The First Time I Fell Read online

  After supper, I set my laptop on the desk in the study and tried to dredge up a smidgeon of motivation to put in some work on my thesis, but was saved from doing more than looking up the precise definition of “proximity maintenance” by an incoming call on my cell phone.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said and, before she could ask, added, “Yes, I arrived safely.”

  “Well, thank St. Christopher for travel mercies!” my mother said, then yelled into the background, “She’s safe, Bob!” To me, she said, “Your father was beginning to worry.”

  “I was just about to call you,” I lied.

  “We were hoping to see you tonight.”

  “Oh. Tomorrow, maybe? I’m beat.”

  That was true. I was kidding myself about getting any work done that night. Besides, I had weeks and weeks to finish it — it could wait until the morning. At that moment, the lightbulb in the desktop lamp flickered and then went out. It seemed like a sign, so I switched off my computer.

  “Are you all settled in? What’s the place like?” my mother asked.

  I strolled to the living room, glancing around. “It’s very neat and very … nice.” From the shelf beside the TV screen, the porcelain clown leered at me, its red grin reminding me unpleasantly of the guard at the gatehouse. “Too nice actually.” I pushed the figurine further back on the shelf and turned it around to face the wall. “So nice, it’s kind of creepy.”

  “Gracious, Garnet, what nonsense you talk.”

  “That’s rich, coming from you!” I protested.

  My mother was the mistress of malapropisms and mangled language, and the undisputed queen of far-fetched beliefs and silly superstitions.

  “How can anything be too nice?” Without waiting for an answer, she began rattling on about all the things we were going to do now that I was in town. “Jessica Armstrong’s gallery has a new show, and wouldn’t it be wonderful to take your two fur-babies to the Dog Chapel in St. Johnsbury and have them blessed? St. Francis, you know! We could do the tour and tasting at Sweet ‘n Smoky Maple Syrups, and did you ever do the Windsor cheese trail?”

  I tested the couch and found it amazingly comfortable.

  “Mom, I’m here to work on my thesis. We’re not going to be spending that much time together.”

  Whenever my mother and I were in each other’s company for more than half an hour, she rubbed my nerves raw with her linguistic and metaphysical meanderings.

  “Yes, dear, but you will need to take a break sometimes.”

  “I’ll swing by tomorrow,” I promised.

  “Come for dinner. I’ll make Mexican.”

  “The real kind? With meat?” According to my father’s weekly calls, my mother was going through a phase of cooking with tofu and chickpeas. And “Quorn,” whatever the heck that was.

  “If you insist,” she said. “Sweet dreams, and may the goddess grant you restful sleep.”

  I wouldn’t need any divine assistance to sleep — my eyes were already drooping. Lizzie was curled up fast asleep at the other end of the couch, in violation of another of Mrs. Andersen’s rules, and Darcy snored on the carpeted floor beside my feet.

  The dogs were behaving normally around me. That was a huge relief because after the weird reactions I’d received from cats and dogs during December, I’d worried that this dog-sitting gig might not be a cakewalk. But the beagles hadn’t whimpered or growled at me, or stared off to my left side as if seeing something that wasn’t there.

  My brain seemed to be behaving normally, too. In December, I’d been haunted by strange symptoms — being overwhelmed by intense feelings that weren’t my own, hearing words inside my head, and having visions and seeing memories of things I’d never witnessed in person — but I’d experienced nothing weird since then.

  Almost nothing.

  There’d been a few odd things, but I’d chalked them up to coincidence, post-traumatic stress disorder, and a fertile imagination. True, at Cassie’s funeral I’d felt swamped by soul-crushing sadness, but surely that was just grief, and a reaction to being in the very church where, ten years before, I’d sat through the funeral of her brother, Colby, who’d been the love of my life. Yes, my mind had teemed with unfamiliar images of Cassie as a little girl, but maybe I’d just recollected long-forgotten memories.

