How They May Be: After the Fall

She must have seen the denial building in my expression, for she didn't even finish the thought before hastily amending, "I mean, not to do anything - I remember what you said. I just, I..." Half-stammering, she looked away. "I want to be close to you."

I had to swallow the lump in my throat before responding. "Princess, if you remember what I said, then you know that this is one of the things I can't handle right now." Right now - I was leaning so heavily on that, promising by implication a future that I did not plan to give her.

Her head dropped minutely, a half-hearted attempt at a smile flickering on her lips. "Yeah. I guess I do." Shifting to her feet, she took a step towards her room - towards me. I stepped aside to let her pass, but she stopped as she came up close, turned her head to me with her eyes still downcast. "Just..." she murmured, and with no more warning than that, snaked her arms inside mine, leaned her body gently against me.

The cold calculation of reason bade me to push her away, but I was not so controlled as that. This was perhaps the last hug we would have, and I could not bring myself to end it before its time. So for some moments we remained, her gentle curves pressed warmly upon me as I slowly put my arms around her shoulders and held her close, the strawberry scent of her hair tickling my nostrils. The side of her head lay softly upon my chest, and there was soon a sigh that seemed to issue from the very soul of her, with a quality of contentment that nearly pierced my heart. So much power in those delicately pink lips, in her silver eyes.

I might not have been able to pull away on my own, but eventually Emily retreated with a small smile, and I was once again able to breathe. "Goodnight, pumpkin," I spoke, after a moment to steady my voice. "I'll see you in the morning."

She quirked her lips. "I think I'll see you in my dreams, first." That slender trace of humor, threaded through her words - I knew I would miss it terribly when I was gone. Miss her. I could not bring myself to think of what that would be like; it was imagining oblivion. All I had were these last few moments. And without thought, without reason, I reached forward and gently clasped the side of her face in my palm, my thumb running slow along the line of her cheekbone - capturing the feel of her beauty, holding it like a jewel in my hand.

I nearly lost control there, almost fell again, my resolve groaning under the weight of my feeling. It was a monumental effort to call back my hand and turn away from her. When I finally managed it I did not risk another look, instead just disappearing into my bedroom and closing the door behind me. I could hear her footsteps receding down the hallway, and breathed a silent sigh of relief - had she followed me into my room, I would never have been able to turn her away.

It was a struggle to fall asleep that evening, my mind crowded and calamitous with memories of her, with emotion and sensation both. Phantom kisses lit upon my lips, and every time I closed my eyes she was there waiting for me, with open arms and a knowing smile. But finally, after an hour that felt like five, I was at last able to drift off into slumber, and find some refuge from my feelings in the blackness of sleep.

---

I did not dream that night, or did not recall on waking - it hardly matters which. The usual morning routine I set about with a certain grim stolidity, the detached and measured purpose of a man preparing for his own execution. I certainly felt the strength of that comparison, staring sightlessly at my suitcase and wondering what I ought to pack. I was removing the lynchpin from my life, or perhaps my life from the lynchpin. Either way, there was a sense of unreality which cast a cloud upon my mind as I slowly replaced the worn clothing in my luggage with clean counterparts, and settled on a few books from my shelf. I'd been trying to finish Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for nearly a year now. Perhaps tearing the heart from my world would give me the chance to do so.

Even once I had packed, I remained sitting for a time on the edge of the bed, girding myself for the task before me. I could hear Emily downstairs, moving about with the occasional small clatter and scrape, and there was a terror inside me at the thought of this farewell. Surely I could wait a day, a scurrying thought within me pleaded. I didn't have to do this right now - I could give her time to prepare, give myself time...

No. The longer I waited, the harder it would be. It had to be now, or I might never manage it. Complacency was too easily attained. I lumbered to my feet and to the stairs with my suitcase, footsteps heavy as I trundled down. By the time I reached the landing I could smell food cooking; coming down the last flight, I saw Emily bent lightly over the stove, stirring at a pan. She turned to me as I set foot upon the floor, and I guiltily dropped my bag out of sight.

"Good morning, daddy!" From the look on her face, it could have been any day of the last half-decade. That dancing little sparkle in her eye, the gently thrilling trill in her voice. As though nothing at all had changed between us. But the illusion faded when her eyes met mine and then fell shyly away. "Um," she intoned bravely, "Did you sleep okay?"

