While I'm Falling (6 page)

H
AYLIE
B
UTTERFIELD 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 glass 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.

Pamela Butterfield 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 class, the same ballet class, 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 Butterfield. 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 Butterfield” 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 sophomore 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 Butterfield 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.

“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.

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. Butterfield 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 passed. 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.

“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 sophomore at MIT. “That
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?”

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 passenger 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 passenger 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 shitty 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 glassed-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.

“That’s ridiculous!” Haylie appeared in the living room and gave one of his big arms a playful poke. “It’s not an old farmhouse. And she’s going to be here, running water. The pipes won’t freeze overnight.” She looked back at me, smiled, and rolled her lovely eyes.

I had slowly begun to understand that Haylie lived at the town house, too. Now that I thought about it, I rarely saw her around the dorm anymore. Her coat was hanging in the front closet, and Jimmy had pointed out her desk in the downstairs study. But I also understood that really, the house, the car—everything—belonged to him. So even though I knew, regarding the possibility of frozen pipes, that she was right and he was wrong, I looked to him for the final word.

He seemed to appreciate my good sense. “Turn the water on if it gets cold,” he said, looking at me, not at Haylie. His cell phone rang in his pocket. “I’ll take this outside,” he said. He kissed the back of her neck as he walked past her out of the room.

Haylie and I were silent, listening to his heavy boots move across the kitchen and out the front door. It was the first time we’d been alone together since high school, and I wondered if, with no audience, she might momentarily drop the act. She did not. When she noticed me watching her, she fished a tube of lipstick out of her skirt pocket, turned around, and looked at her reflection in the flat-screen television.

“He’s really particular about his things,” she said. “He’ll notice right away if anything is different.” She sounded angry, maybe at me. I could see her face in the gray screen, but I couldn’t read her expression.

Still, all around me was quiet. I could hear a dishwasher, gently humming, but that was all. Sunlight streamed in through the enormous windows, settling on the overstuffed couch, the hardwood floors, the lush and leafy plants perched on pedestals. I leaned forward and looked through the bathroom doorway, catching sight of the edge of the Jacuzzi—“a garden tub,” my mother would have called it. I hadn’t taken a long, hot bath in over a year. And so even though I was unsure if Haylie had just made a threat or a complaint, I continued to be friendly and compliant.

I would think about it later, how I dove headfirst into that weekend. I only took in the information that I wanted, and I ignored everything else. My mother would later tell me, in her nice way, not to be so hard on myself; I wasn’t the first person to ignore a risk. This is how we welcome both adventure and grief, as anyone who has done so will tell you.