While I'm Falling Part 3

It was almost midnight when I got back to my room. The hall was empty, all of my freshman charges ostensibly in bed. Someone had written "YOU ARE NEVER HERE. YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE THIS JOB" on my message board. I wiped it off with the sleeve of my sweater and, holding the walkie-talkie between my knees, pushed my key into the lock.

My room that year was a little sad-looking. When I'd moved into the dorm as a freshman, my mother bought me a new white bedspread and a little white lamp to put on my desk. White, she told me, would be a safe bet to match whatever my roommate brought with her. And that had turned out to be true, to an extent. My freshman year roommate, a theater major from St. Louis, had proudly brought an entire bedroom set printed with the markings of a cow. Everything-bedspread, pillows, curtains, even a throw rug-was white with Holstein splashes of black.

The first time my mother came to visit, she was amused. "Does it make you want to mooooooove out?" she asked. She stood on my side of the room, her hands buried deep in the pockets of her raincoat, as if afraid to touch anything cow. My roommate had left for a rehearsal.

"Just try to get along," my mother counseled. "Sometimes you just have to try to get along with someone." She looked around the room and smiled. "Think of it as a learning experience. You know? Milk it for all it's worth."

This year, I had my own room, and there was no cow print to contend with. But I hadn't really had the time or energy to decorate. I had a laminated poster of the periodic table of elements taped on my wall, so I could stare at it while I blew my hair dry. I'd pinned a calendar to the bulletin board, next to a picture of Tim standing on his head in front of his apartment. But that was pretty much it for wall art. I still had the white bedspread, and I put a white sheet over the other mattress. This looked okay in the early fall, when I still kept my windows open, the sun shining bright on the linoleum floor. But on gray days, and always at night, my room looked bare and stark.

As soon as I put my books down, I checked my phone, pleased to see Tim had called twice.

He answered yawning. "Good evening," he said. "Or good morning. What time is it?"

"It's late. Sorry. I forgot my phone. Did I wake you up?"

"No." He was eating something crunchy. "We're watching El Corazon Verdad El Corazon Verdad. You're missing out. Lorenzo is about to find out who his real father is."

I sighed, envious. The graduate engineering program was famously difficult, but you wouldn't know that from all the free time Tim seemed to have. He lived in an apartment off campus, and he regularly got himself to the grocery store and the Laundromat. He went running every morning. When the weather was good, he played kickball with his friends. He and his roommate watched doc.u.mentaries on the Civil War and bad reality shows. They watched the Spanish soap operas so often that they were actually picking up Spanish. And yet Tim had recently been invited to a dinner at the Alumni Center for maintaining a 4.0. He never would have told me this, but they mentioned it at the dinner, and he'd brought me as a guest.

"They're doing a marathon tonight," he said. I could hear dramatic Latin music in the background. "You should come over."

"No puedo," I said.

"Whoa. Whoa." I clearly had his attention. "Seriously. No television. I'll turn it off. But will you come over? I'll come pick you up right now. Just get your toothbrush. I'll be there in ten minutes."

"I'm on duty." The regret in my voice was sincere. I liked watching the Spanish soap operas, sitting with him on his big couch, my head on his shoulder. In the morning, his roommate sometimes went out and got doughnuts.

"This job," he said. "This babysitting job of yours."

I fell on my bed, the phone pinched by my shoulder. "You could come over here."

I knew he wouldn't. He didn't like staying at the dorm. There was the security check-in to deal with, and the real possibility of a late-night fire drill. And if he had to pee in the middle of the night, he had a long walk to the nearest men's bathroom, complete with a flight of stairs.

"Tomorrow night?"

I checked the calendar pinned to the bulletin board next to his picture. Thursday, like Wednesday, was blocked out with an unhappy face.

"On duty again."

"You know I leave on Friday?"

"I'm sorry," I said. "I can't leave."

"But you could still come to Chicago with me." His voice was quieter. He'd turned the television off, or maybe just moved away from it. "You wouldn't have to come to the dinner. You could just drive up there with me. I'd show you around. When I'm at the dinner, you could go see a movie or something. Or study. I mean, you're invited to the dinner, but if you don't want to-"

"I didn't say I didn't want to go. I said I would feel strange." I sat up and pushed my hair behind my shoulders. "I mean, it's a big deal. They probably just want it to be family."

"It's not that big a deal."

"Being married for fifty years?"

