Page 21 of Good Dirt

Falling

E bby hears her brother crying out.

In her dream, she sees Baz lunging for the jar as it falls in slow motion, turning over and over as it nears the ground. She sees the barrel of a pistol, raised. Hears a bullet flying through the air. A kind of drone that slides upward into a whistle. And now Baz is the one who is falling, falling, falling.

And because this is a dream, Ebby is still upstairs, even though she can see what is happening one floor below. She tries to stretch time. Tries to pull at it and mold it like a clump of wet clay. A clock ticks loudly in her head as she turns toward the top of the stairs, willing her feet to move more quickly than the rest of the world. Willing time to take a step back.

Calling her brother’s name, her voice unfurling from her mouth as his body lands on the floor.

She is nearly at the door to the study when she is pulled awake by her own shout. She lies there, thinking of Baz, of how for the first time he has appeared in a dream about that afternoon. But why, after all these years? She tries to figure out what has changed. Bit by bit, her eyes adjust to the dark and the scent of her pillow. Damp cotton and lavender. Now Ebby remembers where she is. In France, thousands of miles from home. Trying to forget the good things gone bad. Only, her past is catching up with her. Even Henry. Ebby hasn’t moved her life forward at all, has she? No, she’s taken a step back.

Next door, Henry is awake. He is certain he’s heard a sound coming from the main cottage. A voice, maybe. He glances at the open window. Checks the time on his cellphone. Avery is sleeping next to him, breathing in that feathery way of hers. He thinks of Ebby, of the nightmares that used to wake him up and leave her trembling. Of the weeping fit Ebby had that one time, when he lost his grip on a serving dish and it broke apart on the tile floor.

Henry remembers the curve of Ebby’s shoulders that evening as she knelt on the kitchen floor among the blue and white pieces of ceramic and wailed like a child. Eventually, Henry reached the point where he could never be certain that Ebby, who, for long stretches at a time, would seem so contained, might not overreact to something mundane.

During lunch with his parents at the club one day, Ebby jumped up from the table when the wind slammed a door shut. Henry saw how his mother, always cool to Ebby, narrowed her eyes. Even then, Henry was aware of how his mother’s reaction, her overall immunity to Ebby’s appeal, bothered him more than he liked to admit. And how he wasn’t irritated with his mother but, rather, with Ebby.

Toward the end of their engagement, Henry wondered if marrying Ebby would mean having to walk on eggshells all the time. What if they had kids? They’d already stopped using protection during sex. What if she freaked out while holding an infant? Or zoned out during a mixer with some of his colleagues? Henry had been willing to deal with people giving him side glances for having an African American fiancée and, ultimately, a black wife. But dodging the lingering fallout from her trauma was another story. And what if his mom never did warm up to Ebby? What would it mean to live without his mother’s full buy-in?

How much of yourself do you have to renounce in order to have the life you think you want?

Avery pretends to be asleep. Henry has woken up suddenly and now he is lying there next to her. Avery, in her silky nightgown, with her silky skin and silky hair. If she may say so herself, Avery is silky perfection tonight, with notes of fig and sandalwood spritzed at the nape of her neck. But Henry does not touch her. They lie there, side by side, in the stony silence of this damned French village, just yards away from the woman Henry nearly married, and he does not even turn toward Avery. It would take that little to reassure her. Instead, he remains on his back, still as a rock, and Avery feels the space between them like a weight on her chest.