Fall, Crash, Survive

by Helen Beer

 

[Editor’s Note: This piece is part of the “Topical” series, with each piece solely submitted to and chosen by the Final Reader Pietra Dunmore.]

 

Allison gripped the dainty handrail as she descended the steep wooden stairs, a standard precaution against wayward cats who often raced by, and through, her feet. Lately, though, the practice had felt particularly critical. The dreams of falling had come so frequently and been so vivid in detail—her flattened body at the base of the stairs, bones shattered, her screams like siren calls to her three cats.

They started soon after the call from Ben. When the landline phone rang, back in late March, Allison ignored it, assuming it was a robocall. When she heard Ben’s voice on the answering machine, she ran to grab it, but tripped over Perseus instead. As she lay unceremoniously on the parlor floor, contemplating the Berber rug’s intricate pattern, she listened intently.

“Hey, Allison. So, I’m off the ice, and back in New Zealand, but uh… looks like my flights home are all canceled due to this virus thing, and the travel folks at USAP aren’t being particularly helpful, so, yeah… it’s Plan B time. Looks like I might be staying here. Don’t know how long, but Kate and Robby have already said I can stay with them for, you know, however long this thing lasts. They’ve got a sweet place in Nelson, plenty of room, so, yeah… anyway, Al, from what I hear, things are far safer here than…”

Beep.

Allison remained splayed, staring into the eyes of Perseus; his jade-colored Bengal eyes stared back at her. “Fuck,” she said. “Five months in Antarctica, and now he’s stuck in New Zealand. That’s just great.”

The details relayed in Ben’s call were soon repeated in an e-mail, with the addition of his typical sign-off: “Love ya, Al. Ben.”

Allison decided she would wait a day to respond to Ben’s e-mail, thinking perhaps plans may have changed—that Ben might, indeed, have found a way to get home. But she was wrong. She woke up to another e-mail from Ben, received sometime in the middle of the night.

“Plan B it is. Sorry. This can’t last long. We’ll laugh about it in another month when I get home, right? I’ll stay in touch by e-mail. Calls are way too expensive. Love ya, Al. Ben.”

The walls closed in as Allison read the words, then reread them once more for good measure. As she leaned towards her laptop screen, squinting, she slipped off her balance stool, and onto the hardwood floor of her home office. “Shit,” she said, to Marcus and Gabby, the two Siamese siblings who’d come running to check out the crashing sound.

The e-mails from Ben continued, weekly, through the months of April and May, with cheerful news about New Zealand’s competent handling of the virus, the “tight bubble” he, Kate and Robby had established, and the flora and fauna encountered on his daily runs. “There’s this fat kereru that waits for me every morning. He’s my buddy!” Allison’s dreams continued, while she hunkered down within her fortress, relying on delivery services for all her needs, and the cats’.

Allison had always been something of a recluse, so this new pandemic routine wasn’t particularly foreign to her. She’d worked for the same bank, in a remote position in compliance, since college graduation. She’d lived in this narrow Charleston row house—“squashed, like a slim volume of poetry between two whopping dictionaries” was Ben’s description, with long hallways, a narrow staircase, two tiny bedrooms, an even tinier office, a parlor instead of a living room, a cramped galley kitchen, two closet-sized bathrooms, and balconies larger than any interior room—since her grandmother had left it to her, along with Perseus, Marcus and Gabby. It was as creaky as her grandmother had been in the years before she passed, but also just as solid and resilient.

Grandma had been a widow her entire adult life, having lost her young husband in “The Great War,” while pregnant with her only child, Allison’s dad. An accountant, she’d always been “militantly self-sufficient,” according to her son, and an astute businesswoman who bought and flipped houses in Charleston long before the practice was a “thing.” The row house had been her parents’, and she lived in it her entire life; she died there peacefully, surrounded by cats, Allison by her side.

There were rumors the place was haunted, and Grandma was a believer. Allison had always been a skeptic—until the dreams had begun. She began sleeping with the hall lights on, fearful she’d trip over a cat on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, even though all cats remained curled in her bed when she got up to pee.

By June, Ben’s e-mails became infrequent, as he was spending more time trekking about the South Island. He’d always been the dreamer to her pragmatist, working seasonally in Antarctica and Greenland, urging Allison to “let loose.” Now she was reliving nightmares in some weird loop, and wrangling audits by day. But she never told him about the dreams, knowing he’d only laugh at her, dismissing her haunted house fears as “ridiculous.” The fact she couldn’t confide in him was the proverbial last straw; the recent, detached tone of his e-mails only confirmed her feelings. She was convinced he loved her for her house, squashed as it was, more than he loved her.

By July, Allison had had enough. She typed out the words, deleted them, typed them again, edited out the “fuck” and “fucking,” then finally settled on: “It’s all good. Stay in New Zealand. Go back to Antarctica, then Greenland, then wherever. But don’t come back here. I’ll send your clothes wherever you tell me to. Allison.” She’d always hated “Al.”

Ben’s response came almost immediately: “That’s cool. I’m establishing permanent residency here anyway. I was waiting for the right moment to tell you. So, thanks, Al.”

Allison had her home, her cats, her steady bank job, and her grandmother’s militant self-sufficiency. But she no longer had Ben, or the dreams.

 

Helen Beer sells for a living and writes to maintain some semblance of sanity. She is the author of numerous short stories, poems, essays, and feature screenplays, some of which have actually seen the light of day—through publication and contest honors—while some remain hidden under a rock somewhere. She shares her life with a husband, three cats, a horse, and an adventurous human son. She admits to deriving an inordinate amount of therapeutic benefit from mucking horse poop.

 

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