Rebecca Coleman - Heaven Should Fall

Sometimes now, when her absence became less bearable, I would imagine those moments with her until the line between reality and memory seemed almost to disappear. In a warm bed, with my eyes closed, it was so easy to imagine. But even then there was a bittersweet edge to it, because for all my belief that she and I were inextricably connected to one another, at the critical moment it proved not to be true at all.

On that day, the day it happened, I was rushing to class—I had lingered too long over my lunch in the Student Union, browsing through my notes for the midterm that was now only ten minutes away. As I hurried up the stairs, I pressed through a crowd gathered around the two televisions suspended from the ceiling in the entryway. They were riveted on some news broadcast. For only a second I glanced up at it—a stretch of red desert, the wreckage of two small planes, an excited voice-over—before squeezing between two students and pushing out the door. It would be hours before I checked my voice mail and found the message from the police in Las Vegas, requesting that I call immediately.

I had spoken to my mother only the day before. I knew she was in Las Vegas, finally taking a well-earned vacation now that her only child was away at school—a girls’ weekend with a couple of friends from AA. When I’d called her she sounded breezy and excited, telling me about the shows and the buffets, the tour of the Grand Canyon they planned to take the following day and how she should have done this years ago. I’d caught the glow of her euphoria and mirrored it back to her, enthusiastic on her behalf and envious, in a good-natured way, of the fun. She told me that the next time, she’d take me with her, and wished me luck on my midterm before dashing off to what sounded suspiciously, from her vague description, like a Chippendales show. If she had mentioned the Grand Canyon tour would be by small plane, I hadn’t paid attention. And so when I saw the flash of the television screen, heard them say Las Vegas, I had only the briefest moment of thinking my mother is there before the thought followed, but that’s not her .

Before it all happened I would have been certain that, in such an event, I would know . A sudden feeling would arrest me, a sense of disturbance or perhaps even a premonition, and I would scramble to call her to discover what was wrong. Never would I have believed that I would sense nothing, that I would look up at the very scene of my mother’s death and hurry along to my next class, utterly ignorant. The guilt that came along with it stalked me, uninterrupted, for a year. I’d pushed on through the semester believing that it was what my mother would want me to do, but even then I nursed the suspicion that I had a lot of nerve to assume I knew what my mother would think or want. The image of those two wrecked planes, having clipped each other and fallen simultaneously to the earth, lingered in my mind like the flame of a vigil candle. Even now it remained there, flickering in the background somewhere, always. It was as if I believed that by holding it in my mind, I could make amends for my indifference to it at first sight.

That year, Dave had insisted I come to Southridge for the holidays rather than spend them alone. It had turned into a tradition-by-accident, as every year circumstances dropped me there, and this year was no different. When my car emerged from the trees that pressed closely against the road I saw a single light on in the main lodge, in spite of the fact that it was two in the morning on Christmas Day. I thought I would slip past, drive up the side road to my cabin. But then the storm door swung open and Dave stepped onto the porch, looking wary at first, then smiling.

On Christmas Day, Dave and I strapped on snowshoes and hiked out into the forest. The gray clouds sent down an occasional riot of flurries, and between that dark sky and the blanketed ground the world seemed to be holding me like a firefly between two hands. In silence I followed Dave down the trail we both knew. His green jacket and dark hair collected a dusting of flakes that melted slowly, and his hiking pole made a steady chunk against the buried ice as we moved ever deeper into the woods.

He stopped in a clearing I knew well. Hidden under a drift was a campfire ring; the fallen tree was a place to sit, as were the two slabs of stone nearby. In the summer months the staff came out here to spend time together, away from the fire pit closer to the lodge that was used nightly by our guests. Nearby was a waterfall that created a pool to wade in on the hottest days, but in the winter it ran dry, and the silence of its absence confused my ears like a distant hum. Through a break in the trees I could see the mountains—the ski trails twisting down the north face, the march of the lifts uphill, the little buildings dotting the peak. But this place felt a world apart from the comfortable resort life. The longer I stayed in college, the more I suspected that I belonged out here instead—not just as a summer job until I earned a degree that could secure me something better, but for good. When I had agreed to marry Cade, even as I said yes to him, this was the thought at the back of my mind— but how will I live in the place I love? I told myself it was a petty concern, but the truth is there’s no way to talk yourself out of the concept of home . I loved the quiet here, the distant sight of sailboats drifting on the lake in the summertime, the way the mountains framed the sky. The little log cabins were easy on my eyes, and the framework of life felt so simple and unencumbered by a tiring menu of choices. I’d believed, in the romantic, girlish way, that it was worth giving up anything for the sake of real love. But even now I sometimes wondered, which real love?

Dave pulled off his gloves and flexed his fingers, then blew into his hands. He nudged me with his elbow and lifted his chin to indicate the woods beyond. Two does stared back at us, their ears alert and tails high. The smaller one eased and nudged a patch of brush for a moment, then followed the other as she bolted into the forest.

“Jill, I’m going to be honest with you,” said Dave.

The sound of my real name spoken by him jarred me to attention.

“I think you ought to think hard about Cade,” he continued. “I know—you’re giving him a pass on this one because you understand about somebody being embarrassed by their family. I remember how your mom felt about her folks, so I know where that comes from. But if Cade felt like he had to choose between them and you, I think he made a bad decision.”

“That’s not it. He doesn’t want me to have to deal with all their drama, is all. He means well.”

He turned his head toward me and squinted, as if trying and failing to see things the way I did. “He’s been with you a year now. You told him you wanted to go, and he knew you didn’t have anyplace else to go, either.” Dave shook his head. “In my opinion he failed a loyalty check, and that means something. You deserve to be with somebody who has more empathy for you. Somebody who’s always on your side.”

I shook my own head slowly, but Dave wasn’t saying anything that hadn’t already crossed my mind. I didn’t want to hear him speaking it aloud, and so I said nothing. Because for over a week now I had been waiting for my body to give a sign that everything was ordinary—that our long Thanksgiving weekend at Stan’s had left us with a romantic memory and not an immediate problem. I’d postponed taking a pregnancy test because I feared the answer, and dreaded the possibility that Cade would receive the news and leave me behind on Christmas anyway. That would be more than I could bear. My mother had taught the women she sponsored about taking a searching and fearless moral inventory of themselves to figure out who they really were; it was the Fourth Step officially, and a good idea for anybody, she often said. Know what you are capable of. Know what stands in the way of your moving forward . I had done that, and found myself sorely lacking. I wished I had my mother’s courage, but when I looked inward all I saw was the fear of finding myself in her situation, alone.