5 I Closed My Eyes and Jumped
5
I Closed My Eyes and Jumped
Thump, thump, thump …
I opened my eyes reluctantly, just a crack. Enough to make sure the sun hadn’t risen.
Thump, thump, thump.
It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t my imagination. Someone was knocking on the door. Or trying to beat it down, to be exact. I looked over at my alarm clock blinking on the bedside. It was five in the morning. I’d barely slept. I got up and crept over to the peephole.
“Hayley? What the hell are you doing here?”
I opened the door and she stumbled in, falling on top of me. She’d had her ear pressed tight to the door. As we hit the floor, we dragged down a coatrack full of jackets and sweaters no one ever bothered wearing, and one of the wooden hangers hit me on the head.
“Ow!”
“Oh jeez, Harper, I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”
My hand on my forehead, I stared at her. I was going to have a serious bruise. She crawled over to take a look.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, then grabbed my arm. “But why did you open up without saying anything? You almost killed us.”
“Why did I what? The better question is, what are you doing here at five in the morning? You scared me to death! Shouldn’t you be in an airplane on your way to your honeymoon?”
“I’ve still got two hours.”
I got up and went to the bathroom to check myself out in the mirror, and Hayley followed me. When I turned on the light, I saw a pale, haggard face staring back at me with a red mark over the right eyebrow that was starting to swell up. I ran water over a hand towel and pressed it down on the bruise.
“Sorry. Does it hurt?”
“I’ll survive. What are you doing here? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, don’t worry, I just wanted to see you and give you something before I left.” She felt her clothing as if trying to find it. “Wait, it must have fallen out.”
She ran to the door, and I followed her in time to see her bend over and pick up a white envelope. She handed it to me.
“Here, this is for you.”
“For me?”
I opened it and took out an airplane ticket. For a moment, I thought she wanted me to accompany her on her honeymoon. Had she lost her mind?
“What’s this?”
“A present.”
“A present? My birthday was weeks ago, and you already gave me one.”
“This is a very special present. The most important one I’ve ever given anyone,” she replied solemnly.
“Hayley, look, I love you, but if you don’t start explaining yourself, I’m going to scream. It’s early as hell, I’m tired, and you’re supposed to be at the airport with your husband. This is weird!”
She grabbed my hand and guided me to the sofa, sitting down and motioning for me to do the same.
“It’s an airplane ticket to Prince Edward Island.”
“For me?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?” I stared at her, goggling.
“So you can go there.”
“Why?”
“Shut up!” I nodded as she went on. “Remember the house on Petit Prince that was Scott’s engagement gift?” I nodded. I’d only seen it in photos, but I remembered it being gorgeous. “Well, you’re going to take a vacation there.”
“What?”
“Since we talked the other night, I’ve been thinking over things about the bookstore, the house, your studies… You have important decisions to make, and you need calm to do that, with no one else there to put pressure on you. That includes me. So I think it’s best for you to leave for a few days and meditate on it so you can figure out what to do on your own.”
I was skeptical. “On an island in the middle of nowhere?”
“It’s not in the middle of nowhere.”
“There’s nothing there!”
“Exactly! Nothing except the sea, beaches, and tranquility. It’s the perfect place to think. Harper, you can’t just drag this situation out forever, even if, knowing you, that’s what you’d like. I mean, it takes you forever to decide whether or not to use real sugar in your coffee.”
I looked down, embarrassed. “I can’t just up and go like that. The fall semester’s around the corner, I have deadlines for projects and reports, books to edit, assignments to turn in…”
“So you’re going to stay in Toronto?” she asked.
“No.”
“You’re going to stay here and keep the bookstore, then?”
“No.” I shook my head.
“Are you going to work for Dad?”
“Never!”
She’d said her piece, and sat there now with that impenetrable expression meant to show that she knew everything about me and I knew nothing. I sank back into the sofa, exasperated.
“Can’t I just think it over here?”
“With Dad stressing you out and Dustin all over you?”
I knew she was right. Time was passing, and I couldn’t just sit on my hands.
If only there was some way to avoid choosing and have everything turn out right. But my father had stopped helping out, and the little inheritance my mother had left me had disappeared into school fees, books, rent, and the basic necessities over the last four years. My income was already barely enough to live on.
I had to decide. “Is Scott okay with me using your house?”
“Scott has no idea. Let’s be honest: he’s not the best at keeping secrets. But you don’t need to worry there. He loves you almost as much as I do.”
“I’m not sure, Hayley. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I can’t just up and disappear to some island. I have things to do! I can’t pause my whole life for this.”