A breath to steady my nerves, and a pasted-on smile I hardly felt. "Well enough, I suppose." My gaze flickered down, and I felt a damning disappointment that she had already dressed for school, that I could not look upon her bare and lovely legs. "What about you?"

"Better than I expected." A silent laugh spoke through her small smile. "I woke up early, though. Thought I'd make us some breakfast, if you're hungry." And she turned back to the stove, began scraping from the pan onto a waiting plate.

"Bacon and eggs?" I asked over her shoulder. Emily wasn't much of a cook; the bacon looked a bit on the scorched side, and the eggs were poorly scrambled. Still, it was clearly a labor of love. "Awfully domestic of you, isn't it?"

"I can be domestic when I want to be!" A playful kind of amusement lined her protest, as she turned back and offered up the plate to me. But it fled when her eyes fell again upon mine, leaving in its wake a desperately earnest intensity. "If you want me to be..."

My hands stopped there, inches from the plate. It was more than a meal she offered, and I could not afford to accept. Could not afford, in fact, to indulge in this any longer. I stepped back from her, hands falling to my sides. I had to tell her now. Let her know, and go. "Emily, I need to leave." It came out smoothly, coldly. I'd certainly practiced it enough that morning, in my head, under my breath.

"For work, you mean." Her eyes narrowed, and there was a trace of worry in her voice. She glanced at the clock; it was well before the time that I usually left.

"No." I shook my head, sighed softly. "That is, yes, that's where I'll be going, but I won't be coming back."

She laughed briefly, incredulously. "What do you mean, won't be coming back?"

"I mean I'm leaving, and I'm not coming back." The words came out roughly now, forced through a throat that tightened in protest. "This . . . we can't have this, Emily, I can't give you what you want. And I can't trust myself to be around you. As long as you're here, I have to stay somewhere else."

Emily shook her head, a desperately disbelieving smile on her lips. "No, you said we had time to figure this out. You said we could talk about it."

Heavily. "I said what I had to, to get us through the day. There's nothing to figure out. Talking wouldn't change anything."

"But you can't just leave," she insisted. "I can't live without you, daddy, I-"

"You'll be fine," I interrupted firmly. "You're a very capable girl, and you won't have to worry about anything. You have your car, and your credit card. I'll hire someone to come in and keep the house clean. If there's an emergency, you can call me on the cell."

Silence for a few moments, her head shaking in a small bobble. Then, "So that's it? All those years, everything we've had since you came back, and now because of one night it's just 'goodbye forever?'"

She was not making this easy for me, staring up into my eyes with a passionately plaintive intensity. My heart was on her side, pleading that there must be another way, that I could not abandon her like this. Not again. But I would not be dissuaded. Despite the dictates of emotion, I knew what had to be done. Slowly, I nodded my head. "Maybe not forever. But for the foreseeable future - yes. That's it."

"You just..." Emily trailed off as her head shook again, her expression contorting with ripples of helpless feeling. Brief laughter bubbled out of her, tinged with hysteria. "You...liar!" An adolescent fury leapt into her voice, blotched her face as she suddenly spat out the accusation. "Fine! You want to leave so bad, then leave!"

"Sweetheart, please understand," I said softly. "It's not about what I want. It's about what's necessary. It's about-"

"SHUT! UP!" She screamed, eyes burning fiercely. "Stop saying that! I hate you!" And in a single, smooth motion, she hurled the plate of food at me - it glanced stingingly off my shoulder and shattered upon the wall, eggs sliding semifluidly down to the ground. I don't think she even meant to do it; her expression quickly cycled through shock and chagrin, before settling in to anger once more. "Just - just get the hell away from me."

She turned away then, hands balled into trembling fists, and I stood there long seconds grappling with my own internal struggle. Her anger rubbed at me like a thorn in my side, and I did not want to leave her so full of bile and rage. I had always soothed her at times like this, never permitted fury to curdle in her heart. But I knew as well that this was an exit I had to take, that I could better stand this anger than the tears which might follow it. So I picked up my bag, uttered a small "Goodbye, Emily," as I headed for the door. It sounded, felt, so empty. Words could not contain the meaning of the moment, could not express what I was giving up. The sky as I stepped outside that day was grey and dismal, with a chill wind that seemed to seep down to my soul.

