The year She Fell

by Rasley, Alicia

  “And we won’t count the carbs.” Laura took a slurp of the grasshopper shake (crème de cacao and crème de menthe, plus Haagen Das) and then tasted the pina colada. “You know, we could open a milk-shake tavern. These are really good.”

  Theresa looked dubiously down at her glass. “That’s a lot of liquor.”

  “The ice cream coats the alcohol and nullifies the effects,” I said positively. I gave the blender jar a quick rinse and then sat down at the kitchen table, suddenly exhausted. “Do you think Mother is really sick?”

  Theresa took a seat across from me. “I don’t know. The doctor gave her the standard treatment for a stroke, a clot buster, but he didn’t seem very worried if he’s waiting till tomorrow to schedule a CAT scan. And Mother seemed perfectly lucid when we got to the hospital.”

  “All a mistake—she wasn’t in an accident.” Involuntarily, I was mimicking Mother’s dismissive diction. “She was just pulled over for a moment, daydreaming.” I thought about that. “Mother doesn’t daydream, could she?”

  “It doesn’t sound like her,” Laura agreed. “But she sure seemed alert enough when we saw her. I loved the look on your face when she asked you to bring your laptop in so she could check her chatrooms.”

  “I am not taking the laptop to her. I refuse. She can just wait until tomorrow.” I could feel Theresa’s gaze on me, and I flushed. I sounded something less than Christian, I knew, but—but I really liked my little laptop, and Mother had already broken it once. Leaving it alone with her would be like, well, leaving an infant alone with a four-year-old. I decided to change the subject back to something important. “Theresa, have you had any experience with those mini-strokes the doctor was talking about?”

  “We have five very old nuns at the convent, so I’ve seen the mini-strokes before, and the big ones too,” Theresa said. “I don’t know. That momentary loss of awareness is suspicious. But the most important symptoms are loss of vision and numbness in the limbs, and she said she had none of that.”

  “Can we believe her?” Done with her milkshake, Laura set the glass in the sink and crossed to the refrigerator. “I mean, it’s not like she has been all that open with us about anything lately.” She rummaged around and pulled out a six-pack of Sam Adams beer. Holding it up, she said, “Like this. Can you imagine Mother drinking a beer? But for a college professor—I mean, Sam Adams would be the drink of choice. Classy and casual.”

  “You think she’s stocking beer for him?” I said doubtfully.

  “Why not? She’s going to turn our home over to him.”

  Theresa said, “Our home.” When we both looked at her, she added, “It’s gone from being the burden none of us wanted to ‘our home’.”

  I gazed out the wide window to the sunset reflecting on the surface of the river. The rose-yellow light was fading in the backyard. “I don’t think I ever imagined she’d give it away. I still can’t believe it.” I glanced at Theresa. “Did you mean it about coming back to live here someday?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t think it would be proper now that the college president might be in residence.”

  It took a moment before I realized she’d made a bit of a joke. “But if you really want to, Theresa, tell her that. If you say that you want to come home, she can’t deny you that chance.”

  She shook her head, but said nothing more.

  Laura removed one beer bottle and put the rest back in the refrigerator. “I meant it when I said I’d help out with the expenses.” She popped the top off with a practiced flick of her thumb. “I—I actually kind of think this is maybe not so bad. Being here, I mean.”

  “Hey, maybe you’ll get a trend going. All those Hollywood types will forsake their Montana ranches and buy a shack out in one of the hollows,” I said.

  “There goes the neighborhood.” She dropped down into a chair and shook her head. “I’m trying to remember why I stayed away so long.”

  “Because you didn’t want to see Mother,” Theresa said flatly.

  Laura studied her for a moment, then smiled. “Besides that.”

  “I think the question is, why do you want to come back now?” I scraped the long teaspoon around the bottom of my glass to corral the last of the ice cream. “Anything to do with the old boyfriend?”

  Abruptly she rose and grabbed her beer bottle. “It’s almost eight. There’s a Buffy re-run I missed the first go-round.”

  “I take it I’m not supposed to mention Jackson anymore,” I said to her departing back.