“You can!” I saw the pleading in her big, expressive eyes. “You can do whatever you want. You’re not chained down. For once, just make it up as you go along. Do something even you didn’t dare imagine.”
“It’s not that easy.” I tried to hand the tickets back to Hayley. With a sad smile, she refused. After checking her watch, she stood and said, “I need to go.”
“Fine.”
“Your plane leaves Monday. Please, think it over. You’ve got time. If you decide to go, the key to the house is in that envelope along with some useful directions.”
“Thanks. I’ll consider it.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
We hugged goodbye and swore to stay in touch.
I couldn’t fall back to sleep, so I put on some coffee and walked around the house, shooting glances at the envelope on the couch. It was an attractive thought, getting away from it all for a few days. Disappearing somewhere until my head was clear. Without pressure.
Just being gone.
Vanishing.
What a word. It was scary and fascinating at the same time.
But I couldn’t.
Or could I? Maybe.
No, it was impossible.
The story of my life.
The door to my grandmother’s room was cracked. I looked inside and noticed most of Frances’s things were gone: her first editions of classic books, her paintings, the armchair where she used to sit and read by the window…
As I walked in, I turned the key that had locked my heart up tight those last few days so I wouldn’t fall to pieces. I felt too much; that was my problem. I experienced everything with an intensity that knocked me over. I had always been that way. I could hardly manage my own emotions. I sank into them, analyzed them without ever managing to understand them, let them drag me around, feeling strong at one moment, vulnerable at another, sometimes resolute, most of the time timid and insecure.
A heart like mine has cracks in it, and they’re impossible to seal shut, so whatever I try not to feel still seeps in like water between your fingers.
I opened the closet. Part of it was empty; part of it still had my grandmother’s things hanging inside. Sorrow overtook me as I smelled her perfume. I touched the dresses, shirts, and jackets, sank my face into a wool sweater. I took it out and put it on, wrapped my arms around myself and tried to imagine she was hugging me.
Frances had already chosen which things of my grandmother’s she wanted to keep. I had to figure out what to do with the rest. The best option was some charity. That’s what she would have preferred, but it hurt me to think of getting rid of all that forever. When these things were gone, her scent, her memory would be gone. It would mingle with the air and disappear forever, because a day would come when I wouldn’t remember what her hair smelled like anymore, or her skin…
I spent that Sunday shut up in the house, eating chocolate and popcorn and watching old movies. At night I took a hot bath that lasted an hour. I liked the water covering me up, ducking my head under, and holding my breath with my eyes closed, as though I were surrounded by a magic crystal that isolated me from the rest of the world. A slight pressure in my ears, a rushing of blood pumping over the silence.
Later, I got in bed and took my copy of Anne of Green Gables out from underneath my pillow. When I was a girl, I always kept it with me wherever I slept. Other people hugged their stuffed animals to feel less alone. I cuddled up with books. It was my most valuable possession, not because it was a first edition from 1908, but because my mother had given it to me as a present on my fifth birthday. It had belonged to her before that, and to my grandmother before that, and a long, long time before, it had been my great-grandmother’s. She’d found it at a secondhand shop in Quebec.
I reread it when I was down, and it always brought out the most positive side of me, the side I hadn’t managed to find for days.
My mother used to tell me I was like Anne, because I felt everything and I lived as if it were my last day on earth. And I was chatty like her, and full of imagination, and I believed in myself.
Personally, I didn’t remember ever being that way.
On Monday, I woke as the first rays of sun were brightening the sky, and the darkness of my room receded into shadows. I made myself a coffee and turned on the computer.
My email inbox was bursting. Ryan, the editor I worked with, had written me every day since I was gone. There was also a message from the department head with information about classes that might be of interest to me and a possible candidate for my thesis advisor. I decided to call him later and thank him personally. It was rare for those classes to have an opening, so I really should sign up and then…
And then…
Nothing.
The thought of going back depressed me.
The thought of staying made me feel guilty.
Because I didn’t know what to do with my life.
I shut my laptop. I felt an uncomfortable pricking in my chest. Anxiety.
I grabbed my purse and went outside, trying to dodge the thoughts piling up in my head. I liked walking when I felt unhappy or ill at ease. That alone—walking nonstop—would cool my head, ward off despair, help me to actually think things over.
My steps took me to La Fontaine Park. I loved getting lost on its tree-lined paths, riding a bike on its trails, sunning myself by the lake there. But that morning, I couldn’t find the peace I needed.
