The Splendour Falls (2 page)

If I hadn't broken my leg, Mother wouldn't have married Dr Steven Blakely. She'd known him casually through one of her arts organizations, and since he was a premier child psychologist, she'd called him after The Accident. Dr Steve had referred me to his colleague
one floor down, and asked my mother out to dinner and a show.

They were married while I was still in a walking cast, but Mother insisted that I process down the aisle with the wedding party. That wouldn't have been a big deal if she had gotten married in an intimate little chapel like a normal divorcée of … let's just say thirty-nine. But eighteen years ago, she and my dad had eloped; maybe she thought a big wedding would make marriage stick the second time around.

The reception was in the Cotillion Room of the Pierre hotel. The
Pierre,
in May, with three months' notice. Dr Steve had pull. There must be a lot of messed-up kids in Manhattan. No wonder my mother looked so happy.

At least one of us was. After my third or fourth glass of champagne I wasn't any more miserable than usual. Which was actually an improvement over the earlier part of the afternoon. Then my new stepbrother ruined it.

He sauntered up, looking amused and friendly, and said, ‘Nice cast.'

John Blakely was in college, a few years older than me. Despite being Dr Steve's son, he seemed almost normal just then, his Ivy League haircut mussed up and the ends of his bow tie hanging loose around his open shirt collar.

‘Thank you, Mr Tactful,' I said, giving him the eye.

He shrugged. ‘I figured you wouldn't have gotten that colour if you didn't want people to notice it.'

Yes and no. I hated the cast, and I hated that
Mother had made me lurch up the aisle like Igor in a Vera Wang bridesmaid dress. So at my checkup, when I learned that I'd still be hobbling through the Big Day, I'd asked the guys in the cast room for Day-Glo orange. Later, my shrink would have a lot to say about that. My mother sure as hell did.

I admired the way the cast clashed with the pinkish mauve of my silk dress. ‘It's not like I can hide it.'

For some reason, John took this as an invitation and pulled out a chair, fortunately not the one where I'd propped my throbbing leg, and sat down. ‘So you're hiding yourself in the corner instead?'

Prior to the Big Day, John and I had met twice. Once at the Four Seasons, where my mother and his father announced their intention to get married, as if the choice of restaurant weren't a dead giveaway. And again at the rehearsal dinner. Our conversations so far had consisted of: wedding, wedding, weather, wedding.

‘Some people would take that as a hint,' I said, because I wasn't in the mood to broaden our established repertoire.

John blatantly ignored the clues, spoken and not, that I was a pity party of one. ‘I just thought we should get to know each other, now that we're related.' He set down his drink – soda and something warm and amber. No one had carded me for the champagne, but I doubted I could ask for real liquor and get away with it. Unfortunately.

‘Dad told me you were a dancer.'

My face went clammy, then hot again.
You
were
a dancer.
He said it so casually, so conversationally, and I
wanted to scream,
I was
famous. Ballet Magazine.
Youngest principal dancer ever.

He kept talking, oblivious. ‘Dad says you'll be going to college next year.'

I swallowed my first gut reaction. Then the second. Eventually a civil answer presented itself. ‘Your dad thinks it's a good idea.'

From the way his brows drew down, I hadn't hidden my feelings on the subject – of school, or of his father.

‘Why not?' he asked. ‘You've got your GED, right? It might be too late to apply for this fall, but you could study for the SAT and try for midterm admission.'

My cheeks began to burn. Pale skin hides none of my emotions, and no one had ever accused me of being beautiful when I was angry. ‘Did he tell you to talk to me?'

John's surprise seemed genuine. ‘No. Why would he do that?'

‘Why are you making like a guidance counsellor?' I could hear the venom in my voice, but couldn't seem to control it.

His tan hid plenty, but my eye spotted a guilty flush on his neck. ‘I'm just making conversation.'

‘Oh my God.' The realization hit me and I slithered down in my chair. ‘You're a psychology major, aren't you? I should have known.'

He stared at me. ‘How did you … ? That's not the point.'

‘You're just like him.' I expected a lack of sympathy or imagination from the stepshrink, but not from
someone my age. ‘
His
idea of comfort was to tell me I was lucky this happened while I was still young and could do something else with my life.'

John frowned, like he was searching for the right answer on a quiz. ‘Well, I would have said that no matter how old you are, it's not too late to go in a new direction when something doesn't work out.'

His calm ratcheted my anger up another notch. ‘It must be easy,' I said, clipping the ends of my words, ‘not to be so passionate about anything that you can't change your plan without any trouble.'

Not a flinch or a blink. ‘Well, you can't sulk the rest of your life. You've got to find something to do.'

I gaped, stupidly, unable to think of any answer other than ‘screw you'. Or bursting into tears, which was
not
going to happen. Shutting my mouth with an audible snap of my teeth, I manoeuvred my fibreglass-swathed limb to the floor and struggled out of my chair. I wanted to surge indignantly to my feet and storm away, but it's hard to
lumber
off in a huff.

John's voice followed me, carrying something that sounded like regret. ‘Sylvie, wait.'

The jazz combo was loud enough that I could pretend I didn't hear him. Mother was dancing with Steve, and she looked so happy that guilt topped off my reservoir of misery. I grabbed a glass of champagne from a passing waiter, then realized I would have to run the gauntlet of theatre and dance people near the ballroom entrance, and I couldn't face their hushed, funereal tones as they asked how I was doing.

Rerouting, I ducked out the service entrance and
paused in the hallway between ballrooms to dig in my tiny, spangled bag for the Vicodin I'd slipped into my aspirin bottle, just in case. My leg hurt, but my leg always hurt. At the moment I was only thinking about easing the ache in my heart.