---

A major bank failure in the Midwest made for a heavy workload that day, and I threw myself upon it eagerly, desperate to fill my mind with something other than the daughter I was abandoning for a second time. I half-succeeded - there were accounts, investments, contacts to work over, but always in the background a low tolling of memory, ready to leap to the fore if I stopped for even a moment. Her face, her eyes, her words. I could still hear her screaming at me, those three terrible words - "I hate you." She didn't mean it, I knew that - but it clawed at my heart all the same. I had to pray she would one day understand, that she would come to see why I had to leave. The irony was, she was right to hate me. Just not for this.

That afternoon I checked into a downtown hotel, booking a room for a week. I still didn't know what I was going to do in the long run, where I was going to stay while I waited for Emily to grow up, to move on, to heal from what I had done to her. But this would do, for the moment. In that small room I carefully hung up my handful of suits, sat upon the bed, and quietly collapsed in on myself, like a home with its foundation ripped away. There was nothing now to distract me, no invented goal to occupy my attention, and my very soul seemed to sag beneath a screaming emptiness, a life made suddenly purposeless and vain.

Even before this chain of events had been set into motion, I had pondered dismally what I would do with myself when she moved on to college and out of my daily life, when I could no longer look forward to her smiles in my mornings or her company on a lazy afternoon. I faced that absence now, earlier and worse than I had feared; I could not even hope to visit her, or to speak to her on the phone, and the lack cut all the more deeply for the forbidden moments we had shared.

For my sanity, I could not think of her - but I could think of nothing else. Emily had been the center of my life for so long now that I had no other orientation. I tried to read, but my eyes passed glassily over the words, refusing to focus. Tried to work, but could no longer summon the clarity of mind to do so. So I paced instead, striding back and forth across the room for something like an hour, my hand clutching neurotically at my shoulder. Desperately trying not to think of anything at all, just doing, being.

It was hardly a satisfying answer, and it was perhaps inevitable that I should eventually turn instead to a chemical solution. There was a mini-bar in the room, with a few of those small and fantastically expensive bottles of vodka; not normally my drink, but on that day I just needed something to tear away my consciousness before it drove me mad. I emptied out the fridge's supply and drained them one by one, laying on the bed with the television tuned to some forgettable sitcom, the intellectual equivalent of white noise. I drank until a cloud descended over all my senses, until I could not hold a thought in my mind or remember what it was that troubled me. And then, with all temperance restrained, I drank until that cloud turned black, and found the night's extinction.

The next morning I awoke with a pounding headache and a dull, hollow feeling that stretched down to the bone. I felt suddenly a decade older, and hardly recognized the haggard face that stared back at me in the mirror as I shaved and washed. The clawing existential panic of the day before had departed, leaving behind an all-consuming weariness, and I shivered with an aching despair that this was to be my life now. Only this, traveling between work and an empty room, carrying on a fa‡ade of normalcy in the days and silencing my memories in the nights. Until such time as I forgot her, recovered from my sickness - but I could little imagine that. There was no one else in the world.

At work, I could not attain again the industry with which I had distracted myself the previous day. I instead just sat in my office, at my desk, staring emptily at the deep-varnished mahogany surface. I listened to the low hum of the air conditioning, to the constant, distant thunder of a building full of footsteps, to the steady clicking of the clock, seconds turning into minutes turning into hours. It was almost a Zen experience, if not for my misery. When I was finally pulled back to reality by the insistent ringing of the sleek black phone on my desk, it took a few moments for me even to pull together the will to pick up.

"Hello?" I finally answered, an unpleasant rasp in my throat. "Yes?"

"Mr. West?" My secretary. In my current mood, the constant perkiness in her voice was a vague irritant. "Your daughter's school is on the line. A Mrs. Mullins would like to speak with you."

A little flash of panic ran down my spine. What now? "Thank you, Ms. Jacobs." Fighting back a renewed sense of looming catastrophe, I hit the button to switch to the incoming line. "Hello, Mrs. Mullins? This is Emily's father. Is there a problem?"

