The Falling Woman: A Novel by Richard Farrell

Author:Richard Farrell [Farrell, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2020-06-23T06:00:00+00:00

24

Tuesday morning, before her first shift at the restaurant, Erin stood, unlocked the desk drawer, and removed the phone Adam had left. He was so certain she’d crack, come to her senses, and give in. She tucked the phone into her pocket and pedaled out toward a small pond not far from the cabin.

Starting the job felt significant, a step toward permanence. Was she really doing it? Was she really going to walk away from her life?

The morning air warmed her skin. Shadows and light danced over the road. A wooden dock jutted out into the lake’s silver water. A rope swung idly from a pine tree. Finches chirped along the shore. Adam would be coming back. She was confident of that. He’d keep trying to convince her to go home. And of course, it was an option. Maybe even an inevitability. She could explain to Doug. Tell her diligent husband how she’d needed time to sort out what had happened. He would understand, and the parts he couldn’t understand, he’d simply file those away.

She turned on the phone. The world was close. She dialed the first numbers. A few more, and she could press send and the signal would bounce. Doug would answer. The enormity of that simple round button. She closed her eyes, listened to the sounds around her, and pressed down on the next number. She imagined her bed, billowing spinnakers on the river, the view from the upstairs office. She wondered if Doug was still raising the flag every morning, her grandfather’s forty-eight-star flag. Doug loved that silly old flag, almost as if he’d fought in the Battle of Leyte Gulf himself. Or was Doug grieving her death now? Had he cried? No. She knew better, knew he was orchestrating the events that gathered around her death: insurance claims, memorial services, goddamn honey-glazed hams for the mourners. What of the girls? Did Claire, so much like her father, throw herself into her studies? Would Tory drink to mask her grief? She’d never loved anything or anyone more than she loved the girls. Even then, even as she took those tentative first steps to erase herself, her own logic baffled.

One flick of her thumb, and it all would all come back, her lies, fears, hopes, passions, and dread. A few seconds for the call to find the cell tower, and then for the signal to bounce toward space at light speed; the miracle of instant communication, like so many other miracles, daily taken for granted. She spent most of her life going through the motions. Asleep. Habituated by routine. Unable to notice life surging around her. A few more seconds while the house phone rang. She imagined saying the words. I’m alive. Imagined hearing Doug’s voice.

I’m alive, she’d say, and then everything would change. Maybe the shock of her resurrection would snap Doug out of his obsessive behavior. Maybe at last he’d see her as more than a problem to solve. Maybe he’d pay attention to her again, not just to her disease.

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