"Lots of people do it. My grandparents are just out to get presents. And attention. They always want attention, those two."

"Mmm-hmm." I smiled. Tim had a picture of his grandparents in his room. They were both in wheelchairs, holding hands. "So what are you getting them?"

"I was going to pick something up on the way. What do you get for a fiftieth anniversary? I mean, it's gold, right? But what do you get if you're young and poor? I don't know. Matching sweatshirts? I have no idea."

I reached up to the top shelf of my closet and took out the plastic bucket that held my toothbrush, toothpaste, and soap. "That's why you want me to go. You want me to pick out a present."

"I want you to go because I want everyone to meet you."

I was silent, looking out my dark window. I was so high up. If there really ever were a fire, I might not be able to get out.

"So...? How about it?"

I had never been to Chicago. And he would probably let me drive, at least some of the way. But I couldn't go. I had to study. And this weekend, I would have Jimmy Liff's car. I could drive as much as I wanted, anywhere I wanted to go.

Tim took my refusal with little grace.

"You're house-sitting for that security guy? The one who used to wear those stupid contacts that made his eyes look like a cat's?"

I frowned. I'd forgotten about the contacts. "Yeah. But that's not the point. He's not going to be there."

"Huh. You know that Chinese tattoo on his arm? You know what it says?"

"I didn't know you read Chinese, Tim."

"I looked it up. It says, 'I don't know Chinese, either.'"

I stood up, sat back down. "You'll come over tomorrow night? You're my only hope. I'll be trapped in the tower here. Come save me."

He laughed a little. "Good night, lovely Veronica. I'll see you tomorrow night."

I sat there for almost a minute, holding the silent phone against my ear. I could have fallen asleep just sitting there, without even taking off my shoes. I would have to get up early in the morning. Jimmy Liff was picking me up at eight. He'd said it was the only free time he had before he left, and he wanted to show me how to get to the town house, and how to water the more delicate plants.

I changed into my pajamas and slippers, got my little basket of toiletries, and shuffled to the bathroom at the end of the hall. But even when I returned to my room, my face scrubbed, my teeth clean, I didn't get into bed right away. I dragged the heavy wooden chair by my desk over to the closet, climbing up to reach the top shelf. I had everything up there-yearbooks, photo alb.u.ms, ice skates, a book report I'd gotten to read over the radio in junior high-all the things that a college student with still-married parents would probably leave in a bedroom back home.

I found the cardboard box I was looking for and lowered myself into the chair.

My mother made amazing photo alb.u.ms. My sister and I each had our own, our names cross-st.i.tched on the front. Inside, she'd labeled each picture with the date, the event, and the names of everyone pictured. In the early years, before digital cameras, she used scissors to crop distracting backgrounds. She colored in our flash-startled eyes with brown marker. Once she got a digital camera, she could put all her energy into the layouts. She used wallpaper sc.r.a.ps for colorful borders. She included party invitations and notes from teachers, and a pressed flower from my prom corsage.

I moved the alb.u.ms out of the box, one at a time, until I came to my parents' wedding alb.u.m. The last time I was at my mother's apartment, she'd asked me if I wanted to keep it. She said she didn't want it around.

I flipped through the pages slowly. The corners were yellowed, and some of the pictures were stuck to their shiny vinyl pockets. As a child, I had looked through this alb.u.m so often, and so slowly, that every image was already burned in my mind: the little campus chapel where the ceremony took place, the priest standing in front of a magnolia in bloom; my father, young and skinny in his tuxedo, barely recognizable, his hair long enough to cover his ears. And my mother, her dark hair falling to her waist, in a white dress with a Cinderella hoop, a too-big bow on the chest. She was twenty-two. She looked happy in the picture, her smile wide, her eyes bright, the breeze lifting her hair and veil. There is a picture of her with my now-dead grandmother, and in it, they both look so vibrant, my grandmother wearing a bright blue hat, my mother's head resting on her shoulder. There is a picture of my mother and father cutting the cake together. He is looking at her and saying something, and she is looking at the camera, clearly trying not to laugh.

It was hard to look at that picture, especially, and not feel bad for both of them, considering how it all turned out. I didn't understand why my mother had done whatever she'd done with the Sleeping Roofer, why she'd let our whole world fall into this strange and un-organized landscape. She'd been unhappy, she said. I squinted down at her youthful face in the camera's flash, searching for some clue, some way she could have known from the very start, even a hint at the world of difference between what she expected on that happy day, and all she had not foreseen.

