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"Falling," by Rachel Storey

A letter from Kier arrived today. I knew it was from him before I even opened it. Kier's are thee only letters that chase me through all the moves and address changes, the orange correction stickers glaring like silent accusations. Not just for moving, though. Kier's accusations go much deeper than that.

   It was a short letter, summing up the last year of his llife in a few concise sentences. I read it, reread it, wrote an equally short reply. I won't mail it. I can't. Not that it really matters; he already knows. I laid the reply aside and went to my dresser. Pulling out the top drawer, I put the newest letter in place and started to close it again. Then I paused, and, for some reason, took the drawer, sat down on the floor of my bedroom, and began going through it.

   I keep everythiing in that drawer, every last thing that somehow involves Kier. Sometimes I think my soul is in that drawer, buried amid the lettters and pictures and keepsakes. There is a little square-shaped tin in one corner. It once contained mint candies; now it is full of tiny pieces of colored glass and a few fragments of metal, the shattered remnants of what was once a stained-glass window. A deep blue silk scarf nestles between the tin and a miniature cedar hope chest, whose lid is carved in an intricate design. Inside are a pair of antique opal earrings; a black velvet choker; an armband made of delicate silver wire; two rings, one of twisting silver, the other a plain golden band.

   A message is engraved on the inside of the lid:

   I never understood how, but he told me the poem within was a translation of what was carved on top. Not in any language I knew; but that wasn't important. Kier just worked that way.

   Sitting there, the drawer in front of me, I lifted the hope chest from the drawer and balanced it on my knee. I caught a faint whiff of cedar as I turned the key that resided peermanently in the chest's brass lock and opened the lid. Almost without realizing what I was doing I draped one hand over the lid of the chest and traced the carved design with my index finger. It was comforting somehow. A piece of Kier was theere in that design, and whatever strange workings of his mind had conceived the flowing swirls and rune-like symbols that somehow meant the same as the poem he had engraved inside.

   Reading the poem, I heard is voice in my mind. He had an odd accent, never quite pronouncing his R's. He'd said my name with a soft "a" - Sah-ra. I remembered the first time we'd met, how I had frowned at his odd pronunciation. He was a new student in my college art class, transferring in partway through the semester.

   "What's your name?"

   "Kier."

   "Really? That's...unique. Is it short for something?"

   "Kieran."

   "Are you named after someone?"

   "No."

   I was silent, slightly taken aback, unsure how to react to his sullen shortness. Just as I was about to turn away, he looked at me and said "Sara," with that soft "a."

   I shook my head. "Sara," I corrected him, giving it the customary long "a."

   He regarded me strangely for a minute, a look halfway between a smile and a smirk on his face. It occured to me that he was quite handsome, in a disjointed sort of way. At first glance he didn't seem like anything particularly noteworthy; but as I studied him more closely, I saw that he had beautiful chestnut colored eyes, shapely facebones, soft dark hair. His expression became completely a smirk, as if sensing my scrutiny. The subtle change both startled and embarrassed me, and I turned my eyes downward, blushing.

   "Sara," he repeated with the soft "a," and turned to his drawing board.

   I sat there, staring at the blank sheet of paper in front of me for several minutes. When I felt my face had returned to its usual color, I glanced at Kier's drawing. The words that had been forming on my tonguue stopped in my throat as I looked, amazed. His drawing was incredible. It was simple, just a sketch of someone sitting at another table in the room, but he made it live there on the paper. His lines were sure, not like the feathery, sketchy lines I used in my own drawings. It seemed as if the figure ought to stand up and walk off the page.

   I shook my head and forced myself to look away from the drawing. "How did you know my name?" I asked, trying to keep my voice from shaking.

   He didn't look up as he said, "I just knew."

   I sighed, frustrated. "What do you mean? I don't understand."

   "No," he said softly, "but you will."

   Very gently, I lifted the earrings from the box. They were incredibly old, and I had only worn them once, the day he had given them to me. "They belonged to my great-grandmother's grandmother," he'd told me. "See how the colors in them shift. They are the embodiment of a free spirit." He brushed my hair back over my shoulders and put the earrings in. "They're perfect on you."

   "I can't accept these," I said, blushing. "They're an heirloom, they're too valuable."