  To my surprise, Theresa followed Laura out. After loading the glasses in the dishwasher, I tracked them to the study, the only place Mother allowed a television. No one seemed interested in making dinner, so I called out for a pizza, and we all settled down to an evening of TV watching.

  Twice the phone rang, and I tensed, worried that it was the hospital calling. The first call was from Doctor Urich. After a moment’s consideration, I decided to tell him that Mother was in the hospital. I listened hard to his response, searching for some tone of glee when he heard that his potential inheritance might be closer than he anticipated. But his voice was all that was proper as he expressed his dismay that she wasn’t well.

  The second call was Jackson, calling to see how Mother was doing. I fielded that one too, rather awkwardly serving as a middleman when he asked if Laura was home. I temporized while I tried, with elaborate sign language, to get Laura to pick up the phone and talk to him. But she refused with a sharp shake of her head, and I had to tell him that Laura wasn’t available. He sounded disappointed, or maybe something more on the order of worried, though I couldn’t imagine why. It wasn’t as if Laura could be in any danger here in Wakefield.

  They must have had a fight. Or a disagreement. Or something.

  I didn’t want to ask her, for fear that she’d retaliate by bringing up Tom. So instead I hung up and went to the kitchen for the rest of the Sam Adams six-pack, and added a bottle of red wine to the tray for good measure.

  Buffy was over, and the six-pack just a memory, when we returned to the topic of the day— Mother’s determination to give the house away. “I suppose it’s my fault,” I said with a sigh, stretching my bare feet out on the ottoman. “I always made it clear that I didn’t want the house. I knew there was no way I’d ever live here, not for good, but I should have thought it through. I just thought Neil or some other cousin would take it over, but none of them will have the money to maintain it. And it’s not . . . not their home.”

  “Would it be so bad?” Laura said. “Living here? Oh, I know you and Tom have jobs to think about. But I can see, you know, this as the family home. A place to return to. A retreat.”

  “It’s a pretty expensive retreat.” Theresa was unexpectedly pragmatic. “Maybe you could afford it. But Ellen can’t. So it’s not her fault.”

  “I didn’t say it was her fault.” Laura’s voice was level, with just enough of an edge to make me have to step in.

  “It’s no one’s fault. But maybe we’re getting at a real solution, if we can just get Mother to agree before she actually signs a new will. The mistake was thinking that one of us had to take the whole house and the whole responsibility. But if we all three own it, and all three help out, and all three share it, well, we might be able to keep the place without it being too great a burden to any one of us.”

  “It’s just—” Laura stopped, took a deep breath, and started again. “It’s just I look around here, and I have so many memories. Not just the bad ones. Not just the sad ones. Now I remember Daddy and Cathy and all the fun we had as a family. I found a couple of the places I used to hide when I wanted to get away by myself, or read something Mother didn’t want me to read—that little cubby under the landing, and the window-seat in the dining room. And I can see, well, you know, sharing all the little special places with my own child. Someday.”

  Cautiously I said, “So are you thinking about that? Starting a family?”

  “Starting a family.” She considered the term. “
Well, I guess that’s what I want. I want to have a baby. And I’m going to be married when I do it. So that’s a family, right?”

  “Getting married doesn’t seem required anymore. Or even fashionable,” I pointed out.

  Laura got up abruptly and fetched the wine bottle from on top of the piano. “So I’ll buck the trend. No one’s going to look at me and use me and my baby as a symbol of decadent Hollywood. My baby’s going to have a real father. I hate it when everyone acts like fathers don’t count, like they’re not necessary.”

  Laura was the one closest to our own father, the one who never quite got over losing him. I knew enough psychology to know his death had affected me too—why else would I marry so young and have a baby right away? To recreate that family I’d lost. “I think it’s a good idea. It just seems so unusual these days, especially in your crowd, to marry first and conceive later.”

