hospital.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “I need a drink.”

  It wasn’t the sort of thing I usually said. In fact, I’m sure I got the line from some sitcom. But it seemed perfectly appropriate when we walked back into the kitchen that evening. I did need a drink, maybe more than one.

  “I need ice cream,” Laura said, opening the freezer door. “This is making me regress to childhood.”

  I regressed only as far as college, using Laura’s ice cream and Mother’s liqueurs and blender to create the sorority house version of a cocktail. “Just try it,” I urged Theresa. “It tastes just like a milkshake. Only with a kick.”