   "You must," he said. "Look." He put his hands on my shoulders and turned me so I could see my reflection in one of the many mirrors in his home. "They are the perfect length, the perfect color. Tthey accent your face and your collarbone, lengthen your neck." He put his finger on my chin and turned my head ever so slightly, but it was enough that the opal caught the light and color flared from the stone. Ii blushed again, but he was right. I wore them for him that day, and dressed in old-fashioned clothes, and he took an entire roll of black-and-white photographs of me.

   I still have a few of those photos in the drawer, packaged in a yellowing envelope and bound with a rubber band. Tthere are all sorts of photographs iin there, mostly of me: me dancing, me sleeping, me taken by surprise when he sneaked up with a camera and shouted my name. He loved taking pictures of me, and more often than not he'd latter make the photograph the subject of a painting or drawing. There's one from that day that he especially loved. I was wearing an old Victorian-era dress, unearthed from one of the mildewed old boxes in the attic, complete with a tight corset waist and padded hips. I was sitting on a stone bench, with a white rose in my hand; and although he'd caught me completely off guard, with a far-off and rather melancholy look on my face, he thought it was beautiful. I never told him just what I'd really been thinking when he took that picture.

   With trembling fingers I put the earrings in my ears for the second time in my life and fastened the tiny clasps. Then I took the two rings from the drawer. Reverently I slid them onto my fingers. The silver one was a thumb ring; the gold band went on my left ring finger. In a way, it was almost a wedding ring, except that there had never been a wedding, or even an engagement. Kier wore one that mattched it, although I was never entirely sure if that was intentional or not. It didn't seem to particularly matter at the time, and it doesn't now. I guess a wedding would have been a formality, and we didn't see a need for it. There was never any question that we loved each other. He used to take my hand and lie it on top of his, both facing in the same direction, so that my fingers fell between his, and he would simply gaze at our hands as if fascinated. Our hands were the same size, our skin the same color, and sometimes, if I was not paying attention, I could glance at our hands like that and not know whose fingers were whose.

   I held my hands out before me, and as my vision blurred with tears the rings seemed to gleam even brighter. TTwo tears slid down my cheek and splashed into my left hand. I closed my hands briefly, clenching them into fists. When I opened them again, I was both shocked and satisfied to see eight bloody half-moons dug into my palms. A line of blood tipped each of my fingernails.

   I pulled the scarf from the drawer and touched it to my cheek, turning my face against its softness. He had tied it around my eyes one time and led me around the house, finally taking me outside in tthe pouring rain. I shrieked, scrabbling to pull the blindfold off.

   "Smile," he said, and I heard a click.

   "Don't you even," I said, finally managing to pull the scarf over my head. He just grinned from behind his camera and clicked again. I draped the scarf over my shoulders and let my hair fall over my face, hiding behind a bonde curtain.

   "Dance for me, Sara," Kier said.

   I shook my head stubbornly. He set the camera down and came to me. Water streamed from his dark hair, making it shine white in the light from the house. He put his hands on my waistt and pulled me close to kiss me. "Dance with me, Sara," he whispered.

   We danced in the rain until night fell. Then he suddenly scooped me up in his arms and carried me, dripping, to our room. Our wet clothes did not stay on long.

   We lived in a house much larger than the two of us could ever need, but we put it to good use. He had a studio at the back, an almost-round room with huge glass windows and a stone floor. It looked out into the woods, over a hill, and blooming vines crept over the brick exterior, creating a living picture frame. We had a bedroom, a living room, a kittchen, a dining room, a library, a parlor, a ballroom. Any rooms we didn't live in were used for storage. Kier had more artwork than he knew what to do with. I understand now--I didn't then--that it wasn't the finished product that was important to Kier. He was about the creation.

   We were so secluded there in our big house in the woods. I never knew, in those six years we lived together, how he got money. He didn't work. He didn't even go to school. Sometimes I got the crazy idea that he had gone to college specifically to find me, then return to seclusion. Then again, maybe it wasn't so crazy, considering the life we led. We hardly ever left the house. Perhaps once a motnh we went grocery shopping and Kier bought art supplies. We had furniture and boxes upon boxes of interesting clothing there in the house. So many things about him made no sense at all, from his non-existant history to his isolated present. It was a bizarre life, and I often felt that real life was somewhere else, waiting for me to find it.