  “That’s one reason I’m not going to consider anyone in the business.” Apparently this husband/father was still hypothetical. “They’re all corrupted. They just want that instant passion, and when it’s not so passionate anymore, they quit. And there’s a sense of entitlement in the male actors, like they have a right to any woman they want—” She broke off, then started again. “I don’t want a big Hollywood wedding and a big Hollywood divorce. I want a real marriage.” She glanced, almost embarrassed, at me. “I want what you have, I guess. A real family. With a real father involved. Like Tom. I’ve always thought he was a wonderful father.”

  “He is.” That was all I could say at that point. If I started thinking about Tom and fatherhood, well, I’d probably spill the whole story. And I wasn’t ready to do that yet, especially not when Laura was extolling us as an example of the perfect family. Why shatter her illusions?

  And why reinforce the cynicism that seemed to radiate from Theresa’s blue eyes? It was paradoxical that the sister from decadent Hollywood seemed most idealistic, while the religious sister most skeptical—but then again, Theresa had chosen to avoid messy family dynamics all these years. And at this point, I could hardly blame her. Celibacy seemed more of a viable alternative than ever before.

  Well, maybe not celibacy. Singlehood, however, appealed to me. “But lots of women raise kids without men involved. I did it while Tom was gone. It wasn’t easy, but parenting never is, even in the best of situations.”

  “I just—” Laura shook her head. “I don’t think men should be just sperm donors. I want a partner. A . . . a good man. One I can trust.”

  “Got anyone in mind?”

  She made a noncommittal sound.

  I wanted to mention Jackson, but took the safe route. “It’s that architect on Long Island, isn’t it? The trustworthy one.”

  I’d guessed right. She smiled a little, shrugged a little, took another handful of popcorn. “He’s a possibility. I like him. He’s solid and he’s not in the business, but he’s creative. And—”

  “And he likes you.”

  “I think so. He hasn’t asked me out yet, but . . . well, he hasn’t asked me out, but we’ve sort of already, in a backhanded way, talked about marriage and family.”

  “Well, at least he’ll be handy around the house,” I said, pouring the last of the bottle into my wine glass. “And maybe he could help me design a guest house, so I can have a bed-and-breakfast and my privacy too.”

  After I swigged down that last little bit of Merlot, I felt mellow enough to give some choice advice to Laura on husband-management, just in case the architect won her hand and she ended up one of a pair instead of one by herself. But I probably wasn’t quite coherent—mixing beer and wine is not an aid to articulation.

  Still, I felt a little resentful of Laura’s sudden embrace of domestic tranquility. I can’t say I’ve lived vicariously through Laura, but her romantic life was so . . . exotic, I guess, to a long-married woman like me. I remember years ago she used to tell me—not bragging, just sharing— about the dates she’d had, the serious relationships, and the ones not so serious. She wasn’t promiscuous, as far as I could tell, but she was thirty-five and single and high-status, and I couldn’t blame her for enjoying some variety.

  It almost seemed a surrender that she would be willing to narrow her options down to one man whose appeal seemed to be mostly the ability to read blueprints and pay the bills on time.

  I must have been drunk already, because despite my resolution, I couldn’t help bringing up the forbidden subject. “What about our sexy new police chief?” That was a fine example of projection. I was the one who had let my chicken breasts touch his T-bone, after all.

  “Jackson McCain?” Laura said, as if there might be more than one sexy new police chief around. “He’s not available. Or so I hear. Reconciling with the ex.”

  Oh. So that was the difficulty. I wondered when she’d had an opportunity to hear that, since just last night she was declaring defensively that he was divorced. “Too bad. He’s got some major sizzle in that smile of his.”

  “Why?”

  Startled, I turned away from Laura. I’d forgotten Theresa. I’d never have been discussing the hotness of Laura’s old boyfriend if I’d remembered we had a nun in our midst. But then I remembered I’d discussed even more extremes earlier. “Why what?” I stammered.

  “Why is he sizzling?”

  When we both just looked at her, uncomprehending, she added impatiently, “I mean, what makes you say that he’s sexy? If that’s what you mean? What makes him seem that way to you?”

  She actually meant it. She was frowning, studying me as if I might have the answer to some puzzle she had just discovered. But—but I didn’t. I didn’t know how to define sexy.

