Rebecca Coleman - Heaven Should Fall

Thanksgiving passed quietly—Cade and I camped out for the long weekend at Stan’s, house-sitting while Stan made the rounds of his grandparents’ homes—and suddenly it was December, with Christmas carols playing in the campus bookstore and greenery strung in lopsided loops around the dining hall. This was the time of year when depression started stalking me, and I had to fight it back the way you might hold up a stick against a rabid dog. It was the same thing every year: I’d play the tough girl through October, the month in which my mom had died, and just when I was congratulating myself at having muscled through another anniversary, the holidays would be upon us. Last year, when Cade and I were still newly an item, I had packed my car and driven out to Southridge once he left to visit his family. It hadn’t been difficult to cover my disappointment at not being invited up to New Hampshire, because our relationship was still so new that it seemed excusable. This year, though, his silence on the subject was causing my case of the holiday blues to arrive at double speed. When I had told Dave I’d be going home with Cade for sure this year, I had thought there was no chance he wouldn’t ask me. But as December meandered on, I grew less and less sure.

I chalked it up to distraction, at least at first. Ever since Mark Bylina had won the election, Cade had grown obsessed with whether he would be offered a job on his staff. For months he had attended to the menial tasks of electioneering with slavish diligence, all in the hope that his good work would be rewarded with a permanent job once the election was over. Now his excitement was tempered by his suspicion that Drew Fielder, his least favorite fellow volunteer, was being groomed for the assistantship Cade had hoped for.

“I’ve put in twice as many hours as that asshole,” he said, late on a Sunday afternoon as we lay in bed. “That guy knows how to show up and look like he’s been working, then vanish as soon as the paid staff’s out of sight. And then I leave early one day this week so I can come see you, and the manager’s calling, ‘Leaving early, Cade?’”

“That sucks. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not on you. My sister’s already pissed that I didn’t come home for Thanksgiving, as if I could leave when Bylina had community service stuff going on all that week. I told her I’ll be back for Christmas, but she doesn’t get it. None of them do. The whole idea of climbing the ladder is just beyond them.”

I draped my arms loosely across my eyes and took a cleansing breath before I replied. It was time to address this. “At least you’ve got a place to go,” I pointed out.

He frowned at the ceiling. “No, all I’ve got is guilt and pressure to go someplace I don’t want to. If you were in my shoes, you’d hate it, too.”

“Not living on a farm. That part would be amazing.”

He snorted a laugh. “Amazing. Yeah. Picture this, okay? It’s minus five degrees outside. You’re sleeping in a hundred-year-old house with drafts out the yin-yang. The roof leaks, and two smokers spent all day putting the smoke from four packs of Marlboros into the air. You’re getting up at four-thirty to milk cows in the bitchin’ cold because hey, you’re home, they expect you to pitch in like you always did before.”

“I don’t mind milking cows. Or the cold.”

“You’d hate it. Hate it like death.”

“I wouldn’t. It’s no different from what I’ve done every summer since I was thirteen.”

“You don’t know cold until you’ve lived in New England. And spending the holidays with my family would be hell. Believe me, Jill. Especially my brother-in-law. He’s King Jackass of the Universe.” He got out of bed, still wearing nothing but his watch and his boxers, and took a Mountain Dew out of the minifridge.

“I’ve got to meet them sometime,” I said. “And it’s depressing to be alone over Christmas. It really is, Cade.”

“You can go visit Dave, right? That’s what you did last year.”

“I could, but I was hoping to spend it with you. It seems kind of lame to go hang out with my old camp counselor while my fiancé is off with his family.” I sat up and pulled my T-shirt over my head. “It’s not normal.”

Cade laughed again. “Neither is my family.”

“Nobody’s is. Everybody thinks that.”

Still holding the soda can, he made a gesture with his arm that said, I’ll give you that one. But along with it he added, “Let me put it differently, then. I don’t want you to come.”

I glared at him. “Wow.”

“Don’t start yelling at me. I’m doing both of us a favor. You and I don’t need to be trapped in a farmhouse on the Maine border with a bunch of crazy people. You think it’s going to be some cozy Christmas reunion, but really it’s going to be like a Stephen King movie. I know it, and you don’t, and so it’s my job to spare you.”

“How are we supposed to get married if I don’t ever meet your family?”

“That’s not the question. The question is why you’d still want to marry me once you do meet them.”

“Oh, Cade.”

I rolled over and crumpled the pillow beneath my chin. Against the cheap little side table his BlackBerry vibrated—once, twice, three times. It never stopped for long. I swallowed hard and tried to force myself to believe he meant well. He wasn’t hiding anything, except whatever it was that he found embarrassing about them. It was at times like this that I wished my mother were still around. I could ask her whether it was right to trust that he would come around to it on his own time, or if he was treating me poorly and I needed to call him on it. But in her absence it all hovered in my mind as a formless question. When she died, the one small consolation had been that at least I was eighteen, an adult, not the child I had been just eight months before. But the longer she was gone, the more I knew I needed her now as much as ever, and that there was nothing merciful in losing my mother just as I was trying to figure out how to be an adult woman myself. I’d thought it would get easier over time, but three years later, I was still waiting.

As soon as he finished his last final exam, just days before Christmas, Cade left for New Hampshire. He insisted on going alone to face his parents and siblings and King Jackass of the Universe himself. Thanks to my arrangement with the university—necessary, given that I didn’t have a home—I had permission to stay in my dorm over winter break, but I moved into Cade’s room for the week anyway. Sleeping in his bed made me feel less alone, and the quad in which he lived was noisier, making me feel less like a straggler left behind on Christmas.

Technically I wasn’t supposed to be there. The resident director of Cade’s dorm, Hagerstown Hall, tolerated my presence because she knew about me and figured that since I could sleep in only one room at night, it didn’t matter whether it was my dorm or Cade’s. The only other person staying on the guys’ side of the floor was Drew Fielder. Cade always treated the guy with barely repressed hostility, but around him I tried to be friendly—after all, Stan seemed to like the guy well enough, or at least tolerated him as part of the regular Rocky Horror group. Cade’s attitude toward him struck me as a little childish, and it seemed to me that a guy with social skills as strong as Cade’s would know that it doesn’t pay to make enemies.

On Christmas Eve, Hagerstown 6 was deserted. I sat on Cade’s bed with my laptop balanced on my knees and Lockup: Raleigh on low in the background, a cup of powdery hot cocoa leaving a wet ring on the table beside me. I was musing on whether to email Dave and ask him if I could drive down to see him the next day; the thought of his judgment of Cade inhibited me, but the loneliness made it tempting even so. Down the hall the elevator door thunked open, followed by the squee squee squee of loafers on tile. A shadow fell over me, and I looked up. It was Drew, of course, leaning one shoulder against the doorway in his shirtsleeves and pinstripes, top button undone. He looked at me with his weird uncertain smile, a petulant curl of his upper lip. His hair, misted by the rain, curled toward the crown of his head like a cool-cat lounge singer’s.