The Fall

Cindy Grade 10, Featured Image: 0602 Keshia Grade 12

The first memory that Kelly had of her grandmother Harriette was when she was four years old. She was on the back deck of Harriette’s lakeside mansion, hot wind whistling through the dense summer trees onto her sunburnt face. Kelly sat at the edge of her mother’s lap, looking out at the rolling hills that led down to still water. The afternoon heat swept them both into a drowsy trance. Her mother’s head rested against the garden chair, and she breathed deeply through her nose. Kelly lay her head gingerly on her mother’s chest and closed her eyes, falling asleep with her ear pressed against a heartbeat. She was awakened by a sound loud and sudden like a crack of thunder. She jolted upright, fear flooding her senses. She whipped her head around, searching for the sound before losing her balance and tumbling off of her mother’s lap and onto the floor of the deck. She let out a piercing wail as her tender head came crashing down on wooden panels, awakening her mother. It didn’t take long before the family realized that the noise Kelly had heard was actually her grandmother diving into the lake. Ever since that day, Kelly was deathly afraid of heights. The fear washed over her just like that, and there was no going back. No roller coasters, no airplanes, no bridges. She would eventually try therapy, but it only did so much. Her hatred for her grandmother was more gradual, but you could say that that day was the start.

On Kelly’s eighth birthday, she had invited every single one of her school friends to her house that Saturday. Last minute, her grandmother insisted that the party should take place in one of her extravagant multi-million dollar homes. Harriette pressured Kelly’s mother, even going as far as to claim that she took offense in her rejecting the offer. Finally, Kelly’s mother agreed and reluctantly re-sent the invitations to Kelly’s classmates’ parents. A few of her friends asked her if the new address was a joke. Kelly shook her head no and explained to them, as modestly as she could, that her grandmother was disgustingly rich. That night, Kelly blew out the candles by herself in a dimly lit dining room with her parents sharing worried glances behind her. Harriette had decided to leave town that weekend, twenty minutes before the party was scheduled, and of course not tell anyone. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas after that, they would fight. It would start as little things. In the beginning, Kelly would casually say snide remarks, usually about whatever food Harriette had brought. Through the years, that would progress into both of them screaming and one of them crying and heading to their room or fumbling their car keys out of their purse. By the time Kelly was eighteen, she would go online and find articles written about Harriette’s company, compiling a list of some of the worst things people had to say about it, writing them down on a page in her journal to bring up the next holiday. She saved things like that–things that would really upset Harriette–for when her grandmother brought up her fear of heights just to taunt her because nothing hurt more than hearing someone she despised make light of her biggest fear. The fear itself, Kelly still blamed on her grandmother.

A pale early-evening sun melted into the horizon on the day of Harriette’s funeral. Kelly stared at the ball of fire, that looked more like ice that day, while her parents gave their tearful eulogy. When they finished, she thought about how she herself felt like the sun at that moment. Low and sunken, waiting for the day to end, surrounded by dark and heavy clouds that were forever on the brink of a downpour. She thought that the will reading would go by easier. She assumed that the money would trickle down the line starting with her cousins, uncles and aunts, parents, siblings, and of course, run out before it reached her. She didn’t expect that she would be included at all. She definitely didn’t expect to be the only benefactor. When she heard it, for a moment, she truly believed that her grandmother’s dying wish was to perform a peace offering. For a moment, she felt honored. For a moment, she felt resolved.

“However,” the lawyer read, “Harriette has requested the money be collected specifically on the 50th floor of the Central Park skyscraper. She insisted that if this request could, for some reason, not be fulfilled by the benefactor, all assets would instead go to her husband.”