3.

HAYLIE B b.u.t.tERFIELD WAS THE only person in the dorm I knew from home. Her family lived just a few blocks away from our cul-de-sac, in a palatial house with a circular drive and small fountain in front, their mailbox hidden inside a statue of a lion. When Haylie and I were very young, we had almost been friends. She had a castle-shaped playhouse in her backyard that was three stories high, made with real wood, with gla.s.s windows and a spiral stairway down the middle. Also, incidentally, Haylie was nice. So whenever her mother called my mother and asked if I wanted to come keep her daughter company, I was always ready to go. only person in the dorm I knew from home. Her family lived just a few blocks away from our cul-de-sac, in a palatial house with a circular drive and small fountain in front, their mailbox hidden inside a statue of a lion. When Haylie and I were very young, we had almost been friends. She had a castle-shaped playhouse in her backyard that was three stories high, made with real wood, with gla.s.s windows and a spiral stairway down the middle. Also, incidentally, Haylie was nice. So whenever her mother called my mother and asked if I wanted to come keep her daughter company, I was always ready to go.

Haylie's mother, Pamela b.u.t.terfield, was a runner. Even in cold weather, we would see her pushing Haylie's bundled-up little brother in a jogging stroller with quick, even strides up the hill past our house, her ponytail bobbing over a wool headband. "The kid has little pedals in there," my father said once, smiling at his own joke. "Lazy woman, making the boy do all the work."

Pamela b.u.t.terfield and my mother were friends, or at least they had been, when Haylie and I were little. According to my mother, they spent long days at the country club's kiddie pool, comparing pediatricians and sleep deprivation while they held us under our armpits and bobbed us gently in the water. Haylie and I went to the same toddler tumbling cla.s.s, the same ballet cla.s.s, the same Spanish sing-alongs at the library. We were in the same Girl Scout troop, and my mother was our troop's leader until my grandmother's failing health took up too much of her time. When Haylie's little brother was born, Haylie's mother resumed the daily routine of a stay-at-home mom with a small child; but my mother was just beginning her long journey into the world of elder care. And after my parents canceled their membership to the country club, we couldn't go to the same pool. But my mother and Pamela stayed friendly. If Pamela was running by when my mom was backing out of the driveway, they would stop to talk, both of them saying they would get together soon, to have coffee maybe, when they weren't so busy.

By the time I was in junior high, Haylie's little brother and his friends were playing in the castle, and Haylie and I had drifted apart. I wasn't exactly a pariah in high school, but by seventh grade, Haylie had risen to the top tier of the social order. She'd always been cute, with the kind of face that looked feminine even with her auburn hair cut short all around. But in ninth grade, she made three major changes: she went out for track and made the varsity team; she let her hair grow past her shoulders; and she started wearing lip gloss. All of a sudden, she was legendary. She dated seniors. There was a rumor that a scout for a modeling agency had spotted her at the mall and given her his card, saying to call if she grew even a few inches taller.

My first and only boyfriend in high school had been in love with Haylie b.u.t.terfield. He told me this several months after he'd broken up with me; to be fair, when he was breaking up with me, I had agreed to "just be friends," and I suppose friends can tell each other whom they are in love with. But I remember that the moment he whispered "Haylie b.u.t.terfield" with so much reverence and ridiculous hope, I instantly lost all respect for him. Having a crush on Haylie seemed so unimaginative.

"Jealous much?" he'd asked.

Maybe. At the time, it was hard not to to be. Not only was she a beautiful track star, her grades were as good as mine. Her father was an executive at a utility company, and her future seemed to hold every potential: I'd heard her talking to a guidance counselor about applying to UCLA and Yale. Still, she hadn't done anything to deserve my resentment. She was pleasant enough when I saw her in the hallways. Almost everyone liked her. She made the Homecoming Court soph.o.m.ore and junior year. And senior year, several months after her father was arrested for embezzlement and tax evasion, Haylie was elected Homecoming Queen. Maybe people felt sorry for her-her father's name had been in the paper every day for months, and everyone knew her parents were getting divorced and the house was being seized and her little brother was in the hospital with a stomach ulcer. But it may have just been Haylie's beauty and charm, undefeated, trumping everything.