My phone rang and startled me. After a glance, I put it away. It was Dustin. Ugh. He called back ten minutes later, then two more times over the next half hour. The next time I looked at my phone, I had three voicemails and five text messages. I had to admit he was tenacious, but I was getting sick of him.
I took a winding route home. I was hungry and in the mood for a bagel with butter and marmalade. I loved that. The sweet flavor, the scent of freshly baked bread, all that took me back to those winter afternoons when I’d have hot chocolate at my grandmother’s house with my brother and sister. Fairmount was the place with the best bagels, and I was the first in line when they opened.
My phone rang again while I was waiting for the light to change at a crosswalk. I ignored it and took a deep breath when it went silent. Leave me alone! was all I could think.
My steps sped up. I was anxious to get home and hide away in a corner. The city I’d always loved was starting to stress me out, and I was surprised to find myself missing my little place in Toronto. I was so absorbed as I walked the last block that I didn’t notice Dustin there waiting for me by the door. He came toward me.
Instead of stopping, I sidestepped him, reaching into my bag for my keys as if he weren’t even there.
“Harper, we need to talk. This is ridiculous. Your father called me in a rage because he says you won’t pick up the phone.”
I opened up, went inside, and shut the door in his face.
“What the hell? You’re acting like a baby.” The wooden door didn’t muffle his voice. “Harper? I promised him I’d take you to see him.”
I felt myself sinking to the floor and had to catch myself against the wall.
Frances was back, I realized. She looked over at me from the kitchen door.
“What happened to your forehead?”
I touched my bruise. It hadn’t looked so bad when I saw it in the mirror, but it hurt like hell.
“Nothing, a little slip. How long has Dustin been here?”
“He got here around an hour ago and hasn’t moved. I doubt he’ll give up, but if you want me to send him packing…”
I smiled. It was comforting, having her there.
“They aren’t going to leave me alone, are they?” She shook her head. I raised my arms, exasperated, and let them fall to my sides. “Why is this so important to Dad? It’s a personal issue for him, me getting rid of all this, like he wanted me to cut the last ties I have to Grandma. I know they never got along well, but going to this extreme…?”
Frances looked irritated, or perhaps she knew something she wasn’t telling me, but instead of responding, she just groaned.
“What happened between the two of them?” I asked.
“They started fighting when your mother got sick, and they went on doing it until one day they just stopped talking.”
“Yeah, but there had to be a reason. Something major, something that would justify all that hate.”
In Frances’s eyes, I could see the beginnings of a storm, dark, somber, but then it disappeared. She shrugged as if she didn’t know or didn’t care and as if I shouldn’t, either. Then she turned back to the kitchen.
“You want coffee?”
“Please.”
I sat down on the sofa. Through the window, I could see the blue of the sky over the roofs of the homes across from us. It was going to be a beautiful, sunny day.
Minutes later, Frances was back with two cups of coffee. She handed me one and sat down next to me as elegantly as a ballerina. Age had made her prettier, if that was possible. She was thin, with high cheekbones and snow-white hair. She could have been anything, a model, an actress, but she’d chosen a calm life by my grandmother’s side. Something crunched beneath her, and she hopped up. Pushing the cushion aside, she found the envelope Hayley had given me.
“What’s this?”
“A present from my sister.”
“Hayley gave you a present?” I nodded. “Why’s it hidden under a couch cushion?”
I told her the whole story, even the incident with the coatrack, as we drank our coffee.
“You should go,” she said.
“I can’t.”
“Do you know what you’re going to do, then?”
“Not yet,” I admitted.
Leaving my coffee on the table in front of us, I noticed the tension in her back and shoulders. It was my fault. She turned to me. “Harper, I’ll be leaving soon. And I’ll be gone too long to help you with this.”
I knew that. I’d been unable to stop thinking about it.
The doorbell rang and my heart stopped a second. I was scared to death. I heard the knocker strike twice afterward.
“Harper, please, open up. You’re acting like a child,” Dustin shouted from outside.
“Go away.”
“I can’t. Your father and the real estate agent he recommended are coming here. Please, open the door. We just want the best for you.”
The best for me? By forcing me to do something when I didn’t know if it was what I wanted?
My pulse was racing, and I whimpered like a child afraid of the dark, like someone shut up in a dark dungeon. Once again, Frances started to say something. But perhaps there was nothing to say.
Then she looked down at the envelope and back at me. And at that instant, I did something I’d have never thought I could do. Without thinking, without weighing the consequences, I made a decision. I closed my eyes and jumped. I felt the emptiness beneath my feet, the fear, but I didn’t try to reach out for something to hold onto.
I just held my breath and kept falling.
And I liked it.