  The one thing that did still baffle me was that wherever I sat — at the counter of my favorite bar in Beacon Hill, on a crowded subway car, in the waiting room at the dentist — the seat to the left of me invariably remained unoccupied. I had yet to find an explanation or rationalization that accounted for that particular peculiarity.

  “Time for bed,” I told the dogs.

  I let them out into the yard for a last pee before tucking them into their baskets in the laundry room. They peered out from beneath their blankets, but the moment I turned to leave, they jumped out and followed me to the kitchen door. Hardening my heart against the guilt-inducing entreaty in their liquid brown eyes, I shut the door firmly behind me. Mrs. Andersen’s instruction on this had been underlined for emphasis — no dogs on the beds!

  I took a long shower, letting the hot water soothe my elbow and shoulder, which ached from where I’d banged them on the toilet and bathroom floor. Before getting into bed, I stood at my bedroom window, nibbling a nail and staring out into the darkness for long minutes. Somebody was taking their own dog for a late walk up the road. The park across the way was deserted, lit by the yellow glow of streetlights. Wind whipped at the flag on the pole in my neighbor’s front yard. Ned was out on his porch, swinging the tube of a large telescope up toward the sky. It was a clear night and the viewing would be good, but he must be a dedicated stargazer to be out in this cold.

  Downstairs, the dogs whined and scratched at the door, pleading to be let out of their kitchen prison. I closed my drapes, burrowed under my duvet and, yawning, stared at the rosebud wallpaper on the wall beside the bed. Up close, by the faint light filtering through the drapes into the room, I could make out forms and faces in the patterns.

  I remembered doing this as a child, finding images in the pattern of the paint or wallpaper and making up stories about them. Pareidolia — my sleepy mind dredged up the term for the psychological phenomenon of finding meaningful patterns, especially human figures and faces, in random data. If I remembered correctly, it had something to do with the activation of the fusiform brain region.

  My own fusiform neurons must have been firing energetically just then because I could see smiling baby faces in some of the petals, and extended hands in the shapes of the leaves. My gaze kept being pulled back to the gap between the buds where the shape and shading exactly resembled the creepy face of a stern old man. In my imagination, he looked like a devil — the serrated edges of the surrounding rose leaves formed sharp horns, the thorns made slanted eyes, and the wedge of white between adjacent stalks and stems was his pointed beard.

  The shape was repeated about every five inches in the pattern. I tried to estimate how many of them — hundreds? thousands? — must be on the walls of this room, watching me. At some point in my calculations, under the gaze of countless fiends, I fell asleep.

  – 3 –

  The next morning, I forced myself to put in a few hours on my thesis, using the theory of phenomenology to explain unique individual narratives of the grieving process. Riveting stuff.

  Just like the dogs pacing the room and whining at the front door, I longed to get outside and stretch my legs. At eleven o’clock, I gave in to the temptation to take a break. Promising myself that I’d return to the mystery of mourning later, I shrugged on my parka, dumped my phone, a bottle of water and an apple into a small backpack, grabbed my knitted gloves and beanie, and asked the dogs, “Want to go for a walk?”

  Those words, they understood. They leapt up and ran to the door, yelping with excitement. I fastened their leashes, grabbed a couple of poop bags and stepped outside, locking the door behind me — it would take more than the three-hour drive from Boston to Pitchford to shed
my big-city paranoia.

  It was freezing outside. There was no wind, but the feeble March sun was blotted out by dense gray clouds which threatened to add more snow to the piles that lingered in shady spots. Pushing the leads over my wrists, I shoved my hands deep in my pockets, fiddling with the two crystals that still nestled there. One, a light mauve lepidolite stone, was a gift from my mother, who swore it would assist me in decision-making. The other, a purple amethyst I’d found at Plover Pond, was supposed to be good for sharpening my “third eye.”

  Darcy and Lizzie were eager to resume hostilities with the ducks, but I steered clear of the park and strode up the hill to the copse of trees at the very top of the estate. I had planned to walk the perimeter of the whole property, but when we reached the fence, I discovered a gate secured with just a bolt. So much for the estate’s advertised “hi-tech impenetrable security.” Beyond the gate, a path disappeared invitingly into the woods beyond.