It was a low dose. Half of what I took on the worst days. I downed it with five big gulps of midgrade champagne, set the glass on the service tray and headed for the lobby.

Mistakes are always so clear in retrospect.

John emerged from the door behind me. ‘Where are you going?' he asked, taking his new big-brother role much too seriously.

‘Away.' I suited actions to words, but moved too quickly, tottering on my one good leg and catching myself on the wall.

John steadied me on the other side. ‘How much have you had to drink?'

‘Just champagne.' I decided not to mention the Vicodin. It hadn't had time to work yet. And, in my cast, it wasn't as if I needed help staggering.

‘I need some air.' It was too close inside, stifling with good cheer. I headed not for the lobby, but for the Fifth Avenue entrance.

John caught up with me as I was looking for a break in traffic. ‘What are you doing?' he demanded. Behind him, I saw the doorman staring, like he'd never seen a girl with a broken leg try to cross Fifth Avenue midblock before.

‘I'm going to the park.' I shivered. It was mid-May, and the evening air was still cool.

John's fingers gripped my arm above my elbow. ‘You can't wander around Central Park after dark by yourself.'

That my plan seemed perfectly reasonable should have been a sign I was a lot more drunk than I thought I was.

‘It's barely dusk.'

‘Your leg is in a cast.'

I looked down, not in surprise, exactly. The throb of my leg was constant, blending into the background of my misery. Then something would remind me,
Sylvie, your leg is broken,
and the ache would come flooding back.

Maybe I had reached that point with my emotions, too. I'd ground through the whole day, and now self-pity and passive-aggressiveness weren't enough to distract me any longer. ‘I want to go to my dad's bridge.'

Something must have shown in my face. Tightening his jaw in decision, John stuck out his arm and hailed a cab. He had the knack of a native New Yorker, but I think it may have been my Day-Glo orange cast that got results so quickly on a Saturday evening.

Technically, my father's bridge was called an arch, not a bridge, and it wasn't ‘his' to anyone but me. The directions I gave the cabbie were to Greywacke Arch.

The trip was longer than it would have been by foot. By feet, rather, if I'd had two working ones. The driver took the East Drive and I had him stop before
reaching the stone arch that bridged the path from the Ramble to the Great Lawn.

It was a struggle just to manoeuvre my cast out the door. I left John to deal with the cab and limped to the side of the drive. The ground fell away steeply to the path below; covering it was the pointed arch, like something from a Moorish temple. The striations of its stone were still visible in the dusky light.

A million familiar city noises covered John's footsteps, but I felt his approach – body heat, a change in the air pressure. Sensing people behind me was a skill I'd developed in dance; it's handy to know who's upstaging you.

‘I can only keep the cab waiting for five minutes.

' Kicking off my shoe, I thrust my beaded evening purse into his hands and stepped onto the grass. ‘There's foty dollars in there.'

‘Not really the point. Where are you going?' He nervously positioned himself between me and the drop-off. ‘Let's not risk life and remaining limb, OK? My dad would kill me if he knew I was …'

‘Knew you're what?' I challenged. ‘
Enabling
me?'

‘Yeah. That.' From the corner of my eye, I saw him slip off his jacket. He settled it, the fabric warm from his body, on my shoulders, defrosting my skin and, unexpectedly, something deeper inside me, too.

‘Thanks,' I said softly.

‘Don't mention it.' He gestured to the bridge. ‘What's the connection? Your dad was a landscaper, right?'

‘Landscape architect,' I corrected, automatically,
but the distinction seemed important. ‘The arch was originally built a hundred fifty years ago. Restoring it was Dad's first big job.'

I pointed westward, through the trees. ‘He worked on the reconstruction of the lawn and Turtle Pond, too.'

‘I remember that. Big project.'

‘Yeah. This arch is my favourite, though.' The slope to the tunnel was a tangle of lush plantings and tumbled boulders. Like the rest of Central Park, it was an artful illusion of random, natural beauty – exactly like ballet.

‘My father would have understood.' The words slipped out on a sigh, surprising me. I hadn't meant to say them out loud. My head was spinning; the whole night seemed to be alive, and moving in strange ways.

‘Did he get to see you dance as a soloist before he died?'

‘Yes.' A shrink-type question, but I found myself answering anyway. Stupid self-medicated truth serum. ‘He was already sick, but I didn't know it.'

I kneaded the toes of my left foot into the grass, with the strange feeling that it connected me to Dad, through this ground that he loved so much. ‘He worked until the very end. He said getting his hands in the dirt energized him, like a plant in the earth.'

I was the opposite, a cut flower without roots, no longer attached to the nourishing soil. Melodramatic, yes. But that's how I felt not being able to dance.

John was watching me, but not with a shrink's critical neutrality. Maybe he wasn't completely ruined by the training yet. ‘Did you get his green thumb?'

‘I don't know. Dad always sent me potted plants instead of bouquets, and I managed to keep those alive.' I didn't quite smile. ‘Mother used to get so angry that he wouldn't spring for a couple dozen roses.'

John echoed the humour in my voice. ‘I'll bet. That reception alone must have cleaned out a couple of hot-houses.'

I might have laughed, if I were the person I used to be. Instead, I pulled the pin from the boutonniere on the lapel of his tuxedo jacket and let the flower drop into my hand. ‘When I was a kid, and saw Dad transplant cuttings, it looked like magic. You put this little sprig of green in the ground, and it takes root – keeps growing instead of dying.'

Now I knew it wasn't magic. Some things could be replanted, or even grafted onto something new. Some wouldn't take. What I didn't know was which type I was.

‘Back then,' I continued, while I peeled the florist tape from the boutonniere, ‘I thought that worked on anything. That it would fix toys, china, dolls …'