Fractured from the Fall

When in Rome...

Lily looked around at the room that was once hers. It was like a time warp back to her teenage years. Not a thing had changed. The walls were still covered in the same pastel pink wallpaper with little lavender flowers, only it was faded now and starting to peel in some areas. There were two twin beds with wrought iron frames: one for her sister and one for her. The beds sat on either side of a window set in the middle of the room. Each bed had it's own bedside table filled with items which epitomized the people they had been at that time in their lives. On Lily's sat a Discman, some headphones and a journal. This had been her daily escape: listening to music and writing about her dreams for what she thought was going to be her fabulous future. At one point she started hiding the journal from her sister, but Violet always found it. So eventually she just gave up and left it on the table. She told herself that she didn't care what Violet thought about what was written in the journal, but she knew now that that wasn't true. She cared more about her sister's opinion than she wanted to admit. She shuddered to think of what was written in there, all types of things that her father should never know. She wondered if he had ever read it over the years. She ran her finger along the top of the book and a thick film of dust lifted off of the diary, answering her question. He didn't want to read the things in there any more than she wanted to relive them. If there was one thing he was good at, it was living in denial and pretending like everything was okay.

She searched through the other items on the small wicker table. There was a picture of her and her high school boyfriend at the homecoming dance. She couldn't help but chuckle aloud at the dress she wore. The light blue fabric barely made it to her mid-thigh region and it was paired with her favorite brown leather cowboy boots. Like most of the outfits she had worn back then, the dress was far too short, but bless her father's heart, he never told her what to wear. It may have been that he was too embarrassed to have yet another awkward conversation with his daughter, at least that's how it had always seemed to Lily. Her father's attempts at being the disciplinarian were comical. It was as if he had bought a book on parenting 101 written in the 1970's and was reading from a script on how to handle teenage girls. It could have also been that he feared her backlash. Lily had always been outspoken, at least that's what she thought, although she realized now that her outspokenness may have just been her flat out being a pain in the ass. But whatever the reason, and whether or not he felt the dress was appropriate, her father always told her she looked beautiful. Looking back, she realized that it was he who had instilled confidence in her without ever really trying, simply by letting her be herself and loving her for who she was, not who he wanted her to be. She wondered if they taught that in parenting 101 circa 1970. She doubted it.

Lily lifted the lid of her jewelry box and rummaged through the items. One item in particular caught her eye. She picked it up and slid it on her wrist. It was a charm bracelet with just two charms. The rest of the bracelet was meant to be filled with charms of things that she and the gift giver could experience together, but she left it behind in this town, just like she did so many things, including the boy who gave her the bracelet. She gently rubbed one of the charms and felt tears starting to fill her eyes. Lily had tried for so long to forget it had happened. She quickly removed the bracelet and stuffed it back in the jewelry box, closing the lid on that dark time in her life and stuffing the emotions deep down inside like she always did.

Her sister's table told a different story. A large stack of books sat on one side. She picked one up and flipped through it. There were words and sentences that were highlighted and underlined. She rolled her eyes at the mess on the page. It was so Violet. She would read the same novels over and over again trying to find some sort of deep meaning in their words that could apply to her life. Lily realized now that it was Violet's escape from this place, just as music had been for her, but her sister's pretentiousness had annoyed her at the time. Violet was brilliant and she knew it. She could have been a brain surgeon or a scientist if she had desired. She received a full ride scholarship to Yale, but for some reason, unbeknownst to Lily, she decided to stay in this Podunk town. In some ways, Lily lost a small amount of respect for her sister when she stayed. It made her realize that maybe Violet wasn't as smart as Lily had always thought she was.