  “What do you say we go for a real walk?” I asked the dogs, eager to burn off both their and my restless energy.

  Darcy yelped once and Lizzie did a little dance on the spot, which I took to mean they were in favor of an adventure, so we headed out. The trail was overgrown in places and littered with sticks and the odd fallen tree. The ground underfoot was spongy with the mulch of pine needles, leaves, moss and lichen. Snow lay lightly on branches and against the north sides of boulders and tree trunks, but here and there, yellow coltsfoot flowers were testing whether spring had routed winter yet. The trill of waxwings high above me added a high-pitched harmony to the gurgled conk-a-reee of an early blackbird and the rapid drumming of grouse in the underbrush below. Spring wasn’t here yet, but it was on its way.

  Lizzie seemed determined to sniff as many trees as possible, but Darcy was more interested in those that sheltered birds and other creatures in their branches. He refused to budge from the base of an enormous beech until a bushy-tailed squirrel sprang onto the branch of a neighboring tree and disappeared from view.

  The path headed downhill for a way, then leveled out and curved around to the left, belting the base of the hill. We walked almost all the way around to the north side, and I was contemplating turning back when our path merged with another trail coming up from below. White tails wagging furiously, the dogs sniffed the intersection in excitement, perhaps picking up on smells that had been absent from our route.

  I used the moment to catch my breath and was gulping water from my bottle when Darcy gave a sudden loud yelp and took off at top speed, yanking his leash out of my hand. A second later, he was out of sight, apparently hot on the trail of some irresistible scent.

  Oh, crap. Day two of my job and I’d already lost a dog. Weren’t you supposed to be better at adulting by the age of twenty-eight?

  When I’d told Professor Perry I’d be baby-sitting beagles, he’d laughed uproariously for several minutes and wished me luck. Then he’d said, “Be warned, beagles are hounds, originally bred for the hunt. That means they bay and howl like the devil himself day and night, and you should never let them off the leash in an open area because once they catch a scent, they’ll chase it all the way to its source. Which usually means losing their owner.”

  I’d thought he was exaggerating. I’d been wrong.

  Lizzie strained at her own leash, yowling and barking, eager to follow her mate. At least I still had her — that would help me track him down, wouldn’t it? We set off at a jog along the path, following the route I thought Darcy had taken. While I could see neither hide nor hair of him, I could still hear distant baying.

  Alternately cursing and calling for Darcy, I half-ran, half-stumbled along the climbing trail, until we reached the tumbledown remains of an old chain-link fence. Rusted signs declared the area beyond to be the private property of Rare Rock Stone Works and warned that trespassers entered at their own risk.

  I knew this place. I recognized the signs and the fence — more dilapidated now than it had been when I was a teenager — and knew what lay in the center of the clearing beyond it. My heart kicked into a faster rhythm because although I could tell by the volume of Darcy’s agitated barking that he was close by, I also now knew that he was in danger.

  This part of Vermont was riddled with quarries. Most of them were for granite, slate and marble, some with vast tunnels that burrowed into the sides of hills and mountains. On the other side of this fence lay a quarry, abandoned in the seventies when carving out slabs of the dark-green serpentine rock used for floors, countertops and fireplace facings became too expensive in a market flooded with cheaper imports from India and Eastern Europe. The deep hole left behind had filled with water from a nearby spring and soon became a favorite summer swimming hole for Pitchford’s teens.

  The path that had merged with the one the dogs and I had been walking was a short one which led down to a parking lot just off the highway. Because it was hidden from view by a thick border of hedges, that lot had been a favorite make-out spot for many a couple, including Colby and me.

  In the summer before I left Pitchford, I’d spent many golden days up at the quarry, swimming and drinking beer with Colby and my best friend, Jessica, and other seniors from Pitchford High. Although the pit had steep sides, it was possible to hike down to the bottom, where a couple of smooth rock terraces made an ideal spot to laze and tan when the sun was overhead.