Shortly after that, she disappeared, and so did her mother and brother. Their house was on the market before the end of spring. My mother tried to call, but by then, the number was disconnected. My mother left a note in the mailbox inside the stone lion. She never heard back. Someone bought the house who didn't have any kids, and they tore down the play castle to make room for a fire pit and patio. I didn't actually see the castle go down, but the next time we drove past their house, my mother and I saw jagged pieces of it sticking out of one of those big portable Dumpsters parked on the street. "It's sad," I said, and my mother nodded, saying nothing. She was quiet the rest of the day.

Much to my surprise, two years later, after the implosion of my own family and home, Haylie b.u.t.terfield resurfaced, as a resident of my dorm. I didn't recognize her at first. In high school, she'd worn pastel cashmere sweaters and sometimes matching accessories for her hair. She wore small pearl earrings that she said had belonged to her grandmother, and the only time I saw her wearing makeup was at prom. The first time I saw her in Tweete Hall's elevator, she was wearing black leggings, a black skirt, and a black cardigan with a tightly cinched belt, and also spike-heeled boots, even though it was still early fall and maybe eighty degrees outside. She'd cut her hair chin-length and dyed it black.

I had to squint at her a good five seconds before I could be sure it was her. She wore red lipstick that made her skin look very pale. She was still beautiful, maybe more so, just in a different way.

"Haylie?"

She turned. She did not look happy to see me. It was as if I'd popped a balloon by her head.

"I go by Simone now," she said.

"What?" I asked. I wasn't trying to be a jerk. I really just didn't understand.

"Simone. It's my middle name. It's what I go by now." There was no hint of friendliness in her voice, though I was certain that she recognized me. "That's what you should call me, too." She spoke quietly, and with a tight, fixed smile, though the other two girls in the elevator were speaking to each other in what sounded like Korean, and they did not appear either concerned with or aware of what we were saying.

"I'll try," I said. I didn't know what else to say. "I...I might mess up a few times..." I laughed, stupidly. "...since I've known you almost my whole life."

She didn't laugh. Her red-lipped smile was still. "Try hard," she said. When the doors opened, she stepped out and glanced back over her shoulder. "If you don't think you can manage it, that's okay. You don't need to call me anything at all."

The next time I had a desk shift, I looked her up on the roster. She was listed as a freshman, with a hometown that I had never heard of. That was all I could find out: for the last two years since her father's arrest, while I'd been in college, she had been doing something else.

The next time I saw my mother, I told her about Haylie's dyed black hair, the dark clothes, and, of course, the new name. I didn't believe Simone was really her middle name. It seemed to me I would have heard her middle name at some point, and if it were really Simone, I would have remembered.

"I don't know if I can do it," I said, pulling wads of newspaper out of our old drinking gla.s.ses. We were in my mother's new kitchen; I was helping her unpack. "It would be like you all of a sudden telling me I should call you...Suzie, or something, instead of Mom."

My mother, lifting her big Crock-Pot out of the bottom of the box, listened with a somber expression. "I wonder what happened to her mother," she said, and she looked over my shoulder and out the window, as if she hoped to see Mrs. b.u.t.terfield running up the street in front of our house, though we were in my mother's new apartment, three flights up, nothing to see outside but the side wall of another building. She turned around slowly, looking back at the empty boxes scattered around the floor. "Give her a break, honey," she added. "Think of what she's been through. Her father is in jail. Everything changed for her. If the poor girl wants to be someone else, let her be someone else."

I actually agreed with the advice. I had no desire to torment Haylie, or to make whatever new life she was creating for herself more difficult in any way. The next time I saw her in the dining hall, I said, "Hi, Simone," without so much as a smile. But she looked uncomfortable, even annoyed, her black-rimmed eyes downcast as I pa.s.sed. She clearly preferred that I would choose the second option she had given me and not call her anything at all.

So that's what I started doing. For the next three months, whenever I saw her, I pretended I didn't know her, and she pretended she didn't know me. It felt strange at first, but then, as with most everything that feels strange at first, it felt normal after a while. Or maybe I just didn't notice her as much.

We might have finished out the year like that, ignoring each other in the main lobby, riding the elevator side by side without so much as looking at each other. But the Thursday morning that Jimmy Liff picked me up so he could show me how to get to his town house, Haylie b.u.t.terfield-Simone-was sitting in the MINI Cooper's front seat.

"You two know each other?" Jimmy asked. He was still in the driver's seat, ducking to see me through Haylie's window. Haylie and I looked at each other and, in silent agreement, shook our heads. She opened the door and leaned forward so I could climb into the backseat. Jimmy introduced us.

