by Morgan Rice
*
Caitlin lay there, in bed, late at night, in the dark, tossing and turning. Caleb had been asleep for at least an hour, and she listened to the steady, measured sound of his breathing. She was always amazed at how well he slept.
But not Caitlin. Most nights, she had a hard time falling asleep. She reached over her bedside table and turned the clock towards her: 12:30. She had laid down in bed over an hour ago, and still nothing.
She lay on her back, resting her head on the pillow, staring at the ceiling fan, thinking. Her mind raced, and she couldn’t get it to quiet down. Tonight was worse than usual. She wondered if she was stirred up because it was such a big day, with Scarlet’s turning 16. She remembered when she, herself, turned 16, and she still felt in some ways like it was yesterday—to think of her daughter turning 16 was surreal. It was so weird to think of herself as a mom. In some ways, she really was still the same 16-year-old Caitlin.
What bothered her most wasn’t what she remembered—rather, it was what she could not remember. It was like there was some hazy corner of her consciousness that she couldn’t quite get to come into focus, some deep part of her brain where things were murky. She willed herself to focus, to think back to the day when she herself turned 16, to remember everything that had happened that day, all the details—and was frustrated to find that she could not.
Often, Caitlin tried to remember her upbringing, especially her early childhood, convinced that she must have some early memories of her father. Something. But she often drew a blank, or muted images, so vague and muddled that she didn’t know if they were actual memories or just her imagination, just something she had concocted over the years. It was like there was this huge black hole in her memory, this hidden part of her life that she just could not remember. And it bothered her to no end.
Maybe she was just imagining there was something more. Sometimes, Caitlin found herself feeling like she was destined for greater things, a bigger life. Like she had some great destiny, some huge purpose or meaning in the world. Sometimes, she couldn’t help wondering if her life was meant to be so much bigger, if she had a secret mission waiting to be revealed.
But that day had never come. As Caitlin pondered her life—a normal life, a life which seemed so much like everyone else’s—she didn’t actually see anything about her that was that special. It seemed like she was just destined to live a normal life, in a normal town. A part of her refused to accept that.
Another part of her wondered if she was just going crazy. After all, what was wrong with a “normal” life anyway? Wasn’t having a normal life an achievement in its own right? Why did life have to be greater than normal? When Caitlin looked around and saw so many people with real problems, with broken marriages, with health problems—with real suffering—she realized that normal was OK. It was better than OK. She should be so grateful, she knew, just to have normalcy, just to have what she had. And she was grateful. She was not unhappy.
It was just that sometimes, she wondered, if maybe, she was meant for something more.
Thinking of that necklace, the one her grandmother had given her, had stirred her up. It brought flooding back memories of her—one of the few clear memories Caitlin still had. She remembered her, one of the few people she loved, on her eighth birthday, giving her a box of rare books; she remembered holding that box as if it were a treasure chest; she remembered all the times her mother had insisted on getting rid of that box, and all the times Caitlin had refused. She remembered one time, when she came home and discovered her mom had thrown it out—and bringing it back in and hiding it. She kept it hidden, under her bed, for years, determined her mom never find it again. And she never did.
Years later, when Caitlin moved to the Hudson Valley, to this big old house, she had brought the box and had stored it in a far corner of her attic. A part of her had wanted to go through them all right away—but another part wasn’t ready to. She couldn’t explain why. There was something so personal about them; she felt she had to wait for exactly the right time to do it.
Caitlin tossed and turned, thinking about those books, and after many hours, she didn’t know how many, she finally fell into a fitful sleep.