   That was why I left. I packed and left in one night. Thinking about it now, I realize Kier must have known why. Perhaps that was why he didn't try to stop me, because I was sure he realized I was leaving that night. I took everything that somehow connected us, hoping that if I severed myself from him completely it would hurt him less. I didn't realize I was trying to hurt myself less too. Most of it I burned; everything else went into the drawer.

   I moved to Chicago and tried to begin what I considered a normal life. I got a job at a restaurant, went to community college, and got an apartment of my own. I even tried dating a few people, but it didn't measure up to what I was expecting. I moved numerous times, eventually ending up in my current apartment. I think I was hoping that if I waitied long enough, my life would become story-book-perfect, the way I'd always envisioned when I was growing up. But the years stacked up, and the starting date of "real life" kept getting pushed further and further , always at some unattainable point in the future. My reasons for leaving began to pale in comparison to the problems I was facing on my own. Was this what I had abandoned love for? Yet every time I thought about going back, something inside me said, "A little more time. Give this a little more time."

   I never sent him my new address, but somehow the lletters reached me anyway.

   My fingers shook as I took the stack of letters from the drawer. The earliest is fifteen years old to the day now, having arrived exactly one year after I left. It was a fairly long letter -- the first few were -- telling all about what he had done that year, telling me he loved me, and if I wanted to come back I could. How I'd cried when I'd read it! I wanted to go back, to leave this strange new life behind, let Kier put his arms around me and stay there forever. It took me days to write my reply, because before I could explain to him I had to explain to myself.

   Dear Kier, I had written. How can I make you understand what I barely understand myself? I do love you, never doubt that. But a life with you is not the lfie I have been raised believing I should llead. Real life is here, away from you. And, though it may not be romantic, or even enjoyable, this is where I have to be. If you don't understand, you are not alone. I don't understand either. This is something I was not meant to understand. It's something I just know.

   It went on, meaningless prattle about what I was doing with my life. Three days after I mailed it, it was returned to my apartment, "RETURN TO SENDER. ADDRESS UNKNOWN" stamped across it. I fretted over that first reply, wondering how I was to let Kier know that I needed him too. Butt when Kier's next letter arrived, a year later, it dawned on me that replies were unnecessary. I kept writing them, but that was just a formality. Perhaps going through the motions somehow appeased my conscience. I realized that, in some explicable way that had he had "just known" my name was Sara, had "just known" so many other things about me, he knew everything I did.

   I opened the letters, all sixteen of them, and carried them into the main room. Without even thinking, I began spreading them all over the floor. Pages of his unmistakeable, feathery handwriting covered my apartment, creating a delicate paper carpet. I remembered the last time I had seen pages of his writing covering the floor. They were pen-and-ink drawings accompanied with writing. Some were poetry, some were translations of mysterious symbolic drawings, like the chest he'd made for me. He'd stood there, looking at them, then suddenly took my hand and led me into the middle of them.

   "Your papers!" I cried. "We'll ruin your papers!"

   He only smiled more broadly and started dancing with me.

   "There's no music!" I protested further.

   Kier started humming and swung into a waltz I had never danced before, leading me patiently through all the parts where I fumbled. I followed falteringly, giggling every time I missed a step, until Kier was laughing with me. We whirled faster and faster, until we collapsed dizzily on the paper, giggling hysterically, lips touching, spirits hopelessly intertwined.

   I looked at myself in the medicine-cabinet mirror, at the face of a forty-three-year-olld woman who had never learned to live. Sometime in the last seventeen years my hair had taken on streaks of gray, and wrinkles had developed on my face. Seventeen years of wishful thinking and unreached tomorrows stared back at me. Another tear rolled down my cheek, but I knew with a painful certainty that it would be the last tear I ever cried. It splashed onto the counter, where I looked at it for a long moment, fascinated by the significance of such an insignificant thing. Then I reached for the medicine cabinet door.

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   I step gingerly onto the paper carpet, still not wanting to wrinkle it even though I know it doesn't matter now. I feel awkward, there is no music; but as I look up, the counter covered with now-empty pill bottles dims and music swells in my mind. The scarf floats around me as I begin to dance, and I feel Kier's hands on my waist. He is with me now, leading me into the approaching darkness. The scarf flutters to the floor, lies there on my paper carpet of forgotten dreams. I close my eyes and smile, because I know he is there, arms outstretched and ready to catch me, catch me as I fall...