"I certainly hope not." An older woman's voice from the other end, small and faintly prim. "I'm only calling myself to make sure everything is all right. Do you know, Mr. West, that your daughter has not appeared in her classes, yesterday or today?"

"She hasn't?" I felt a knot tighten in my stomach.

"No, indeed she has not." A cluck of disapproval came down the line. "We've received no word here of illness or any other matter, and so it's standard policy to call. Now, Emily is doing well in her classes overall, but unexcused absences can very quickly begin to affect a student's grades, you understand?"

"Yes, of course," I agreed distantly. "She's, ah. I'll speak to her about it."

"Do I take it, then," the woman continued acutely, "that these are not absences with your permission, and that she is just 'playing hooky,' as the kids say?"

I could hardly imagine that the kids said that, and at this point I desperately wished to end the conversation. "That may be. As I said, I'll speak to her about it."

"Very good," she replied pleasantly. "Then we will be happy to see her in class tomorrow. Have a good day, Mr-"

Explosively, I slammed the phone back down on its cradle before she could even finish her goodbye. My fingers tapped nervously on the desk, possessed by a sudden and terrible worry. It was nothing. I dearly hoped it was nothing. But I remembered the words she had spoken as I left, so blithely ignored at the time - "I can't live without you." Emily was so sensitive, so given to sorrow, and abruptly all I could think of was the half-full bottle of sleeping pills in the medicine cabinet, the package of razor blades under the sink, the small revolver I kept in my nightstand. Such a tumultuous event in her life, and I had abandoned her there with such tools...

No, I wanted to cry out. Emily had never tried to hurt herself, never spoken of any desire to. Not that I knew of. And surely I would know if she had, wouldn't I? I was being paranoid. I prayed that I was being paranoid, that she was just cutting class to have fun, to go shopping, to recover from...from what I had done to her.

But if I wasn't? If she were lying comatose this moment in the bath, or holding my revolver, or already - I couldn't think it. I couldn't risk assuming. I had to call, make sure she was all right. My fingers were jittery as I picked up the phone again and hit my home number, the ringing on the other end seemingly eternal. Finally, there was a click, and I heard Emily's voice.

"Hi there!"

Relief swept through me, and I released the breath I didn't know I was holding. "Oh, thank god, sweetie. I was-"

Then I heard myself on the other end, and came crashing down again. "You've reached the home of Mark," - "And Emily!" She sounded again in my ear, eager and sweet on the recording, before my own voice returned. "We're not able to answer the phone right now, but leave a message, and we'll get back to you just as soon as we can."

A long beep. I inhaled once before I spoke. "Emily, if you're there, pick up the phone." I waited, one second, two, three. Nothing. "Pick up the phone. Please, I just want to make sure that you're...that everything's okay. Pick up." Again, I waited, and received only silence. I felt like screaming, a touch of madness in the back of my mind.

"Okay," I sighed, "If you're there, if you get this, just . . . stay there, stay home. Don't do anything. I'm coming over. Please, princess," I could hear the reedy edge of desperation in my own voice, "Don't...don't do anything rash, okay? I'm leaving right now." I held the phone to my ear for a moment longer, just in case. Nothing.

Muttering something about a family emergency to my secretary on my way out, I almost ran through the underground parking structure to my car, my lethargy of the morning given over to the fevered energy of panic. It was only my good fortune that I was not pulled over by the police on my way home, as I made full use of the car's power for perhaps the first time, tearing down the highway at a hundred miles an hour wherever traffic permitted, and in a few places where it did not. All the same, the drive felt twice as long as it usually did, and when I finally arrived at my neighborhood, I screeched around the curves to my house, parking haphazardly upon the driveway in front. Emily's car was there. I refused to consider what that meant.

I tried to remain calm, forcing myself to breathe deeply, as I opened the front door. There was nothing obvious amiss - in fact, the room looked just as it had when I left the previous morning. Rounding the corner, I saw the shattered plate she had flung at me still resting beneath a sloppy pile of eggs and meat, now smelling faintly foul. I stopped before it, lightly pushed one of the ceramic shards with my toe. And then a touch of dread in my belly, as I heard the distant sound of music coming from upstairs.