  The quarry itself wasn’t enormous — maybe about three hundred feet deep and about one hundred and fifty by two hundred yards across — with ledges jutting out at varying levels along its vertical rock faces. Everyone agreed that the murky pool at the bottom was seriously deep. Some said it went down sixty feet, some said ninety, but no one knew for sure. That didn’t deter the cliff-jumping thrill-seekers who regularly hurled themselves off the ledges. I’d thought myself brave leaping off a ten-foot-high ledge, but others — mostly guys, there was a reason women tended to live longer than men — had spent hours carelessly diving and somersaulting off ledges way higher up, plummeting into the cold, dark water below, their shouts and splashes echoing off the high quarry walls. Between the underage drinking and adolescent delusions of invincibility, it was a wonder none of us got killed or paralyzed.

  That serpentine quarry was the spot above us where Darcy’s barks now came from.

  My yells and whistles for him were met with a renewed frenzy of yaps and yelps. There was no help for it, I’d have to follow him and physically haul him back.

  “Wait,” I told Lizzie. She ignored me. “Stop. Whoa.” No, that was for horses. “Stay?” She tilted her head at me. “Stay!” I repeated firmly. “Sit.”

  She sat but looked ready to bolt at any moment, so I tied her to a section of fence, knotting the leash twice. Ignoring the signs which threatened to prosecute my trespassing ass, I stepped over the sagging fence and made my way between scrubby bushes and thinning trees toward the center of the clearing at the top of the hill, where tufts of dried grass, jutting through the snow like dark stubble on a white face, crunched beneath my feet.

  When I caught sight of Darcy, my gut went cold, and my knees felt suddenly unsteady. He stood perilously close to the edge of the hole, barking and staring at something down below.

  “Darcy, Darcy, come here, boy,” I cajoled through a tight throat.

  He turned to face me, whined, and then resumed his scrutiny of the pit whose sheer sides fell away mere inches from where he bounced on his paws.

  I edged over to him, but when I reached down to grab the trailing end of his leash, he leapt sideways, slipping on the loose gravel at the sloping lip of the quarry. Swallowing hard, I edged closer to Darcy, talking to him in a singsong hypnotic voice, trying to soothe him into standing still.

  “Darcy, hey boy, please stay cool. Just sit and stay and don’t move any closer to that edge, okay? Good boy, Darcy, good boy.”

  His leash now lay on the ground, parallel with the side of the hole. The handle dangled over the edge. I inched closer, keeping up the soothing murmurs.

/>   “I’m just going to step on the leash, Darcy. Stay cool.” I trod down on the closest section of it, pinning it in place. “And now I’m going to grab it, please don’t freak out and pull me over the edge into oblivion, okay? I’ve already died once and have zero desire to do it again.”

  Moving as slowly as I could, I bent over and grasped the leash. Wrapping it securely around my hand, I kept my muscles braced against another possible lunge. Although Darcy was safe — or at least safer — now, I felt no relief. On the contrary, my heart was racing, a cold sweat beaded my top lip, and my heavy limbs rooted me to the spot. Despite the evidence of rapid puffs of frosty air from my mouth, I felt like I couldn’t breathe, like the air was being sucked from my lungs. Was I having a panic attack?

  No. No!

  The words were loud in my mind, and in a voice that wasn’t my own. As though magnetized, my head turned, and I peered over into the looming abyss below. As I stared, the high, perpendicular sides buckled and undulated in my vision. Dizziness surged.

  And I saw the cause of Darcy’s upset.

  – 4 –

  Approximately one hundred feet directly below me, a wide snow-covered ledge jutted out from the quarry wall. On it, spread-eagled on the snow, lay a body.

  Long black hair fanned out in a grisly halo, melding with a pool of blood, dark against the frozen white. Black-clad arms and legs lay at impossible angles. The absence of life lay heavy and solid as a shroud over the still form.

  I dragged Darcy several yards back from the edge of the quarry before removing my gloves and fumbling in my backpack for my phone. A single bar of signal came and went. Fetching Lizzie, I pulled both dogs down the path, hoping to find a spot with a stronger signal.