"Valerie, Simone. Simone, Valerie."

"It's Veronica," I said.

He glanced up at me in the rearview mirror. "That's right," he said, as if I needed confirmation. "I knew that. Sorry. Is it okay if I keep my window down? It's so nice out. But just tell me if it's too much air."

By the time we pulled away from the curb, he had his hand on Haylie's leg. She was wearing ribbed tights, not black, but gray, and he moved his fingers up and down the textured lines as he drove. I tried not to appear startled, in case he looked in the rearview mirror again. But, apparently, Haylie was not just trying to look different and have a different name, she really was different than she'd been before. In high school, she had exclusively dated the clean-cut and obviously-destined-for-success-a quarterback, a student body president, and even-famously-a soph.o.m.ore at MIT. "That sounds sounds impressive," my mother had pointed out. "But why can't he date a girl his own age? And why not a girl in the same state?" impressive," my mother had pointed out. "But why can't he date a girl his own age? And why not a girl in the same state?"

Jimmy turned on the radio at the same moment he started talking. "Before we go out to the town house, I want to stop somewhere and see you drive." He glanced at me over his shoulder. "No offense," he added.

The backseat was very small. My knees were not far from my chin. "Oh, I'm a good driver," I said. "No tickets, even." This was probably because I'd never had my own car, but I didn't mention that.

"Just the same. We'll make sure." He was difficult to hear over the music blaring on the radio, someone shouting in German over loud guitars. Sitting this close, I could see the skin around the bolt in his nose looked a little puffy and red.

Haylie turned around. "This car is his baby," she said, her voice friendly, but not familiar. I could have been meeting her for the first time. She had her hair pulled up under some kind of turban that would have looked really stupid on anyone else. "I drive it, too, but usually no one else. We're sure you'll do just fine. We're so grateful you could do this for us." She flashed a smile.

I nodded. So she was going on the trip as well. And apparently, before they left, she was going to be condescending. Maybe it was the only way she could think to be. But I didn't smile back.

Jimmy drove to the parking lot of the football stadium. He gave me the keys, and though I got out of the car on his side, he gestured for Haylie to move from the pa.s.senger seat to the back. In the back, Haylie sat with her feet on the seat. In the rearview mirror, she looked like she had no torso, her heart-shaped face resting on the knees of her gray tights. I put the car in gear and told myself not to be nervous. I was a good driver. I tried to remember this as we rolled around the parking lot, me braking, accelerating, and turning at Jimmy's command. I did all this with the stereo on, the German guy still shouting.

"Okay. Yeah. I feel okay," Jimmy said, using one hand to signal for me to stop. He got out of the car and walked around the front to the driver's side. By the time I had gotten out and walked around to the pa.s.senger door, Haylie had moved to the front seat. She leaned forward to let me in.

"But try not to drive too much." Jimmy readjusted the mirror and ran his hand along his shaved head. "The weather is supposed to get s.h.i.tty tomorrow. Maybe ice. But not until the afternoon. Our flight leaves in the early morning. You'll be fine if you come straight home."

I frowned, looking out the backseat window, at the bright blue sky, the maple trees still dappled with a few gold leaves. I hadn't heard about any ice.

But I said nothing. The idea of the weekend, the cuteness of the car, the luxury of the town house, was already locked into my mind. And later, when Jimmy showed me the security code that opened the door, and I saw the floor-to-ceiling windows in the kitchen and the enormous bathtub that looked like it had just been scrubbed (it had-Jimmy informed me that a maid came once a week), I forgot all about the potentially icy roads. I was friendly and compliant. I nodded appreciatively at the rather disturbing paintings on the wall, all painted by Jimmy. ("They're all from the point of view of a serial killer," Haylie explained. "They might be a little edgy for you.") And I paid close attention when Jimmy opened the door to a gla.s.sed-in sunroom as warm and muggy as an August night, and full of exotic-looking plants. He showed me which ones needed to be misted daily and how to check the humidistat.

"Obviously I keep the sunroom warmer than the others," he said, shutting the door behind him. "The rest of the house is set at sixty-five. So if it gets really cold tomorrow night, just let all the sinks drip a little, and open the cabinets underneath."

I wasn't sure what to say. Jimmy, I knew, was from some city in California that started with "San," not San Diego or San Franciso, but some other place that sounded like the weather was usually lovely and mild. He'd apparently heard a little about Kansas winters and freezing pipes, and he was ready to take unnecessary precautions.