I'm actually working on it now. But I thought I would share this rough cut of the intro. Some of my readers may have heard an enigmatic description of the fact I have three heroines, of different class, race, and decade. Not to mention voice. How they connect is the story... sort of. Anyway, here is the start, with that most human of connections... not wanting to wake up.
I don’t want to open my eyes.
I am warm here.
I don’t want to open
my eyes.
Safe in my liquid cocoon of reality.
I don’t want to open my eyes.
I like this sleep.
I don’t want to open my eyes.
I know it is morning.
The sun is bright. I know I could
be awake.
I don’t want to open my eyes.
I feel myself falling and then it is as if I am standing,
leaving the thin coverlet in a disheveled pile.
I go to pull the curtain closed to block out the sun, block out the
day. I go back to bed, back to sleep and
then somehow I realize I never left the cocoon.
The sun is blocked because I’ve turned on my side.
It is warm. It is
comfortable here. Safe.
This is where I want to stay.
For a few more moments.
An hour.
The whole day.
Forever that blends into time I forget.
œœœœœœœœœœœœœœœœœ
I felt the cold on the edge of my nose. I knew if I opened my eyes and pulled back
the covers, that cold would alarm the rest of my body. It would wake me. I needed to wake up. I did not want to wake up. I wanted to stay in the warm milky gray softness
of sleep, hiding from the cold that rimmed my nose.
For a minute I forgot the bed, the pillow, the cold
room. It was barely light enough to
recognize the walls of where I was sleeping.
In that in between, that tempting moment to go back into the gray, I
almost thought I was back in the apartment, our little attic room… and I would
roll away from the cold into Dawn’s arms.
I pulled the covers over my head to hide from the cold
pillow beside me. I wanted that warmth
of the in between to shield me from remembering my present. Remembering the days of that empty
pillow. Of the room downstairs next to
the kitchen. Of all the empty unplanned
days before me.
The phone rang just as my eyes were about to succumb to the
tease of that gray. I swung my feet
around and startled the bottom of my heels as they hit the groaning wooden
floor. I found my phone vibrating on the
desk next to my laptop, managing a groggy hello.
“Bekah, I can’t come on Saturday,” my mother’s voice woke me
as harshly as the cold that nipped my nose.
“I need to go grocery shopping.”
“I thought Malcolm was coming up for the evening.”
“That’s why I need to go grocery shopping. So I can make dinner.”
“I have to do a re-shoot,” Carolina was articulate in her
unrelenting reply. “Go when the nurse
comes.”
“I…” I swallowed the words my not nearly awake mind wanted
to snark.
“Or ask Sarah Lawson.
She has offered to help. I don’t
know why you don’t take up her offer.”
“She’s too cheerful for me.”
“Well, the cheerful wouldn’t be for you. It would be for your grandmother. The time to get away would be for you.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“I’m sorry, Bekah.
I’m committed to this.”
“I know.”
“No changes I should know about?”
“No changes,” I saw my tired reflection in the mirror over
the dresser.
“Well, if anything does come up, call. Love you.”
“Love you,” I agreed to end the short wake up call. I don’t know how my mother always manages to
be so alert and abrupt at the crack of dawn.
It must annoy her students endlessly.
I went into the bathroom, resigning myself to the fact that
warm, seductive gray would not be an option if I went back under the
covers. It was the responsible thing to
do, even if my sense of responsibility that morning was more to avoid the inevitable
staring at the ceiling that would come after letting myself think about the
arms in which I wanted to hide from the cold.
Even if that room was cold, I did like having my own
adjoining bathroom. Not that I had to
share a bathroom with anyone… but I liked the fact it was mine and didn’t force
me to let in the cooler air of the second floor hallway first thing in the
morning.
One thing you could say for Helen is that she had nice
bathrooms in her house. Even if mine
hadn’t been updated since the 90’s, the room was still bright and well
coordinated. In the mental list of
renovations I dreamed about the house, the bathrooms were surprisingly low on
my priority list. The tiling, the
mirrors, even the towel holders were all just right.
It was much easier to contemplate interior design than the
fact my plans for the weekend just went awry.
How this was going to affect my cooking schedule… and thus how
unimpressive a meal I could prepare for my brother and his partner.
I could call Sarah Lawson.
I did not want to do that. I did
not want… to do that.
I saw my reflection in the mirror again as I washed my
hands. I looked old. Much older I imagined I should for just
passing my 35th birthday. I
didn’t remember having circles like that under my eyes. So many parts of me had gone soft in the last
six months. None of the right curves had
filled out. Just the ones that reminded
me how long it had been since I went for a bike ride.
No wonder Dawn lost interest… that stupid nagging morning
voice echoed in my head. I
wasn’t going to think about that. It was
easier to fume about my mother messing up my Saturday cooking plans… forcing me
to have to call that vapid, too perky for a person to be naturally, Sarah
Lawson.
I went back into the room and made my bed. I never used to care about doing that. But now, even before I got dressed, I made
sure all the sheets and blankets were pulled tight with the pillows arranged
neatly at the head of the bed. I think I
started because I was in Helen’s house… and once long ago I was instructed by
Helen to do that. She told me if you
make your bed first thing, you put everything right in your day. I don’t know if I believed that… but at that
point I was willing to try anything to get somewhat right.
œœœœœœœœœœœœœœœœœ
Her eyelids fell. She
tried to fight them, heavily pulling her towards sleep. She fluttered them open again, but found the
struggle too overwhelming as the anticipation faded into the cloud of an
obscured dream. Then somewhere in the
grayness a light flashed. Aggie opened
her eyes suddenly and saw the reflection of the panes move across the
wall. She watched to see if they moved
again. The distorted squares of light
remained on the wall over her head.
She leapt out of bed towards the window. She barely noticed the cold on her bare
feet. The light – two lights – glowed in
the driveway below. She rubbed her eyes,
still seeing spots. Then she looked
beneath her as the shape of a long black car came into focus. The engine
stopped. A man in a dark coat stepped
out of the front and opened the door behind him. A woman in a fur coat stumbled out of the
back seat and laughed as she fell against him.
She looked up at the man in the coat, allowing Aggie to catch a glimpse
of the bobbed brown hair and dark eyes full of mischief.
Another young woman with red hair stepped from the car and
took hold of the laughing woman’s arm.
The dark eyes looked up at the wintry moon that made her skin glow with
an eerie paleness. Her laughter quieted to a smile as her glance fell over the
house.
Shadows appeared on the snowy lawn as the lights went on
downstairs. Aggie saw Mavis, fully
dressed as though it were day, walk over to the car. She spoke briefly to the man and another man who
held several bags. The laughing woman
moved between them and took Mavis’ hand.
She lifted her dark eyes again, the laughter frozen as she took in the
house in the moonlight.
Aggie hid back behind her curtain so she wouldn’t be
seen. When she looked back, Mavis was
following the woman and her red haired companion into the house. Aggie tiptoed
across the room and opened her door. She
went to the top of the stairs and strained to hear any noises that might make
their way across the house and through the kitchen. There was an eternal silence when the cold
started to numb her bare toes and weigh down her eyelids. She contemplated going back under her
blankets when she heard footsteps and two men talking on the second floor. Then she heard the laugh. It was a carefree, low giggle. Aggie’s lips curled mindlessly at the
infectious sound. She heard Mavis direct
them to the bedroom at the end of the hall. Then she gave directions to the
third floor. Aggie rushed back to her
room, closing her door quickly. She went
back to the warmth of her bed, giggiling into her pillow as she let the heavy
eyelids pull her into the grayness of sleep.
