The Art of Falling by Kathryn Craft Read Free Book Online Page A

and ranch homes of the neighborhood. Our corner lot created the illusion of property expanse in an area where most of the houses butted up one against the other. But still, the brick ranch looked smaller than I remembered. The ivy my mother had planted at the end of the house after my father died now swallowed the whole wall and crept along the rain gutters above the garage door.
    “Listen,” I said. “You’ll have to be patient. I can only take this one step at a time. Literally.”
    My mother parked the car in the driveway. If the garage weren’t full of junk, she could have put me three short steps from the family room. “I’m willing to help you, Penny, but you have to promise me you aren’t going to try this again. If I’m going to wake up one morning and trip over your body on the way to the coffeemaker—”
    I gazed out the passenger window at the impossibly long trip to the front door. “Come on Mom, think about it. If I jumped off a building without dying, what could I possibly try next?”
    When the car rocked gently, I turned. My mother was sobbing. How could I comfort her, when her imagination was more real than any memory I had of the event? But her grief did pain me: my own mother thought me capable of self-destruction. I’d left the notion behind—I had to. What energy I could muster had to go toward healing.
    My more immediate struggle with the car door brought her around. Once she’d helped me into the recliner in the family room, she scurried around the house ablaze with energy. She fetched me some water, then bustled back to the kitchen to make dinner, all the while muttering that everything would be fine now that I was home.
    I quickly fell asleep. Sometime later, the smell of fennel and the sizzling of sausage woke me. I had a pain in my side—the bag with the pill bottle Dr. Tom had given me was wedged between my hip and the arm of the chair. I pulled it out and studied the leaflet. The antidepressants had a longer list of side effects than benefits. Among them: memory loss, inability to concentrate, and—the pièce de résistance—weight gain. I ripped up the leaflet.
    My mother kindly set aside her disappointment when I said I wouldn’t join her for dinner. It took a few minutes and most of my remaining energy to free myself from the recliner’s embrace before heading to my room.
    As I labored down the hall, I was surprised to find the collection of framed dance posters lining the wall had grown. Especially since I hadn’t considered my mother’s house my home for twelve years, and hadn’t been back to visit since leaving for New York City six years ago. During my youth, she had bought one each year to commemorate my birthday.
    Within one of those frames, hanging at the end of the hall, the contours of a body I knew only too well confronted me. He crouched low, arms spread, voracious eyes stalking me in a pose from a solo work I had helped him develop. It was a poster for Dance DeLaval’s debut at the Kennedy Center, and my mother had hung it right next to the door to my room.
    I braced myself against the doorframe and looked back at my mother padding down the carpeted hallway behind me, folded sheets in hand.
    “Why is this here?” I said.
    “You deserve a place on this wall.” The conviction in her voice made every single cell in my body ache. My circumstances were hard enough to face without adding what I may or may not “deserve” into the equation. “Those performances were the highlight of your career.” Fingerprints already smudged the glass where she now placed her hand. “This one’s Puma , right?”
    Maybe I should have taken comfort in this display of maternal pride. But seeing Dmitri on the prowl right next to the room where I had dreamed as a little girl rattled me. “I told you I didn’t need help.”
    “And I heard you, Penny. But how are you going to get these sheets on the bed with only one arm?”
    How was I going to live without the career Dmitri