  So I deferred to Laura. She’d know better than I. Presumably, years ago, she’d had a lot more sizzle sessions with Jackson McCain than my single covert flirt in Odom’s. “Laura, what do you think? Why is he sexy?”

  Laura made a little face. She obviously didn’t want to discuss this. But a bottle of wine and sisterly obligation fueled her reluctant response. “Just because. I mean, he looks good. But it’s more than that. He’s . . . cool.” She looked over at me. “Come on, Ellen, you know what I mean. What makes a man sexy.”

  “Warmth too.” I really tried to give this some thought, mentally conjuring up the man at issue. “Or maybe heat. He’s got that slow smile. And the way he moves. Confident.”

  Theresa was taking this all in with the earnest interest of a new student. She really didn’t know, I realized. She’d never felt a man’s sizzle before. I sent up a prayer of thanks that my denomination let me be a woman of the cloth and still a woman of the flesh too.

  “What about Tom?” she said. “Has he got sizzle too?”

  I didn’t want to answer that. I didn’t have to. Laura glanced at me, her eyes knowing and mischievous. “Oh, yeah. Tom’s got it in spades. If he weren’t my brother-in-law, well, let’s just say he could sing me one of those Irish lullaby anytime he wanted.”

  I picked up a handful of popcorn and flung it at her. She ducked, laughing, and a few of the kernels sailed past her and hit Theresa on the side of her head. Oh, no, I thought. She wouldn’t like that. Too exuberant.

  But she shook her cropped fair hair and one piece of popcorn flew out. And she started to laugh. It never got past tentative, but it was the first time I’d heard her laugh in—well, in as long as I could remember. Then, just as we started to laugh, she stopped and turned serious again. “But how? What does Tom do that’s sexy?”

  I didn’t want to think about that, remember the way he moved, the way glanced at me with that laughter in his eyes, the way he whispered endearments. But this was Theresa, and she’d never asked anything like this before, and who could she ask if not her sisters? I took refuge in the universal. “There are some things a man does that just seem so . . . masculine. I don’t know. The way he loosens his tie, as if he’s been tethered and now he’s free.”

  Theresa frowned at this. “It doesn’t seem like much.”

 
“No, I guess not. But it’ll get to me every time. I think it’s symbolic. You know, that he’s able to restrain himself, but he loves freedom too.”

  “Don’t forget the shirtsleeves,” Laura added. “You know what I mean?” Always the actress, she pantomimed a man unbuttoning one cuff, slowly rolling it up his forearms, and then repeating the action at the other wrist.

  She was good. As she moved, I could almost imagine a man’s sinewy forearms gradually emerging instead of her own smooth pale wrists. “That’ll do it for me too. Much sexier than Chippendales.”

  We had to explain Chippendales to Theresa, and that inspired me. I found my cache of old disco albums in the cupboard behind Mom’s ancient hi-fi, and Laura and I put on Donna Summers and showed her how Chippendale dancers operated.

  “You really missed your calling,” Laura said admiringly, as I demonstrated how, if I’d had only one more glass, I might full monty. “You’d make a great stripper.”

  Fortunately, before my wine-loosened tongue could explain how I got so accomplished at bump and grind—or for that matter, why the first bars of “Hot Love” were guaranteed to inspire a ready, willing, and able husband in my house—we heard the rattle of an engine out front, and the beams from two headlights pierced the dark hallway.

  “Mother,” Laura said, the panic in her voice rising over Donna’s relentless disco cheer.

  “She’s in the hospital,” I said, guilty that I hadn’t even thought of her for hours. “It must be someone else.”

  But Laura was right. Mother appeared in the parlor archway, back in her creased gray linen suit, a Band-Aid on her wrist where the IV had been, her light hair swept up in an attempt at her usual chignon. She looked weary and ill and something close to angry as she took in the popcorn-strewn floor, the empty wine bottles, the shamed faces.

  Theresa, oddly enough, was the first to react. She rose, swaying only slightly, and crossed to switch off the stereo. In the sudden silence, she said, “You were supposed to stay in the hospital until they did a CAT scan.”

  “I feel fine. So I checked myself out. I’m not going to waste any more time there.”